If it is true what Avadeyev told me (and why would he bother to lie when he was about to kill me?) Sverdlov is not expecting me to survive this trip. As far as the Party is concerned, I was an inconvenience that has been eliminated. I am sure that Aleksandra will miss me, will probably be sad, and may be suspicious about my disappearance, but no doubt Sverdlov will have answers for her. In their minds, I have ceased to exist. Rada's absence could also be connected to my non-return, and they already know that Nina was injured (or killed) in the confrontation with Avadeyev's men outside the cafe. We are free to blend into the countryside, to finally leave the past behind and start a new life.
~ Finale ~
The sleek limousine, with its darkened windows, merged smoothly and silently into the early-morning rush hour traffic, like a black shark slipping into a shoal of unsuspecting, shimmering silvery fishes. Despite my nerves, I couldn't help smiling at the lady beside me in the back of the car. She was as excited as a child, her age forgotten, twisting in her seat to look first one way and then the other, turning her head, pushing her glasses back on her nose as they slipped down again, pointing out landmarks she recognised, and chattering almost incessantly as memories flowed from her in a torrent.
"That's the Winter Palace! Look, over there! And Palace Square! And the railway station! The main one, for the Trans-Russia Railway, you know, the one that goes right across to Siberia and China. We came through here when . . . . ," her voice trailed off as she remembered one of the less happy memories.
The lady was my grandmother, Natalie Tereshchenko. After sixty-six years away, she was back in the country of her childhood, Russia. It was August 1985, and we were being driven through the beautiful city of Saint Petersburg (also known for a while as Petrograd and then, for many years, Leningrad) on our way to Pushkin, the town that used to be called Tsarskoye Selo. We were riding in a luxurious, chauffeur-driven limousine provided for us by the Russian leader, Mikhail Gorbachev. Our destination, on the edge of Tsarskoye Selo, was the Alexander Palace, once the home of Nicholas II, the last Tsar of Russia, and his family, where Natalie had lived and worked when she was a young woman.
* * *
Our journey had started a year earlier, when I received a surprise phone call from my grandmother to ask if I would help her to make a nostalgic trip back to her former home. She had been so excited about her plan, to return one last time to see the palace where she grew up, and it was important to her that she took one of the women in the family with her. My mother ~ her daughter Audrey ~ was too frail after her illness, so she asked me, Elizabeth, her granddaughter, spinster of this parish, to take the trip with her.
To me she was always Nana Shengo (I was unable to pronounce her name properly when, as a little girl, I would beg my parents to take me to see Nana and Granddad). Every visit to their cottage was like a fairytale, and I would sit silently listening to Nan's magical stories about princesses and palaces, dukes and princes, and always about Max.
Granddad Max was a gentle man with a mass of unruly blonde hair above an angular face, with strong cheekbones and a proud jaw. Even in his later years, he was tall, straight-backed and strong. Their love was as evident then as it must have been all those years before, and I had never heard a bad word pass between them. He died of pneumonia following a bout of influenza in 1980, and Nana Shengo withdrew from almost all contact with the outside world. It was heartbreaking to see the way she shrank, like a balloon the day after a party, as though all purpose had been sucked from her life. For three years she hid in her little cottage, refusing to see anyone but her closest family.
Then, on her eighty-third birthday, on the twentieth of February nineteen eighty-four, she found her old diaries in the back of a drawer, and made a decision to go back to the place that held so many memories. It was there that she was taken in as a baby by the Empress Alexandra, wife of The Tsar of Russia, and there, at the age of sixteen, that she became Lady-in-Waiting to Tatiana, the second of the four royal daughters.
Once the decision was made, Nan and I talked every day on the phone, and I visited her many times, to work out plans and write letters with her, and it was good to see the old sparkle return to her eyes. We knew it would take quite a lot to set up the trip, but we soon discovered that there were many more obstacles than we had thought possible.
