Lorimers at War (34 page)

He shrugged his shoulders. ‘It's a big country – even after the Brest-Litovsk Treaty. But I shall know where you are, at least to start with. And if you are in any trouble, you can write to me in Moscow. Cautiously, of course – other people will read the letter. In the meantime, I wish you all happiness.'

‘And you, Sergei.' They embraced for a second time before Kate went off to find Vladimir.

‘I wish it were anywhere but Petrograd,' she said, when she had told him of Sergei's fears for her safety. ‘There must still be people there who know you. But I dared not risk raising difficulties, in case he should ask too many questions.'

‘I doubt if I could be recognized with my beard and shabby uniform,' he said. ‘And we shall hardly be moving in the same social circles as before. What worries me
more is the danger of the train journey to the baby. It's difficult to believe now that there was once a time when a journey on a Russian train was the most luxurious form of travel in the world. I'm afraid we're going to find it very different now.'

There were people on the roof of the train and people travelling on its outside steps. Kate looked at the jostling crowd on the station platform and at the packed wagons which were drawing to a halt beside it and saw no possibility of finding a place. She felt Vladimir's strong fingers gripping her arm.

‘Hold on to my shoulders and follow me,' he said. ‘Don't let anyone push in between us. Now!'

He thrust forward towards the nearest wagon door. Those who were already on the train did their best to push the new passengers away, whilst those at the back of the platform pressed forward. More frightened than she had ever been in the middle of a battle – since now it was her baby that was at risk – Kate longed to use her arms to protect herself. The pressure was so great that she could hardly breathe and it was difficult not to panic. All her self-control was needed to obey Vladimir's instructions in the five-minute struggle which seemed to last for ever.

The wagon was divided into compartments and the sides of each compartment were fitted from floor to ceiling with sleeping shelves. The compartment into which Vladimir eventually forced an entrance already held at least a hundred people, instead of its official maximum of thirty. There were three or four people on each shelf and the floor between was stacked with bundles and baggage. Vladimir looked quickly round and discovered a top shelf
which was occupied by only three people. Ignoring their loud protests that there was no room for more, he hauled Kate up to join them, himself standing on the edge of one of the lower shelves to make sure that she did not fall from her precarious perch. Kate, breathless and bruised, listened to the thumping of her heart and was frightened again, but her anxiety for the baby came to her rescue. She forced herself to relax, to breathe deeply and lie as still as though she were sleeping. Still grumbling, but accepting the presence of an intruder, the old woman beside her allowed her a few more inches of the shelf.

The first struggle might be over, but the discomforts of the journey had only just begun. It was impossible to move. Even after twelve hours had passed it seemed risky to produce what food they had managed to carry with them, in case it should be snatched away by their hungry fellow-passengers. The few windows of the wagon were tightly sealed against the cold outside and the atmosphere became steadily more stifling. The smell was appalling. All the travellers were dirty and a good many of them were visibly verminous. They spat, they smoked and they urinated. How long, Kate wondered, would it take to reach Petrograd?

Her defence was to retreat into what was almost a trance, removing her mind from her body so that she could feel peace instead of disgust. Occasionally she was aware of Vladimir's hand stroking her cheek or his lips softly kissing hers, but she did not speak. The train crawled on across the huge sub-continent.

From time to time it came to a halt. This might mean that it had arrived at a station, but the density of bodies within each wagon was such that it was impossible for anyone else to enter. Once – or so the rumour came down the length of the train – it was because there was no more fuel to fire the engine; all the passengers at the front had been ordered out to chop wood from the forest.
If Kate strained her head downward she could see out of one of the windows, but there was little variety in the view – sometimes an unbroken sheet of snow, stretching to the horizon; sometimes a dark forest, equally silent and uninhabited. Sometimes the moon was shining and sometimes there was daylight, but she made no attempt to keep track of the passage of time.

