— Yes, that’s it. If I might bother your lordship for the tickets.
Edward continued to stare, not, Temerity thought, at the train guard.
— Father, aren’t the tickets in your inner left pocket?
— Hm? I don’t think so, Temmy.
— Could you check? We don’t wish to keep the guard waiting.
Edward patted his inner left pocket, retrieved the tickets. —Ah.
— Thank you, my lord.
— What?
The train guard deepened his tones of courtesy and respect. —Thank you, Lord Fenleigh. I hope you and the Lady Temerity have a pleasant journey.
Temerity hurried to fill the gap left by Edward’s silence. —I’m sure we shall.
The door squeaked shut.
— Father, you—
— Damned odd, that. How did that fellow know the titles? If I’ve said it once, I’ve said it a thousand times, call me West.
— Perhaps a secretary reserved the compartment.
Edward folded the newspaper on a sharp line, and the newsprint squeaked between his gloved fingers. For just a moment, the left side of his face seemed to lag behind the right as he spoke. Then both sides matched. —Did you know Charles Dickens was one of the first in England to install a shower bath? I wonder if it helped him write.
— Father—
— He took long walks all over London, all hours of the day and night. Little wonder he wanted a wash.
Temerity shut her eyes and rubbed her temples. Edward’s conversation would twitch and dance now as he changed the subject, and changed it again, until Temerity surrendered. Yet his manner seemed excessively careful, even brittle, like that of drunk man walking with a slow and forced grace.
Angry, worried, and confused, she said nothing else.
Neither did he.
Higgins, their aged butler and their only remaining servant, met them at the train station and drove them to Kurseong House. Edward asked Higgins about his rheumatism and about the village in general. Temerity pretended she did not notice Higgins wince as he took her light overnight case. To suggest she carry own case, she thought, would only insult him.
Young women from the village, hired for the week, aired the house and changed the dust sheets, in no need of Temerity’s nominal supervision. Temerity stared out at the back lawns from her old bedroom window. Her father was right. This house, this utter folly of a house, built too fast on a fen, felt oppressive with damp.
Edward seemed not just tired but afflicted, even confused. He spoke of nothing more meaningful than the weather.
Sunday evening, Temerity returned to her own London flat; Monday evening she crossed the Channel. She’d left Edward a note on his own stationery. I may be gone for some time. Give Higgins my regards. How to sign it: Temerity? Love, Temerity? Your loving daughter, T? Yours, Temmy?
No: TTW.
The white wall interrupted, its sight reminding her of just where she sat, hidden in an NKVD officer’s Moscow flat.
As sunlight streamed through the glass of tea and out past the filigree of the podstakannik, and Temerity tilted her head to get a better view, she thought of Kurseong House and her desire to leave it. The certainty of her desire felt old and distant, lost. After returning from Roedean, she’d lived year-round at the estate, tended by three servants. Edward visited every weekend, more when he could manage it. As much as she thrived on language study, she longed for some sort of work, something messy and intricate, difficult. Instead, privilege settled on her in layers, each one heavier than the last. Language study at home. Excellent food. Devoted servants. Beautiful grounds. Even tailored trousers, worn on the understanding she must change into a skirt or frock when leaving the house.
The suffocating summer of 1933: Temerity’s debut, with Aunt Min back from India to chaperone. Temerity, tired from party and after party, event after event — that bloody flower show perhaps the most boring of all — and disgusted by the stunts of one or another Mitford sister, wanted only to resume her study of Russian.
One day, she asked her Russian tutor about his melancholy air. Was it true, then, those stories of sadness woven into the Russian Soul?
Count Ilya Yakovich Ostrovsky shook his head. —Miss West, you are more intelligent than that. Now, your Russian compositions. You speak the language well, very well. You’re a perfect mimic for my voice, but if you truly wish to write in Russian, to communicate at all, you must first think in Russian. This composition is English in Cyrillic letters. Again, please.
She would dream in Russian some nights, then dream of her mother’s book of Russian fairy tales with that illustration of Vasilisa the Beautiful. In her dreams, adolescent Temerity told herself not to push the book away, not this time, because if she behaved herself then she might hear her mother’s voice, yes, her mother would be here any moment. She would wake in silence, her face wet.
Day by day, Ilya seemed ever sadder.
Again, please.
Again. Again. Again.
Of all the treasures Ilya had abandoned when escaping St Petersburg in 1917 — he never called the city Petrograd or Leningrad — he said he missed the enamel samovar and tea service the most. He described it one afternoon when Min invited him to join her, Edward, and Temerity for tea. Then he confessed he’d never quite adapted to drinking tea in the British style. —The teapot is tyrannical.
Min lifted the spout free of Ilya’s cup. —Whatever do you mean, Count Ostrovsky?
— You, the hostess, control the tea. So you control the strength. All courtesy then demands I drink my tea as you would please.
Min placed the teapot back on the tray. —My dear count, if the tea is not to your liking…
— The tea is delicious. It is crisp and bright. From one of your own Darjeeling gardens. That is not my point. With the samovar, one makes zavarka, a tea essence, a concentrate, and then a guest may add as much or as little hot water to dilute it, as he pleases.
Edward, annoyed on Min’s behalf, clinked his cup against his saucer and quoted a Bolshevik slogan. —From each according to his ability, to each according to his work?
Min raised her eyebrows. —Really, Edward? Count Ostrovsky, I apologize for my brother.
Temerity gazed at her tutor in this awkward moment and saw him for the first time as a person, a fellow human being, and one shaped by a different culture and a complex past. Posture straight and elegant, he wrapped his long fingers around his hot cup, as if in penance, and gazed into his tea. When he looked up, he caught Temerity studying him. Sunlight streamed through the window and caught the edge of his strong cheekbones and the few blond hairs left in the grey.
Moscow pipes rattled.
God’s sake!
Standing up, giving her head a shake and demanding of herself a little discipline instead of this daydreaming, Temerity strode to the little fold-down table and cleaned it for the third time. Then she returned to the samovar.
Earlier that morning, Efim and Kostya, each irritating the other, had hurried to make tea for her, and their competition spared her the dangerous embarrassment of admitting she had no idea how to work a samovar, let alone puzzle out the best ratio for zavarka to water. So now she experimented. The first glass she dumped down the sink, expecting it to improve the drainage. The second, which gave up a colour much closer to red than brown, proved drinkable: smoke, wine, leather, flowers.
Ursula Friesen’s voice: You Britishers always want some tea.
Memory trickled again, and Temerity found herself thinking of Roedean and the ram’s head over a door, the way the light played on the tea-coloured glass eyes. She’d noticed this while rehearsing Henry V on a staircase, Temerity cast as self-sacrificial York and wishing instead she could be Henry and deliver his glorious lines. Tell the constable we are but warriors for the working day…