What had propelled him, as far as Frank could make out, had been shock. He had been unsettled when Bertha died, aghast when Lloyd George had introduced National Insurance (though relieved when it turned out that there wouldn’t be pensions for criminals), worried – as he had told Frank – by the recent behaviour of Englishwomen and English railwaymen and printers, but none of these had constituted the kind of distress that Nellie had caused him when, supposed to be in Moscow, she had rung the bell at Longfellow Road, and worse still, disappeared the next day. Perhaps, too, there was a wish, long unrecognized, to go one better than his much-travelled sister. Who would have believed that Charlie Cooper would ever get as far as Russia? But there was no practical object in his journey whatever. The only idea that had come to him, he said, was that ‘they might advertise’. Frank pointed out that advertisements were for lost and missing persons, and Nellie, properly speaking, was neither. Charlie, however, had been thinking of something on the lines of the Lost Boys in Peter Pan, who appealed to their mothers to come home. Frank was rather surprised at this stroke of imagination, but Charlie said it had been suggested by the vicar.
‘So you’ve been discussing my troubles quite extensively in Norbury.’
‘Not extensively, Frank. Only to sympathetic ears.’
Once they were back in Lipka Street, Charlie explained that he intended to stay about a week or ten days, to see whatever there was to be seen, and to broaden his mind a bit, because that was what travel was for. He’d been afraid that it might be inconvenient, but he could see that he needn’t have worried about that – Frank was very well able to manage, and the whole place, he could also see, was something like. The warmth of a Russian household and the excitement of the servants’ greeting to a distinguished relative from a foreign country powerfully affected him, so that he was much less like a man on an awkward and distressing mission than a tripper on a day-outing.
‘My word, Frank, you don’t do yourself badly. Plenty of everything, people to look after you, the house kept warm all the time, almost too warm for comfort, I’d say. I can’t call to mind a single house in Norbury with anything more than coal fires.’
‘I should be careful of the vodka if I were you, Uncle Charlie,’ said Ben anxiously. ‘It doesn’t taste of anything but it’s quite strong.’
‘Uncle Charlie needs something quite strong,’ said Dolly.
‘Well, I’ll take a little,’ Charlie said amiably, ‘if your father thinks it’s good for me.’
‘It’s not at all good for you,’ said Frank. But the vodka, pliant, subtle, and fiery, eased the moment, as it had done for so many millions of others.
Charlie was not deaf, but he didn’t always entirely take in what was said to him. In this way, although he was sometimes taken off guard, he was spared a good deal. He helped himself freely at table, remarking, ‘I hope I’m not overdoing it.’
‘You can’t overdo it,’ said Frank, ‘the cook will be disappointed if you don’t take plenty.’
‘She needn’t worry. It’s excellent, and then there’s all these little touches, these slices of cucumber, I mean, that’s what I call little touches. I’d never have believed that the housekeeping would go ahead like this while you were managing on your own, so to speak.’
‘He isn’t managing on his own,’ said Dolly. ‘He has Lisa.’
‘There’s a Russian girl who looks after the children,’ said Frank. ‘I don’t know why she isn’t here now.’ He had expected her to be there, and although she was presumably only a few yards away he was not able to prevent himself from feeling the deprivation as a physical pain.
‘You were a very long time at the station,’ Dolly said. ‘Lisa had supper upstairs with Annushka.’
‘Well, I hope I shall meet your Miss Lisa tomorrow, then,’ said Charlie. ‘A good thing she’s got an English name, isn’t it? Just for a chat, then tomorrow.’
‘I’m afraid Lisa won’t be able to chat to you,’ said Dolly. ‘She doesn’t know any English.’
‘Dear me, that’s a pity. You’ll have to see if you can teach her any. Just “how do you do?” and “thank you” and “A was an apple-pie” – just useful phrases to be going on with.’
Dolly and Ben both left the room.
‘They’re unusual kiddies,’ said Charlie. ‘They’ve got a quaint way with them. You can’t tell what’s going on in a child’s mind, of course. Those two join in the conversation quite freely, but that doesn’t mean you can tell what they’re thinking. I’m not sure that Nellie and me were ever permitted to join in quite as freely as that. There was rather rigid discipline in our home, you see.’
