‘Papa! You’re home! I knew it was you!’ she cried in French. ‘When it got late, Nyanka said you wouldn’t be home until the morning, but I made myself stay awake. I knew you’d come.’
Reaching the foot of the stairs, the child launched herself at her father, and the Count, laughing, caught her up and lodged her firmly on one hip, delivering himself of at least as many hearty kisses as he received, and addressed his daughter with a mixture of French and Russian endearments. Anne was delighted to see how unaffectedly they greeted each other. In England, amongst people of rank, even fond parents preserved formality with their children, and if, unthinkably, such a display of affection had been offered, they would have choked it off with stern rebukes about being out of bed without permission. But the Count put his daughter down only for the purpose of introducing her to Anne.
‘Now, Lolya, your best curtsey for mademoiselle, for I want you to make a good impression on her,’ he said in French, easing the bare toes down to the ground. ‘Miss Peters, may I present to you the Countess Yelena Nikolayevna Kirova?’
‘Enchantée, mademoiselle,’ the child said, making a deep curtsey with pointed foot and bent arm, in the manner of a ballet-dancer, and fluttering her eyelids like a coquette. Her parents laughed, and she jumped up, pleased, and cried, ‘Didn’t I do it well? Did you like it, mademoiselle? That is how La Karsevina does it at the ballet, when they throw her roses at the end of the performance. Mama took me last winter when we were in Petersburg, didn’t you, Mamochka? Do you like the ballet, mademoiselle?’
‘I’m afraid I’ve never seen it,’ Anne replied in French, ‘but I think I should like it very much.’
The child looked as though it were very strange for her not to have seen the ballet, and then said, ‘I mean to be a dancer when I grow up. And my cousin Kira is going to be an opera singer. We shall travel all over the world together, and have kings for our admirers.’
The Count laughed, and scooped her up onto his hip again. ‘So this is what happens when I go away for just a few months! When I last saw you, you said you were going to stay with me for ever and ever, and never get married, because you loved me best.’
‘But you were away so long,’ she objected, looking seriously into her father’s face, which was now on a level with hers. There was little resemblance between them, Anne thought, except for the rather long chin. The child was very dark, with black hair and eyes, and honey-brown skin, and her face had all the charm of irregularity, and of its innocent and animated expression. Over her father’s shoulder, she caught sight of Anne again, and with a little, considering frown, she whispered quite audibly into her father’s ear, ‘Papa, what must I call her? Is it Mademoiselle de Pierre?’
‘That is what it comes to, in French,’ her father agreed, laughing.
‘I think she is prettier than Fräulein Hoffnung,’ was the next penetrating comment, to the Countess’s evident embarrassment.
‘Please, come into the drawing-room, mademoiselle,’ she said quickly, and led her through the far door into a large, octagonal room.
‘Oh, this is lovely,’ Anne exclaimed involuntarily. The unusual shape was determined, she guessed, by the three-sided bay window, now covered by drapes of blue silk damask, directly opposite the door where she was standing. The floor was of polished parquet, the centre of which was covered by a huge Savonnerie rug in shades of blue and rose against a white background. The walls were dark blue, with an elaborate frieze of white and gold around the cornice, and the ceiling was again decorated with delicate rococo designs in plaster. The walls were hung with an enormous number of paintings, mostly portraits, jostling each other for space in a friendly way, and there were several large, comfortable sofas, a handsome pianoforte near the window, and in the centre of the room, a wide circular table, on which stood a samovar emitting wisps of steam, and a number of supper dishes. The sight was most welcome to Anne, who was beginning to feel almost faint from hunger.
‘It is a pretty room, isn’t it?’ the Countess said, looking round with a pleased smile. ‘You will like it even more by daylight – the colours show up much better. But now, I am sure you must be tired and hungry. Let me take your pelisse and hat – there, now. Come and sit here and be comfortable, and Lolya and I shall wait on you. No, I insist!’
In the most natural, unaffected way, the Countess took off Anne’s hat with her own hands, and placed Anne on the most comfortable of the sofas, and went over to the table to make the tea. Russian tea was something that Anne had already come across on her journey from Grodno, and she had gathered that it was something of an institution in Russian society. It was drunk from glasses, instead of cups, which were arranged on the table with a measure of the thick, amber liquid already in them. Boiling water was then added from the samovar, and sugar stirred in, although at some of the inns, instead of powdered sugar being added to the tea, she had been given a piece of sugar snipped off the loaf to chew while she drank, which was the peasant way.
The child Lolya, despite her nightgown, curl papers and bare feet, was behaving in a completely drawing-room manner, and brought tea to Anne and then to her father as though to the manner born. Anne sipped gratefully at the hot liquid, while Lolya placed a little table with a marquetry top just before her, and the Countess brought her a plate of cold chicken, cake, nuts and dried figs. Anne tasted the chicken first. It had been roasted with honey and herbs, and was the most delicious chicken she had ever tasted; and she said so.
‘Kerim roasted it specially, when he knew you were coming,’ the Countess said, with a laughing glance at her husband. ‘He believes that the cooks in London are the best in the world, so whenever we have guests who have been to England, he insists on doing something special for them. You can imagine how excited he was at the thought of a real Englishwoman coming to stay!’
‘I won him from Prince Naryshkin in a wager, years ago when we were both young and foolish,’ the Count added. ‘The next day the Prince offered me fifteen hundred roubles to have him back, but I wouldn’t take it. I’d already tasted some of Kerim’s cooking, you see. He learned his art from a Frenchman in Moscow, which makes it all the more odd that he believes the culinary art is only understood in London.’
‘I believe London society may know all there is to know about eating fine food,’ Anne offered, and they laughed.
‘You must try one of the cakes, Miss Peters,’ the Count said later. ‘They are curd-cakes, a speciality of the Caucasus, where Irina comes from. She had to teach Kerim how to make them – didn’t you, Irushka? I think he begins to make them almost as well as you.’
Anne tried one and found it delicious: a soft brown crust around the outside, and moist, sweet curds and fat Turkish raisins inside. Lolya, who was sitting in the corner of her father’s sofa with her legs tucked up under her, was given one and ate it with the passionate slowness of one who knew from experience she would not be offered another. By the time the last crumb had gone, her eyes were heavy, and she made little protest at being sent off to bed again. Looking at her made Anne feel sleepy too, and she was glad when the Countess, with quick sympathy, suggested that Anne must want to go to her room, and offered to show her there at once.