The Dangerous Years (11 page)

The British Mission had already withdrawn to somewhere in the docks so they decided to look for Base Headquarters. But Base Headquarters were totally deserted and the whole empty place echoed to their voices.

‘The buggers have bolted, sir,’ Rumbelo said indignantly.

Small tables and palms in tubs in the main hallway showed that, if nothing else, the headquarters staff had not stinted themselves for comfort, but of the inhabitants there was no sign.

‘There’s a lift!’ One of the bluejackets pressed the bell push and looked up the shaft. As the steel rope showed no sign of moving, he turned to his companions with an affected high-nosed stare. ‘Damn these lower classes,’ he said. ‘You can’t rely on ’em at all.’

Racing up the curving staircase, they flung open door after door. There were signs of hurried packing everywhere – open cupboard doors and drawers, soiled clothing, a pot of brilliantine, even a pair of corsets.

Through the windows, they could see the opera house opposite, with a poster outside announcing that it would be heated for the next performance, but there was no sign of light, staff, players or audience. From another window, they could see the sea, heavy as lead against a dark sky and the white tip of the snow-covered land. When they all met together in the hall again, Kelly was feeling faintly light-headed. They’d brought rations for three days in their haversacks but he had a sudden ill-omened feeling that their stay could well be longer.

Leading his party outside, he found an eating house. It seemed to have nothing but offal to offer but nobody was arguing. An old lady, wearing a garment cut from a worn carpet, huddled alongside a White officer wearing the board-like Tsarist epaulettes on his shoulders, who was trying to encourage her to eat. Nearby was a mother with two little girls, all neatly dressed, waiting their turn but well aware there were only a few days left at the outside before the Refugee Control Office closed for good.

For the price of an English half-sovereign, Kelly was able to provide his men with a hot meal and wine, and by the grace of God the elderly man who was serving the meal spoke a little French.

‘The consulate’s in the Kivanov Prospekt,’ he told them. ‘But nobody’s lived there since last year, because the mob got in after the French pulled out. Army headquarters left forty-eight hours ago.’

The eating house had a spare room at the back. It contained nothing but two bare tables and four hard benches, but there was a roof and the draught under the door wasn’t quite as arctic as the wind outside. Handing over another half-sovereign, Kelly announced he was commandeering it.

Turning to Boyle, he outlined his plans. ‘The chaps can bed down here if necessary,’ he said. ‘But keep ’em on their toes. I don’t know what’s going to happen but I don’t want to be far from the Fleet Landing Place when
Mordant
comes back.’

Emptying his pockets, he handed over three sovereigns. ‘I don’t suppose the Admiralty’ll ever reimburse me,’ he said. ‘But that’s for food and to keep the owner at bay. What’s the rate of exchange?’

‘About ten thousand roubles to a Bradbury. And all that buys are two slices of bread and meat.’

‘I’m going to find the French Consul. Can you cope?’

Boyle looked at Kelly. He was a slightly built young man with pale anonymous hair and eyes, and as a cadet in the torpedoed cruiser,
Cressy
, in 1914, had been as near to death as he was ever likely to be when he’d been dragged by Kelly to a raft and pushed aboard. In Boyle’s eyes there never was and never would be again anybody quite like Kelly Maguire.

‘I’ll cope,’ he said firmly.

Near Base Headquarters, Kelly found an ancient cab and he and Rumbelo set off for the Kivanov Prospekt. But the French Consulate had clearly been empty for a long time, and they stared blank-eyed at the flat-fronted building, its consular plate askew, its high windows shattered, its rooms in darkness.

‘Where are the consular staff now?’

‘All left, Monsieur. They were living in a house in Drestrovskiy Street.’

‘You’d better take us there.’

Drestrovskiy Street was less important-looking than the Kivanov Prospekt and half the houses seemed to be unoccupied. Telling the cabby to wait, they pushed their way through the open doorway and, striking a match, found a candelabra still containing the stubs of three candles. By their light, they saw more signs of a hurried departure. Books lay scattered everywhere, with papers and scraps of clothing. A trunk standing in the hall was open, its contents draped over the edge. Moving through the empty rooms, they found bedrooms where the bedclothes had been stolen by marauders, and the consul’s office with its huge desk, its fireplace full of paper ash as if he’d spent his last hours there burning documents.

