Midnight in St. Petersburg (44 page)

Outside, it was a perfect winter's morning. There was no wind, no ice in the air, just a celebratory light blue sky with tiny white clouds. Great white pillows of unspoiled snow lay everywhere, and the little golden boat at the top of the Admiralty spire glittered in the pale sun.

Horace knew he was saying goodbye.

He knew, too, that it wasn't as important to him as he'd once thought, being here. He'd been a fool. It was far simpler than he'd realized. The main thing was for Inna to be safe. A man can live anywhere. Home is where the heart is.

Still, he'd have liked to tramp right round the city one more time, making private farewells to all the places he'd been happy in here: to the canal sides, and the river banks, to the concert halls and garrets and palaces and basements.

But his injured foot was throbbing too much. He limped on home.

And as he walked, he found his thoughts returning to what Maxim had said before his Moura had come in with the tray bearing the little painted flask of vodka and the two glasses and the obligatory bit of bread to sniff after their farewell shots.

‘Have you seen anything of young Kagan recently?'

Some instinct had stopped Horace from answering straightforwardly. ‘I don't suppose we will now,' he'd said lightly. ‘It's been a long time since he worked at the Lemans'.'

Maxim's eyes were always compassionate, but for a moment Horace had thought something steelier was glinting in them.

‘He comes here sometimes, and talks to Bokii the Chekist, you know,' Maxim had said, shaking his head. ‘He's in over his head, I'm afraid. He never did know when to stop.' And then Moura had arrived. ‘How much time one spends worrying about people,' Maxim had added, reflectively, taking the tray from her. ‘But at least there's no need to worry about
you
any more.' He'd poured out the shots with a lavish hand. ‘You're well out of all this.'

*   *   *

That evening, when they gathered in the kitchen to eat, Madame Leman brought out every luxury she could manage.

There was tea. And not just tea, but jam with the tea.

There was fresh bread, and she made a point of telling Inna that she'd parcelled up the rusks she was always making out of the stale bread and that the parcel, with a bottle of tea, was for them to take on the train.

Horace had meant to go and stand in a queue to get something for this farewell meal, but his foot was hurting again. And at least he could share the presents Maxim's Moura had given him: a carefully wrapped box of darling doves, with at least a memory of meat mixed up with the buckwheat inside the cabbage parcels, and also, miracle of miracles, a long piece of sausage.

He couldn't go up all those stairs to their rooms very easily, and anyway the
burzhuika
he'd made was broken, so he and Inna had been sleeping these past couple of nights down in the yellow room, on the divan. Inna was still in that dazed, mute state she'd been in ever since the attack – a perfectly understandable frame of mind, considering the shock she'd suffered; he could only hope she'd recover her usual quickness of wit on the road. In the meantime, while he trudged around town getting documents, he'd charged her, Agrippina and Madame Leman with clearing out their space in the attics, scrubbing both rooms clean and bringing down all the belongings they wouldn't be taking with them. Everything except a couple of changes of clothes, and of course the violin, was to be shared out among the family.

Since Horace was rather enjoying the mood of decisiveness that had come on him since he'd realized they had to leave, he'd hoped the sheer practicality of that task might energize her, but she'd only nodded, looking quietly acquiescent. Horace had the distinct impression it was Madame Leman who'd actually taken charge of the work. In any event, it was all ready now, and their possessions – two small bags, one battered violin box, and Inna's reticule – were out in the hall.

He'd got Inna, rather than anyone else, to bring down the big dictionary, the one he hadn't managed to hit the Bolsheviks with, and put it on the kitchen dresser.

Once Madame Leman had poured them each a thimbleful of Aunt Cockatoo's dark-gold cognac, he got up and heaved it over to the table. It was as big as an English family Bible and you needed both hands to lift it.

‘I have a farewell present for you all, too,' he began.

He sensed the slight disappointment in the air. He could imagine what they were thinking: what good was a dictionary? Yet they kept their polite smiles firmly on their faces, as if, however inadequate his unwanted gift was, they knew they must accept it with good grace, because they loved him.

‘Can I have a knife, please, Barbarian?' Horace asked. ‘A sharp one?'

They all laughed at that.

