Skeleton-in-Waiting (4 page)

“Have you talked to him about it?”

“Wouldn't know what to say. Scared of burning my boats. See a psychiatrist, d'you think?”

“They say it isn't much use unless you actually want to.”

“Don't. Anyway, I'm too young to go potty. Auntie Kitty was pushing sixty. Got any plans for that bit of duck? Thanks.”

Louise let her plate be raided. Soppy sounded more than a bit miserable, curiously ashamed and scared. Her great-aunt, Lady Kitty Bakewell, had gone round the bend about the time Louise was born and had barricaded herself into the stable flat at Coryon and, with the help of her butler and a pair of shotguns, had held out for several days. She'd still been alive when Albert's engagement to Soppy had been announced, and hacks had actually broken into the home where she was kept and tried to interview her. Other hacks had speculated on the possibility that the madness ran in the family. It had all been fairly typically unpleasant, not helped by the fact that there was something a little odd-looking about Soppy, something out-of-proportion, which came out in certain pictures, though in others she simply looked like the GBP's dream, the doll princess.

“Would it help if I talked to Bertie?” said Louise. “I wouldn't say anything direct.”

Soppy shrugged.

“Probably just the time of year,” she said. “Always used to look forward to it. Skipped the whole grisly Christmas hoo-ha by nipping off to the Argentine for a couple of months.”

“Two months, and no diary at all!”

“Just polo.”

“Bliss!”

“I've managed to clear a fortnight in Feb. That's the lot.”

“But they won't let you go there, will they? I …”

“Course not. Florida.”

“They play polo there?”

“Pretty good. But … Hell, I don't see why I can't go to the Argentine if I want. I didn't start the bloody war. I don't care a hoot what happens to the bloody Falklands. They don't belong to us. Never did.”

Soppy's voice was beginning to rise. If any of the anemone's tentacles were floating near by, they'd be beginning to sense the presence of a titbit.

“It's just one of those things,” said Louise in a deliberately deadening tone.

“Ta ever so, darling. Second help? I'm going to. Talk to Bertie if you want—better not try and tell me what he says.”

Albert in fact was only a group away, listening to his mother-in-law, Aunt Eloise Kent, who was the obvious next candidate for the title of UMRF, though earning it in a different style from Granny, coldly self-willed, power-hungry and devious. Louise couldn't imagine herself tolerating, let alone half-liking Aunt Eloise the way she had Granny, nor was this a possible moment to tackle Albert, so she drifted herself in the other direction, theoretically looking for some cousin or guest who seemed left-out, but knowing that the drift would continue till she fetched up alongside Piers. She found him by the fire, of course, scorching his hams while he talked to a stranger. They made a joke pair, the stranger small and shiny and round, bobbing continually on the balls of his feet like a balloon at a souvenir stall, and Piers bending over him with the vulture look he wore when amused or interested. In his funeral black, Piers could easily have been mistaken for an undertaker's assistant who had been misdirected into the gathering and was making the best of the free meal. (He claimed to prefer beer to wine, but his glass seldom stayed full of either for long; he ate nearly as much as Soppy.)

“Hello, darling,” he said. “Have you met Alex Romanov? Prince, is it?”

“For today Count, I suppose,” said the stranger. “Usually plain Doctor. Your Highness.”

He got it exactly right, the small bow, the touch of the hand, the accepting tone of voice. His eyes were bright with fun. He gave the instant impression that he expected to enjoy your company.

“A proper doctoring doctor?” said Louise.

“A philosophising doctor. They never told me it was improper.”

“We're in the same line,” said Piers. “Only Alex has gone where the loot is. Expert systems.”

“Then I'll push off and leave you at it,” said Louise.

“Oh, please not, ma'am,” said Count Alex. “Lord Chandler and I can get together any time, but I may not have another chance to talk to somebody who knew the Grand Duchess well.”

“I didn't think you Romanovs agreed she was one.”

(Granny's claim to the title had been part of her general campaign of making people realise that for her marrying into the British royal family had been a come-down.)

