Page 18 of The Gathering Storm (Morland Dynasty #36)

CHAPTER FIVE

Over tea one evening, James asked Tata something he had been wondering about, though not with any urgency, for some time.

‘How did you get out?’

‘Out?’ she said, though he saw understanding reach her eyes a moment later. Still, she was cautious. ‘Out of where?’

‘Out of Russia. If you were there during the war, I suppose you were there during the revolution—’

‘We don’t talk of that,’ she said quickly. ‘That terrible time.’

‘No, I understand. I just wondered …’ He was thinking, staring at those photographs on the wall. ‘You were just a child. Your aunt Masha – is she in Paris too?’

‘No, Shems, she is dead.’

‘I’m sorry,’ he said, and prepared to change the subject.

But she went on: ‘There were secret organisations, lots of them, helping people to get away. There was an American colonel, called Boyle, Joe Boyle – he was a great big man. Aunt Masha called him a magician. She said he could do anything . And an English flying officer called Hill, who was his partner, I think. They worked for the Queen of Romania. She was an English princess by birth, cousin to the Tsarina, so of course she cared about them. They helped a lot of people. Aunt Masha and I were got out through Romania. I don’t remember much about it.

I was a child, and it was a bad time. I remember the travelling, always in the dark, always in a hurry.

The pinching hands urging one along, pinch and shake, and the whispering.

One must never make a sound. And the fear.

The fear most of all. Everyone scared me.

The men with guns, who smelt of sweat, demanding papers, always papers.

One time, in a railway carriage, I remember a soldier reading our papers, and I don’t think he could read.

I said, “You’re holding them upside down,” and I felt the shock all around the compartment.

I thought we would be killed. I was just a child, Shems. The memories are all jumbled up.

We got out on a ship from Odessa to Romania.

But Aunt Masha was never well afterwards.

She caught some kind of fever in Odessa – that was a dirty place.

She died of kidney disease after we came to Paris.

I was always glad that at least she died here, in freedom. ’

‘I’m so sorry,’ James said. ‘That must have been terrible for you.’

She gave a French little shrug and was silent for a moment, thinking. ‘It is not surprising perhaps that there is so much taking of drugs.’

‘Is there?’ James queried.

‘Natalie’s circle – they all take cocaine.

There’s a lot of it at her parties. But even Before, in the top circle, they all used it.

The Tsar took it for colds, and the Tsarina for rheumatism, but also I think for pleasure.

I remember Aunt Masha talking about it once with Sister Chebodarev.

She said the Tsar had told her it made him feel “absolutely marvellous”. ’

‘But you don’t—?’

‘No, Shems. I’ve seen what it does to them. Don’t you try it, even if someone offers.’

‘I won’t. I believe it’s illegal in England.’

She shrugged. ‘Well, it wasn’t in Russia. And no-one thought anything of it, any more than drinking brandy. Now we must get back to work. You have made me think of uncomfortable things.’

‘“For old, unhappy, far-off things, and battles long ago,”’ he quoted, from some buried childhood rote-learning.

‘Wordsworth,’ she said unexpectedly. ‘Yes, we read English poetry. Why are you surprised? “His little, nameless, unremembered acts of kindness” – that was Wordsworth as well. And my kindness to you will be to make you work harder. Idleness is a sin, Shems, you should remember that.’

‘You are a harsh teacher,’ he said, grinning. ‘I bet your little children at school are terrified of you.’

‘Do I terrify you?’

‘I’m shaking to the core,’ he assured her.

‘You are a liar,’ she laughed, ‘but I like you. Come, we must look at verbs. You are lucky, there are only four irregular verbs in Russian, unlike in English where it seems all verbs are irregular.’

‘Ah, but with English, one may speak it very badly and still be understood. That is its great advantage. Unlike French, where the slightest mistake means they’ll look at you with stony incomprehension. I never knew people so very good at not understanding.’

‘Are we going to be embarrassed tonight?’ Emma asked, as she and Kit walked down the marble staircase, dressed for dinner. The dogs rushed past them in a flood, skidding on the corners with wildly flailing paws.

‘No more than one usually is by the Simpsons playing host to the King at Bryanston Court. Personally, I find it amusing when Simpson suggests a cocktail and HM heads straight for the drinks trolley and does the mixing, as if he’s the host.’

‘You have an odd sense of humour,’ Emma said. ‘I can’t help feeling sorry for Ernest. It’s his house, after all. But why a black -tie dinner? It makes it so awkward to know what to wear.’

