The House of Special Purpose

1935

A MOMENT OF GREAT happiness.

Zoya and I are sitting on our bed in the attic room of a lively Brighton boarding-house, enjoying a week’s holiday, and she has just presented me with a new, finely tailored shirt as a birthday present. It’s a rare thing for us to take a trip like this; our days and weeks and months are always filled with work, responsibilities, anxieties about money, so that extravagances such as vacations usually fall beyond our reach. But Zoya proposed that we leave London and take a short break together, somewhere we could enjoy long, lazy lunches in outdoor cafés without having to watch the clock, somewhere we could stroll along a beach hand in hand while children laughed and played on the pebbles and I had said yes without a moment’s hesitation. Yes, let’s do it. Yes, when can we leave?

Our trip coincided with my thirty-sixth birthday and that morning I woke with the realization that I had now spent more years away from my family in Kashin than I had ever spent with them, a thought that suffocated my otherwise cheerful mood with sensations of regret and shame. It was not often that I allowed the faces of my parents and sisters to reappear in my mind – I had been a poor son, there was no doubt of that, and an even worse brother – but they were with me that morning, crying out from some dark and distant chamber of my memory, embittered that I had found such unexpected happiness while they… well, I knew not what had become of them, other than a certainty that they were dead.

‘I bought it in Harrods,’ Zoya said, biting her lip a little in anticipation as I unwrapped the packaging and examined the gift; it was a shirt of unusual quality, the kind of luxury I would never have afforded for myself but was delighted to receive. ‘You do like it, Georgy, don’t you?’

‘Of course I do,’ I replied, reaching over to kiss her. ‘It’s very beautiful. But it’s too much, really.’

‘Please,’ she said, shaking her head, anxious that I would not ruin her own pleasure by listing all the reasons why she should not have spoiled me. ‘I’d never even set foot in Harrods before. It was quite an experience, if I’m honest.’

I laughed when she said this, knowing how she would have planned the expedition weeks in advance, chosen the correct day when she could walk to Knightsbridge, select the gift, bring it home, inspect it, wrap it and hide it before I returned from work. I had never been inside the doors of the great department store myself, although I had walked past it on any number of occasions. I always felt a little apprehensive as I did so, however, sure that I would be turned away by some over-zealous doorman if I attempted to step inside, my inexpensive suit and émigré accent marking me out as one who had no business being on the inside. Zoya, on the other hand, was not intimidated by splendour; her avoidance of such stores stemmed from nothing other than common sense, for she would never have wasted her time longing for things that she couldn’t have.

‘Now my present, my present!’ shouted Arina, toddling towards me with her arms outstretched, a small gift in her hands, also beautifully wrapped. She was grinning wildly but still uncertain on her legs, having only recently grown accustomed to standing and walking without assistance, delighted by her newly discovered independence. She hated it when we came too close, however, preferring the freedom to run where she wanted, regardless of danger. Our daughter did not want any safety nets.

‘Another present!’ I cried, sweeping her up in my arms and lifting her off the ground, her legs flying out in the air as she rejected the embrace and pushed me away, demanding to be returned to the floor immediately. ‘What a lucky man I am! But what could it be?’

I unwrapped the package slowly and removed the gift from the tissue paper, staring at it for a moment, unsure what it was that I was looking at, and then recognizing it an instant later and drawing a deep breath of surprise, truly astonished by what I was holding in my hands. I looked across at Zoya and she smiled, a little nervously I thought, as if she wasn’t quite sure how I might react to such a reminder of my past. Lost for words and worried that I might betray my emotions with some ill-chosen phrase, I said nothing for now but stepped over to the window instead, turning my face away from my family as I allowed the sunlight to illuminate this treasure.

My daughter had given me a snow globe, its base no bigger than the palm of my hand, a white plastic dome with a glass hemisphere constructed on top. At its centre stood an awkward model of the Winter Palace in St Petersburg, its frontage a dark blue where it should have been pale green, the roof statues nowhere to be seen, the Alexander Column missing from the square in front; but despite its deficiencies, the building was unmistakable to my eyes. Indeed, it would have been immediately recognizable to anyone who had ever lived or worked within its gilded walls. I held my breath as I stared at it, as if worried that to breathe on it might cause its collapse, and narrowed my eyes to examine the small white grooves that represented the windows of the three-floored palace.

And the memories flooded back.

