The Kirilov Star (8 page)

‘Beautiful,’ her father said, coming forward to take both her hands. ‘Absolutely stunning – isn’t that what the young bloods would say?’

She laughed. ‘I’m very nervous.’

‘No need to be, you will be the belle of the ball, as is only right and proper.’ He turned from her to reach for a jewellery box from the mantelpiece. ‘This is already yours,’ he said. ‘I have kept it safely for you, but now I have had it made so that you can wear it.’ He opened the box and took out the Kirilov Star, adapted and hung on a silver chain so that she could wear it as a necklace. The central diamond sparkled in the light from the electric chandelier above her head and all the smaller diamonds in its points glistened like drops of water.

Another of her fleeting memories came to her of her mother sitting at a table in tears, sewing it into her petticoat, and her father taking her on his knee and gruffly telling her she was the star of the Kirilovs. She thrust the recollection from her and turned dutifully at Edward’s command so that he could take the pearls from her throat and replace it with the necklace. ‘There!’ he said as she turned back to him. ‘All yours now. Wear it with pride for what you were and what you have become.’

‘It’s lovely,’ she said, fingering it. ‘I didn’t know you still had it.’

‘I could never part with the Kirilov Star,’ he said. ‘Neither the jewel, nor the child.’

‘Oh, Papa,’ she said, throwing her arms about him. ‘I do love you.’ She turned to Margaret and embraced her too.
‘You are so good to me. I sometimes wonder what I have done to deserve it.’

‘Just been yourself,’ Edward said, embarrassed. ‘Go on being that. Now, I think we had better go into the hall to receive our guests.’

There were more than a hundred of them: distant relations of Sir Edward and Margaret, family friends from far and wide, Lydia’s school friends and others she had met in Cambridge, people from the diplomatic corps, a few displaced Russians with whom Edward had kept in touch, the vicar and the doctor and Alexei, all dressed in their finest, come to wish her well, all bringing gifts. It was exciting and slightly out of this world, a dream from which she might wake and find herself … where? Back in a droshky in a snowy forest or crammed into a freight wagon with hundreds of others? Watching her weeping mother sew? It was strange how those visions kept coming back to her now, clearer than they had ever been. It was as if her traumatised body had shut them out at first, refused to acknowledge recollections that were too painful to bear, and only years later released them, as if saying, ‘Yes, you are stronger now. Now you can face them. You should not forget. It is part of what you are.’

Edward partnered her for the first dance but after that Alexei claimed her. Since the death of his father in Russia, Edward had taken him under his wing, though he really did not need it. He had become a tall, handsome man, popular with everyone, though there was a serious side to his nature that perhaps only Lydia and Sir Edward understood. His mother had died the year Lydia went to Cambridge – of a broken heart, he had said. Since then he had become a naturalised British subject, taking the name of Alex Peters,
easily able to pass himself off as an Englishman. He was completely self-assured.

Lydia was very fond of him, had been ever since she had taken him to feed the ducks and he had been kind to a lonely, frightened little girl. He was a presence in her life, not an especially frequent one, but a stable one, someone she knew instinctively she could lean on if need be. He was practical and down to earth, the only one who could curb her more exotic flights of fancy and cheer her up when she felt pulled down by her memories. He understood.

‘You are looking ravishing,’ he said, as they waltzed. ‘I would hardly know the little waif I met in Simferopol.’

She laughed. ‘The waif is still there, underneath.’

‘You would never know it. All this …’ He moved his head to indicate the room, the dancers, the orchestra, the heady scent of hothouse flowers. ‘All this for a little waif.’

‘I do realise how privileged I am,’ she said. ‘Others were not half so fortunate. I should like to do something to help them. Surely there is a way of tracing their relatives and perhaps bringing some of their assets out of Russia?’

‘That was what my father was trying to do and he paid for it with his life.’

‘I’m sorry, I should not have reminded you.’

They were silent for a minute or two and concentrated on their dancing, each thinking of the past – unhappy, disjointed, another time, another world. And then he suddenly shook himself as if shaking off a cloak. ‘Are your studies all finished now?’

‘Yes. I have the equivalent of a degree, but I can’t call it a degree. It’s not fair, is it? I bet I worked just as hard as you did to get your BA.’