“In my eyes she was above technicalities,” said Count Alex.

“You're the only two I've met who had a good word to say for the old girl,” said Piers.

“I met her just once,” said Count Alex. “When I was seven. I was taken by my mother for inspection. She wore more rings that I have ever seen on one hand and stuffed my mouth with small sweet cakes as though I'd been a dog.”

“Trying to make you sick,” said Louise. “She did that.”

“At the same time she said cruel little things to my mother. I didn't understand them, but I could feel the cruelty and was intrigued, and often asked when we could go again. At Epiphany, with the help of my nurse—I had so many nurses and governesses, but almost all of them I contrived to make allies against my mother—I sent the Grand Duchess a card. I didn't know how to make Russian letters, but I used Russian words. She must have been amused, for she replied.”

“No! In that terrible green ink?”

“Being a child I took it for granted. She wrote in green ink at first, but later changed to a pale, hard pencil.”

“You mean she kept it up! She never wrote to anyone if she could help it. The telephone was a way of life to her.”

“Not in my case. I found out when her birthday was and wrote again, but she didn't answer. Next year I tried once more. There'd been some rumpus among the cousins, and I told her about it, for something to say, and this time she replied telling me that she had enjoyed my letter and if I heard similar stories I must let her know. We are an unimportant branch of the family, but my mother had made it her business to become a sort of nodal point in the network. She did not create scandal, but she processed it and passed it on. I would lie on my stomach and draw in my book and listen, and whenever I heard of one of the cousins doing something characteristic I'd tell myself ‘That might amuse the Grand Duchess,' and send her a letter. After a while she began to reciprocate. We always wrote in Russian, so it was quite safe, but I know more about your family than you might think, ma'am.”

He beamed. Louise smiled back, relying on a lifetime of face-control. Did he really not understand what he was telling her?

“Granny wasn't all that reliable,” she said. “I mean she once told me my grandfather was drowned by the secret service on orders from Lord Halifax to prevent her from becoming Queen and making friends with Hitler and stopping the Second World War.”

Count Alex nodded. That must be in the letters.

“Oh, there's a lot of noise,” he said.

“Almost white in her case,” said Piers.

“Yes, white Russian noise,” said Count Alex.

“You're leaving me out,” said Louise.

“Noise is gibberish from which one attempts to extract a signal,” said Piers. “White noise is pure random gibberish.”

“Yes, of course,” said Count Alex. “It was a curious relationship. She let me understand quite soon that she had no wish to see me again. At first, I suspected that she may have been mainly concerned to create mischief for my mother, but if so she misunderstood the relationship, which was … let's not go into that. Later, when she appreciated how well-placed I was to keep her
au fait
with
émigré
affairs, she used me for that, and also as a repository for some of her own spites and spleens. I agree with what you say about her unreliability, but it wasn't total. Sometimes she would comment on what I had told her and add anecdotes about previous Romanov scandals which I was able to check. The facts she seldom did more than embroider. It was her interpretation of the facts which was grotesque.”

“Have you talked to Aunt Bea? Lady Surbiton, you know?”

Count Alex laughed aloud.

“She is a figure of myth to me,” he said. “The Grand Duchess's letters always ended with a postscript describing her latest persecution of poor Lady Surbiton. She claimed it was necessary to keep Lady Surbiton's bowels open. Yet I gather Lady Surbiton was devoted to her.”

“She's heartbroken,” said Louise.

“It must have been like one of those marriages—the sort where no one on the outside can understand how the couple make it work.”

“All marriages are of that nature,” said Piers.

“Except the ones which really don't work,” said Louise. “Come and find Aunt Bea. She's getting a bit deaf these days.”

“How very extraordinary,” said Aunt Bea in her breathy near-whisper. “I had no idea. Of course HRH could be peculiarly secretive.”