I pictured the Tsarevich, Alexei, sprinting away from the colonnades, running along the edges of the quadrangle while a member of the Leib Guard gave chase, terrified that the boy might fall and injure himself.

I saw his father in the first-floor study, consulting with his generals and Prime Minister, his beard flecked with grey, his bloodshot eyes betraying their anxiety at the dispiriting news emerging from the Front.

In a room above, I imagined the Tsaritsa kneeling at her prie-dieu, the starets standing before her, muttering some dark incantation beneath his breath as she prostrated herself before him, not like an Empress at all, but like a common moujik.

And then, emerging from a door of the inner courtyard, a young man, a peasant from Kashin, lighting a cigarette as he stood in the cold air, rejecting the company of a fellow guard, for he wanted to be alone with his thoughts, to consider how he could possibly stifle the overwhelming love that he was feeling for one who was entirely beyond his reach, a liaison he knew to be utterly impossible.

I shook the globe and the collection of snowflakes which had been resting peacefully on its base rose upwards in the water, floating gently towards the roof of the palace before descending slowly, and the characters in my memory emerged from their hidden places and looked towards the skies, their hands outstretched, smiling at each other, together once again, wishing that these moments might never end and the future might never come.

I turned to Zoya, moved by the gift which had, of course, been purchased by her and not by our one-year-old daughter. ‘It’s hard to believe,’ I said, my voice betraying a sudden rush of emotion.

‘I found it in a jewellery store on the Strand,’ she said, stepping over to the window too and laying her head gently on my shoulder as I held the globe out between us. The snow continued to fall; the palace continued to stand; the family continued to breathe. ‘There was a whole shelf of them,’ she told me. ‘Different places in the world, of course. The Coliseum. The Tower of London. The Eiffel Tower.’ She hesitated for a moment before looking up at me again. ‘But I didn’t choose it, Georgy, I swear it. I let Arina look at all of them and she picked the one she liked the best. She picked St Petersburg.’

I stared at her in surprise and couldn’t help but smile. ‘It’s just so unexpected,’ I said, shaking my head. ‘It’s been…’ I thought about it for a moment and calculated the time in my head. ‘It’s been almost twenty years, can you believe that? I was so young then. Just a boy.’

‘But you’re still young, Georgy,’ she said with a laugh, running her hand through my hair. It was such a delight to see her so happy. Those were joyous years, with our little Arina, the most unexpected gift of all, by our sides. ‘And anyway, I’m growing old alongside you,’ she added. ‘I’ll be getting wrinkles soon. Turning into an old woman. What will you think of me then?’

‘What I have always thought of you,’ I replied, kissing her, putting my arms around her as I held on to the globe carefully before we were separated by our daughter, who was pushing her way between us, determined to be part of our happy number.

‘Father,’ she said, sounding so serious now, the way she always did when she had a question she considered to be of the highest importance. ‘Whose present is the best, mine or Mother’s?’

‘I like them both equally,’ I said, refusing to choose one over the other. ‘And I love you both equally too,’ I added, picking her up and kissing her, holding her tight, wrapping her closely in my embrace, refusing to let her go.

When we first came to London, we rented a small flat in Holborn, where we had the misfortune of living next door to a tedious, middle-aged civil servant who leered at Zoya whenever he passed her on the street but glared at me as if I was beneath his contempt. On the few occasions that I attempted conversation with him, he behaved in an abrupt fashion, as if my accent was enough to convince him that I was unworthy of his time.

‘Can’t you do something about her crying?’ he shouted one morning as I closed our front door behind me, blocking my way as I tried to ascend the steps to the street.

‘Good morning, Mr Nevin,’ I replied, determined to be polite in the face of his rudeness.

‘Yes, yes,’ he said quickly. ‘That child of yours. She keeps me awake at nights. It’s ridiculous. When are you going to do something about it?’

‘I’m sorry,’ I said, not wishing to antagonize him any further, for his cheeks were crimson with rage and he had black circles beneath his eyes from sleep deprivation. ‘But she is only a few weeks old. And,’ I added, laughing a little, hoping that this might appeal to his humanity, ‘we are new at this, after all. We’re trying our best.’

‘Well, your best isn’t good enough, Mr Jackson,’ he snapped, poking a gnarly finger at me that, fortunately for him, did not make contact with my chest; I was tired, too, and my patience might have snapped if he had touched me. ‘A man needs his sleep, I’ve lived here for—’

‘It’s Jachmenev,’ I said quietly, feeling my own anger beginning to build now.

