A Countess Below Stairs

The Rabinovitches’ maids got the shingles and the piles and were nursed by Hannah. They were crossed in love and their sobs floated up to the study where Rabinovitch was trying to read his company reports. They dreamt about nesting crows and royal babies and fire engines and told him so while serving breakfast. They walked in their sleep, their aunts fell off bicycles, poltergeists infested their cousins’ cottages - and every disaster, minutely chronicled, reverberated through the rooms and corridors of his house.

But if Proom had come to offer his services … If Proom were to take over the running of The Towers… Leo’s eyes momentarily closed and a series of dizzying vignettes flashed through his mind. Himself sitting at dinner while a totally silent footman, an English footman, inscrutable and powdered, approached with the lebernockerl and sauerkraut. Himself arriving after a day in the city, handing his hat and coat to Proom himself and receiving only a pleasant: ‘I trust you had a successful day, sir?’

But as he looked at Proom, standing respectfully before him in his unaccustomed lounge suit, Leo knew that all this could not - should not, even - be. For Proom belonged to Mersham. Proom was Mersham.

‘You will sit down, Mr Proom?’

‘No, thank you, sir.’ The mere idea had made Proom flinch. He was extremely embarrassed now, wondering why he had come, and putting off the moment when he would have to make his request, he said, ‘May I be permitted to felicitate you on the news of Miss Rabinovitch’s engagement? The event gave great satisfaction below stairs.’

‘Thank you. How are things at Mersham?’ enquired Rabinovitch.

Proom, in pursuit of his plan, made no attempt at polite evasion.

‘Bad, sir,’ he said with finality.

Rabinovitch nodded. ‘You know we shall not be visiting any longer?’

‘I had heard, sir. There will be a number of changes -and none of them for the better.’

Rabinovitch waited. ‘I can help you, perhaps?’

Proom cleared his throat. ‘A long time ago, sir, you said that if I ever needed help, I had only to come to you.’

Leo nodded. ‘I said it and it is true. Never shall I forget what you did for Susie.’

The incident to which Rabinovitch referred had taken place shortly after they came to The Towers. They had all gone in a party to a local race meeting, taking along the twelve-year-old Susie. Susie had patiently watched three races, after which she had drawn a book out of her pocket and settled herself on a folding stool to read. She was deep in her story when a Bugatti coupe, incompetently parked on a slope, began to roll towards her and it was Proom, standing guard over the picnic hampers, who had seen what was happening and pulled her to · safety.

Proom plunged. ‘I need a considerable sum of money, sir. Immediately. And in cash.’

He mentioned it and Rabinovitch’s bushy eyebrows shot up in surprise. The sum was one which would keep a man and his family in comfort for a year.

‘You shall have it, Mr Proom. But I wonder whether you are wise to take it in this way. If you are considering the purchase of a cottage for Mrs Proom, for example, it might be wiser—’

‘It’s not for me, sir,’ said Proom, shocked. ‘I’d never ask it for myself, sir. I can take care of myself; I’ve a bit saved.’

‘For what, then?’ asked Leo, surprised. ‘Or do you not wish to tell me?’

‘It isn’t that I don’t want to, sir. But… well, I have this plan and I don’t really want to involve anyone else. It’s a very…peculiar plan.’

‘You are trying to help someone else?’

‘You could say that.’ There was a pause. ‘Things couldn’t be worse at Mersham, sir. Lady Westerholme, well she’s at her wits end and Mr Rupert - his lordship, I mean - I saw him in hospital when they first brought him over from France and he looked better than he does this morning. And Anna’s gone—’

Leo smiled. ‘You heard what happened at the ball?’

Proom inclined his head. ‘Yes, sir. The account gave great pleasure to all the staff. But it was what was done to Win,’ he continued, ‘that made me think anything was worth trying.’

·Win? Who is Win?’ enquired Leo.

Proom told him the story, while Leo made Central European noises of sympathy.

‘If I tell you what I mean to do, sir,’ said Proom, realizing how unfair it was to ask for help without giving his confidence, ‘I’m afraid you’ll think I’ve taken leave of my senses.’

Carefully, much embarrassed by its theatricality, h explained his plan. When he had finished, Leo looked at him incredulously.

‘Your plan will not succeed, I think; there are too many people who will foil to act as you hope. But if it does, don’t you see, you are destroying also yourself? The financial consequences to Mersham would be disastrous. ‘

‘I know, sir. But… well, I taught Mr Rupert to ride a bicycle. There wasn’t the fuss made of him there was of Lord George, but there’s no doubt which was the finer gentleman. And seeing him like this…’

There was a pause. Then Leo nodded. ‘You shall have the money, Mr Proom. Immediately. And in cash.’

