The Kirilov Star (17 page)

At the end of the interrogation, she was asked to sign the Official Secrets Act and offered the job of translating
and summarising reports coming out of Russia. To do this she was required to enlist, which she did, becoming a lieutenant in the Auxiliary Territorial Service, the women’s branch of the army, known as the ATS. After training she was posted to London and allowed to live at Balfour Place with her father. He had come out of retirement to work at the Foreign Office and stayed at Balfour Place during the week, going home to Upstone Hall at weekends.

It was a very different London from the one Lydia had left. Everything was blacked out after dark; not a chink of light was allowed to escape to guide the German bombers. Doors were protected by walls of sandbags and windows criss-crossed with brown paper tape. There were air-raid shelters everywhere and anti-aircraft gun emplacements in the parks. At first the Luftwaffe had gone for the aerodromes, hoping to win the war in the air, but when that failed they had turned on London. Sitting in the cellar of the apartment block with the other residents, eating sandwiches and drinking tea from flasks, Lydia could hear the drone of aircraft and the answering boom of the ack-ack guns, then the crump of an exploding bomb and the bells of fire engines. The people in the shelter reacted in different ways; some were silent, others tried singing and joking, some women calmly went on knitting.

On her way to work the morning after one of these raids, Lydia would see half-destroyed buildings, some still smoking, their contents crushed or scattered in the street, people walking about in a daze, tripping over coils of hosepipe, trying to avoid the broken glass, unable to believe their homes or businesses had gone. The casualties were frightening, but the buses and trains still ran, the
theatres still opened, the shops continued to serve their customers, though their stock was much depleted. Food, coal and clothes were rationed. And yet the birds still sang in the plane trees and the ducks still swam in the Serpentine. Contrary to what she had read in Russia, London was far from destroyed.

It was a world away from Russia. And yet she maintained her contact with it through her work. Alex had been right; the Polish territory the Russians had gained in their pact with Germany was lost in a matter of weeks and, in June 1941, they moved over the border into Russia proper. Lydia’s fears for Alex and her son increased a hundredfold and she prayed constantly both might be kept safe. She read every bit of news that came her way, official and unofficial. None of it was cheering. A policy of terror was being pursued by the German troops who considered the Russians, like the Jews, to be subhuman and killed them with extreme brutality, even stringing some of them up on gallows by the roadside. They were apparently making no provision for prisoners, who were left to fend for themselves without shelter, food or medicine. The situation was not helped by Stalin’s scorched-earth policy; nothing was to be left that the Germans could use – guns, ammunition, food, fuel or shelter – which punished the local population as well as the enemy. Minsk, which had been extensively bombed in the early days of the campaign, was soon surrounded, trapping thousands of Soviet troops, some of whom melted into the surrounding forests and formed partisan bands to harass the conquerors.

‘I can’t help thinking of Yuri and wondering where he is,’ she said to Sir Edward, one Sunday in July as they strolled in Hyde Park in the sunshine. Huge barrage balloons swayed
lazily overhead, creating moving blobs of shadow on the grass, but the Luftwaffe no longer came over every night, being more concerned with the Eastern Front.

‘I am sure all children will have been evacuated to the east long ago.’

‘I hope so.’

He laid a hand on her arm. ‘You mustn’t torture yourself over it, Lydia. You did all you could and so did Alex. Have you heard from him?’

‘No, not a word, not even through official channels. He was in Red Army uniform when I left him and I worry about him too.’

‘Try not to. He knows what he’s doing.’

But how could she not worry, especially when the German army seemed unstoppable, sweeping towards Moscow? The only way she could cope was by working, hoping that what she did might shorten the war and bring nearer their reunion. In her mind she coupled them together, Alex and Yuri, the two people she loved above all others.

