The Kirilov Star (10 page)

‘You
are
joking,’ she said, laughing.

‘Perhaps, perhaps not. We could go as tourists. It might be fun.’

‘We?’

‘I couldn’t let you go alone and I wouldn’t mind seeing what the Bolsheviks have done to poor Mother Russia. So, what do you say?’

‘Kolya, it’s impossible. Tourists are escorted everywhere and have to have their itinerary vetted. It would be the
sights of Moscow and Leningrad and then only what they want you to see.’

‘I know, but we could give our minders the slip and take a train to Kirilhor, couldn’t we?’

She stared at him. ‘You mean it, don’t you?’

‘Yes.’

‘But you’d no more be allowed into the country with your background than I would.’

‘I wouldn’t have that background, would I? I can invent something else. I could be a Party faithful. Some of my Paris friends have gone back and they tell me they’ve had no problems. If they invited us to stay we wouldn’t have to stick with the tour.’

She did not ask how he had made contact with them. He could have been meeting people in London. ‘How did they travel?’

‘I’ve no idea.’

‘Oh, you’re impossible,’ she said, throwing a cushion at him.

Darkness had fallen and the evening was turning chilly. They went back inside and made cocoa before going to their separate beds. Nothing more was said about returning to Russia, but Lydia could not sleep for reliving the conversation in her mind. Russia. Kirilhor. Mama and Papa. Beautiful Mama, handsome Papa, both of whom had loved her and tried to protect her. Could they possibly be alive? Would they be grieving for a child they thought they had lost? Had Sir Edward done all he could to find out the truth? Had she been lied to? The questions went round and round in her head, unanswered, unanswerable.

Three weeks later, when she arrived home from work, she was greeted by a jubilant Kolya. ‘I’ve got them,’ he said, waving a sheaf of papers at her and grinning broadly. ‘An invitation from my friend to visit and entry permits to go to Russia. It’s all here.’

‘You’re never going?’ She kicked off her shoes and went into the kitchen in stockinged feet to put a kettle on to make tea.

He followed her. ‘Yes. That’s what you want, isn’t it?’

‘Me?’

‘Yes, you’re coming with me.’

‘Don’t be silly, Kolya. My father wouldn’t hear of me going.’

‘Then don’t tell him. You can write to him after we’ve left.’

‘I couldn’t do that.’

‘Why not? The only way to find out if he has deceived you is to go to Russia and see for yourself.’ He put the
papers on the table and went up to her to take her shoulders in his hands and look earnestly into her face, his blue eyes alight with excitement, unable to comprehend that, for her, going to Russia was something so momentous she found the concept difficult to grasp. And yet something was pulling at her heart strings, something she found hard to deny. ‘You do want to go, don’t you?’

‘Yes, but …’

‘Oh, don’t let us have buts,’ he said. ‘I thought you’d be pleased.’

‘I would be under normal circumstances, but to go secretly …’

‘We aren’t going secretly. Haven’t I just said? It’s all open and above board. Besides, sweetheart, I don’t want to go without you. I need you.’

‘How can I go?’ The kettle whistled. She warmed the pot, put two teaspoons of tea leaves in it and poured the boiling water onto them. ‘I have no papers and I wouldn’t be given any.’

He grinned. ‘You have got papers. I have them here, for Lydia Stoneleigh, to accompany me.’

She stared at him. ‘How could you, Kolya? How could you assume—?’

‘I assumed nothing but I knew you would dither and dither if I asked you first, so I decided to present you with a fait accompli.’

‘But we aren’t married and it wouldn’t be right …’

‘No, but we could be.’

She gave a brittle laugh. ‘Nikolay Andropov, is that a proposal?’

‘Yes.’ He gave her shoulders a little shake. ‘Lidushka, you know I adore you, don’t you? I want to make you
happy. I want to help you put the past to rest so that we can go forward together. We cannot do that if you are dragging ghosts behind you.’

Ghosts. Was that what was troubling her? She began to waver. His enthusiasm was infectious. Obstacles, in his book, were there to be swept away. If you wanted something badly enough it was attainable. How badly did she want to explore her roots? ‘But it would mean leaving my life here behind me.’

‘Not for good. We will come back. Please, Lydia, darling, sweetheart, love of my life, say you will.’

In the face of such an onslaught, how could she hold out? ‘When?’

‘You will? Oh, happy, happy me!’ He pulled her into his arms and smothered her with kisses. He would have gone further than just kissing and began fiddling with the buttons on her blouse, but she pulled away. ‘Hold on!’ she said, laughing. ‘It hasn’t happened yet.’

Reluctantly he desisted. ‘Sorry. I’ll be good until we’re married, but it will have to be quick. I want to go next week.’

