The Kirilov Star (7 page)

This hope died, or rather was killed outright, when Sir Edward received a letter from Baron Simenov.

‘They are dead,’ he told Margaret as he read it over breakfast after Lydia had gone off with Claudia to get ready for school.

Margaret looked up sharply. ‘Who are dead?’

‘The Kirilovs.’ He finished reading. ‘This is a letter from Baron Simenov. He is back in London. The cause of the White Army is lost.’

‘What did he say about the Kirilovs?’

‘The count and his wife were caught and questioned on the way through Red-held territory, and in the course of a search, some precious gems were found concealed on their persons. It is punishable by death to export jewels from the country and they paid that price. The story was told to the baron by Ivan Ivanovich, the servant who had taken Lydia to Simferopol. He returned to Kirilhor. It was the talk of the village apparently.’

‘How barbaric! What are you going to say to Lydia?’

‘I don’t know. She has been so much better lately.’

‘You cannot allow her to go on hoping if you are sure there is no hope.’

‘No, you are right. She must be told.’

‘She may not believe you. She might think you are trying to keep her from them.’

‘So, what do you suggest?’

‘Perhaps you could invite Baron Simenov and his wife to stay with us for a few days. He could tell her.’

‘That would be a cowardly thing to do, Margaret,’ he said. ‘I will tell her myself, but not about the execution. An accident perhaps. And I will ask the Simenovs to visit. Pyotr might be able to tell me more than he has written in the letter.’

So the baron and baroness and young Alexei came to stay at Upstone Hall for a weekend and Lydia was allowed to join them.

It was two days since Sir Edward had told her that her papa and mama had died on their way to meet her and her brother in Simferopol. An accident, he had said, taking her on his lap to comfort her. ‘They were happy because they were on their way to join you and your brother. Their horse bolted and the carriage turned over. It all happened very suddenly, but at least you know they did not abandon you. They would not want you to be sad for them.’ She had hardly seemed aware of what he was saying, had stared straight ahead at a picture of a wood carpeted in bluebells on her bedroom wall, but it was nothing but a blur of blue and green. It was like losing Andrei and Tonya all over again. Why did she feel betrayed, as if they had all deliberately left her?

But the Simenovs were Russian, they were her link with her past, if only a tenuous one, and though she was shy with them at first, hearing them speak Russian and answering them in the same tongue was lovely. For the first time since coming to England she really came alive, smiling and chattering.

Alexei seemed to have shot up since she had last seen him on the fateful train journey to Yalta. He was dressed in a Norfolk jacket and long trousers and he had a stiff white collar on his shirt. His brown hair was slicked back from a centre parting and his dark intelligent eyes looked at her with something akin to pity, but she did not recognise it as such. ‘I am learning Russian history and European languages,’ he told Sir Edward and Lady Stoneleigh in confident English. ‘Papa says it will be useful in years to
come. When the Bolshevik regime collapses, I mean to go back to Russia.’

‘Do you think it will collapse?’ Sir Edward asked, humouring the boy.

‘Oh, it is bound to. The Russian people will not tolerate it when they find it is not the paradise they have been led to believe.’

Edward smiled; the boy was obviously repeating something he had overheard. ‘You think they have been misled?’

‘Oh, without a doubt. It was a way to get them out of the war. They will come to their senses.’

‘Let us hope so,’ Lady Stoneleigh said. The baron’s story of what he had learnt about the Kirilovs had finally convinced her that Edward had been telling the truth all along and she berated herself for ever doubting him. She felt happier than she had for months. ‘The Communists are at the root of all the strikes we have been having. The thought of them taking over this country is terrifying.’

‘It won’t happen in England,’ her husband told her. ‘The English people are not so easily led by the nose.’

‘Neither are the Russians,’ Baron Simenov put in.

Lydia looked from one to the other in bewilderment. She had hardly understood a word, not because her vocabulary was poor, though that was part of it, but because what they were discussing was way above her head. ‘Would you like to go for a walk?’ she asked Alexei in Russian.

Alexei was not keen to be a baby-minder, but the look of appeal he gave his father was ignored.

‘Yes, show the young man round,’ Edward told Lydia, smiling at them both.

They slipped out of the house by the kitchen door,
after begging some stale crusts from the kitchen maid, and walked down to the lake. The ducks paddled towards them, expecting the titbits Lydia threw to them.

