Katerina's Secret (17 page)

As they walked to the bench, Katerina's arm encircled his warmly, and she said, ‘You're very sweet to me, Edward.'

‘I'm worried about you,' he said as they sat down.

‘No, no, I'm quite all right,' she said. ‘I'd simply like to sit here with you for a little while. Look – people on the beach.' She smiled. ‘The weather is still so kind.'

He saw three people down below. Two were entering the sea, and the third stood watching them.

‘It must be very kind,' he said.

‘Are they from your hotel?' she asked.

‘Probably, but from this distance I'm not sure.'

‘You can use these, if you like.' Katerina reached under the bench and drew out a case containing binoculars. She smiled again. ‘I use them so that I can feel in contact with people. Is it rather an intrusion on their privacy?'

‘Not if they're behaving themselves.'

She laughed softly, watching him as he took the binoculars out and trained them on the figures far below. He picked out the swimmers. Rosamund and Franz Brecht. She was Junoesque in her bathing costume and he was strong-chested and brown. On the beach, watching them and calling out to them, was Mademoiselle Dupont, her green dress lightly fluttering.

Edward lowered the glasses and looked around. He turned. The high wall hid the villa and the climbing heights behind it.

‘Excuse me a moment,' he said and went back to the open gate. From just inside it he used the binoculars to observe the slopes covered with pines and shrubs. He fanned the glasses. There was no one to be seen. If someone had already had a good look at Katerina, a further study of her was unnecessary.

‘What have you been doing?' she asked when he returned to her.

‘Taking a look at the view from your garden.'

‘But why?' she asked.

‘Just as a matter of interest.'

‘You are becoming curious?'

‘Yes, Katerina, I am.'

‘You must not worry about me.' Katerina
gazed at the shimmering sea. ‘Edward, why is it you've never married?'

‘Oh, circumstances, I suppose. And I'd make a very unsatisfactory husband, you know, always having to sit down when the situation demanded activity.'

‘You can't expect me to agree with that,' she said. ‘I'm sure there are many women who would never consider you unsatisfactory. What does it matter that you can't run or hurry about? Edward, you can't really think that if you proposed to a woman who loved you, she would only say yes on your assurance that you could run up a mountain.'

‘But a few little hills have to be climbed in a marriage, don't they?'

‘Not by yourself,' said Katerina. ‘The two of you would climb them together. Has there been no one you would like to have married?'

‘During the war there was my fiancée, Emily,' said Edward reminiscently. ‘I wrote to her from hospital some months after I'd been gassed. We agreed to break the engagement. It was the fairest thing for both.'

‘I refuse to believe that Emily thought that.'

‘She protested quite vigorously, true,' said Edward, ‘but it would have been asking too much of her to be more of a nurse than a wife.'

‘That's ridiculous,' said Katerina. ‘Look at you – you are out, you drive a car, you play croquet, you take little walks – no, no, you weren't fair at all to her, or yourself.'

‘Emily was a very active young lady, pursuing healthy outdoor interests.'

‘Perhaps, if you had let her decide for herself, she would have surprised you,' said Katerina.

Edward thought how perfect her English was. It contained not the slightest accent. There were never any faults in either pronunciation or grammar. If there was anything particularly her own about it, it was the absence of colloquialisms or fashionable slang. She did not use words or phrases like spiffing, jolly good, old thing, cheerio, ghastly, darling or flapper, all currently in vogue. Hers was a very correct, even dated, English. She must either have lived among perfect linguists or been carefully taught by – an English governess?

‘Emily is very happily married,' he said, ‘to a small landowner.'

‘A small landowner?' said Katerina. ‘A little man, Edward?'

He laughed.

‘No, Katerina, a quite tall man with a modest amount of land.'

‘Oh, a kulak,' she said.

‘A kulak?'

‘Yes, that's—' Katerina bit her lip. ‘Yes,' she said lightly, ‘in my country an owner of a small amount of land is called a kulak.'

‘In Bulgaria?'

‘Bulgaria does have its own language,' she said, and Edward made a mental note of the fact that that answer did not necessarily mean yes. ‘Edward, do you have regrets that you let Emily marry someone else?'

