The Kirilov Star

Chapter Eight

Theirs was not the only tragedy; it was being enacted all round them every day and, like everyone else, they pulled themselves together and got on with their lives, more than ever determined to defeat Hitler and all he stood for. Lydia stopped looking for Alex’s name in the documents she had to translate, and slowly, as the weeks and months passed, she found she could look back in gratitude for what time they had had together and not yearn for what she could not have. Not that she could forget – that was impossible – but her time in Russia was becoming unreal; Yuri and Alex were ghosts who haunted her dreams but had no place in reality.

They celebrated Christmas Day 1941 at Upstone Hall, though ‘celebrate’ was perhaps the wrong word. Hong Kong surrendered to the Japanese on that day, and that was followed in February 1942 by the fall of Singapore. And still the Allied ships were being sunk. But the Russians were rallying and the RAF was hitting back and hitting hard.

‘They’re getting a taste of their own medicine,’ Robert said when he had leave at the end of May 1942, which coincided with Lydia’s own leave and they were spending it at Upstone Hall with Margaret. The night before there had been a huge raid on Cologne involving over a thousand bombers. They had heard wave after wave of them droning overhead as they lay sleepless in their beds.

The Hall had been gradually modernised over the years, but externally it was exactly the same as it had been in 1920 when Lydia had first arrived there, a bewildered, traumatised four-year-old, crying for her parents. The servant situation was very different; except for Mrs Selby, a daily woman and Claudia, they had all left for the armed services or more lucrative employment and it was impossible to recruit more, so Margaret lived in one wing and shut the rest of the house.

It was a peaceful island surrounded by noisy airfields. The Japanese had bombed the US fleet at Pearl Harbor the previous December, which had brought the Americans into the war, and they had arrived in large numbers and parked their flying fortresses on the airfields, filled the pubs, smoked fat cigars and flirted with the local girls – much to the chagrin of the local young men. They were generous to a fault, especially to the village children, whom they plied with what they called candy, and oranges. Some of the little ones had never seen oranges and were not quite sure what to do with them. The soldiers sliced them in half and showed the children how to suck the juice out of them.

None of this impinged on Lydia and Robert, who wanted to make the most of their leave, going for long walks in the countryside, taking picnics to local beauty spots and shopping in Norwich or Cambridge, using up their precious clothing coupons on utility clothes.

‘What about you? Are things any easier for you?’ she asked him. They were walking alongside the river, hand in hand.

‘Oh, not so bad,’ he said dismissively.

‘I worry about you.’

‘Do you?’

‘Of course.’

‘And I worry about you,’ he said, raising the hand he held and kissing the back of it. ‘I wish you could be here at Upstone Hall all the time. It’s safer than London.’

‘London is where my work is, just as the sea is where your work is and we have to do it. In any case, the Blitz has moved on from London. Nowhere is any safer than anywhere else these days.’

‘No, I suppose not.’ He paused, took a deep breath and then went on as if he had to summon up the courage to say what he had to say. ‘Lydia, do you still think of him?’ He paused. ‘Alex, I mean.’

‘Sometimes,’ she answered slowly. ‘It happens when I least expect it, but I have learnt to accept that he has gone, a victim of war, as so many other young men were, dragged into more danger than he should have been because of me and Yuri. Yuri will be three now, you know.’ Counting the birthdays she had missed was still heartbreaking. She would not even consider that he, too, might have died, in spite of her nightmares.

‘I know,’ he said softly. ‘I just wanted to know because there is something I want to ask you.’

‘Oh.’ She half-knew what was coming.

‘I know I’m not Alex…’

‘No, but that doesn’t mean you are not a lovely man. I have been fortunate to have both of you.’

‘That’s what I wanted to ask. Will you have me? Marry me, I mean. You know how much I love you. You are everything to me and it will make me the happiest man alive if you would.’

She smiled. ‘You haven’t asked me if I love you.’

‘Do you?’

‘Yes, I think I do.’

His blue eyes lit up. ‘Then you will marry me?’

‘Yes.’

He stopped walking, twisted round and gathered her into his arms. ‘Oh, my darling, you have no idea how happy that makes me. I promise I’ll be good to you…’

‘But Robert, you already are good to me.’

‘It will be better.’ He kissed her long and hard, and others on the towpath passed them with a smile. ‘Oh, thank you, my darling, thank you.’

She laughed. ‘I ought to thank you, for being so patient with me, for being my friend when I needed one most and putting up with my bouts of despair…’

‘That’s what love is all about,’ he said. ‘And it works both ways. Knowing you were waiting here for me helped me get through the worst. I had your picture in my pocket next to my heart, keeping me safe.’

She laughed. ‘Oh, Robert, that’s nothing but superstition.’

‘So what, if it works?’

They turned, arms linked, and went back to tell Margaret their good news.

Margaret had initially been angry with Lydia over the way she had disappeared and left Edward desperately worried. ‘You’ve put years on him, you ungrateful child,’ she had said when Lydia reappeared. ‘You have no idea what it’s been like here, not knowing whether you were alive or dead. And Alex going after you. Heaven knows what will happen to him. I suppose you expect to walk back in here as if nothing has happened.’