She was asleep in the middle of an afternoon when the train stopped yet again, but this time with a shuddering jolt which aroused and alarmed all the passengers. All of them were well aware of the various dangers of which Sergei had warned Kate. So many different armed bands were at large that no one could feel safe.

The door was opened from outside. Kate's first feeling was one of relief as the foetid atmosphere was disturbed at last by a shaft of air which was icy cold but so clear that its invasion of the wagon was visible. She breathed deeply through the scarf which she had pulled across her mouth, but at the same time listened with anxiety to the shouted commands coming from near the front of the train. More sinister still, there was the sound of gunfire; somebody screamed.

‘Who is it? Who is it?' Everyone was calling to those nearest the door. The answer was brief and sinister.

‘Cheka!'

A wave of fear swept through the passengers. The Cheka was supposed to be on the side of the peasants and proletarians and only against the bourgeoisie and what was left of the nobility, but there was no one who had not heard stories of the Red Terror, of hostages taken and executed, of innocent men shot merely as an example to others. And there were few people – even amongst the poor – who could feel sure that they were not offending against one of the new regulations which flooded out of the Bolshevik headquarters. It was generally known that anyone who denied carrying firearms and was then found in possession of a revolver would be shot
immediately; but Kate detected a feeling of terror in the old lady lying beside her as someone else on the same shelf shouted a reminder that it was against the law now to possess more than two of any article of clothing.

Kate had more reason than her neighbour to be nervous. She had been told often enough that she spoke Russian with sufficient fluency to persuade anyone who had no grounds to suspect otherwise that she was indeed Russian, although he might presume that she must come from a different district from him – the huge Russian state contained so many nationalities that there was necessarily a wide variation of dialects and accents, especially amongst those for whom Russian was a second language. But it would be impossible for her to sustain a plausible identity under interrogation by somebody who was looking for irregularities, and Sergei's warning about the danger of being British had been a valid one. Nor was she anxious only on her own behalf. Vladimir, like any other aristocrat, had been brought up to speak French, with English as his second language, so he, like Kate, had learned Russian only as a foreign tongue. And he too would have difficulty in producing acceptable answers if his life before the Revolution was investigated too closely. His identity papers were those of an Estonian, and any interrogator from that area would realize immediately that he had no right to them. He and Kate were equally at risk. Their only hope was to remain inconspicuous, two anonymous and insignificant figures in a crowd.

Vladimir had scrambled towards the door when it opened, in order to look outside. Now he climbed back again and spoke quietly into her ear so that no one else could hear.

‘Groan,' he said, and repeated the command urgently as Kate looked puzzled. ‘Groan. As though the baby were coming. As though your labour had started.'

Kate did as she was told, moaning faintly to begin with and then panting more loudly. She was not clear what the
purpose of the charade was. The baby was not due for several months and she could not produce it now merely to create a diversion. She continued to groan, though, as Vladimir muttered to the old lady beside her that his wife's time was approaching, that he must go and see whether there were a doctor anywhere on the train, just in case one should be needed. Kate grabbed at his hand.

‘You're not really going to leave me.'

‘Listen,' he said. Once again his lips were close to her ear. ‘When the Red Guards come, you groan again. You don't speak. Whatever happens, you don't say anything. The old lady will tell them what the trouble is. They won't do anything to help, but your travel papers are in order so with any luck they'll leave you alone.'

‘But why won't you be here?'

‘They're calling all the men of military age off the train to have their papers checked,' said Vladimir. ‘You're not to worry. It will be all right, of course. But just in case anything goes wrong, you mustn't be associated with me. I'll step out from a different compartment.'

‘No!' exclaimed Kate. Too frightened to be cautious, she tried to sit up, but Vladimir held her down.

‘As a couple, we could make them suspicious. Separately, we can get away with it. I'll be further down the train, and I'll be watching. I shan't let them take you off. That's a promise. If there's really trouble, I'll come back to you. But there won't be trouble.'