She worried about Robert too. He was serving with the convoys taking war supplies to Russia and, apart from the weather and treacherous seas, they endured attack after attack from U-boats and German bombers, both during the voyage and in harbour at Murmansk while they were unloading. Whenever he came back from a voyage, he telephoned her to tell her he was safe. They wrote each other long letters, which had to be censored, so they were careful what they said, but the affection was obvious and that affection was gradually becoming more profound, but she did not try to analyse her feelings. It was enough that he cared.

They met as often as they could, sometimes going to a
show or a dance. On one occasion they went to the first night of Noel Coward’s play,
Blithe Spirit
, at the Piccadilly Theatre. It was a comedy starring the indomitable Margaret Rutherford as Madame Arcati, a dotty medium who conjured up the spirit of a husband’s first wife and caused mayhem with the second. There was not a single reference to the war and, for an hour or two, they forgot their troubles and laughed.

Taking her home to Balfour Place afterwards, Robert stopped in the hallway and kissed her. She was taken by surprise, but did not protest. She supposed she had been half expecting it and it was not unpleasant or even unwelcome. In fact it roused her far more than she would have expected. He stood back and surveyed her with his head on one side, smiling. ‘What, no outrage?’

‘No, Robert, no outrage.’

‘But you’re not really ready for it, are you?’

‘For a kiss? Or something more?’

‘You tell me.’ He wasn’t smiling now.

‘A kiss yes, something more, no. I’m sorry, Rob. I still hope, you see …’

‘I understand. But we can still be friends, can’t we?’

‘Of course. I should be very sad if we couldn’t.’

‘Good, because I am a patient man.’

She knew that already and she knew she would try his patience sorely in the weeks to come.

Minsk fell to the Germans a week later and they had their sights set on the ancient city of Smolensk, on their way to Moscow. According to reports Lydia read, a pall of yellow smoke, caused by burning villages and the dust stirred up by the tanks, hung over everything. A few photographs came in the diplomatic bag which illustrated
poignantly what was happening to the populace. One was of two little children, one aged about three and one a little older, standing in the ruins of Smolensk, crying. Another was of some refugees, trudging along a road away from the fighting. In the foreground a shawl-clad woman carried a little boy about the same age as Yuri. She studied the child, wondering if it could be her son. It was difficult to conjure up his face, and in any case her memory was of a
four-month-old
baby, and though she tried, she did not seem able to add the two years in her mind’s eye. Her eyes filled with tears and she couldn’t see to work.

The nightly blitz on London, the industrial cities of the north and the major ports around the coast stopped while Hitler concentrated on bombing Leningrad into submission. The Royal Air Force, which had been England’s saviour during the Blitz, was able to take a breather and bomb Germany to exact some retribution. But the convoys of vital shipping were still being lost to German U-boats in the Atlantic, the Mediterranean and the North Sea. And as another winter approached, the North Sea run became even more hazardous, with rough seas and
sub-zero
temperatures. Leningrad was under siege and Moscow threatened. All foreign embassies in Russia were being evacuated eastwards, which meant even less news reached the West, and rumours flourished until it was difficult to know what to believe.

But winter was Russia’s ally, not the invaders’. The cold affected everything: tanks and trucks would not start, vehicles and guns were frozen in and could not be moved until the ice had been tackled with pickaxes. According to reports reaching London, the Germans had been so sure of their swift success they had not even supplied their troops
with winter clothing. Comparisons were being made with Napoleon’s march on Moscow a hundred and thirty years before; the winter had defeated him and it would defeat Hitler. At home in London, Lydia realised how lucky she had been and how much she owed to the absent Alex. He had been a constant presence in the background of her life all through her growing up, but it was only in Russia, when he had appeared just when she needed him most, that she realised how much she loved him, when it was almost too late. She longed for him to return to her.

Her daily scrutiny of all the reports arriving on her desk for his name became a ritual before she began translating, but it was never there. Surely if he were alive, he would have found some way of letting her know? She worked diligently, putting in long hours, using it as a kind of anaesthetic to numb the pain of being without her son and the man she loved.