The tea came in, and Toma, who wanted a closer look at the brother-in-law, took up once again with Frank a grievance of long standing about the necessity of buying a fifth samovar. One was upstairs now with Lisa Ivanovna and the two large ones were in the kitchen. The argument was not a formality and went on for some time, while Charlie sat perspiring in the warmth of the room, turning his head from one unintelligible speaker to the other. The door, meanwhile was left open, and Lisa came in.
Charlie got to his feet, was introduced as Karl Karlovich, and could only smile. Lisa also smiled, and said to Frank in Russian, ‘Please don’t think I intended to sit down here. I know you want to talk to your brother-in-law.’
‘No, I don’t want to talk to him,’ Frank answered in English. ‘Stay here, I’m in love with you.’
‘Pardon, I didn’t quite catch that,’ said Charlie.
Lisa went silently away.
‘She looks like a very refined type of young lady, Frank. A pity she’s had her hair cut short, as it’s quite a nice colour. At home I’d have thought she was a suffragist.’
‘She’s employed here on a temporary basis,’ said Frank. ‘I mean while Nellie’s away.’
‘Oh, I see, she’s not a young lady, she’s a young woman.’
‘I’m sure her hair will grow again quite quickly,’ said Frank.
18
Charlie continued to show an unexpected readiness to enjoy himself. This began, conventionally enough, with a call at the Chaplaincy, where Frank himself, since the departure of Miss Kinsman, had felt himself coldly received. If this was so, Charlie didn’t notice it. He repeated to Mrs Graham his amazement at the housekeeping at 22 Lipka Street.
‘That’s Russia, I suppose. You’ll feel the difference, you and your husband, when you come to the end of your ministry here and go back home again. I tell Frank that in his house it’s more like the Arabian nights.’
‘I’m glad, Frank,’ said Mrs Graham, lighting one of her horrible cigarettes, ‘that your house has become like something out of the Arabian nights.’
‘Someone to open the door,’ Charlie went on, ‘someone to shut it for you, someone to bring anything you’re in want of. With a smile, you know! And then the kiddies are no trouble at all.’
‘Ah yes,’ said Mrs Graham. ‘I heard that Frank had engaged a girl to look after them.’
‘Of course, when she does say anything it’s in Russian and I can’t make head or tail of it,’ said Charlie. ‘But you’ve only got to look at her to see that she’s the right sort. She’s “just the sort of creature that Nature did intend”. Do you know that song, Mrs Graham?’
‘No, I don’t,’ said Mrs Graham, afraid, perhaps, that Frank’s brother-in-law might begin to sing.
‘It’s an Irish song,’ he told her. ‘It’s called “I met her in the garden where the praties grow.” But you can’t draw a hard and fast line between the nationalities. It describes her to a T.’
‘Lisa used to work as an assistant in Muir and Merrilees,’ said Frank. ‘I hope –’
‘In which department?’
‘The men’s handkerchiefs, I think.’
‘Ah, yes.’
‘I hope that when you and the Chaplain next come to see us, you’ll have a talk with her.’
‘Oh, you mustn’t trouble yourself about invitations,’ said Mrs Graham, ‘until
your wife comes back.’
Mrs Graham struck Charlie as a gracious, friendly woman, who seemed to have a kind word for everyone. He was also impressed by Selwyn, a clever chap, he thought, who’d read a lot. He was surprised that Nellie hadn’t mentioned him more in her letters home.
‘He told me he was a poet, Frank. I wonder if you knew that?’
‘Yes, I did know it.’
‘And he’s a vegetarian, too, like George Bernard Shaw. But Shaw isn’t a poet. It must be easier for him, writing prose, to sustain himself on vegetables.’
‘Selwyn doesn’t eat much at any time,’ said Frank.
‘It seems an odd thing for a management accountant. But you can’t argue with genius, it strikes where it will. When he took me yesterday to hear that pianist, you know, Scriabin, yes, at that concert hall, and we were walking back together, he suddenly told me to stop, and we stopped dead in the middle of the tram-lines.’
‘What for?’
‘He didn’t give any reason. He just threw back his head and looked at the stars, and we moved on almost immediately.’
