Were people drawn to this painting because of the girl portrayed in it? she wondered. Or was it for its Englishness? Or perhaps the shimmering pastoral landscape depicted behind the girl? Or the mood of the bygone age it seemed to capture? She had no idea; she had never known what it signified to other people, what powerful emotional response it evoked in them. But it did, that was certain.
Turning away though she did, her thoughts stayed with her sister; Katti had been born in England, but deep down, Anya believed, she had a truly Russian soul. She was so like their mother, Natasha, had been, almost a carbon copy. Their brother, Vladimir, also born in London, was wholly English and did not appear to have a hint of his Russian heritage in him. He was three years younger than Katti, eight years younger than she.
Both her siblings were alive, and for this she was inordinately grateful. She knew they would be thrilled to come to her birthday party; the three of them had remained close and loving over the years, had been there for each other when they were needed. They did not live far away, just across the English Channel, in the beloved country of their birth.
Obviously Nicky had placed them at the top of the guest list, along with the rest of her extended family. Anya laughed out loud when she thought how large it was, and its eclectic mix. She considered it something of a genuine gypsy stew.
Her sister, Katti, and Katti’s husband, Sacha Lebedev, another Russian born in England of émigré parents from Moscow via Paris, and their sons, Charles and Anthony, and their daughter, Serena. And Serena’s husband, and the wives of the Lebedev boys. Her brother, Vladimir, his wife, Lili, and their three sons, Michael, Paul, and Peter, and their wives.
And then came her closest, her children by her first husband, Michel Lacoste. Her daughter, Olga, and her son, Dimitri; there would be Olga’s children, her granddaughters Anna and Natalie, by Olga’s former husband Adam Mattison, with whom she was still friendly. Anya had seen his name on the list, and she was glad of that. She had always liked Adam. Dimitri would bring his wife, Celestine, and their daughter, Solange, and son-in-law, Jean-Claude.
Oh, and then there was the Sedgwick tribe, whom she had inherited from Hugo, her second husband, and whom she loved as much as her own. Larry and his wife, Stephanie; Nicky, her special favorite, and his wife, Constance. But no, perhaps Constance would not come, since she and Nicky were apparently at loggerheads, estranged at the moment. She had not noticed Connie’s name on the guest list. And of course there was their sister, Rosamund, who had never married, although she had often been engaged. She was expected, along with her current partner, Henry Lester.
It was indeed a complex mixture, but they were all members of her family, and she cared for each and every one of them. The party’s going to be fun, she thought, sitting down on the scarlet velvet sofa. She leaned back against the soft cushions, enjoying the warmth of the fire, the floral smell of the scented candles, the comfort of the surroundings in general, the tranquil atmosphere that prevailed.
The painting of her sister, Katti, had triggered innumerable memories … memories of the past, of people she had loved who were gone forever … others whom she loved and who, fortunately, were still alive.…
Eighty-five, she thought, I can’t believe I’m going to be eighty-five in just three months. I feel so much younger inside.
Anya smiled to herself and looked up at the painting of
Katti. She felt as young as that girl there, who gazed back at her with such innocent eyes.…
————
SHE HAD BEEN BORN in St. Petersburg in 1916, virtually on the eve of the Russian Revolution, although she had no recollections of that city as it was then. Nor did she know of the tumultuous events of 1917 and 1918, which had led her parents to flee their country.
But her father, Prince Valentin Kossikovsky, had recounted everything to her when she was old enough to understand. The politics of these chaotic times was his favorite subject, and besides this he was a mesmerizing raconteur, one who held her fascinated with his tales and reminiscences.
Her parents were from Russia’s most elite and privileged society; her father was a man of ancient lineage, great wealth derived from vast family-owned lands in the Crimea, a variety of industrial holdings in Moscow, and financial interests abroad. Her mother, Nathalie, always called Natasha, was the daughter of Count Ilya Devenarskoe, also a landowner and man of wealth.
At the time of her birth, Anya’s father was acquiring a name for himself as an artist of formidable talent. His mother and siblings regarded his painting as more of a hobby than anything else; in fact, his mother, Princess Irina, thought it was an avocation rather than a vocation.
But, as it eventually turned out, she was totally wrong. Valentin Kossikovsky had found his true vocation when he began to paint seriously, and in time he would astound art lovers around the world with his work; he was to become as famous as his talented contemporary, Marc Chagall.
Within fifteen years of his departure from Russia, Valentin would be acclaimed as one of the great Russian painters of the twentieth century, along with Kandinsky, Chagall, Rodchenko, Ender, and Popova.
However, in 1917 Valentin was not thinking of fame but of escape. Anya was now a year old, and he was worried about the safety of his child and young wife. To a certain extent, he was involved in politics, as were other Russians of his ilk, and he was well aware of trouble brewing. Smart, intuitive, and well informed, he was certain that Russia was about to plunge into disaster and turmoil from which it would never recoup. He had long anticipated the revolution, had seen it coming, and accordingly he had made certain financial plans.