‘This is a grand place,’ Alexei said, watching the ducks squabbling over the bread. ‘Do you like living here?’

‘Yes, but I miss Papa and Mama and Andrei and Tonya.’ Speaking their names made her gulp back tears.

‘I am sorry about what happened to them,’ he said, remembering what his father had told him when he asked him to be kind to the little girl. ‘But try not to be sad.’

‘I cannot help it.’

‘No, I suppose not. But you are a great deal better off than a lot of Russian émigrés. They are finding life in England hard, not speaking English and needing to work. You have a good home here. Be thankful.’

That was something Claudia said to her every day but she wasn’t quite sure what it meant. ‘I wanted to see them again so much. Now I can’t.’

‘I understand. I would feel the same if I lost my parents.’

‘Where do you live?’

‘With my mother’s cousins in Berkshire, but Papa is looking for a home for us in England. I go to an English boarding school.’

‘Do you like it?’

‘Oh, yes. It’s great fun.’

‘I don’t like school. They laugh at me.’

‘I’m sorry about that,’ he said. ‘But you must hold your head up and pretend you do not care. You are a little countess, remember that.’

‘I will try.’

‘You have to learn, you know, nothing is achieved
without learning. When I have finished my education, I intend to go back to Russia.’

‘But Sir Edward said the bad men were everywhere.’

‘You mean the Bolsheviks. They have to be overthrown.’

‘What are Bolsheviks?’

‘Communists. Reds. They believe everyone is equal and there should not be any tsar or counts or barons or anything like that. And no one must be rich or own property. They call each other “comrade” and won’t have anyone addressed as “Excellency”. They killed the tsar and all his family. That was why anyone with a title had to leave. Didn’t you know that?’

‘No.’ She really did not understand but it was nice hearing him speak in Russian.

‘Would you like to go back, one day, when the Reds are defeated?’ he asked.

‘Perhaps,’ she said with a sigh, though if the baron was right, there was no one there to go back to. He had taken her on one side soon after they arrived and gently reiterated what Sir Edward had said. ‘Sir Edward is a good man,’ he had said. ‘And I know he loves you and will look after you.’ She loved Sir Edward without reservation and knew she must try and settle down in England now. If what they said was true, her old home was no more, Russia had changed, nothing would ever be the same, not the village or the
dacha
or the servants. Without Mama and Papa and Andrei, what was the point of going back? But it made her very sad.

‘We have to grow up first,’ Alexei said.

The crusts were all gone and the ducks, realising there were no more to be had, were swimming away. He took her hand and led her back to the house.

Growing up was sometimes hard, Lydia decided, as the years passed and she moved on from infant school to Upstone High School for Girls. Although she was an apt pupil and did well at her lessons, she always felt a little apart from her fellow pupils and students. It wasn’t that she spoke with a Russian accent – that was soon eradicated – nor that she was unpopular, because she had many friends, though some of that might have been down to her privileged upbringing. No, it was her continuing feeling that she was Russian.

Finding himself having to field questions about her origins more and more often as she grew older and went about more, and thinking her statelessness might be a barrier in later life, Sir Edward decided to adopt her formerly and changed her name from Lydia Kirillova to Lydia Stoneleigh. He told her that he and Margaret were to be her new mama and papa. It was then he had confessed to bending the truth about her parents’ deaths. ‘They did not die in an accident,’ he said, taking her hand and speaking softly. ‘They were executed by the Bolsheviks. I didn’t tell you before because you were upset enough about losing them without the added distress of the manner of their death. And I was not at all sure you would understand at that age. But you are entitled to know the truth. I hope you can forgive me.’

She was shocked and angry at first, not so much about her parents’ death, which she had come to accept, but because he had taken away her birthright, her very Russian-ness, the person she believed herself to be, but what he had done was done out of love. She kissed his cheek. ‘Of course, I forgive you.’

‘I have been given this for you,’ he said, handing her an old sepia photograph of a very aristocratic-looking lady in a long evening dress. She was wearing a heavy necklace
and long earrings, and on her head a tiara, on the front of which sparkled the Kirilov Star. ‘I believe the lady is your grandmother, the dowager Countess Kirillova.’

Lydia studied it carefully. She did not remember the lady, but she did remember the jewel. ‘May I keep it?’ she asked.

