Skeleton-in-Waiting (7 page)

“I liked Count Alex,” said Louise. “He's got a lot of charm, hasn't he, Aunt Bea?”

“I suppose so, my dear, but I'm afraid my life has taught me to be just a weeny bit suspicious of charm.”

Louise caught Carrie's eye and looked away. The point was that some male gene in the Surbiton line seemed to pass on a unique form of loutishness, as repellent in its attempts to please as in its more usual manifestations of aggression. Aunt Bea had doted on each generation in turn, down to the present Lord Surbiton, her grandson, now serving a gaol sentence in Japan.

Conversation became the normal vaguely probing exchange you'd expect between new neighbours. Mrs Walsh relaxed her hardness and reserve, if only slightly, and listened to Aunt Bea's sighings and meanderings with patient attention. The subject of offspring naturally arose. Aunt Bea described her grandson's plight with surprisingly deft prevarications—something legal, but of course the Japanese were so different, there were bound to be misunderstandings, weren't there? Mrs Walsh said only that her daughter lived abroad and hadn't married. You'd have been hard put to find two less well-matched old ladies, Louise thought, but when she rose to leave it was clear that Mrs Walsh intended to stay a bit longer, and just as clear that Aunt Bea wanted her to. They were both lonely, and at least they had the shared experience of court life. That counted for a lot. People outside didn't understand at all.

As on most evenings Louise rang Mother to tell her what she'd been up to. She described the visit to Aunt Bea, and in passing asked Mother to see if Mrs Suttery, the Palace Librarian, could find the copy of the book about Mrs Walsh's adventures which had been sent to Great-grandfather­. It was probably there somewhere. The Palace had no machinery for actually­ throwing things away.

Two mornings later, timing her arrival with her usual precision, Joan waddled in to the bedroom with note-book, diaries and post-bag just as Louise was finishing burping Davy after his feed.

“You're looking smugger every day,” said Louise.

“Am I? I had one wild night. They were lurching around like Sumo wrestlers. They're going to come out fighting.”

Joan pulled out the flap of the escritoire, put the papers on it and took Davy to practise on. She sat down and perched him like a squinting Buddha on the ledge of flesh beneath which her twins, due in three weeks, were housed. Louise started on her make-up.

“We've got thirty-three mins,” said Joan. “There's nothing that couldn't wait till tomorrow, really.”

“Let's clear up as much as we can,” said Louise. In the mirror over her shoulder she could see Davy and enjoy the way an air of puzzlement would sometimes cross his benign features, probably only caused by a bubble of unrelieved wind but making him look like some indolent gross ruler slowly becoming aware of the revolutionary activities of the twins beneath his throne.

“Nothing new about today,” said Joan. “Your speeches and briefings are in the folder. Lady Anne's got copies. You'll have to read the ones for the cement-works before you get to the
spina bifida
place, unless you're going to try and get them read in the helicopter.”

“No thanks. Did the Palace OK that bit?”

“They niggled, but I said you were keen. Apparently the local MP is a rabid cost-cutter, but he'll be there and you can wheedle him. They said provided you don't go beyond the script …”

“I never do. What's the weather look like?”

“Clear but nippy. There's a bit of fog in Lincolnshire, but they say it'll be gone before you get there. I think that's all about today, but something's just come up about Edinburgh …”

“That isn't till … when?”

“Thursday week. I'm afraid the Scottish Office have been on to the Palace again saying if Lord Chandler's coming up with you can't he …”

“No.”

Joan said nothing.

“I'm not even going to ask him,” said Louise. “He's coming up to talk to two or three people about his work. They think just because he could fit other things in … Oh, God, why can't they tell the bloody people themselves? They know what the answer's going to be. It's just bloody unfair making you ask me and getting us both upset.”

“It's all right,” said Joan. “Part of the job.”

“What on earth am I going to do without you?”

“It'll only be six weeks with luck. I've got a couple of girls coming in today, to look at. There's plenty of time to show them the ropes. It isn't a difficult job, provided you don't get in a fluster.”

“Well,
I
couldn't do it.”

“I couldn't do yours. I'll bitch at the Palace for you, with pleasure. Now here's something you'll enjoy. Do you remember Chief O'Donovan Kalaki … ?”

Janine, already in her out-door clothes, came in to fetch Davy and get him ready for the trip. Louise and Joan worked at the post until the buzzer sounded to tell them that the Daimler was on its way round to the door. As Louise was putting on her gloves Joan said, “Oh, there's a book come from Mrs Suttery. She said you'd asked for it. I've put it in Lady Anne's box, in case you want something to read on the way home.”