‘Oh, Christ, Rumbelo,’ Kelly said despairingly. ‘This is a bloody awful war, and no mistake.’

In the servants’ quarters they found an old man, dirty, starved-looking and stinking of booze.

‘Perhaps
he’s
the consul,’ Rumbelo said and they took refuge in laughter.

Back at the eating house, they found Boyle looking depressed. The room they were occupying had the iron coldness of the inside of a refrigerator. It was hopeless trying to search any further that night and they bedded down on the floor. They were wakened next morning by the owner of the room banging on the door. Behind him was the cab driver they’d used the night before.

‘You were looking for the French Consul, Excellency,’ he said. ‘I’ve found where they moved to. It’s in the Karyetny Ryad.’

With Kelly and three sailors aboard, the cab creaked its way into the town. The place looked arctic now, the buildings black against the snow. A group of men in fur caps and heavy coats watched them from a street corner where they stood around a fire built on the pavement, but there was no attempt to stop them.

The Karyetny Ryad was in an old part of the town, a quiet street lined with bare trees, their branches black against the leaden sky. At a crossroads at the end, country carts and droshkies laden with refugees were passing in a steady stream. The suburb had been wrecked when the French had evacuated the place the year before and Red sympathisers had moved in to wreak their vengeance on the people who had welcomed them. There was a stark atmosphere of neglect among the houses, with broken windows, and even occasional stone chimneys standing smoke-blackened in the middle of a heap of ruins.

Eventually the carriage slowed to a stop and, peering through the window, Kelly saw a huge gatepost from which hung a rusting wrought-iron gate. Beyond, there were charred trees and bushes in an unweeded garden along a curving gravel drive that was overgrown and neglected.

‘This it?’

The coachman shook his head. ‘Next door, Monsieur. But if you dismount here, you can get through the garden. It will be better that way. You can’t be seen.’

Climbing from the cab, they edged past the empty ruins of the house. The front door, daubed with a red hammer and sickle, stood open, and inside they could see sabre-slashed drapings and broken furniture full of bullet holes. Picking their way past wrecked stables with shattered roofs and charred brickwork, they found themselves in a long sloping garden which had once been terraced, but now consisted of broken walls and rubble.

The next door house was across a muddy lane overhung by gloomy trees. Creeping through the garden, they knocked at a side door and swung on the bell pull. The bell echoed emptily and for a long time there was no sign of life. Then, as Rumbelo and the two sailors began to push their noses against the windows to see if the place was occupied, they heard the sound of bolts being drawn and the door opened.

The man standing in the opening was small, plump and frightened-looking. He opened his mouth to say something then abruptly closed it again.

‘This is the British Navy,’ Kelly explained. ‘We’ve come to take you to safety.’

The little man continued to gaze at them, his face deathly pale, then his throat worked. ‘You had better come in, Monsieur.’

They all crowded inside and the Frenchman closed and bolted the door behind them. They followed him into the hall and, without saying a word, he produced five glasses and a bottle of brandy which he sloshed out with a shaking hand.

The sailors eyed each other sideways and accepted the drinks in the usual unflappable way of all sailors offered free booze. While they were still swallowing it, the little man fished a last sheet from an opened desk crammed with papers, stuffed it in a suitcase and faced them.

‘Balustridnyi Ryad,’ he said. ‘Monsieur Baptiste is there. I am Armande Driand, his secretary. I was collecting papers.’ He indicated the suitcase crammed with documents. ‘We moved here after the consulate was sacked, but we decided that when White Army headquarters evacuated the city these houses would be the first to be looted. We have all now moved to my house.’

The Balustridnyi Ryad was a quarter of a mile away, and the route they took doubled back and forth several times.

Eventually they found themselves in a narrow road, at the end of which, where it debouched on to a wider, more important street, they could see dark figures against the snow. As they emerged, a shabby hearse, painted white and pulled by two sway-backed knock-kneed greys, plodded past, creaking and rattling over the frozen ruts. The driver was huddled in his seat, smothered in scarves and old coats, and the empty interior was stuffed with withered laurel leaves. A few weeping women trudged behind it, wearing what scraps of black they had managed to find for the obsequies.