‘Of course. It is yours. Would you like me to have it framed, then you can keep it in your bedroom?’

‘Yes, please.’ It was something tangible from her old life, something she could look at and touch to remind her of her roots.

Gradually Margaret’s attitude towards the little waif changed, possibly because she knew she could never have a child of her own, and they became close. They went horse riding together and shopping for clothes. Margaret loved buying clothes and embraced all the latest fashions, and she loved dressing Lydia. They talked about her life at school, especially after she left the village school and went to the high school. They discussed what she would like to do when she grew up. The world, so Sir Edward said, was changing and women were no longer restricted in what they could do. She could be a doctor, a lawyer, a teacher, even stand for Parliament, if she so chose. Of course, she need not do anything; she could have a Season, be presented at court and wait for the right man to come along.

But she was still only fourteen and marriage was a long way from her mind. She was intent on going to college and studying the Russian language and Russian history. She needed to understand what had happened to her.

‘I want to talk to you about this,’ her tutor said, tapping the essay Lydia had been asked to write about the causes of the Russian Revolution and why the Kerensky Government failed to halt the rise of the Bolsheviks in 1917, which led to the execution of the Romanovs and the Civil War. Lydia had spent an inordinate amount of time on it, drawing from stories she had heard from Sir Edward and Alexei, who frequently visited Upstone Hall, and her own very clouded memories of Kirilhor and the privations her family suffered there. Sir Edward’s accounts were factual, couched in the words of a diplomat, but Alexei’s were fiery and one-sided, which was hardly surprising since his father had returned to Russia once too often and been arrested and executed for spying after Stalin came to power in 1927. His mother had become frail because of it. ‘We got out safely in 1920, why did he have to keep going back?’ she had lamented on a visit to Upstone Hall.

The tutor was in his mid-thirties, a handsome man, a
good teacher. ‘This is very interesting,’ he said. ‘How did you come to be so passionate about it? Have you ever been to Russia?’

‘I was born there. My name was Lydia Mikhailovna Kirillova then. My father was Count Mikhail Kirilov. He and my mother were executed by the Bolsheviks. I have every reason to be passionate.’

‘I’m sorry, I didn’t know that. Is that why you decided to read Russian history?’

‘Yes. I want to understand how it could have happened.’

‘You will not understand if you only study one side of the argument. There is a lot to be said for Communism, you know.’

‘I can’t think what it can be. They take people’s belongings without compensation and murder for no reason except fear of losing control. If they are so sure they are right, why do they have to execute people? My parents never did anyone any harm. In fact, they did a lot of good, employing people who would otherwise be out of work, making sure they were fed and housed and educating the children. When their assets were taken from them, they could no longer do that.’

‘A lot of that is Western propaganda, you know. The freeing of the serfs did not change much; the rich still exploited the poor, which is neither fair nor just. The peasant is as much of a human being as the tsar and deserves better than that. Now the Communist state employs and feeds everyone.’ He held up his hand to stop her interrupting. ‘Oh, I know it is not the Utopia the purists want and there is a lot of putting right of old wrongs before that can happen, but it will come, you’ll see.’

‘And you think murder by the State is justified?’ It was not only her parents’ death in 1920 she was thinking of, but the arrests, trials and executions which had been taking place in Russia since Stalin came to power.

‘In some cases, yes. We execute murderers and traitors in this country, don’t we?’

‘It’s not the same. We do not kill innocent people.’

‘In an ideal world no one would, but with so much evil to sweep away, there is bound to be a degree of injustice. It cannot be helped.’

She was becoming increasingly angry. ‘My brother and nurse were killed by soldiers in front of my eyes. You call that sweeping away evil? It was horrible and senseless and I shall never forget it.’

‘I am sorry for that, but do you know for sure who perpetrated the deed? They might have been bandits, there were a lot of those about. The Red Army was being blamed for everything, whether guilty or not. How much do you actually remember?’

‘Very little, I was too shocked.’

‘So you relied on what other people told you.’

‘But I saw them die. Andrei fell across me, his blood was all over me.’ She shuddered at the memory. ‘It doesn’t matter who did it.’

‘If you want to separate what is true from what is false, you need to study both sides,’ he said. ‘I advise you to set aside your prejudice and be more even-handed, so that you can offer a reasoned and balanced treatise. You have exams coming up and I should not like you to fail.’

