Anne had heard so much about it already, this great city which Emperor Peter had raised, by an act of will and at the cost of thousands of peasant lives, from the swamps and salt-marshes and reed-covered islands of the Neva estuary at the northern end of the Bay of Finland .Not quite a hundred years later, Peter the Great’s ‘Window on the West’, begun in such unpromising conditions in one of the worst climates imaginable, had become ‘the Venice of the North’, and the most beautiful city in the world.
It was a city of broad avenues, gigantic squares, waterside promenades and massive granite quays lining both sides of the wide, genial river. With its interlinking network of canals, it was a city of light and movement and rippling reflections, bright-coloured boats and the chuckle of water against hull. It was a city of buildings designed on a magnificent scale: elegant, symmetrical, pillared and porticoed, and – what was most delightful to Anne’s first sight – stuccoed and painted in bright, harmonious colours. Every other city was dull and shabby in comparison. Where in the world, for instance, was there anything to equal the seemingly endless, blood-red façade of the rococo Winter Palace, or the chrome-yellow Admiralty building, almost a quarter of a mile long, with its gilded spire, its white columns and projecting porches flanked with marble statues?
The Kirov Palace on the Angliskaya Naberezhna – the English Quay – was painted a pale, bright blue, classical in style, with the windows, frieze, and pediment picked out in contrasting white. Anne was struck speechless with the sheer size of it. And when the Count told her it was one of the smaller palaces, she gave him a reproachful look.
‘But it’s true,’ he said, divining her trouble. ‘Everything in Petersburg is big, compared with European cities,’ he added almost apologetically. ‘You must remember that here in Russia, space is what we have plenty of. And particularly here at the mouth of the Neva, where the land was not useful for anything else.’
Anne’s new room was so large that at first she thought regretfully of her snug chamber at Schwartzenturm, particularly when she began at last to appreciate how cold it was going to be. There was no doubt though, that it was handsome. Her massive bed bore a canopy and curtains of ochre silk-damask; the drapes were of sea-green velvet, the carpet green-and-gold Savonnerie; the walls were panelled in a pale, honey-coloured wood, and the furniture was light and modern, with chairs upholstered in sea-green to match the drapes.
The fire in the massive marble fireplace, supported by rather snub-nosed caryatids, was kept alight all the time. It was flanked with two sofas, while nearby was a neat little satinwood writing-desk, positioned to catch the light. It was a room not only to sleep in, but to retire to at any time of the day, to be comfortable and private. As soon as Anne’s eye had adjusted to the difference of proportion of everything in Petersburg, she began to think of it as being just as snug as her room in Schwartzenturm.
The first few days were very pleasant, as the Kirovs devoted themselves to showing Anne the sights of Petersburg. The Dowager was engaged elsewhere, renewing old acquaintances, so it was a relaxed and happy Countess who introduced Anne to this magical city. Sometimes alone, and sometimes en famille, she took Anne to watch parades in front of the Winter Palace, reviews on the Champs de Mars, and impromptu carriage-races along the quaysides, and again and again to visit the shops along the Nevsky Prospekt, each like a little palace in its own right, where French fashions and furniture and the most fabulous jewels and furs in the world were on glittering display. The weather was cold but bright, and Petersburg looked at its best under a dark-blue autumn sky, the heatless sunshine flashing off the gold of spires and cupolas and refracting into dazzling rainbows in the spray from a hundred ornamental fountains.
Even when lessons began again, Anne found herself with more time to herself, for while in Petersburg, Lolya went to fashionable tutors for her music, dancing and drawing lessons. After a week or so, there was also another interruption: Vera Borisovna took to coming into the schoolroom at various times and taking Yelena away to accompany her on shopping expeditions or to visit friends. Anne guessed that the Dowager enjoyed the child’s uncritical company, and also that she liked to show her off to her contemporaries, for Yelena was certainly both pretty and vivacious. But it was bad for Lolya to be displayed like a pet monkey, praised and admired and generally allowed to go her length unchecked. The more Gran’mère called her Belle Hélène and promised her a career of social adulation and heart-breaking, the more idle and inattentive she became in the schoolroom.
Finally, Anne felt driven to remonstrate. It was difficult to find an opportunity to do so, for she would not argue with the grandmother in front of the child, and Vera Borisovna was largely engaged elsewhere in the evenings. The occasion arose, however, one day when Tanya had taken Lolya early to her dancing lesson, while the rest of the family was lingering over breakfast.
‘My sweet Hélène,’ Vera Borisovna was saying. Tve seen the most delightful ermine hat in the Pantheon bazaar! I have half a mind to buy it for her this afternoon before I take her to the Shuvalovs. Princess Shuvalova’s granddaughter is coming to visit her, and she’s as plain as a staff beside Hélène! And as for her playing on the pianoforte, well, I hardly know where to–’
‘I beg your pardon, madame,’ Anne interrupted, feeling her blood mount, ‘but do I understand that you are intending to take Yelena out of her lesson again?’
The Dowager’s brows contracted sharply, and the Countess choked a little over her coffee.
‘What is it to you, mademoiselle, if I do?’ the Dowager snapped. ‘Pray do not interrupt me when I am speaking.’
‘I must interrupt, madame, when it is a matter of Yelena’s welfare,’ Anne began bravely, hearing her own voice with a kind of detached amazement, for she was almost as frightened of the Dowager as the Countess was. ‘It is not good for her continually to miss her lessons–’
‘How dare you speak, mademoiselle, when I have bid you be silent?’ the Dowager said, her cheeks mottling ominously. ‘Remember your place!’
‘My place, madame, is to teach Yelena, and I cannot do so if you interfere with my–’
‘Interfere!’ the Dowager boomed in horrified astonishment. The Countess moaned quietly behind her napkin. ‘How dare you use such a word to me? Do you think I do not know what is good for my own granddaughter, my own flesh and blood, better than a foreigner, a hireling, engaged merely to teach her English, though what good that will do her I still have not been brought to understand? You see, Irina Pavlovna,’ she went on, rounding on the Countess with a sort of savage glee, ‘what comes of going against tradition? No gentlewoman speaks any language but French, as I’ve told you many times, and now this – this person–’
‘I was engaged, madame, as Yelena’s governess, to educate her in all subjects, not just English, and I will not remain silent when I see her being made vain and idle by a diet of flattery and spoiling,’ Anne cried, her face growing as red as the Dowager’s.
Vera Borisovna let out a shriek. ‘Insolence! You impudent hussy! Koko, dismiss this – this creature at once! Do you hear me, Koko? I want her out of the house within the hour! I will not have–’
‘Sir, I appeal to you,’ Anne said desperately over the top of the tirade. ‘You engaged me to make an educated woman of your daughter, and I cannot do so if–’