Of course, at that time there were no package holidays to Russia, which was isolated from the rest of the world by the aggressive posturing of successive governments ~ on both sides of the Iron Curtain ~ and we figured that getting permission to even enter Russia would involve complicated procedures that were hard to understand. As it turned out, we were right, but in ways we could not have anticipated.
We started by writing to the British Foreign Office for advice on how to set about it. The people there were, to say the least, lukewarm about the plan, and offered little advice. For a while we wondered if it was possible at all, but were determined not to give up.
So we wrote to our Prime Minister at the time, Mrs Thatcher, and to the then Russian leader, Secretary Chernenko. We had read in the newspapers that Mr Chernenko was ill, so we were not surprised when we did not receive an answer.
But Nan did receive a reply from Mrs Thatcher, saying that she would ask her Foreign Secretary, Geoffrey Howe, to contact the Kremlin and ask for their assistance. We thought that things might get moving after that, but weeks passed and, apart from a letter from Mr Howe, saying that he had not received any reply from Russia, nothing happened.
We had begun to think that the whole project was impossible when, in May 1985, we unexpectedly received a letter from Russia, signed by the new Russian leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, authorising our visit and promising his support. What a shock! Apparently, all the letters relating to our request to visit Russia had been pushed under a pile of more important items by a clerk in the General Secretary's office, and only came to light when Mr Gorbachev succeeded Chernenko as the supreme leader of that huge country. It seems that one of the secretaries assigned the task of clearing the backlog of paperwork had taken an interest in the content of the letters, and drawn Mr Gorbachev's attention to them.
Once Mr Gorbachev became involved, the Russian authorities seemed also to enter into the spirit of the venture. They started to help us in many unexpected ways, with arranging visas and permits and booking hotel rooms and arranging transport and security for us at the Russian end.
And after that, the Foreign Office also became amazingly helpful, and guided us through the steps to all the UK arrangements that were involved. I had the impression that neither side wanted to be outdone by the other, and that we had become a kind of project for everybody. Each department suddenly seemed to have taken an almost proprietorial interest in making sure it all went smoothly.
~ Russia ~
And so it was that, on the twenty-sixth of August nineteen eighty-five, ironically the anniversary of her journey from Alexander Palace into exile in Tobolsk, we stepped from a plane into the long, late afternoon shadows at Pulkovo airport, in Russia's second city, Petrograd. We cleared customs and passport control without incident (Nan's rusty Russian came in handy), and emerged into the airport arrivals lounge, where we saw the name 'Tereshchenko' printed boldly on a large card being held aloft by a tall, smartly-dressed man.
He introduced himself as Sergey Cherenkov. He spoke English in clipped sentences, with a very strong Russian accent, and interspersed with many "er"s and "mm"s and rolling "rrr"s, which made it hard for me to understand what he said (though I found it very sexy). Nan, apparently, had no problem comprehending him. His appearance was so obviously intended to be unobtrusive that he stood out in the crowd, like a red bus among black taxis. He wore a dark suit, white shirt and grey tie, and I noticed that his shoes were gleaming. The letters KGB came to mind, but I scolded myself for being cynical.
"I am your guiding, ladies and gentleman ... (mmm) … Please give by our glorrrious leader, Chairman Gorrrbachev … (mmm) … and with his best wish," he sa
id, as though reciting a passage from a public information leaflet. "Any you help durrring … (mmm) … staying, please … (er) … talk me, and I will … (mmm) … arranging it for her."
We smiled nervously and thanked him.
With a small bow, he led us out of the building and across a wide pavement to where a sleek, black, chauffeur-driven limousine was waiting, with a small grey flag fluttering on the bonnet, featuring the distinctive Hammer and Sickle emblem in red. The chauffeur leapt out and held open the rear door for us, and we sank into deep leather seats and smelt the sweet, cool, conditioned air.
As the car took us through wide streets between tall skyscrapers to our hotel, I noticed that Petrograd seemed to have few old buildings, and I commented on this to Sergey.
"Yes. The Nazis bomb-bed and … (mmm) … shells … (mmm) … the city for many days to the war," he explained. "Much of the houses was destroyed, and also much history buildings. A big … (erm) … vosstanovleniye?"