‘It passes every morning,’ Driand said, ‘and returns in the evening. It seems to be the only one in this part of the city and there is a lot of work for it.’

He led them down the side of a small mansion set back from the others and, taking a key from his pocket, pushed into a large old kitchen which seemed to be full of drying female underclothes.

As the sailors eyed the underwear with interest, they were surrounded by children who stood in a semi-circle, staring with huge, absorbed eyes. Then a dark, plump man with a doe-like gaze appeared.

‘My good Driand,’ he said. ‘Thank God you’re back!’

‘This is the British navy, sir,’ Driand explained. ‘They’ve been sent from Sebastopol to take us off.’

Baptiste pushed through the children to shake their hands. Rumbelo accepted the greeting with an equanimity which was not shared by the other two sailors, who went pink with embarrassment and turned in preference to the children. Even before the Consul had finished effusing, one of them had a small girl on his shoulders, giggling with laughter.

‘You must meet my wife,’ Baptiste said. ‘Please come this way.’

There were more female clothes piled on every chair and hanging on the banisters as they went upstairs, and Kelly eyed them with alarm, wondering how many people the Consul had collected.

He cleared his throat. ‘I ought to point out, sir,’ he said, ‘that our orders are that no one’s to be evacuated except White Russian soldiers and their families, wounded, and non-Russians who need to return to their own countries.’

As he spoke, a pair of double doors opened and what appeared to be hordes of young females poured through. In fact, there were seven but there seemed to be many more and they surrounded Kelly, shaking hands and giggling. Madame Baptiste looked as young as her daughters, who seemed to have grown up a little since they were seen by the man in Sebastopol, and they all seemed to be beautiful in the dark doe-eyed manner of Baptiste himself. Somewhat unexpectedly, Driand’s wife was about three times the size of her husband, a statuesque blonde with a bust like the prow of a battleship, but she too had clearly once been a beauty, and her daughters, every one of them junoesque and tall, seemed to take after her. The sight of so many pretty girls took Kelly’s breath away.

He tried to answer all their questions, but Baptiste flapped his hands and the shrill chatter stopped at once. ‘Anne-Marie, the brandy! Pascale, the biscuits! Josephine-Claude, the cigarettes! Angélique, a chair!’

As the hall cleared, Baptiste took Kelly’s arm and led him into the salon, a large room with big windows where the curtains had been drawn so that people in the street couldn’t see inside. It was full of people and the faces that were turned to Kelly didn’t have the consul’s beaming confidence.

‘General Prince Busukov,’ Baptiste introduced. ‘The Princess Busukov. Their daughters, the Princesses Svetliana, Nona and Magdalena. Countess Aramitian and her daughter. Madame Mamontov and her two daughters. Madame Valiovski and her daughters. Madame Krosilev and her daughters –

Kelly was staring at them with dismay. Prince Busukov was plump and pink-faced and looked just what he was – an aristocrat. His wife, a small delicate-looking woman, walked only slowly, leaning on a stick.

‘Arthritis,’ Baptiste smiled. ‘She is very brave.’

‘Sir!’ Kelly tried to halt the flood of introductions. ‘I must remind you of my orders. These people can’t
all
be part of your staff.’

‘But of course not!’ Baptiste beamed. ‘They are friends of mine and people who have appealed to me for help.’

‘Sir–’ Kelly gestured unhappily ‘–I can’t give it! I’m not permitted to. My orders are quite clear and unequivocal. I was expecting perhaps a dozen, but with the children there must be around forty people in this house. I can’t take them all.’

‘Not even me, Kelly Georgeivitch?’

The voice just behind him made Kelly turn. He knew it at once. Facing him in the doorway, smiling at him, was Vera Brasov.

The streets of Odessa were deserted.

Not only the wealthy but the white-collar workers and the tradesmen, too, had considered it wiser to disappear from sight. Dock labourers, drunk on stolen vodka, were seeking out everybody who didn’t earn their living with manual toil; while others, affected by drugs from looted shops, were rampaging through the streets and welcoming the Bolsheviks as they emerged from their hiding places armed with stolen weapons.

Leaving Rumbelo in charge and wearing Baptiste’s civilian coat and hat, Kelly set off back to the Fleet Landing Place to warn Boyle.