‘I’ve no doubt you did.’ He whirled her round. ‘But times are changing. Your day will come.’

‘I want to be useful, so I am thinking of taking work as a translator. Do you think I should?’

‘My dear Lidushka, it’s no good asking me. You must go where your heart leads you.’

Prophetic words, she decided later.

‘I don’t have to make my mind up just yet. We are going to Paris for a holiday in a couple of weeks.’

‘And is there a young man waiting in the wings?’

‘Oh, lots of them,’ she said lightly, oblivious of the intensity of his question.

‘But no one special?’

‘No one special. I’ve been too busy getting an education. What about you? Anyone special?’

‘No,’ he said quietly. ‘I, too, have been busy carving out a career for myself in the diplomatic service.’

‘Have you ever thought about going back to Russia?’ she asked, as the dance came to an end and they left the floor.

‘That, my dear little Countess, would be the height of folly. The Russia we knew has gone for ever.’

He did not tell her that he had been back because he had been sworn to secrecy. Nor did he tell her that the regime under Stalin was worse than it had been after the Civil War, that almost everyone, particularly the intelligentsia, waited for the knock on the door in the middle of the night when they were hauled off to prison and sentenced to death or years in a labour camp for being an ‘enemy of the people’ or not being ‘sufficiently vigilant’, for which little proof was needed. A simple denunciation was enough. Out of loyalty to the Party, or greed, or jealousy, neighbour was denouncing neighbour, sons and daughters were denouncing
fathers, wives their husbands. It had become a cult of fear. It was an omission he would come bitterly to regret.

He delivered her back to Edward and Margaret and others came to ask her to dance and he did not see her again until they went into supper, when Edward asked him to join them.

‘Lydia tells me she is thinking of becoming a translator,’ he said to Edward, as they enjoyed a lavish meal.

‘It is one of her ideas,’ Edward said, smiling. ‘I don’t think she knows what she wants.’

‘She doesn’t have to do anything,’ Margaret put in. ‘She can stay here with us until she marries. I am sure that won’t be long.’

Lydia laughed. ‘I’m not ready for marriage yet, I want to live a little first. Besides, I haven’t met anyone I want to marry.’

Alex was not sure whether to be pleased or sorry about that. The little waif he had befriended was long gone and been replaced by a lovely woman, spoilt and yet not spoilt, whom he loved. The trouble was she was not aware of it and he would not tell her. He had nothing much to offer her. The money his mother had managed to bring out of Russia had soon been used up, and like so many others, he had been obliged to work for a living. He owed his present job at the Foreign Office to Sir Edward. He was thankful they paid him well and in time he would be in a position to marry, but the job he was doing could be dangerous and it would not be fair to Lydia to ask her to share his life. Besides, she must be allowed to make up her own mind about the man she married and he was perfectly aware she looked on him as a kind of older brother.

He escorted her back to the ballroom after supper and
claimed another dance before relinquishing her to others: lively, confident young men who knew their place in the world. He watched her treating them with smiling courtesy, listening to their compliments with her head cocked on one side, intent on what they were saying. By the end of the evening more than one was sighing after her.

When the last waltz was over, everyone, except those who had come some distance and were staying the night, made preparations to leave. Lydia stood beside Edward and Margaret, wishing them goodnight and thanking them for their gifts. Then she looked round for Alex, but he was nowhere to be seen. She said goodnight to everyone else and made her way to her bedroom. The evening had gone off without a hitch and she was tired and happy and a little tipsy on champagne. But it was too bad of Alex to disappear like that; she would have liked to mull it all over with him and talk to him about his gift of Tolstoy’s
War and Peace
in the original Russian. She wondered if it was a message to her not to forget her roots.

She went with her parents to Paris for the last two weeks in June, taking the train to Dover and then the ferry to Calais, where Edward hired a car and drove them to Paris and the Hôtel St-Germain-des-Prés on the Rue Bonaparte. It was warm and sunny and their days were filled with sightseeing, visiting museums and exhibitions, and going to concerts and the theatre. And when they weren’t doing that she and Margaret shopped for clothes at the best couturiers, until both were exhausted and Lydia began to wonder how they would get everything into their trunks for the return journey.

