The Dangerous Years (6 page)

As they vanished, Wellbeloved drew in his breath. ‘They’re treating the Owner as if he were a bloody commissionaire,’ he gasped.

More cars began to appear, and luggage was stacked on the loading platform. There were more than two hundred pieces, all unmarked or lettered with unreadable Russian characters, and enough staff to fill a troopship, most of them apparently carrying on waspish feuds with each other.

They managed to stow the important ones away in the cabins, but it still left a lot without anywhere to go, and bug-eyed seamen in their underwear stared at unseeing parlour-maids passing through their mess flats seeking laundering facilities or hot water for their betters, while elderly ladies-in-waiting in galoshes and mackintoshes and carrying umbrellas climbed leisurely up to the bridge to look at the view. They were all attractive, but they all seemed boneheaded in their inability to accept that their condition had changed.

As Kelly bedded them down in his capacity as major domo, he was informed he was to fill up all spare space with White officers’ families and, as they began to appear in cars and carts and carriages and on foot, he pushed them in anywhere he could. The Grand Duke Vissarion clearly didn’t approve of sharing the ship with the people whose husbands were fighting to save him, but with the placid stolidity of the British sailor doing one of the multifarious jobs the Navy always had to do, everybody ignored his bleats of protest and they packed aboard old men, women and children, stuffing them below and in and around the torpedo tubes and guns and anywhere else there was room.

As they arrived in Malta after a cold passage across a foggy sea, a signal arrived directing them back to Constantinople at once.

‘Get ’em off, Number One,’ Orrmont snapped, ‘Domlupinu’s being attacked by Turkish guerrillas and there’s battle, murder and sudden death going on!’

Aided by burly seamen, the refugees were bundled ashore, but the Vjeskovs seemed to have no more wish to leave than they had had to come aboard, which, considering how much they’d complained about their quarters, was hard to understand. Startled seamen found themselves the recipients of useless Denikin roubles as tips, sometimes even valuable ikons which left them merely bewildered. Grand Duke Piotr handed out signed portraits of himself to the officers. Grand Duke Vissarion offered nothing. Only the two elderly grand duchesses showed any sign of gratitude and theirs was overwhelming. A handsome pair of diamond cuff links was handed to Orrmont; and Kelly found himself the possessor of a magnificent ruby belonging to the Grand Duchess Evgenia, which he decided ought to make a good engagement ring for Charley when – and if – they finally got around to getting engaged.

They got them all off at last and
Mordant
swung away from the quayside, turbines whining as she headed east. They stopped at Constantinople only long enough to go alongside an oiler and take on mail. Once more, significantly, there was nothing from Charley.

Domlupinu was a warren of mud-brick houses and ruins, huddled lattice to lattice and roof upon roof amid dunghills and winding precipitous lanes. Greek forces, reeling from the Turkish guerrillas, had crammed into the town and the cruiser,
Cithara
, was lying offshore with her boats already alongside the sagging wooden jetty which was the place’s apology for a quay. Guns and material of all descriptions were scattered about amid corpses of exhausted, diseased men and animals, and the stink of unburied carcasses filled the sultry air.

As they stuffed terrified people into the boats, more ships arrived. The French and Italians had done little in the way of making arrangements for their nationals and there was a wail of horror as the news went round that the Turks were on the point of arriving. The decks of the ships in the bay were already covered with weeping women, and bearded bluejackets were nursing screaming babies. Searching the crowded vessels, Kelly found two colliers and began to direct the crowd to them. Within a matter of hours, he had crammed five thousand men, women and children into them and sent them on their way to Mitylene.

The Turks arrived the following morning, their eyes blazing with cold hatred for the Greeks, their swords and bayonets rusty with dried blood. Some of them were drunk, and murder and rape were followed almost at once by smoke as Domlupinu was set on fire. Houses built of lath and plaster took the flames immediately in the growing wind, and looters and Turks anxious to pay off old scores added to the blaze.