It was Sir Edward who broke the news to her. She had arrived home a little before him and was in the kitchen preparing an evening meal for them both when he came in. He hung up his hat, coat and scarf and dropped his briefcase on the hall table as he always did. She heard the clunk of it and then his footsteps coming along the polished parquet floor towards the kitchen. ‘You’re just in time,’ she said without looking round. ‘I’ve made a casserole.’

‘Later,’ he said. ‘There’s something I have to tell you first. Come and sit down.’

She turned as he sank into a chair at the kitchen table, and noticed how tired and drawn he looked. He was working long hours and at his age it was taking its toll. She sat opposite him, the table between them. His hesitation was alarming her. ‘Papa, what is it?’

He reached out and put his hands over hers on the table. ‘It’s Alex. He’s …’ He stumbled, then collected himself. ‘I’m afraid he’s dead.’

‘Dead?’ She stared at him. ‘He can’t be.’ But even as she denied it, she realised she had been half expecting it, but refusing to acknowledge it, as if by even thinking of such a possibility she would bring it about. ‘Are you sure?’

He nodded. ‘He was in Minsk when it was overrun by the Germans. He had apparently been acting with immense courage during the battle, single-handedly disabling a gun which had been shelling a convent being used to house children orphaned by the war, but it cost him his life. The action was reported by a senior officer in the Red Army who had witnessed it and recommended Major Alexei Petrovich Simenov for a posthumous medal. And then it came to light there was no such person serving in the Red Army, and enquiries revealed who he really was. Unfortunately the government in London has had to deny he was anything to do with them and he was acting off his own bat.’

She hardly heard what he said. She was back in Russia, in that squalid room in Moscow, loving and being loved by Alex. An Alex who was no more. He had declared he would always love her however long or short his life. Had he known how short it would be? Had he said he would rejoin her and bring Yuri to her, simply to get her safely away? He had saved her life, but lost his own. She sat looking at her father’s hands covering hers and could not take it in. ‘I can’t believe it. I don’t want to believe it.’

‘I know. I didn’t want to believe it either. I looked on him as a son, especially after his parents died. I had hoped you and he might …’ He stopped and took his handkerchief from his pocket, pretending to blow his nose. It was enough
to set her off and she put her head into her arms on the table and wept, huge gulping sobs. He stood up and went round behind her and laid a hand on her shaking shoulders. He did not speak. There was nothing he could say that would in any way mitigate her misery. They stayed that way for a long time, not speaking, a little tableau that epitomised the war and all it was doing to ordinary men and women.

She lifted her head at last and sat up. ‘I suppose I knew, in my heart of hearts, that it was the end when we said goodbye in Moscow. I have been living on hope, but now hope is gone, not only for Alex, but for Yuri too. There’s no one left to look for him, you see, and it’s been too long …’

‘I know.’ It was said quietly. It was the easiest thing in the world for people to disappear in Russia, especially children who were more often than not given new names when they arrived in the orphanages.

‘But when the war is over, perhaps we can try again …’ He did not know how to go on giving her more hope when it would be better for her to accept her loss.

She stood up, dry-eyed now, as if every single ounce of moisture had been sucked out of her, as if she were the withered shell of the person she had been. ‘We had better have our dinner before it’s all dried up.’

But neither could eat.

Theirs was not the only tragedy; it was being enacted all round them every day and, like everyone else, they pulled themselves together and got on with their lives, more than ever determined to defeat Hitler and all he stood for. Lydia stopped looking for Alex’s name in the documents she had to translate, and slowly, as the weeks and months passed, she found she could look back in gratitude for what time they had had together and not yearn for what she could not have. Not that she could forget – that was impossible – but her time in Russia was becoming unreal; Yuri and Alex were ghosts who haunted her dreams but had no place in reality.