‘Kolya, I can’t arrange things that quickly, you know that. I have to tell my parents and Mama will want to do everything properly.’

‘You don’t have to tell them. You are twenty-two and they are not your real parents. I thought the whole idea of going to Russia was to find the couple who gave you birth.’ He laughed suddenly. ‘Let’s get married in Moscow.’

He had a mesmeric quality about him she found impossible to deny, perhaps because what he was offering was something she had subconsciously wanted for years. Not marriage, she had hardly given that a thought, but the
opportunity to go to Russia and find out the truth. Did she want to marry him? He was fun and made her limbs ache when he was kissing her and it was with the greatest difficulty she had managed to hold him off, not only because he was so ardent, but because of her own weakness where he was concerned. And he must love her, if he could be so patient with her. ‘All right,’ she said.

He hugged her. ‘All you have to do is pack. I must go and book seats on the train.’ And he was gone, leaving her with a pot full of tea, wondering what on earth she had done.

By the time they arrived in Moscow, in squally, chilly rain, after more than a week on a succession of trains through Germany and Poland, she was so tired and bemused all she wanted to do was sleep. Her study of pictures and maps did not prepare her for the dreariness of the place, notwithstanding that many of the buildings were new and the new arterial roads extraordinarily wide. Everywhere there were signs of change: roadworks, old buildings being pulled down, new ones built. She saw ragged children,
babushkas
in patterned cotton dresses and shapeless cardigans with the elbows out, butchers standing beside their trucks hacking meat from carcasses with bloody axes, fashionably dressed women and men in smart suits. She could not help noticing the huge contrast between the rich and the poor; neither seemed to notice the existence of the other.

Kolya took her to the Savoy Hotel, which was nothing like the Savoy in London. The accommodation was poor and the food worse. ‘Never mind,’ he said. ‘We’ll only be here a couple of days, just long enough to get married and for me
to meet my friend. Then we’ll make tracks for Crimea.’

‘Aren’t I going to meet him?’

‘No, better not.’ He went to the door and looked along the corridor and, apparently satisfied, returned to her. ‘You have to be careful,’ he said in a low voice. ‘Even the walls have ears.’

‘Kolya, what’s going on?’ She was whispering now. ‘What’s this friend of yours done?’

‘He’s a kulak and Stalin is afraid of the kulaks.’

‘Why? They are only a superior kind of peasant with more money than most. I thought most of them were eliminated when the collective farms were set up.’

‘Not all, some were simply dispossessed and sent to the labour camps and some of those have returned home. My friend belongs to a secret organisation preparing a kulak uprising. It’s very powerful and growing rapidly.’

‘I never heard of them.’

He laughed. ‘They would hardly advertise their existence in
Pravda
, would they?’

‘No, I suppose not. You don’t belong to them, do you?’

He laughed. ‘No. I am a loyal Party man, you saw my application to travel.’

She knew the information on that had been a fabrication. ‘How long will you be gone?’

‘Only an hour or two. You wait here for me.’

She wondered afterwards why she had not asked more questions, but then it would not have made any difference; the die was cast and there was no going back. Behind her she had left a letter to her parents, explaining why she felt she had to go, reaffirming her love for them and promising to write regularly. How had she come to be so unfeeling and ungrateful?

It filled her with remorse every time she thought about it and she wished she had discussed the huge step with them first. But they would only have tried to dissuade her and she hated arguments, especially with those she loved. She could have said something to Alex but he was out of the country, and in any case, he would be bound to side with Sir Edward.

If she had imagined getting married in Moscow would involve a religious ceremony, she should have known better. Most of the cathedrals and churches had either been destroyed or turned into warehouses, and getting married meant they both had to stand in line to book a time at the Civil Registration Bureau, known to the Russians as the Palace of Weddings. Having done that, they returned two days later for the ceremony, which could hardly be called a ceremony and all it did was confirm the legal status of their union. It was far from the wedding of her dreams; instead of a white wedding gown with a long train and a veil held by orange blossom, she was dressed in a light wool skirt and jumper and a raincoat. Instead of friends and family wishing her well there was only a dour registrar. Leaving the building hand in hand with her new husband, she didn’t feel married at all, even though she had his ring on her finger. He was
cock-a-hoop
and bought caviar and cheap champagne which they took to their room.

‘Well, Lydia Andropova,’ he said, when she was more than half tipsy. ‘Tonight is our wedding night and I have been a patient man, don’t you think?’

‘Yes,’ she murmured, consumed with nerves.

‘Then you will not mind if I make up for lost time.’ And
with that he picked her up, deposited her on the bed and fell on her.