"Reconstruction," Nan offered.
"Da, yes, dank you. A big … rrre-con-strook-shon … is made when the war is end. Some we have … (mmm) … repaired ... but also much lost."
I was struck by the cleanliness everywhere in the city, and also by the huge number of statues and monuments, as the limousine, with its little fluttering flag, drove sedately through the traffic. Here was a nation anxiously proclaiming its successes, urging its people to be patriotic, as though it felt that the world would find it lacking otherwise.
* * *
Eventually the chauffeur brought us to a halt outside the Hotel Moika, a beautiful, elegant, old, four-storey hotel in the centre of the city, overlooking the river. This was the hotel chosen for us by the Russian leader, and paid for by the government; it seemed that he wanted to impress us, as if we were special guests (though I knew that, of course, it was just Nan who was special). If this building had been damaged in the war, then clearly, no expense had been spared since to restore it to its former glory and create a feeling of complete luxury.
The floor of the spacious entrance area was thickly carpeted and the walls were decorated in traditional style, with gigantic paintings and ornate mouldings, and draped with heavy velvet curtains. We were greeted at a huge, beautifully carved, mahogany reception desk by smartly uniformed staff.
The chauffeur carried our bags in for us, and Sergey stayed with us as we checked in. He told us that preparations had been made for him to meet us in the morning and take us to the palace, then he bade us a good night.
A hotel porter (nice, but not talkative) took our bags and led us up to our room, which turned out to be an elegant suite on the fourth floor, beautifully decorated, with more draped curtains, more thick, luxurious carpets, and large windows that looked out over the river. We had separate bedrooms, each with a four-poster bed and private shower room.
After the porter had left, Nan and I stood together in the lounge and looked out of the window, with its wonderful view of the river and out across the rooftops of the city. The evening was still and warm, and the sun was just settling down towards the horizon on our right, surrounded by an explosion of red and orange and purple clouds which were reflected in the water. We looked at each other and smiled.
"We made it, Nan," I said.
She slowly let out her breath, relaxing at last. "Thank you for everything, Elizabeth dear," she said, emotionally.
"Hey, you did it all," I grinned, I'm just here for the holiday."
She took my hand in hers and raised it to her face and held it there for a moment, deep in contemplation. "I am very nervous, you know," she said quietly.
"Of course, who wouldn't be. But look, the hard part is behind you now, tomorrow you will finally meet up with your past. Who knows, we might see the young Natalie, walking the corridors of the palace, waiting for you to return."
She smiled. "What an imagination you have, Elizabeth!"
* * *
After dinner in the grand dining hall that filled the basement area of the hotel, we returned to our suite and, for a while, we chatted about the flight, the day just finishing and the day to come. We ordered some coffee, then sat in the huge settee near the window.
"What was it like to work for the family?" I asked.
She smiled, wryly, and settled back into the cushions. She had told me the stories about her childhood so many times that I could almost recite them word for word, but she knew that I still loved to hear her talk about those days. "The Empress was good to her ladies, and kind to me," she replied. "But I was treated differently from the other staff; I was educated with the duchesses, and allowed to attend functions with the family. I didn't understand why, at the time, but I seemed to enjoy a different status to everyone else ~ not part of the family, but more than just a servant. Alexandra didn't love me, I knew that, but she treated me well, though my special treatment caused resentment among the other staff. I was between stations, never wholly one thing or the other; it made me feel quite alone."
She lapsed into her memories, and was quiet for a while. I was used to this, too, and waited patiently.
"Alexandra was a complex woman,” she finally said quietly, “fanatically religious, and strong-willed. Most of us were aware that she was the power behind the throne; she always got her own way, and Nicholas hardly made any decisions without first consulting her.
"Despite her dismissive attitude to the aspirations of the masses, she wanted to be seen as a good leader ~ her German upbringing again, I suppose. The trouble was, she thought she knew what the people needed better than they did themselves, and she believed that they wanted to be ruled with a firm hand. She could not comprehend that many of the ordinary citizens deeply resented the royal family's ostentatious wealth and power, when they themselves were starving and unable to control their own lives.
