The Kirilov Star

Chapter Nine

The rumours were running round the camp like wildfire. Where they had come from, when no newspapers or radio were allowed to the prisoners and possessing either was punishable by death, Alex did not know. But the whispers passed from mouth to mouth, were whispered in the bleak shower rooms as they stood naked under a trickle of cold water, muttered on the seats of the rows of toilets, sung as a kind of ditty as they waited in line every morning during roll call. ‘The Russians are coming. Didn’t you hear the guns?’

He had certainly heard gunfire, no one could be unaware of it when they were in camp, which was only at night if they were on the day shift and during the day if they worked nights. The overcrowded huts shook and it felt as if they would tumble about their ears. When they were in the factory which had been built alongside the camp, they could hear nothing of the outside world. The windows and doors were tight shut and blacked out against air raids, and the noise of the machinery drowned out every other sound, even their voices. The work was hard and unremitting and the shifts, which had begun as ten hours at a time, soon lengthened to eleven and then twelve as the need to supply the German army with weapons became more acute. Quotas had to be reached; the punishment for failure was a beating and a spell in the punishment block in total darkness on bread and water, and little enough of that. For many of the inmates, already on starvation rations, it meant almost certain death.

Alex had no illusions about what would happen to him if the Russians arrived. He would be executed, probably without the refinement of a trial. His alias as Major Alexei Petrovich Simenov would not save him. In fact, he doubted if any of the Russian prisoners would be sent back to their homes. He had learnt enough of Soviet ways to know they would almost all be accused of collaboration, simply for allowing themselves to be captured and made to work in German factories. If not put in front of a firing squad, they would be sent to prison camps in Siberia, from where few would ever return. As for what the Soviets did to spies, he dare not think of that. It would have been better to have died in that field outside Minsk. By all the laws of nature he should have died. According to Iosef Ilyievich who saw what happened, no one ought to have survived the barrage of gunfire that rained down on him.

He had been in the area, trying to keep his promise to Lydia to try and find Yuri. In spite of telling Lydia he thought all the babies must have been evacuated to safety, he had decided to resume the search back at the beginning and that meant returning to the hospital where Olga and Yuri had been taken. Someone who had not been on duty the day they visited might remember something others had missed. Sticking to his military disguise had been easier than he expected; officers were often sent from the high-ups in the Kremlin to find out what was really happening on the ground. Communications were chaotic, and provided he kept out of the way of officialdom, he felt reasonably safe, though always on his guard. At the hospital, he had been surprised to learn that Olga Denisovna Nahmova had not died but had been evacuated with hundreds of other badly injured patients to a Moscow hospital.

Remembering what Lydia had said about how Olga idolised Yuri, he felt sure the woman would not give him up and would set about looking for him as soon as she was discharged. If he found Olga, he might find Yuri. But the boy was a Russian citizen, he reminded himself; even if he found him, he would not be allowed to take him out of the country legally. He would cross that bridge when he came to it. It might be that all he would be able to tell Lydia was that her son was safe and well. Even this slight feeling of optimism was dashed when Minsk came under attack from the invading Germans with thousands of troops, tanks and big guns.

He had found himself watching a field gun firing on what had once been a convent but which had become a home for orphan children and, for all he knew, might contain Yuri. It had incensed him. Without thinking of the possible consequences he had taken a couple of hand grenades and crawled round to encircle the bunker from which the gun had been firing. He had managed to get below the gun’s trajectory without being seen and approached it from the side, but hand grenades were puny weapons against the gun and so he had crept closer than it was safe for him to do so. He was right on top of it when he pulled out the pin of the first grenade and flung it in the bunker. It did not disable the gun but it caused enough injury and confusion among the crew for him to toss the other down the barrel, a satisfyingly accurate lob. For what happened after that, he had only the word of Iosef, who had been hiding in a nearby ditch.

‘There was a great explosion,’ he said, when Alex recovered consciousness several days later. ‘There were bits of gun, limbs and flesh flying everywhere. You were flung ten metres into the air like a rag doll. And then it all went quiet. I crept out to look. I did not expect to find you breathing, but you were. All the gun crew were dead. Such heroism could not be allowed to perish. I carried you home.’

Iosef was a peasant who lived with his aged mother in an izba a few versts outside Minsk. He was big and strong but lacking in wit and that had somehow saved him from conscription into the Red Army. How they lived Alex had no idea, being only half-conscious at the time and unable to walk on account of a broken leg, not to mention a lump the size of a chicken’s egg on the back of his head. The Russians’ scorched-earth policy meant that nothing was left for them to live on. When the Germans threatened to overrun the area, he had carried his mother and then Alex into the nearby forest where they met other Russians, civilians and troops who were determined not to fall into German hands. It was an area of mixed forests and swamps, often hidden in mist and fog, an ideal habitat for partisans. Iosef, who was not as simple as he appeared, told him they stole food, rifles and ammunition from the Germans. ‘We are causing them no end of inconvenience,’ he had said with a chuckle.

It was inevitable that they would be rounded up in the end. Many of the partisans had been shot on the spot; the injured were left to die by the roadside, while those who were able to walk had been herded like cattle along the road to Germany. They were given no food, no shelter and very little rest. Alex, hobbling painfully, had been supported by Iosef and another of their number. ‘We saved you before, we are not going to let you die now,’ he had said. His mother had died a few weeks before and he clung to keeping Alex alive as a sort of compensation. The fact that he had never been a soldier and could not truthfully be termed a prisoner of war was not taken into consideration; he was between fifteen and sixty-five and therefore of military age.

That first camp had been nothing but a field surrounded by barbed wire. There were no huts and they were left to try and make themselves what shelter they could with whatever materials came to hand: brushwood, old posts, bits of clothing and ragged blankets. As for food, that was so minimal it consisted of onion skins boiled in water and little else. The prisoners ate the grass until the field became a desert. They gnawed the bones of dead animals who had strayed into the camp and been killed; dogs, cats, rats, pigeons brought down with catapults, it didn’t matter what they were as long as they had a little flesh on them. Fighting over scraps was rife, though the weakness of the combatants meant they were half-hearted affairs. When winter came they died in their thousands and were flung into mass graves. How he had survived Alex did not know.

The Germans needed workers to feed their great war machine and who better to supply them than their prisoners? Towards the end of 1942, they were taken to Sachsenhausen concentration camp. It was triangular in layout, with a three-metre-high perimeter wall within which was a path patrolled by guards and dogs and inside that an electric fence. Barrack huts lay beyond the roll-call area and these had tiered bunk beds, though they were so overcrowded, the beds were pushed together so that three and sometimes four shared beds intended for two. A factory had been built just outside the camp, in which the prisoners were expected to work for the German war effort. Refusing to work was not an option, but few would have done so because workers were fed – not generously, but enough to keep them working and alive. But for some it was too late. Friendships made were often broken by death.

Iosef had been singled out for the gas chamber almost as soon as they arrived. He was mentally deficient and therefore even more reviled than the ordinary Russians, who, as Slavs, were considered like the Jews to be Untermensch: subhuman. Alex, who could do nothing to save him, had mourned his passing.

Because he spoke excellent German, he was often asked to translate the official pronouncements of the camp commandant, and as few Germans knew any Russian, he was able to put whatever interpretation he liked on his words, warning his listeners of new edicts and suggesting ways that the sick could be saved from being carted off. If you were not well enough to work, you were not worth your rations.

Although skeletal, he did not quite become the numbed, unthinking automaton that many of them did and would often lie in his bunk listening to the quarrelsome words of his fellow prisoners and dream of better times. It was then he would conjure up a picture of Lydia in his mind’s eye. His filthy unsanitary surroundings faded and he was in an orchard with apple blossom all around him and a blue sky above. The voices of those around him faded and he heard laughter. Lydia’s laughter – light, carefree, mischievous.

Had she got safely back to England? Had she been given a hard time by the Foreign Office? Had she gone back to work? Was she in London or at Upstone Hall? Sometimes he liked to imagine her in a printed cotton frock, sitting on the swing Sir Edward had made for her in the garden at Upstone, with the sun shining on her hair and daffodils in the grass at her feet. Sometimes she would be in a lavish ball gown, dancing with him on the terrace to the music of a waltz, the Kirilov Star glittering at her throat. He had hated having to send her away without her child. Her misery over the loss of Yuri had torn his heart to shreds. He had done his best to be cheerful and optimistic for her sake, but as soon as he was alone, his despair had overtaken him and he had wept, knowing, as he handed her over to Robert Conway, that he would almost certainly lose her. Now, weakened and unsure if he was meant to survive, he tried only to think of the happier times and wish her well.

The rumours they were hearing reminded him of the previous year when they had told of the Western Allies’ invasion of France. Not even their captors, who refused to admit defeat was possible, had been able to go on denying the truth for long and they had maintained the enemy would soon be driven back into the sea. How long would they take to come clean about this latest piece of news? Hearing the whispers, they instructed Alex to tell the prisoners that what they were hearing were German guns firing on Allied bombers and the flames they could see in the distance were planes that had been shot down and exploded. Some believed it, some didn’t.

Your category as a prisoner influenced your reaction. Dressed in the rough striped uniform of a prisoner, each wore a patch which indicated their group: yellow for Jews, red for Communists, black for Gypsies and anti-social elements, green for common criminals, purple for Jehovah’s Witnesses, who called themselves ‘Bible Students’, and pink for homosexuals. Alex’s patch was red. It had afforded him some wry amusement in the beginning, but he knew it would be a death sentence if the Russians reached them first.

Now, four years after being taken captive, his thoughts were turning to freedom. But how to obtain it? How near were the Russians? How far away were the Western Allies? What plans had their captors made should they come under attack? Would they resist or retreat? What would they do with the prisoners? At the far end of the camp they had built a crematorium to dispose of the thousands who died, but no one was in any doubt that it also contained gas chambers where those who were too weak to work were disposed of. Would they all be herded in there? His questions were echoed by everyone else and no amount of shouting and beating could stop the prisoners talking.

Alex began to make plans to escape, which he told no one. It would have to be done on the march from the camp to the factory, the only time they went outside the gates. Being spring, they went in daylight, but when they returned at the end of the day’s shift it was growing dark. He decided to make the attempt on the return journey at a particular spot where there was a hedge overhanging a ditch. If he could roll into that without being seen by the guards who accompanied them, he might not be missed until roll-call when the column arrived in the camp. It would give him a few minutes, no more, to get away. He began to hoard a little of his food each day.

His plans were thwarted because production in the factory suddenly stopped and they ceased to be taken out of the camp. It was a sure sign the Germans were expecting the worst. Lorries drove up and down the roads, taking the machinery and the German workers further west, and clouds of smoke in the factory yard indicated papers being burnt. No one told the prisoners what was to become of them. And their already starvation rations were cut.

The Jews had been rounded up some time before and driven away in trucks, no one knew where. Towards the end of April, the criminals, the Jehovah’s Witnesses and the homosexuals were marched out escorted by guards. Alex learnt later that as soon as they were a few miles from the camp, their guards had returned to camp, leaving the prisoners to fend for themselves. How many of them survived, Alex never knew. It left only the political prisoners and the Russian POWs still in camp. This caused more than a little consternation. They were going to be handed over to the advancing Russians. A few saw it as a good thing, their belief in Bolshevism so firm they could not envisage anything but joy and a return to their homes and loved ones. Most, including Alex, were more realistic.

Those that were left were rounded up, lined up in batches and herded out of the gates like cattle. At first Alex thought they might be going west, away from the advancing Russians, and he was content to go along with that, but after a time it became apparent they were going north. What their captors had in mind he had no idea, but his mind was intent on reaching the Allies. They had not been going for long when the weaker among them began to drop like flies and were shot on the spot or left to die by the roadside. Could he fake collapse and be abandoned? But how could he be certain one of the guards would not put a bullet in him to make sure?

As they shuffled along incredibly slowly, they met civilians trudging along the road in the opposite direction, preferring to be taken by the Western Allies than the Russians. When, at midday, they were allowed to stop and rest by the wayside and eat the crust of bread with which they had been provided, he spoke to one of the women trudging southwards. ‘Gnädige Frau, what news is there?’

He had at first thought she was in her forties, but when she came closer to answer him, he realised she was at least ten years younger than that. She was thin as a rake and her hair, which had once been dark, was streaked with white. ‘Are you German?’ she asked.

‘No. English.’

‘Ein Engländer! How did you come to be with this lot?’ She nodded at the column of men in their striped camp uniforms.

‘I was attached to the Red Army when I was captured. They took me for a Russian. How far away are they?’

‘The Reds? No more than a few kilometres. Where are they taking you?’

‘I don’t know, but I don’t want to fall into the hands of the Russians.’

‘Why not, if you are English?’

‘I can’t prove it and the Communists would arrest me for a spy. Can you help me?’

‘Why should I?’

‘No particular reason. On the grounds of common humanity, if you like. On the other hand I might be able to help you when the time comes.’

She stood looking at him with her head on one side, turning over his request. If the Germans lost the war, it would make sense for her to have helped an Englishman, a sort of insurance policy. Not that they would lose; the Führer had promised them they would drive the invaders out and be victorious. ‘I wouldn’t help a Russian,’ she said. ‘I’d spit on him. You are sure you’re not Russian?’

He smiled crookedly, better not admit his origins. ‘No, I am not Russian.’

‘What do you want me to do?’