----*

Anna, meanwhile, was fine. She was very well. She had, as she frequently informed Pinny, never felt better in her life.

‘I don’t doubt it, dear,’ said Pinny. ‘All I said was that I wish you’d eat something. You’ve been home twenty-four hours and you haven’t touched a thing.’

Anna gazed obediently at the breakfast table set out in the little parlour, took hold of a piece of toast and conveyed it to her mouth.

‘It doesn’t go down,’ she said in a puzzled voice, exactly as she had done when she was five years old and sickening for quinsy.

Pinny’s heart contracted with pity and helplessness. From Anna’s account of Mersham, which seemed to be inhabited by absolutely everyone except its owner, she had drawn her own conclusions.

‘I have been thinking,’ said Anna, ‘and I believe it would be best if I went to Paris. Kira has said she can find work for me in her salon - selling perfumes and such things. It would,’ she added bleakly, ‘be very interesting.’

Since none of them had the fare to Pimlico, let alone to Paris, Pinny felt free to agree that it did indeed sound a fascinating way of life.

‘Ah, no, my little flea,’ said the countess, patting her daughter’s hand. ‘Paris is so far! Something will come along soon, you see. Dounia has a new plan,’ she continued, referring to her irrepressible sister-in-law, the Princess Chirkovsky. ‘We are to make very much kvass in Miss King’s kitchen - she has permitted it - and sell it to the teashops of the Lyons because nobody in England knows at all about kvass—’

‘Luckily for them,’ said Pinny under her breath.

Anna tried to smile. But added to the ceaseless, searing pain about Rupert, there was another anxiety now about Sergei. If she could not find suitable work soon and help her family, Sergei might well sacrifice himself and marry Larissa Rakov and a loveless marriage seemed to Anna, in her present state, to be a hell like no other.

‘There are always good things happening,’ said the countess, determined to divert her daughter. ‘For example, have you heard about Pupsik?’

‘No?’ This time Anna’s smile was not assumed. The troubles of the Baroness de Wodzka were very close to her heart. ‘Has he…?’

‘No,’ said the countess. ‘He has not. But the daughter of Colonel Terek has married a very rich man with many factories, and of course the Colonel has always had a tendresse for the baroness ever since she came from the Smolny, so he has sent Pupsik to a very expensive clinic in ‘arley Street and they have made Rontgen rays and found absolutely clear the Rastrelli diamond in some part of him that begins, I think, with a “c”.’

‘That’s marvellous! So now they will be able to operate?’

They will be able,’ admitted the countess. ‘But they will not, because the baroness does not permit that Pupsik should suffer and has taken instead a job where she receives the washing parcels in a laundry in, I think, Clapham. But you see how there are always wonderful things.’

‘Yes, Mama,’ said Anna tenderly, getting up to kiss her.

She wandered over to the window. In three hours, Rupert and Muriel would be man and wife. ‘Help me to endure it,’ she prayed. ‘Oh, help me, please.’

‘There are many wonderful things,’ her mother had said. Well, she would have to find them somehow. Even in this wedding, perhaps. And suddenly, unbidden, she did find something. Ollie’s pride and joy as she walked down the aisle in her pink dress, holding up Muriel’s train. For Ollie would be all right now. Anna, slipping upstairs, meaning to say goodbye to Ollie, had seen Muriel go into the child’s room carrying a most beautiful doll. Clearly Muriel was sorry for what she had said and had come to make sure that nothing spoiled the little girl’s joy on her big day.

Lost in reverie, Anna did not at first pay any attention to the huge, black car which had drawn up in front of the house. A car with a pennant on the bonnet and two serious-looking men in dark suits in the back. Men who now descended to allow the chauffeur to hand out a figure wrapped in innumerable shawls… an old woman in a kerchief…

Anna gave a gasp. ‘Mama! Pinny!’

But when they reached her she could not speak and it was the countess, tears running down her cheek, who cried: ‘It’s Niannka! Dear God, it’s Niannka come back!’

----*

The men from the Foreign Office had left, pointing out sternly that while they were delivering this old woman she was in fact stateless, without papers or permits, and that the authorities would be in touch. Nor was then-departure attended by any expressions of gratitude on the part of Old Niannka herself, who clearly felt that in collecting her from the Orient Express and whisking her through customs, they had done no more than their duty. Now she sat on the sofa, emitting the familiar smell of camphor and oiled wool; toothless, emaciated, fierce as an eagle - and in her hoarse, Georgian dialect, told them her story.