‘I think I was a little sorry for myself at the time,' he said, ‘but no, I can't say I feel regrets now. I suppose that means we weren't in-consolable soulmates. I see her now and again, and we're good friends.'

‘Edward, is it bad sometimes, your chest and your breathing?' she asked.

‘Sometimes.' He felt singularly well at the moment, and also peaceful and relaxed. He was aware of the tranquil effect she had on him. In her company, one asked for no more than to look at her and listen to her. Her grey eyes reflected wandering and wondering thoughts now, as if her mind was gently chasing things unknown. ‘That's why I spend the winters at the Corniche,' he said. ‘I'm lucky that I'm able to.'

‘And you're an historian, you're writing about the war?' she said.

‘I'm one of the team of British soldiers and civilians engaged in the task.'

‘Isn't it wonderful, then, that you can do that, that you don't have to live in a hospital but are able to do something so interesting and satisfying?'

‘Yes, I'm a lot more fortunate than others, Katerina.'

‘Celeste, however, is very concerned that you live alone, that you have no wife,' said Katerina.

‘I think she's been looking for someone suitable,' said Edward. ‘And why do you have no one to care for you, except your doctor?'

She turned her eyes to the sunlit figures down on the beach.

‘Dr Kandor would tell you why,' she said quietly.

‘He'd talk about your weak heart? You're to have no husband to give you love and care? Who has decided that for you?'

‘You must not ask such questions,' she said.

‘Then may I at least ask what happened to the Count of Varna? I presume he exists, or did exist, that you were married—'

‘I am not married. I am a countess in my
own right.' Katerina looked up as the little bell rang on the terrace. ‘There, tea is ready. Please don't frown, Edward. I have no dearer friend than you. It's a happiness to me, to have you visit me so often. So come, let's see what Anna has brought out for our tea.'

Over tea she was very bright again, and the time ran away from them. Dr Kandor did not return until Edward was on his feet, about to say goodbye to Katerina for the time being. He took the opportunity to express his concern at what had happened yesterday, and to offer the opinion that the man in the other car was drunk. He thanked Edward for his clear-headed action that had reduced the seriousness of the incident to merely something unpleasant. It was he who saw Edward out through the green gate, saying a cordial goodbye to him.

Katerina smiled sadly at him when he returned to the terrace.

‘Boris Sergeyovich, you've spent the day making arrangements to hasten my separation from my friends?'

‘Nothing has happened during my absence?' enquired Dr Kandor. ‘Sandro and the dog took good care of you?'

‘Nothing happened,' said Katerina.

‘I've made enquiries,' said the doctor, ‘and
considered certain avenues. America, I feel, would be best.'

‘America? America?' Despair showed. ‘No. I refuse. I should never see my friends again.'

‘It's a fact of our present existence that neither of us can have permanent friends,' he said. ‘I shall try to arrange the acquisition of a property in one of the New England states. There, I'm told, properties can be found which would be very suitable, with spacious grounds to ensure the privacy we need.'

‘Such privacy will mean something very close to solitary confinement,' said Katerina bitterly.

‘Anna and Sandro will be there. So will I. We shall enjoy our pleasant times, our music and our chess.'

‘Music and chess? That is all I'm to have?'

‘You'll take the treasures you hold dear, Katerina Pyotrovna,' he said.

‘A few trinkets, a few letters, some other little things – must it be America? That's so far away, so very far.'

‘Distance is advisable at the moment. We shall come back one day, one better day.'

‘Oh, Boris Sergeyovich, for us there will never be a better day, there will never be a restoration,' said Katerina sadly.

‘We shall return,' he insisted.

‘Yes, when I'm old and grey and withered, when I've lived seventy years without knowing a single lover, or even a kiss – yes, even a kiss. Do you realize that never, not once in all my life, has a man kissed me?'

Dr Kandor regarded her sombrely.

‘Katerina Pyotrovna, you've always had a fine sense of what was right,' he said. ‘You've always been able to draw a firm line between the permissible and the indiscreet. I think you've enjoyed the permissible.'

