‘Yes.’
‘But you’d no more be allowed into the country with your background than I would.’
‘I wouldn’t have that background, would I? I can invent something else. I could be a Party faithful. Some of my Paris friends have gone back and they tell me they’ve had no problems. If they invited us to stay we wouldn’t have to stick with the tour.’
She did not ask how he had made contact with them. He could have been meeting people in London. ‘How did they travel?’
‘I’ve no idea.’
‘Oh, you’re impossible,’ she said, throwing a cushion at him.
Darkness had fallen and the evening was turning chilly. They went back inside and made cocoa before going to their separate beds. Nothing more was said about returning to Russia, but Lydia could not sleep for reliving the conversation in her mind. Russia. Kirilhor. Mama and Papa. Beautiful Mama, handsome Papa, both of whom had loved her and tried to protect her. Could they possibly be alive? Would they be grieving for a child they thought they had lost? Had Sir Edward done all he could to find out the truth? Had she been lied to? The questions went round and round in her head, unanswered, unanswerable.
Chapter Five
Three weeks later, when she arrived home from work, she was greeted by a jubilant Kolya. ‘I’ve got them,’ he said, waving a sheaf of papers at her and grinning broadly. ‘An invitation from my friend to visit and entry permits to go to Russia. It’s all here.’
‘You’re never going?’ She kicked off her shoes and went into the kitchen in stockinged feet to put a kettle on to make tea.
He followed her. ‘Yes. That’s what you want, isn’t it?’
‘Me?’
‘Yes, you’re coming with me.’
‘Don’t be silly, Kolya. My father wouldn’t hear of me going.’
‘Then don’t tell him. You can write to him after we’ve left.’
‘I couldn’t do that.’
‘Why not? The only way to find out if he has deceived you is to go to Russia and see for yourself.’ He put the papers on the table and went up to her to take her shoulders in his hands and look earnestly into her face, his blue eyes alight with excitement, unable to comprehend that, for her, going to Russia was something so momentous she found the concept difficult to grasp. And yet something was pulling at her heart strings, something she found hard to deny. ‘You do want to go, don’t you?’
‘Yes, but…’
‘Oh, don’t let us have buts,’ he said. ‘I thought you’d be pleased.’
‘I would be under normal circumstances, but to go secretly…’
‘We aren’t going secretly. Haven’t I just said? It’s all open and above board. Besides, sweetheart, I don’t want to go without you. I need you.’
‘How can I go?’ The kettle whistled. She warmed the pot, put two teaspoons of tea leaves in it and poured the boiling water onto them. ‘I have no papers and I wouldn’t be given any.’
He grinned. ‘You have got papers. I have them here, for Lydia Stoneleigh, to accompany me.’
She stared at him. ‘How could you, Kolya? How could you assume—?’
‘I assumed nothing but I knew you would dither and dither if I asked you first, so I decided to present you with a fait accompli.’
‘But we aren’t married and it wouldn’t be right…’
‘No, but we could be.’
She gave a brittle laugh. ‘Nikolay Andropov, is that a proposal?’
‘Yes.’ He gave her shoulders a little shake. ‘Lidushka, you know I adore you, don’t you? I want to make you happy. I want to help you put the past to rest so that we can go forward together. We cannot do that if you are dragging ghosts behind you.’
Ghosts. Was that what was troubling her? She began to waver. His enthusiasm was infectious. Obstacles, in his book, were there to be swept away. If you wanted something badly enough it was attainable. How badly did she want to explore her roots? ‘But it would mean leaving my life here behind me.’
‘Not for good. We will come back. Please, Lydia, darling, sweetheart, love of my life, say you will.’
In the face of such an onslaught, how could she hold out? ‘When?’
‘You will? Oh, happy, happy me!’ He pulled her into his arms and smothered her with kisses. He would have gone further than just kissing and began fiddling with the buttons on her blouse, but she pulled away. ‘Hold on!’ she said, laughing. ‘It hasn’t happened yet.’
Reluctantly he desisted. ‘Sorry. I’ll be good until we’re married, but it will have to be quick. I want to go next week.’
‘Kolya, I can’t arrange things that quickly, you know that. I have to tell my parents and Mama will want to do everything properly.’
‘You don’t have to tell them. You are twenty-two and they are not your real parents. I thought the whole idea of going to Russia was to find the couple who gave you birth.’ He laughed suddenly. ‘Let’s get married in Moscow.’
He had a mesmeric quality about him she found impossible to deny, perhaps because what he was offering was something she had subconsciously wanted for years. Not marriage, she had hardly given that a thought, but the opportunity to go to Russia and find out the truth. Did she want to marry him? He was fun and made her limbs ache when he was kissing her and it was with the greatest difficulty she had managed to hold him off, not only because he was so ardent, but because of her own weakness where he was concerned. And he must love her, if he could be so patient with her. ‘All right,’ she said.
He hugged her. ‘All you have to do is pack. I must go and book seats on the train.’ And he was gone, leaving her with a pot full of tea, wondering what on earth she had done.
By the time they arrived in Moscow, in squally, chilly rain, after more than a week on a succession of trains through Germany and Poland, she was so tired and bemused all she wanted to do was sleep. Her study of pictures and maps did not prepare her for the dreariness of the place, notwithstanding that many of the buildings were new and the new arterial roads extraordinarily wide. Everywhere there were signs of change: roadworks, old buildings being pulled down, new ones built. She saw ragged children, babushkas in patterned cotton dresses and shapeless cardigans with the elbows out, butchers standing beside their trucks hacking meat from carcasses with bloody axes, fashionably dressed women and men in smart suits. She could not help noticing the huge contrast between the rich and the poor; neither seemed to notice the existence of the other.
Kolya took her to the Savoy Hotel, which was nothing like the Savoy in London. The accommodation was poor and the food worse. ‘Never mind,’ he said. ‘We’ll only be here a couple of days, just long enough to get married and for me to meet my friend. Then we’ll make tracks for Crimea.’
‘Aren’t I going to meet him?’
‘No, better not.’ He went to the door and looked along the corridor and, apparently satisfied, returned to her. ‘You have to be careful,’ he said in a low voice. ‘Even the walls have ears.’
‘Kolya, what’s going on?’ She was whispering now. ‘What’s this friend of yours done?’
‘He’s a kulak and Stalin is afraid of the kulaks.’
‘Why? They are only a superior kind of peasant with more money than most. I thought most of them were eliminated when the collective farms were set up.’
‘Not all, some were simply dispossessed and sent to the labour camps and some of those have returned home. My friend belongs to a secret organisation preparing a kulak uprising. It’s very powerful and growing rapidly.’
‘I never heard of them.’
He laughed. ‘They would hardly advertise their existence in Pravda, would they?’