Tens of thousands of terrified people crammed the sea front, jumping into the sea or running aimlessly about carrying bundles which were already on fire. Greek churches, mosques and houses were silhouetted against the smoke-filled sky as the sailors struggled to separate British nationals and direct them to
Mordant
’s rescue teams. But it was an impossible task because women were throwing their children into the boats to save them and men were plunging into the water and swimming out to appeal for help. Nobody appeared to have much faith in the Greek navy and they all turned instinctively to the British and American ships. The roar of the flames was deafening and, as darkness came, the sea was like molten copper, with what appeared to be twenty different volcanoes flinging up pyres of jagged flames from the town.

Up to their waists in water, the sailors were handing children into boats while their fathers tried to reach the Greek ships. But there were always too many of them and they seemed to be drowning in dozens. The whole water’s edge was littered with corpses and in one spot the bodies of three women who had clearly been raped bobbed against the sea wall, only the seaweed covering their nakedness.

‘Good God,’ Wellbeloved said grimly as the boats were hoisted in and the ships drew away. ‘I hope bloody Lloyd George’s happy. You’d have to go a long way to find a worse mess than this.’

They little knew what was round the corner.

Still shocked and angry, they headed back to Constantinople. Mail from home awaited them. There was a letter for Rumbelo announcing the birth of a son and a short note from Kelly’s mother to say his father had finally returned home from the Middle East, but still nothing from Charley.

They had no sooner refuelled when they were ordered to Salonika where vengeful Greeks were forcing out the Turkish population. Since going down to defeat with her German allies, Turkey could no longer support her European possessions and the whole Middle East seemed to be on the move.

Ferrying their unhappy passengers back to Stambul, they rejoined the squadron at Sebastopol and spent the next three weeks crossing and recrossing the Black Sea to Odessa, Batoum and Baku, picking their way through dubiously-charted minefields laid during the war by Turks, Russians, Bulgarians and Rumanians, trying to obtain fixes on lighthouses which functioned only occasionally, if at all, and pick up buoys that no longer existed.

Finally, well into the summer they were ordered to Novorossiisk in South Russia where the anti-Bolshevik campaign seemed to have picked up a little. There was now a clear hope that the three White Army fronts might come together and drive the Reds back into Moscow for Christmas, but of all the confusion in South Russia, that in Novorossiisk was perhaps the worst.

Colourful beneath the onion-shaped domes of its churches, the town was full of penniless refugees and indescribable beggars, and was a hotbed of crime. With the white Army’s paper roubles practically valueless, a great deal of speculation in foreign currency was going on, and there was a motley collection of nationalities in the streets – Russians wearing British khaki with epaulettes like planks on their shoulders; foreign entrepreneurs attempting to establish some new base for trade; Levantine merchants; Cossacks in fur caps; women on the make; Jews in shabby frock coats; and dubious Balkan mercenaries, Turks, Adventurers, and German and Austrian prisoners of war still awaiting repatriation. In addition, there were also enormous numbers of the old Russian aristocracy, an incredible group, still arrogant and self-satisfied despite the disasters that had struck them, some of the unluckier ones living in tiny cluttered rooms smelling of the creosote with which they tried to discourage the lice that seemed to swarm everywhere in South Russia. Because of the overcrowding, every disease imaginable prospered with ease, smallpox chasing diphtheria, and typhus chasing cholera.

As soon as they appeared alongside, a British naval officer stepped on board.

‘Lieutenant-Commander Mawdit,’ he announced. ‘Naval Mission staff. What have you been sent here for?’

‘God knows,’ Kelly said, and Mawdit grinned.

‘Then it doesn’t matter, does it?’ he said cheerfully. ‘If I were you, I’d suggest to your captain that you leave a responsible officer on board and go ashore and enjoy yourselves. There’s a party on at the Smalnovs’ tonight, in fact, so I’ll pick you up and whizz you along. The Smalnovs like the Navy. Like all the other White Russians, they think they might need it one day.’

The Smalnovs’ house was an awesome place surrounded by sweeping flights of marble terraces and mosaic pavements. A buffet supper had been laid out on the terrace, a wide flagged arena reached through a vast room of pink marble sparkling with candelabras. The guests seemed to include half the population of Novorossiisk, and lobster, caviare and chicken were washed down with Crimean wine. Though considering themselves impoverished by the loss of their northern properties in the Revolution, the Smalnovs were still living like princes on what was left, and their attitude was clearly that it was better to die than reduce their standards.