He looked round him. Their guards were sitting on the side of the road, eating bread and cheese and swilling it down with beer while their charges stood or squatted waiting for the signal to resume the march. ‘Find me some civilian clothes. I’ll get nowhere dressed like this. I can’t pay you, not until after the war, but I will do it then.’

She didn’t ask him how that was to be achieved. ‘You want them brought to you?’

‘No, I’ll have to slip away, roll into a ditch or something.’

‘They’ll shoot you.’

He shrugged. ‘It’s a risk I’m prepared to take.’

The guards had finished their break and were rounding up their prisoners again. She thought for a moment. ‘I’ll claim you for my long-lost husband. What’s your name?’

‘Alex Peters, though I am known here as Alexei Petrovich.’

‘My name is Else Weissmann. My husband’s name was Erich.’

‘Was?’

‘He died outside Stalingrad in ’42.’

‘I’m sorry. That was a bad business.’

‘Yes. Come, I haven’t got time to waste.’ She grabbed his hand and hauled him towards the sergeant of the guard. ‘You have my husband here,’ she told him belligerently. ‘How did that come about? He is a good Wehrmacht soldier, not a Russian. They said he was missing on the Eastern Front and here he is, not two kilometres from home. I would not have known about it, if he had not called out to me. Let him come home.’

The sergeant looked Alex up and down. ‘Is this true?’

‘Of course.’ He launched into a story of being taken prisoner by the Russians who were subsequently captured by the Germans and he had been herded along with them. His German was perfect and everyone knew the Russians couldn’t speak anything but their own tortured language, so the guard laughed. ‘What does it matter?’ he said. ‘What does it matter if you all walked off? I wouldn’t have to stay if you did. Go on. Clear off.’ He turned back to hustling the rest of the prisoners into line.

Alex made a show of embracing Else. ‘Let’s hurry before he changes his mind,’ he said.

She took him back to an apartment in a block on the eastern outskirts of the nearby town of Prenzlau where she had been living. From her top floor living room they could see the smoke clearly, and even as he stood there while Else searched the wardrobe for clothes, he heard the whistle and then the bang of an exploding shell. The windows and doors rattled and some plaster came down from the ceiling onto his shoulders. He moved away from the window. ‘They’re getting closer,’ he called out to her.

She appeared with a bundle of clothes and a pair of shoes in her arms. ‘Try these.’

He was taller than her husband had been and definitely thinner; the trousers barely came to his ankles and had to be held up with a belt. But it was better than the prison uniform with its conspicuous patch. The shoes, although a mite tight, were better than the clogs he had been issued with for his march to the factory and back. While he was changing, another shell came over, nearer this time. ‘They’ve got the factory,’ she said, looking out of the window. ‘Hurry up, we’ll be next.’

They clattered down the stairs and out into the street, then dodged from building to building as more shells came over and more heaps of rubble appeared where once buildings had stood. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, when they paused in a doorway to get their breath back. ‘I have delayed you. You could have been far away by now.’

‘Where do you want to go?’ she asked.

He laughed. ‘As far from here as I can get, preferably to the Western Front, wherever that might be.’

‘Have you got any money?’

‘No.’

‘I have a little. You had better come with me. I could do with the company.’

And so he did. They escaped from the town which was rapidly becoming a ruin, plodding slowly along with hundreds of others, carrying whatever they could in the way of belongings. Some had donkey carts, some handcarts, some prams, some nothing at all. There were women and children and old men and, here and there, a soldier in a tattered uniform. Occasionally they were overtaken by camouflaged cars with officers sitting in them, their drivers hooting to make the pedestrians get out of the way. This was an exodus. No one wanted to be left behind for the Russians to find. Occasionally they met convoys of military vehicles going in the opposite direction and they learnt from experience to scatter into the surrounding woods and fields when that happened because they were almost certain to be dive-bombed.

As they walked Else filled Alex in on her husband’s details in case he should be asked: where he had been born, how old he was, where he had been educated, what job he had done in civilian life – he had been a bricklayer for the city corporation in Potsdam. Because Alex still limped from the effects of his broken leg which had not been properly set, the others on the road accepted that he had been invalided out of the army and he became used to being addressed as Erich.

Else herself was the daughter of a grocer. Her father had become more and more depressed by the rationing and the shortages and, having nothing to sell, had taken his own life. ‘Hanged himself in the cellar,’ she told him. ‘When Mutti saw him hanging there with his mouth and eyes wide open, she had a heart attack and died in hospital a week later. I shut the shop up and took a job in the garment factory, making Wehrmacht uniforms. It was while working there I met Erich. He drove the lorry that came to collect the finished goods. We were married just before he was sent to the Eastern Front. We had no married life to speak of.’ She spoke without inflexion, giving no indication of how these tragedies, coming one after the other, had hit her.

‘I’m sorry,’ he murmured. ‘War is bestial, no matter whose side you are on.’

‘What did you do before the war?’

‘I was a diplomat.’

‘Not a soldier?’

‘No. I left England before the war started, or I might have been.’ He paused. ‘Do you know where the Allies are?’

‘Not exactly.’

‘But France has been liberated?’

‘Yes, and the Netherlands. But we are not done yet. There is a secret weapon the Führer says will change the whole course of the war and give us victory.’

‘And what is that?’

‘A flying bomb. It is already devastating London. The population is in panic and the government gone into hiding.’

He smiled at her simple confidence in what she had been told but he did not believe Londoners were panicking. While in Russia at the beginning of the war, he had heard reports of the London Blitz and how everyone had coped, and he imagined Edward in his business suit, bowler hat and rolled umbrella going to work at the Foreign Office, just as if nothing had happened. Oh, how he hoped that was an accurate picture. Hitler’s invasion of Russia had brought the nightly attacks on London to an end as the Soviets had never ceased to remind everyone when lobbying for a second front to relieve the pressure on them. Now they had it and Germany was being attacked on both sides. ‘Then perhaps I am fortunate to be here,’ he said mildly.

‘How are you going to find the Allies?’ she asked.

‘I don’t know. Catch a train, I suppose.’

She laughed, assuming he was joking.

‘What about you?’

‘I have an aunt and a cousin in Potsdam. I shall go there.’

‘You are not going to come with me and surrender to the Allies, then?’

‘No. I have no wish to be a prisoner.’

They stopped at night to try and find lodgings, but every hotel, house and barn was already crowded with refugees and the unlucky ones built fires beside the road to cook what they could and slept where they were. The trek continued. The weakest fell by the wayside and were abandoned. When baggage became too heavy that was also abandoned to lie beside rifles, anti-tank guns and ammunition boxes – all the detritus of war. There was no food and they resorted to begging at farmhouse doors. Sometimes they were welcomed, sometimes turned away, and Else’s money was soon gone.

He had been half starved and was painfully thin, but forced labour had made him stronger than he looked. It was Else who faltered first. She had seemed so strong and determined, but all the walking took its toll. Her feet became covered in blisters which suppurated and became infectious, and as day followed day, their progress became slower and slower. He could not in conscience abandon her and helped her along as best he could, and thus they arrived at Neustrelitz, still too far east for Alex’s peace of mind. He half dragged, half carried her to the railway station.

‘Come to Potsdam with me; my relatives will give you food and clothes,’ she said that night as they waited on the platform, hoping, along with hundreds of others, that a train would come. When it did, it was packed to suffocation and steamed straight through without stopping. Alex cursed, but cursing did no good, and Else had a fever which worried him. He left her to go in search of a doctor and found one at last, trying to tend the sickness and wounds of the thousands of refugees who had descended on the town. They were queueing two- and three-deep for hundreds of yards. Alex realised he would have to bring Else to the queue. He went back for her but she could not move. He left her again and found a pharmacy, where he was given salve for the blisters.

The salve helped a little but she still could not walk. She gave him her wedding ring and, with the money it fetched, he bought bread, a small lump of cheese and a tin of soup, which he took back to her. ‘Don’t leave me,’ she begged, wolfing down the food. He watched, hungry himself but reluctant to take anything from her. Nor could he leave her.

Two days they rested there, while all the while the Red Army was coming closer. Something had to be done. He went into the countryside and found a farmer who had a horse and cart which he was loading, ready to flee himself. Alex, telling the story about being captured by the Red Army and then the Germans, which ensured him a sympathetic hearing, begged a lift for Else. Reluctantly the man agreed. Else was fetched and lifted onto the back of the cart behind a table, chairs, a bedstead and mattress, several bundles of clothes, a sack of potatoes and a cloth-wrapped loaf of bread. The farmer and his wife sat at the front and Alex walked alongside.

Progress was even slower than walking because of the number of refugees and the abandoned debris of war on the road, but at least Else was resting. They arrived in Fürstenberg late at night to discover the town was being evacuated en masse. The Russians, so they were told, were only a few kilometres away and the Americans were at Bad Kleinen. Alex would have liked to strike off in that direction, but Else was determined to go to Potsdam, convinced the Allies would be halted long before they reached there; leaving her would be a cowardly and ungrateful thing to do. There was a train going south the next morning and they managed to squeeze onto it.

They arrived in Berlin the next day after a night in a siding during an air raid. Alex had stayed in the city during his time as a diplomat and thought he knew his way about, but very little was recognisable among the ruins. They were confronted by whole streets which were nothing but rubble. Else, only able to hobble, was horrified and insisted they go to Potsdam at once. They caught a local train but that stopped short of Potsdam and everyone was told to leave it. ‘The station has been blown up,’ they were told. ‘You’ll have to walk the rest of the way.’

The lovely city of Potsdam, once the state capital, full of ancient palaces and churches, was also in ruins. Else, leaning heavily on his arm, guided him to the street where her relations lived, but it had been totally destroyed. She stood looking at the heap of bricks, stone, broken windows and smashed furniture with tears raining down her face. ‘Now I have no one,’ she wept. ‘I am alone.’ She turned and flung herself into his arms. ‘You will stay with me, won’t you? If the Americans come, you will stand up for me? Tell them I helped you.’

What could he do but agree? Without her and the clothes and money she had provided he would have died on the march, because the straggling line of prisoners would almost certainly have been taken by the advancing Russians. Someone had told him they had been destined to be put on board a ship which would have put to sea and been deliberately sunk. Either way, he would not have survived. He was not as sure as Else was that it would be the Americans who reached them first and his only hope of staying out of a Russian prison was to remain Erich Weissmann.

They lived like rats in the cellars of bombed houses, coming out now and again to try and find food, begging and scavenging. Money had no value, so they traded whatever they could find in the bombed buildings for food. By the time the Russians overran the city, they were living skeletons dressed in rags. But the anonymity was a blessing.

The conquerors were in jubilant mood, drunk much of the time, raping the women, which they said was no more than the Germans did to the Russian women. Else was afraid all the time and clung to Alex, who managed to keep the soldiers at bay with his ready command of Russian. They heard daily reports of the Battle for Berlin which was raging street by street and getting closer and closer to Hitler’s headquarters in the Reichstadt. The day it was overrun was a black day for the inhabitants but one of jubilation for the Russians, who celebrated with noisy parties and drunken orgies. No one believed Germany could win the war and none was surprised when it ended with the news of the Führer’s suicide, and very shortly afterwards, Germany’s unconditional surrender.

‘Now we can live in peace,’ Else said, as she emerged from the cellar in which they had been living to see their conquerors celebrating. ‘Now, perhaps they will go home and we can get on with our lives.’

Alex did not believe for a minute the Russians would go; it was their avowed intention to spread communism throughout the world and they set out to sovietise all the land they had overrun. Germany became a country divided between the Allies; Potsdam was in the Russian zone.

The civilian men were rounded up and put to work clearing the rubble so that life could return to some kind of normality, for which they received a small wage and minimal rations. Alex, known as Erich Weissmann, became one of the workers. England, Upstone Hall and Lydia seemed a far-off dream and it was best not to think about it. But sometimes, when life seemed more than usually drear, he could not help thinking of the life he had left behind and wondering if Lydia were safe and happy. He prayed that it was so, or all he had endured would have been in vain.

He sometimes looked longingly towards the west, wondering if he could escape, but Else was the stumbling block. He could not abandon her and she would not go with him. As far as she was concerned, she was home where she belonged and she had a man to take care of her and life was not so bad, especially when they found an apartment in a block of flats which had been repaired and made habitable. The Hausfrau in her came to the fore and she delighted in making a home for him. It was all she asked. She did not see his restlessness and would not have understood it if she had.

Unfortunately there were those in the city who had known the real Erich, and one day in autumn 1946 four armed policemen knocked at the door in the early hours of the morning and arrested him, taking no notice of Else who clung to him, weeping and protesting that he was Erich Weissmann to whom she had been married since 1941. He was taken to the town gaol, his only hope that they did not know his real name; only Else knew that.

Several nights and days of interrogation followed in which he maintained his name was Erich Weissmann. It became apparent during their interrogation of him that they had questioned Else who, to save herself, had told them his Russian name and that he was a deserter who had forced her to shelter him. She had not told them he was English, perhaps because they never thought to ask and she had only answered questions put to her, or because she did not believe it herself. He was handed over to the Russian authorities.