It smelt of dust-thick shelves. Its pages didn't want to come apart. Its spine crackled. Decades must have passed since anyone had looked at it. No dust-cover. Dark blue linen binding.
Escape from the Reds
by Sirius. Inscribed on the fly-leaf in careful copy-book writing, “With my greatest loyalty and devotion, J. J. Walsh, Major.” Published by Danton and Bute in 1922. Illustrations by M.B.W. Frontispiece of an officer, booted and spurred, with a huge holster on his sword-belt and wearing a peculiar fur hat with four up-turned flaps which looked as though they could be pulled down to cover not only his ears but his face and nape as well. He was about thirty-five, already a bit stout, with a fuzzy moustache. He looked in reasonable health, but there was something comic about uniform, figure and pose, as though the costume had been hired for amateur theatricals. Of course he hadn't been an officer in the British Army—the “Major” presumably referred to the temporary rank bestowed on him for his liaison work with the Serbs. Mrs Walsh had described him as an adventurer, but he didn't look the part at all.

About thirty-five in 1922, so perhaps a bit over fifty when Father succeeded in 1938. Father had been only eight, and Granny had already been feuding with the Palace for years, so she would certainly have done her best to create maximum havoc by clearing out all the old courtiers she could, including one dim, semi-invalid figure whose reason for employment in the first place no one could now remember. In fact the Palace had probably fought her off. Granny had lost most of those battles, including the legendary ructions over the Regency, because of her known sympathy for the Nazis. No, surely if she'd been directly responsible for Major Walsh's retirement Mrs Walsh, for all her self-discipline, would have spoken with greater bitterness.

Sadly the book turned out almost impossible to read. Perhaps in 1922, when people knew who General Kornilov was, and what the Bolsheviks had done at Perm, and why the Czechs were the only people who controlled the railway, it might have seemed less bitty and bewildering. Louise, looking for the adventure, skipped rapidly through the first two-thirds of the book, which seemed to be mainly about intrigues between Absolutists and Social Republicans, with rival parliaments sitting in every town and Japanese and French and British and Americans intervening, and counter-orders arriving from London or Paris as soon as any possible compromise had been reached. Then, without warning, in the midst of all this, the adventure seemed to begin.

“Some two hundred miles east of Omsk our train halted for an obstacle on the track. Leaning from my compartment I observed the ruffians from the forward wagons attempting to drag some ladies towards the train. Naturally I intervened, and in the ensuing scuffle my trusty servant, poor Fred Creech, was killed by an unlucky shot from the wagons, no doubt aimed at me. Despite my protestations the train then steamed on without me. Since the next train to pass that way was all too likely to be manned by terrorists I decided to head south, accompanied by the ladies it had been my good fortune to rescue.

“The landscape of the Barabinskay Steppe is an arid plateau, cut by several rivers, sparsely inhabited by nomadic herdsmen. Such agriculture as exists is of a primitive nature, the chief crops being …” and so on for page after page, paragraphs that looked as though they had been lifted unaltered from encyclopaedias or old
National Geographic Magazines.
The illustrations began here—there had been none in the earlier part of the book—pen-and-ink drawings of “A church burnt by the Bolsheviks”, “Our camp by the lake”, “Winter quarters”, and such. The artist—Mrs Walsh, presumably—seemed not to have been confident of drawing the human figure, but the camp by the lake showed four separate little huts, improvised from branches, whereas the snow scene showed a single shelter, no larger but more solidly constructed, leaning against what looked like the wall of some ruin far older than the burnt church. Had the party huddled into the single hut for warmth? Or had they been fewer already? How had any of them survived? What had they eaten? Ah, Major Walsh had killed a bear, “disposed of the brute with a single well-aimed shot from my revolver”. How long would one bear last a family? There was nothing to tell one. The pages between the bear-killing and the point at which “our now sadly depleted party” moved on after the winter were filled with a scornful account of the superstitious nature of the Russian peasant. Surely you didn't get that sort of peasant that far south and east? It was all just padding, noise. There was a message embedded there, a possible marvellous story, but there was no way of reading it through the mess and muddle of the book. It was almost, Louise thought, as though Major Walsh was using every means he could think of not to tell the reader what had happened. The tone, too, was unpleasant, mostly boastful but at times affecting a gentlemanly modesty which rang even less true. There were a lot of references to the virtues of the British officer, and patches of ranting for a policy of invasion through the Himalayan passes and incorporation of all Asian Russia into the British Empire. Louise, still skipping, searching for nuggets of personal adventure, came to a drawing of a dozen dome-shaped tents or portable huts with a few tethered horses. For once the picture was on the same page as the text it illustrated. She read a few lines, found a totally new voice, and continued reading for several pages which described with warm humour life among a group of nomadic Tadzhik herders, people the writer seemed to like and admire, and even to know quite well. The passage ended with the chapter, and the next chapter began with the writer, back in his old voice, now accompanied by “my dear young wife” and building a raft to cross a hitherto unmentioned river.