She sighed. Mother had settled her on a
chaise longue
and arranged a rota of the family to cheer her up, but none of them had achieved much, Louise guessed, until Count Alex settled beside her and started to talk, apparently focussing the whole of his bubbling attention on Aunt Bea's soft, white, grief-dulled countenance. Louise was impressed. Most newcomers would have shown at least disguised reluctance to be transferred from talk with a newsworthy princess to a dull ex-lady-in-waiting. She was threading her way back towards Piers when her path was blocked by Father's private secretary, Sir Savile Tendence. His attempt to stand aside was hampered by the three plates of walnut meringue he was balancing on one arm and the several brimming glasses in the other hand. He smiled his controlled tired smile.

“Hello, Sir Sam,” said Louise. “When you get sick of us you can always get a job as a juggler's mate.”

“I shall come to you for a reference, ma'am. Impressive little ceremony the kontakion made it, don't you think? Life's going to be quieter without her.”

“Don't you believe it. She'll make a pretty effective ghost. Uncanny harp-twangings at the wrong moment. Where did you find Count Alex Romanov?”

“The little shiny one? We didn't find him. HRH left instructions that he was to be invited to the funeral. He is named in her will as literary executor—not a very onerous responsibility, one would think, with just that monograph on the harp. Presumably he has an interest in things musical.”

“I don't know. He says they were pen-pals. He's still got a lot of her letters. They used to send each other family gossip.”

Sir Savile had already been on the move with his teetering load. He stopped.

“
Our
family?” he murmured.

“Yes.”

“Dear me.”

“He says he doesn't necessarily believe everything she told him.”

“Oh, it wouldn't need to be
true.
Has he any idea what he's got there, d'you imagine?”

Louise considered. People, especially intelligent ones, could be extraordinarily naive about what mattered once you became involved with the Family, but Count Alex had given the impression of being fully aware of the nuances around him. You wouldn't be much good as a gossip­-relay if you weren't.

“Yes, probably,” she said.

“Dear me.”

“They're all in Russian.”

“I suppose that's something. I'd better have a word with HM. How did you run into the chap? I mean, did he come beavering over to you to tell you?”

“No. He was talking to Piers about AI, and then when I showed up he got on to the letters.”

“AI?”

“Artificial Intelligence.”

“Is there any other kind?”

“It's Count Alex's job too.”

“Is it, now? Perhaps you might suggest to Lord Chandler that he keeps in touch, hm?”

“They seemed to be getting on. Tell Father to ring me if he wants to know any more.”

Sir Savile moved away but before Louise could do so too she felt a touch on her elbow and turned to find it was Albert.

“Got a moment?” he said. “Not in here. Shouldn't be anyone in the Stamp Room.”

“I'll just tell Piers.”

Great-grandfather, King Victor I, had been a man of few interests. He shot and went racing, because he was expected to. He played simple card-games for large stakes, and snooker. His rumoured youthful­ enthusiasms were not permissible under the steely rule of Great-grandmama­. But somebody must have decided that a monarch ought to be publicly known to have concerns of a vaguely intellectual kind, and that in King Victor's case philately was about the highest level he could plausibly be represented as having attained. The Royal Stamp Collection was housed in a small room off the State Apartments, not much changed since King Victor's day, with its pair of reading-desks and its low leather arm-chairs in which a man might relax with his Hine and Havana after the effort of studying an 1866 Bolivian five-centavo mauve. Louise found Albert already in one of the chairs, in exactly the right pose, slumped back with his wine-glass in his hand. It was a mild shock; despite having thought about his new neatness at the funeral, and what Soppy had said about his having changed, Louise's mental image of her elder brother was still that of a few years back, the hairy leftie vegetarian who harangued banquets of financiers about the vital need to preserve the habitat of the natterjack toad. Now, in his formal clothes, with his beard trimmed to a naval wedge and his hair receding sharply above the temples, he could have been the ghost of Great-grandfather, apart from the blue intelligent gaze.

“You'll be eating veal next,” said Louise.

He twitched his head, puzzled. Her skirt was too tight to copy his pose so she perched on a chair-wing.

“You've changed,” she said.