It was unexpected but fortuitous that they were so inefficient that there appeared to be no record of Alexei Simenov becoming the Englishman Alex Peters. He wondered whether to disclose it himself in the hope they would release him, but decided not to. For one thing, he knew he would be considered a spy and the British authorities would almost certainly deny any knowledge of him. It would cause a diplomatic incident and would not save him. Better to remain Alexei Simenov. He was despatched to Moscow for trial on a charge of desertion and consorting with the enemy, fully expecting to be sentenced to death. He would have been if his bravery at Minsk had not been reported and his sentence was commuted to ten years in Norilsk, one of the many labour camps in Siberia. ‘You have been given an opportunity to become rehabilitated,’ he was told. ‘Do not waste it.’

The journey was even worse than he imagined it might be. The prisoners, many of them sentenced under trumped-up charges, were crowded into trucks like animals; the rations were minimal and toilet facilities disgusting. He lost track of time as day followed day; the weather became colder and only the fact that they were crammed so closely together kept them warm. It came to an end at last when they arrived in the town of Krasnoyarsk, where they boarded a steamboat to continue by river. After another two thousand kilometres, becoming colder and colder, they arrived in the port of Dudinka well inside the Arctic Circle. From here a train took them to the camp. It was snowing hard and they were ill-equipped for the cold. Some had already died on the journey, many more were sick.

Norilsk was a desolate place, built by earlier prisoners using nothing but pickaxes and wheelbarrows in order to exploit the rich mineral deposits in the area. Its nickel was needed for the production of high-grade steel and it had grown into a huge complex. There was no perimeter fence; it wasn’t needed. No one could escape from that wilderness, thousands of kilometres from civilisation. They were taken to the administration building for documentation, after which their clothes were taken from them for delousing and they were given a bucket of water and herded to the washrooms to try, as far as they were able, to clean themselves. Their clothes, such as they were, were returned to them and they were taken to the huts which were to become their homes. Alex ducked his head under the lintel of one to follow the man in front of him, in a mood of black despair. The thing he had spent so much time and effort to avoid had come to pass; he was a prisoner of the Soviet system and cut off from all communication with the outside world.

He looked about him. The floor of the hut was simply hardened earth. There was a broken stove in the middle whose chimney leant drunkenly before disappearing out through the roof. Beside it were a few sticks and a pile of coal. Bunks had been constructed around the walls and each man put his meagre belongings onto one of them while one of their number set about lighting the fire. The room was soon filled with black smoke, making them cough and their eyes water, but the fire took the edge off the bitter cold.

It was the cold and the barren landscape which was their greatest enemy. Trying to keep warm, fed and well enough to do the work required of them was the be-all and end-all of their days and nights. The camp was huge; there were copper and nickel mines, coal mines, smelting works, factories for making bricks and another for processing fish, garages for the repair of vehicles, as well as offices, a post office, a theatre and a sports stadium, though Alex suspected the last three were intended for the guards and the growing number of free workers, specialist engineers and technicians, who were needed to run the mines and factories and who, unlike the convicts, were paid.

Alex was put to work in the repair shop, which was supposed to keep the machinery in working order. This was almost impossible, due not only to his lack of experience in that kind of work, but to a chronic shortage of spare parts and the intense cold. When his expertise in languages became known, he found himself in the administrative office, translating the petitions of the non-Russian prisoners and drafting the replies, most of which comprised a firm nyet. It meant a slightly enhanced standard of living, if you could call constant hunger and never feeling warm living.

The efforts to separate the male and female prisoners were not always successful and there were many ragged unshod children running about the camp. They reminded him how he had failed to find Yuri and that reminded him of Lydia. It was seven years since he had said goodbye to her in Moscow and he wondered what she was doing. What was England like in the post-war years? Was it returning to normality? Had she remarried? He could hardly blame her if she had. He had not asked her to wait for him; it was too much to ask, given the situation at the time when the prospect of him ever returning to England was so remote as to be discounted. But oh, how he longed for the pleasant green fields, the winding tarmac roads, the old churches and Upstone Hall.

The pleasant green fields of England had disappeared under layers of snow. Drifts up to fourteen feet deep obscured the roads and buried cars over their roofs. Trains could not run. Remote villages and even some towns were cut off. The sea froze at its edge and there were icebergs floating in the sea off the Norfolk coast. To add to everyone’s misery, there was a shortage of coal, not only for domestic use but for industry. The mines had recently been nationalised and the stocks, already low, were frozen solid and could not be moved to the power stations. Factories were closed and schools were shut. Peace had certainly not brought an end to the country’s problems. Rationing was as severe as it had ever been, money was short and so was housing, even though there was a huge programme to replace buildings which had been bombed. Discontent was rife and there were frequent strikes.

Robert, on leave, struggled up the drive of Upstone Hall dragging a huge branch which had fallen from one of the trees in the park. Bobby, not yet four, was with him, well clad against the cold with woolly hat and gloves. Bobby was a real daddy’s boy and, whenever Robert was at home, would follow him about, trying to imitate his ways. Seeing them from the window, Lydia handed Tatiana over to Claudia, donned wellington boots, scarf and gloves, and ran to help.

‘It’ll keep the stove going a little longer,’ Robert said, stopping to catch his breath. Keeping the stove going was their main occupation. They had turned off all but the essential radiators and had been living in the kitchen where the stove which heated the boiler was situated. It had also been used for cooking until Edward had had an electric cooker installed just before the war. The cooker was next to useless now because there were daily power cuts between nine a.m. and noon and for two hours again in the afternoon. The old boiler was their lifeline.

They dragged the branch round to the stable yard and Robert set about chopping it up. Lydia took Bobby indoors to keep him away from flying splinters. Edward had come to the kitchen to keep warm and was sitting in the housekeeper’s old rocking chair, toasting his toes on the fender and nursing Tatiana. He was wearing a dressing gown and scarf on top of all his clothes. He had never been the same man after Margaret’s death, but the arrival of Tatiana, which had coincided with the end of hostilities in Europe in May 1945, had given him a renewed vigour. He adored her. She was dark-haired and blue-eyed, a placid child, unlike Bobby, who had learnt to walk when he was little over a year old, and was like a whirlwind and into every mischief he could think of. Seeing his grandfather, he endeavoured to clamber on to his lap beside his sister.

‘You cannot both sit on Grandpa’s lap,’ Lydia said, removing him and divesting him of his outdoor clothes. ‘Come and look at your picture book with Claudia while I cook lunch.’

‘I hope it’s not that dreadful whale meat,’ Edward said. ‘It’s enough to make a body turn vegetarian.’ Whale meat had been heralded as a good alternative to beef, but it had not proved popular with the public.

‘No, it’s chicken. They’ve stopped laying, so we may as well eat them.’ To augment their rations, they had turned over a portion of their large garden to vegetables, half a dozen chickens and a cockerel who scratched in the dirt and ruined the flowerbeds, and a nanny goat which they kept for her milk. Claudia had even managed to make goat’s cheese.

‘Then what do we do for eggs?’

‘Rely on the ration and dried egg,’ Lydia said.

‘We were better off during the war,’ he said, echoing a favourite cry of much of the population. ‘What we need is Winnie back at the helm.’

Winston Churchill’s Conservatives had lost the 1945 election and Labour under Clement Attlee had come to power. One of their first enactments was to nationalise the coal mines and bring them under the control of a Minister of Fuel and Power in the shape of Emanuel Shinwell. The weather and his apparent lack of forethought over coal stocks, together with strikes and absenteeism, meant he was decidedly unpopular.

It wasn’t only the weather that had made everyone gloomy, but the austerity of the aftermath of the war, the strikes and shortages. Factories closed for lack of power. Meat, eggs, cheese, bacon, sugar and sweets were still rationed and so were bread and potatoes, something that had never happened during hostilities. The newspapers were cut back to their wartime size of four pages and holidays abroad were banned. There were those who said Britain had won the war but lost the peace.

The troubles at home were reflected abroad with the need to rebuild Europe. This was not helped by the attitude of the Soviet Union and those eastern countries it controlled. Winston Churchill, in a speech in America the year before, had said: ‘From Stettin in the Baltic, to Trieste in the Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended across the Continent.’ Neither Lydia nor Edward were surprised by this. It seemed to symbolise the way she had been cut off from Yuri. She would never cease to feel guilty about what had happened, telling herself she should have realised what Kolya and Olga were planning and taken steps to prevent it. But she had been so overcome by misery over her husband’s betrayal, she had not been thinking properly. Papa had told her not to blame herself, but she still did. Perhaps one day, when life returned to normal, she might try and find him. But what was normal? Was it never being afraid? Never being hungry? Was it never being short of anything? Was it having time to enjoy life? Being free to travel?

Robert came in carrying a basket full of logs which he put down beside the stove. ‘I’ll go out after lunch and see if I can find some more,’ he said. ‘The weight of snow on the branches is bringing some of them down.’ He walked into the hall, picked up the telephone and listened for a few seconds. ‘Dead as a dodo,’ he said, returning to fiddle with the knobs on the wireless. During the war the wireless had been the main means of communication between the government and the people, but even that service had been curtailed to save power.

The news was all about the arctic weather. The temperature in London had not risen above forty degrees Fahrenheit all month and on one night went down to sixteen. Listeners were urged to conserve fuel supplies and find other methods to keep warm. More snow was forecast for the whole country.

‘It’s as bad as Russia,’ Lydia said, peeling potatoes which had been grown in their own kitchen garden and stored in clamps since the previous autumn. Percy Wadham, their gardener, who should have retired years before, had managed to shift enough snow to unearth some of them, though sadly they were frostbitten. ‘Worse really because they are used to it and know how to cope, while we flounder. I wonder what it’s like there now.’

‘Cold,’ Robert said and looked at Edward, who had glanced up from the newspaper he had been reading.

She saw the look that passed between them. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I didn’t mean…’ She stopped, unsure what she had meant. Not criticism of Robert, who was the best of husbands and fathers; it was simply something inside her which, even after seven years, stopped her letting go of that part of her life, to put it behind her.

Edward, who understood her better than most, wished she would count her blessings, as he did. All in all, life had been good to him. He had been fortunate to have Margaret’s love and devotion and a fulfilling job, a job that had brought Lydia into his life. That had been fate, he supposed, a benign fate. He remembered the traumatised child she had been and the woman she had become – a good wife and mother, but one deeply scarred. He was well aware of how things stood between her and Robert. He could see the bleakness in Robert’s eyes whenever Lydia mentioned Russia. The poor man obviously adored her, and though she was always affectionate and loving and, apart from an occasional tiff that was soon over, he had never heard them quarrel, there was something missing, something vital: the beating heart of a marriage. She did not seem to understand Robert’s needs, nor he hers. Robert would have to come out of the navy at some point, and then what? They ought to have a home of their own, not live with a decrepit old man. Supposing he made the house over to her and moved out himself, would that answer? On reflection, he didn’t think it would because Robert needed to be the provider. He sighed and returned to his newspaper.

Chapter Ten

‘I can’t think why you want to,’ Robert said in answer to Sir Edward’s suggestion.

‘I just thought we could make a few enquiries,’ Sir Edward explained. ‘The war’s been over nearly eight years, things have settled down a bit and I’ve still got a few useful contacts.’

The two men were sitting in the library, having a general discussion about Edward’s plans for the future. Gradually the country had pulled itself out of the post-war blues. The National Health Service had come into being and London hosted the Olympic Games. Clothes rationing came to an end and the couturiers took full advantage of it and produced the New Look. Full skirts worn well below the knee became the fashion. Lydia loved it.

New houses were being built everywhere, including Upstone, which was growing from a village into a small town, and Edward was considering selling some land on the fringes of the estate for much-needed housing. It was not a subject Robert was particularly interested in; he had no stake in the property. It was after that, apropos of nothing, Edward had brought up the subject of Yuri. ‘There must be records somewhere. At least, we could try.’

‘Why are you so keen for him to be traced? You’re as bad as Lydia. She’s too firmly wedded to the past.’

‘I’d like to make her happy.’

‘She is happy, or so she assures me.’

‘Well, she would say that, wouldn’t she? That doesn’t mean that there isn’t a great hole in her life. Knowing where Yuri is and that he understands she had no choice but to leave him in Russia would be the best thing for her. Make her more content.’

‘You haven’t told her this, have you?’ Robert asked.

‘No, I wouldn’t want to get her hopes up for nothing.’

‘And it would be for nothing. Even if you find him, what good would it do? They can’t be reunited, that’s just not possible. It’s past, Sir Edward, past and gone. We all have to move on. She’s got Bobby and Tatty and that should be enough.’

Edward had not realised how strongly Robert felt over Lydia’s past, but he supposed it was understandable; it was a past he could not share. And now, instead of improving matters, he had made them worse.

‘Who’s Yuri?’ Bobby appeared suddenly, sitting on the floor almost at their feet, startling them both. Neither had noticed him sprawled on the carpet playing with the cat.

His father seemed reluctant to answer him, so Sir Edward did. ‘Your mother had a baby in Russia at the beginning of the Second World War and she had to leave him behind.’

‘A baby!’ he exclaimed. ‘How did that come about?’

‘It’s a long story and best forgotten,’ Robert said.

‘But why did she leave him behind? Did she have a love affair?’ Bobby’s curiosity had been roused and he wasn’t going to let the subject drop.

Edward smiled; where had the boy learnt such terms? ‘No, she was married to a Russian. He was killed early in the war.’

‘I never knew that.’

‘No reason why you should,’ his father said. ‘Now, run along and play.’

‘But I want to know more.’

‘Then I suggest you go and ask your mother.’

