The Grand Duchess of Nowhere (9 page)

‘But I don’t want to stay here,’ Elli said, even when I told her about the new pony. She glowered at me and clung to Ernie’s leg.

‘I don’t want a new pony,’ she grizzled. ‘I want to go home with Pappi. Mamma’s cross with me.’

I said, ‘I’m not cross with you at all.’

‘Well, you look cross,’ she said. ‘Always.’

People said that. Missy always looked gay and I always looked stern. It was so unfair.

Mother suggested that Ernie stay on for a few days, to help Elli settle in.

‘Not sure I care to,’ he said. ‘I suppose Sailor Cyril’s in town?’

I said, ‘He’s in the Pacific.’

‘Really?’ he said. ‘Gosh. Poor old Ducky. All divorced and nowhere to go.’

I said, ‘Cyril was nothing to do with our divorce.’

He sniggered.

He said, ‘Honestly, who do you imagine you’re fooling? Everyone knows about you and Cyril. When will his tour finish?’

I didn’t know.

‘Oh, Ducky,’ he said. ‘You don’t know? I do hope Cyril Vladimirovich hasn’t taken fright now you’re a free woman. I do hope you haven’t thrown out the baby with the bath water.’

*

Ernie stayed on in Coburg for three ghastly days, with Elli constantly begging to go home. So I let them go. What was the point of making the child miserable? Mother said this was a grave error, that I should have forced Elli to spend more time with me until she grew accustomed to our new situation. I don’t know. I only ever wanted her to be happy. I did tell her so.

I said, ‘And you know you may come to me as often as you like. You have your own room here and no one else shall ever sleep in it.’

‘I don’t much like that room,’ she said. ‘I like my room at home.’

I said, ‘Then we’ll change it to your liking. You can draw me a picture of how you’d like it to be. Pappi will put it in the post for you.’

She said, ‘Why are you crying?’

I said, ‘I’m going to miss you.’

‘Then why are you staying here?’ she said. ‘Why don’t you just come home with me and Pappi?’

Which made it all the harder. I could have gone back to Darmstadt. I’m sure Ernie would have agreed to it. But I needed Cyril more. That’s what I chose.

*

The last thing Ernie said to me was, ‘By the by, once you’re a Navy wife, don’t imagine I’m going to let you spirit Elli off to Manchuria or wherever for years on end. Not bally likely. She’ll stay with me.’

I waited four years for Cyril Vladimirovich. Four years of looking out for letters and listening to the ticking of the clock. The Grand Duchess of Hesse was reduced to being Ducky, living under her mother’s roof again, like a child. Elli gradually thawed enough to visit me – she still asked me when I’d be going home – but her life was elsewhere and Ernie was its centre. I suppose I became more like an aunt than a mother. I over-indulged her, anything to be liked. I didn’t see that clearly until later, until I was a proper mother again.

Why didn’t Cyril come galloping up to the gates of Rosenau and carry me off at once? Because Cyril is Cyril. There’s nothing impetuous about him. Everything he does: accounts, morning toilette, affairs of the heart, they are all attended to carefully and methodically. I never doubted his love for me, only his judgement, sometimes.

The first time he got shore leave after my divorce he went to see Emperor Nicky, to talk to him man to man. We had agreed that it would be far better to marry with Nicky’s blessing than without it. I thought the outcome of their meeting was ambiguous but Cyril put a positive gloss on it.
Nicky
, he wrote,
expressed every hope that with time things will straighten themselves out. So hold fast, my love! We’ll do things correctly and all will be well
.

With time things will straighten themselves out. Cyril took this to mean that Sunny might eventually accept the fact of my divorce.

Mother said, ‘It doesn’t mean that at all. It means that Nicky hopes if he drags it out for long enough Cyril will forget about you and marry someone more acceptable. Which he may well do.’

Sometimes, when a week passed without a letter, I feared Mother was right. Other times, like the summer of 1903 when Cyril was on furlough and rushed to be with me, my hopes were raised. We bought a Richard-Brasier and went on a little motoring holiday. That was when I taught myself to drive. We stayed in
pensions
as Mr and Mrs Brown and if anyone suspected we were lovers, no one showed it. The French don’t get so excited about such things.

How do men learn to please women? I didn’t know Cyril’s history or what he did when he was away from me and I didn’t want to know, but he seemed quite confident. And so enthusiastic. Cyril didn’t waste time cracking jokes or horsing around as Ernie always had. At last, a man who couldn’t wait for me to slide between the sheets. Of course Cyril wasn’t the type to murmur endearments. He’s a military man, after all. But I felt adored and sometimes, I will admit, rather wild. I began to understand Missy’s taste for adventurettes, if that was how a man could make one feel.

It was such a happy summer, but it came to an end and we were still no further forward. Cyril went back to Kronstadt to await his next posting and I went back to Coburg, the divorced daughter, the absent mother. So much for patience and doing things correctly. Before he left Cyril promised me he’d speak to Nicky again.

‘Soon,’ he said. ‘The very moment the time seems right.’