‘We can't eat the dictionary!' Barbarian cried. ‘Not after this meal!'

‘Not without boiling it first!' Agrippina added, tears brimming in her eyes.

Horace took the knife Barbarian gave him and inserted it between the solid black leather of the binding and the first of the pages.

‘Are the pages glued together?' asked Inna, looking curious for the first time in days.

Horace said nothing; just grimaced, and yanked.

He was a bit breathless by the time the leather front finally dropped away, with a tearing noise, to reveal hundreds of pages, all stuck together with violin-making glue, to make the sides of a box – a box with a deep square cut in the middle of every page. It was an idea he'd had when he'd first done his deal with Fabergé to hide things from oafish requisitioning Bolsheviks: the perfect hiding place. Little boxes and glittering jewellery tumbled out on to the table.

The Lemans squealed, leaned forward, and put their hands out to touch. They opened the boxes, and more shining objects were revealed. They oohed and aahed as they lifted from the shimmering mound an egg pendant on a fine gold chain whose bottom half of faceted violet amethyst was separated by a gold band from a top half of smoothly creamy enamel; a curvy photograph frame of translucent grey guilloche enamel, decorated with a tracery of silver-gilt lilies of the valley; a delicate bracelet, shaped like another bouquet of foliage and flowers and ribbons, made of sparkling gold, diamonds and enamel; a perfectly lifelike onyx bulldog, with emerald eyes and a miniature golden collar, whose bell actually rang; an art deco brooch in silver-topped gold, with a large aquamarine and a smaller diamond at its wider end; a pair of peasant figurines, in semi-precious stones and enamel, full of the patience and gentleness of old Russia; a pair of gold and enamel cufflinks, with a swirl of tiny lilies across the blue background; and a blue-and-gold enamel cigarette case, with a snake coiled elegantly around it, its tail in its mouth.

‘My own savings, these,' Horace said, but no one was listening.

‘Take what you want,' he said, a little louder. ‘I can't travel with all this. We'll share them out.' He was aware of Madame Leman's sudden sharp-eyed glance – of the disbelief in it, for she must be doing the sums and seeing that, if sold, these playthings of the old rich would keep them in bread and jam and sausage for as long as she could imagine – but he only smiled wider (how they'd always laughed at his quick English smile) and gestured with his hand: take, take. Gradually, they all started to smile, too – soft, radiant smiles. Their hands slowed, reflectively sifting through the beautiful little objects. The charmed look of yesterday was in every pair of eyes.

‘But you, Horace,' Madame Leman said gently when, even after Aunt Cockatoo furtively stuffed the picture frame into her jacket before he could change his mind, he didn't move to touch the pile they were fingering, ‘you must take something for yourself, too.'

Horace hadn't found these little trinkets so remarkable when he'd been putting them by, over the years. They were beautifully made, of course, but too mannered, too refined and dainty to be truly art, as he understood the term, with the sweep and love of experiment and roughness he loved most.

But now, seeing them gleaming on the table among the greasy plates, he was swept with a nostalgia so intense it felt like pain for the lost world they belonged to.

‘Yes,' he said, simply, reaching forward too, and picking out the ice pendant. Now that
was
truly lovely, so apparently simple it took your breath away: a long, irregular, octagonal form in rock crystal, frosted and faceted, subtly etched, here and there, with the thin jagged lines that frost draws on glass – icicles, Carl Fabergé had called them – which were applied with rose- and brilliant-cut diamonds so they sparkled when the pendant moved, with only the border of tiny, regular, brilliant-cut diamonds giving away the artificiality of the piece's creation.

He turned to Inna. ‘This is for you. To remind you of the snows.'

She hadn't been touching anything, any more than he had, and now looked lost as he fastened the pendant round her long narrow neck. The others all cheered and stamped their feet.

They were right to applaud, Horace thought, appreciatively. Inna was wearing a black dress, and the crystal took on its darkness, but the tiny gemstones winked and sparkled with her breath. With her black hair piled up carelessly on her head, and that magical curve to her cheekbones, that added flash of glamour lent her the air of a grand duchess. If only her eyes weren't so clouded, Horace thought …

Perhaps Madame Leman guessed at Horace's anxiety, because she leaned over and, kissing Inna's forehead, said, tenderly, ‘You don't have any idea how beautiful you look, I can see. You never have had. But, oh, the havoc you could cause, in that…'

Inna put a hesitant hand to her neck, and touched the chain. Looking bewildered, she nodded her thanks.

