Lorimers at War (23 page)

His smile was curiously sweet, banishing the dreaminess from his eyes and replacing it with a pleading warmth. Kate was not easily charmed and was well aware that any claim that he would be miserable without her was only a pretence. Nevertheless, she found the mixture of formality and persuasiveness in his manner to be irresistible.

‘Thank you, Excellency,' she said, half laughing at herself for the weakness of her capitulation. ‘I shall be most honoured to be your partner.'

Early on Sunday morning Kate stared out of her bedroom window across the frozen water of the Neva. At this time of day the ice was a pale green, as delicate in shade as the panels of the marble hall. Later, if the sun shone, it would glint with gold for an hour or two before sunset turned it a rosy pink. On the further side of the river the spire of the Peter and Paul fortress, too slim to show the snow, was golden as well: a beautiful sight but a symbol of ugliness. The contrast was too acute to be believed –
on this side of the river, the pampered comfort of the prince in his palace; and on the other, the hardship and oblivion to which political prisoners were condemned.

There was no bureaucracy to be besieged today – its officials would replace obstructiveness by absence. The Aminov palace was equally silent. Kate was growing familiar with the timetable of the Russian nobility, whose day – Sunday and weekday alike – hardly began before nightfall. Still governed by the habit of hospital routine, she herself woke early, but never saw her host at breakfast.

If the prince had known that she intended to go out and explore the city – and unescorted into the bargain – he would certainly have prevented her. There had been a series of strikes on the previous day. No trams or trains had run, and crowds carrying red banners paraded through the streets demanding the resignation of the Cabinet and expulsion of the German Tsarina. The army had been called out and some of the demonstrators were killed. But it was rumoured that many of the soldiers had disobeyed the order to fire.

Kate was well aware that the streets of the city were becoming unsafe. Being Kate Lorimer, however, she was not prepared to make any concessions to the fact. After almost a week spent in ministerial ante-rooms, she felt the need to treat her frustration with a dose of fresh air and exercise.

For more than two hours she tramped over the frozen snow in the boots which the army cobbler had made for her. In spite of the blackness of her mood and the heavy greyness of the sky, from which new snow was falling, the beauty of this most un-Russian city took hold of her. Already she had admired the magnificence of the Winter Palace, and she was able to appreciate the classical elegance of the pale yellow buildings which curved round the facing side of the palace square even though they housed the General Staff offices she hated. The elaborate
ceremonial arch in the centre of the curve and the picture-book array of noble palaces, like the Aminovs', which stretched along the river bank, were all part of the same splendid architectural centrepiece with which she had become familiar. But now for the first time she wandered further afield, exploring the network of canals, admiring the decorative bridges which ran so elegantly across them, and the handsomely painted mansions on either side.

It was as easy here as in Prince Aminov's marble hall or golden drawing room to forget the other aspects of the city: the slum tenements with their insanitary courtyards, the poverty of the people on the streets, the deep puddles which formed when the sun shone warmly enough for an hour or two to melt the snow. From the first moment of her arrival in Petrograd she had been appalled by the contrast between the luxuries of her temporary home and the world of pain and misery on the battlefront which she had been attempting to describe to the indifferent bureaucrats of the General Staff. Only that morning she had become aware of another contrast, with the world of the political prisoner. And now she realized that the extremes of luxury and sordid discomfort were to be found inside the central living area of the city. How long could such a state of affairs be tolerated, she asked herself. Her step became firmer and even less ladylike than before as her anger rose.

The sound of singing drew her towards the Cathedral of St Nicholas. Reminding herself that it was Sunday, she went inside. It was a long time since she had last been able to attend a Baptist service, and it was likely to be an equally long time in the future before she had any contact with the faith which her father preached so eloquently in Jamaica. But although the form of the Russian Orthodox service was so different from that of a Nonconformist chapel, the same God presumably listened to prayers in all languages, and Kate was in need of comfort.

On the ground floor a funeral service was in progress.
A crowd of women, fat and dowdy in their winter coats and headscarves, wandered, weeping, in and out. But the singing came from a higher floor. Kate climbed the stairs and found herself in a treasure house. The light of many hundreds of candles was reflected off jewelled icons and golden mosaics. Even here, it seemed, she could not escape from the contrast between great wealth and great poverty. Gorgeously attired in yet more gold, a black-bearded priest was reading from the Bible to his crowded congregation. Almost imperceptibly his reading voice changed to chanting and the chanting to an operatic style of bass singing. All her life Kate had been susceptible to the influence of music, whether soothing or stimulating. She made no attempt now to listen to the words, but allowed her troubled spirit to be comforted by the beauty of the sound.

The voice of the single singer was joined by a choir in the gallery above. The new sound filled the building, swelling and diminishing, harsh and even discordant at times, its harmonies changing abruptly from major to minor key with that especial Slavonic characteristic which was so difficult to analyse but so easy to recognize. Kate tried to pray but found the atmosphere uncongenial. Her Baptist upbringing had given her a positive attitude to religion and life. She was not prepared – as the Russian Orthodox worshippers were – merely to prostrate herself on the ground and await events. Her father, in his services, was accustomed to converse aloud with God – to put forward problems, and to receive solutions which owed a good deal to the pastor's own conclusions. Kate knew that prayers were not always answered – but that could be the fault of the petitioner: it remained important to continue the dialogue. But above all it was necessary to take whatever action might be necessary to achieve God's revealed wishes, to walk firmly down the path illuminated by His will.

Such an attitude was out of tune with the mood of this
congregation. Already in the hospital Kate had learned to recognize what appeared to be a peculiarly Russian aptitude for suffering – an ability to accept separation, hunger, pain and even death without a murmur of complaint against whatever inexplicable fate had brought all these things to pass. The women in this congregation – for there were few men – seemed to display the same passivity: whatever was God's will was to be accepted.

