Both pairs of eyes came round to her as she entered. The Count smiled warmly, Sergei shyly, and then Lolya ran forward to claim their attention and her brother’s hugs, and to display her new best dress, put on for the dinner and perfectly fit, she assured them eagerly, for dancing. Anne took Nasha to sit on a sofa to one side. Shoora engaged her in conversation across the Countess, who was sitting between them, silent but faintly smiling as she gazed at her husband and her stepson with what appeared to be both pleasure and pride.
Then the door opened and Vera Borisovna sailed in, magnificent in puce satin decorated all over with glinting crystal spars and beaded fringe, and with her famous pink diamonds glittering on her bosom and in her hair.
‘The first carriage is approaching. Come Serge, Koko, we must take up our positions at the head of the stairs to greet our guests.’ The Count looked towards his wife, who made a move as if to rise, but the Dowager crushed her back with a kindly smile. ‘No, no, my dear Irina Pavlovna, we need not trouble you. There is no need for you to receive – not the least in the world! My son and grandson and I will do all that is necessary. Pray do not disturb yourself.’
The Countess sat very still, her face very pale, her eyes carefully blank. The Count and his son exchanged a quick glance, and Anne thought how, in the Dowager’s presence, they were like two guilty, children. Her influence over both of them was absurdly strong; but the Count could not refrain from at least beginning an objection.
‘Surely, Mother, Irina, as my wife, ought to be with us.’
The Dowager’s smile was wider and whiter than ever. ‘No, no, my dear, there is not the least occasion to trouble the dear Countess. People will not expect it. Serge is merely a relation by marriage to her, and it is I, after all, who have been a second mother to the dear boy – have I not, mon cher?’
‘Yes, Gran’mSre,’ Sergei said automatically, but he was watching his father enquiringly.
‘Mother, I must insist–’ the Count began.
‘No, my dear, this is a Kirov affair, you know. There is no need for this debate – and no time! I hear people below. Come now, we must take our places at once!’
She swept them out without allowing any further argument. It was done so cleverly that there was nothing on which anyone could have hung offence; and yet Anne knew it was meant to offend, and that it had offended. Lolya was chatting to her aunt and uncle, who had not observed the piece of business at all, and Irina remained motionless, displaying no distress, but Anne could feel her pain like a separate person standing between them. She went across and sat beside the Countess and began talking about the first thing that came into her head.
‘I wonder if we shall hear more, ma’am, of this shocking new dance they have invented in Germany? I cannot believe we shall ever see men and women holding each other in public in that way; but perhaps the reports have been exaggerated. What do you think? Would you countenance the Waltz in your drawing-room?’
The Countess could not answer at once; but after a moment made some kind of reply, and Anne continued to talk, hardly aware of what she was saying, only using her voice as she would to soothe a frightened animal. In a little while, Irina looked up and met Anne’s gaze with eyes that were too bright and gave her a small, tight smile of gratitude.
The dinner was magnificent, but Anne, whose appetite was usually healthy, ate little of the procession of delicacies which passed her way. As the Countess was seated on the same side of the table, Anne could not see her, or judge how she was feeling; and Lolya, beside her, demanded a great deal of attention. But it was still unhappily plain to Anne that Vera Borisovna, at the end of the table with Sergei on her left hand, was taking all the congratulations of the occasion to herself, not only as hostess, but as patroness and surrogate-mother of the newly graduated cadet.
The Count was at the other end of the table, and Irina, seated insignificantly half-way down one side, was being pointedly ignored. Anne began to wonder apprehensively what would happen at the party tomorrow. If Vera Borisovna stage-managed another slight to Irina, would the Count protest? Anne hoped so fervently, though her imagination shrank from the prospect of a quarrel between mother and son. The situation would be unpleasant, whether he intervened or not; and she wondered whether she might somehow speak to him, persuade him to confront his mother privately during the course of the next day, before the party, and somehow force her to be properly civil to her daughter-in-law. Yet that would be an unwarrantable intrusion on her part. It was not her business to intervene, however much she longed to.
She was so preoccupied with her thoughts that she hardly noticed the Dowager’s butler approach his mistress with an unusually agitated expression to murmur something into her ear. The Dowager’s expression altered. She spoke a few rapid words, and the butler hastened towards the door; but before he reached it, a new figure appeared in the doorway. It was a young Guards cadet in uniform, booted and caped and a little tousled, as if he had ridden fast. His face was pale, his eyes, as they swept the room, almost unseeing from some kind of emotion, and as he strode up the room towards the Dowager, all eyes turned to him, and the clamour of conversation died rapidly away.
He stood before Vera Borisovna, but seemed unable to speak in his agitation. His mouth opened and closed a few times without words, and he looked around him again, as if seeking help.
The Count stood up. ‘What is it?’ he said into the chill silence. ‘You have a message for someone? Pull yourself together and spit it out, man! Remember you’re an officer.’
The young man straightened up, gratefully, and turned towards the Count, almost visibly separating himself from his emotions.
‘News, sir,’ he said at last. ‘A despatch has just arrived from Olita. I have been sent from military headquarters to request you to come at once – and you, sir,’ he added, his eyes flickering round towards Sergei. Sergei made a movement as if to rise; his hand, with his napkin crumpled in it, going down on to the table to push himself up, knocked a knife lying on the nap, so that it swivelled and struck the stem of his wine glass, which rang with a tiny, clear sound. Anne always remembered it afterwards: it was as if someone had rung a bell, as they do during the Mass, to draw attention to the moment of transubstantiation. What came next would change everything.
The Count recalled and held the messenger’s gaze. ‘A despatch from the front?’ It must be serious, if they were summoned immediately. ‘Is it news? For God’s sake, what is it?’
The boy’s precarious self-possession crumpled, and he looked at once very young and very scared.
‘There’s been a battle, sir, against the French, at Friedland. A terrible defeat! Our men are in retreat to Danzig. They are evacuating Konigsberg, and taking the wounded to – the wounded–’ His voice trembled and failed, and nothing followed it in the palpitating silence. His eyes filled with tears. ‘Oh sir, they say our dead number more than twenty thousand!’