Mary Nichols - The Kirilov Star

‘I wish it too. Having you here has made it into a home. It was never that before, simply somewhere to eat and sleep.’

‘Alex, you know I can’t leave Robert, don’t you?’ The words were torn out of her.

‘Yes.’

‘If you can’t accept that, I mustn’t come again.’ As she said it, she knew how hard it would be to keep away, but she would have to try for Robert’s sake, for the children’s sake and for her own peace of mind. And for Alex too. Because she wasn’t being fair to him.

He understood her so well, could read her mind and knew exactly the torment she was going through. ‘You must do what you think is right,’ he said. ‘But never doubt, I will always be here, to come to the rescue if you need me…’

‘Like a knight in shining armour,’ she added with a cracked laugh.

‘The armour is a little tarnished now,’ he said. ‘But it is still available.’ There was silence for a moment, then he said, ‘Lydia, you know I said I had been looking for Yuri in Minsk?’

‘Yes.’

‘I didn’t find him there.’

‘I realised that. You would have told me if you had.’

‘Oh, Lydia, I am so sorry. I should have, I really should. You have every right to know.’

‘Know what? Tell me, tell me at once. He’s not… not dead, is he?’

‘No, far from it. After I came back from the gulag, I went to Kirilhor. I was simply looking for somewhere to lie low until I could get home and I thought of Ivan Ivanovich. I had no idea Yuri would be there.’

‘He’s back at Kirilhor?’ That was the last place she expected him to be.

‘He was six years ago. He would have finished his education and found a job by now, though I doubt he’d move far from Olga Denisovna.’

‘Olga!’

‘Yes.’ He took a deep breath. ‘She didn’t die. She was still in hospital in Minsk when the Germans invaded Russia. She was evacuated to Moscow with all the other patients and recovered, though badly knocked about. She spent the rest of the war years keeping her head down, working as a cleaner at the hospital. After the war she went looking for Yuri. She was luckier than you. She found him in an orphanage and claimed him as her son. He has grown up believing himself to be Yuri Nahmov.’

Her heart sank. ‘So he doesn’t know about me?’

‘No. He thinks Olga Nahmova is his mother.’

‘How could she do that – how could she?’

‘She sustained head injuries in the explosion and it may be she actually thinks he is her son.’

‘But you told him differently.’

‘No, I didn’t.’

‘Why not?’

‘He was in no mood to hear it. He’s been brought up to be a good Communist, Lidushka. He hates the Capitalist West and when I mentioned your father, the count – without telling him about the relationship – he was vitriolic in his hate and Olga came at me with a knife. I decided, reluctantly, to leave well alone.’

Tears were raining down her face. ‘Oh, Alex. If you kept quiet all this time, why tell me now?’

He wiped the tears away with his handkerchief. ‘You wish I hadn’t?’

‘No. And it’s done now, isn’t it?’ She attempted a smile.

‘Yes. I debated long and hard about whether to say anything when you were here before, wondering if you had really given him up…’

‘No, I hadn’t, not altogether. I couldn’t.’

‘I realise that now.’

‘I can’t go to him, can I?’

‘No, sweetheart, you can’t go to him. But take comfort from the fact that he is a big strong lad and very intelligent. You can be proud of him.’

She was silent for a long time. He reached out and put his work-worn hand over her soft one. ‘Perhaps I should not have told you.’

‘Yes, you should. I needed to know. Now I shall be able to imagine him growing up and making his way in the world, Communist or no Communist.’

‘Communism won’t last,’ he said. ‘Not like it was in Stalin’s day. Already there are signs of change. The uprisings in Hungary prove that. It will happen again elsewhere and the Russians won’t be able to keep putting them down.’

‘I hope you are right.’ She paused. ‘I must go home.’

‘I know.’

‘I shan’t say anything of this to Robert. He doesn’t like me talking about Russia and always cuts me off when I start on what he calls “one of my nostalgic trips”. I suppose it’s because it’s part of my life he can’t share.’ She smiled suddenly. ‘In any case, he’d want to know how I found out and I can’t tell him that, can I?’

‘I suppose not.’

And so she left him, left him to his pigs and his chickens and his untidy kitchen and went back to Upstone Hall, large, comfortable, well kept, even though it took her a week to tidy up after Bobby’s party.

September 1963

Lydia was back in Kirilhor, silently and desperately struggling with Olga for possession of Yuri. The woman would not let her have him. In the tussle the baby fell to the floor with a sickening crump. Horrified, Lydia looked down through her empty arms and realised he was dead. His head was at an unnatural angle, his limbs all floppy and yet his blue eyes were open and reproached her. The shock of it woke her and for a moment she thought she was still in Russia.

She felt the dried-on tears she had shed in her sleep and looked about her at the familiar room with its warm carpet and pretty curtains. Her sheets were white, not the dirty grey of those at Kirilhor, and instead of scratchy blankets, those on her bed were soft. She was safe at Upstone Hall. Yuri wasn’t dead; he was alive, Alex had told her so.

She passed the back of her hand across her eyes in an effort to bring herself back to the present. Yuri wasn’t dead; her nightmare was false. He was alive and well and for that she should be thankful. She had written to him at Kirilhor soon after her last visit to Alex, explaining why and how she had left him in Russia and how she loved him and thought of him constantly, but her letters had come back unopened and covered in official stamps. It had been a terrible disappointment that wracked her with misery for days. It was not fair on her family to be constantly brooding and wishing, and so she had pulled herself together and hidden the letters away, hidden her pain along with them. But it didn’t stop the nightmares.