‘What’s that?’

‘My name,’ I said. ‘It’s not Mr Jackson, it’s Mr Jachmenev. But you may call me Georgy Daniilovich, if you like. We are neighbours, after all.’

He remained silent for a moment, staring at me as if he wasn’t sure if I was deliberately trying to provoke him or not, before throwing his hands in the air and marching off, leaving a few jingoistic comments flying through the air to remember him by.

It was an irritation, of course – the man was a boor, but neither Zoya nor I had any desire to fall out with our neighbours. However, the matter was resolved happily a few months later when he moved out in a fit of pique and his flat was taken over by a widow in her mid-forties, Rachel Anderson. And rather than being irritated by our daughter, she seemed utterly charmed by her, a reaction which naturally endeared her to a pair of proud parents, and we quickly became friends.

She regularly volunteered to babysit for us, and as our friendship grew, so did our trust in her, and we took her up on her offer. She was alone and lonely, that was easy to see, and enjoyed playing grandmother to Arina, a surrogate perhaps for the children and grandchildren that she had been denied.

‘A stroke of luck for us that Rachel likes babies,’ I said to Zoya as we strolled towards the Holborn Empire one evening, enjoying the romance of being alone again, if only for a few hours. ‘I can’t imagine leaving Arina in the care of our previous neighbour, can you?’

‘Definitely not,’ said Zoya, whose initial reluctance to spend an entire evening away from home had dissipated almost immediately when we had left the flat. ‘Still, you are sure you want to go to the pictures, aren’t you?’

‘We can go somewhere else if you want,’ I replied, for all that mattered to me was that we would spend some time together. When I had seen what was playing at the Empire I had made the suggestion without fully thinking it through, immediately realizing that it was either the best idea I had ever had, or the worst.

‘No, no,’ she said, shaking her head. ‘I’m looking forward to it. I think. Aren’t you?’

‘Yes,’ I replied eagerly. I will make a confession: I had been to the cinema only three times before that night, but each time it was to see Greta Garbo. The first occasion had been five years earlier, when I had wandered alone into the Empire, not knowing what was playing, and watched the actress as Anna Christie, a former prostitute trying to improve her lot in life. I saw her again two years later, playing Grusinskaya, the fading ballerina of Grand Hotel, which charmed me less. But she won me over again the following year as the Swedish queen, Christina, and now I was back for a fourth visit, with Zoya by my side, to see her play a part close to my heart, Anna Karenina.

Those two simple words were enough to transport me back twenty years. Looking at them printed in large black letters above the cinema’s facade, I could feel the ache in my bones still from Count Charnetsky’s endless training sessions and my own disorientation at trying to find my way back to my room in a palace which was still unfamiliar to me.

He’s the one who was shot in the shoulder, isn’t he? Tatiana had asked, looking across at me, welcoming this brief respite from her lessons.

No, I heard it was someone terribly handsome who saved Cousin Nicholas’s life, replied Marie, shaking her head.

It is him, said Anastasia quietly, meeting my eyes.

The cinema was full that night, the air already filled with cigarette smoke, the theatre noisy with the chatter of courting couples and single romantics, but we found two seats together on the balcony and settled back in contentment as the lights faded and the buzz of conversation began to diminish. A newsreel was shown first and we saw images of a hurricane hitting the coast of Florida, destroying everything in its path. A man called Howard Hughes, we were told, had just set a new airspeed record of 352 miles per hour, while America’s president, Mr Roosevelt, was shown at the Black Canyon, between the states of Arizona and Nevada, preparing to open the Hoover Dam. The newsreel ended with a five-minute film of the German chancellor, Herr Hitler, parading through the streets of Nuremberg, inspecting the army and delivering speeches at rallies attended by tens of thousands of German citizens. The audience gasped at the devastation of the hurricane, cheered at the antics of Mr Hughes, talked loudly over the oration of Mr Roosevelt, but sat in rapt silence as the chancellor addressed the masses, shouting at them, screaming at them, pleading, imploring, insisting, demanding, as if he was only too aware that his speech would be heard even five hundred miles away in the Holborn Empire and he wanted to hypnotize every member of the audience with his ferocious battle cries, despite the fact that they could not understand a single word he said.

