This wasn’t how Paul had imagined their reunion would be. For some reason, despite all he had read and heard about the Revolution in Russia, he had supposed he would find her much as he had left her. Grown up of course, and now a young lady, but still the wilful girl he remembered, daughter of an affluent family — a sort of romantic figure in his imagination; something like Natasha in Tolstoy’s War and Peace, only more familiar.
‘I had to grow a beard,’ he explained nonsensically. ‘And they made me wear these rags. It’s not surprising you don’t recognise me.’
‘You say you are Pavel Sergeyevich?’ she said, shrugging. ‘Very well. Why should I not believe you if you say you are my cousin? My brother Mikhail will be sorry to have missed you. You remember what great friends you were…’
‘Friends?’ Paul replied with a laugh. ‘You know very well that Mikhail never liked me, Sofya. He wasn’t sorry to see me and my mother leave. You cried, though, do you remember that?’
She peered at him closely. ‘You tell me you are Pavel… then why is it you have come back? To gloat, is that why?’
‘Gloat? What do you mean?’
‘To see to how we are reduced. Does it please you?’
‘Why would it please me, Sofya? Of course I don’t like to see you like this. It is horrible.’
‘Isn’t that what your mother always wanted? A revolution… to see us dispossessed?’
‘No. How can you say that? That wasn’t what she wanted. You were just a child, you couldn’t have understood how it was then. I couldn’t, so how could you?’
He made a move towards her again, but she stepped back. She was just repeating what her father would have told her. And Mikhail, just as soon as she was old enough to listen.
‘I’m looking for Mikhail,’ he said. ‘I’ve been sent to find your brother.’
Sofya’s lips curled contemptuously. ‘So you’re with them are you? I might have known. Well you’re too late. Mikhail’s not here. They already sent people and I told them. My brother has gone away. We don’t know where so there’s no point in asking. Leave us alone.’
The hand at the end of the arm protruding from the bedding twitched and its owner moaned, almost as though, having been included in Sofya’s denial of knowledge as to Mikhail’s whereabouts, she wished to concur.
Sofya dropped to her knees by the cot again and parted the bedding. Paul saw the withered face of an old woman. Her eyes flickered weakly and she moaned once more.
‘I’m not with the Bolsheviks,’ Paul insisted. ‘If that’s what you think. I’m not with anyone. I’ve come from London with a message for Mikhail. Where can I find him?’
‘Look, Maria,’ Sofya said to the crone on the cot. ‘Look who has come to see us. He says he is Uncle Sergei’s son, Pavel Sergeyevich.’
She turned back to Paul. ‘You remember your governess, don’t you, Pavel? All those hours she spent trying to teach you how to behave like a little Russian gentleman?’
‘Governess?’
Stunned, Paul stared at the withered face on the cot. Surely it couldn’t be her, not the woman who had tormented him for years, the governess who had replaced the one who had hit him and then disappeared?
‘Korovina?’ he said. ‘It can’t be.’
He remembered her as a large and imperious matron, a vindictive figure who had taken her lead from the rest of the family — only she had always waited until she was alone with Paul before showing her contempt for him and his mother. He remembered the many slaps across the head she had dealt him when no-one was looking, how when he had cried she had called him an English coward. He had hated this woman with such a depth of loathing that, at the time, it seemed to have rooted itself in his soul. He could not remember ever having despised a human being quite as much since.
Paul bent over the cot. ‘Madame Korovina?’
Her face was lined like a railway shunting yard; her mouth pinched and wrinkled like a prune. The slight hook to her nose, which once had been hardly noticeable, now seemed to have become more pronounced as the flesh on her face had dropped away.
‘I am glad to see you alive and well,’ he said to her with an equanimity he did not feel, thinking the crone hadn’t heard him until her eyes opened.
‘Maria Ilyainichina,’ Sofya said again. ‘It is Pavel Sergeyevich come to see us.’
Paul saw a spark of recognition flare in the governess’ eyes, a look he remembered and told him there was still some vestige of the old tyrant left inside the withered body. It was the look of the despiser for the despised.
‘I don’t suppose you thought you’d ever see me again,’ Paul said, feeling he at last had some sort of advantage over the woman.
Her mouth opened. ‘Mаlyenykoye gavnor,’ she croaked in a half-whisper.
Paul glanced at Sofya. ‘What did she say?’
‘Have you lost your Russian, Pavel?’
‘No,’ he said. ‘She called me little something… What’s gavnor?’
Sofya smiled at him wickedly.
‘Gavnor? Don’t you remember when we were children we used to say chert? It means the same as chert.’
‘But that means… Chert is—’
‘That’s right,’ said Sofya. ‘Shit. She called you a little shit.’
Paul straightened up, colouring. The old woman on the cot laughed, lungs wheezing like bellows.
‘She looks half-starved,’ Paul said, regaining his composure. ‘So do you, Sofya. You need to eat,’ adding, despite himself, ‘Madame Korovina as well.’
‘Oh? And what do I use for money?’ Sofya retorted. ‘They have left us nothing. What they didn’t steal I had to sell. There is nothing more to sell.’
‘Didn’t Mikhail leave you with anything?’
She ignored him.
‘I was rather hoping he might have some old clothes I could borrow,’ Paul said looking down at his rags. ‘I really need to get out of these things.’
‘I’ve sold them all.’
‘Everything?’
‘Everything he didn’t take. Except one suit I’ve saved for when he comes back.’
‘Well, that will do,’ said Paul.
‘It wouldn’t fit you,’ Sofya said.
‘Then I’ll have to buy some.’ He reached into his pocket and found the small turnip the old woman on the train had given him.
‘Shall we divide that three ways?’ Sofya asked sarcastically. ‘We’ll eat well on that.’
‘I have money,’ Paul said. ‘We can buy food and clothes. I assume one can still buy food?’
‘You can buy anything if you have money,’ she said. ‘Have you ever seen a thin Bolshevik?’
Korovina stirred again. Her wrinkled lips twisted into the parody of a smile. ‘Bad pennies always turn up,’ she whispered.
‘Well this bad penny has turned up with roubles,’ Paul retorted. He pulled a fistful from his pocket and held them out for her to see.
Maria Ilyainichina raised her head until she could see the money. She clutched Sofya’s hand.
‘Eat, little one,’ she rasped. A fierceness grew in her eyes as she turned to Paul. ‘Make her eat, Pavel Sergeyevich. Keep her alive, on the soul of your father, or I will curse you with my dying breath.’ She fell back onto the cot and began coughing.
Sofya held a cup of water to her lips, cooing as she helped her drink. When the governess had taken a sip and Sofya was sure she was comfortable, she got to her feet. She took the money in Paul’s hand.
‘Is it yours?’
‘Of course it’s mine. Are there shops open? It’s getting late.’