With a start, I realised he knew all there was to know about me, and was giving me what he thought of as good advice. Something in his cool assumption that he knew best got under my skin. With sudden tears of fury blinding me, I hammered the iron deckrails till my hands ached. ‘Beastly, arrogant man!’ I cried. ‘Stupid and obtuse like all of them! I hate him. I hate all men.’
I felt better after the explosion of tears, and from then on I started to enjoy the journey. After all, I had done so little travelling that to be on the move was in itself new and exciting. My spirits improved daily, and I even began to enjoy the company of Edward Lacey.
And now I was almost sad that the journey was ending …
I came back to the present, to the view of St Petersburg, and to Edward Lacey’s voice. ‘Peter the Great built St Petersburg because he wanted a door on the world,’ he was saying.
‘Hadn’t he got one, then?’
‘The western world. Moscow was in many ways an oriental capital. He wanted to change all that. He did, too. But I think Russia has been paying the price for it ever since. What a country.’
We had talked a good deal about Russia during the voyage, and he obviously knew it well. His sister, he had told me, was married to a Russian; she was expecting a child in the autumn. Now he said: ‘I shall hope to introduce you to my sister, Miss Gowrie, when she’s out and about again.’
‘Oh, thank you.’ Perhaps he didn’t disapprove of me as much as I had thought. ‘Yes, I should like that. I shall know so few people apart from my godfather and the Denisovs.’
‘That will soon change,’ he predicted briskly. ‘The Russians are an endlessly sociable people. The Denisovs will take you around. Dolly Denisov lives for the world.’
‘Ariadne is only seventeen,’ I said.
‘Never mind, you won’t be cloistered.’ He had his eyes screwed up, staring at the quay. ‘There’s the Denisov motorcar already waiting for you, I see.’
‘A motor-car?’
‘Yes.’ He sounded amused. ‘Did you expect a sledge? It is summer and there are very few motor-cars in St Petersburg, but of course Dolly Denisov has one.’
Suddenly, my new life seemed all too close. ‘I wonder if I shall be happy in Russia,’ I said urgently.
‘Yes. If you are the sort of girl who can accept it for what it is, a country entirely itself, and not be continually comparing it with what you know at home, then you will be happy. Or on the way to happiness.’
‘I think I can manage that.’
‘And learn the language. The real Russia is hidden, otherwise.’
‘I already know a little Russian,’ I said. ‘Our local schoolmaster taught me to read Chekhov, he had the language from his mother who was a governess in Russia.’
‘Then you will be well away. And keep your eyes open to the state of Russia. I expect you know something already?’ He was summing me up.
‘I have read the news,’ I said. ‘I know of the terrible poverty, of the oppressive rule, and of how they fear revolution.’
‘Yes. There are all shades of political thinking in Russia, from the most reactionary which favours extreme despotic rule by the Tsar, to the moderates who want to make the Tsar a parliamentary monarch on the British model, to the extreme anarchists who want to destroy all government – blow the lot up, is their motto. I should say Dolly Denisov is an old-fashioned liberal who wants the Tsar’s government to relax some rules but otherwise keep things more or less as they are. As for her brother, he sometimes looks as if he despaired of his country and did not give a damn. Yet I swear he does, because Russians always do care, and those who seem indifferent often care the most. For all I know he may be an out-and-out reactionary – there is that element in the Denisov family – or a downright anarchist.’
He was patently instructing me in the intricacies of Russian political life and I acknowledged this. ‘I will look and learn,’ I said.
‘Then you may survive. But mind: I only say may. It’s the goddamned country. One loves it or hates it.’
We disembarked together, and moved along the quay towards the Denisov car. My great adventure was upon me. With a beating heart I prepared to meet the Denisovs. The Denisovs and Russia.
No one had told me about the May nights, how white they were, and how intense, and how they would affect me. I kept thinking of Patrick; I had come to Russia to forget him, and he was all I could think about. These long, sleepless nights were one of the phenomena of my first weeks in St Petersburg. There were others. One was the cold. Heaven knows, Scotland is often cold enough in May, but I was not prepared for the cold wind of Russia that made me huddle in my clothes. But they told me it would be warm enough soon, and then I should see. Everyone in the Denisov household seemed to take a delight in offering me the contradictions of St Petersburg, as if it had all been specially constructed to amuse me. It was my first introduction to one aspect of the Russian character: its capacity to charm. At the beginning, and indeed for a long time after, Dolly Denisov seemed to me charm personified. Partly it was her voice, delicate, light and sweet.
‘You speak such excellent English yourself, Madame,’ I told her, not long after I arrived, ‘that I wonder you need me to speak to your daughter.’
‘Ah, but poor Ariadne, she needs your company. She must be gay, happy. I love her to be happy. Besides, I cannot be with her all the time.’ A slight pout here, as of one sacrificed already too much to maternal duty.
But it was plain from the start that Dolly Denisov had other amusements besides motherhood; her appearance, for one thing. Never had I seen such dresses and such a profusion of jewels. Perhaps she saw my smile. ‘Ah, it’s no joke, Miss Gowrie, being a wife at eighteen and a widow with a daughter at twenty.’
‘And such a daughter,’ said Ariadne, giving her mother a loving pat. ‘Seventeen years and more you have had of it, Mamma.’
‘But luckily the English nation has been specially created to provide us poor Russians with the governesses we need,’ laughed Madame Denisov, ‘and thus to lighten my burden.’
English or Scottish, it was all one to her.
A joke, of course, but partly meant. You got a new slant on the Anglo-Saxon people and the great British Empire in Russia; we were not, as I had supposed, a nation of shop keepers and diplomats and colonisers, but a race of trustworthy governesses.
The Denisov motor-car had duly met us off the John Evelyn, and, close to, gave me an immediate appreciation of the Denisovs’ mettle; it was of surpassing elegance, the bodywork of maroon with a sort of basket-work corset enclosing it, the metalwork like well polished silver and the upholstery of lavender-blue watered silk. Did I forget to say that it was perfumed? As the introductions were concluded and I stepped inside, a sweet waft of rose and iris floated towards me, nicely mixed with the smell of Russian cigarette smoke. I discovered afterwards that Dolly Denisov smoked incessantly, a long, diamond-studded cigarette-holder always between her fingers. Not that Madame Denisov was there herself at the quay, of course. She was out at one of her numerous engagements, and indeed I did not see my employer for the first twenty-four hours after my arrival. But Ariadne, my dear pupil, had come to meet me. A plain girl, I thought at first, but when I took in her friendly brown eyes and her gentle smile, I saw she had her own beauty.
She turned from Edward Lacey and held out her hands in welcome. ‘I am so glad to see you, Miss Gowrie. I have been excitedly looking forward to today.’
I mumbled some pleasantry