Page 29 of The Gathering Storm (Morland Dynasty #36)

‘You see,’ Basil began slowly, having had time now to think of an approach but not all the details, ‘living with Aunt Molly, in her house, in her spare room – it’s a lot of obligation.’

‘I’m sure she doesn’t mind—’

‘Let the boy finish.’

‘Thanks, Dad. I live in her house and eat her food and work in her business. It’s like— Well, it’s as though I’d never left home. I’m very grateful for all she’s done for me, but I think in a way I’m too comfortable. I need to get out and fend for myself – prove I’m really an adult.’

‘You’re not, until next year,’ Jack said mildly.

Basil turned to him. ‘Yes, Dad, I know, but I want a job that I ’ve found, and lodgings that I pay for from my wages. I want to – what do the Americans say? – hustle for myself.’

‘But, Basil, what job would you do?’ Helen said. ‘Have you found something?’

‘Not yet. I’m looking at advertisements in all the papers,’ Basil said, determining to do just that when he got back to London.

‘What I wanted to consult you about,’ he hurried on before Helen could develop the question, ‘is how best to put it to Aunt Molly. She’s taken such trouble with me, I don’t want to have her think I’m ungrateful. ’

Jack answered, ‘You must put it to her just as you’ve put it to us. Be honest and straightforward. I expect,’ he added, with a faint smile, ‘she’ll be glad to get her spare room back.’

Basil grinned with relief, thinking he’d won over his father. That was more than half the battle – Mum followed Dad’s lead more than she probably realised.

Now Helen spoke, musingly: ‘There are lots of other publishers in London – hundreds, I dare say. You have some experience now, and I’m sure Molly would put in a good word for you.’

Basil didn’t want to stay in publishing. He’d met one or two other publishers at Aunt Molly’s parties, and they were not only ancient stiffs, but formidable chaps, with sharp eyes that would not take readily to wool. They would keep a tighter lead on him than Molly did.

‘But that would be more obligation to Aunty,’ he said earnestly. ‘I want to be really independent, or I’ll never be able to prove to myself that I can do it.’

His father spoke. ‘Well, let’s all have a think about it, and talk some more tomorrow.’

‘Yes, let’s not forget why we’re here,’ Helen said. ‘Oh, did I mention, Michael’s coming tonight? He’s got a weekend pass from Dartmouth.’

‘Oh, good. How’s he doing?’ Basil seized the new topic, and felt the spotlight swing away from him.

The whole Russia experience was like a dream – always a strange dream, and often close to a nightmare.

Not only was the spoken language incomprehensibly different, but the written language looked like hieroglyphics.

Every road sign and shop front and poster – there were lots of posters – confirmed that James was very, very far out of his way.

There was no getting used to it: Russia not only went on being alien, it seemed to get more so with the passing weeks.

It was rather frightening, like being marooned on another planet.

Then there was the vastness of everything: the incomprehensible miles of forest and wide unending skies, the length of time it took to cross it in the antique-looking and somehow brutal trains.

In the towns, the enormous imperial-era edifices and the vast post-war blocks rose to hide the sun and went on and on, lining the roads to the perspective point.

The streets were so wide, and the public squares so absurdly wide, they required a new word for wideness that just didn’t exist.

And always there was a sense of menace, usually low and in the background, like a distant rumble of a storm that might or might not come your way.

Tata had warned him that they would be watched all the time, and they were.

They were accompanied everywhere by a government guide, but even so there were often long delays while papers were checked and queries passed up the line for confirmation.

He could not count how many hours they had spent sitting on hard chairs in bleak offices while a man with cold eyes barked into the telephone, staring at them as he spoke.

The Russian he had learned so painfully from Tata did him little good.

He might manage to convey a simple idea to a Russian, but he never had any idea what they said in reply.

They spoke so quickly, with such a variety of thick accents; and their vocabulary went so far beyond his, which was largely confined to food, hotels and trains.

Then, along with their official guide and driver, there were the local security details that attached themselves at every stop, and gave them an impressive retinue that would have turned heads if the heads hadn’t all been down, concentrating on their work.