At this time, as Anya learned in later years, her father believed that they had been brought to the brink of ruin by the German wife of the tsar, who was born Princess Alix of Hesse. Until the day he died, Valentin Kossikovsky tended to blame Tsarina Alexandra for the revolution, as did so many of his contemporaries and some members of the imperial Romanov family. Within the circle of his small family, he quietly castigated her, characterizing her as deluded, manipulative, controlling, and interfering. As for Tsar Nicholas II, Valentin thought he was weak, vacillating, and somewhat under the thumb of his wife.
And yet Prince Valentin Kossikovsky also knew, as most educated Russians did, that basically Nicholas was a good man and not the tyrant he was purported to be by the Bolsheviks. History would prove Valentin to be correct on this score; in time Tsar Nicholas II was deemed a martyr.
As matters drew to a head within the Duma, the national government, at the beginning of 1917, Valentin literally held his breath, worrying, waiting, weighing the odds, wondering what moves to make.
Then unexpectedly, in March of that year, Tsar Nicholas II abdicated, on behalf of himself and the tsarevitch, in favor of his brother, Grand Duke Michael Aleksandrovich.
For a short time Valentin thought disaster had been averted, that Michael would become a constitutional monarch like his first cousin, King George V of England. This is what the government said they wanted.
Valentin, like most of the aristocracy, admired Grand Duke Michael, who was a celebrated war hero, a forth-right man of honor, honesty, and great ability who favored constitutional monarchy, had advocated it in the past to his brother.
Valentin often told Anya when she was growing up that he had met Grand Duke Michael with her uncle Sergei, who was in the army and stationed at Gatchina, where Michael was stationed. “We frequently ran into each other at the riding school of the Blue Cuirassiers. He would have made a good emperor.”
Although she knew the story by heart, Anya always pleaded to hear it again. “What happened to Michael, Papa? Tell me the story, please, please.”
And her father would explain: “Michael was tsar for only a day. He abdicated immediately, because that was what the Bolsheviks wanted him to do. Since he wanted to prevent bloodshed, he signed the papers of abdication. But he didn’t prevent the killing or the terrible bloodbath, Anya. Michael was the last Emperor and Autocrat of All
the Russias, and the first of the Romanovs to be murdered, just a few weeks before his brother Nicholas and his family were killed in cold blood in that cellar in Ekaterinburg.”
Grand Duke Michael was murdered at two A.M. on June 13, 1918. The ghastly murder of Michael and his secretary, Nicholas Johnson, took place in the woods outside Perm, the town where they had been under house arrest in the local hotel. But the murders were not known about then; news of Michael’s death did not come out for a long time. At first it was assumed he had managed to escape with Johnson, and that they had fled Russia.
Valentin and Natasha had not believed this story. They were convinced there had been foul play on the part of the Bolsheviks. Five weeks later, when the tsar and his family were so brutally murdered, the news leaked out almost immediately. Valentin made his moves with great speed. He went to see his uncle Sandro, his father’s first cousin, who was a very close friend of Admiral Kolchak’s, at that time the Supreme Commander of the White Army.
A lot of strings were pulled by a lot of people, and Valentin, Natasha, and their baby daughter, Anya, were finally able to leave Russia six months later, in January 1919, getting out via Finland. From Helsinki they went to Sweden, and from Stockholm they traveled to Oslo. After spending several weeks in Norway, they were finally able to board a British merchant ship and set sale for Scotland.
Waiting for them there was Valentin’s older sister, Olga, who in 1910 had married a wealthy English banker, Adrian Hamilton, and moved to London.
Anya’s first conscious memories from her childhood were of England, and, in particular, her aunt’s beautiful manor house in Kent, where years later she would paint the portrait of Katti on the terrace.
It was in this house, Haverlea Chase, that the Kos-sikovskys lived until they found a place of their own. Valentin and Natasha spoke several languages, including English, and so they adapted quickly to life in the bucolic English countryside. And for the first time in years they felt safe from harm.
After six months of living in Kent, Valentin knew he must move on. He and Natasha quickly found a small but attractive house in Chelsea; what made it so attractive to them was the conservatory in the garden. Built almost entirely of glass, this was ideal as a studio in which Valentin could paint.
Fortunately, Valentin Kossikovsky had wisely moved money out of Russia in 1912. It ended up in England, where it was well invested by his banker brother-in-law. And so unlike many other White Russian émigrés who had fled to London and Paris, they were not destitute.
It was in this lovely old house in Chelsea that Anya grew up, surrounded by the possessions her mother had managed to bring out of Russia … the silver samovar in which she made tea every day … the icons arranged on a table in the sitting room alongside the family photographs in their Fabergé frames.
Anya ate Russian food, learned Russian history from her father, and the language from her parents, who spoke only Russian when they were alone.
In essence, she was raised as a Russian aristocrat would have been brought up in St. Petersburg. And yet she was also an English girl who grew up in the ways of her adopted country. She went to a private kindergarten as a young child, and then to one of the best boarding schools; later she became a student at the Royal College of Art.