I remember saying, ‘We could just do it. We could be married tomorrow, before you leave. Once it’s done Nicky can’t unmarry us.’

‘True,’ he said, ‘but he could make things pretty unpleasant for us. Better to wait for his blessing. I’m confident our patience will be rewarded.’

And off he went. I had no idea when I’d see him again, and when
my very great hour of need came I wasn’t even certain where in the world he was.

The first telegram arrived as Mother and I were sitting at breakfast.

ELLI SICK. DON’T WORRY, BUT SUGGEST COME. ERNIE.

He’d taken Elli to Poland, to the Skierniewice hunting lodge for a holiday with Nicky and Sunny and their girls. Mother and I were still at table, discussing train times when a second wire was delivered.

FEVER WORSE. COME AT ONCE.

I couldn’t think what I needed to take with me or how, precisely, I was going to get to Skierniewice. I ran about, achieving nothing. Mother was perfectly calm.

‘Sit down and collect yourself,’ she said. ‘Amsel will pack your bags. That’s what maids are for. And Kuster will go with you. You can’t travel all that way without protection. Anything might happen.’

Kuster was Mother’s steward. A mountain of a man who only spoke when spoken to. I was glad to think I could leave the particulars of the journey to him. From Coburg we had to go to Leipzig, from Leipzig to Dresden, then to Breslau and finally to Lodz. So many trains. At Breslau Kuster was to wire Ernie to tell him what time to meet us.

Amsel was already in the carriage and Kuster was strapping on the last bag when another telegram arrived. I don’t remember reading it. I suppose I must have. Mother collapsed. She had her prayer book in her hand.

‘No,’ she said. ‘No, no, no.’

There was no point in travelling to Skierniewice. Elli was already on her way home to Darmstadt, in a silver coffin.

Typhoid, they said. Perhaps from the water, they said. But why my child and not one of Sunny’s and Nicky’s girls? They must all have drunk from the same well. I found I went over every event, every fork in the road that might have changed things. If Ernie and I hadn’t divorced, would Elli have gone to Skierniewice? Probably not. The idea of being cooped up in a small lodge in the middle of Poland with Sunny and Nicky wouldn’t have appealed to me. But then, if we had gone and if I had been there, would Elli have clung more fiercely to life? No. She was always Ernie’s girl. If she could have lived she would have done, for his sake.

I travelled to Darmstadt in a kind of fog. People’s voices seemed muffled, their questions seemed idiotic. Did I want tea? Did I want a blanket? I wanted nothing, except for everyone to go away, but the more I said that the more they crowded around me. What did they think? That I’d throw myself from the train?

The thing I dreaded most was seeing Ernie. I thought he’d rage at me, I don’t know why. But Ernie was too broken to rage.

‘The sun’s gone out,’ he said. ‘My life’s over.’

Which has turned out not to be entirely the case because he remarried two years later and forced himself to carry out the disagreeable chore of fathering two sons. But in that first week it really seemed that he might die of grief. He wandered about the house and lay on Elli’s bed.

‘Sunny’s taken this terribly hard,’ he said to me one evening. ‘You know how she is. She feels everything so.’

Sunny! I didn’t see what business it was of hers to suffer. She had four healthy daughters and mine was dead.

Elli would be twenty-three now, had she lived. I wonder what
ill-advised marriage Mother might have canvassed for her? Or has she learned her lesson. This war has changed everything. Half of those cousins are on the wrong side now.

We took Elli to the mausoleum at Rosenhohe, to be buried with all the other Hesses. Mother urged me to go in and look at her before the casket was closed. She said it would help me to accept. It didn’t, not at all. But I did put my Hesse medallion into her cold little hands. After all, I wasn’t their Grand Duchess any more, and I hoped, I hope never to see Darmstadt again as long as I live.

She looked like a wax doll. Only her black curls seemed real. One little drink of water. What a stupid, stupid waste.

Cyril wrote to me but he didn’t rush to my side. He was in Palermo.

Tricky situation
, he wrote,
with regard to Ernie. I don’t wish to intrude at such a sad time, but, darling, I do think of you every waking minute
.

I don’t know how one calculates the decent period to stay away from a bereaved lover. Cyril left it two months. Then he came to Coburg and asked if he might stay for Christmas. Baby Bee persuaded Mother to allow it.

She said, ‘Ducky’s had such a sad year. And how is Cyril ever to propose if he never sees her for more than five minutes?’

Mother said, ‘Cyril Vladimirovich has had ample opportunity to propose. He may stay in the Callenberg shooting box. If he desires the greater comfort of my house he knows what he must do.’

Cyril didn’t take the hint. Marriage wasn’t mentioned. Not once. He says now that it wouldn’t have been proper, during a time of mourning. I disagree. I wasn’t looking for the fuss of a betrothal and a public announcement. I just wanted Cyril’s reassurance. I wanted a private pledge and a date. Missy said I should give him an ultimatum. Her letters were full of advice but I’d grown to see
that Missy wasn’t particularly brilliant at managing her own affairs, let alone telling others what to do.

Do you know whom I have to thank for the wedding ring on my hand? Admiral Togo of the Japanese Imperial Navy.