Deeply disappointed Louise closed the book and drowsed the way to Quercy.

3

“Danton and bute, I think. Something like that.”

“Never heard of them. You're seriously interested?”

“Yes, I think so.”

“I could ask Archie Smith. It's not his period, but he'll know someone.”

“You'll have to show him the book. I'll put it for you to take.”

“Is your interest more than mere inquisitiveness?”

“Oh, yes. I am inquisitive, of course. It's such a terrific story. I want to know if it's true. But I was talking to Mother, and she's a bit worried about a tough like Mrs Walsh getting her hooks into Aunt Bea. She thinks we ought to try and find out a bit more about her. And on top of that if Mrs Walsh is going to be reading all the stuff Granny wrote to Alex Romanov about us, people like Sir Sam will want to have her vetted some way or other. She's frightening, but I like her, you know. I want her story to be true. I thought it was but now I'm not sure. The book smells so fake.”

“Both could be the case. They arrive in England friendless and live for a while by selling her jewels. He attempts to make some money by writing a book and finds that he isn't up to it.”

“He was ill, she said.”

“So in desperation he patches something together from other books and magazines and then somehow persuades some hole-and-corner little publisher to take it on.”

“I expect so. I still want to know. Mother's going to get the Palace to see if they've got anything about the Walshes in the files.”

“All right. I'll get Archie to find someone to have a look at the book. You still haven't told me about your trip. What did Davy make of it?”

“He adored the helicopter. Grinned like an idiot all the time the rotors were going. The ear-muffs wouldn't stay on so we stuffed cotton wool in his ears.”

DECEMBER/JANUARY 1987/88

1

“T
hat you?”

“…”

“What about Alex Romanov? Any luck?”

“…”

“We're
working on it? You mean you've told the others. What did they say?”

“…”

“Well, I've got something else you can tell them. It's about the same lot of letters, only copies. This lot are all at Hampton Court. There's an old girl called Lady Surbiton, lives in one of the fiats there—the Princess went over to visit her …”

2

For once in her life Joan mistimed something. Her labour began a fortnight early, on the afternoon of the day on which she'd started to show Deborah the ropes. The girl-twin was born with a defective heart-valve, and Joan herself suffered from severe internal bleeding because of some complication with the after-birth, and as a result was under intensive care for forty-eight hours. The run-up to Christmas was a fraught period any year, with the staff's nervous energy sparking off into short-circuits caused by the usual personal frets about mums to stay and children to keep busy and travel and catering and so on. Any good cause Louise was involved with was bound to have a carol concert and want her there (the dates would have been in the diary before either Davy or the twins had been thought of) like a goat in the cowshed of charity whose presence was supposed to make the milk flow more freely. Security were always jumpy, too. They'd never tell you if they knew for sure that anyone was planning an attack; it was probably no more than a hunch, based on the knowledge that this was the season when a bomb in Bond Street would cause maximum carnage, so in their eyes other targets, though they mightn't be going anywhere near the West End, were at extra risk as well.

Even without the worry over her illness Joan's disappearance from her linch-pin role would have strained the system, and unfortunately Deborah turned out to be one of those people who don't live up to their interviews. Perhaps she found it a problem working for someone six years younger than herself. She was neat and willing and competent over anything clear-cut, but no good at nuances. Form letters, for instance, which Joan would automatically have adjusted, were constantly having to be re-typed; little hassles with the Palace which Joan would have coped with herself had to be referred to Louise; and so on. Deborah of course realised she wasn't getting it right, and minded, and became stiff and formal. By the time Louise realised she wasn't going to improve it was too late to look for someone else. Joan was due back in a few weeks, surely? Meanwhile apparent holes in the diary closed, clogged with the extra work, and the strain of the relationship sapped Louise's energy-reserves, so that it was the second week of January before she got a chance to take Davy to show Aunt Bea. Because it was a free afternoon and no movements had been planned or announced for her she drove herself in one of the Rovers with Davy stuffed into his nest-egg beside her and her personal detective, John Dyce, in the back seat. Davy slept most of the way, but opened his eyes in the lift and was already whimpering as she rang the bell. Aunt Bea took a while to answer—Louise had half-expected her, like most lonely old people waiting for a visit, to be almost waiting on the door-mat—so by the time the door opened the whimper had modulated to a Siamese-cat wail.