Lydia took the sheaf of papers and left the room, seething. It seemed she was not to have an opinion of her own. For two pins she would abandon the whole course.
After all, as a woman she was not going to be given a degree, even though her studies were on a par with the men’s. They wouldn’t have women in their colleges, and Girton had been built so far out of town, the ladies felt cut off from university life. A certificate to say she had done the study and passed the exams was all she could hope for. But she knew Papa would be disappointed if she walked out, so she had better grit her teeth and rewrite the essay. The result was a cold, dispassionate dissertation which made her feel a coward.

Lydia went home to Upstone Hall for the traditional Christmas, though it was both the same and somehow different. There was still much hardship after the severe depression earlier in the decade and the village did not seem to be the happy place it had once been. Or was it that now she was grown up, she saw things the child had missed? On the surface Sir Edward appeared to be his usual urbane self and Alexei, who joined them with his mother as usual, was charming and teasing – a kind of big brother, to whom she found it easy to confide – but underneath there seemed to be a heaviness about their conversation. The situation in Russia was worrying, though Lydia did not think it was that. It was as if Alexei had something on his mind he could not speak about, which had never happened before and puzzled her. When she asked him what was wrong he laughed and said, ‘Nothing. What could possibly be wrong, here at Upstone?’

In early January, in wintry weather, she went back to college where the discussion centred around the abdication, which seemed to have stunned everyone. Opinion was divided. There were those who could not understand the king falling for a twice-divorced American fortune-hunter,
who had threatened the very fabric of British life and tradition, and there were those of a romantic bent who applauded his decision to put love before duty. At least, Lydia thought with wry humour, no one was going to execute him as they had his kinsman, the tsar.

The coronation in May of George VI cheered everyone up. The new king did not have the charisma of his older brother but he had a strong sense of duty and a lovely family. Undeterred by the cold damp weather, crowds packed twenty-deep behind barriers in Trafalgar Square, to watch the glittering State Coach pass in procession. Many more listened to the broadcast on the wireless, an innovation which was a great success. A few who had television sets watched in their own homes, though the cameras were not allowed into the Abbey. Lydia, who had completed her final examinations, went up to London with some college friends to join the crowds. Her Russian roots were not forgotten, but she felt as British as anyone, cheering and waving a little Union Jack.

The following month she learnt that her hard work had paid off and she had been awarded what would have been considered a good degree if she had been a man, and she went home to Upstone with her certificate and no idea what she was going to do next.

Edward met her at Upstone station with the Bentley. He hugged her and then held her at arm’s length. She was wearing a straight mid-calf-length skirt in deep blue, a silk blouse with ruffles down the front and two-tone shoes. On her chestnut-brown hair was a small pillbox hat set at an angle. It had a brooch pinned to the front of it. ‘You look splendid,’ he said. ‘All grown-up. Not my little girl anymore.’

‘I’ll always be your little girl,’ she said, as they walked out of the station arm in arm, with a porter bringing up the rear with her luggage on a trolley.

‘Your mama has gone to one of her charity meetings but she will be back for tea,’ he said, directing the stowing of the cases, the tennis racket and the box of books in the boot and on the back seat. Then he held the door open for her to settle in the passenger seat before walking round to get behind the wheel. He enjoyed driving and dispensed with the services of a chauffeur except when on official business. He was doing less and less of that now and was planning to retire in a year or two.

‘What are you going to do with yourself now?’ he asked as they pulled out of the station yard. ‘Do you still want to be a translator? I could probably find you a niche somewhere.’

‘I’ve been thinking about it, but I can’t make up my mind.’

‘There’s plenty of time. A holiday first and your
twenty-first
birthday. Mama is planning a ball for you. A sort of come-out. That will be fun, don’t you think?’

No one knew when her birthday actually was and so they had always celebrated it on the sixth of June. ‘It’s a lovely time of year for a birthday,’ Margaret had said when she and Edward discussed it after she had been with them a few months and Margaret had come to accept her as part of the family. ‘Long warm days when we can use the garden or go for a picnic.’

‘It will be a lot of extra expense for you and Mama,’ Lydia said, not really sure she wanted it. The country was only just coming out of the depression which had seen thousands out of work. Many still were. Poverty was everywhere and
the twin evils, as she saw it, of Communism and Fascism were rife. And yet, she, who had seen horrors most British people could not even imagine, was cocooned from it by money and privilege. It made her feel guilty.

