The Dangerous Years (7 page)

Her eyes were enormous and she had fine delicate hands, while her English – learned, it seemed, as a small girl at school in England and at the Smolnia, the leading Russian girls’ establishment in Petrograd – was as perfect as her figure.

She led him round the room and on to the veranda, introducing him to the other guests – elderly generals, a woman with an eyeglass and a perfect English drawl, her son, a Guards captain educated at Cambridge and now a British liaison officer. None of them seemed to be involved in the fighting.

‘What are they all doing?’ Kelly asked.

She smiled. ‘They are waiting for the end of the world, I think,’ she said. ‘It isn’t very far away.’

An amateur guitarist was playing
The Song of Stenka Razin
, a pretty ballad which had become popular with the officers of the British Mission. Judging by the look of one or two of the Russians, they had been at the abrau durso, the local champagne, and one of them was lying sprawled across the table with his head among the crockery and glasses.

The talk was nostalgic and the women sighed for clothes no longer obtainable in Russia, but everyone was remarkably cheerful, though occasionally there were little gaps in the conversation, hastily covered with a smile, which showed how the circumstances of many of them had changed. Their minds were full of their hopes and fears but they tried hard not to be boring about them, and they were always quick to propose a toast – ‘Na Moskvu – To Moscow.’

‘I understand you came to Russia to pick up the Vjeskovs,’ Princess Brasov said. ‘How lucky they are! To be taken somewhere safe with all our belongings is something we all dream about.’ She gave her brittle little laugh. ‘Let’s go into the garden and you can tell me more about yourself.’

The Smalnovs’ garden was full of trees and palms, and the paths led to quiet arbours, but, as the evening progressed, a chilly wind carne up from the sea, and it emptied abruptly, so that Kelly found himself alone in it with Vera Brasov.

‘Are you married, Kelly Georgeivitch?’ she asked.

‘No.’

‘Then perhaps you have a fiancée.’

If Charley could still be considered a fiancée, Kelly thought, then, yes, he had, but the gospel according to Kimister seemed to indicate that Charley didn’t consider herself in any way spoken for any more.

‘No,’ he said shortly.

‘But you must have a
baryshnia
– a girl.’

‘No.’

She glanced about her. ‘Then you’d better kiss me now,’ she murmured, ‘and set your mind at rest.’

Kelly’s mind hadn’t been particularly uneasy, but Charley seemed to have dropped him and, under the circumstances, he saw no harm. The world appeared to be full of attractive women all itching to get close to a man, and it seemed a pity to waste an opportunity.

The news improved. With the Reds thrown back in confusion on the Tsaritsyn front, Denikin had gone on to the offensive and had taken over two hundred and fifty thousand prisoners and gained a vast stretch of territory, so that his lines now stretched from Poltava in the west through Kharkov and Pavlovsk towards Kamyshin, and he was only three hundred and seventy miles from Moscow. In Siberia, Admiral Kolchak’s armies had rallied and also seemed to be headed for the capital, while the Army of the Ukraine, based on Odessa, was advancing with unchallengeable verve, and General Yudenitch in the north-west was said to be within sight of St Isaac’s Cathedral. Lenin, it was gleefully claimed, was waiting in the Kremlin with a train standing by in Moscow station to take him to safety, and it seemed the only thing now needed to make everything right was the elimination of a completely new army which had appeared – the Greens, neither Reds nor Whites and led by a man called Mahkno – who were really only bandits and nothing compared with the defeated Red hordes which had been troubling Holy Russia.

Nobody had taken seriously Orrmont’s joke about naval officers on armoured trains, not even Orrmont, but apparently Galt did, and two weeks later a signal was received aboard
Mordant
as she returned from a trip to Yalta, instructing the first lieutenant to repair on board the flagship.

The admiral, a tall, round-faced man peering at a book through horn-rimmed spectacles, looked up as Kelly entered his day cabin.

‘Maguire?’ he said.

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Understand you speak French?’

‘I took a course after I was wounded at Jutland, sir. I took rather a lot of courses just then.’

‘Good.’ The admiral nodded approvingly. ‘We need French speakers out here. Only way we have of communicating with the Russians. We also need gunners.’

Kelly’s heart sank. ‘For trains, I suspect, sir.’

The admiral smiled. ‘That’s right, my boy. How’s your gunnery?’

