The House of Special Purpose (26 page)

‘Father,’ said Alexei, turning to the Tsar now, who had skated alongside Anastasia to the side of the lake, where he was forced to overhear their argument. Their faces were pink with the cold, but they had been laughing and enjoying themselves, despite the freezing temperature. Anastasia smiled at me and I smiled a little in return, careful that my reply should not be noticed. ‘Father, please let me skate for a little bit, won’t you?’

‘Alexei,’ he said, shaking his head in sorrow, ‘we have spoken about this.’

‘But what if I don’t go alone?’ suggested the boy. ‘What if I was to skate with someone on either side of me? Someone to hold my hands and keep me safe?’

The Tsar considered this for a moment. Unlike his wife, he was conscious of the other people who made up our party – the servants, extended family members, princes of noble families – and at such times he was always anxious that his son should not be perceived as a weakling who could not risk the most normal of activities. He was the Tsarevich, after all. It was important that he be seen as strong and masculine if the security of his position was to be maintained. Sensing his father’s hesitation, the boy seized on the weakness immediately.

‘And I’ll only stay out there for ten minutes,’ he continued, pleading his case. ‘Fifteen at most. Maybe twenty. And I’ll go terribly slow. No faster than walking, if you like.’

‘Alexei, you cannot,’ began the Tsaritsa, before she was interrupted by her husband.

‘Do you give me your solemn promise that you will go no faster than a walk? And that you will hold the hands of those who accompany you?’

‘Yes, Father!’ shouted Alexei in delight, jumping off his chair and – to everyone’s shock – almost tripping over his own feet as he reached for a pair of skates. I jumped forward to catch him before he could fall to the ground, but he corrected himself in time and stood there, looking a little embarrassed by his tumble.

‘Nicky, no!’ cried the Tsaritsa immediately, standing up too and looking at her husband angrily. ‘You cannot allow it.’

‘His spirit must have some freedom,’ replied the Tsar, looking away from her, unwilling to catch his wife’s eye. I could tell how much he hated this kind of scene to be played out in front of others. ‘After all, Sunny, you can’t expect him to sit here all afternoon and not feel that he is being cheated.’

‘And if he should fall?’ she asked, her voice already crackling with tears.

‘I won’t fall, Mother,’ said Alexei, kissing her cheek. ‘I promise it.’

‘You nearly fell getting off your chair!’ she cried.

‘That was an accident. There won’t be any more.’

‘Nicky,’ she said again, appealing to her husband, but the Tsar shook his head. He wanted to see his son on the lake, I realized. And regardless of the consequences, he wanted the rest of us to see him there too. Husband and wife stared at each other, their mutual strengths competing in a power struggle. Palace gossip had it that theirs had been a love match when they had married just over two decades before – their union had come about against the inclination of both the Tsar’s father, Alexander III, and his mother, the Dowager Empress Marie Fyodorovna, who resented the Tsaritsa’s Anglo-German ancestry. Throughout all their years together he had never treated her with anything other than adoration, even when daughter after daughter had been conceived and a son had seemed like a distant possibility. It was only in recent years, since Alexei had been diagnosed with haemophilia, that their relationship had begun to disintegrate.

Of course, the other gossip, repeated around the whole country, was that the Tsar had been replaced in Alexandra’s affections and in her bed by the
starets
, Father Gregory, but whether this was true or a slander I did not know.

‘I’ll take him out, Father,’ said a quiet voice and I looked towards Anastasia, who was smiling that innocent, gentle smile of hers. ‘And I’ll hold his hand all the time.’

‘There, you see?’ said Alexei to his mother. ‘Everyone knows that Anastasia is the best skater of all of us.’

‘Not just you, though,’ replied the Tsaritsa, sensing defeat but wanting to ensure a part for herself in the decision-making. ‘Georgy Daniilovich,’ she said, surprising me by turning around and knowing exactly where to find me, ‘you will accompany my children also. Alexei, you’re to stand between them and hold both their hands, is that understood?’

‘Yes, Mother,’ he said in delight.

‘And if I see you let go even once, then I will call you back and you will not disobey me.’

