Her self-esteem suffered more that evening, however, through Yelena’s behaviour. She had hoped that she was beginning to work some good on her pupil, but Yelena grew more and more excited as the evening wore on: she interrupted the conversation, swung on the furniture, knocked things over, and snatched rudely at every dish that appeared. Anne’s remonstrances served only to provoke her to worse behaviour, and when even old Madame Tchaikovskova’s patience was fractured by Yelena’s knocking over her glass of wine for the second time, Anne could restrain herself no longer, and swept Yelena out of the room before she had time to resist.
Yelena bellowed, fought, and bit all the way up the stairs, and it took both Anne and Nyanka to detach her from the door-frame of the nursery, where she clung with both hands, howling with rage. Once she was inside, Nyanka gripped her charge round the waist with an arm like a bolster, summoned Tanya’s assistance, and dismissed Anne with a jerk of the head. Seeing the red glare that Yelena was directing towards her, Anne thought the child would probably calm down more quickly if she went away and took her leave with haste and relief.
The rest of the evening in the drawing-room passed quietly, and Anne had put the incident from her mind by the time she went up to bed. In her chamber she washed her face, cleaned her teeth, took off her clothes and put on her nightgown, all by the faint but sufficient light of the white night outside. She climbed into bed, and jumped out again much more quickly than she got in: her bed was wet. Lighting her candle, she held it close, and saw that a large patch in the centre was thoroughly soaked, as though water had been poured over it. In a moment of complete bewilderment, she stared up at the ceiling, and then down at the floor; and then noticed a trail of spots of water which, though they had dried out already on this warm night, had left whitish marks on the waxed floor.
Grimly, she put on her wrapper and, candle in hand, followed the trail out of the door and down the passage, already guessing what had happened – knowing it would lead to the nursery and to Yelena’s wash-stand pitcher, now standing empty. The nursery rumbled gently to Nyanka’s snoring. Anne padded softly over to Yelena’s bed and looked at the face against the pillows grimly sleeping, the eyelashes fluttering in their determination not to be tricked into looking.
‘Enough,’ she said grimly. ‘Get up, Yelena Nikolayevna. You are coming with me. Get up, up, up!’ And she whipped the covers off with one hand. Yelena, exposed to the night air, jerked together like a hedgehog rolling up, opened her eyes and looked at Anne with a mixture of apprehension and defiance. ‘Up,’ said Anne again, taking hold of her wrist and tugging her upright.
‘What is it? What’s the matter?’ came Tanya’s sleepy voice from the other side of the room. Anne turned, holding the candle near her face so that she could be seen.
‘It’s nothing,’ she said soothingly. ‘Go back to sleep.’ Tanya sat up, but showed no inclination to interfere, only watched, puzzled, as Anne thrust Yelena’s wrapper at her and then urged and prodded her out of the room. ‘Go to sleep, Tanya,’ Anne said as she passed.
Out in the corridor, Yelena looked up at her darkly. ‘I’m supposed to be in bed,’ she said. ‘I’m supposed to sleep. It’s very bad for me to be woken up.’
‘Oh, but you weren’t asleep,’ Anne said pleasantly, ‘and you and I have a little job to do.’
‘I’ll tell Papa,’ she offered, rather feebly.
‘Good,’ Anne said. ‘I’ll tell him too, in the morning.’
‘It was only a joke,’ she said now, subdued by Anne’s immovability, and Anne took her hand and led her along towards the backstairs, where the housemaids’ cupboard was.
‘Quite,’ said Anne. ‘Now you are going to help me make the bed again, and then we’ll decide what to do with you. I might have a joke or two I want to play on you.’
Yelena offered no further protest or justification, but went meekly through the process of finding fresh bedclothes, carrying them back to Anne’s room, stripping the bed, and making it up anew. The mattress was rather damp in the middle, even when Yelena had sopped it with towels, so they folded several more dry towels over the patch before putting on the sheet.
‘Tomorrow it will have to be dried out properly,’ Anne said, ‘but for tonight it will have to do. I just hope I don’t get rheumatism.’
Yelena looked up at her under her brows. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said abruptly. Anne’s heart contracted with relief at the words, the first sign of yielding in her intractable pupil; but she said nothing, only nodded slightly.
Yelena bit her lip. ‘I know,’ she offered, ‘I’ll sleep in it, and you can sleep in my bed. And then if I get sick, it will be my punishment.’
It was so innocently said that Anne repressed a smile. ‘No, I don’t think that’s a very good idea. We shall have to think about how you can make it up to me. You can let me know if you have any good ideas. And now you had better go back to bed. Come.’
She held out her hand, and they retraced their steps.
‘Will you tell Papa?’ Yelena asked after a moment. Anne glanced down, and saw the fan of eyelashes against the rounded cheek as Yelena fixed her eyes on the floor. ‘He’d be very angry.’ Anne thought privately that his anger, if it existed at all, would be much more formal than reaclass="underline" his indulgence towards his daughter seemed endless.
‘No, I shan’t tell him. Not as it was just a joke,’ she said. Yelena’s hand relaxed in hers. In the nursery, Tanya stirred, watching them, but did not sit up. Anne put down the candle, helped Yelena into bed, and pulled the covers up around her. ‘Goodnight, Yelena Nikolayevna,’ she said. ‘Tomorrow, perhaps, we can think of some more jokes together – but funny ones, this time.’
Yelena regarded her thoughtfully, her eyes black pools with twin candle flames in their centres. ‘You can call me Lolya,’ she offered. Anne smiled, and the corners of Lolya’s mouth moved in response. ‘And I’ll call you Anna Petrovna, if you like,’ she added with enormous generosity.
‘Yes, I like,’ said Anne.
It was a beginning. Yelena did not become an angel overnight, but now licensed to call her Lolya, Anne found much less difficulty in making contact with her, and began to be able to interest her in her lessons, instead of merely forcing her to endure them. Fräulein Hoffnung noticed the difference at once and congratulated Anne on having broken down the first barrier. It would be a long time, they both knew, before Lolya completely accepted and trusted her new instructress, but it was a start, and, as Fräulein Hoffnung said, ‘Rome vass not burnt in a day’.
One day, as Anne approached the breakfast room, she heard the Count’s voice raised in irritation: ‘For God’s sake, Irina, don’t begin that again! It’s stupid, and you know it!’
Anne was shocked, never having heard him raise his voice in anger before; and was even more shocked at the little thread of pleasure she discovered in herself, that he should so berate his wife for stupidity. Rebuking herself fiercely, she made a noise at the breakfast room door before opening it, and when she entered, they were composed: the Count reading his letters, the Countess, eyes down, picking listlessly at a roll of bread.
The under-butler, Yakob, followed Anne in and drew out her chair for her, and a moment later Fräulein Hoffnung brought the children in, and the normal morning routine was re-established. But Anne, watching the Countess from the corner of her eye, thought she looked less at ease than usual. She seemed a little pale, and her lips were tense.
Later, in a lull in the conversation, the Countess spoke up, her voice serene as always.