They celebrated Christmas Day 1941 at Upstone Hall, though ‘celebrate’ was perhaps the wrong word. Hong Kong surrendered to the Japanese on that day, and that was followed in February 1942 by the fall of Singapore. And still the Allied ships were being sunk. But the Russians were rallying and the RAF was hitting back and hitting hard.

‘They’re getting a taste of their own medicine,’ Robert said when he had leave at the end of May 1942, which coincided with Lydia’s own leave and they were spending it at Upstone Hall with Margaret. The night before there had been a huge raid on Cologne involving over a thousand bombers. They had heard wave after wave of them droning overhead as they lay sleepless in their beds.

The Hall had been gradually modernised over the years, but externally it was exactly the same as it had been in 1920 when Lydia had first arrived there, a bewildered, traumatised four-year-old, crying for her parents. The servant situation was very different; except for Mrs Selby, a daily woman and Claudia, they had all left for the armed services or more lucrative employment and it was impossible to recruit more, so Margaret lived in one wing and shut the rest of the house.

It was a peaceful island surrounded by noisy airfields. The Japanese had bombed the US fleet at Pearl Harbor the previous December, which had brought the Americans into the war, and they had arrived in large numbers and parked their flying fortresses on the airfields, filled the pubs, smoked fat cigars and flirted with the local girls – much to the chagrin of the local young men. They were generous to a fault, especially to the village children, whom they plied with what they called candy, and oranges. Some of the little ones had never seen oranges and were not quite sure what to do with them. The soldiers sliced them in half and showed the children how to suck the juice out of them.

None of this impinged on Lydia and Robert, who wanted to make the most of their leave, going for long walks in the countryside, taking picnics to local beauty spots and
shopping in Norwich or Cambridge, using up their precious clothing coupons on utility clothes.

‘What about you? Are things any easier for you?’ she asked him. They were walking alongside the river, hand in hand.

‘Oh, not so bad,’ he said dismissively.

‘I worry about you.’

‘Do you?’

‘Of course.’

‘And I worry about you,’ he said, raising the hand he held and kissing the back of it. ‘I wish you could be here at Upstone Hall all the time. It’s safer than London.’

‘London is where my work is, just as the sea is where your work is and we have to do it. In any case, the Blitz has moved on from London. Nowhere is any safer than anywhere else these days.’

‘No, I suppose not.’ He paused, took a deep breath and then went on as if he had to summon up the courage to say what he had to say. ‘Lydia, do you still think of him?’ He paused. ‘Alex, I mean.’

‘Sometimes,’ she answered slowly. ‘It happens when I least expect it, but I have learnt to accept that he has gone, a victim of war, as so many other young men were, dragged into more danger than he should have been because of me and Yuri. Yuri will be three now, you know.’ Counting the birthdays she had missed was still heartbreaking. She would not even consider that he, too, might have died, in spite of her nightmares.

‘I know,’ he said softly. ‘I just wanted to know because there is something I want to ask you.’

‘Oh.’ She half-knew what was coming.

‘I know I’m not Alex …’

‘No, but that doesn’t mean you are not a lovely man. I have been fortunate to have both of you.’

‘That’s what I wanted to ask. Will you have me? Marry me, I mean. You know how much I love you. You are everything to me and it will make me the happiest man alive if you would.’

She smiled. ‘You haven’t asked me if I love you.’

‘Do you?’

‘Yes, I think I do.’

His blue eyes lit up. ‘Then you will marry me?’

‘Yes.’

He stopped walking, twisted round and gathered her into his arms. ‘Oh, my darling, you have no idea how happy that makes me. I promise I’ll be good to you …’

‘But Robert, you already are good to me.’

‘It will be better.’ He kissed her long and hard, and others on the towpath passed them with a smile. ‘Oh, thank you, my darling, thank you.’

She laughed. ‘I ought to thank you, for being so patient with me, for being my friend when I needed one most and putting up with my bouts of despair …’

‘That’s what love is all about,’ he said. ‘And it works both ways. Knowing you were waiting here for me helped me get through the worst. I had your picture in my pocket next to my heart, keeping me safe.’