The Tsarevich agreed to her terms and finished tying his laces as I made my way to the edge of the lake and swapped my heavy snow boots for the lighter blades of the skating shoes. I caught Anastasia’s eye and she smiled coquettishly at me; what a perfect little plan she had orchestrated. We were set to dance out on the lake together in full view of everyone without raising a single person’s suspicions.

‘You’re a fine skater, Your Highness,’ I declared as the three of us skated slowly towards the centre of the lake, where the other skaters and the Grand Duchesses parted in order to give us room.

‘Why, thank you, Georgy,’ she replied haughtily, as if I was nothing more than a servant to her. ‘You seem surprisingly unsure of yourself on the ice.’

‘Do I?’ I asked, smiling.

‘Yes, have you not skated before?’

‘Many times.’

‘Really?’ she asked in surprise as the three of us circled the circumference together, swishing left and right, keeping in time with each other, picking up the pace every so often until the shouts of the Tsaritsa from the edge forced us to slow down again. ‘I didn’t know you had enough free time to leave the palace for such frivolity. Perhaps your duties are not as onerous as I thought.’

‘Not here, Your Highness,’ I answered quickly. ‘No, I meant back in Kashin, my home village. In the winter when the lakes froze over we would slide across them. Not on skates, of course. We had no money for such luxuries.’

‘I see,’ she said, enjoying the flirtation. ‘You skated alone, I assume?’

‘Not always, no.’

‘With your friends, then? The other slow-witted, thick-bodied boys with whom you were reared?’

‘Not at all, Your Highness,’ I grinned. ‘Families in Kashin, like every other place in the world, are blessed with both daughters and sons. No, I would skate with the girls of my village.’

‘Stop fighting, you two,’ cried Alexei, who was concentrating on staying upright, for in truth, he was not a very good skater at all. He was also too young to recognize that this was no argument, but a continuing flirtation.

‘I see,’ said Anastasia after a few moments. ‘Well, it has stood you in good stead, sliding across your lakes with those big, hardworking girls. I myself have been an accomplished skater for a number of years now.’

‘I can tell,’ I replied.

‘Yes, you have met Prince Evgeny Ilyavich Simonov?’

‘On occasion,’ I said, recalling the handsome young scion of one of St Petersburg’s wealthiest families, a fellow blessed with maple-coloured skin, a thick head of blond hair and the whitest teeth I had ever seen on any living being. It was well known that half the young women in society were in love with him.

‘Yes, he taught me everything I know,’ said Anastasia with a sweet smile.

‘Everything?’

‘Almost everything,’ she conceded a few moments later, pursing her lips together as she looked at me, the closest we could come to a public kiss.

‘Let’s try a circle,’ I said, looking down at Alexei.

‘A circle?’

‘Yes, we can spin around. Your Highness,’ I continued, looking at Anastasia, ‘you take my hand too, so we three create a ring together.’

She did as instructed and a moment later we were bonded together, skating this way and that in a small circle of three, a pleasurable dance that was interrupted only when the Tsaritsa began waving her arms in frustration at the edge of the lake and insisting that we return to safety. Sighing, wishing that the moment could continue for ever, I suggested that we should go back, but the moment that Alexei was safely returned to his mother’s arms, Anastasia grabbed my hand again and, faster now,
sped along the ice with me as I struggled to match her speed and maintain my equilibrium.

‘Anastasia!’ cried the Tsaritsa, who was more than aware how unseemly it was for us to be skating alone together like this, but the sound of the Tsar roaring with laughter at how I had nearly tipped over was enough to convince me that such an escapade would be permitted, for a few moments at least.

And so we skated. And the skate became a dance. We fell in line with each other, matching movement for movement, length for length. It lasted for no more than a few minutes, but it felt like an eternity. When I think back to Tsarskoe Selo and the winter of 1916, it is this that I remember most vividly.

The Grand Duchess Anastasia and I, alone on the ice, hand in hand, dancing to our own peculiar rhythms, as the red sun descended and darkened before us and her parents and sisters watched us from afar, ignorant of our passion, unaware of our romance. Dancing in time with each other, a perfect combination of two, wishing that this moment might never end.