‘But you are worth it, sweetheart. And I know Mama is really looking forward to it. She has already drawn up a guest list and put the preparations in hand.’

She chuckled. ‘I must not disappoint Mama, must I?’

They both knew that Margaret was thoroughly spoilt and liked to have her own way, but as both loved her, they went along with whatever she wanted. It was a long time since she had objected to Lydia’s presence in the house and she would probably have denied it if someone had reminded her.

The ball was the talking point of the village. Margaret was immersed in making the arrangements, hurrying about with lists. An orchestra was booked and the two largest reception rooms opened out for a ballroom and the carpets taken up. Since the war, they had had to manage with fewer servants, so temporary staff were called in to polish the floor, prepare the bedrooms for those guests who would be staying overnight, and to help with the catering. ‘Mama, you will wear yourself to a frazzle,’ Lydia said the day before the ball when everyone seemed to be at odds and the servants were falling over each others’ feet. ‘Do take a break. Let’s go for a ride and blow the cobwebs away.’

Riding was Margaret’s passion and the only thing likely to tear her away from the preparations. Lydia enjoyed it too and whenever she came home from Cambridge they would spend hours on horseback, roaming the Norfolk countryside she had come to love. It lacked the spectacular views of the Pennines, the Lakes and Scotland, but it had
the Broads and the Fens, gently rolling countryside and wide, glorious skies. ‘I loved Cambridge, but it is good to be home,’ Lydia said, breathing deeply as they walked their horses towards the common.

‘You really think of Upstone Hall as home now?’ Margaret queried.

‘Of course. I have done for a long time. Why did you ask?’

‘I just wondered. When you first came to us you talked of nothing else but going home to Russia and I wondered if, now you are growing up, you might have started thinking about it again, especially as you have been studying it.’

‘Sometimes I think about it, but it doesn’t seem real anymore. It’s like a dream. One day I might like to go on a visit, but that’s a long way into the future.’

‘It would not be safe. Papa is worried about what’s happening in Germany too. He thinks Hitler is as bad as Stalin and there could be a war in Europe.’

‘Oh, they talked a lot about it at Cambridge, especially among the men, who seemed to think it would be a great adventure. Do they never learn? War tears families apart.’ She shuddered as a sudden glimpse of a droshky and bloodstained bodies clouded her vision. ‘Let’s not talk about it.’ They had reached the edge of the common and she spurred her horse into a gallop. ‘Come on, I’ll race you to the oak tree.’

Margaret followed and the ugly memory was dissipated and they trotted back home refreshed and ready to tackle whatever problems cropped up.

On the day of the ball, a florist arrived in the morning to arrange the flowers, and after the last-minute instructions
and a look round to see nothing had been forgotten, Margaret went to lie down before getting ready. Lydia went to her room too, but instead of lying down she sat at her window looking out on the park that surrounded the house. Every inch of it was known and loved. Here she was, at twenty-one, loved, cosseted and privileged. Others had not been so lucky. So why did she sometimes feel unsettled, as if there was something missing, something she ought to be searching for? Not her parents; they were long gone. Not Andrei and Tonya, whose deaths still haunted her dreams.

Was she twenty-one? The only evidence they had for that was her own declaration that she was four when she met Sir Edward in Yalta. How had she known that? Had she just turned four or was she nearer five? It felt strange not knowing when her birthday was. She supposed somewhere in Russia there was a record of it. Or had all the records been destroyed? She gave up musing and left her seat to go and run a bath. It was time to start getting ready.

Claudia, who had stayed on making herself useful in a dozen different ways for no other reason than she had nowhere else to go and Edward would not dismiss her, helped her dress. The gown, which had cost Edward a fortune, was of heavy cream silk embroidered with seed pearls. Without a distinguishable waist, it was cleverly cut to emphasise the slimness of her figure. Its back was very low and had a train which she could loop up on a catch at her wrist for dancing. Claudia helped her with her hair which was swept up in a chignon and fastened with two glittering combs, a present from Mama. She put a pearl necklace about her throat, slipped into her shoes and went down to the small parlour where Edward and Margaret waited.

Margaret was in a soft dove-grey crêpe dress and Edward in immaculate tie and tails. She entered the room demurely, smiling. ‘Will I do?’