The Breadth of Heaven (6 page)

Kathy transmitted the order, asking for a sherry for herself, and then she put the receiver back on its rest and looked at the Princess’s uninformative and
resolutely turned back. Feeling a little uncomfortable, and also very slightly exasperated, she wondered what to do.

Quite inconsequentially, she said: “It’s not a very nice night for the Prince’s journey.”

“No.” Natalia turned, and walked towards her. “Kathy, I am frightened.”

“Frightened?” Kathy stared at her. “Why, madame?”

“The Prince has appointed someone—a man from the Embassy—to escort us to Tirhania. Such a one could be dangerous
...
how can I trust him?”

“Well, surely, if the Prince himself—”

“The Prince trusts people, Kathy. I cannot do so.” She started to move restlessly about the room, picking things up and putting them down again. Her drink arrived on a tiny silver salver, and was placed on a table. She took it and sipped at it, and then sank down limply on to a settee.

“The Prince told you why I am frightened, I
think.”

“Yes, madame.”

“He thinks that I am wrong, that I have nothing
to fear, but
...
”

“Perhaps there is nothing to fear,” Kathy ventured gently.

“You do not know my brother-in-law.” The small, pretty hands toyed nervously with the stem of the glass. “My brother-in-law Anton, I mean. He hates me, and he hates Joachim. Joachim is the heir, you understand.”

“But surely,” said Kathy practically, “His Majesty could marry, and provide himself with a son?”

“Anton is married. But they say—oh, I don’t know if it is true—that the Queen will never have a child of her own.”

“I see.” Kathy tried another idea. “But, madame, you trust Prince Leonid, don’t you? Surely, if he says there is nothing to fear, there is nothing?”

“Leonid is—what you say—very sweet. He does not see the danger which is beneath his own nose, I think.”

Feeling definitely startled, and thinking that ‘sweet’ was the very last term which it would have occurred to her to use in connection with Leonid, Kathy abandoned the struggle to make Natalia see sense. And having abandoned it, she suddenly began to wonder whether there might after all be some truth in what the other woman believed.

“When shall we meet the gentleman from the Embassy?” she asked thoughtfully.

“We shall not meet him! I have made up my mind.” Natalia finished her drink and stood up. “He is coming to wait upon me tonight, the Baroness said. But I will not be here, and you will not be here
...
and the children will not be here.” Her eyes were shining, and she looked as pleased as a little girl who had just thought of a way round the difficulties in her homework. “We shall fly to Rome by ourselves, you and I and Joachim and Nina, and I shall send a cable to Leonid, telling him that he is to collect us there!”

“But
...
” Kathy’s mind revolved in circles, and she stared at the Princess in blank amazement. “Madame, we would not even get seats ... if you mean we are to fly to Rome tonight?”

“But of course it must be tonight,” with mild impatience. “Of what use would it be to wait until tomorrow? And now,
cherie,
you will pick up the telephone, and you will make calls to all the airline offices. You will tell them that Princess Natalia Karanska wishes seats immediately on a night flight to Rome—seats for herself and her children, and for one other person. And you will tell them, of course, that it must be kept quite secret.” Rather wistfully, she added: “It would be nice if I could travel
incognita,
but everyone knows me, you see.”

Kathy, appalled by the plan, did her best to talk her employer out of it. The whole idea seemed to her more than a little crazy, and completely irresponsible, and she was quite certain that if Leonid knew of it he would be furious. And Leonid had asked her to look after Natalia.

But Natalia could, when she chose, be extremely obstinate, and on this occasion she was definitely not to be moved. She had made up her mind, and beneath the warmth and utterly genuine friendliness of her attitude towards the other girl, there was always an underlying hauteur. She was accustomed to being obeyed—she expected to be obeyed.

Kathy didn’t have to spend very much time telephoning before she found an airline only too willing to accommodate the Princess. Four seats were available on a plane which was due to leave Le Bourget airport at seven-fifteen. It would arrive in Rome a little over three hours later. Would that suit Her Highness? It would. A few small formalities were gone into, and finally the thing was settled, and Kathy replaced the receiver.

Feverishly and secretly, they started to pack. Natalia gave the astonished nanny the night off, and let the remainder of her entourage know that she was resting, and did not wish to be disturbed until dinner time. The man from the Embassy, Colonel Zanin, was not expected to call until after dinner, and by seven o’clock they would be off the premises. They naturally decided to encumber themselves with the minimum of luggage—even the Princess with true heroism confining herself to one small white suitcase—and Kathy was obliged to leave most of her brand new wardrobe to be sent on by Natalia’s staff. She then had the cases taken downstairs, telling the porter who took charge of them and placed them in a taxi that they constituted the baggage of a member of the royal suite who was leaving that night, ahead of the rest, and although she was certainly not accustomed to telling lies, or even to stretching the truth, she thought she did rather well. When the taxi had departed, she went upstairs again, and found Natalia and both her children ready to leave.

They looked a pathetic little family, with Nina yawning fretfully in her mother’s arms, and Joachim being good and solemn and grown-up. And Kathy longed more than ever to stop them from doing this rash thing. But Natalia was impervious to argument or at least there was nothing Kathy could say that had the power to move her—and so they picked a moment when the hotel seemed very quiet, and then slipped quietly down in the lift and out through the swing doors into the cold and noisy street. Had they encountered a member of Natalia’s staff, they would have said that they were going for a drive around
Paris—however strange it might have seemed to be taking two small children out at that time of night but they met no one, and both women heaved sighs of relief as their feet touched the pavement, and they knew that they had crossed the biggest hurdle.

