Gwendoline Butler - The Red Staircase

‘Yes,’ I said steadily.

A faint smile curved the lips of that enigmatic old face. ‘Very well. We shall see. Anna, lift me up on the pillows and light me another cigarette.’

‘The last thing you should be doing,’ I said.

‘Ah, but with you to save me – ’ she said, giving me a flash of the smile which, I suppose, must have enchanted my great-grandfather – ‘I shall be quite safe. I shall hang on to you, Rose Gowrie. I don’t intend to die yet. Tell my nephew and niece that, if you like. Settle their minds for them.’ And she began to laugh again.

I shook my head at her, and departed.

Outside on the staircase the air seemed hot and dead. I found myself swaying; I sank down and closed my eyes. I was spent; she had taken more from me than she knew. Instinctively, I understood it would never do to let her guess how much; while she was ignorant I retained free will. I sat there, leaning against the wall, and waited for the darkness which surrounded me to recede. Two old invalids in one morning was exhausting. I wondered if Erskine Gowrie knew Princess Irene. Probably one of her lovers, I thought dizzily, to be counted among those sins of the flesh she now dubiously repented of.

When I opened my eyes I found Ivan standing there, looking at me with a worried face. I realised he must have been outside all the time, waiting for me. ‘Are you ill, Miss Rose?’

Only Ivan called me by name, the other servants used any gracious term that popped into their mouth at that moment; the fact that I was a Scots girl seemed to free their tongues, they called me Excellency, my lady, Baryna, and sometimes Baryshna, just as it suited them, but it was all done with such good humour that I could not mind.

I stood up. ‘No, no, I’m not ill. Were you waiting for me? Yes, I can see you were. But why?’ Ivan, even if within earshot, was usually invisible. ‘Was it because I was there ? Because I’ve been up the Red Staircase?’

He shrugged. ‘It’s a place,’ he said, meaning: Of course, it’s a bad place, or perhaps just a queer place, or even just a place he was unsure of. One always had to read between the lines.

‘She’s only an old lady. What could happen?’

‘They keep company with the devil up there,’ he murmured, looking at the wall and not at me.

‘Oh, Ivan,’ I said, half laughing. I almost stumbled; I put out a hand and he helped me down the stairs. Together we got to the bottom.

‘But of course, a clever young lady like you doesn’t believe me,’ he grumbled.

It was true that a door had opened in the wall behind the Princess on the day I had first seen her, and I remembered, too, my thought that she had a mirror carefully placed so that she could watch the door. The door had moved, and as soon as it had moved she had got me out of the room. Or so I had thought.

A question occurred to me. ‘How many rooms are there in the tower where Princess Irene lives?’

‘I have never seen. My duties do not take me in them.’

‘But you know?’

‘I have been told; three rooms leading into each other, one very small in which the woman Anna sleeps.’ His tone indicated that she could die there, too, for all he cared. ‘And a staircase leading down to the street, with its own entrance on to Molka Street.’

A back door to the Denisov osobniak , in fact. So Irene Drutsko could entertain whom she wished, with everyone coming and going unnoticed by the rest of the household.

‘St Michael and all his angels could come trooping up the stairs,’ said Ivan, accurately reading my thoughts. ‘Or the Devil and all his.’

‘And just as likely to,’ I said sceptically. ‘You don’t really believe all that rubbish.’

He shrugged. No, he didn’t believe the Devil came visiting, it was just a handy phrase, covering a multitude of suspicions and fears. There it was again, I thought, the secret language of the oppressed. ‘The Devil must be gentleman compared to some I’ve met,’ was all he said.

Downstairs, it was at once apparent that Dolly Denisov an her retinue were in the process of returning. Home two hours at least before anyone expected them – I could tell by the flustered way the servants were running about.

Ariadne came hurrying in first and went straight up the stairs, passing me, where I stood at the door of the great drawing-room, without a look. Dolly Denisov followed, slowly drawing off her gloves and talking over her shoulder to he brother as she did so.

‘I blame you entirely, Peter. I have wasted my morning taking Ariadne to choose clothes and she has chosen nothing. All because of you. How could the child like the silks and lace when you were being so critical? I have never before known you like it, you almost had the poor woman who was showing the dresses in tears. She was doing her best you know, Peter. I shall never be able to show my face ther again.’

‘Oh, come now, Dolly,’ protested Peter. He had followe her through the door, and behind him came Mademoiselle Laure; he looked flushed and she was deadly pale. Ther was a reason for her pallor; it appeared that she had been stricken with a migraine and had had to be brought back This was the real reason for Dolly’s displeasure.

‘Can I help?’ I said. Laure looked very sick. To my suiprise she turned to me with something very like gratitude in her face. ‘It would be a great kindness,’ she said.

I assisted her upstairs and helped her undress. When I had got her lying on her bed she was easier. ‘What do you usually do to relieve the pain?’ I asked.

‘Nothing. There is nothing I can do but lie here and endure. Later, when the sickness goes, I sometimes take a long warm bath.’

I put my hand on her forehead. I could feel an angry pulse throbbing under my fingers. ‘Does it still hurt?’

‘Much less.’

‘Try to sleep.’

‘Yes, I believe I will be able to sleep now. You have been very kind, and I have been shrewish and ill-tempered to you. Unfair as well. But I will make it up to you. I will tell you why you have been brought here. I know . I should have told you before, but I was evil and stupid and wanted to see you in trouble.’

‘Oh, but I know it all.’

‘Do you? You really know? How do you know?’ There was surprise in her voice. ‘Then surely you see the danger.’ She struggled to sit up.

‘I saw Princess Irene, poor old thing.’

‘Princess Irene?’ She seemed genuinely surprised. ‘It’s not only her. No, no, they’ll use you, turn you inside out and then, if it suits them, abandon you. If all goes wrong, you will either be shipped back home – or at worst, who knows what could happen to you? Don’t you see – it is not what you are but what you will be, what you will possess, that matters to them?’

A wave of nausea swept over her and she retched. I pushed her gently back on the pillows, thinking her more than a little mad. ‘You can’t talk now, you must rest. Presumably you think me in no danger today? And I possess nothing, dear Laure, so calm yourself.’

‘No, not today,’ she muttered. ‘Not today. It is not today that matters. Although I quarrelled today with someone on your account.’

‘Very well then. Tomorrow, tomorrow we shall talk.’

I waited till her eyelids closed and then walked quietly to the door. When I turned round for a last look, her eyes were open again and she was looking towards me. Yet I don’t think that it was me she saw.

‘At last I believe I am free,’ she said softly. ‘I have tried so often to leave Russia. Once I even got as far as Poland – but I always came back. Now I am free. I’ll start a little school in my own town of Blois. It’s what I’ve always wanted to do.’

Her eyelids closed again and she was asleep.