She laughed. ‘Oh, Robert, that’s nothing but superstition.’

‘So what, if it works?’

They turned, arms linked, and went back to tell Margaret their good news.

Margaret had initially been angry with Lydia over the way she had disappeared and left Edward desperately
worried. ‘You’ve put years on him, you ungrateful child,’ she had said when Lydia reappeared. ‘You have no idea what it’s been like here, not knowing whether you were alive or dead. And Alex going after you. Heaven knows what will happen to him. I suppose you expect to walk back in here as if nothing has happened.’

It had made Lydia feel terribly guilty, and she would have left again, if Papa had not said Mama did not mean to sound so unforgiving, it was just her way of saying she was relieved and pleased to have her home again. Alex’s death had brought them together again, and though she was often in London, they became almost as close as they had been before. Robert’s visits were welcomed and encouraged and, with the news of their engagement, the last of the resentment disappeared. Robert’s father, Henry, had been a lifelong friend of Sir Edward’s and would surely have applauded their decision if he had still been alive.

They were married in St Mary’s Church in Upstone six weeks later. It was an austerity wedding; few people were free to travel and many were in the forces and could not get leave. Robert was in uniform and Lydia wore Margaret’s wedding dress, which fitted her surprisingly well. They had flowers from the garden, but rationing meant catering was a problem. But somehow Margaret coped and even managed a small cake.

Edward, who was giving her away, had questioned her closely on her reasons for wanting to marry Robert. ‘He’s a good man,’ he had said. ‘None better. But are you sure you’re not marrying him out of gratitude? It wouldn’t be fair on him if you were.’

‘No, Papa. I really love him. Alex belongs in the past
and that has become a kind of dream. It’s not real anymore. Today is real and Robert is real, and I must get on with a life that is real.’

‘So long as you are sure.’

‘I am sure.’

They had a short honeymoon in the Lake District and then it was back to their wartime jobs, long weeks apart, punctuated by leaves that were all too short and rarely coincided.

In 1943 the tide of war seemed to turn. The Russian army drove the Germans out of Stalingrad, the city which symbolised the Russian character in its determination not to surrender. It was a city in ruins where thousands upon thousands had died. And that was only the beginning. Russian troops were victorious all along the line and the Germans were retreating. The Battle of El Alamein had been the turning point in the West; Italy was invaded, surrendered and changed sides, and the Royal Air Force used bouncing bombs to destroy the Möhne and Eder dams in the Ruhr, causing massive flooding and destruction. In November Winston Churchill, President Roosevelt and Stalin met at Teheran to talk about the second front, something the Russians had long been lobbying for.

Lydia and Robert’s marriage was a calm and peaceful oasis in the midst of noise and confusion, death and destruction. They had no marital home, having decided to leave looking for a house until after the war. Whenever they could get a few hours off together, they spent it either in London at Balfour Place or at Upstone Hall. It was here that Bobby was born in May 1943, ten months after they were married. His birth had not been planned but he was welcomed all the same. He was nothing like Yuri to look at,
being more like Robert, after whom he was named. Robert was at sea, but as soon as he docked, he managed a
forty-eight
hour pass and came home to see his month-old son. He was ecstatic and kept going into the nursery to look at him, a wide grin on his face.

Margaret and Edward were equally pleased. ‘Our first grandchild,’ Margaret said, walking about with him in her arms to shush his crying. She seemed to have forgotten that Lydia was not her flesh and blood. And Claudia suddenly found she had a use after all. She had looked after Lydia as a child and now she could help look after Bobby, who was the apple of her eye, and she spoilt him dreadfully.