Which is exactly what he did, when he found her making an apple pie in the kitchen. He loved his mother’s pastry, especially when she had a little left over, sprinkled it with sugar and dried fruit before rolling it up and cutting it into slices before baking. He could never wait for the slices to grow cold before he wolfed them. ‘Mum, I want to ask you something.’

‘Ask away.’

‘I heard Dad and Grandpa talking about someone called Yuri. Dad said if I wanted to know about him, I was to ask you.’

She was taken by surprise. ‘Why were they talking about Yuri?’

‘They were talking about trying to find him; Grandad was telling Dad they ought to make enquiries, but Dad said it was useless. When I asked who Yuri was, Grandpa said he was your son and Dad said if I wanted to know about him to ask you. I never knew you had another son, Mum.’

Lydia looked at Claudia who was busy peeling potatoes. The older woman put down the knife, dried her hands and left the room.

Lydia sat at the kitchen table and pulled Bobby down on the chair next to her. He knew she had been born in Russia, she had told him in his first term at the infant school, when he complained about taunts of being a poor little rich boy. Wealth or its lack had never entered his head. He had all he needed and he supposed he was lucky to have all that garden to play in but it didn’t make him different. He rebelled when the bigger boys had demanded money off him and wouldn’t believe that his pocket money was even less than theirs. Lydia had advised him not to give in to them, that if he did, they would only ask for more. She had told him about when she first went to school at Upstone and how frightened she had been, especially when she hadn’t been able to speak English properly.

‘Not speak English!’ he had exclaimed. ‘What language did you speak, then?’

It was then she had told him about being born in Russia and how Grandpa Stoneleigh had saved her and adopted her. He was not her real father and therefore not their real grandfather. She had not said anything about her return in 1938 and the birth of Yuri. She had known one day she would have to tell her children they had a half-brother, but had put it off until they could understand why there had ever been anyone in her life besides their father. Now it seemed the time had come.

She smiled. ‘And you are curious?’

‘Of course I am. Why was I never told? You think you know all about someone and then you discover you don’t know anything at all. And why should Dad and Grandad argue over him?’

‘Were they arguing?’

‘No, not exactly, but Dad got a bit hot under the collar.’

‘I’m sorry for that. It’s nothing they should be arguing about. It was all so long ago.’

‘What were you doing in Russia and why didn’t you bring the baby back with you? And what happened to your Russian husband?’

‘Were you eavesdropping?’

‘Not on purpose. I was playing on the floor. They didn’t know I was there.’

She and Andrei had played on the floor at Kirilhor, she remembered, and had heard things they shouldn’t which had only become clear years later. Believing, as she always had, that if children asked questions, they deserved honest answers, she told him a watered-down version of what had happened

‘Wow!’ he said when she finished. ‘That’s like a fairy story. Can’t you find him again?’

‘I don’t think so. Russia is nothing like England, you can’t move about freely and if you are a foreigner you can only go where the Russians choose to take you. And it all happened too long ago.’

‘But you must think about him.’

‘Sometimes I do. It’s only natural, I suppose.’

After he had gone, Lydia returned to her pastry, musing as she rolled it out. Her son had set her thinking about the past again. Fancy Papa thinking they ought to try and find Yuri. Of course, it was impossible. She didn’t like them arguing over it and she must warn Papa not to mention it again. And she must make a point of taking Tatty on one side and telling her the story before she heard a garbled version from Bobby.

How swiftly the years had flown by, Lydia mused. The children were no longer babies, they were little people with personalities and temperaments all their own. Nine-year-old Bobby was like Robert, though not so patient and tolerant. He might learn those virtues as he grew older. He was certainly brainy. Tatty, two years younger, was intelligent but could never sit still long enough to learn her lessons; she would rather be active, skipping and running, climbing trees, taking part in sport. But she was also tender-hearted and would weep buckets over a wounded bird. How she would react, Lydia did not know.

Getting the children ready for school next morning, after an unusually stormy night, she was only half listening to the breakfast news on the wireless; she was still musing on Tatty’s reaction to her tale. Her daughter had gazed at her in wonder and asked all sorts of questions Bobby would never have thought of: What colour was Yuri’s hair? His eyes? Was he fat like her friend Chloe’s baby brother was? Did he cry much? When was he coming home? All of which she had endeavoured to answer. Tatty must have been satisfied because she had gone to bed and straight to sleep, and hadn’t mentioned it since waking up.

Struggling with Tatty’s wellington boots, she heard the newsreader speak of extra high tides which, combining with wind and rain, had caused widespread floods down the east coast, from Lincolnshire to Kent. It was feared there was some loss of life and many injuries as people tried to escape the water. Some were trapped in the upper storeys of their houses, some had gone out onto the roofs of their bungalows and sat there awaiting rescue. Thousands had lost their homes, especially those close to the low-lying coast.

‘It reminds me of 1947,’ Edward said from the rocking chair by the kitchen hearth. He was still a handsome man, white-haired, a little bent, but still active, refusing to give way to old age. ‘Do you remember? Robert took a rowing boat out and helped rescue people and brought them here, and you and Claudia wrapped them in blankets and gave them tea and soup.’

‘I remember. It was a terrible time.’ Valleys all over the country had become lakes; the Fens, so close to Upstone Hall, had become a vast inland sea. Field after field had become inundated, the farmers lost their crops, cows had to be rescued using boats. But it was not only the floods, the shortages and the strikes which made it terrible, but the fact that Robert had not been able to settle down in civilian life and gone back into the navy. She sometimes wondered if he needed to get away from Upstone and her memories. However careful she was not to mention Alex or Yuri, he knew she could never completely let go. It filled her with guilt because her husband deserved to be more than second best.

He had left very early that morning to return to duty. The war in Korea between the Communist North and the non-Communist South had been going on for three years. South Korea was being backed by troops from America and Britain and it involved the Royal Navy.

‘When Robert comes home again, I think you should think about taking a holiday,’ Edward said, almost as if he had read her mind. ‘He needs you to himself sometimes, you know. Claudia will look after the children.’ Claudia was still with them, but for how much longer, Lydia did not know. The fifty-year-old was courting a bus driver who drove the bus that passed their gate and took passengers into Upstone. Apart from two women who came in daily, she was the only live-in servant left, though no one thought of her in those terms. She was a friend and helpmate to everyone, especially the children, whom she adored. She had told Lydia she was torn in two when Reggie had proposed, not wanting to leave Upstone Hall, but Lydia had told her not to be so silly and to go ahead.

‘I know. We’ll talk about it when the time comes.’ She finished putting Tatty’s coat on and buttoning it up, then turned to Bobby. ‘Are you ready? Have you got your lunch and your football boots?’

‘Yes, Mum.’ He picked up his satchel and all three said cheerio to Edward and left by the kitchen door. The wind was still howling round the house and it was raining hard. Water was streaming down the drive like a small river.

The school was within easy walking distance and usually she encouraged the children to walk there and back, but today even she was struggling to stand upright. ‘I think I’d better take you in the car today,’ she said. In 1950 when petrol rationing was abolished, Robert had bought Lydia a new Morris Minor.

The storms abated at last. Over three hundred people had lost their lives, twenty-four thousand houses had been damaged, some beyond repair. In the countryside thousands of animals drowned and fields inundated by salt water could not grow crops. Winston Churchill, who had been returned as prime minister after the general election of 1951, declared it a national disaster.

Stalin died in March and Lydia wondered if it would make any difference to East-West relations. The entente of the war years had soon disappeared and the Soviet Union and its satellites were as cut off from the Western world as they had been when Churchill spoke of an iron curtain. Any news from Russia set Lydia thinking of Alex and Yuri; she supposed she would never stop thinking of them, but the pain had dulled, leaving a quiet nostalgia that she deliberately kept at bay. To let it come to the forefront of her mind would be a catastrophe and unfair to Bob and her children. They deserved the very best she could do for them.

One happy event was the coronation of Queen Elizabeth on the second of June, which was televised almost in its entirety. It was a day of great pageantry, which the country loved. They turned out in their thousands to watch the procession as Elizabeth travelled to Westminster Abbey in the golden State Coach.

The Korean War ended and Robert came home in time to take them all on holiday in Scotland during the school holiday. The weather was kind to them, and they had a lovely time, walking in the Highlands and sailing on the lochs. They returned sunburnt and happy, and then Robert and Lydia left the children at Upstone and went to Balfour Place for a long weekend. They wandered about doing nothing in particular, seeing the sights, shopping, going to the theatre and making love. ‘We’ll do more of this when I leave the service,’ Robert said.

‘Are you thinking of leaving?’

He laughed. ‘They’ll kick me out when my time’s up.’

‘What do you want to do? Afterwards, I mean.’

‘I don’t know. I’ll have to think about it.’ He paused, then went on in a rush. ‘Lydia, don’t you think it’s time we bought our own home? We can’t live with Sir Edward for ever.’

She was startled. It was the last thing she had expected. ‘Why not? It’s plenty big enough for all of us. And you know Papa loves having the children round him.’

‘It’s too big,’ he said. ‘An anachronism. It costs the earth to keep up, even though we only use half of it. If we bought a nice house, near the sea, he could have a small bungalow nearby.’

‘He’d hate that. And it isn’t as if he’s poor.’

‘No, he isn’t, but that’s half my point. We rely on him too much. It makes me feel less of a man.’

‘Robert, I never heard such nonsense. You’re all man.’ She gave a cracked laugh. ‘I can testify to that.’

He managed a half-grin, though he was too concerned with making his point to laugh at her joke. ‘I want us to have a home of our own, you, me and the children. Can’t you understand that?’

‘In a way I can, but it’s just masculine pride. I can’t imagine what life would be like living anywhere but Upstone Hall. It’s my home, Robert, the only one I’ve ever known. Even when I was in Russia with Kolya, all I wanted to do was get back to it.’

‘Will you at least think about what I’ve said?’

‘Yes, I’ll think about it.’

She did, but it always came back to one thing: she could not bear to leave Upstone and her father. ‘It would seem like ingratitude,’ she told Robert when he brought the subject up again. And because he loved her, he gave up.

In September Bobby went to Gresham’s boarding school, Sir Edward’s old school, and Holt was near enough for him to be fetched home for weekends, though Papa didn’t think that was a good idea. ‘He should stay and take part in the weekend activities,’ he told Lydia. ‘There’s always something going on: sport, drama, music, cadets.’

Lydia missed him dreadfully but he settled down well and wrote frequently about new friends he had made, what he had done and the things he intended to do. Left behind, Tatty informed her one day that she wanted to learn to ride. ‘My friend Chloe has a pony,’ she announced. ‘He’s called Tubby, ’cos he’s a roly-poly. I asked Grandpa and he says he doesn’t see why not.’

Lydia smiled at the way her daughter unashamedly used her grandfather to get her own way. ‘Did he? I rode a lot when I was young.’

‘So I can, can’t I?’

‘If you are good.’

‘I am good.’ It was said loudly and vehemently. So Tatty got her pony, took to riding like a duck to water and started competing in local gymkhanas. She always took the rosettes she won to show Grandpa before hanging them on her bedroom wall. The child idolised him, which was another reason in Lydia’s mind for not moving.

Another year passed, a year in which rationing finally ended after fourteen years; children were able to buy their lollipops, gobstoppers and chocolate without having to produce coupons; Roger Bannister became the first man to run a mile in under four minutes; rock and roll came to Britain from America with Bill Haley singing ‘Rock Around the Clock’, something the youth of the country took to their hearts, but which the older generation deplored.

Lydia fetched Bobby home from school for the following Christmas holidays in thick freezing fog. ‘We’ve been talking in class about what we want to do when we leave,’ he told her as she drove very slowly along the country roads. The windscreen wipers were sticking to the ice on the glass and she had to stop every now and again to get out and scrape it off.

‘Goodness, that’s a long way off.’

‘I know, but we’ve been told to think about it because it’s important to know where you’re going in life and we have to decide what exams we want to take.’ At eleven years old he was tall for his age, a well-built lad with fair hair and blue eyes like his father. He had other traits of Robert’s too: thoughtfulness and consideration and a way of looking at her which made her want to hug him, but hugging was definitely out; he considered himself too old for that. ‘I think I’d like to be a diplomat like Grandpa.’

‘He’d like that,’ she said.

‘Perhaps they’ll send me to Russia.’

‘Would you like to go?’

‘I wouldn’t mind. After all, I’ve got roots there, haven’t I?’

‘Yes, but I doubt you’ll be able to find any connections now,’ she said, as she drew up outside the house. ‘It’s been too long and Russia has changed.’

Christmas Day was dull but overcast, but it did not dampen their spirits. They all went to church, including Claudia who was still with them, but would be going to spend the afternoon and evening with her fiancé after Christmas dinner. Poor Claudia, she was as undecided as ever.

‘Time for presents,’ Tatty said as soon as the meal came to an end and they all left the table and trooped into the drawing room, where a large tree stood in the corner glittering with lights and tinsel. Beneath it was a heap of colourfully wrapped parcels. Tatty acted as postman and soon everyone was unwrapping presents, exclaiming and thanking the givers.

Lydia watched them all: her father, husband – home on Christmas leave – children and best friend and sent up a little prayer of thanks for her good fortune. Somewhere, thousands of miles away, she prayed another child, fourteen years old now, was also enjoying his Christmas, even if it wasn’t called Christmas anymore.