Zoya and I understood enough German, however, to grasp the essence of what Hitler was saying. And we sat a little closer to each other as he roared, but said nothing.

When he finally left the screen, the film began and the train carrying Anna and the Countess Vronskaya pulled in at the Moscow station, emitting huge clouds of smoke which parted gradually to reveal Garbo – Anna Karenina – her large, clear eyes perfectly centred on the screen, the dark mink of her hat and coat in stark contrast to her simple, flowing curls.

‘The way she looked!’ I enthused to Zoya afterwards, smitten by the performance as we walked home. ‘The passion in her eyes! And Vronsky’s eyes too, for that matter. They didn’t even need to speak a word, they just looked at each other and were overwhelmed by their passions.’

‘You thought that was love?’ she asked quietly. ‘I saw something else.’

‘What?’

‘Fear.’

‘Fear?’ I repeated, staring at her in surprise. ‘But they don’t fear each other at all. They are meant for each other. They know it from the very first moment they meet.’

‘But their expressions, Georgy,’ she said, her voice rising a little in frustration at my simple view of the world. ‘Oh, they’re only actors, I know, but didn’t you see it? To me it felt as if they looked at each other in absolute horror, as if they knew that they couldn’t possibly control the chain of events set in place by that simple, inevitable meeting. The lives they had lived until that moment had come to an end. And then it didn’t matter what happened next, their destinies were already decided.’

‘You have a very bleak way of looking at things, Zoya,’ I said, not entirely pleased by her reading of the scene.

‘What was it that Vronsky said to Anna later on?’ she asked, ignoring my remark. ‘You and I are doomed… doomed to unimaginable despair. Or bliss… unimaginable bliss.’

‘I don’t remember that line from the novel,’ I remarked.

‘Don’t you? Perhaps it’s not there. It’s been so many years since I read it. Still, I feel that I know this woman.’

‘But you’re nothing alike,’ I said, laughing.

‘Aren’t we?’

‘Anna does not love Karenin,’ I pointed out. ‘But you do love me.’

‘Of course I do,’ she replied quickly. ‘I didn’t mean that.’

‘And you would never commit an infidelity, as Anna does.’

‘No,’ she said, shaking her head. ‘But her sadness, Georgy. Her realization when she steps off the train that her life is already over, it’s only a matter of enduring the time ahead until she reaches the end… that doesn’t seem familiar to you at all?’

I stopped in the street, turning to her with a frown clouding my face. I couldn’t decide how to respond to this. I needed time to consider what she had said; time to understand what it was that she was trying to tell me.

‘It doesn’t matter anyway,’ she said finally, turning around now and smiling. ‘Look, Georgy, we’re home.’

Inside, we found that Arina was already asleep, and Rachel assured us that our daughter was quite simply the most wonderful child that she had ever had the good fortune to spend an evening with, something which we already knew, but delighted in hearing anyway.

‘I haven’t been to the picture house in years,’ she said as she put her coat on for the short walk next door. ‘My Albert, he took me there all the time when we were courting. We saw all sorts of things, we did. Charlie Chaplin, he was my favourite, though. You like his films, do you, loves?’

‘We’ve never seen him,’ I admitted. ‘We know of him, of course, but—’

‘Never seen a Charlie Chaplin?’ she asked, outraged. ‘You want to keep an eye out for the next one. I’ll babysit again for you then, happily. He’s the best, is old Charlie. I knew him well when he was a boy, you see. Grew up in Walworth, didn’t he? Right round the corner from me. Can you believe it? I used to see him running around as a lad, all short trousers and parlour tricks, never giving anyone a moment’s peace. I lived round on Sandford Row, and my Albert, he were from Faraday Gardens. Everyone knew each other back then and old Charlie, well he were famous even as a lad for his nonsense. Made good, though, didn’t he? Look at him now. A millionaire over in America with all the nobs at his beck and call. It’s hard to believe it, I swear it is. Who was in that film you saw tonight, then? Never seen a Charlie Chaplin? I never heard the like of it!’

‘Greta Garbo,’ said Zoya with a smile. ‘Georgy’s half in love with her, didn’t you know it?’

‘With Greta Garbo?’ asked Rachel, pulling a face that suggested she’d just noticed an unpleasant odour. ‘Oh, I can’t see it myself. She has a terrible manly quality, I’ve always thought.’