The next morning, sore and more than a little disillusioned, she followed him to the railway station and boarded a train for Crimea. Unlike the train in which she and her parents and brother had travelled in 1918, this one did have seats and it was possible to buy food from
babushkas
with baskets of fruit and bread whenever the train stopped at a wayside station. After they changed trains at Kiev, the countryside seemed to be one vast wheat field, the result of Stalin’s collectivisation policy. This was Crimea, this was where her roots were, and as they rattled through the countryside, going further and further south, she began to wonder just what was ahead of her.

By the time she found herself standing beside Kolya at the station at Petrovsk, with their cases at their feet, she was a bundle of nerves. He didn’t seem to notice. ‘Well, here we are,’ he said, picking up the cases and leading the way out of the station building into the street, where he hailed a battered Lada which was apparently a taxicab. The driver did not think it was any part of his duty to help with the luggage, so Kolya loaded it into the boot himself.

Lydia sat in the car looking about her while this was happening, trying to recognise the place. Everything seemed more run-down than her childish memory had painted it. There was a huge new apartment block next to the station, built to house the families sent from other parts of Russia to work the fields. The recent famine had decimated the local population. The church at the end of the street had lost its dome and the windows were boarded up. As they rattled along the main street, she caught sight of the school and that seemed not to have changed.

Kirilhor, when they reached it, shocked her. It looked derelict. The paint was peeling off and half the windows were broken. One end of the building seemed to be falling down. The garden which her mother had been at such pains to cultivate was overgrown. It didn’t seem habitable.

But it was. As they drew to a stop, the door was opened and several small children ran out, screaming and chasing each other. They stopped and stared when they saw the car. Lydia got out, making them stare even harder. She smiled at them. ‘Do you live here?’

They nodded shyly.

‘Where is your mama?’

They pointed to the house. ‘In the kitchen.’

‘Will you fetch her, please?’

Giggling, they ran to obey.

‘This is terrible,’ Kolya said, curling his lip in disgust. ‘I thought we were coming to a considerable
dacha
.’

‘So it was. Once.’

A woman in a long black skirt and a white blouse emerged from the house, wiping her hands on her apron. ‘What can I do for you, comrade?’ she asked, speaking to Kolya.

‘We are looking for anyone who knew Mikhail Mikhailovich Kirilov,’ he said.

‘Never heard of him.’

‘It would be before the Revolution,’ Lydia put in. ‘He was my father.’

‘Still can’t help you. We’ve only been here eighteen months. You had better ask Grigori Stefanovich. He might know, he’s lived here a long time.’

‘Where can I find him?’

‘He’ll be back when he finishes work. Do you want to come in and wait for him?’

Lydia indicated she would and they were led through the house to the kitchen where three women were vying with each other for the use of the cooking stove. ‘This is …’ she started, then turned to Lydia. ‘What’s your name?’

‘Lydia Andropova. This is my husband, Nikolay Nikolayevich Andropov.’

‘And I am Sofia Borisovna.’ She pointed to the other women in turn. ‘That’s Svetlana, Grigori Stefanovich’s wife. That’s Katya Ivanova Safanova, and over there, Olga Denisovna Nahmova. They work night shift in the tractor factory.’ Lydia and Kolya greeted them and shook their hands.

‘Sit down,’ Olga said, fetching out bread and salt, the traditional courtesy offered to guests. ‘Tell us all about yourselves.’

‘We have come from England.’ It was Kolya who answered because Lydia seemed suddenly tongue-tied. She was back in her childhood. Although it was dirtier and more dilapidated, the kitchen had not changed and it was easy to recall playing under the table with Andrei while her mother stitched jewels into their clothes, to feel again the frisson of fear she had felt then and not understood. It was the last place she had seen her mother and father and, in spite of the years between, she felt her eyes filling with tears. She brushed them away impatiently and tried to listen to what Kolya was saying to the women, whose mouths were agape at his story.

‘Lydia was abducted by the Englishman,’ he was saying. ‘She was given no choice and it is only now, when she is old enough and married, that she has been able to come back to search for her parents.’

‘You don’t look as though you have suffered,’ Olga said, looking Lydia up and down and reaching out to finger the material of her coat. ‘You don’t see coats like this hereabouts.’

‘I have been well looked after,’ Lydia said, shrinking from the woman’s exploring fingers.

‘That doesn’t mean she hasn’t suffered,’ Kolya put in. ‘The mental anguish has been unbearable.’

When they had eaten the bread and drunk a glass of tea, Svetlana offered to take them to meet Grigori. They rose and followed her through the house, along a corridor to a separate wing. This was a huge improvement on the rest of the house. All the best of the old furniture had been collected up and brought to furnish what was a comparatively
well-ordered
apartment.