Selwyn had also given Charlie a copy of Birch Tree Thoughts. There it was, in its familiar buff paper cover. ‘It would have been more of a keepsake, of course, if it had been in Russian, but then, if it hadn’t been in English I shouldn’t have been able to follow it. I’ve had a glance through it. This one is a kind of lullaby, I think, to make a child drop off to sleep. I didn’t know Crane was a married man.’
‘It isn’t the poet speaking,’ said Frank. ‘If I’m thinking of the right one. It’s a birch tree.’
‘Well, I consider it a privilege to meet a poet on equal terms like that. You must feel it too, in the day-to-day running of the business.’
While Selwyn and Charlie had been at the conservatoire Frank had taken the opportunity to call on Mrs Graham again. He had telephoned to ask her if he could have another word with her; it hadn’t been possible, he said, the other evening, but at the moment his brother-in-law was out.
There was no one else in the drawing room, evidently she’d thought it worth while to keep it clear for him. He began at once, ‘I wanted to ask you if you’d heard from Miss Kinsman. To tell you the truth, I haven’t been altogether easy about her.’
‘Did you expect to be?’ asked Mrs Graham.
‘I’m not sure that I have any special responsibility towards her. But I know that she’d lost her job and needed another one, and perhaps she expected … I mean that if she was disappointed, I’m very sorry.’
‘Ah, but are you?’ Mrs Graham said. ‘Would you consider me old-fashioned to an absurd degree if I said that a man’s duty to a woman, even an older woman, or perhaps I should say particularly to an older woman, in a strange city, is to escort her safely to wherever she happens to want to go?’
‘No, I don’t think you’re old-fashioned, Mrs Graham. I find you confusing, but that’s a different matter. I find all women confusing, even Dolly. It’s because you use a different manner, if I may put it that way, according to who you’re with. Now your husband would never do that.’
‘He should be able to, it was part of his pastoral training,’ said Mrs Graham briskly. ‘I admit I didn’t need training in it myself. But in any case, you didn’t find poor Muriel Kinsman confusing?’
‘Yes, I did. But even so, I wasn’t sufficiently polite to her, or even reasonable.’
‘Well, she arrived safely at Harwich. She was completely harmless, or as harmless as a penniless person can be. The poor always cause trouble, my father was a country curate and we were poor as dirt. Where did she go? Well, I gave her a note to the Distressed Gentle-women, and Mr Crane knew of a Tolstoyan settlement somewhere near London, with running water, of course. But that isn’t really what you came here to talk about, is it? My husband wouldn’t have been able to advise you, because it wouldn’t have been his business. It isn’t my business either, but then I don’t care whether it is or not.’
‘I haven’t any secrets,’ said Frank. ‘Everyone in Moscow knows everything I do.’
‘Perhaps you’ve been in Moscow too long.’
‘I hope not.’
‘I won’t say “let’s get to the point”. We arrived there a long time ago. This young woman. She, also, was recommended by the great recommender, Mr Crane. He’s an idealist. I don’t accuse him of anything worse than that. He’s not of the earth, earthy, he’s of the clouds, cloudy. But what does your brother-in-law think?’
‘Charlie thinks very highly of Lisa Ivanovna,’ said Frank. ‘He’s told you that already.’
‘Of course he thinks quite highly of her!’ Mrs Graham cried, raising her voice to a pitch that Frank had never heard before. ‘Show me a single man in this city who wouldn’t! Quiet, blonde, slow-witted, nubile, docile, doesn’t speak English, hardly speaks at all in fact, sloping shoulders, half-shut eyes, hasn’t broadened out yet though I daresay she will, proper humility, reasonable manners, learned I suppose behind the counter at Muirka’s.’
‘I don’t think her eyes are usually half-shut,’ said Frank.
‘You’re all of you serf-owners at heart! Yes, this brother-in-law too! Fifty years after Emancipation, and you’re still chasing them into the straw-stacks!’
‘Don’t let yourself be carried away, Mrs Graham,’ said Frank. ‘They’ve never had serfs in Norbury.’
‘Still you haven’t answered what I asked you. The brother-in-law. Over here, presumably, in distress at his sister’s disappearance. What does he think of the situation he finds in your house?’