‘I am not “half in love with her” at all,’ I said, blushing at the suggestion. ‘Really, Zoya, why would you say such a thing?’

‘Look at him, Mrs Anderson,’ she replied, laughing brightly. ‘He’s embarrassed.’

‘He’s gone redder than a prize tomato,’ she said, laughing too, and I stood there, looking away from them and frowning in my humiliation.

‘A lot of nonsense,’ I said, marching over to my armchair and sitting down, pretending to read the newspaper.

‘Well, what was it like, anyway?’ asked Rachel, looking over at my wife. ‘This Greta Garbo film of yours. Any good?’

‘It reminded me of home,’ said Zoya quietly, in a tone that made me glance across at her, examining the wistful expression on her face.

‘And that’s a good thing, is it?’ asked Rachel.

Zoya smiled, before nodding and letting a great sigh escape her lips. ‘Oh yes, Mrs Anderson,’ she said. ‘That’s a good thing. A very good thing indeed.’

Before Arina was born, there had been some discussion at the factory where Zoya was employed as a sewing machinist that she was going to be promoted to the position of supervisor. The hours would have been no easier, of course – long working days from eight o’clock in the morning until half past six at night, with only a half-hour break at lunchtime – but the pay would have been much improved, and rather than sitting at her machine throughout the day, she would have had the freedom to move around the factory floor.

That possibility came to an end, however, when she became pregnant.

We told no one our news for almost four months – we had suffered too many losses by that point in our lives to believe that we would ever become parents – but eventually, she started to show and our doctor reassured us that yes, on this occasion the pregnancy had taken and there was no reason to believe that we would suffer another miscarriage. Almost immediately, Zoya made the decision not to return to the factory after the birth, but to devote her time instead to bringing up our daughter, a moot point anyway, given that her employers did not allow young mothers to return to work until their children were of school-going age. And while this put a greater strain on our finances, which were now reduced to my single salary, we had saved our money carefully over the previous few years and, in recognition of my new responsibilities, Mr Trevors granted me a small pay rise immediately following Arina’s birth.

It was a surprise, therefore, when I returned home one evening to find a large sewing machine standing in the corner of our living room, its heavy metal casing glaring defiantly at me as I walked through the door, and my wife clearing a space to the right of it for a small occasional table on which to rest her fabric, needles and pins. Arina was watching intently from her chair, her eyes wide, captivated by this unusual activity, but she clapped her hands together joyfully when she saw me and pointed towards the machine, shouting loudly in delight.

‘Hello there,’ I said, divesting myself of my hat and coat as Zoya turned to face me with a smile. ‘What’s going on here?’

‘You’re not going to believe it,’ she replied, kissing me on the cheek and sounding thrilled by whatever development had taken place during the day, her tone betraying a certain anxiety at the same time that I would share her happiness. ‘I was making Arina’s breakfast this morning when there was a knock on the door. And when I looked through the window, I couldn’t believe my eyes. It was Mrs Stevens.’

Zoya tended to grow nervous whenever there was an unexpected knock on the front door. We had few friends and it was unusual for any of them to call around unannounced, so any disturbance to our typical routine caused my wife to feel uneasy, as if something terrible was about to take place. Rather than open the door immediately, she always walked towards the window and pulled the net curtain a little to the side to get a better view of who had come calling, for it was possible from that position to see the back of our visitor, while he or she remained unaware that they were being observed. It was a habit that never left her. She never felt safe, that was the problem. She always believed that some day, somehow, someone would find her. That they would find all of us.

‘Mrs Stevens?’ I asked, raising an eyebrow. ‘From Newsom’s?’

‘Yes, she took me completely by surprise. I thought that perhaps there was some discrepancy in my final pay packet and she had been sent around to fix it, but no, it was nothing like that. At first she said that she wanted to stop by to see how I was and how Arina was, which of course I didn’t believe for a minute. And then, after having a cup of tea and making me feel entirely uncomfortable in my own home, she finally said that they are suffering a shortage of machinists at the factory just now, there aren’t enough to fill all their orders anyway, and they wondered whether I would be interested in doing some work from home.’

‘I see,’ I replied, nodding as I looked across at the machine, aware how this particular interview was certain to end. ‘And you said yes, of course.’