No doubt the obstructive behaviour of Russian officials was encouraged by this attitude. Their procrastinations or outright refusals to take action would all too often be accepted without complaint: or, if that was too much to hope for, the petitioner would continue to wait patiently for something to happen which might change the situation. More than once in the past few days Kate had longed to leap to her feet in some crowded waiting room, allowing her rage to explode. She had persuaded herself that restraint would be wiser, but now she wondered whether she was right or whether the time had come to protest. In this cathedral, too, she would have liked to shout out, interrupting the service to tell these submissive women that life ought to be good, that it was not necessary to be always unhappy and – most of all – that to accept the blows of fate or government without complaint was to invite further tribulation. Oh, for the throbbing vitality of Hope Valley!

She held her indignation under control now, just as she had controlled it during the search for the right rubber stamp; but the intensity of her feelings, raised to a higher pitch by the melancholy music of the choir, drew her into a state of exaltation – a trance-like ecstasy, illuminated by a visionary flash. There is no God, she thought, and at once everything was explained.

Her father had preached in the name of God, but it was his own hard work as an administrator which brought happiness to his people, and she suspected that he had always known this himself. For the past two years she
had done her best to reconcile the death and suffering she saw with the faith of her childhood, the belief in a loving God who ordered everything for the best. She had failed in the attempt. How could a loving God have wanted Brinsley to die? But if God instead were angry or uncaring, why should He be worshipped? The reconciliation of faith and fact had proved to be impossible. Now she knew that the effort had never been necessary: there was no God.

So there was no excuse for passivity. The world might be destroying itself, but the destruction was not inevitable. There was no God. Men who were the victims of other men must save themselves by their own exertions and build a new society out of love for their fellow-men, not from hatred or fear. It was all so obvious that she could not understand why she had taken so long to comprehend it. She even remembered that Sergei had tried to convince her of the need for a change in society. Revolution was the word he had used, and she had been alarmed by it, thinking in terms of the French terror. But a spiritual revolution would be as effective as a political one. All that was needed was a change of attitude, a determination to be positive.

Kate Lorimer's vision was the opposite of Saul's, but Petrograd was on her road to Damascus. ‘There is no God,' she repeated to herself. ‘No God. Only men, who must love one another.'

Around her the service continued, but it had nothing more to offer. Kate pushed her way out of the crowded cathedral and began to walk back towards the Neva. The day was lighter now: the sky seemed to have lifted. Was it only the excitement of her vision which made her want to run and shout? Was it only her imagination which made her see the people in the streets in a light very different from that of the early morning? They were holding their heads higher, surely – were walking with a more purposeful air. Her excitement increased, as though
the change in her faith had imperceptibly attuned her to the mood of the city. Her own anger made her sensitive to the anger around her. The Russian people were ready at last to break through the shell of their old passivity and she, Kate Lorimer, felt herself spiritually to be a Russian.

Within sight of the river she paused in surprise. It had not all been her imagination, then. Crowds of people were approaching on foot across the bridge. There was nothing threatening about their pace or attitude: only their number made it clear that this was no ordinary Sunday promenade. And if she had had any doubts, a disturbance behind her would have dispelled them. A line of soldiers, their footsteps quietened by the snow, was marching down the Nevsky Prospekt towards the Admiralty building, leaving a few of their number in a group at each street corner. Hardly more than boys, they looked uneasy in their ill-fitting uniforms. But they were armed.

There was no confrontation. The crowd filled the heart of the city but did not threaten it. The demeanour of the soldiers made it so clear that they did not wish to use their weapons that their officers, equally uneasy, showed no disposition to test their authority by giving the order to clear the area. Nevertheless, the steady increase in the size of the crowd and the silence which was as sinister as it was surprising, brought Kate down to earth again. In any kind of battle it was important to be recognizably on one side or the other: the man in the middle was too often the target of both. Prudently she made her way by back streets to the Aminov palace.

The moment of revelation inside the cathedral had changed Kate's whole attitude to life. She was aware that she would never look at society in the same way again – and yet the knowledge did not affect her actions immediately. She was still the same punctual and efficient woman who kept promises once she had made them. When Prince Aminov had first asked her to go to the Radziwill ball she had felt doubtful. But the possibility that the occasion might prove of practical value had persuaded her to accept, and the mere fact that her doubts about going to a party had deepened did not seem a good enough reason now to disappoint her host. As the maid came into her room that evening with a heavy weight of creamy satin over her arm, Kate's gasp was not one of rejection but merely of incredulity. She had been promised the choice of a gown and had intended to look for the simplest, but it appeared that the maid had taken the decision out of her hands.

‘It's unlucky to put on clothes which have been worn by someone who is dead,' the girl explained. ‘But this dress was ordered by the princess to be ready for her after the birth of her baby. She never even saw it.'

‘It's too rich for me!' Kate exclaimed, for the low-cut sleeveless bodice and the hem of the skirt were both patterned in hundreds of tiny pearls.

‘The others will be too tight,' said the maid. Not for the first time, Kate was amused by the frankness of Russian servants. And this one, no doubt, was telling the truth. Kate's experiences during the past two years had hardly allowed her to grow fat through overeating; but she was sturdily built and it was unlikely that even the most vigorous attempt at tight lacing would reduce her
waist to a fashionable smallness. If for this one gown the dressmaker had guessed at a slight increase in size on the part of a new mother and had allowed her a little looseness even on top of that, the maid's choice might indeed prove to be the best. Laughing, Kate allowed herself to be taken over. Only when she was ready, with her hair veiled and ornamented, her shoes buckled, her necklace fastened, her long gloves smoothed up to the elbow, was she allowed to look at herself in the glass.