‘But suppose – oh, dearest, suppose they take
you
off, to join the Red Army. It might happen. Sergei said there was compulsory recruitment.'

‘It wouldn't be the end of the world. It would give me a better set of papers when I was discharged. I'd come back to you.'

‘Where? How should we ever meet again?'

‘Ssh!' The warning was necessary, for Kate's voice was rising as her fear increased. She could tell, though, that Vladimir recognized the difficulty as a serious one.

‘Listen, then,' he said. ‘If we're both on the train when it moves off, then I shall see you at the station at Petrograd. If I'm taken off, you must go first to the hospital and take up your post there. I'll know where to find you. But when the time comes for the baby to be born, go to Tsarskoe Selo. I expect it's called something else now that the Tsar is dead, but you'll find it. It's not too far from Petrograd. We had a theatre palace there. We'll use that as a rendezvous. Not the palace itself, of course; it was looted in the February Revolution. But there's a lodge by the south gate. The lodgekeeper's wife was my wet nurse. Two years ago I would have trusted her with my life. Now, one can't be quite sure. Take it carefully. You should be able to find out whether she's loyal to the family, whether she'd help you to care for my baby. If you're doubtful, protect yourself by saying that you were seduced and deserted. Beside the gate of that lodge there's a hollow tree. I used to put messages there when I was a boy. That's where I'll look for a letter from you, to tell me where you are and who can be trusted. If I get there first, I'll leave the same information for you.'

‘Vladimir, I want to stay with you. Please don't leave me.'

‘I'm a danger to you,' he said. ‘And to our child.' He put his hand gently on her abdomen to feel the movement of the baby. ‘I love you, Katya. I'll love you till the day I die. Be brave just for a little while. We'll be together very soon, I promise. But if the baby is born before I can come, sing him the lullaby I composed for him. I shall be able to hum it in my own head and think of the two of you together. Now, remember to groan.'

Not gently, but passionately this time, he kissed her again. She clung to him, still unwilling to let him go. As he released himself from her grip he muttered something about the doctor to anyone who might be listening, and then climbed down to the floor and swung himself outside.

Kate had hardly needed the reminder to groan,
although it was fear rather than pain which caused her fists to clench and her eyes to flood with tears. But she was sufficiently in control of herself to know that at all costs she must refrain from making a fuss. It might be true that Vladimir saw himself as a danger to her, but certainly she was a danger to him. He had told her not to speak, and she must obey his instructions for his sake as well as her own.

The search of the train took several hours. When it came to the turn of Kate's wagon, all the men in it were ordered out. Kate counted that almost forty jumped down from the door. By the time the engine had begun to hiss again, and the shouting outside to take on a different note, only seven of the forty had returned. It was possible to move now, for in addition to the absence of so many travellers, much of the baggage had been hauled off the train. Stiff after the long period of immobility, Kate climbed down from her shelf and leaned out of the doorway.

The Cheka had made a good haul. A long line of men was tramping away from the train under armed guard. But a few remained behind, sprawled in the snow, the victims of execution without trial. Fighting hysteria, Kate strained her eyes in an attempt to recognize Vladimir amongst the group of living men. But the distance was too great and the unwilling conscripts were all dressed much alike.

Two of the Red Guards came running down the length of the train. Kate was pushed roughly inside in order that the door might be slammed and locked. The engine gave a piercing signal and began to move, carrying its cargo of silent or wailing passengers on towards Petrograd. Kate was one of the silent ones, dry-eyed again after the panic which had almost overwhelmed her. Even more than before she could sympathize with the helplessness which Vladimir had felt in the first weeks of the Revolution, when he found himself condemned by his birth to be an
outsider in the new society. In her case it was nationality which was likely to prove more important in the eyes of strangers than all the sympathy she felt for the downtrodden people of Russia, and she was angry as well as upset at the way in which the landing of British troops at a port hundreds of miles away had forced her to keep quiet when she ought to have been able to protest, to cry, to cling to her husband.