“Oh, dear,” whispered Aunt Bea. “Tummy pains?”

“Just hungry. I'm going to have to feed him. I'll do it in the bedroom if you're squeamish about that sort of thing.”

“No, of course … Only I've got Maria …”

Aunt Bea lowered her voice still further, so that it was inaudible through the wail until Louise craned her ear to the whispering mouth.

“… meeting her here last time? My upstairs neighbour, Mrs Walsh. I'm
employing
her to help sort HRH's papers. She hasn't a penny of her own, poor dear—she's been living off crusts and scraps from the cafeteria. But she's an absolute boon to me, knowing Russian, so it's a great convenience all round. She works in the spare room so I can ask her to go in there for a while, if you wish.”

“Whatever she likes. I don't mind. You go and explain while I take the brat into the bathroom and change him.”

As she left Louise saw Aunt Bea hesitate at the living-room door with her lips moving, as if rehearsing for the difficult interview ahead, but when she carried the now dry but squalling Davy into the living-room she found Mrs Walsh still there, standing, with Aunt Bea hovering to one side, a large pale bubble of pure anxiety. Mrs Walsh bobbed into her minimal curtsey and waited, her attitude signalling that Louise herself would have to ask her to leave before she did so. Louise smiled at her, settled into an arm-chair, opened her blouse and hushed the racket.

Aunt Bea sighed with relief.

“Do you know, they wouldn't let us do that,” she said. “It was supposed to be unhygienic.”

“My child was delivered in a nomad's tent,” said Mrs Walsh. “An old hag bit the cord off with her teeth and cauterised it with a live coal.”

“And I don't suppose anyone had given you ante-natal classes or anything,” said Louise.

“Naturally not. Until the revolution we had been brought up in a glass case, like dolls too precious to play with.”

“You must have thought you were dying,” said Louise. “Davy hurt like hell for a bit, in spite of the gas-and-air, and you didn't have any of that.”

“I had opium. But no, I did not think I was dying. Always, whatever happened, I was certain that I was going to live.”

“Maria's incredibly brave,” said Aunt Bea. “She's had the most dreadful adventures.”

She gazed dimly across the room at Mrs Walsh. Though perfectly clean and kempt she reminded Louise of an Old English Sheepdog gazing out from under its shag of eyebrows, a poor old bitch which had lost her mistress and then, after a period of bewildered grief, had transferred her devotion to a new owner. Mrs Walsh too appeared happy with the relationship, and seemed to have been encouraging it by regaling Aunt Bea with extracts from her escape. It was certainly good to see Aunt Bea up from the pit of mourning, but Louise didn't feel fully happy with the change—a doormat may perhaps only find fulfilment in having shoes wiped on it, but when it's a lovable old thing like Aunt Bea you can't help wishing it a year or two of some other kind of existence before it goes to the bonfire.

“You seem to have made yourself pretty snug,” said Louise.

Sighingly Aunt Bea agreed. Of course it was rather a long way from the shops, but she'd got her little car; and last week the lift had failed for three whole days; and the workmen over on the other side of the courtyard did make a noise with their wirelesses on full blast in the early morning … she glanced every now and then at Mrs Walsh, as if anxious that she might be saying something not permitted. Mrs Walsh, herself spoke very little, but by the nature of her silences managed to occupy her third part of the conversation. Since a secondary motive for the visit had been to try and find out a bit more about her, and whether any urgent steps needed to be taken to stop her having the run of Granny's papers, in the end Louise addressed her directly.

“I found a copy of your husband's book,” she said. “He'd presented one to Great-grandfather, and it was still in the Library.”

Mrs Walsh raised her eyebrows and sat waiting, expressionless.

“We weren't taught that bit of history,” said Louise. “I got a bit lost in the first part—all those generals and parties, and not knowing whose side anyone is on. I wish there'd been a bit more about your actual adventure, things like your baby being born in a tent, you know.”

“My husband was not present. When a baby was born, all the men left camp.”

“Still …”

Louise stopped. As on her last visit, but even more strongly, Mrs Walsh had managed to signal that she would prefer the subject changed. Louise felt obstinate.

“That must have been when you were among the Tadzhiks,” she said. “Have I pronounced that right? You did a picture. Funny round tents like bowler hats without a brim, and horses.”

“The tents are called
yurts.
They are made of mats on a frame. Your Highness, forgive me—this book. I possess no copy at all. I have not seen one for forty years. I barely remember what is in it and what is not—it was my husband's work, not mine. I should at least like to hold it in my hands again.”

“Yes, of course. Next time I come. I don't know if I can actually give it to you—I'll have to find out. You remember what that sort of thing's like at the Palace?”