‘And for the journey,' Madame Leman prompted, ‘Horace, do have some sense and take at least one or two things with you. You never know when you'll need something pretty to please someone on the road.'

Horace nodded, grateful for the tartness in her down-to-earth voice. He picked up the amethyst pendant, and the slim, showy cigarette case, which would be easy to carry. Felix Youssoupoff had had one like it, he recalled. He slipped both items into his pocket.

‘And what's this?' Barbarian was digging at the square hole in the dictionary. There was one more box still wedged in there, quite a big one, which Horace hadn't managed to tip out.

‘Ah, yes,' Horace said. Using the knife, he levered out the package.

There'd been a time, long ago, when he'd thought of simply posting this to England, to his sister, for her to keep for him, so it was wrapped in brown paper, string and sealing-wax, and addressed to Mrs. William Ingham Brooke, The Rectory, Barford, Warwickshire. He cut through the string.

Inside the paper was a silk Hollywood box, lined inside with velvet, and with the lid satin stamped, heartbreakingly, with words written in the old way of yesterday's Cyrillic: ‘Fabergé, St. Petersburg, Moscow, London'.

‘Open it,' Agrippina said, wide-eyed.

Horace did, taking out a fist-sized egg vertically striped in green-and-cream enamel, on a delicate golden stand, with an emerald set at the top.

‘Press it,' he told Inna, setting it before her.

When Inna touched the emerald, a tiny catch moved. At once, the little egg sprang open, into slices that concertinaed smoothly outwards: each oval slice hinged to the next, each one turning out to be a glassed picture frame bordered by tiny, perfectly matched seed pearls, each frame containing a miniature vista of a different St. Petersburg street, in pastel colours, the throat-catchingly lovely way those streets had all used to be …

They all stared; remembering, suddenly; eyes filled with tears.

‘
That
,' he told Inna, ‘I always thought, would show our children and grandchildren where we'd first met. That's my gift to them.'

As Inna looked at the egg, something in her face finally relaxed. Then, at last, she turned to face Horace, and put her hands in his.

 

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

Sitting on the bags in the hall beside Horace, Inna joined the Leman family in the ritual minute of silence before departure. Then she left the apartment and walked through Hay Market in a daze.

It was only at the station, on the platform, with the clank and swoosh of trains all around, and bitter little eddies of snow in the air beyond the station building, and the ragged men with guns checking the papers of every person who passed them, and the young Lemans inside the train energetically cramming the bags into the overhead rack of the packed carriage, sandwiching the violin between the two softer ones, and laughing quite hysterically at unfunny things, that Inna looked around at the family and realized she was really leaving.

Her eyes filled with stinging tears.

Her heart lurched at the thought that struck her next. She hadn't said goodbye to Yasha. Yasha, who, only days ago, she'd felt so close to, spiritually as much as physically, and who must have felt the same; Yasha, who'd helped to rescue her, and who was as trapped as she was, now, in a life not of his choosing; Yasha, more herself than she was, who knew everything about her and always would; Yasha, whom she loved and would never see again.

Suddenly every complexity, every nuance of emotion she'd ever felt was burned away in the awful simplicity of this truth. She yearned to see him, to feel, taste and smell him so desperately that she felt faint with it. Three days, she reminded herself, in an agony of self-reproach –
three whole days
– and I never tried to see him, not even to say goodbye …

And now it was too late.

She looked up the platform, searching for his face.

But there were only strangers, hundreds and hundreds of strangers.

Instead she fell into Madame Leman's arms, hugging her harder than she'd intended, knocking hairpins flying from that white-grey hair, reassured, for a moment, by the familiar home smell of bread and lily of the valley, murmuring broken snatches of words, ‘I'll never be able to thank you enough, never, dear, sweet, good Lidiya Alexeyevna. I've been … you'll be … we'll…'