The fog lifted, but at the beginning of January it snowed and it continued to snow for a week, made worse by blizzards which piled it up against walls and hedges, and covered cars. More than seventy roads were blocked and hundreds of vehicles abandoned in drifts. Trains couldn’t run and everyone was struggling to get to work; schools were shut and livestock was dying and old people suffering. Lydia did what she could to help those old people in the village, trudging out in wellington boots, taking soup in thermos flasks and making sure they had heating.

Ice grew thicker and thicker on ponds and rivers, much to Tatty’s delight, who informed them that the ice on the lake was several inches thick.

‘You are not to go on it,’ Lydia said. ‘The water is deep, and if you go through, you’ll never get out. You heard the news, children drowning all over the place falling through the ice. I don’t want you to be one of them.’

‘No, but Mum, they’ve flooded the fen at Earith and that’s only a few inches deep. They’re going to hold the speed skating championships there. The snowploughs have cleared the roads; my friend, Chloe, told me so.’

And so they all went in Edward’s Bentley: Edward, Robert, Lydia, Bobby and Tatty. The large expanse of ice was crowded as everyone for miles around came to take advantage of the rare chance to skate and watch the speed trials. Those without skates walked on the ice, slid and fell over laughing. Tatty was soon whizzing about, followed by a less-sure Bob. Lydia and Robert went hand in hand more sedately, while Edward watched from the warmth of the car.

‘It’s like a Russian winter,’ Lydia said, cheeks glowing.

She was, Robert decided, looking especially beautiful. ‘You don’t remember Russian winters, do you?’

‘Not as a child, except that dreadful day when Andrei was killed, but it was pretty cold that first year of the war. You remember, you were there.’

‘So I was, but I didn’t have much time to notice the weather.’

‘No, you were too busy looking after me. You saved my life – not only my life, but my sanity, and I never thanked you enough, did I?’

‘Just being you, and loving me as you do, is all the thanks I need and want, sweetheart.’

It was an ambiguous statement which made her realise how he must feel about a marriage that was perfect except for one missing ingredient. His stoic acceptance of that made her feel guilty. She made a resolution to try even harder to love him as she ought.

He went back to duty at the end of the week, but the big freeze continued until March, when Tatty’s school reopened and Lydia took Bobby back to Gresham’s. The snow was still piled up on the sides of the roads, some of it higher than the car, making her nervous. Driving along between the walls of snow, with black overhanging trees making it dark, she was suddenly back in Russia in the droshky with Ivan whipping up that great carthorse and Andrei laughing. He had not laughed for long and she shuddered at what had become a rare recollection. It was the snow, she supposed, and its menace.

Mentally trying to shake off the image, she drove faster than she ought to have done. As she turned into the drive, the car skidded when it encountered the ungritted surface and slid off the gravel into the shrubbery where it stalled in a heap of snow. Shaken, she leant forward over the steering wheel, thankful she was not hurt. ‘Damn! Damn! Damn!’ she said aloud. Then she picked up her bag, left the car where it was and trudged up the drive.

‘I’m back,’ she called to Edward, as she took off her coat and went into the drawing room.

He looked up from the newspaper he was reading. ‘I didn’t hear the car.’

She laughed. ‘No, I skidded turning into the drive and ran it into the bushes. It’s in a snowdrift. I’ll ring Andy at the garage to come and drag it out.’

‘Are you hurt?’

‘No, just feeling foolish. I should have known it was icy just inside the gate.’

‘I thought Percy had gritted the drive.’

‘So he did, but he ran out of grit before he got to the gate and the store didn’t have any more.’ She went back into the hall and telephoned the local garage.

‘Andy’s out with his recovery truck,’ she said when she returned. ‘There’s been a nasty accident on the Norwich road. Sue doesn’t know when he’ll be back.’

He stood up. ‘I’ll go and have a look at it. I might be able to back it out.’

‘No, leave it, Papa. It’s not doing any harm.’

‘If it’s in the way someone else might run into it and be injured.’ He went into the kitchen, donned coat and boots, picked up the car keys from the table where she had dropped them, and left the house. He fetched a shovel which was leaning against the stable wall where Percy had left it after clearing the paths after the last lot of snow, and went off down the drive. Lydia put her coat back on, found a spade in the shed and followed.

When she joined him, Edward was already tackling the snow behind the car, shovelling it to one side. She bent to do the same and by the time they had freed the car they were both exhausted. Edward, particularly, was finding it hard to breathe. ‘Get in the car, Papa,’ she said, putting the shovel and spade in the boot.

He did so and she drove carefully the four hundred yards to the house, when he got out, leaving her to take the car round to the garage. When she returned to the house, she found him collapsed in the rocking chair beside the kitchen hearth, one boot off and one on. His arms hung limply over the sides of the chair, his eyes were shut and his face all lopsided.

‘Papa!’ She flung herself on her knees beside him, and though she had no reply, she felt a flicker of a pulse when she picked up his hand. Thank God, he was alive. She rang for an ambulance and in no time he was on his way to hospital with her following in the Morris, praying with every breath she took that he would recover.

The doctors brought him round briefly and she was able to talk to him. She sat at his bedside holding his hand and told him how much she loved him, that she needed him to get well again, that the children needed him. He was not to give in, he had always been a fighter; now he had the biggest battle of his life. Understanding, he smiled with one side of his mouth, but did not speak. If she could have given him some of her strength and vitality, she would willingly have done it.

At three o’clock he drifted off again and she became alarmed. The ward sister came quickly when summoned, but said he had simply gone to sleep. Relieved, Lydia stayed a little longer watching him, then left to be at home when Tatiana came home from school.

She broke the news to her daughter and saw the usual happy face crease in a worried frown. ‘But he will be all right, won’t he? He isn’t going to die, is he?’ She had been quite little when her mother had explained her true relationship to Sir Edward. She had been shocked at first, but then accepted it. He was still Grandpa Stoneleigh, white-haired, a little crotchety, but always loving and generous.

‘I don’t think so. I pray not.’

‘So do I. I can’t imagine this house without Grandpa. Have you told Bobby?’

‘I rang the headmaster and he is going to tell him, but I don’t think he need come home. He’s only just gone back.’

The next few days were critical and Lydia’s time was taken up with visiting the hospital and trying to keep Tatty and herself cheerful. Robert was informed but whether he could get home she did not know. In any case, there wasn’t much he could do. It was a question of waiting and hoping and praying.

Her prayers were answered in that Edward rallied, but he was left severely disabled. She brought him home and employed Jenny Graham, a qualified nurse who had experience with stroke victims, to help her look after him. Coming home seemed to revive him. He managed a crooked smile for Tatty and Bobby, whom she had fetched home for the weekend, though his efforts to talk to them resulted in their confusion. ‘I can’t understand what he’s saying,’ Bobby said to his mother, after spending a few minutes at his grandfather’s bedside.

‘I know,’ she told him. ‘It’s his illness, but we will become used to his little ways and then it will be easier.’

She wondered if it would. It broke her heart to see the strong upright man he had been reduced to such helplessness, especially when it had been so unnecessary. The car would have been perfectly all right until Andy could come and deal with it. It did not help to be told the stroke could have happened at any time and she should not blame herself. Robert came home and was, as ever, a great comfort to her. She knew she could lean on him when she was overwhelmed with sadness and sheer tiredness. He seemed able to understand the invalid better than most and spent hours talking to him, stimulating him into a response. When he returned to duty, he left them all more cheerful and optimistic.

With the help of a physiotherapist and a speech therapist, Edward’s condition improved, though he was never the robust man he had been. He wandered about the house using a couple of elbow sticks, and he liked to watch the television, particularly the news and politics shows. Churchill stepped down as prime minister in April after fifty years in politics. He had inspired the nation with his stirring speeches during the war and his retirement was marked by radio, television and film producers with recollections of the dark days of the war. A film about Churchill’s life was the last thing Edward saw. He died in the early hours of the next morning after another stroke.

Lydia, who found him, was so shocked she could not take it in for several seconds, then she threw herself across him and sobbed her heart out. Her beloved papa, who had taken her in as a waif and loved her as well as any natural father, who had fed her and clothed her and educated her, put up with her naughtiness, her wicked betrayal of him and still loved her, had gone from her. It was too much to bear.

It was Jenny Graham who came and gently lifted her from the body and closed the dead man’s eyes. Lydia was angry and turned on her. ‘You should have been here, you should have seen it coming. Where were you?’

‘Mrs Conway, it is six o’clock in the morning,’ she said patiently. ‘He was all right when I went to bed. I could not have foreseen it, and even if I had, there was nothing either you or I could have done.’

Lydia gulped and pulled herself together. ‘I know. I woke early, and something, I don’t know what it was, told me to come and look at him. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have spoken to you like that. Will you ring for the doctor? I’ll stay here a few minutes. No need to wake Tatty yet.’

Jenny left her and she sat beside the bed and took her father’s hand. It was already drained of blood, the white bone of his knuckles showing through the thin skin. ‘Papa, I shall miss you dreadfully,’ she murmured. ‘You have been the backbone of my life and now I have to stand on my own.’ Even as she spoke, she thought of Robert. She was not alone; she had a husband who was an unfailing support and children who needed her. And they must be told. Tatty would wake soon and want her breakfast, happily eager for life and the day ahead. She was going to have to shatter that happiness. Should she defer it, send her to school and tell her later? That would be a cowardly thing to do and she would hate her for it later. And she must ring Bobby’s school and get in touch with Robert. He had been on his way to Gibraltar when she last spoke to him by phone.

‘The doctor is on his way.’ Jenny had returned; Lydia in her grief had not heard her. ‘I’ll stay with him, if you like. I thought I heard Tatty about.’

Lydia stumbled to her feet and went in search of Tatiana who was singing ‘The Yellow Rose of Texas’ in the bathroom as she showered. Lydia waited for her to come out, wrapped in a bath towel and rubbing her hair. ‘Tatty, sit down, I have something to tell you.’ She sat on the edge of the bed and pulled her daughter down beside her. ‘You have to be very brave.’ She found herself overwhelmed with tears again and for a few moments could not go on.

Tatty looked at her in bewilderment. ‘Mummy, what’s wrong? Why are you crying? Have you hurt yourself?’

‘No, I am not hurt.’ She managed a weak smile. ‘At least, not outside. Inside I am hurting a lot. You see, it’s Grandpa. He’s… He fell asleep in the night and… and I’m afraid he isn’t going to wake up again.’

Tatty stared at her. ‘You mean he’s dead?’

‘Yes, darling. But it was a peaceful end.’ Oh, how she hoped and prayed that was true, that he hadn’t been calling out for help and none came.

‘I don’t believe it. He was all right yesterday, shaking his stick at the television – you know, how he does when he’s agitated.’

‘I know. But he was an old man and he had been ill a long time.’

‘I don’t want him to go,’ Tatty said, her lip trembling. ‘I want him to stay here with us. It’s not fair.’

‘I know, I’d like it too,’ Lydia said, then as Tatty began to sob in earnest, she gathered her into her arms and put aside her own grief to comfort her.

Jenny returned to tell them the doctor had arrived and Lydia gently disengaged herself and went to her father’s room to meet the doctor.

The nurse had laid Edward out straight, washed his face, combed his white hair and crossed his hands on his chest. Lydia almost gave way again at the sight of him, but remembering her children, she straightened herself up and prepared to deal with practicalities, after which she decided to go and fetch Bobby home. She shouldn’t leave it to the headmaster to break the news.

The funeral took place in a crowded Upstone church a week later. Sir Edward’s work colleagues were there in force and so were the villagers. A handful of Russian émigrés whom Edward had helped came to pay their respects, as did some of Lydia’s friends and colleagues who had also known Sir Edward. The local vicar, the Reverend Mr Harrington, took the service and Lydia was asked to say a few words. How she got through it without breaking down she never knew and she didn’t have Robert to support her. He was on his way back but had not arrived in time. She ended with the hope and belief her father had joined his beloved wife and invited everyone back to Upstone Hall for refreshments.

They left the church behind the pall-bearers for a short committal service at the graveside. As they stood about the newly opened grave, with heads bowed, Lydia caught a glimpse of someone standing in the shadows of the great yew tree which stood close to the lychgate. Her heart did a crazy somersault and then began to beat so quickly she could not breathe. She took a half step towards him, her legs buckled under her and she fell to the ground.

She came to her senses lying on the grass beside the grave with her head in Claudia’s lap. Her eyes took in Bobby’s legs clad in his dark-grey school trousers and she raised her head to find him looking down at her, his face screwed up with worry. Tatty was kneeling beside her, clinging to her hand. She scrambled into a sitting position and stared towards the yew, but there was no one there. Had she seen a ghost? She must have. He was dead, had been dead fourteen years. And yet he had seemed so real, albeit older, grey-haired and very thin.

‘It’s all been too much for you,’ Claudia said. ‘Shall I tell everyone to go away?’

Lydia shook her head, as much to deny the apparition as to answer Claudia. ‘I’ll be all right. Help me up.’

Claudia helped her to her feet and she took the children’s hands in each of hers and led the way to the funeral car which took them back to the Hall. By the time she arrived, she decided she had been seeing things. Alex was dead. She must remember that and not be so foolish.