‘You always look exactly right, darling, whatever you wear,’ said Kit.

Emma was amused. ‘That is the worst thing you can say to a female. It suggests you either don’t care what she wears, or simply don’t notice.’

‘What I meant to say was that your choice this evening is perfect.’

Emma was wearing a bias-cut silk Vionnet gown in broad black-and-white diagonal stripes, calf-length with a little flare at the hem.

She wore modest diamond earrings and two small diamond clips in her dark hair.

‘But the King being there makes it a sort of royal occasion, and one doesn’t want to look underdressed,’ she fretted.

‘You know my view. Better under than over.’

‘I suppose Wally will be hung about with jewels like a Christmas tree.’

‘Now, darling, don’t be unkind. You are so very beautiful, you don’t understand that lesser women have to decorate themselves more to compete with you.’

‘She does dress very well, and I must say her style is good. She got shoals of new dresses in Paris. And David gives her a jewel every time she tells him off for something. She got sapphire clips after scolding him for leaving a wine-glass ring on some official paper.’

They reached the hall, where the servants were waiting with their outdoor clothes, and at the sight the dogs came to a halt and sat down on their tails and looked mournful.

Kit took Emma’s fur from Spencer and hung it round her shoulders.

‘Alec Hardinge is in despair about the red boxes,’ he said.

‘HM reads them in the drawing-room or wherever he happens to be, and leaves confidential papers lying about where anyone could read them.’

‘“Anyone”, in this case, being Wally, I suppose,’ Emma said. ‘Alec hates her so much, he’s hardly rational about it. He must know HM shows her everything anyway – otherwise how could she advise him?’

Kit took his scarf and gloves from Ponsford and they walked towards the door. ‘I rather think that begs the question,’ he said. ‘She shouldn’t be advising him. He has an entire government for that.’

‘Ah, but they don’t tell him what he wants to hear,’ said Emma, passing before him down the steps into Manchester Square.

It was a clear, starry night, and sharply cold.

Each streetlamp wore a halo of mist. They hurried into the waiting car, and were glad to have the rug tucked around their legs.

As Osmond closed the door, Kit sought her hand under the rug and held it.

It was one of his fond gestures that made her feel very fortunate in her marriage.

‘What is the situation between the Simpsons, anyway?’ Emma asked him, when they were moving. ‘I thought Ernest was going to arrange for a divorce, but I haven’t heard anything more. Has he changed his mind?’

‘Oh, I have news on that front. I met Wally in Selfridge’s this afternoon and took her for a cocktail—’

‘What were you doing in Selfridges?’

‘Looking at some Van Cleef cufflinks. Please concentrate on the important point.’

‘Did you buy them?’

‘The cufflinks? No. So I took Wally for a cocktail—’

‘Why didn’t you tell me you’d seen her?’

‘You only got home just in time to dress. I’m telling you now . May I continue?’

‘About the divorce?’

‘Yes. It’s in abeyance at the moment. HM is consulting a new lawyer, one Walter Monckton, who’s supposed to be as clever as a barrel of monkeys, and he’s suggested a way out – because, you know, as it stands, the King can’t marry a divorcée.’

‘Wally told you all this? She certainly confides in you more than in me.’

‘Of course she does. Everyone does. I’m the sort of person people love telling things.’

‘That’s true. So what’s the new idea?’

‘Monckton’s suggested instead of a divorce Wally seeks an annulment.’

Emma considered. ‘But even if there were some legal problem with her marriage to Ernest, she would still be a divorcée from her first marriage.’

‘An annulment of both marriages.’

‘That sounds a little improbable. Legal hitches in both cases?’

‘No. Non-consummation,’ said Kit, watching her face for her reaction. He was enjoying himself.

‘Really? She told you all this?’

‘After the second martini she let down her hair. She told me she had never had sexual relations with either of her husbands. She said she would never allow a man to touch her below the Mason-Dixon line.’

Emma frowned. ‘The—’

‘It’s the line that divides the American North from the American South.’

‘I know what it is. I just can’t believe she used an expression like that to you.’

He shrugged. ‘I’m exactly the chum she wants: a man – because she prefers men to women – but one who’s never going to want to sleep with her. In fact, she likes me so much, I’m almost an honorary American.’

‘She can’t be serious about this,’ said Emma, getting back to the point. ‘The King won’t go along with it, surely. Think of the speculation it would unleash. About him as well as her.’