“Of course.”

“Were the pictures ones you'd done on the journey, or did you do them from memory after?”

“I carried my sketch-pad with me. I used it to remind myself of the time when I was a doll in a glass case. My husband simply took the drawings for his book.”

His
book, now. Hadn't it been
we
before who decided to write it,
our
publisher who messed things up?

“Oh, but it's all so fascinating!” said Aunt Bea. “Such dreadful times! And so brave! How I wish HRH could have been here to talk to you!”

That would have been a meeting of Titanesses, perhaps a battle for poor Aunt Bea's soul. Louise wasn't at all sure that Granny would have got the best of it.

“You must tell the Princess about your husband pretending to be ill and running away with all the horses,” said Aunt Bea. “And crossing the river!”

“There's a bit about crossing the river in the book,” said Louise, “but …”

She was interrupted by an alteration in the rhythm of Davy's sucks. He was already almost as obsessively regular in his bodily functions as his grandfather, and if Louise had been an ordinary citizen she would have been tempted to pot him, as she herself had been potted pretty well from birth. The trouble was, some woman's-mag hack would be sure to find out, and next thing a whole generation of Britons would find themselves being pot-trained straight from the womb, with unknowable effects on the national psyche. But at least his Old-Faithful-like predictability meant that she could clean him up pretty well on the instant, with fewer leakages and changes of clothing than most mums had to cope with, so now she carried him off into the bathroom and sorted him out. When she brought him back into the living-room she was at once aware that Aunt Bea was in the grip of a fresh bout of anxiety. Louise smiled, exuding motherly calm.

“All safe and sound,” she said.

“I'm so glad. You are marvellous, doing it all yourself. But, well, um, we've heard from Dr Romanov, you know. He wants to come and take HRH's papers away. I can't think what to do. I don't like to trouble HM, but really …”

“Alex is Granny's literary executor, you see. She put it in her will.”

“Yes, I know, dear, but …” wavered Aunt Bea.

Mrs Walsh rescued her decisively.

“We are by no means ready to hand the papers over to anyone. It will be several more weeks before we have been through everything. The Dowager's hand is exceedingly difficult to read, especially in the carbon copies. I am having to use a reading-glass much of the time. And in the meanwhile Beatrice should certainly have advice on the legal aspect of her responsibilities.”

“You'd better ring Sir Savile's office,” said Louise. “I should think Jane Gordon-Byng is the person to talk to—she's a proper lawyer. She'll know what you're on about—I told Mother after my last visit that you'd got all Granny's papers, and she'll have passed it on. They haven't been in touch with you?”

Knowing the answer Louise felt a flicker of shiftiness about the question. Provided Mrs Walsh could be trusted the Palace were perfectly happy for Aunt Bea to be as obstinately long as she wished before handing any papers over to an outsider. It was only intense and automatic secretiveness (which Louise couldn't help sharing to some extent) which had made them suggest that Louise should deal with the matter on a casual footing, as though Granny's papers were only of minor interest to anyone. For Aunt Bea to ring the Palace herself would now allow them to deal with her directly, without their having alerted her by making the first move themselves.

“I don't think you need worry too much about Dr Romanov,” said Louise. “As a matter of fact I'm having supper with him this evening and I'll try and do a bit of gentle probing. I haven't seen him since the funeral, but Piers has talked to him a couple of times about their work. He says he seems a reasonable sort of person. I suppose he might want his own letters back, if Granny bothered to keep them.”

“I have found a number of letters from Count Aleksei,” said Mrs Walsh. “They seem of very little interest at a superficial reading. Third-hand tittle-tattle, and misinformed.”

“He's rather amusing to meet,” said Louise.

“They may well be amusing, to people who are amused by that sort of thing. The Dowager Princess's letters to him are of the same order. I find it hard to imagine why she troubled to keep copies.”

Louise smiled, doing her best to encourage the dismissive attitude. It didn't sound as if Mrs Walsh was about to start telephoning The
Daily Mail
with translated titbits.

“Oh, you could never tell why HRH chose to do anything,” said Aunt Bea. “I keep thinking, suppose the poor Prince hadn't drowned like that … People say she didn't really love him, but she did, she did. When she thought no one was listening she used to talk to him still, you know. Teasing him. Little bits of baby-talk. Of course I always pretended I hadn't heard.”

“They had been married how long?” said Mrs Walsh.

“Just over ten years, wasn't it, Aunt Bea?”

“That is a very good time to lose your husband,” said Mrs Walsh, with a banal finality, as if laying down the law on the proper season for the spraying of peach-trees. Louise was saved from having to answer by the beep of the pager from her handbag.