*

The Japanese attacked the Russian fleet at Port Arthur and war was declared. Cyril was still at Rosenau when we heard the news. He said he should leave for Petersburg at once, to report for duty. I think I cried more that night than I did when Elli died. Well, they were a different kind of tears. When a child dies a worm of pain buries itself in your heart and never goes away. It sits there and every day, without fail, it flexes its hateful little body and gives you an aching reminder. But when a man goes away to war without leaving you the promise of a firm wedding date, the tears are fierce and angry.

Mother said I should forget Cyril.

She said, ‘I regret to say it of my own people but Russians have no sense of urgency. “Tomorrow will do,” they say. But tomorrow never comes.’

Cyril was posted to Port Arthur. Manchuria. It’s the other side of the world. His letters took weeks to arrive and by the time I heard that the
Petropavlovsk
had sunk, he was already back in Petersburg, recovering from his injuries. It was the beginning of May 1904. Aunt Miechen wrote to Mother. Cyril needed a place to recuperate. Would Mother consent to his coming to Rosenau? Mother sniffed and put Aunt Miechen’s letter aside. Then, after a calculated period of silence for which only she knew the formula, she agreed. She said that as Cyril clearly had no intention of marrying me I might as well help nurse him. He was my cousin, after all. And it would help prepare me for the life of lonely spinsterhood and good works that was now clearly my destiny.

Baby Bee and I went to the station to meet him. At first sight he seemed unchanged. It was only when he moved that it was obvious he was in pain. His back was burned, but it was healing well. His mind had a different kind of injury that couldn’t be dressed. He suffered from nightmares when everything came back to him in terrifying detail. He told me about it, eventually.

His boat had been on a night sortie. Port Arthur had been blockaded by the Japanese Navy so every night a convoy of Russian destroyers ventured out to report on any change in the Japanese positions.

‘It was almost dawn,’ he said. ‘We were heading back into Port Arthur. I was on the bridge with Captain Yakovlev. It was snowing.’

The
Petropavlovsk
had hit a mine. Cyril remembers being thrown into the air.

‘And then I came back down, with a thump. Yakovlev was dead. He was cut almost in two. I couldn’t hear a thing. Ears refused to function. Eyes still working though. Just as well. We were sinking fast. So I went overboard. Water was bloody freezing. Took my breath away. Then I thought best to pull myself together and move away from the wreck sharpish. Vessel that size goes down, Ducky, it can drag you with it. There were men in the water. I told them to swim for it. Don’t know if they heard me. Then down she went.’

That’s the worst part of his nightmare, being under the water and powerless to rise to the surface. But he did get to the surface.

‘God tossed me back up,’ he says. ‘And thoughtfully provided me with a piece of flotsam to keep me afloat.’

He was nearly dead from the cold when a Russian torpedo boat plucked him out of the water.

‘Extraordinary thing,’ he told me. ‘Brother Boris witnessed the whole incident. He was inspecting a battery on the ridge above the
harbour, saw the explosion, felt sorry for the poor buggers who’d caught it, never realising I was one of them.’

*

Cyril stayed with us at Rosenau all through that summer. His burns healed and he began to be active again. Only the nightmares persisted. One day, a perfect summer’s day, we were sitting by the Princes’ Pond watching the swallows drinking on the wing and he said, ‘That’s exactly like death. It felt like something brushing over me, when I was in the water. Like a bird’s wing. But then it passed on. So I suppose it wasn’t my time.’

I said, ‘Doesn’t that make life seem doubly precious?’

‘Absolutely,’ he said, and he took my hand. ‘That’s why nothing will prevent me from marrying you.’

It was what I’d longed to hear, of course. I suggested we do it immediately, while he was in Coburg, but Cyril’s moment of poetry, birds’ wings and all that, had passed.

‘Inauspicious time, darling,’ he said. ‘What with Elli’s death, and the war. Wedding during a time of mourning. Not quite the thing. But as soon as this damned war’s over.’

That’s Cyril all over. Not yet. Not quite the thing. As for the war, I was perfectly prepared to be a war bride. Lots of girls did it. Then, in the middle of August we received wonderful news. Empress Sunny had at last produced a baby boy. Alexis. It meant that Cyril and his brothers were pushed reassuringly down the line of succession. Tsesarevich Alexis would succeed after Nicky, so who Cyril married was really no longer of any concern. We were free to do as we pleased.

Aunt Miechen wrote that Emperor Nicky was like a little dog with two tails and Sunny, boy produced and duty done, had retired to a day bed.

When Cyril went back to Petersburg, to re-enter the war effort,
it seemed the perfect time to inform Nicky of our plans. We could ride on his wave of joy at fathering an heir. Furthermore, Cyril was a war hero, wounded but returning to do his patriotic duty. Nicky could not possibly raise any objections. Cyril, though, let the moment slip. He spent the rest of the year as Nicky’s aide. He dined with him almost every night, but he never brought up his wish to marry me. Missy told me I was a perfect fool. Aunt Miechen wrote that Cyril never was one to be chivvied, even as a child; he got there but in his own good time.