The House by the Dvina (17 page)

One day Mother suddenly announced that she and I would also go to Scotland. My father was aghast. Nelly was calmly determined. She wanted her father, her sisters and all her friends to see the baby. After all, she reasoned, no one from her side, except her mother, was present at the christening, so it was only fair that they should now have the pleasure of meeting the child. There was also, she pointed out, the advantage of having her mother to help her during the journey. In the face of all these arguments Father had no other option but to agree. And so, in the midst of a howling blizzard, my mother, Grandma and I, some ten weeks old, set off for Scotland. The journey to Hull was uneventful and after five days we reached the shores of England. The familiar stocky figure of my grandfather was seen waiting on the landing stage. Grandpa did not disguise his pleasure at meeting his wife and daughter. He embraced them warmly and gently pinched the chubby cheeks of his grandchild. “She looks healthy enough,” was his sole comment to Nelly.

In Hull they boarded the train for Scotland. Holding me in her arms, Nelly sat in her corner hungrily scanning the fast-moving landscape, the neat and orderly cottages and houses with their gardens, the green fields and the lambs scampering round their mothers. “Was it only a year ago?” she kept asking herself. So much had happened during that time. How different everything had been from Scotland Ч the customs, the people, but she was getting to know and like them. She enjoyed the way of life there and was slowly mastering that difficult language; not very correctly, but enough to be understood.

Facing each other in the two far corners, my grandparents were eagerly exchanging their news. Grandma asked questions about the running of the house. “Did the girls remember to make marmalade?” “These lassies,”

Grandpa began scornfully, “nothing but nonsense in their heads.” He lapsed into silence. “Aye, God, aye,” he went on again, turning away his head to gaze intently out the window, “you never miss the water till the well runs dry.” And Grandma was well content, for that was as big a compliment as she had ever had from him.

Nelly was happy to be back. It was good to be in Scotland and see again the old familiar places that she had missed so much. It was good to meet relatives and friends and take her place amongst them, just as if she had never left them. Good to stroll along the smooth pavements of Broughty Ferry, pushing the perambulator past the old church where she had been married and on to the shops where everyone knew her and to meet friends who would stop to admire the baby and pass the usual flattering comments.

All that was fine, but as the spring advanced and an army of daffodils formed a golden border round the lawn and the blackbirds sang their glad songs Ч there came the knowledge that something was amiss. She had seen everyone, exchanged all news, did all the things she wanted to do and had been happy and content to be in Scotland. Now she began to long for her own home, her husband and all the kind and open-hearted friends she had made there.

In early May, when the waters of the Dvina ran freely to the sea, my mother bundled me up and we sailed from the port of Leith on a cargo ship.

It took us round the coast of Norway and the Kola Peninsula and through the White Sea to Archangel. We settled once again in our home and my parents took up the threads of their married life.

In the following spring my mother was expecting her second child and as the days went by she became obsessed with the idea that the baby had to be born in Scotland and nowhere else. Father could not accept this. The child, he patiently tried to explain to her, would be a Russian subject, receive a Russian education, embrace the Russian Orthodox Church and in short become a Russian citizen. Why then was it necessary for it to be born outside Russia? What was her reason? She had no reason, she was perfectly satisfied with the attention and care she received during her first confinement, but this time she wanted the child to be born in Scotland.

Years later she told me that during that distant spring she felt as if some inner voice kept telling her to have this baby in Scotland. She never dreamt that in this way she was doing the best thing possible for her son, as during the hungry twenties when we were in Scotland and when the dark shadow of mass unemployment hung over the whole of Britain, it would have been very difficult for a foreign subject to find any employment. By adopting the country of his birth, a way was open to my brother.

Meanwhile, Father gave up pursuing an argument which he knew he could not possibly win. Instead, he decided to take a long leave and combine some business with pleasure in Scotland. We were to leave by ship in early June and take the usual route through Norway. My nanny, Sasha, was to accompany us, as it was thought that she would be a help to Mother on our return journey to Russia.

As the date of our departure drew closer, Father was approached by Pavel Tarasoff; the boy employed as a kazachok in our household, which required him to be at the beck and call of everyone, whether it was to clean the stables, polish the harness, deliver letters or hurry for the odd bottle of vodka.