‘Oh, flirtations with young officers – those did not lead to the kind of kisses I mean,' said Katerina. ‘Those were only butterflies in a meadow and raindrops on windows, and as instantly forgettable as giggles.'

‘You are what you are,' said Dr Kandor, ‘and therefore not a woman to collect lovers.'

‘I don't want to collect lovers,' she said emotionally. ‘Women who collect lovers experience excitement, but know little of happiness. One lover, Boris Sergeyovich, that is all I ask.'

‘Not so long ago, it was just one friend. A week ago, it was just one more friend. Now it's just one lover you want.'

‘Boris Sergeyovich, you know how old I am.
Thirty-one. And I am still a virgin. Look at me, and tell me, am I to be denied for ever?'

‘I look at you every day, Katerina Pyotrovna,' he said, ‘and I see you always as the woman you are. You were not entrusted to me so that I could approve a lover for you.'

‘I won't go to America,' she said.

‘You'll be safer there than anywhere in Europe. With luck, we can arrange a sea passage in seven days.'

‘Seven days?' Katerina looked stricken.

‘I'll hire a car that will collect us here at midnight. I've already placed the villa in the hands of selling agents.'

‘Seven days?' she said again. ‘That is all I have?'

‘You also have life,' said the doctor.

‘I breathe. I walk about. I have no life.'

Edward, returning to his room after breakfast, let his eyes take in the aspect of the garden while he reflected on the fact that it was now three days since he had last seen Katerina. It seemed like three weeks. She had said nothing about a further meeting. Nor had she sent him one of her written invitations. He had thought she would. If their afternoons had come to an end, perhaps that was all to the good. If it was, it did not feel so.

He looked at himself in the mirror. He knew he could not be called handsome or vigorous-looking.

He left the hotel, started his car and began to motor to Nice. It was still very much on his mind, that incident on the road. In Nice, he found his way to Heriot's, the car dealers. He went to the office of their hire department. The manager was extremely helpful, giving
him a description of the man who had hired a saloon car, a black Citroën, four days ago, and brought it back damaged. It had struck a wall, apparently. The description was of a man of medium height, in a grey suit and hat, clean-shaven and aged perhaps thirty, perhaps a little more. That could have been anybody. No, there were no distinguishing features.

Edward wondered if he had been expecting details of someone he knew. Such an expectation had to be absurd. Did he, in the back of his mind, have a vague image of Dr Kandor, the impassive, unreadable Bulgarian? That had to be impossible. Yet the doctor had passed the incident over lightly, with a suggestion that the driver of the other car must have been drunk. He had given the impression that it was worth neither discussing nor enquiring into.

Edward thanked the car-hire manager and left. He called in at the municipal library and asked to see some dictionaries.

He was very thoughtful when he came out.

The word kulak was Russian. It meant a peasant more affluent than others. It meant a peasant who was the proprietor of a small amount of land.

He motored back to the Corniche, arriving in good time for lunch. Celeste, catching sight
of him on his way to his room, went to the reception desk to get the letter that awaited him in its pigeonhole. She took it to him.

‘M'sieur, another one,' she said, ‘another billet-doux. It was delivered two hours ago, so I've brought it at once, even immediately. Shall I wait while you write your reply?'

‘Thank you, little angel, but if an answer is required I'll see you later.'

‘Oh, of course,' said Celeste, ‘you must have a few minutes to yourself while you count the kisses Madame has sent.'

‘Terrible girl, be off with you.'

Celeste laughed as she departed. Edward read the note.

Dear Edward,

I am distressed. Why have you not called? What have I done? Are we no longer friends? Have I taken up too much of your time? If so, you must forgive me, but do please let me hear from you. Are you unwell? I pray not. I am ever and always your friend. Please remain my friend too.

Katerina.

What an idiot he was. Perhaps any man who was still a bachelor at thirty-five was unimaginative
about women and their feelings. She had had to spell out the obvious, that she was entitled to expect some initiative from him. He sat down and wrote in profuse apology for his shortcomings, and declared he would call on her this afternoon. He hoped, he said, that she would not set her dog on him for his thoughtlessness. He gave the letter to Celeste, who asked him if he would like Jacques to take it now, before lunch.