It had made Lydia feel terribly guilty, and she would have left again, if Papa had not said Mama did not mean to sound so unforgiving, it was just her way of saying she was relieved and pleased to have her home again. Alex’s death had brought them together again, and though she was often in London, they became almost as close as they had been before. Robert’s visits were welcomed and encouraged and, with the news of their engagement, the last of the resentment disappeared. Robert’s father, Henry, had been a lifelong friend of Sir Edward’s and would surely have applauded their decision if he had still been alive.

They were married in St Mary’s Church in Upstone six weeks later. It was an austerity wedding; few people were free to travel and many were in the forces and could not get leave. Robert was in uniform and Lydia wore Margaret’s wedding dress, which fitted her surprisingly well. They had flowers from the garden, but rationing meant catering was a problem. But somehow Margaret coped and even managed a small cake.

Edward, who was giving her away, had questioned her closely on her reasons for wanting to marry Robert. ‘He’s a good man,’ he had said. ‘None better. But are you sure you’re not marrying him out of gratitude? It wouldn’t be fair on him if you were.’

‘No, Papa. I really love him. Alex belongs in the past and that has become a kind of dream. It’s not real anymore. Today is real and Robert is real, and I must get on with a life that is real.’

‘So long as you are sure.’

‘I am sure.’

They had a short honeymoon in the Lake District and then it was back to their wartime jobs, long weeks apart, punctuated by leaves that were all too short and rarely coincided.

In 1943 the tide of war seemed to turn. The Russian army drove the Germans out of Stalingrad, the city which symbolised the Russian character in its determination not to surrender. It was a city in ruins where thousands upon thousands had died. And that was only the beginning. Russian troops were victorious all along the line and the Germans were retreating. The Battle of El Alamein had been the turning point in the West; Italy was invaded, surrendered and changed sides, and the Royal Air Force used bouncing bombs to destroy the Möhne and Eder dams in the Ruhr, causing massive flooding and destruction. In November Winston Churchill, President Roosevelt and Stalin met at Teheran to talk about the second front, something the Russians had long been lobbying for.

Lydia and Robert’s marriage was a calm and peaceful oasis in the midst of noise and confusion, death and destruction. They had no marital home, having decided to leave looking for a house until after the war. Whenever they could get a few hours off together, they spent it either in London at Balfour Place or at Upstone Hall. It was here that Bobby was born in May 1943, ten months after they were married. His birth had not been planned but he was welcomed all the same. He was nothing like Yuri to look at, being more like Robert, after whom he was named. Robert was at sea, but as soon as he docked, he managed a forty-eight hour pass and came home to see his month-old son. He was ecstatic and kept going into the nursery to look at him, a wide grin on his face.

Margaret and Edward were equally pleased. ‘Our first grandchild,’ Margaret said, walking about with him in her arms to shush his crying. She seemed to have forgotten that Lydia was not her flesh and blood. And Claudia suddenly found she had a use after all. She had looked after Lydia as a child and now she could help look after Bobby, who was the apple of her eye, and she spoilt him dreadfully.

Lydia had left the ATS to have her baby and so she was no longer privy to secret intelligence and had to rely on news bulletins like the ordinary citizen. But even the ordinary citizen knew something was up the following spring. For a start, a ten-mile-wide strip of coastline from the Wash right round to Land’s End was forbidden to visitors, and the concentration of troops, tanks, guns and aircraft could not be concealed. The second front was imminent. What was not known was when and where the landing might be and speculation was rife. The first Lydia and Margaret knew it was beginning was when they were woken in the night of the fifth of June by the droning of aeroplanes, hundreds and hundreds of them. They ran out onto the terrace in their nightclothes to stare up at the sky which was black with aircraft. And the following morning, the day on which Lydia had always celebrated her birthday – knowing it had really been in April had not changed that – they heard it confirmed on the wireless. As she opened utility cards of birthday wishes, she heard John Snagge’s steady voice announce: ‘D-Day has come. Early this morning the Allies began an assault of the north-western face of Hitler’s European fortress…’

They stood in the kitchen, hugging each other. ‘What a birthday present!’ Lydia said. ‘I wonder where Robert is.’

Robert, she discovered two days later when he rang her, had been in the thick of it, taking troops across the English Channel, but unlike his passengers, he didn’t have to stay. ‘From where I was standing it looked like hell,’ he told her. ‘But it was magnificent.’ He didn’t add that he would be going backwards and forwards for many more days, taking reinforcements and equipment, but she had guessed it anyway. They were assembling a harbour of precast parts, so that ships could dock and unload their cargoes, and they were being ferried out under intensive fire; the Germans had no intention of giving up.

‘Did you get my birthday present?’

He had sent her a silver brooch in the shape of an anchor, with their two names entwined in the rope around it. ‘Yes, it’s lovely. I’m wearing it now. I’ll thank you properly when you come home.’

‘I shall look forward to that. Don’t know when it will be, though.’

‘Never mind. Look after yourself.’