‘There’s nothing to think. If Lisa had come to work for us, and Nellie had left the house in consequence, there might have been some objection, but it was quite the other way about.’
‘Yes, quite, quite the other way about,’ said Mrs Graham hoarsely. She blew out quantities of smoke. Frank felt dismayed.
‘You’re distressing yourself unnecessarily. I’m sorry it should be on my account.’
‘Do I irritate you?’ Mrs Graham asked, gallantly trying to regain her usual manner.
‘Not yet.’
‘There’s something else. I find your Lisa difficult to place. We were saying that Selwyn Crane is an idealist, by which we meant, or at least I did, that he’s easily taken in. How much did he know about her? I’d say she was probably a deacon’s daughter, or a psalm-singer’s, or a bell-ringer’s – some church official, anyway.’
‘I think her father was a joiner.’
‘You’ve seen her documents, of course.’
‘Of course.’
‘I’m only asking you the questions you ought to have asked yourself. Very likely you have. After all, you were brought up here. You must see a lot of young Russians, a lot of students, but after all Russians can be young without being students – many more of them, I mean, than we do here at the Chaplaincy. A joiner’s daughter! Well, I don’t know that I’ve ever spoken to a joiner. Milkmen, sewingwomen, photographers – terrible people! – German dentists – but not joiners. I’m glad to say that so far the woodwork at the Chaplaincy has held up, and there’s been no need to call a joiner in.’
‘We were talking about Lisa Ivanovna,’ said Frank.
‘Well, let me put it quite plainly. Perhaps I’m quite on the wrong tack in thinking there’s anything mysterious about her. But do you think it’s possible that she’s connected with any kind of revolutionary group?’
‘Mrs Graham, what I think is this: your imagination’s running away with you a little. I can’t help feeling that you’re determined to find something wrong with Lisa, however unlikely. Politics need spare time, and anyone who looks after my three children for twenty-four hours of the day and night won’t have much spare time left.’
‘But, my dear Frank,’ said Mrs Graham, leaning forward, ‘is she sleeping in the house?’
It was the first time she had ever called him ‘my dear’. He went on rapidly, ‘and then, political activity needs a certain temperament, I think. For example, Dolly’s teach
er –’
‘Oh, the godless one!’ said Mrs Graham. ‘Yes, I’ve heard of her. But I’m sure you need have no fears about Dolly. Never did I meet a child of her age whose head was screwed on more firmly.’
Frank wondered exactly what Dolly had been saying when she came to tea, as she sometimes did, at the Chaplaincy. Mrs Graham rolled another handful of rank shag, and squared her thin shoulders. She’s going to pieces, Frank thought. ‘No hard feelings,’ he said, and in her contempt for such a commonplace remark, she began to feel better, so that they parted almost on friendly terms.
19
‘Your wife and her brother must be close, very close!’ exclaimed Mrs Kuriatin.
‘I don’t think so,’ said Frank. ‘They haven’t seen each other for some years.’
‘No tie is as strong as that between a brother and a sister, none. Only prison and hunger are stronger, that’s what’s said. What do I know of what Arkady is doing? But I know what’s in the heart of all my six brothers in Smolensk.’
Kuriatin, too, seemed extravagantly delighted at the arrival of the brother-in-law, whom he insisted as regarding as a lawyer, perhaps as a public prosecutor from an important district. ‘Norbury. What is the significance of that in Russian?’
‘Northern city, I suppose,’ said Frank doubtfully.
‘The same meaning, then, as Peking,’ said Kuriatin in triumph.
He must show, he said, this newcomer how a Russian enjoys himself, in a way quite unknown to the West. Ordinarily he would have done this by taking a taxi to the gipsy brothels in Petrovsky Park. Were there good gipsy brothels in Norbury? Frank reassured him on this point. But these places were all compulsorily shut during Lent, and Frank stipulated that Charlie who, after all, was musical, shouldn’t be taken to Rusalochka’s. The motor-car, then. They could go in Kuriatin’s Wolseley Star – a 50 h.p. model, with detachable wheels, which Frank felt was a wise precaution – to, let’s say, the Merchants’ Church, between Kursk and Ryazan, about twelve miles out of Moscow. The roads, though, were still covered with only half-melted snow.
The Beginning of Spring Page 13