‘Well, I didn’t see any reason why not. They’re offering very generous wages. And a man from Newsom’s will deliver everything I need once a week and collect my work at the same time, so I don’t need to go anywhere near the factory. It’ll help us to have more money coming in, won’t it?’

‘Yes, of course,’ I said, considering it. ‘Although I’d like to think I could take care of all three of us.’

‘Oh, I know you can, Georgy. I only meant—’

‘She must have been sure of your response if she brought the machine with her too.’

Zoya stared at me in bewilderment for a moment, before bursting out laughing. ‘Oh Georgy,’ she said, shaking her head, ‘you don’t think Mrs Stevens carried it here all the way from the factory, do you? Why, I could barely drag it across the floor. No, one of the workmen came with it this afternoon, after I had agreed. He left only a short while ago.’

Perhaps it was wrong of me, but I wasn’t entirely happy with the arrangement. It seemed to me that our home was our home, it was not a place that should be turned into a sweatshop, and that these new arrangements had been made without my even being consulted. But at the same time I could see how happy Zoya was, that this work would provide a break from playing with Arina all day long, and realized that it would be churlish of me to stand in her way.

‘It’s all right, Georgy, isn’t it?’ she asked me then, sensing my ambivalent feelings on the subject. ‘You don’t mind?’

‘No, no,’ I replied quickly. ‘If it makes you happy.’

‘It does,’ she said assertively. ‘I feel flattered that they even thought of me. And besides, I like earning my own money. I promise, there will be no work in the evenings. You won’t have to put up with the noise of the machine when you get home from the library. And if I buy some fabric of my own, then I can make clothes for Arina too, which will be a great bonus.’

I smiled and said that I thought it was a very fine idea, and then, to my surprise, Zoya spent the rest of the evening working on the machine, examining the various patterns which had been sent with it for her to begin before the man from Newsom’s returned the following week. I watched as she concentrated on her task, her eyes narrowing a little as she followed a line of stitching along a piece of fine, pale cotton, snipping off the edge of the thread and lifting the arm of the machine before tying off the knot. At home, this would have been considered a menial job, a task for moujiks, but here in London, almost two thousand miles and twenty years away from St Petersburg, it was a task which gave my wife pleasure. And for that, if nothing else, I was grateful.

When we did have an evening visitor, it was usually Rachel Anderson, who knocked on our door once or twice a week and spent an hour in our company in order to relieve her loneliness. We both enjoyed her visits, for she was a kind soul who came as much to play with Arina – who adored her – as she did to see us, a fact which inevitably endeared her to Zoya and me.

That year, as Christmas approached, we all sat together in our front parlour listening to a concert on the wireless. Arina was asleep in my arms, her tiny mouth half open, her eyelids flickering slightly as she dreamed, and I felt an almost overwhelming sensation of well-being at this happy home life which had been gifted to me. Zoya was sitting next to me, her head resting against a cushion as we listened to Tchaikovsky’s Fourth Symphony. Our fingers were interlaced and I could see that she was lost in the music and the memories it conjured up for her. Glancing across at Rachel, I caught her gaze in the candlelight, and although she was smiling at our small family, her expression was one of almost unbearable sorrow.

‘Rachel,’ I asked, concerned for her, ‘are you feeling all right?’

‘I’m fine,’ she reassured me, shaking her head and attempting a smile. ‘Absolutely fine.’

‘You don’t look fine. You look as if you’re about to burst into tears.’

‘Do I?’ she asked, raising her eyes for a moment as if to stem any sudden tide. ‘Well, perhaps I do feel a little emotional.’

‘Tchaikovsky can provoke strong sensations,’ I said, hoping that I had not embarrassed her. ‘When I listen to this movement, my head is filled with recollections of old Russian folk songs. I can’t help but feel nostalgic for it.’

‘It’s not the music,’ she replied quietly. ‘It was the three of you.’

‘What about us?’

She laughed and looked away. ‘I’m just being an old softie, that’s all. You just seem so content, all of you, sitting there like that, all snug in each other’s company. It puts me in mind of my Albert. It makes me think of what might have been.’ She hesitated, before offering an apologetic shrug. ‘It would have been his birthday today, you see. His fortieth birthday. We most likely would have been enjoying a right knees-up tonight, had things worked out differently.’

‘Rachel, you should have said,’ said Zoya, standing up and going over to sit next to her, placing an arm around her shoulder and kissing her cheek. Her great empathy always came to the fore at moments like this, when she saw another soul in torment; it was one of the things I loved about her. ‘I expect you think about him a lot.’