And now I must relate the great moment of shame in my life. I live with the memory of it by telling myself that I was young, that I was in love, not just with Anastasia but with the Imperial Family, with the Winter Palace, with St Petersburg, with the entire new life that had been so unexpectedly thrust upon me. I tell myself that I was drunk with selfishness and pride, that I did not want anyone else to become part of my new existence, that I wanted only to begin again. I tell myself all these things, but they are not enough. It was a sin.

Asya was waiting for me at the time that we had said; I suspected that she had been there for much of the afternoon.

‘I’m sorry,’ I told her, looking her directly in the eye even as I betrayed her. ‘There’s nothing here for you. I asked, but there’s nothing that can be done.’

She nodded and accepted what I said without complaint. As
she vanished into the night I told myself that she would be better off in Kashin, where she had friends and family, a home. And then I put her from my mind as if she had been nothing more than a distant acquaintance and not a sister who loved me.

I never saw or heard from her again. I must live with this memory, with this dishonour.

1941

I
FAILED TO NOTICE
the gentleman on the first three occasions when he appeared at the library, but on the fourth, Miss Simpson, who was much taken with him, pulled me aside with an exhilarated expression on her face.

‘He’s here again,’ she whispered, clutching me by the arm and looking out into the body of the library, before turning back to me eagerly; I had never seen her quite so animated before. She had the feverish excitement of a child on Christmas morning.

‘Who’s here again?’ I asked.

‘
Him
,’ she said, as if we had been engaged in a conversation about the fellow already and I was being deliberately obtuse by not acknowledging it. ‘Mr Tweed, as I call him. You’ve noticed him, haven’t you?’

I stared at her and wondered whether she was going mad; the war, after all, was playing havoc with everyone’s mind. The constant bombings, the threat of bombings, the aftermath of bombings … it was enough to drive even the most rational soul towards lunacy. ‘Miss Simpson,’ I said, ‘I have no idea what it is you’re talking about. There’s someone here who you’ve seen before, is that it? A troublemaker of some sort? I don’t understand.’

She grabbed me, dragging me away from the desk where I had been working, and a moment later we were hidden behind a shelf of books, staring at a man who was sitting at one of the reading tables, his attentions entirely engaged upon a large reference book. There was nothing particularly remarkable about him, other than the fact that he was dressed in an expensive tweed suit,
hence Miss Simpson’s name for him. I suppose he was a rather handsome fellow too, with dark hair swept and lacquered away from his forehead. His tan suggested that he was either not English or had spent a lot of time abroad. Of course, the most unusual thing of all was that a man of his age – he was in his late twenties – was in the library at the British Museum at two o’clock on a Thursday afternoon. He should, after all, have been in the army.

‘Well, what about him?’ I asked, irritated by my young colleague’s enthusiasm. ‘What has he done?’

‘He’s been in every day this week,’ she said, nodding her head ferociously. ‘Haven’t you noticed him?’

‘No,’ I said. ‘I don’t make it a habit to notice young gentlemen who choose to use the library.’

‘I think he must be sweet on me,’ she said, giggling and looking back at him again with an appreciative smile. ‘How do I look, Mr Jachmenev? Is my lippy all right? It’s been months since I even had any and then this morning I found an old tube at the back of my dresser and thought
That’s for luck
, so I put it on to cheer myself up. What about my hair? I have a brush in my bag. What do you think, should I give it a quick run-through?’

I stared at her and felt my sense of irritation growing. It wasn’t that I was immune to the frivolity that some of the younger people engaged in from time to time; after all, in recent years daily life had become both more difficult and frightening for all of us. The last thing I wanted was to deny anyone a moment of fun on the rare occasions when one could be found. But there was a limit to how much jollity I could endure. It was, to put it plainly, annoying.

‘You look fine,’ I said, stepping away from her in an attempt to return to my work. ‘And you’d look even better if you got on with your job and stopped wasting time with such silliness. Don’t you have anything to be getting on with?’

‘Of course I do,’ she said. ‘But come on, Mr Jachmenev, there’s
precious few men in London as it is and just take a look at him, he’s gorgeous! If he’s coming in here every day to see me, well, I’m not going to say no to him, am I? Perhaps he’s just too shy to talk. There’s an easy way around that, of course.’

‘Miss Simpson, please, can’t you—?’