She supervised the refreshments, talked to everyone, thanking them for coming, joining in as people told their own stories about the Sir Edward they knew, some of which raised a laugh. Afterwards there was the reading of the will, though Lydia already knew its contents. Sir Edward had been very generous to long-serving servants, to Claudia, the church and his favourite charities, and he had set up a trust fund for Bobby and Tatty. He had no male heir and the baronetcy had died out with him, and so the residue of the estate, Upstone Hall and the flat in Balfour Place had been left to Lydia. It was enough to keep her in comfort for the rest of her life and to enable Robert to leave the sea and take up whatever occupation he chose. And he could buy that yacht he had been talking about for ages.

He arrived home just as everyone was leaving. ‘I’m sorry I couldn’t get here in time,’ he said, hugging her and then holding her at arm’s length to look into her face. ‘Are you all right?’

‘Yes. Oh, you don’t know how glad I am to see you.’ And she flung herself back into his arms.

He held her a few moments, then gently put her aside to look to his children, taking Tatty to sit beside him on the sofa. Bobby remained standing, looking down at them.

‘I don’t like the house without Grandpa,’ Tatty said. ‘It seems all wrong.’

‘His spirit is still with us,’ Robert told her. ‘If you love someone, they can never really die.’ A statement that made Lydia, remembering the vision in the churchyard, gulp.

‘The funeral was awful,’ Bobby told him. ‘Everybody was so miserable, though some of them were only pretending; they were laughing afterwards and guzzling sherry and cakes like it was a party. I don’t think Grandpa would have liked that. And Mum fainted. In the churchyard with everyone watching.’

Robert looked up at Lydia, his eyebrow raised in a query.

‘It was nothing,’ she said. ‘My legs just buckled under me. It only lasted a second or so. Nothing to worry about.’

She did not tell him she thought she had seen Alex. It had been an apparition, born of her distress; he had not been real, and telling Robert would only upset him to think that after all their years together a ghost still haunted them.

Alex had wanted to pay his last respects to the man who had been a second father to him. It had not been his intention to reveal himself. He had watched from the shadow of the tree, knowing there was no place for him in the group around the open grave. When Lydia had fainted, he had longed to go to her, but seeing her rise and take her children away, he had left. But he had come back later when all the cars had gone and the gravediggers had filled in the grave. He stood over it, reading the cards on the flowers and musing on a life that had brought him so much love and then snatched it away again.

Since returning to England he had discovered Sir Edward still lived at Upstone Hall and Lydia had married Robert Conway and had two children. He had known, when he had sent her away from him in Moscow, he was shutting the door on his own happiness. Someone like Lydia needed a man in her life, to love and be loved, needed children to mother. He ought not to mind. She would not wish to have the past dragged up again and in any case it would only hurt everyone: Lydia, Robert and their children, not to mention his own battened-down feelings.

He stooped to read the inscription on the largest of the wreaths laid at the head of the grave. It was made up of white and yellow roses. ‘In love and gratitude to the best of fathers and grandfathers who gave freely and asked nothing in return. May you rest in peace. Robert, Lydia, Bobby and Tatiana.’ Fighting back tears, he put his hand under the wreath and plucked a tiny yellow rosebud from where it would not be missed and slipped it into the top pocket of his suit behind the triangle of white handkerchief that peeped from it. Then he went back to his car and drove out of the village and along the road past the gates of Upstone Hall, continued on, and took the main road to Norwich.

Chapter Eleven

It was the death of Stalin in March 1953 which had started the process to set Alex free. As soon as the news reached Norilsk, the prisoners rejoiced, thinking they would soon be sent home. Lavrenty Beria, Stalin’s successor, was known to want to dismantle the Gulag system and as a first step he transferred the administration of the complex from the gulag to the Ministry for Heavy Industry. It paved the way for the prisoners to apply to the Soviet Procuracy for a review of their sentences. Those whose sentences were shorter than five years, who consisted mainly of the criminal element, women and the elderly, were granted an amnesty, but the so-called politicals and enemies of the people, which included Alex, were left behind, and conditions, already harsh, became worse.

The guards were afraid that if the prisoners were released they would lose their jobs and were anxious to prove that to grant an amnesty to such prisoners would endanger the security of the country, and so their cruelty increased. They did not seem to understand that, if everyone was suddenly declared innocent, it would make the state legal system look inept, if not worse. When the guards shot at a convoy of prisoners on their way to work it triggered a whole wave of protests which were brutally put down.

Alex was kept so busy processing the prisoners’ applications for a review of their sentences he did not have time to see to his own. It was a miracle that his years in the camp had not degraded him as it had many another. Thin and in rags he might be, but his mind still worked, perhaps because of the translation work he was given which kept his brain cells from going rusty.

It was this office work which had brought him into contact with one of the engineers in charge of the steel works. Leonid Pavlovich Orlov and his wife, Katya, lived in comparative luxury in a larger-than-usual house on a part of the compound reserved for paid workers. Alex didn’t know Madame Orlova, but he had seen Leonid about, directing workers and prisoners, treating both with humanity, something almost unknown in the camp. Sometimes he would come into the office and talk to Alex. He had, he told Alex, worked his way up in his career by diligence, ambition and not a little risk. ‘I seized my chances,’ he had said on one occasion. It was well below freezing, both outside and in, and he was warmly clad in a padded coat and fur hat, which was more than Alex had. ‘During the war Russia needed engineers, people who could design and make weapons, tanks, transports, things like that and I took full advantage. Not everyone in Russia is poor, you know; a man can get on if he’s determined enough. I own my engineering business.’

‘Then what are you doing here?’

‘Advancement,’ he had said, laughing. ‘Here I have been allowed to grow even stronger, to make even more money. Mining and engineering together make a lucrative partnership…’

‘Should you be saying this to me?’

Leonid had laughed and looked about him at the empty office. Alex felt he had deliberately chosen that moment to speak to him when everyone else had gone for their midday meal. ‘Why not? There’s no one to hear and no one to care if they did. The guards can do nothing to me, I am not one of their prisoners. Besides, I want to ask you something.’

Alex was immediately wary. ‘What might that be?’

‘You speak English and German?’

‘Yes.’

‘Then will you teach me?’

Suspicion had become part of Alex’s nature and this sounded very suspicious. ‘Why?’

‘Why?’ Leonid repeated. ‘Because I want to learn. One day Russia will be doing business with other countries. It’s inevitable, and it might come sooner than you think. I want to be prepared.’

‘I meant, why me?’

‘Why not you? And who else is there who is so fluent and whom I can trust?’

‘You trust me?’

‘Yes. I have watched you at work. You are scrupulously honest, when anyone else in your shoes would be fiddling the books, hiving off goods and supplies and selling them. Selling the secrets entrusted to you by prisoners too. There are any number of ways in which you could have used your position to better yourself. And yet you haven’t. So, what do you say? I’ll pay you.’

‘Apart from buying extra food and clothes, money’s not much good here. And it would only be stolen if I had it.’

‘Very well, then – apart from a little tea money, I shall keep it until you get out. You haven’t got long to go, have you?’

‘Who knows? People are always having their sentences increased, sometimes even doubled on the flimsiest excuse. How do I know it won’t happen to me?’

‘The sentences are increased because the government needs the labour and prisoners don’t have to be paid.’ He paused. ‘I could make sure you left on time.’

‘In exchange for lessons?’

‘Yes.’

And so he had agreed, and Alex went to their house on three evenings a week and taught Leonid and his wife English and German. And he was rewarded with supper. It didn’t help his popularity with his fellow prisoners and he received more than one beating, not only because they considered him a traitor, but because they thought he might have been given money and they meant to take it off him. Only when they had been convinced he was not being paid more than a pittance and a meal, and he managed to smuggle food out for them, did they leave him alone. He fancied Leonid, who was nobody’s fool, knew about this but turned a blind eye.

The comparatively soft life came to an end after two years when Leonid told him he was going back to Moscow. ‘My wife has had enough of living out here and she’s homesick for the sun,’ he said.

‘I shall miss you,’ Alex said. They had established a rapport which, in other circumstances, might have been called friendship and he meant what he said. Besides, he’d miss his free suppers.

‘And I you, my friend. I shan’t forget you. If you need help when you get out, come to me. I will have your fee waiting for you.’

Alex was not such a fool as to believe it – neither the fact that he would get out at the end of his original sentence, nor that Leonid would remember and pay him if he ever did. But then Stalin had died and that had put a whole new complexion on things. To his surprise his application for review of his sentence was granted the following year, probably because he had been a model prisoner and worked efficiently.

In the autumn of 1954, he had found himself, skeletally thin, in a train being conveyed back to Moscow and civilisation. His Certificate of Release had specified he was forbidden to live within a hundred kilometres of Moscow or any other major city and he was given twenty-four hours to make himself scarce or be rearrested. He was given to understand he was expected to make for Potsdam, though no one thought to give him the wherewithal to get there. He had no money, no clothes, no job and nowhere to live, but he was free. He was tempted to go straight to the British Embassy and throw himself on their mercy; he was, after all, a British citizen, but he was plagued by his conscience. He had never forgotten that promise to Lydia. He knew it was an almost impossible task, but he had to try and find Yuri before he could even think of going home. Where was home anyway?

It was then he thought of Leonid Orlov. Would he remember him? Would he honour his debt? He knew the name of the man’s business and, by asking the way, found himself outside a huge factory making engineering tools. He had washed and shaved in the communal baths, but there was nothing he could do about his clothes except brush them down.

‘You want work?’ the man on the gate asked him, looking him up and down in contempt. ‘There’s no vacancy.’

‘No, I want to speak to Comrade Leonid Orlov.’

The man laughed. ‘You haven’t a hope. He won’t see you.’

‘I think he will. Tell him it’s Alexei Simenov. We knew each other years ago.’

‘He’s always being plagued by people who knew him years ago. The whole population of Russia seems to think he owes them a favour.’

Alex straightened his back and lifted his head. ‘I am not the whole population of Russia. I am Alexei Petrovich Simenov.’ It was said with all the authority he could muster, and it worked. The man sighed heavily and picked up the telephone.

‘Wait here,’ he said when he put it down.

It seemed he had been standing in the street for ages and was beginning to think he might as well walk away, when Leo himself came hurrying out to meet him. ‘My dear man, how good it is to see you again,’ he said, giving Alex a great bear hug, much to the astonishment of the gatekeeper. ‘Come along, you look as though you could do with a good meal.’ Leo himself obviously never went short of a meal. He had been plump before, now he was rotund. ‘And you need some clothes. You can’t go about looking like that.’

Alex breathed a huge sigh of relief. ‘I can’t stay in Moscow long. I’m supposed to leave within twenty-four hours, and I was wondering how I was going to manage it when I thought of you.’

‘Glad you did, Alexei, my friend, glad you did.’ He took Alex’s arm in a firm grip and led him inside the gate where a monster limousine stood with a chauffeur beside it, who sprang to open the rear door. Leo ushered Alex in and climbed in beside him. ‘GUM,’ he ordered the driver.

They went to the department store where a whole wardrobe of clothes was bought for Alex. ‘A suit and a shirt would have been enough,’ Alex protested.

‘Nonsense. Three lessons a week for two people for two years, at so much an hour, must come to a tidy sum.’

They left the store with Alex looking and feeling smarter than he had in years. ‘Now for something to eat,’ Leo said. ‘Then you can tell me everything.’

‘Everything?’ Alex queried.

‘Yes, you didn’t come to me to beg, I know you better than that.’

‘I thought you might remember the lessons.’

‘So I did, but there’s more to be told. We’ll go home, you’d like to see Katya again, wouldn’t you? And we won’t be overheard.’

In Alex’s experience, if there was one place in Moscow to be overheard it was at home where living quarters were shared and everyone lived cheek by jowl in rooms divided by paper-thin walls, so that it was impossible to have any privacy. But Leonid Orlov’s home was not like that. He had a privileged apartment in a block of flats in Granovski Street where he and his wife had six rooms all to themselves. It was here Alex had a warm bath, the first since that time with Lydia in that dreadful kommunalka with its filthy bath along the corridor. Even that room had been spacious and the bath a luxury compared with how he had lived afterwards. Not that he had cared at the time where he lived when he had Lydia with him, loving him, relying on him. Those times could never come again, neither the worst of them, nor the best of them.

‘Now, tell what’s been happening to you,’ Leonid said, after they had finished an excellent meal cooked by Katya. ‘I assume you have been set free?’

‘Yes, pardoned after review.’

‘Good. I am not going to have the police knocking on my door in the middle of the night, then.’ It was said with a chuckle.

‘Don’t joke about it, Leo,’ his wife said.

‘You can never tell,’ Alex said. ‘I can’t quite believe I’m free and they won’t find some other charge they’d forgotten.’

‘You are safe here for the moment,’ Leo said, making himself serious again. ‘Tell me what your plans are.’

‘It is a long story and I’m sure you don’t want to hear it.’

‘Oh, but I do. I might be able to help. That’s why you looked me up, isn’t it?’

Alex smiled. ‘I suppose it is.’

‘Were you hoping to go back to England? I can’t help you do that.’

‘No. I wouldn’t allow you to risk it anyway. It’s something else.’

‘Fire away, then.’ He opened another bottle of wine and refilled their glasses. ‘You are not in a hurry, are you?’

‘No.’ He paused, wondering where to begin. ‘Nearly fifteen years ago, I made a promise to someone I love very dearly, a promise to search for someone.’

‘In Russia?’

‘Yes. Her father was Count Kirilov. She left Russia in 1920, the only survivor of her family. Her father, mother and brother were all killed during the Civil War. She was taken to England and adopted by Sir Edward Stoneleigh. All she had of her old life was a piece of jewellery sewn into her petticoat.’

