Was she twenty-one? The only evidence they had for that was her own declaration that she was four when she met Sir Edward in Yalta. How had she known that? Had she just turned four or was she nearer five? It felt strange not knowing when her birthday was. She supposed somewhere in Russia there was a record of it. Or had all the records been destroyed? She gave up musing and left her seat to go and run a bath. It was time to start getting ready.
Claudia, who had stayed on making herself useful in a dozen different ways for no other reason than she had nowhere else to go and Edward would not dismiss her, helped her dress. The gown, which had cost Edward a fortune, was of heavy cream silk embroidered with seed pearls. Without a distinguishable waist, it was cleverly cut to emphasise the slimness of her figure. Its back was very low and had a train which she could loop up on a catch at her wrist for dancing. Claudia helped her with her hair which was swept up in a chignon and fastened with two glittering combs, a present from Mama. She put a pearl necklace about her throat, slipped into her shoes and went down to the small parlour where Edward and Margaret waited.
Margaret was in a soft dove-grey crêpe dress and Edward in immaculate tie and tails. She entered the room demurely, smiling. ‘Will I do?’
‘Beautiful,’ her father said, coming forward to take both her hands. ‘Absolutely stunning – isn’t that what the young bloods would say?’
She laughed. ‘I’m very nervous.’
‘No need to be, you will be the belle of the ball, as is only right and proper.’ He turned from her to reach for a jewellery box from the mantelpiece. ‘This is already yours,’ he said. ‘I have kept it safely for you, but now I have had it made so that you can wear it.’ He opened the box and took out the Kirilov Star, adapted and hung on a silver chain so that she could wear it as a necklace. The central diamond sparkled in the light from the electric chandelier above her head and all the smaller diamonds in its points glistened like drops of water.
Another of her fleeting memories came to her of her mother sitting at a table in tears, sewing it into her petticoat, and her father taking her on his knee and gruffly telling her she was the star of the Kirilovs. She thrust the recollection from her and turned dutifully at Edward’s command so that he could take the pearls from her throat and replace it with the necklace. ‘There!’ he said as she turned back to him. ‘All yours now. Wear it with pride for what you were and what you have become.’
‘It’s lovely,’ she said, fingering it. ‘I didn’t know you still had it.’
‘I could never part with the Kirilov Star,’ he said. ‘Neither the jewel, nor the child.’
‘Oh, Papa,’ she said, throwing her arms about him. ‘I do love you.’ She turned to Margaret and embraced her too. ‘You are so good to me. I sometimes wonder what I have done to deserve it.’
‘Just been yourself,’ Edward said, embarrassed. ‘Go on being that. Now, I think we had better go into the hall to receive our guests.’
There were more than a hundred of them: distant relations of Sir Edward and Margaret, family friends from far and wide, Lydia’s school friends and others she had met in Cambridge, people from the diplomatic corps, a few displaced Russians with whom Edward had kept in touch, the vicar and the doctor and Alexei, all dressed in their finest, come to wish her well, all bringing gifts. It was exciting and slightly out of this world, a dream from which she might wake and find herself… where? Back in a droshky in a snowy forest or crammed into a freight wagon with hundreds of others? Watching her weeping mother sew? It was strange how those visions kept coming back to her now, clearer than they had ever been. It was as if her traumatised body had shut them out at first, refused to acknowledge recollections that were too painful to bear, and only years later released them, as if saying, ‘Yes, you are stronger now. Now you can face them. You should not forget. It is part of what you are.’
Edward partnered her for the first dance but after that Alexei claimed her. Since the death of his father in Russia, Edward had taken him under his wing, though he really did not need it. He had become a tall, handsome man, popular with everyone, though there was a serious side to his nature that perhaps only Lydia and Sir Edward understood. His mother had died the year Lydia went to Cambridge – of a broken heart, he had said. Since then he had become a naturalised British subject, taking the name of Alex Peters, easily able to pass himself off as an Englishman. He was completely self-assured.
Lydia was very fond of him, had been ever since she had taken him to feed the ducks and he had been kind to a lonely, frightened little girl. He was a presence in her life, not an especially frequent one, but a stable one, someone she knew instinctively she could lean on if need be. He was practical and down to earth, the only one who could curb her more exotic flights of fancy and cheer her up when she felt pulled down by her memories. He understood.
‘You are looking ravishing,’ he said, as they waltzed. ‘I would hardly know the little waif I met in Simferopol.’
She laughed. ‘The waif is still there, underneath.’
‘You would never know it. All this…’ He moved his head to indicate the room, the dancers, the orchestra, the heady scent of hothouse flowers. ‘All this for a little waif.’
‘I do realise how privileged I am,’ she said. ‘Others were not half so fortunate. I should like to do something to help them. Surely there is a way of tracing their relatives and perhaps bringing some of their assets out of Russia?’
‘That was what my father was trying to do and he paid for it with his life.’
‘I’m sorry, I should not have reminded you.’
They were silent for a minute or two and concentrated on their dancing, each thinking of the past – unhappy, disjointed, another time, another world. And then he suddenly shook himself as if shaking off a cloak. ‘Are your studies all finished now?’
‘Yes. I have the equivalent of a degree, but I can’t call it a degree. It’s not fair, is it? I bet I worked just as hard as you did to get your BA.’
‘I’ve no doubt you did.’ He whirled her round. ‘But times are changing. Your day will come.’
‘I want to be useful, so I am thinking of taking work as a translator. Do you think I should?’
‘My dear Lidushka, it’s no good asking me. You must go where your heart leads you.’
Prophetic words, she decided later.
‘I don’t have to make my mind up just yet. We are going to Paris for a holiday in a couple of weeks.’
‘And is there a young man waiting in the wings?’
‘Oh, lots of them,’ she said lightly, oblivious of the intensity of his question.
‘But no one special?’
‘No one special. I’ve been too busy getting an education. What about you? Anyone special?’
‘No,’ he said quietly. ‘I, too, have been busy carving out a career for myself in the diplomatic service.’
‘Have you ever thought about going back to Russia?’ she asked, as the dance came to an end and they left the floor.
‘That, my dear little Countess, would be the height of folly. The Russia we knew has gone for ever.’
He did not tell her that he had been back because he had been sworn to secrecy. Nor did he tell her that the regime under Stalin was worse than it had been after the Civil War, that almost everyone, particularly the intelligentsia, waited for the knock on the door in the middle of the night when they were hauled off to prison and sentenced to death or years in a labour camp for being an ‘enemy of the people’ or not being ‘sufficiently vigilant’, for which little proof was needed. A simple denunciation was enough. Out of loyalty to the Party, or greed, or jealousy, neighbour was denouncing neighbour, sons and daughters were denouncing fathers, wives their husbands. It had become a cult of fear. It was an omission he would come bitterly to regret.