Kelly smiled back. ‘That’s another of the courses I took, sir.’

‘Well, the Royal Artillery are busy training field batteries and they haven’t the men to spare for trains. How about you?’

Kelly sighed. ‘It’s never been my habit to refuse when I’ve been told to volunteer, sir.’

The admiral’s smile grew wider and he rose. ‘A very good idea, too,’ he said briskly. ‘There’s a new train just been made up here in the railway yard. There’ll be a gunner – I think you’ve met him – a naval gun’s crew with one officer from
Queen Elizabeth
and a squad of Russian infantrymen, strengthened with British. Do you wish to take anybody special with you?’

‘Just a chap from my ship, sir. He’s served with me before. I know I can trust him.’

The admiral nodded. ‘Very well,’ he said. ‘That can be arranged. You’ll be informed when to be at the railway yard.’

That seemed to be that. It took Kelly’s breath away.

The south Russian summer had come with a vengeance and the days were full of drying heat. With Denikin’s advance, the Bolsheviks were nowhere near now but everyone was still in a highly nervous state. Many of them had seen their home towns crowded with mutinous soldiers decked with red ribbons, hundreds had died in organised massacres, and almost everyone you met had lost a husband, son or father. But there was a tremendous optimism about the future now, with large White armies in being, and everybody was beginning to hope for great things.

Protocol and etiquette still filled the Russian minds more than the war, however, and they argued long and earnestly about whether they should propose the toast of the King of England and the Prince of Wales without including the name of the Queen and the Princess Royal, or the order in which the six or seven national anthems of the allies who were supporting them should be played by the Cossack band which was always present at parties.

Outings were laid on which involved drives on vicious mountain roads by chauffeurs who seemed hell-bent on suicide. They visited the battlefield of Inkerman and the scene of the charge of the Light Brigade; and a few startled British officers found themselves the husbands of countesses or even princesses.

‘There are going to be a hell of a lot of Boris Albertovitch Smiths and Sergei Angusovitch MacNabs when this is all over,’ Wellbeloved grinned.

Among the nightly flirtations which went on under the cypresses, Kimister seemed to be carrying on a hesitant affair with a determined Russian baroness. Though he seemed to spend most of his time backing away at full speed, his devotion to Charley didn’t seem to put him off entirely and, to Kelly’s fury, he still received letters from home which Kelly did not receive.

‘Had a line from Charley,’ he liked to announce when they met. ‘She sends her regards.’

Times were changing, Kelly thought. It used to be her love.

In Novorossiisk the war was clearly nearer than in Sebastopol and the place was full of soldiers all wearing British khaki. The regimental officers were an extraordinary crowd. Dressed in a mixture of uniforms, their badges of rank were often marked on their epaulettes with blue pencil, yet they wore spurs with rowels as big as five shilling pieces that jingled like pebbles in a tin. Generous to the point of absurdity, they were of little use for anything, and they were lazy, arrogant and often cowardly, because they knew their men had no heart for fighting their fellow countrymen.

‘The best men vanished in the war against the Germans,’ Vera Brasov explained. ‘Those who join now are mere ingorotsy or chinoviks – foreigners and petty officials – who enjoy dressing up as officers but have no intention of going near the front.’

Certainly no one at British Mission headquarters had a very high opinion of them, while their soldiers – as often as not country boys recruited by scouting parties – were simple men inclined to put flowers in the muzzles of their rifles and stand in awe at the sight of a train. Among them also, however, were a lot of shifty individuals who’d been taken as prisoners from the Red Army in the skirmishes earlier in the year and given the choice of changing sides or being shot. Not unnaturally, they hadn’t hesitated.

‘I wouldn’t like to be a White officer, standing in front of ’em,’ Orrmont observed shrewdly.

‘Which suggests, sir, that it might be a good idea to keep an eye on where our own people go when they’re ashore,’ Kelly said. ‘I wouldn’t like to think of ’em meeting that lot in bars.’

Orrmont gave him an amused look. ‘You expecting bloody revolution to break out aboard, Number One?’

‘We saw the Germans at Scapa, sir,’ Kelly said. ‘And at Sebastopol we were floating above the bodies of a couple of hundred Russian officers, who were chucked overboard with their feet tied to firebars. Their crews gave them the choice of dying hot or dying cold. If they asked for hot, they fed them into the furnaces. If they preferred cold, they went overboard with no chance of swimming.’

