Then came Dmitri and Danil, separated by a year, but looking and behaving like twins, the more so because they had married twin sisters, which added enormously to Anne’s confusion. They had seven children between them. Ekaterina came next in age, widowed and returned for a long visit with her two children. She was the closest to Irina in age, being just eighteen months older.
After Irina came the unmarried brothers, Mishka and Grishka, and the unmarried daughters, Nadezhda and Zinaidia. Nadezhda had recently been betrothed by their eldest brother to a steady young man who would be allowed to marry her in nine or ten years’ time, when he had proved himself worthy. Anne saw that Irma’s whirlwind courtship and marriage to Count Kirov was not the way things were usually done, and that they had worried a great deal about her and were upset but not too surprised to find poor ‘‘Rushka’ looking so pale and thin.
‘Now you’re here,’ Zina said, putting an arm round her little sister, ‘we’ll soon make you rosy and plump. You must stay a good, long time. No need to hurry away, since that husband of yours is not at home. In fact, since you’ve brought the children with you, there’s no need to go back at all,’ she said, and at Irina’s startled look added hastily, ‘until Kirov comes home again, I mean.’ But it was plain that it was not what she meant, and that she could see no good and sufficient reason why any Kiriakov should ever live anywhere but at Chastnaya.
Life at Chastnaya was very much less formal than at Schwartzenturm. Anne was surprised but pleased to see her mistress put off her fashionable French clothes and adopt a plain and serviceable mode of dress; and was amused at Marie’s outrage when Irina stopped having her hair curled, and wore it instead in a single plait down her back, like a child. One day she even put on Scythian trousers, and went out on Iskra riding astride, the way she had when she was a little girl. The change in her was astonishing: she blossomed under the kindly warmth of her family’s love, and became smiling, talkative, even mischievous, enjoying romps and old family jokes as much as any of the children.
It was a happy, haphazard house. Everyone had their tasks to perform, and their own interests to pursue, and though the greeting they gave Anne was warm and sincere, she was a little startled, but not displeased, to find that they expected her to look after herself. Whatever she wanted she could have for the asking, or better still, help herself to. She might please herself how she dressed and what she did; and until everyone gathered on the verandah at the end of the day for the long, social evening of eating and drinking and talking and laughing, no one felt it was their business to entertain her, or advise her what to do.
Riding took up a great deal of everyone’s day. Chastnaya was a large estate, and just to get around it all the brothers spent many hours each day on horseback. The children were taught to ride almost before they could walk, and scrambled about on ponies, bareback like the hill children, as easily as on their own legs. Because of the threat from the Tcherkess, it was not possible to go outside the estate, and even within its bounds there was some danger, though all the Kiriakovs affected at least to ignore it. Their father had been killed by a Circassian raider, who picked him off while he was riding about his business in one of the outlying parts, and his sons felt that to show any fear of the same fate would be to dishonour his memory; but the women never went near the boundaries unescorted, and the children kept strictly to the fields nearer the house. The estate was so large, however, that this was not a hardship.
Anne rode for a good part of every day, and could hardly have desired a more agreeable occupation. Quassy had quite recovered from the journey, and Anne was discovering all over again the particular joy of riding her perfect horse. Her paces were smooth, her mouth like silk; but best of all, as Anne had found the first time she mounted her at Schwartzenturm, Quassy had a great natural exuberance which made riding her a particular delight. The mare loved to go out; and as they explored Chastnaya together, Quassy’s ears were pricked, her nostrils quivering, and she looked about her, bright-eyed with the intensity of her interest in everything around her.
The good-natured Grishka had built a series of small obstacles in one of the paddocks and was teaching Anne to jump.
‘I’ll teach you to ride astride, too, if you like,’ he offered one day. Anne was reluctant at first to try it. It looked immodest, she said. Grishka laughed, and pointed out that he had taught his two younger sisters to ride astride, and he would hardly have done that if there were anything improper about it; so she consented. The lessons were so successful that Danil offered next to teach her to shoot, and promised she would be a very fair shot by the time he had finished with her.
As to her pupils, she hardly saw them. There were so many people at Chastnaya eager to take care of them that she was never called upon to accompany the. Lessons were not thought of. They ran and played and rode with their cousins from dawn to dusk, growing brown and strong in the delightful Caucasian sunshine; and Anne comforted herself with the thought that the things they were learning then might be just as useful to them as the ability to put the map of Europe together, or recite the Tsars in order, with their dates.
One day in June, Anne was coming in with a basket of roses she had picked for the house, and to her astonishment found Sergei standing on the verandah talking to Zina, who had been called away from overseeing an important culinary event by his unexpected arrival. He turned as Anne approached, and his face lit up with a very flattering smile.
‘Anna Petrovna!’ he said. ‘There you are! I was told you were all here, so I thought I’d call and see you. I’ve been seconded to the Independents – the Independent Caucasian Corps, you know – and we’re stationed at Grozny, which is only twenty versts away. How are you? You are looking so well! And how is my mother?’
The second question sounded rather more perfunctory than the first, but Anne answered it as if it were not merely polite. ‘She is so much better, you would hardly know her. She grows quite plump – doesn’t she, Zina?’
‘She does; but none of us will have anything to eat today unless I get back to the kitchen and stop my cook and Kerim from killing each other. So I bid you welcome and farewell for the present, Sergei Nikolayevitch. Anna will take care of you, I know, and the men will be back soon. Forgive me – I shall see you at dinner.’ She hurried away, and though she had spoken in a friendly way, Anne wondered if she rather disapproved of Kirov’s son, and whether some other visitor might not have been deemed worth the risk of a domestic disaster.
Sergei seemed to notice nothing, however. He was looking at Anne, and as she put down the basket of roses he reached out and took both her hands, and said, ‘You look so well, Anna Petrovna! And different, somehow, I wonder what it is?’
‘Nothing, except that I dare say I am rather brown, from riding all day,’ Anne said with a smile.
‘No, no, it is something. You look happy and -1 don’t know.’ He was staring at her with such intensity, that she began to feel a little uncomfortable. She drew her hands back and gestured to him to sit down on one of the large sofas in the deep shade of the verandah.
‘Now, tell me all your news,’ she said. ‘I haven’t seen you since you left Moscow with your father last year. You must have so much to tell! You were with him for some time, weren’t you?’
She managed to keep the wistful note out of her voice, though she longed for news of the Count. Sergei leaned back in the sofa’s embrace, and stretched out his elegant legs, crossing them at the ankle, and she studied his face unobserved for a moment. He had changed, too, she thought: his face had gained authority, his neck was thicker, his shoulders heavier. He no longer had that unfinished look: he was almost twenty, and had come into his young manhood, which suited him very well. She noticed that he had grown very handsome; and also, with a pang, that he looked more than ever like his father.