There was a high-ranking RAF officer present and several British army men, including an artillery major called Galt whose mother had been Russian. He was holding forth about the confusion.

‘The bloody place has five “times”,’ he told Kelly. ‘Local, ship’s time, Petrograd time, the time of the local cement works and British Mission time. There’s an hour and a half difference between the fastest and the slowest, so if I were you, I’d put away my watch and just forget it until the war’s over.’

The battleship,
Queen Elizabeth
, had just joined the South Russian squadron and almost the first person Kelly met was Kimister.

‘Maguire,’ he said. ‘I heard you were here.’

Kelly noted the disappearance of his Christian name and already resentful of the fact that Kimister had once proposed to Charley, he remembered the number of fights he’d had at Dartmouth with Verschoyle to protect Kimister from his bullying.

‘
How
did you hear?’ he asked.

‘Charley, of course. Charley Upfold.’

‘Oh!’ Somewhere along the line, Kelly felt, he’d become second favourite and the betting on Kimister had improved quite considerably. ‘See much of her?’

‘Well, a bit.’ Kimister didn’t seem to have changed much. His manner was still uncertain and over the years his round, pale face had lost what character it had ever had and seemed to be devoid of lines, bone structure, everything except soft jowly cheeks.

‘I seem to have missed things out here a bit.’ He spoke as if he were apologising. ‘My father died, and they gave me a long leave to clear up his affairs. He left me pretty well off.’

Kelly grunted. ‘More than mine will ever leave me,’ he said.

‘Heard from Charley?’ Kimister went on. ‘I had a letter by the last mail.’

Did you, by Christ? Kelly thought savagely. Kimister appeared to be doing well out of his misfortunes. Some people could smell loneliness a mile away and, though he’d never thought Kimister a fast or determined mover, perhaps he’d learned a lot in the last two or three years.

Galt, the artillery major, pulled Kelly away. He was with Orrmont and was talking enthusiastically about the war.

‘You interested in guns?’ he asked.

‘Gunnery officers,’ Orrmont pointed out, ‘become gunnery officers only so that they don’t have to go to sea in the same ship as another gunnery officer.’

Galt frowned. ‘A gunnery officer would be a good chap for what we have in mind.’

‘What
do
you have in mind?’

‘Broneviks – armoured trains. Up to now they’ve carried only light stuff – field guns and machine guns, that sort of thing – but now we’ve persuaded your admiral to let us have a naval banger or two so we can indulge in a little decent long-range slogging.’

‘What you want,’ Orrmont pointed out cheerfully with a sidelong glance at Kelly, ‘is a chap who’s done a gunnery course, speaks French and is unlikely to panic.’

Galt grinned. ‘That’s exactly what we want,’ he said. ‘Know somebody?’

‘Indeed I do,’ Orrmont said, looking at Kelly again. ‘My number One.’

The room seemed to be filled with incredibly beautiful women but the introductions were alarming because the rules of procedure were strict and none of the British spoke Russian. Most of the Russians spoke French, however, and while Kelly, who appeared to be the only Englishman present with any command of the language, was still struggling with protocol, a hand touched his arm and he turned to find a woman in a lavender gown standing alongside him. She had startling topaz eyes that indicated a Tartar ancestry and thick deep-brown hair touched with reddish lights.

‘I shall be your friend for the evening,’ she announced. ‘I am Vera Nikolaevna Brasov. Princess Brasov. Does that worry you?’

‘It’s not been my good fortune to meet many princesses,’ Kelly admitted, ‘but the Royal Navy has a self-assurance all its own and isn’t likely to be outfaced.’

She gave a tinkling laugh. ‘That’s a very clever reply, Captain–?’

‘Maguire,’ Kelly said. ‘George Kelly Maguire. And I’m not a captain, merely a lieutenant. Not really very important.’

She touched his medal ribbons with her gloves. ‘My brother had many medals,’ she said. ‘He was murdered with my mother and father when the Revolution broke out.’

There was an awkward silence. What did one say in reply? Then she gave a short brittle laugh. ‘I know exactly whom you should meet,’ she said. ‘And since the Brasov family is very important, no one will dare to be rude to you with me alongside.’