The Red Staircase. Gwendoline Butler

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СКАЧАТЬ trouble has fallen upon the Grahams. Patrick has disgraced himself in India and must leave his regiment in dishonour. We don’t know the details as yet; I dare say we never shall, but I feel for his poor mother.’

      In Grizel’s hand, I read: ‘Rose darling, Patrick is accused of mutiny, who would have believed it of him? And he has fled. No one knows his whereabouts, not even his mother. Well, thank goodness you are not married to him, my love, that’s what I say.’

      But I thought: poor Patrick, poor Patrick. And I also thought how little I knew him after all.

      That night, instead of dreaming about Patrick I dreamt about myself. Troubled, restless dreams in which my own identity seemed lost, and I wandered like a ghost through an unknown countryside.

      I woke in the pale dawn and lay looking as the sunlight began to colour the room. I held my hands up in front of me; ordinary, quite pretty hands, with long fingers and the narrow nails inherited by all the Gowries. Why should my hands be working hands, hands to heal, when the hands of all my forebears – except for the soldiers’ – had been idle ones? And yet I knew my hands must work. I wanted to feel them scrubbed clean and sterile, ready to do what I asked of them. And then at the end of the day I wanted to feel they had achieved what I had asked of them. It wasn’t exactly that I thought of myself as a healer, although I hoped I would be; it was simply that there was a job I seemed born for, head, hands and heart, and I longed to be at it.

      Had Patrick sensed this? Was this, as much as any troubles of his own, what lay behind our break-up? Perhaps I should blame myself as much as him. And lying there in that Russian dawn, I did blame myself. Somehow I had frightened Patrick away. The notion that he had been paid to leave me struck me now as ridiculous. Still, he had gone, and now some terrible disaster had struck him in India. I felt as though I didn’t understand about this disaster. As if the story, as presented to me, was false. I did not believe in the mutiny tale.

      I thought about that for a little while. ‘But I’ve only heard about it at third hand,’ I thought. ‘What actually happened in India, and the story as told to me, may bear very little relation to each other … What a lot I don’t understand;’

      The next day – quite unexpectedly – I got my first taste of the other Russia. So far I had been on the whole cocooned in a world of luxury and security; now I was to see the dark side.

      That morning early, before breakfast, I buttoned myself into a cool, white linen shirt – for St Petersburg was beginning to be hot – and went downstairs where Ariadne was waiting for me to go with her to church. Like many Russian girls of her class and generation, Ariadne had strongly developed religious feelings, although of a somewhat dreamy and simplistic sort. Religiosity rather than religion, my old Tibby would have called it. It was a matter of duty that I should go with her, but in fact, I was entranced by the richness and beauty of the Orthodox service and music. We went quite often. Church was not, as in Presbyterian Scotland, a Sunday affair; one could go on any day of the week, at almost any time; sometimes we planned to go, but sometimes, too, we went quite casually, just because Ariadne felt like it.

      I had instituted the habit of walking; Ariadne fell in with the idea, to humour me. This morning we were turning into the street which led to the church when we saw a line of police drawn up across the road, and we were stopped. Beyond them we could see a small group of people being questioned by two policemen, and in the distance, right down at the end of the road, was a glimpse of the Nevsky Prospect where a large crowd seemed to be milling about.

      ‘What’s going on?’

      The police officers were eyeing us, and one man stepped forward. ‘You may not go that way, Excellencies,’ he said politely.

      ‘What is it?’ asked Ariadne.

      He bowed. ‘A bomb in the Imperial Library, Excellency.’

      ‘Oh, the Anarchists again, I suppose. Was anyone hurt?’

      ‘I believe so.’ He was clearly reluctant to add more.

      Ariadne turned back to me. ‘The police must think the criminals are still in the neighbourhood; you can see they have the area cordoned off and are searching.’

      I had my eyes on the little group already under investigation; I saw a girl, quite young and neatly dressed in dark clothes, a young man in the characteristic suit and narrow cap of the student, and two older men, both working-class.

      ‘Perhaps they have them, or think they have,’ I said. Even as I looked, the four were led away by the police.

      ‘The girl was very young,’ said Ariadne. ‘Younger than me. It frightens me a bit.’

      There was much to frighten one in Russia, and I was only just beginning to realise it. All the newspaper reports of violence I had read at home, the cautious speculation on the possibility of widespread unrest, suddenly took a concrete form. I was witnessing the break-up of a society. This was the edge of a volcano.

      ‘Let’s go home.’ And I took Ariadne’s arm, and we turned our backs on the scene.

      ‘It’s exciting, though, isn’t it?’ she said. ‘She was so brave, that girl, and must have dared so much.’ She was like a child who had just been given an experience that both shocked and delighted her, so that she wanted to go on re-living it in her imagination. For myself, it made me wonder how I should bear myself in this strange new country full of alarming portents.

      In the hall Ariadne excused herself. ‘I’ll have some tea and bread in my room. I won’t come in to breakfast. I think I would like to be alone for a little while. You know, if we had been a bit further on on our walk we might have been near that bomb. The Imperial Library is not so far away from the church. We might have been hurt.’

      ‘And the girl?’ I said. ‘If she’s guilty, what will happen to her?’

      ‘The Fortress of St Peter and St Paul first,’ said Ariadne. ‘That’s where they take political prisoners. And then – ’ she shrugged – ‘Siberia, I suppose. It is terrible, isn’t it? However you look at it. Terrible what she did, and terrible what will happen to her. Russia is a terrible country. And today I have to go shopping for clothes with my mamma!’ And she ran away upstairs.

      Thoughtfully, I went into the breakfast parlour. So now Ariadne knew that politics could reach out and touch her.

      I found Mademoiselle Laure there, for once, coolly drinking tea. Her appearances on occasion were as puzzling as her disappearances. No rule seemed to account for them. But this morning, I learnt, Ariadne was to go to her mother’s French dressmaker, and Mademoiselle Laure was to go along too, presumably to see fair play. I was to be left to my own devices.

      Mademoiselle Laure inclined her head to me over the teacup, as if it gave her some satisfaction to pass on this information. She was wearing a tight black dress with a small miniature, set with seed pearls and plaited hair, at her throat; I was in white even to my shoes. We made a strange pair, I all white and Mademoiselle Laure all black. There was something total in that blackness. Almost as if she was in mourning.

      She saw me looking at the miniature and laid her hand protectively across it. ‘It is the anniversary of his death, and on that day I always wear his likeness, and dress,’ she indicated with her hand, ‘as you see.’

      ‘His death?’

      ‘Georges. Georges Leskov, my betrothed. He died of a fever before we could СКАЧАТЬ