“I’m a funny mixture,” she said to Michel Lacoste when she first met him in Paris. “But deep down I know that my soul is Russian.” And she continued to believe this for the rest of her life, just as her father, the prince, had intended.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
THE RAIN DID NOTHING TO DAMPEN NICHOLAS SEDGWICK’S good mood. As he walked across the Boulevard des Invalides, heading toward the rue de l’Université, he dismissed the sudden downpour as merely an April shower that would stop at any moment. And it did, almost before he had completed this thought.
Closing his umbrella, he hooked it over his arm, and marched on at a brisk pace, humming under his breath. He had just finished the sketches of sets for a new movie to be shot at the studios in Billancourt and in the Loire Valley, and he was thrilled that the producer and director had liked his designs; actually, they had both been bowled over by them.
Nothing like a little success to put a man in a happy frame of mind, he thought as he crossed the boulevard, heading for Anya’s school.
And then in a split second his expression changed and a shadow crossed his handsome face, settled in his bluish-green eyes, clouding them over. Professionally, he was at a high point, but in his personal life happiness had eluded him for a long time, and this troubled him greatly.
As far as he was concerned, his marriage to Constance Aykroyd, the English stage actress, was over. He had tried to make it work, but he simply became more and more estranged from her as the months went by, and all he wanted now was to end it. And as peacefully as possible.
But Connie did not want a divorce; she clung to him and to the marriage. He took the line of least resistance, did nothing legally, because he had no real reason to push for the divorce at the moment. There was no other woman in his life; he was so busy with his work he didn’t have much time to start seeing lawyers, setting the legal wheels in motion. Although deep within himself he knew that this was an inevitability if he was going to get his freedom. Certainly Connie was not about to set him free of her own accord, even though he had moved out many months before.
Nicky sighed to himself, thinking how difficult and temperamental Connie had become. And anorexic. He was really very upset by her these days. She was so painfully thin she appeared to be starving herself to death, looked like one of those tragic Holocaust victims released from Bergen-Belsen at the end of the war. He shuddered involuntarily; just thinking about her ghastly appearance appalled him. She was a walking skeleton.
Suddenly Nicky was thankful there were no children involved in this disastrous marriage. It would be a clean break when it finally happened, and with no additional casualties of the divorce, thank God.
And he was only thirty-eight.
He could start again. He hoped. He smiled to himself. Hope springs eternal … that was the favorite line of Hugh Sedgwick, his uncle. Hugo, as he was commonly called, was Anya’s second husband; he had been a rather special man, a business genius and the linchpin of the family, the man around whom everyone and everything revolved.
Charismatic, reliable, and strong, he had been steady as a rock, and the most enduring influence in Nicky’s life.
At least my work is going well, Nicky thought as he turned the corner. He and his brother, Larry, were busier than they had ever been, and their theatrical design company, with offices in Paris and London, was thriving.
Not only that, he was particularly enjoying teaching this season. He gave two classes a week, on set designing and decorating, at Anya’s school, and this year he had discovered that he had several brilliant students in his class. Consistently, they took his breath away with their work.
Larry, who stood in for him when he was away on a film, agreed with him about their unique talents, was also full of praise.
Nicky had always found it rewarding to encourage and nurture students who showed promise, and he took pleasure in showing them how to develop their work and achieve their goals.
————
HALFWAY DOWN THE rue de l’Université he finally came to the huge wooden double doors that led into the courtyard of the school. He went in through the small side door designed for pedestrians; as he closed it behind him, he hoped Anya would be happy with the designs he had created for her birthday party. He was going to show them to her later that day.
Nicky went up in the old-fashioned lift to his office on the fourth floor. This was in the building where the original school had first started and had been housed from the twenties to the forties, which was when adjoining buildings were acquired.
As he stepped out of the lift and walked along the corridor, he couldn’t help thinking about the history of this place. The school would be seventy-five years old later this year, and wha
t a success story it was.
If only walls could talk, he thought, going into his office. He put his umbrella in the closet, sat down at his large desk, and began to look at the sketches he had made for Anya’s party. But his mind drifted off after a while; his thoughts focused on the school, and what it had become, all because of Anya Sedgwick.
————
ORIGINALLY, IT HAD BEEN a modest little school of art run by Catherine Lacoste, Anya’s mother-in-law.
The young widow of the renowned French sculptor Laurent Lacoste, who had started the school in 1926, she had struggled to keep it going after Laurent’s death in the early thirties.
Despite being small, it had a good reputation because of the gifted teachers it employed, mostly artists themselves who needed to earn a steady income to support their art. Even in those days it had a certain prestige because of Laurent Lacoste’s name.
Incredibly, and to her credit, Catherine had even managed to keep the school open during the war years and the German occupation of Paris. Somehow it had been able to survive in the terrible and troubled times of the Nazis’ domination of Paris, during the many deprivations and hardships of all kinds.
After the end of the Second World War, the school had begun to blossom more fully once again. But in 1948 Catherine realized she could not run it by herself for much longer. She was growing increasingly debilitated by arthritis, and becoming less mobile than ever. Eventually, she had asked her young daughter-in-law to take over the school and run it for her. Anya had agreed, knowing she would have the advice and guidance of her mother-in-law at all times.