Authors: Mary Jane Staples
‘Well, we must do our best to guard against that,’ said Mr Gibson, walking briskly to counteract the raw cold of late November. Natasha swung along beside him, warmly wrapped in her new winter coat.
‘It will be very emotional tomorrow, meeting the lady who says she’s the Tsar’s daughter,’ said Natasha.
‘Emotional?’ said Mr Gibson.
‘Emotion is not something the English allow themselves?’
‘Oh, I think we allow it, Natasha,’ said Mr Gibson, sidestepping a large and bustling woman, ‘but only in moderation.’
‘You will not be affected by meeting the lady?’
‘I shall be extremely curious and interested,’ said Mr Gibson, ‘I don’t know if I’ll be affected. I think I’m required to remain impartial and detached.’
‘Oh, but you have a very kind heart,’ said Natasha.
‘Shall we find a little restaurant and lunch out?’ asked Mr Gibson.
‘I don’t at all mind preparing lunch in the apartment,’ said Natasha. She had practically taken over the kitchen, particularly in respect of their evening meals. She felt it was safer to stay in at night, and during the last two weeks Mr Gibson had discovered she could serve very appetizing suppers. The atmosphere at times was cosy and intimate, and Natasha supposed, in a confused and uncertain way, that it was like being married to him. They were living together in the apartment, having breakfast together, and other meals, and on the occasions when he was writing his notes, she attended to all the little domestic tasks she could find. Sometimes she felt extremely sensitive about the situation, while he always seemed cheerfully casual, as if he gave no thought at all to the nuances of her living here with him. She was sure his wife would be outraged. She
did not say so. That would have introduced an uncomfortable element. It would not last very long, this unconventional situation. He would depart from her life all too soon. But while it did last, it gave her happiness. ‘I am very willing to do the lunch,’ she said.
‘I know you are. You’re a gem in the kitchen, Natasha. But allow me the pleasure of taking you to a restaurant today.’
‘To allow you is a pleasure for me too,’ she said, ‘although I wish only a light lunch.’
‘Of course,’ said Mr Gibson. Natasha had gained much-needed weight. She had filled out. Her thin, starved look had vanished, her facial hollows had gone and her features were surfaced with light, not shadows. She was beginning to look beautiful. As they entered a fashionable shopping avenue, he said, ‘Natasha, have you no friends in Berlin?’
‘I have many acquaintances,’ said Natasha. ‘I have given up friends.’
‘Why?’
‘Because in Berlin, friends borrow from you or steal from you. Or spy on you.’
‘Spy?’
‘Perhaps so that they can tell certain people I am still here, still in Berlin. Perhaps they tell
Bolshevik agents I am still here. Who knows what friends will do to you in Berlin?’
‘If I didn’t think it would distress you, I’d demand your full story from you, young lady. Have you no young man?’
‘What young man would have been interested in a miserable bag of bones?’ said Natasha, and laughed a little mirthlessly.
‘Well, you’re no longer in that state, I assure you. By the way, I’ve written to a close friend of mine in England. Out of it, I hope, will come the offer of a job for you, a suitable job.’
‘Oh,’ she said.
‘You don’t care for the idea?’
‘Oh, yes – yes.’ Her eyes suffused. ‘Might it mean that when you go back to England, I would come with you? Might it mean that?’
‘I think that would be best, don’t you?’
‘Best? Mr Gibson, kind and dear sir, I should be so happy. How could I ever thank you?’ Natasha, visibly radiant, drew the glance of a short-skirted Berlin flapper, and the flapper thought that anyone who could look like that on a cold November day must have inherited an ocean of bliss. ‘Always, always,’ said Natasha, ‘I shall be your most devoted and grateful friend.
If I do come to England, it will be permissible for us still to be friends?’
‘Of course. There are no laws against it. Come along.’ He began to cross the wide street with her. As they did so, a column of political activists approached at a stamping, rhythmic run, after the fashion of the famed Italian
bersaglieri
. They were chanting political slogans and flying a banner, the banner of the National Socialist Party. Their boots pounded the surface of the street, and they drew catcalls from some people. The column came on, taking no notice of Mr Gibson and Natasha crossing the street in front of them. Natasha ran for the pavement at a moment when Mr Gibson checked and held back. Hard-faced activists bruisingly shouldered the Russian girl. She tumbled and fell, without one of them paying her the slightest attention. She had been in the way. Get out of the way, that was the impression they gave.