‘Yes, every day,’ she admitted. ‘Even though it’s been more than twenty years since he died. They buried him in France, did I ever tell you that? I used to think that made it worse, as I couldn’t just stroll down to see him and put flowers on his grave like anyone else. There’ve been days when I’ve wanted nothing more than to fill a little flask of tea and stroll down to sit where I knew he was near by, but I can’t do that. Not here. Not in London.’

‘Haven’t you ever gone over?’ I asked her. ‘It’s not a long trip from Dover.’

‘I’ve been eight times, luvvie,’ she said with a smile. ‘I might go again in a year or so if I can afford the crossing. He’s buried in Ypres, in a cemetery called Prowse Point. Rows and rows of neat white tombstones, all lined up together, all covering the bodies of the dead boys. The whole place is so immaculately kept. It’s almost as if they’re trying to pretend there’s something, I don’t know, clean about the way they died. When there isn’t. The purity of that place is a lie. That’s why I’ve always wished that he was here, in some graveyard with overgrown trees and hedgerows and a few field mice running through it. Somewhere more honest.’

‘He was a foot soldier?’ I asked. ‘An officer?’

‘Oh no,’ she said, shaking her head. ‘No, Georgy, he wasn’t grand enough to be an officer. Wouldn’t have wanted it either. He was with the Somerset Light Infantry. Just one of the boys – nothing special, I suppose. Except to me. He died at the end of 1914, quite early on, really. He hardly got to see any action at all. Sometimes I think that was a blessing,’ she added, considering it. ‘I’ve always felt sorry for those poor boys who died in ’17 or ’18. The ones who spent the last few years of their lives fighting and suffering and witnessing God only knows what horrors. At least my Albert… at least he didn’t have to go through any of that. He went to his reward quite early on.’

‘But you still miss him,’ said Zoya quietly, taking Rachel’s hand in her own, and the older woman nodded and gave a deep sigh, trying to hold back the tears.

‘I do, luvvie,’ she said. ‘I miss him every day. I think of all that we might have been together, you see. All the things we might have done. Sometimes it makes me terrible sad, and other times, it makes me so angry with the world that I could scream. Those bloody politicians. And God. And the war-mongers – Asquith and the Kaiser and the Tsar, all of them buggers.’ Zoya bristled a little at the reference, but made no comment. ‘I hate them for taking him from me, you see. A lad like him. A young lad. With everything to live for. But who am I talking to, after all? You must have suffered during the war, too. You had to leave your homeland. I can’t even imagine what that was like.’

‘They weren’t easy days for anyone,’ I said hesitantly, unsure whether this was a safe subject for conversation.

‘I lost my entire family in the war,’ said Zoya, surprising me that she should talk of her past at all. ‘All of them.’

‘Oh, luvvie,’ said Rachel in surprise, leaning forward and rubbing her hands now. ‘I didn’t know that. I always thought that maybe you’d just left them behind you in Russia. You never speak of them, I mean. And there’s me, bringing up all those bad memories for you.’

‘That is what wars do,’ I said, anxious to change the subject. ‘They take our loved ones from us, separate families, create untold misery. And for what? It’s hard to see.’

‘It’s coming back, you know,’ she said then, the seriousness of her tone surprising me.

‘Coming back?’ I asked.

‘War. Can’t you feel it? I can. I can almost smell it.’

I shook my head. ‘I don’t think so,’ I said. ‘Europe is… stirring, that’s for sure. There are troubles and enmities, but I don’t believe there will be another war. Not in our lifetime. No one wants to go through what we all went through last time.’

‘Don’t you think it’s ironic,’ she replied, considering this, ‘that all those boys conceived in a great outpouring of love and lust when the Great War came to an end will be just the right age to fight when the next one begins? It’s almost as if God created them for no other reason than to fight and die. To stand before the rifles and swallow the bullets that fly towards them. It’s a joke, really.’

‘But there won’t be a war,’ insisted Zoya, interrupting her. ‘As Georgy says—’

‘Such a waste,’ Rachel said with a sigh, standing up and reaching for her coat. ‘Such a terrible waste. And I don’t mean to contradict you, Georgy, not in your own home, but you’re wrong, I’m afraid. It’s coming all right. It’ll be here before too long. Just wait. You’ll see.’