‘Oh, the poor thing!’ Katya exclaimed. She was even rounder than her husband.

‘She was luckier than some. Sir Edward is a great man. She adores him.’ This didn’t seem real, this warm room, his stomach replete, his head a little fuzzy with excellent wine and this charming man, who seemed to be listening attentively. He took a deep breath and confided the whole story.

Leo got up suddenly and left the room. When he came back he was carrying a large book. He sat down beside Alex and opened it. It appeared to be about the tsar’s court. ‘Here,’ he said, turning it to show him a photograph. It depicted an autocratic lady in a long straight evening dress, dripping with jewels, including a tiara. Standing on one side of her was a young man, still in his teens, in a white uniform, and on the other the tsar and tsarina.

‘Good heavens,’ he said, reading the Russian inscription aloud. ‘The Tsar and Tsarina with the dowager Countess Irina Kirillova and Count Mikhail Mikhailovich Kirilov at the ball at the Winter Palace, St Petersburg, to celebrate the New Year 1900.’

Alex pointed to the young man. ‘That must be Lydia’s father and that her grandmother. And that’s the Kirilov Star.’

Leo turned the page. ‘There is a little more here about the tiara. According to legend the centre stone was cut from a huge diamond found on the banks of the Ob River by a peasant who was fishing and had no idea of its worth. He could not afterwards remember exactly where he found it. In that region, there are no easy landmarks. He took it to the village priest, who thought it might be worth money and made the long journey to Tobolsk where he sold it to a silversmith who in turn sold it to a travelling merchant. It eventually ended up in Novgorod where Count Kirilov owned an estate. It is not known how much he paid for it, but it would not mean anything in today’s money, considering we are talking about the eighteenth century. He had it made into a tiara for his wife.’

‘And Sir Edward had it made into a pendant for Lydia. Oh, how she would love to see this book.’

‘I’ll have the page copied for you.’

Alex thanked him, but at that moment the likelihood of him ever seeing Lydia again seemed remote. Yet his efforts to find Yuri were based on that assumption. ‘How did the book survive the Bolsheviks?’

‘Heaven knows. By all the rules it should have been burnt but I found it years ago in an old bookstore that was closing down and selling off the stock. I bought it because I collect old books that depict precious stones.’

‘The Star is famous, then?’

‘It was, in the days before the Revolution. Like so much of Russia’s history it was repressed by the Bolsheviks. Your Lydia is lucky to have it still. It is as well Yuri knew nothing about it. He would have found it difficult growing up with a background like that.’

‘Do you think there’s any chance of finding him?’

‘She cannot possibly expect you to keep such a promise,’ Katya said, referring to Lydia.

‘I don’t know what she expects, but I will not rest until I’ve done all I can, though I have no idea how to go about it. Any contacts I might have had have long gone.’

‘How old would the boy be?’ Leonid asked.

‘He was born in April 1939.’

‘He’ll soon be sixteen then. Is he smart enough to go to university, do you think?’

‘I have no idea. His mother certainly was. Why do you ask?’

‘I sometimes lecture on engineering at the university and some of the cleverer students manage to get there as young as that, though I must say it is rare, especially if he’s had no one to give him a helping hand.’

‘As far as I know there is only Olga and she wouldn’t have influence, unless she married well. That’s a possibility, of course,’ Alex said thoughtfully. ‘On the other hand she may not have survived the war, and if she did, may not have been able to trace Yuri.’

‘It’s like looking for a needle in a haystack,’ Leo said. ‘Isn’t that one of the English sayings you taught me?’

‘Yes, along with “fire away”.’ Alex laughed. ‘Fancy you remembering.’

‘I remember it all, my friend. You make a good teacher. Do you think that’s what you’ll do when you go home?’

‘I don’t know. I haven’t thought that far. If I cannot find Yuri I am not sure I’ll go home, not to England anyway. Getting out of Russia won’t be easy. I have a feeling I will embarrass the British Embassy if I turn up there.’

‘First things first, then.’ Leo spoke cheerfully to dispel the gloom that had come over Alex. ‘I’ll try the education authorities.’

‘But there are thousands of schools and hundreds of colleges and universities in Russia, we can’t ask them all.’

‘There’s always the Moscow Central Archive,’ Katya put in.

‘Good thinking.’ her husband said. ‘Olga’s death or remarriage might be recorded there.’

‘Or if she had a criminal record,’ Katya said. ‘It wouldn’t surprise me.’ Without ever having met Olga, she was prepared to dislike her.

‘Is that open to the public?’ Alex asked in surprise.

Leo smiled knowingly and tapped his nose. ‘There are ways if you know the right people and have deep enough pockets.’

‘Oh, I see.’

‘It’s the way business is done,’ he went on. ‘You, of all people, should know that the wheels of officialdom turn at the pace of a snail and the only way to speed them up and get the information you need is to take an envelope full of banknotes with you whenever you make any sort of application. It you don’t, someone else will and you lose the deal you’re going after. It is the same for everything, not just business.’

‘I do know that. I meant I have no money.’

‘That isn’t a problem, Alexei. I owe you.’

‘But you’ve already paid for my clothes.’

‘Pshaw! A flea bite.’

‘And you are prepared to do this for me?’

‘Would you do it for me if the shoe were on the other foot?’

‘Yes, I expect I would.’

‘There you are, then.’

‘But I’ve got to get out of Moscow tomorrow, if I’m not to be arrested.’

‘You could stay here, as long as you didn’t venture out,’ Katya offered doubtfully.

‘No, certainly not.’ Alex was adamant. ‘I am not putting either of you at risk.’

‘Have you anywhere to go?’ Leo asked.

‘Yes,’ he said suddenly thinking of Kirilhor. ‘Petrovsk, in Ukraine. Lydia’s family had a dacha there. There’s a man there, Ivan Ivanovich, he’ll take me in.’

‘That’s nice and close,’ Leonid said with heavy irony. ‘Don’t you know anywhere nearer than that?’

‘No. Not as safe. You can send me word if you discover anything, and I’ll come back, or meet you somewhere.’

‘And if I can’t?’

‘Then I’ll have to make up my mind what I’m going to do.’

He stayed with them that night at their insistence, and early next morning, Leo took him to the railway station and bought his ticket, before seeing him to his carriage and bidding him goodbye. Alex had given him the address of the telegraph office at Petrovsk railway station. ‘I’ll be in touch,’ he said, as the carriage doors were slammed and the guard blew the whistle. ‘Don’t despair.’

It was all very well to tell him not to despair, Alex thought, sinking back into his seat. How could he not? He was probably on a wild goose chase, and how could he be sure Lydia would want the information even if he found Yuri? But deep inside him he did know she would never give up on her son, dead or alive. And dead could be a possibility. So many lives were lost in the war, why should Yuri have survived? Was he simply using the search as a distraction because he was too cowardly to go home and face whatever had to be faced? The journey was a very long one and he had plenty of time to think about that question, to remember going in the opposite direction with a distraught Lydia. Oh, how he had loved her, still loved her! But he was not the man he had been then, young, strong, confident. He had aged beyond his years, his hair was grey and he limped. What had happened to Lydia? Would there be any grey in her hair?

He arrived in Kiev late at night. Even so the air was several degrees warmer than in Moscow. After living in the Arctic Circle for so long, it hit him like a warm bath. Picking up his case, provided by Leo to contain his new clothes, he made his way to a cheap hotel. Leo had given him money, more than he deserved, but he wasn’t sure how long he would have to make it last and so was careful with it. Next morning he continued his journey and by evening found himself once more looking down the Petrovsk main street. The view had not changed, except for being more run-down than ever. He booked into the dilapidated hotel, ate a lonely meal and went to bed early. He tired easily these days and the journey had taken it out of him, which was surprising since it was nothing like as long as the journey from the gulag to Moscow, but put the two together, one after the other, and he seemed to have been travelling half his life. In a way, he supposed he had, and he wasn’t at the end yet.

The next morning he set off on foot for the woodman’s hut, telling himself the man had been getting on in 1939 and people died young if they never had enough to eat and not to be surprised if he had gone. But Ivan was there, chopping wood as if he had been doing it non-stop ever since Alex had last seen him. His white hair had thinned to almost nothing and his beard, left untrimmed, came well down on his chest. His cheeks had fallen in and his bony hands were covered in dark-red veins. He wore an old leather jerkin, a fur hat with ear flaps and long felt boots. He put down his axe and stared at the newcomer. ‘Major Alexei Simenov,’ he said, sinking onto a tree stump, shaking his white head in disbelief. ‘Surely not?’

Alex laughed. ‘So you remember me?’

‘I remember you. Did you find my little Lidushka?’

‘Yes.’

‘Is she well? What are you doing back here?’

‘I found her and I’m here because we never found the baby.’

‘Ahhh.’ It was a long drawn-out sigh. ‘You had better come in.’ He indicated the door of the hovel. ‘I’ll make tea.’

Alex preceded him into the only room. The thatch on the roof was wearing thin and he could see the sky through one spot. ‘You sound as if you know something. Do you know where he is?’

‘He’s at Kirilhor. They came back here in 1947.’

‘My God! I never thought to find him here.’ And then another thought struck him, making his heart race. ‘They? Surely not Lydia?’

‘No, I never saw her again.’ He busied himself over the stove. ‘I mean Olga Denisovna. She brought the boy up.’

‘She’s here too?’

‘Yes, though not quite right in the head, if you understand me – violent sometimes, though not with Yuri, never with Yuri. But, excuse me – if you did not expect to find the boy here, why have you come?’

For the second time in three days Alex found himself telling the story, while they sipped tea from cracked glasses and he ate a little bread dipped in salt. At the end of the tale, the old man grunted. ‘You should have stayed away. You won’t be welcome and Olga Denisovna has wits enough to denounce you.’

‘I’ve served my time and been given a pardon, she has no grounds for denouncing me.’

‘No?’ The old man gave another of his grunts. ‘What about attempting to lure a Soviet citizen out of the country to be indoctrinated by the West?’

‘I never said I intended to do that.’

‘She will make it sound as though you did.’

Alex sipped tea. There was a lot of sugar in it. ‘What about the boy?’

‘He’s a good little Pioneer, a real Soviet citizen. He believes everything they tell him. He was even seen to weep when Stalin died. And he loves Olga, looks after her all the time, even when she’s at her worst.’

‘That’s hardly surprising if she brought him up.’

‘He doesn’t know she’s not his real mother.’

‘Why didn’t you tell him as soon as he was old enough to understand?’

‘What would that have achieved?’ Ivan answered one question with another. Olga Denisovna had told him, when they first arrived, that if he said one word to the boy or anyone else about who Yuri really was, she would denounce him. ‘You’ll be sent to a labour camp, and how long do you think you’ll survive there?’ she had said belligerently. ‘Keep your mouth shut.’ And so he had. There was no point in stirring up trouble either for himself or Yuri, and there was no one left in the village who remembered Olga before the war or Yuri being born. Besides, if he kept quiet he could keep his eye on the boy and see he came to no harm. It was strange when he thought about it: Yuri was the grandson of Count Kirilov and by rights the heir to Kirilhor. Not that there was anything worth inheriting. It was a ruin. He had once asked Olga, when she was in one of her more sensible moods, why she had come back. ‘It’s where the boy was born,’ she said. ‘I thought Svetlana might still be here and help us, but she wasn’t. I have no one but Yuri. He’s a good boy. And clever too. I am going to be proud of him.’

‘I should like to see him,’ Alex said. ‘At least then I can tell Lydia I have seen him and he is well. Perhaps if I spoke to Olga Nahmova first…’

Ivan shrugged. ‘You must do what you think is right, but don’t blame me if you get less than a welcome.’

Alex thanked him and went back to the hotel.

Yuri Nahmov was chopping down a fir tree in the forest. They needed more logs for the stove. Ever since he had been considered old enough to wield an axe, he had been responsible for seeing the stove was never without fuel. His mother couldn’t do it. Half the time she didn’t know what she was doing. She often burnt the soup and she went for any visitors to Kirilhor like a wildcat, as if they had evil intent. ‘Hide!’ she would cry whenever a stranger arrived in the village. ‘Hide in the cupboard.’ Yuri hated being shut in a cupboard; that was how you were punished at the orphanage and it always brought back unpleasant memories. It made him want to scream and beat his fists against the door, but nothing would satisfy Mama until they had hidden and waited for whoever it was to go away again. She was afraid, always afraid. Did she suppose the authorities would come and take him back to the orphanage?

How he had hated that place! They were half starved and brutally treated, especially those whose parents had been arrested and sent to Siberia. He had had no idea who his parents were and it had been assumed he was either one of those or one of the thousands of besprizomiki, street children without family and means of support, who had been rounded up to be made into useful Soviet citizens. He was full of jealousy when someone came to claim a child and take him away amid tears of joy, which didn’t happen very often. He would hide his misery in a show of indifference, until in the end his pretence became real and he was indifferent.

He was a son of the Soviet system. Stalin was his father and every morning when the children were required to chant ‘Thank you, Comrade Stalin, for a happy childhood’ he sang out, unaware that there was, or could be, anything different, until one day, when he was about six or seven, a strange woman had turned up and claimed she was his mother. She said his name was Yuri Nahmov and not Ilya Minsky which was the name they called him in the orphanage. Worried and frightened, he had been handed over to a complete stranger and begun a very different life.