The Parish rush-hour was not yet over, however, and as they stood outside the hotel in the chilling, soaking December rain, Kathy experienced a sudden moment of panic in case they should be unable to get a taxi. But they were lucky, and had scarcely been waiting for more than thirty seconds when one drew into the kerb. A minute later they were on their way to the airport, and Natalia was smiling because everything, so far, had gone smoothly—it was going
to be all right.

They drove along by the Seine. There were a thousand lights reflected in it, and Kathy thought how beautiful it was, and wished that she could have seen a little more of Paris. The bridges spanning the river were like something out of a fairytale, and she could see the floodlit outline of Notre Dame
...

It was very cold in the taxi, but the children didn’t seem to mind, and Kathy thought how very well behaved and amenable they both were. Nina was asleep on her own lap, but Joachim sat between her and his mother, his dark eyes wide open, staring through the windows at the lighted streets of Paris, never saying a word. She thought he was the most self-possessed child she had ever encountered, and wondered how fond he was of his mother, and whether he ever wondered at the crazy, unexpected things she did. Whether it occurred to him, for instance, to think it strange that they were now going to fly off in an aeroplane, without his nanny and, in fact, without
any of the people, with the exception of his mother and Nina, who normally made up his life.

Once she felt in the darkness for his small, gloved hand, but as soon as she tried to take it in her own he snatched it away, and she wondered whether he disliked her ... or whether he was simply a very independent small boy.

At the airport, formalities were got through quickly and simply. Natalia had an account with the airline which they were using, and everything was made as smooth as possible for them. Because the airport buildings at Le Bourget were rather small it was not possible for them to await the departure of their flight in a private room, but the public lounge was not crowded, and even Natalia had no qualms about being seen by the few people who were already assembled there. Air stewardesses smiled at the children as they walked across the room, and an elderly American gentleman in a far comer beamed benignly at the slightly sleepy Nina, who gurgled disarmingly back at him.

Their flight was announced, and for a few moments they were out on the tarmac in the chill, wet evening air. And then the warmth of the plane swallowed them up, and for the second time in one day Kathy prepared to fly from one capital to another.

CHAPTER FIVE

There
weren’t many passengers on board the aircraft, and the few there were seemed largely preoccupied with their own affairs. This was a relief to Kathy, if not to her employer as well, for during the flight from London the understandable curiosity of other passengers about the royal party had become rather embarrassing, and at one point Natalia had even been approached with a request for her autograph. But tonight they were quite undisturbed, and as the great silver-winged airliner roared into the black, starless sky and headed southwards towards the Italian frontier, both children fell easily and naturally asleep, and a few minutes later, rather to Kathy’s surprise, their mother followed their example. When she was asleep she looked extremely young, and for a while Kathy sat watching her, wondering about her, and what her future would be like, whether there could be anything behind her fantastic fears and suspicions, or whether her own imagination was her worst enemy. And then she sat back and stared up at the dimly seen roof of the passenger cabin, and thought about Leonid, the Princess’s brother-in-law. He seemed so hard, so impenetrably cold, and yet Natalia had said that he was very kind, and she herself had seen how suddenly his dark eyes could smile, lighting up their shadowy depths with a tremendous warmth. He had been cruelly, quite unnecessarily rude to her in the foyer at Ransome’s, when she had been saying goodbye to Miss Harbury
... But she had seen him smile, and it
lingered in her memory. She hoped he would not be angry with her for letting the Princess leave Paris without her escort
...
she thought that if he were really angry it would probably be unbearable.

She was falling asleep now, and her eyelids were getting heavy, but in front of her she still seemed to see a pair of smiling eyes. She didn’t want to do anything to stop them smiling
... Very slowly they faded away, and then she was fast asleep.

When Kathy awoke it was nearly an hour later, just after a quarter past eight, and a stewardess was bending over her. She was speaking very softly, and Kathy realized that she didn’t want to awaken the Princess, who was still slumbering peacefully, her pale hair falling in a shining cascade across her face.

“Miss Grant, we are to make an unexpected landing at Genoa. I do not know
why ...
I expect there is some technical reason. There is nothing the matter with the aircraft, of course—nothing at all to worry about. Will you tell Her Highness?”

Kathy nodded, pulling herself upright. “Yes, of course. Thank you.”

The stewardess disappeared, and Joachim, who had been curled up in the seat opposite his mother, stirred and sat up. He rubbed his eyes, which looked huge and tired and over-strained, and Kathy smiled at him. She thought he ought to be in bed, and wondered whether she should ask the stewardess for some hot milk. But just at that moment Natalia awoke too, and Kathy thought that perhaps, in a minute, she would ask her about the milk.

For a moment Natalia stared about her sleepily, then she opened her handbag, and taking a comb out began to drag it through her tousled hair. Staring at her own reflection in the mirror of her compact, she laughed and looked mischievously sideways at Kathy. “I wonder what my maid would say to me now?” she pondered.

Kathy smiled, and hoped the cheerful mood would last. She picked up her own bag and began to repair her make-up ... then she suddenly remembered about the touch-down in Genoa. She told the Princess about it, and didn’t notice the little silence that fell as she herself went on powdering her nose, and frowning over the application of her rose-pink lipstick.

Suddenly, Natalia said: “There isn’t anything wrong, is there
...
really?”

“Of course not, madame ... of course not.” Kathy put her lipstick away in her bag, and snapped it shut. “The stewardess was quite definite. She didn’t know why we were landing, but there is nothing wrong.”

“No, no, I see. But why
...
?
I wonder
...
” She was tense again, and almost inaudibly Kathy sighed.