Pavel was an orphan and somewhere along his thorny path he had learned to read and write. From that time he devoted his spare time to reading everything he could lay his hands on. This did not escape my fatherТs attention. He suggested that Pavel should read some of the classics and allowed him free access to them. A new and rich world was open to Pavel.

He went through every book my father possessed Ч all the Russian classics and the translations from foreign writers, especially the English. England especially attracted him. He heard the English language spoken in the house and laboriously began to write down in Russian letters the words he had picked up. At times he timidly approached Mother to ask her to explain the meaning of some words. One day Father presented Pavel with a simple Russian-English grammar book and was astonished to see how eagerly the boy began to study the language.

Now, nervously wringing his hands, Pavel begged my father to take him to Scotland. He was prepared, he explained, to work for his passage on the ship. Work in Scotland as well, in the garden, in the house, clean, wash and do anything he was asked to do. He wanted no money, only a little food and a corner where be could sleep. My father could not find it in his heart to refuse him. It was a happy, carefree journey. Pavel was not required to work for his passage. Instead he spent his time learning as much as he could of the English language and was now able to converse in a halting fashion with the members of the crew. Sasha, on the other hand, picked up nothing at all and when spoken to in this strange foreign tongue, only giggled selfconsciously and hid her face behind a corner of her kerchief.

After two weeks we arrived in Broughty Ferry. The grandparents welcomed this invasion. During the last two years the house had become empty.

Stephen and Mary were married. Henry was in India. Aggie was soon to sail for Australia and Vicky was only to remain for a little while. Now the house was alive and full again. Sasha and I shared a bedroom overlooking the river. Pavel was accommodated in a room known as “the smoking-room”.

Grandpa, who could not bear the smell of smoking, which he maintained contaminated the atmosphere, built this room adjoining the house. It had a separate entrance from the garden. Whenever any of the sons, my father or friends wished to smoke, they had to go out of the house and enter this room, where they could do so to their heartsТ content. From the minute he arrived Pavel, true to his promise, was determined to earn his keep. Each morning he could be seen brushing out the courtyard, bringing in the coal, carrying out the ashes. The cook found in him a treasure Ч he cleaned her grate and peeled the potatoes. Mary, the maid, was thankful to find someone to relieve her from the detested task of polishing the brasses and silver. He worked for hours in the garden, quietly and unobtrusively. My grandparents took to this boy who was always willing to do what he was asked and who in a matter of a few weeks acquired a remarkable fluency in the English language. He was given a little money and at times, in the spirit of adventure, would set off to explore the town. Soon, he was due to travel back with my father, back to the old, drab existence to which he was born. After all he was, as Mikhailo once said, one of the people who walked in the darkness of illiteracy. A village lad for whom there was little hope in the future beyond the promotion to a coachman or perhaps to a worker in the timber mills. He had no education beyond what he gathered from his beloved books. One day, Father approached a friend who was a flax 166

merchant and asked him if he might employ in his office a boy of unusual ability for a matter of two or three years. The following week the flax merchant . called at the house and met Pavel. There was some conversation, a few questions asked and in the end, being duly impressed, my fatherТs friend agreed to take Pavel for a business training in his office. The next day Pavel, completely unaware of what had transpired, was approached by Father who in a casual manner enquired if he would care to stay on in Scotland and serve an apprenticeship with a firm of flax brokers, at the end of which, he could, if he wished, return to Russia and find a post in some office in Archangel.

Pavel never returned to Russia Ч at least not until as a high executive in a trading firm, he travelled on business to many parts of Europe and like all Russians was drawn to visit the place where he was born.

At the end of three years he had the choice of remaining with his firm, returning to Russia, or accepting a lucrative appointment in London, offering a wider scope and opportunities. He chose England.

I have vague memories of a smart, fair-haired young man calling on my grandparents on a summerТs day during one of our last visits to Scotland when I was in my sixth year. He had called to say goodbye before leaving for England. He brought me a doll and conversed freely with my mother and grandparents at the tea table. Pavel would have passed any day for a Scotsman if it had not been for his name and the broad features of a Slav.

I have no knowledge as to what happened in the end to that remarkable man.