Lydia had left the ATS to have her baby and so she was no longer privy to secret intelligence and had to rely on news bulletins like the ordinary citizen. But even the ordinary citizen knew something was up the following spring. For a start, a ten-mile-wide strip of coastline from the Wash right round to Land’s End was forbidden to visitors, and the concentration of troops, tanks, guns and aircraft could not be concealed. The second front was imminent. What was not known was when and where the landing might be and speculation was rife. The first Lydia and Margaret knew it was beginning was when they were woken in the night of the fifth of June by the droning of aeroplanes, hundreds and hundreds of them. They ran out onto the terrace in their nightclothes to stare up at the sky which was black with aircraft. And the following morning, the day on which Lydia had always celebrated her birthday – knowing it had really been in April had not changed that – they heard it confirmed on the wireless. As she opened utility cards of birthday wishes, she heard John Snagge’s steady voice announce: ‘D-Day has come. Early this morning the
Allies began an assault of the north-western face of Hitler’s European fortress …’

They stood in the kitchen, hugging each other. ‘What a birthday present!’ Lydia said. ‘I wonder where Robert is.’

Robert, she discovered two days later when he rang her, had been in the thick of it, taking troops across the English Channel, but unlike his passengers, he didn’t have to stay. ‘From where I was standing it looked like hell,’ he told her. ‘But it was magnificent.’ He didn’t add that he would be going backwards and forwards for many more days, taking reinforcements and equipment, but she had guessed it anyway. They were assembling a harbour of precast parts, so that ships could dock and unload their cargoes, and they were being ferried out under intensive fire; the Germans had no intention of giving up.

‘Did you get my birthday present?’

He had sent her a silver brooch in the shape of an anchor, with their two names entwined in the rope around it. ‘Yes, it’s lovely. I’m wearing it now. I’ll thank you properly when you come home.’

‘I shall look forward to that. Don’t know when it will be, though.’

‘Never mind. Look after yourself.’

‘And you. Love you lots.’

‘Love you lots too.’

She put the telephone down and returned to Margaret, who was knitting thick socks for Robert in oiled wool. She was not a good knitter and the wool was hard on the hands; Lydia wondered if they would ever be finished. ‘Robert is fine,’ she said. ‘Looking forward to coming home.’

‘It won’t be long now,’ Margaret said. ‘It will soon be over.’

It was over for Margaret just ten days later.

She had gone to London to see Edward who was busier than ever and had little time to spend at Upstone. Lydia, who had stayed behind at the Hall with Bobby, was unprepared for the distraught telephone call and could hardly make out who was speaking, his voice was so thick with distress.

‘Papa, Papa, what are you saying?’

‘She’s dead, Lidushka. Your mama is dead.’

‘Dead?’ she echoed, hardly noticing that he had called her by the Russian diminutive of her name, something he had done when she was little. ‘When? How?’

‘A flying bomb. This morning on her way to meet me.’

Having no pilots, flying bombs had no specific targets and simply flew until they ran out of fuel and the engines stopped, then they whistled down, mainly on London and its environs. No one had known what they were at first and all manner of rumours abounded about crashed planes and pilots baling out and Allied shells falling short, but only that morning the BBC news had announced, ‘The enemy has started using pilotless planes against this country.’ It was only three days since the first one had arrived but already the damage and loss of life was huge. It stifled the optimism of the D-Day landings; Hitler wasn’t done for yet. If only they had known about the new weapon before Margaret left, Lydia might have persuaded her not to go.

‘I’m coming up.’

‘You can’t do anything.’

‘I’m coming anyway. Claudia will look after Bobby.’

She caught the first available train and took a taxi to Balfour Place. She found Edward sitting at his desk, staring into the distance. He had flung off his jacket and was in his shirt sleeves. His tie had been loosened and the top button
of his shirt was undone. He had obviously been raking his fingers through his hair and it stood up on end. In one hand he held the brooch Margaret had been wearing and the pin had dug into his palm, but he didn’t seem aware of the blood. A cold cup of tea stood at his elbow. He hardly noticed Lydia’s arrival.

‘Papa,’ she ventured.