Outraged but unhurt, Natasha lay breathless for a moment. A man, stepping from the pavement, stooped over her and extended a helping hand. Natasha looked up into hard grey eyes shaded by a hat brim. She saw a swarthy face marked by a scar on the left cheek. The grey
eyes searched her. They flickered. Her blood froze.
‘Are you hurt, Fräulein? Allow me.’ The German was thickly accented. The hand on her arm attempted to bring her to her feet. Mr Gibson appeared.
‘Thank you,’ he said to the swarthy man, and Natasha’s frozen blood thawed in surging, thankful relief. The hand released her arm, and it was Mr Gibson who brought her to her feet. A small group of bystanders had gathered, and there were mutterings about political ruffians.
‘Are you all right, Natasha?’ asked Mr Gibson, bringing her to the pavement.
‘Yes – yes – thank you,’ said Natasha, and Mr Gibson brushed her coat down.
‘Certain political creatures have always lacked manners,’ he said.
Natasha made a compulsive search of the scene. But the man with the stony grey eyes and facial scar had gone. She could see him nowhere. Her blood became cold again. Mr Gibson took her gently by the arm and they resumed their walk.
‘He has found me,’ she said.
‘Who has found you?’
‘The Bolshevik commissar.’
‘What are you talking about?’
‘He hit me. He broke my finger. He murdered my family. Now he is here, in Berlin.’
‘But not because of you, Natasha, not after all these years. And how do you know he’s here?’
‘You have just spoken to him. You said thank you to him. Didn’t you notice him? He has a scar on his face, and eyes like grey, frozen snow. He will come after me now that he has seen me.’
Mr Gibson had not taken any particular notice of the man. He had just been someone who had stepped from the pavement to give a helping hand to Natasha. A brimmed, felt hat and a black, belted raincoat, Mr Gibson remembered those things, and a dark-hued face, casually glimpsed.
‘Stop a moment, Natasha,’ he said. She stopped. He took hold of her left wrist and ran a hand along her arm, as if testing the limb for injury. It allowed him a look back. Among the pedestrians there was no one in a felt hat and black, belted raincoat. ‘He doesn’t seem to be coming after you at this moment.’
‘Are you sure?’ said Natasha, resisting the temptation of looking back herself.
‘Yes, quite sure,’ said Mr Gibson, giving her arm a light rub. ‘Are you certain, Natasha, that a commissar who was cruel to you seven years ago is actually in Berlin now?’
‘Yes.’ Natasha spoke quietly but firmly. ‘It was him. I could never make a mistake about such a man as that.’
‘And you think he recognized you?’
‘Yes.’
‘You feel he means you harm?’ said Mr Gibson, as they walked slowly on.
‘That is why he is here. He has been following me for years. Always I had to keep running because people who were kind told me a man with a scar was asking questions about me. But although it made me shiver to see him a few minutes ago, I’m no longer afraid of him. I am not alone any more. You are my friend.’
‘Why does he want to harm you?’
‘It is a feeling I have.’
They reached the restaurant Mr Gibson had in mind. He took her in. It was true they were not being followed by a man in a felt hat and a belted black raincoat. There were, however, two men who from a distance watched them go into the restaurant. One was hatless and coatless, with wintry grey eyes. The other was
carrying a bundle under his arm, the bundle made up of a raincoat rolled around a hat. They crossed the street and seated themselves at a table outside a café opposite the restaurant. They ordered drinks, and they sat waiting and watching.
Over lunch, which was so appetizing that Natasha ate more than she had intended, Mr Gibson took her mind off Bolsheviks and commissars with some very light and cheerful conversation. She became vivacious with laughter. Overriding so much that was unpleasant in her mind were thoughts that gave her bliss, thoughts of working in England, of earning enough money to keep herself, of being far away from Berlin, but still being close to Mr Gibson, her friend and patron and shield. Perhaps she would be allowed to visit him and his family occasionally. She would have to be careful in front of his wife, who was bound to be curious about her. For everyone’s sake she must never show she had come to love Mr Gibson, although it was not possible not to love him. One could worship from afar. That would harm nobody, and his wife need never know about it. Imagine the sheer pleasure of being married to him, of being kissed by him and loved by
him, and having his children. There could only be one wife, of course. Other women must be content with their dreams.