The war and revolutions intervened, followed by the demoniac reign of the Georgian maniac when even a letter from abroad to Russia could have brought disaster to the recipient. People engrossed in their own worries and tragedies lost touch with Pavel, but, who knows, perhaps his descendants still live somewhere in Britain.

A different cup of tea was Sasha. After the first few weeks of rapturous exclamations over everything she had never seen before Ч the hot and cold water gushing from the taps, the flush toilet in the bathroom, a special delight in itself, the concrete pavements, attractive little gardens, the shops that offered such a rich variety of things, Sasha began to wilt.

Through the day I kept her occupied. We spent many happy hours on the shores of the sun-drenched Grassy Beach, gathering shells, coloured stones and turning over the seaweed in search of tiny scampering crabs. When it rained, we played in our room. With childlike earnestness Sasha came down to my level and out of bits of cardboard and matchboxes made little shops and houses. She was untiring in all her efforts to amuse me, but at night when I was safely tucked away in bed and sleeping, Sasha became lonely.

Sometimes she sat beside the window doing her cross-stitch embroidery or gazing aimlessly across the river. At other times she would wander outside the gate and stand leaning against the wall, watching the rolling carriages and the pedestrians who in turn would glance curiously at the sad-eyed girl in her unusual dress and kerchief. She was friendly with Mary, the young maid, who on her day off introduced Sasha to her people.

There was a lot of nodding and smiling but the language barrier prevented a closer acquaintance. Aggie and Vicky, who were in the habit of bathing at the Grassy Beach, suggested to Sasha that she might join them and offered a spare swimming suit. Sasha loved swimming and longed to go into the water, but she had been quite overawed by the strange sight of my two aunts emerging from the bathing shed in their navy bloomers, bodices complete with a sailor collar all edged in white braid and frilly mob caps on their heads. Such an unseemly spectacle was not for Sasha. She could take no part in it, nor yet could she understand why anyone should undress only to dress up again to go into the water and come out with these silly-looking clothes wet and sticking to their bodies. Back home no one ever wore bathing suits. They were unheard of. They all went bathing in their natural state just as God made them. The women in one part of the river and the men in another and no one bothered. Mother tried hard to make Sasha happy. She often took us into town to see the shops and bought prints, ribbons, and strings of bright beads for Sasha. These little expeditions usually finished up in a tearoom famous for cream cakes and hot scones. But the highlight of SashaТs sojourn in Scotland was the day when my mother presented her with a beautiful little hat trimmed with ribbons and glossy crimson cherries. Sasha had never possessed a hat. She was delighted beyond all words and in some way it helped to alleviate the pain of her homesickness. She loved to stand in front of the mirror and smile back at the reflection of the round sweet face, framed by soft tendrils, under the little hat perched on top of her head. She laughed, shrugged her shoulders, made faces, at times lifting her head proudly and looking down her small nose in the manner of a haughty barynya, or suddenly breaking into a gay smile and coyly winking an eye. There were so many variations in her dream world and at the end of each session the hat was carefully wrapped in tissue paper and put back in the box. Sasha never actually wore it.

Another diversion was Jocky the parrot. She liked to sit beside his cage and talk to him. “Oi kakoi ti boltun” Ч “What a chatterbox you are!” she would say to him and Jocky, his head cocked and his bright beady eyes fixed on Sasha, listened intently to this flow of strange words. But somehow very soon Jocky began to behave in an odd manner. He ran up and down his perch excitedly calling out, “Ship ahoy. Ship ahoy,” and still more urgently “Kiss me quick, Mary. Kiss me quick.” This was accompanied by the constant rattling of his tin dish. For some mysterious reason Jocky had developed a voracious appetite. No sooner did Grandma fill his dish than she would hear Jocky rattling it as hard as he could and demanding to have it refilled. Jocky was being a nuisance and Grandma was perplexed by such unseemly behaviour until one day Grandpa, coming in from his office, enquired if Grandma was aware that outside the gate there was an unsightly heap of sunflower husks. Everything fell into place. Sasha had been filching the seeds from JockyТs cage and finding solace in the activity so often practised in Russia. Jocky was having a hard time trying to keep up with Sasha, whose expertise and speed in attacking the seeds would have put to shame any self-respecting parrot.