"And they were incompetent! She and Nicholas made terrible, ignorant mistakes in the running of the country. They had a kind of arrogance that they were superior to everything and everyone, and they built up a bad reputation for causing the deaths of huge numbers of people. Did you know that Nicholas was called 'Nicholas The Bloody' by some people, after the killings of dissenters and the dreadful losses on the battlefields against Japan and Germany?"
I shook my head. I hadn't known, but it came as no real surprise. I knew from my research that Russia had been ruled, often with greed and cruelty, by the Romanov family for hundreds of years, and that their popularity had declined seriously by the time Nan arrived at the palace. There had been some very bad lapses of judgement and leadership by several generations.
"But, you know," she continued, "they were just born into the myth about royalty that had been constructed over generations, that they were granted their status by God and were entitled to it by birth. Maybe they had to believe it, otherwise they would have been forced to see that it was a sham and to give up their luxurious lifestyle. It was easy for me to see that the girls had already been indoctrinated with the same nonsense."
She always called them The Girls ~ it was quaint and rather touching ~ but, actually, most of the princesses were older than her. Olga, the eldest, was 22 when she died, Tatiana was 20 and Maria was 19. Only Anastasia was younger than the eighteen-year-old Natalie who fled from the slaughter in the basement of the house in Yekaterinberg.
I wanted to hear more, but by then we were both finding our eyelids drooping. We were exhausted from our long day, and soon we bid each other goodnight and went to our bedrooms. Two very tired ladies went straight to bed and slept solidly.
~ Catherine Palace ~
Soon after dawn the next morning we were up and enjoying a little walk along the river in the chilly, early-morning sunlight. The air was clean and the sun, low on the horizon to our left, sparkled on the ripples as we sat on the concrete wall above the river and watched boats chugging and splashing back and forth.
Eventually, though, the cold penetrated our inadequate clothes, and we returned to the hotel for a hot shower, then took the lift down
to the dining room for breakfast. We were just finishing when Sergey came to our table to inform us that he had arrived, then he waited in the foyer while we returned to our rooms for our handbags and coats.
A quick check in the mirror, and we headed back to the lift and down to the entrance hall again. Nan looked very smart in a pastel blue blouse, navy blue dress with light grey rectangles dotted over it, and a patent navy blue belt and matching shoes. Around her neck was a silver chain, with a pale turquiose stone in a silver mount. Over the dress, she wore a white, lightweight jacket. I had chosen a silver-grey trouser suit with a white blouse, and black shoes with a small heel.
At the front doors of the hotel, just before following Sergey out to the waiting car, we stopped spontaneously, and looked at each other. We both smiled.
"Are you ready for this?" I asked.
She nodded, biting her bottom lip.
"Let's do it, then."
The chauffeur helped us into the car with Sergey, and we set off through the wide streets of the city. After a while, the car merged onto a motorway, through a sweeping curved access road, and began to speed along the highway that would take Nan into her past.
* * *
Half an hour later, we turned off the wide, multi-lane artery onto a lesser vein, and then ever smaller roads, eventually passing through a small town and then parkland. Here we stopped at a pair of massive iron gates, beside which waited an open military vehicle, like a Jeep, with an officer and two smartly dressed soldiers sitting in it. Nan and I stayed in the car, peering past our silent and impassive chauffeur, watching as Sergey spoke quietly in Russian with the officer. Then he returned to the car and we followed the Jeep through the gates and into the grounds. The gates were opened for us by a soldier, but as we passed through there was also a red and white barrier, which had been raised, and a pair of grey sentry boxes, manned by armed guards, who watched us with curiosity.
The two vehicles travelled slowly along an avenue through beautiful parkland. Nan had fallen silent, and I looked at her anxiously; she had become pensive ~ it seemed to me that her mind was reliving days, long ago, when her life was very different.