She had been arrested on the way to their rendezvous in one of those pointless raids that were so much a feature of the times. For three weeks she and a haphazard collection of unfortunates scooped off the streets had been kept behind barbed wire in a detain-ment camp near Chudvo. From there, some wretches were marched off to permanent imprisonment or death, others, arbitrarily, were released, given back their ragged bundles and sent on their way.

Niannka was released, but when she reached Chudvo station to meet her employers, the Grazinskys had gone.

Since they themselves had hot been certain of their destination, she thought the only thing to do was to go back to the palace in Petersburg and wait for news.

The Grazinsky palace, however, had been taken over by the Metal Plate Workers’ Union - an organization which made it clear that she had better remove herself, and fast. When she wouldn’t leave, they sent for the Red Guard. The first time the soldiers escorted her over the Anchikov Bridge they were friendly, cracking jokes with the old woman. The second time they were not amused. The third time they told her that if she attempted to return to the palace she would be shot.

‘So I went home, Baryna,’ said Niannka now, shrugging aside the ten day journey in an unspeakable train across a war-torn country, the trek across the mountains without food.

Her relatives were not overjoyed to see her, but Niannka commandeered an adjoining cave, stowed her bundles and prepared to wait till the Little Father should be back on his throne and the Grazinskys return.

It was a hard time, she said, but she had done what she could to make herself useful, requisitioning the new babies as soon as they were born and preventing her pig of a brother-in-law from putting dead cats in the shashlik.

Then one day, a party of English with mules and porters had come to the village, leading them was a tall man like a stork who had begun to question her. At first she had laughed so much at his extraordinary Russian that she couldn’t hear what he said, but when she gathered that he knew where the Grazinskys were she stopped laughing very soon.

‘Even so, I was not stupid,’ she said, tapping the side of her nose. ‘ “How do I know you are telling me the truth?” I said to him.’

But then, continued the old woman, he had described the Grazinskys - but most particularly Annoushka -in such amazing detail that her doubts were soon stilled. ‘For he knew everything, doushenka,’ she said, turning to Anna. ‘The way your hair jumps out from behind your ears and the way there are freckles only on the top of your nose and even the place where the chicken made a hole in your thumb, do you remember?’

So as soon as she had gone to the monastery to thank St Nino, she packed her belongings and prepared for the mule journey across the valley to where she could catch a train to England. And here, said Niannka, shaking her head, the Englishman had proved himself very slow in the uptake, not realizing that of course it was necessary for her to set off at once, that there was no question of her waiting till the expedition was ready to return. She had had to sit for several days actually on the bag of tools he was using for his digging to make this clear. But at last he had got the message and taken her down to Batumi and sent many telegrams and put her on the boat to Constantinople…

‘So now I am here,’ she finished, ‘and ready to work.’ Her fierce eyes swept the tiny room, looking for the missing icon. ‘But first, Baryna, I must ask for your forgiveness.’

And with tears springing to her eyes again, she began to apologize. She had not. she said, been able to bring the Crown of Kazan. It was so cumbersome and heavy that it would certainly have attracted suspicion, so she had buried it under some rocks just before she reached her village. She could remember the exact spot and would take them there as soon as the Little Father returned, if only the baryna would not be angry. Everything else, of course, she had brought.

‘Everything else?’ said the countess faintly.

Niannka bent down to the malodorous, mudstained carpetbag which had been lying like a sick animal against her skirts. Then she rose, carried it over to the green baize card table and, watched in a silence that even embraced Miss Pinfold’s sister’s budgerigar, began to unpack. She drew out a pair of woollen stockings, a flannel petticoat, a crucifix … There followed a wooden comb, a rolled up daguerrotype of St Xavier the Bleeding Heart … Then a large, flat piece of felting, stiffened with cardboard, the false bottom of the case. Then crumpled up newspaper, a great deal of it. Once more her hand came out, this time cradling a lake, a dazzling pool of blue …

‘My sapphires,’ cried the countess. ‘Oh, Niannka, my sapphires!’

Niannka nodded and turned back to her rooting.

Then, with a grunt of satisfaction, she let fall on the green baize table the translucent, shimmering snake that was the famous triple row of pearls. Quite impervious to their exclamations and the countess’ tears, she unpacked the Potemkin pendant, a diamond tiara, a butterfly brooch, three pairs of earrings … There followed the Empress Sophia’s pectoral cross and the rubies that had been Anna’s christening present from her godmother. And lastly, laying the stones down respectfully but without undue excitement, as one completing delivery of a useful batch of groceries, what was arguably the most valuable set of jewellery in Christendom: the emerald parure.