And beyond all that he sensed the shadowy presence of a further level of government surveillance.

Sometimes there would be a man lounging in the hotel foyer with a newspaper open before his face in a manner not quite natural.

Sometimes he’d look back and see a solid man in a heavy overcoat and anonymous hat trudging along thirty feet behind them, who met his eyes with a stony look that might or might not mean anything.

But mostly he just had the itch-at-the-back-of-the-scalp feeling that their footsteps were being dogged. He began to feel very tired.

In the long, long waits between activities, and during the long, long train journeys, he thought about Tata.

Their relationship, begun so suddenly and unexpectedly, had ripened daily.

He hurried to her flat as soon as work finished to snatch an hour or so with her before his evening engagements; when he had none, he spent the whole time with her, usually in bed.

Her bed, like an Oriental divan freighted with velvet cushions and silk scarves, exotically scented, became a galleon on which he sailed an ocean of sensory delight: not just the love-making, though they made love a lot, but the talking and the touching and just the being together.

They rarely went out. She shopped hastily on the way home from school or he bought things on the way from work, and they ate in bed, feeding each other delicacies, slivers of cheese, paté spread on biscuits, sweet white grapes, macaroons …

After love they slept at last like exhausted puppies, waking to make love again almost with a groan.

He had to make himself get up early in the morning so that he could go home to wash and change his clothes.

One weekend when Charlie wanted him for a house party and he could not bear to be parted from Tata, he asked if he could bring her with him.

Charlie agreed, and was instantly enchanted with her.

He had seen her at one of Natalie’s parties, but never spoken to her.

Now he and Fern took her into their circle of acquaintance; and Charlie no longer wondered when James arrived heavy-eyed at work in the morning.

Instead, he laughed and said it was a miracle he had managed to get up at all.

‘She’s a lovely girl,’ he said. ‘You hold on tight to her.’

And James had answered, ‘I will,’ and was disturbed by the thought that he might not have, out of carelessness.

He had parted with her to come to Russia without any contract of permanence, and it seemed an extraordinary omission.

His mind was full of her, of the musical sound of her voice and her delicious chuckle, like a delighted child’s; the scent of her hair when he thrust his hands into its living mass; her look when, heavy with love, she lifted her full lips to him.

He remembered the way she moved across the room, as though barely touching the floor; the graceful turn of her head, her long neck, her expressive hands.

Sometimes in her flat she would dance for him, out of her sheer joy at being in love, and she would tell him where each movement and gesture came from.

This port de bras is Cechetti – don’t I do it well?

Look, this is how Karsavina placed her feet before the Swan Lake fouettés .

Pavlova did this with her hands in the Dying Swan .

And sometimes her dancing would be simply Tata, a whirling Czárdás of passion, because she was too happy to keep still.

In his mind she danced, and smiled at him, and reached out hands to him, as the sullen train beat its way across the wide empty landscapes; she came to him soft and scented in the moments before sleep in yet another alien, comfortless hotel room.

Even when he was busy with his job, even when he was anxious and tense with the subdued menace of the place, he was aware of her under the edge of his thoughts, waiting for him.

Meanwhile, he and Charlie and Fern had meetings and receptions and even banquets.

There were smiles, but there never seemed to be any warmth in the eyes to match: at best there was caution, at worst a contained hostility.

It was strange to see the magnificent imperial palaces being used by the very people who had slaughtered the occupants as a punishment for having built them in the first place.

It was sad to see the old revolutionary damage and the modern, careless damage, but also unsettling to see beautiful interiors that had been expensively restored as a theatrical backdrop for the new regime.

The food was dull and unappetising – dark bread, beetroot soup, pickled cucumbers and boiled potatoes could be expected, joined by an anonymous slice of grey meat, or a bony fish.

At the banquets there was a little more variety, and often very good wines, though it was hard to relax and enjoy anything when the hairy wrist of the man serving you was lavishly pocked with flea bites.