‘And you. Love you lots.’

‘Love you lots too.’

She put the telephone down and returned to Margaret, who was knitting thick socks for Robert in oiled wool. She was not a good knitter and the wool was hard on the hands; Lydia wondered if they would ever be finished. ‘Robert is fine,’ she said. ‘Looking forward to coming home.’

‘It won’t be long now,’ Margaret said. ‘It will soon be over.’

It was over for Margaret just ten days later.

She had gone to London to see Edward who was busier than ever and had little time to spend at Upstone. Lydia, who had stayed behind at the Hall with Bobby, was unprepared for the distraught telephone call and could hardly make out who was speaking, his voice was so thick with distress.

‘Papa, Papa, what are you saying?’

‘She’s dead, Lidushka. Your mama is dead.’

‘Dead?’ she echoed, hardly noticing that he had called her by the Russian diminutive of her name, something he had done when she was little. ‘When? How?’

‘A flying bomb. This morning on her way to meet me.’

Having no pilots, flying bombs had no specific targets and simply flew until they ran out of fuel and the engines stopped, then they whistled down, mainly on London and its environs. No one had known what they were at first and all manner of rumours abounded about crashed planes and pilots baling out and Allied shells falling short, but only that morning the BBC news had announced, ‘The enemy has started using pilotless planes against this country.’ It was only three days since the first one had arrived but already the damage and loss of life was huge. It stifled the optimism of the D-Day landings; Hitler wasn’t done for yet. If only they had known about the new weapon before Margaret left, Lydia might have persuaded her not to go.

‘I’m coming up.’

‘You can’t do anything.’

‘I’m coming anyway. Claudia will look after Bobby.’

She caught the first available train and took a taxi to Balfour Place. She found Edward sitting at his desk, staring into the distance. He had flung off his jacket and was in his shirt sleeves. His tie had been loosened and the top button of his shirt was undone. He had obviously been raking his fingers through his hair and it stood up on end. In one hand he held the brooch Margaret had been wearing and the pin had dug into his palm, but he didn’t seem aware of the blood. A cold cup of tea stood at his elbow. He hardly noticed Lydia’s arrival.

‘Papa,’ she ventured.

He turned towards her, his grey eyes so bleak they made her shudder. She ran to him and knelt at his feet, taking the brooch from him and laying it on the desk before wiping the blood from his hand with her handkerchief. ‘Oh, Papa, I don’t know what to say.’

‘We didn’t even have time to say goodbye,’ he said. ‘It was so sudden. One minute she was there, coming along the road towards me, smiling and waving and then… and then… Oh God, it was terrible. A whistle, a bang and I was thrown in a heap in the road. It winded me and for a moment I couldn’t get up, but when I did, I saw half the street had gone. Bodies everywhere. I ran looking for her. I kept hoping it hadn’t been her I had seen, that it was a stranger coming towards me, someone who looked like her. But then I found her. She was unmarked, not a scratch on her. I thought she had been knocked out by the blast and tried to rouse her. A warden came along and stopped me, took my hands away from her. Then an ambulance came and took her away… Oh, Lidushka, how am I going to live without her?’

She had never seen him cry; he had always been so strong, so in control, the one to whom she turned in distress. When they heard Alex was dead it was she that had collapsed and could not function, while he, who must have been mourning himself, was her comfort and gave her the strength to continue. Now it was her turn to comfort him. She made more tea and made him drink it. She made sandwiches for them both and sat on the sofa beside him the whole night while he talked. He seemed to want to talk, on and on he went, hardly drawing breath. It was as if he was afraid to stop for fear of being overwhelmed.

He spoke of his love for Margaret and how beautiful she was, how he had courted her, how she had resisted at first but then agreed to marry him. He described their wedding day, how happy they had been and how disappointed they were when they found she could not have children, and his joy when Lydia had come into their lives. The pace slowed in the early hours of the morning and at dawn he slept from sheer exhaustion. She covered him with a blanket and left him to prepare breakfast. Only then did she weep herself, a paroxysm of tears which ran down her face as she boiled a kettle and made tea. She found some bread and some dried egg in the pantry. The only way dried egg could be successfully cooked was by scrambling it. By the time it was done and the bread toasted, her tears had dried on her face and she was ready to continue being the strong one.

They took Margaret’s body home to Upstone Hall for burial. Most of the village turned up for the funeral, for she had been much loved. Life went on but Edward was bowed down with grief. He seemed to become old overnight, stooped and silver-haired. Lydia did her best to help him over it and sometimes she thought she had succeeded, and then he would say something about Margaret as if he had forgotten she was no longer with them, and when she gently pointed this out to him, he would say, ‘But Lidushka, she is still with us. She will always be with us.’ To which there was no answer.

And sometimes she wondered if it was the same with Alex. Even in death, was he still with her? Did he, in some way, watch over her as he had done in life? That did not mean she was unhappy with Robert; quite the contrary, their marriage was happier than she had any right to expect and she thanked God for it. It looked as though the war would soon be over and they could settle down in peace. After the turbulence that had gone before, it was all she asked.