‘It’s not the best tree for making firewood,’ Ivan told him, watching him from his seat on a tree trunk. He was fidgety, unable to make up his mind whether to say anything about yesterday’s visitor. Perhaps he should, perhaps he shouldn’t. ‘It’s too green. It will spit.’

‘It’s easier than cutting down one of those big deciduous trees.’ Yuri had long ago decided that Ivan was the nearest thing to a father he would ever have and treated him with gentle tolerance. ‘And it won’t matter about the spitting if we close the doors of the stove. It’s too hot to have them open anyway.’

The tree toppled with a creak and a groan and a satisfying thump. Yuri set about stripping it of its smaller branches, ready to saw the trunk into logs. Ivan got up to help him with the two-handed saw.

When they had filled the basket, Yuri picked it up and hefted it onto his shoulder. He had grown into a big strong lad, uncannily like his grandfather, the count, and the weight of it meant nothing to him. ‘Are you coming back to the house?’

‘Not yet. Later perhaps. I’ll clear up these bits first, maybe make a bonfire. The ash will be good for the garden.’

‘It’ll spit!’ Yuri said, laughing. ‘I’ll see you later, then.’

Back at Kirilhor, he put the logs down by the hearth in the kitchen and took off his outdoor clothes before joining his mother in the living room. She was cowed on the floor in a corner of the large room, her shoulders hunched into a ragged shawl, her eyes flashing hate at a man who stood watching her as if unsure what to do, a man in a business suit and a clean shirt. ‘Yurochka, thank goodness you are here,’ she said. ‘I don’t know what this man wants, but he won’t go away. Tell him to go away, tell him we don’t want whatever it is he’s selling.’

Alex held his hand out to the boy. ‘I am Alexei Petrovich Simenov. I am sorry if I have disturbed your mother. I assume the lady is your mother?’

‘Of course she is,’ Yuri said, shaking the hand. His grip was firm. ‘What do you want with her?’

‘Nothing,’ Alex assured him. ‘And I’m not selling anything.’ He noticed Olga’s eyes flashing dangerously and thought quickly. ‘I am sightseeing.’

‘In Petrovsk?’ Yuri laughed. ‘What is there to see in a dump like this?’

‘Kirilhor,’ Alex answered. ‘It has an interesting history. Did you know that?’

‘I know it once belonged to a count, but he’s long dead, and all his kind. And good riddance too. If he were alive now, I would spit on him. You aren’t anything to do with him, are you? You haven’t come to claim your inheritance?’ And he laughed again.

‘No, I have no claim on Kirilhor.’ Alex wondered if they paid rent for living there, and if so, to whom. Perhaps they were simply squatting. ‘But I know someone who lived here as a child before the Revolution. Her father was Count Kirilov. He died during the Civil War, along with his wife and son. Lydia was the only one who survived and went to England. She returned in 1938 with her husband, Nikolay Nikolayevich Andropov. She remembers it with fondness. I wanted to see the place and perhaps take a photograph to show her.’

Olga was undoubtedly disturbed and the mention of Kolya’s name roused her to a furious response. ‘Get out!’ she yelled, scrambling to her feet. Grabbing a knife from the table she came at Alex brandishing it. ‘Get out and leave us alone. We don’t care that…’ she clicked bony fingers at him ‘… for a stiff-necked aristocrat, do we, Yurochka?’

Yuri shrugged his shoulders. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said to Alex, taking Olga’s hand and gently removing the knife from her fingers. ‘My mother is not well. She was wounded in the head at the beginning of the war and has never fully recovered. It is best you leave us. I shall have to calm her down. You understand?’

‘Yes, I understand,’ Alex said, and took his leave.

He made his way along the forest track until he came to where Ivan was tending a bonfire; he was almost obscured by thick smoke. The whole forest smelt of pine resin. Seeing Alex he threw the branch he had in his hand on the fire and came towards him. ‘You went to Kirilhor, my friend?’

‘Yes,’ he said turning away because the smoke was making his eyes water. ‘The woman’s mad.’

‘I told you that, didn’t I? What did you say? What did she say?’

Alex recounted their conversation word for word. ‘Now I’m in a quandary,’ he finished. ‘What shall I do?’

‘I should go away and forget you ever came here. The boy will be all right. He’s clever; he’ll grow into a fine man and make his mother proud of him.’

Alex gave a humourless grunt of laughter. ‘Which mother?’

Ivan chuckled. ‘Both of them.’

‘Should I tell her? Lydia, I mean.’

‘You must make up your own mind about that, young man, but if I were you I’d say nothing. It will break her heart.’

Alex left him and made his way back to the hotel, booked out and took the train back to Moscow. He knew he ought not to go back there but he needed to tell Leo what had happened and ask his advice.

Leo’s advice was the same as Ivan’s, even though he had never known Lydia. ‘In any case,’ he added, ‘how were you going to tell her? You are here, in Moscow, where you have no business to be, and the lady is in England. A letter? Not advisable, everything is censored. You are banned from the cities, but that doesn’t mean you can go where you like. I stayed around to make sure no one followed you onto the train to Kirilhor, but you can be sure someone will pick up your trail before long.’

‘I know.’ Alex was drowning in despondency. He had not felt so down since he had been taken prisoner outside Minsk. All his longing centred on Upstone Hall and Lydia, even though he realised, deep inside him, that returning there was an unrealistic dream. Too many years had passed since that tearful parting in Moscow, even though it was the memory of that which had kept him alive when he could so easily have succumbed to cold and hunger and cruelty, as many another had done. And with no good news to take back to her…

‘Cheer up, my friend,’ Leo said. ‘You were taken at Potsdam, weren’t you?’

‘Yes.’

‘It’s in the Russian zone; the authorities won’t stop you going back to where you came from and you never know, you might be welcomed with open arms. Even if you’re not, you’ll be nearer the West. More chance of hopping over the border.’

This was subversive advice from someone who lived in the Soviet Union, but it sounded like sense and Alex was too tired to argue. ‘I don’t like abandoning the boy,’ he said.

‘I’ll keep an eye on his progress. If he shows promise, I’ll see he gets to university or technical college.’

‘Why should you do that?’ Alex asked in surprise. ‘You don’t even know him.’

‘For our friendship’s sake and because Russia needs educated men. Too many were lost in Stalin’s purges.’

Alex couldn’t stay in Moscow a moment longer. He took his friend’s advice, bidding him and his wife goodbye, choking back tears.

Potsdam was not where he wanted to be. Leo had been right; even as a free man, he could not return to England. Freedom was relative and he would still be inside the Russian zone, stuck until he could think of a way to cross to the West. And it soon became obvious to him that the nearer he came to the border, the more roadblocks and checks there were. Every time the train rushed over a crossing, he could see them from the window. And there were wide swathes of a kind of ploughed-up no-man’s-land between one side and the other, designed to allow no cover for anyone trying to cross.

Arriving in Potsdam he discovered Else had married in his absence and had two children. She was not pleased to see him and anxious enough to be rid of him to persuade her husband to show him where there was a weakness in the rows and rows of barbed wire that separated East from West. He was guided to the spot at the dead of night and quietly abandoned.

He took a deep breath and dashed across, ready to start dodging if the bullets came, but strangely no one saw him. Once on the other side, he trudged westwards, his senses keyed to every rustle in the undergrowth at the side of the road, every drip-drip of water from hedges, every barking dog, ready to dive into a ditch if anyone came along the road. In a mile or so he came to a crossroads and another of the ubiquitous border posts, but this time it was manned by American soldiers. They stopped him, guns at the ready.

‘Take me to the British,’ he said.

‘You’re a Limey?’ one asked in surprise.

‘Yes.’

The sergeant detailed one of his men to take him to their CO, where he explained who he was and how he came to be in the East. ‘Well, I’ll be damned!’ the man said. ‘That’s some story.’

Here he was entertained royally with the best meal he had had in years, a couple of glasses of lager and a fat cigar. Later, in their officers’ mess, he had been quizzed again, this time out of curiosity. Most wanted to know what life was like in the Communist East and how he had endured the concentration camp and the gulag. It was dawn when they found him a bed and he collapsed exhausted into it.

Later that day, a gum-chewing driver and a lieutenant with a pistol in a holster took him by jeep to Bonn, the capital of West Germany, where he was left with an aide to the British ambassador. Here he was debriefed thoroughly and given accommodation, while they verified his identity. Two days later he was on a plane heading for London.

The interrogation and the debriefings at the Foreign Office went on for several days, even though they must have been sent the notes of his interrogation in Bonn. When they were satisfied he was who he said he was, he was asked what he intended to do. It was a question he could not readily answer. A quick look at the telephone book had confirmed that Sir Edward Stoneleigh still lived at Upstone Hall and he had been tempted to ring him but decided not to; if he went there he would have to see Lydia, and how could he go there and not tell her he had seen Yuri?

‘I need work,’ he said. ‘And somewhere to live.’

‘You have a job here and all your back pay – years of it.’

‘Thank you, but I’ve had enough of the diplomatic corps. I need to be out of doors, leading the simple life.’

He recognised he was not the man he had been, nor ever would be again. What he had been through would colour the rest of his days. The man of decisive action had been too long inured to obeying orders instantly, to half expecting the blows raining on his shoulders for no reason except the guard was in a bad mood, or one of his fellow prisoners suspected him of stealing his food. After years and years of communal living, of not being able to call his soul his own, he needed solitude. He bought a smallholding in Northacre Green, a small village near East Dereham in Norfolk, where he grew vegetables and reared a few pigs and chickens and kept himself to himself.

Sir Edward Stoneleigh’s obituary in The Daily Telegraph had caught his attention and dragged him, unwillingly, back into the real world.

Robert was working on the deck of the Merry Maid, lovingly polishing the brass work, when Alex found him. ‘Hallo, Rob,’ he said quietly.

Robert whipped round. ‘God God, Alex Peters! It is you, isn’t it? You’re as thin as a rake.’

‘Yes, it’s me.’

‘We thought you were dead. Sir Edward heard it through the embassy. Where the devil have you been?’

‘Here and there. In a German POW camp and then Siberia. It’s a very long story.’

‘Come aboard and tell me about it.’

Alex walked up the gangplank and jumped on deck. After shaking hands, Robert led the way down to the cabin. It was clean but untidy. ‘Don’t mind the mess. I’ve been too busy on deck to clean up.’ He filled a kettle and lit the gas ring. ‘When did you get back?’

‘About six months ago.’

Robert whistled. ‘Why have you waited so long to contact us? Why didn’t you come to the house? Sir Edward died, you know, two months ago now. Poor Lydia was devastated. You did know we had married?’

‘Yes. It’s why I didn’t go. Thought it best.’

‘Appreciate that, old man.’

Alex smiled. They seemed to be talking in a kind of shorthand but it conveyed their meaning perfectly. He watched Robert put a tea bag in each of two mugs and pour the boiling water on them. He stirred them thoughtfully. Alex could almost hear his brain ticking over.

‘We have two children: Bobby, who’s twelve, and Tatyana, who’s ten.’ He sniffed at the bottle of milk, decided it hadn’t gone off and added some to the mugs. Alex could not get used to drinking tea with milk in it. He watched Rob dip a teaspoon into an open bag of sugar and put some in his tea. He followed suit.

‘I know that too. I congratulate you.’

‘Thank you.’ He looked at Alex over the rim of his mug. ‘Come on, out with the story.’

So Alex told it yet again, while the other drank his tea and listened in silence, until he came to his return to Moscow, a free man. ‘If you can call it freedom,’ he added.

‘How did you get out of Russia and back here?’ Robert asked. ‘It could not have been easy.’

‘That’s another story and, in a way, is why I’m here. I went to Balfour Place, thinking that perhaps you stayed there without Lydia sometimes. The janitor told me where to find you.’

‘Wondering when you were coming to that.’

‘I need your advice.’

‘Go on.’

Alex told him about finding Yuri and both his and Olga’s reaction. ‘I’d like your advice on what to do about it,’ he said. ‘Should Lydia be told or not?’

‘That’s a tough one,’ Robert said, looking thoughtful, while Alex waited, understanding the man’s hesitation. ‘If the boy is so anti the West and Olga hasn’t told him about Lydia, should we upset her all over again? Is that what you’re asking me?’

‘I suppose it is.’

‘Then I would say, no, don’t tell her. Sir Edward tried to locate Yuri soon after the war ended, but failed. She has accepted the boy is lost. Think of the emotional upheaval for everyone, not least Bobby and Tatty. And all for what? It won’t reunite Lydia with Yuri, will it?’

‘No. You’re right.’ He drained his mug. ‘Does Lydia come on the boat with you?’

‘No, she looked it over when I first bought it, but she hates the sea. We had a rough crossing coming back from Russia and she’s never forgotten it. This is my private passion.’

‘Doesn’t she mind?’

‘Not at all. She knows how much I miss the sea since I came out of the service.’

Alex stood up to leave. ‘Good luck with it.’

‘Thank you.’

‘I shan’t trouble you again. If, at any time in the future, you want to tell Lydia what I have told you, then that’s up to you.’

They shook hands and Alex went up on deck and jumped down onto the towpath. He took a huge breath of air before striding off towards the city and the railway station. He was exhausted. The encounter had taken more out of him than he would have believed possible. What was more, he had condemned himself never to see Lydia again. He knew Robert would not breathe a word.