Paris was home to a great many Russian émigrés who tended to congregate in the area of the 15th arrondissement. Most of them were educated, former aristocrats, bourgeoisie, skilled workers, poets and writers, but few were wealthy enough to support themselves without work and had been obliged to take menial jobs in order to survive. But they maintained their own culture. They had their magazines, publishers, theatre companies, dance troupes, schools and churches. When Margaret was resting in the afternoons, Lydia would wander about those streets, listening to Russian being spoken and daydreaming of finding her parents there, safe and well. She even approached groups of women and asked if they had heard anything of a Count Kirilov or his wife, to which the answer was always a shake of the head and a muttered ‘sorry’.

One day, after a particularly long walk, she found a small park and sat down on a bench to rest. One shoe was hurting her foot and she kicked it off, rubbing her toes up and down her other calf. She did not notice the small dog until it had her shoe in its mouth and run off with it. She shouted and began limping after it, but could not catch it.

A young man noticed her predicament, caught the dog and retrieved her shoe which he presented to her with a half-mocking bow and a broad smile.

‘Thank you,’ she said, hobbling back to the bench to slip it on again. ‘I did not fancy walking back to my hotel in stockinged feet.’

He was blond and blue-eyed with rather appealing boyish features, probably older than he looked. ‘No, your stocking would be in ribbons and so would your foot. Such a pretty foot too.’ He sat beside her, fetched a cigarette packet from his pocket and offered her one. She shook
her head. He lit one for himself and sat back to smoke it. ‘Whew, it’s hot today,’ he said.

‘Yes, but I don’t mind it.’ She was wearing a lilac silk dress, loosely tied on her hips with a sash. A large brimmed straw hat shielded her face.

‘On holiday, are you?’

‘Yes, are you?’

‘No, I live here.’

‘But you are Russian.’ Although they had been speaking in French, she had recognised his accent.

‘What makes you say that?’

‘Your accent.’

He laughed. ‘Since the Bolsheviks took away my family’s citizenship and France decided to recognise the Soviet Union, I am stateless. But yes, you could say I was Russian. What about you? In the same boat, are you?’

‘No, I was adopted by an Englishman and his wife, so I am English now.’

‘But you were Russian once?’

‘Yes. My father was Count Mikhail Kirilov.’

He whistled. ‘Wow. A count. What’s your name now?’

‘Lydia Stoneleigh. My father is Sir Edward Stoneleigh.’

He held out his hand. ‘How do you do, Lydia Stoneleigh. I am Nikolay Nikolayevich Andropov.’

She turned to take his hand. ‘How do you do, Monsieur Andropov.’

‘Oh, please, let us have it the Russian way. Nikolay Nikolayevich, if you please. Or Kolya, if you like.’

‘How long have you been in France?’

‘Since the end of the Civil War. My father was in the White Army and was killed by the Reds.’

‘My father was in the army too. He and my mother
were killed by the Bolsheviks. My brother and nurse were murdered. I was the only one who survived. I came out with Sir Edward in 1920.’

He smiled. ‘You could not have been very old.’

‘I was four.’

‘Do you remember anything of it?’

So she told him all she could remember.

‘How interesting,’ he said when she finished. ‘Our lives have run almost parallel, though I am two years older than you are.’

‘Yet you have retained your accent.’

‘That is because I have lived among exiled Russians all my life and we continue to speak Russian. I should think you have forgotten it.’

‘No, I kept it up and studied Russian and Russian history at college. I am thinking of becoming a translator.’

‘They are ten a penny in Paris. So many Russians who need to earn a living are doing that as an easy option. It is better than waiting at table in some sleazy restaurant, or cleaning floors, or portering on the railways.’

‘Is that what you do? Translating, I mean.’

‘No. I am a poet.’

‘And do you make money at it?’

He laughed in an embarrassed way. ‘I get by.’

‘I must be going back. Mama will be wondering where I have got to.’ She stood up and held out her hand. ‘Goodbye, Nikolay Nikolayevich. It was nice to have met you.’

He stood up beside her, slightly taller than she was. ‘I’ll walk you back to your hotel. We can talk some more as we go.’