She had forgotten what had woken her and was startled by a knock on the door and Tatty poking her head round it. Seeing her mother still in bed, she came into the room. ‘Mum, are you all right? It’s gone eight o’clock.’ She was tall and slim, dressed in tailored black slacks and a pink cashmere jumper. Her dark hair was cut in a fashionable bob, with the nape of the neck shaped and the front hair flicked forward.

‘Is it? Good heavens, I must have overslept. I’ll be properly awake in a minute.’

Tatty looked closely at her mother’s face. ‘You’ve been crying.’

‘No, dreaming.’

‘More like a nightmare, by the look of you.’

‘Perhaps. It’s gone now.’ She attempted a laugh, which was difficult since her dream still haunted her.

‘I’m at a loose end and thought we could go shopping in Norwich. I need some things to take to Girton and I want to buy Claudia and Reggie a wedding present.’ Now the children were grown up and no longer needed her, Claudia had at last agreed to marry her bus driver. ‘What do you say?’ Tatty went on. ‘You haven’t got anything else arranged, have you?’

Tatty was always going off here, there and everywhere with her friends, but they were close, mother and daughter, and they enjoyed going shopping together. ‘Give me a minute and I’ll be ready.’

She struggled off the bed and went to have a shower. When she returned, Tatty was sitting on her bed, waiting for her. ‘What were you dreaming about, Mum? It wasn’t Dad, was it?’

‘Why do you say that?’ she asked sharply.

‘He’s away an awful lot. He went off again early this morning, didn’t he?’

‘Yes, but he loves sailing and I don’t. He’ll be home next weekend for the wedding.’ In the absence of any close family, Robert had agreed to give the bride away. Tatty was to be bridesmaid.

‘I’m not a child, you know. I’ve got eyes and ears.’

Lydia smiled. No, her daughter was a beautiful young woman, far too observant sometimes. She was off to Girton in October and then both her children would have left the nest. She sat down beside her on the bed. ‘Tatty, I’m not worried about your father, I promise you.’

‘Then what?’

‘It was something on the news last night,’ she said, prevaricating. ‘Some poor young man has been killed trying to get over the Berlin Wall. To me, that dreadful wall symbolises the great chasm between East and West, a gulf of hate and misunderstanding nothing can bridge, and it set me thinking about my time in Russia just before the war and I suppose that’s what triggered the dream.’

‘Tell me about it.’

Perhaps if she talked about it, she could dispel the feeling of guilt, because it was guilt which gave her the nightmares. ‘It was a terrible time. No one knew what was going to happen and when the Germans invaded there was panic everywhere. The Russians had been relying on their non-aggression pact with Germany and were taken by surprise. Alex saw it coming and so did most of the Brits in Russia at the time, but of course, no one listened to them. People disappeared, simply disappeared into thin air, and there was no way of tracing them…’ She stopped. ‘I shouldn’t be remembering that, should I? I can’t seem to stop myself and I feel so guilty…’

‘Whatever for?’

‘I left Yuri behind. I abandoned him.’

‘From what you’ve told me, Mum, you had no choice.’

‘Sometimes I ask myself if I should have been stronger and not let Alex persuade me to leave.’

Tatty knew about Alex; he had figured in her tale of leaving Russia at the beginning of the war, before she met Robert, but she had called him a family friend, which indeed he was. He had been frequently at Upstone Hall as a young man and several photographs in the family album featured him but, like everyone else, Tatty believed he had been killed at the beginning of the war. ‘Then your life would have been very different. You would not have married Dad and Bobby and I would not have been born. You don’t regret that, do you?’

‘No, of course not. Not for a minute. Don’t ever think it. It’s simply that I would like Yuri to know how it was and to understand…’

‘Perhaps he does.’

‘It’s not only that I left him, it’s that I didn’t want him. When I realised I was pregnant I hated the thought of having a child, especially Kolya’s. It seemed to be the end of everything. I couldn’t come home and I was so unhappy. The bigger I got the more I hated that lump in my body. I wanted him to be born dead…’

‘Mum!’ Tatty was shocked. ‘You never said that before.’

‘You were too young to be told and, in any case, the minute he was born and I held him in my arms, I loved him. I loved him all the more for not wanting him in the first place. When Kolya and Olga Nahmova took him I was out of my mind. And then Alex turned up, sent by Grandpa to find me. We searched for Yuri together until he made me give up and come home. I always hoped we would find him, but even when he was traced, he didn’t want to know. It was my punishment, I suppose.’

‘I didn’t know he had been traced.’

She had almost given herself away. ‘It was Olga Nahmova found him. They told me she was dying of her wounds, but she didn’t die. She recovered and went looking for him. She was his mother. Why should he want anything to do with me?’

‘Mum, you mustn’t think like that. I’m sure if he understood what happened, he’d want to be in touch.’

‘Perhaps, but it wouldn’t be easy, you know. There are so many restrictions.’ She paused, unsure where the conversation was leading her. ‘Come on, I’m longing for a cup of tea, then we’ll be off to Norwich.’

To Lydia’s relief Tatty did not ask how she knew Olga had found him; she could not divulge that without betraying her visits to Alex and she could not do that. They went downstairs together and Lydia managed to put it from her mind until they were driving past the turn for Northacre Green when she nearly gave way again. Keeping away from Alex was the hardest thing she had done since leaving Yuri in Russia and it was no easier after two years, but she had to do it. She could never have gone on seeing him, returning home so elated or so dejected that someone was sure to notice. It was not in her nature to dissemble, to add more untruths to those already told. She would not have been able to function as a wife and mother if her heart and soul and every thought was geared towards the next trip to Northacre Green and how she was going to manage it. She hoped – no, she knew – Alex understood that.