‘What’s on your fascinating Russian mind now?’ smiled Mr Gibson. ‘You look as if you’re not sure whether to laugh or cry.’
‘Your Excellency—’
‘Drop that,’ said Mr Gibson.
‘Dear sir is permissible?’
‘Drop that too. Mr Gibson will do.’
‘Mr Gibson, sir, there is nothing on my mind except how God reached out to me one night to put me in your care.’
‘Heavens,’ said Mr Gibson, ‘don’t relate me to an act of God, young lady, or I’ll get unbearably smug. By the way, when we visit the woman in the clinic tomorrow—’
‘You’d prefer me to wait outside?’ said Natasha. ‘Yes, that will be best. Please, where in England do you live?’
‘In the county of Surrey. We’ll see the patient together. I’ll not have you waiting outside. I shall need your help in just one thing alone. Never having known her, she’ll be a stranger to me. I shall have no more idea of what is credible about her than what is not. I do know, of course, that some people say she can’t speak Russian,
and is therefore a fake. Some say she can speak it, but won’t. Will you do something for me? Will you ask her a question in Russian? Not as soon as we’re introduced to her, but at some time during the course of conversation. Let us see if she answers it, or at least understands it. If she understands, that will mean a lot, even if she won’t speak it. If she doesn’t understand, that will obviously affect my final conclusions in a bleak way. A question in Russian is the only test I can give her in respect of credibility. It’s the only test any stranger could give.’
‘Although I’m quivering at the thought of appearing before her,’ said Natasha, ‘I will ask the question. I will think of one. If people find out we have visited her, I hope nothing will happen to us.’
‘If it should,’ said Mr Gibson crisply, ‘then certain aspects of the matter will be even more suspect than I’ve thought.’
Leaving the restaurant after they had finished their lunch, he and Natasha enjoyed a pleasant stroll back to the apartment, for the afternoon weather had turned kind.
‘They saw the von Rathlef woman this morning.’
‘That had to happen, of course,’ said Count Orlov.
‘I called after they left, and spoke to her. I made kind enquiries about the health of the patient. That made her talkative, as usual.’
‘On that subject, she is a talking machine,’ said the count.
‘Gibson and the girl are visiting the patient tomorrow, at two thirty in the afternoon.’
‘I wondered when he would get round to that. The girl’s going with him? Are you sure?’
‘The von Rathlef woman was very sure.’
Count Orlov became tight-lipped and severe. His frown cut lines in his smooth forehead.
‘She’ll talk,’ he said. ‘The occasion will be so dramatic for her that she’s bound to. We should have had her locked away ages ago.’
‘She may still keep quiet. After all, we know now she’s living with Gibson that that might have made her talk, but since he’s made no move out of the ordinary and expected, I think she’s said nothing.’
Count Orlov pulled on his lip.
‘They haven’t been out at night since Walensky bungled his chance at the Imperial Eagle,’ he mused. ‘So, what’s to be done about the possibility that she might talk tomorrow?’
‘Shall we discuss it?’
‘Sit down,’ said Count Orlov, and his associate seated himself.
They talked.
The woman seated in a chair beside her bed in the Mommsen Clinic looked petite and frail. She had been ill in one way or another ever since someone pulled her out of the canal in 1920. Before being transferred to the clinic from St Mary’s Hospital, she had been treated by a brilliant Russian surgeon, Serge Rudnev. She had been so anaemic and emaciated that she was not far short of being a mere skeleton. His treatment almost certainly saved her life. During a detailed examination of her, he noted a large bunion on her right foot. Many people had bunions. Grand Duchess Anastasia was known to have had one. On her right foot. Serge Rudnev also noted the sick woman’s many scars, all consistent with wounds caused by bullets and bayonets, and all looking as if the original wounds had been primitively treated.
In addition, there were signs indicating that her jaw and skull had both been fractured. If she was Anastasia, then no one could have denied that the extent and nature of her injuries were identifiable with what was known about the method of execution at Ekaterinburg. Rifles had been fired, and bayonets used. If anyone had survived such an execution, their injuries would have been as massive as those undeniably suffered by the patient.
At the Mommsen Clinic the woman was making a slow and painful recovery, her most serious ailment at the moment being the tubercular infection in her left arm, due to a neglected wound.