How right Kelly was, was proved only a few days later when news found its way south that an Anglo-Slav battalion in North Russia formed from deserters and prison inmates who’d been given their freedom on receipt of a promise to fight against the Reds, had mutinied and murdered three British and four Russian officers and wounded four more. A battalion of Royal Marines sent to stabilise the front where they’d defected had also refused duty and the allied forces had been obliged to retire.

Orrmont was a little shaken and Kelly went ahead hurriedly to organise trips round the Russian museums, and even obtained permission from Vera Brasov to allow him to show a group round the gardens of her family home.

‘You’d better make it fast,’ Orrmont suggested, tossing a message form across. ‘You’re to report to the sidings next week.’

The last of the summer warmth had a cloying feel about it now and everybody in the city seemed to be making an effort to get the best out of the weather. Kelly was in a curious state of limbo. He’d still heard nothing from Charley and didn’t know where to lay the blame. As he well knew, it lay chiefly with the Navy, and probably with himself, but he suspected, too, that Kimister hadn’t been idle.

Mordant’s
ratings enjoyed themselves at the Brasov Palace because sausages, bread, cheese and a pale soapy liquid which went by the name of beer had been laid on; and a red-haired able seaman called Doncaster stepped forward and insisted on making a ponderous speech of thanks which Kelly translated in his best French.

‘I hope you have taken his name, Kelly Georgeivitch,’ Vera said quietly. ‘In Holy Russia we have discovered that men who make speeches are also the sort who stir up disaffection.’

As the two-horse charabancs arrived to carry the bluejackets back to the ship, she slipped her hand through his arm.

‘Why not stay for dinner?’ she suggested. ‘I think your sailors can take themselves safely back to their ship, can they not?’

They dined on the vast veranda, on a small table laid with spotless linen, the meal served by discreet servants who hovered in the distance.

‘Do you trust them?’ Kelly asked as they rose.

‘Would you?’

‘No.’

‘Neither would I. But so far, thank God, the Bolsheviki are far away.’ She took his hand and led him upstairs. ‘We’ll use the first floor salon,’ she said. ‘Here it’s like sitting in the middle of the Nevsky Prospekt.’

The salon was a small pink room with armchairs and a chaise longue. The draperies were filmy and smelled of flowers, and a bottle of Russian champagne waited for them. This, Kelly thought, is what Verschoyle does when he invites girls to see his etchings.

She turned to face him. She had sparkingly white teeth, and the oriental opulence about her looks that many of the South Russians had gave her a forthright sexuality she made no attempt to disguise.

She fanned herself and downed a glass of wine. ‘The heat can be brutal here,’ she said. ‘I shouldn’t have worn this dress.’ She began fumbling with the back of the high neck. ‘Would you be shocked if I asked you to unhook me?’ She beamed. ‘Just the neck, of course.’

Deciding he was becoming expert at this business of undressing females, Kelly stood behind her, his hands under the heavy chignon she wore. Her neck felt hot under his fingers as slowly, methodically, he freed one hook after another.

She made no protest, shivering a little as he touched the skin of her exposed back. It exuded a warm, animal fragrance, and his hand reached inside the thin silk chemise. Abruptly she gave a gasp, turned in his arms to face him and moved her head slightly towards a door at the end of the room.

‘In there,’ she whispered.

The room contained a bed draped with the same filmy hangings as the salon. She unbuttoned his jacket and began to unfasten his shirt.

‘What are we waiting for?’ Her voice came as a croak and he saw she had shed all her clothes but the thin chemise and was standing near the bed.

She gave him a twisted smile. ‘You are making guesses at why I’ve brought you here, aren’t you, Kelly Georgeivitch? You have heard that Russian girls are trying to find themselves husbands among the British where it is safe, and you think I’m taking out an insurance for my future.’

Kelly said nothing and her face became harder. ‘You would be wrong,’ she said. ‘When the war broke out in 1914, I was twenty-three and engaged to be married. Everybody said it would soon be over so we decided to wait and be married in peacetime. He was killed at Przemy’l. I took a lover after that but he was murdered by the Bolsheviki in 1917. Now I think only of today and what it has to offer. I like my men alive. Please don’t stop now.’