Kate Furnivall: The Russian Concubine

But Lydia couldn’t shift her gaze from the floor. Her mother’s clothes were spread out all over it, neatly arranged in matching sets.

Navy dress above navy shoes. Cream silk suit with camel blouse and tan sandals. Stockings, hats, gloves, even jewellery, placed as if she were wearing them. Empty bodies. Her mother there. But not there. A scarf each time where her face should be.

It was too much. She choked.

‘Lydia,’ Alfred said urgently, ‘Valentina has written to us.’ He wasn’t wearing his spectacles, and his face looked naked and vulnerable. Though the bedside clock showed four-twenty in the morning, he was still in yesterday’s rumpled suit, his jaw dark and in need of a shave.

‘What do you mean?’

‘I found them. Beneath her underwear in that drawer there. One for each of us.’ He abandoned the sheet and cupped the envelopes to his cheeks.

Lydia knelt down in front of him on the rug, placed her fingers lightly on his knees, and felt the shivers rippling through his body. She looked up into his face.

‘Alfred, Alfred,’ she murmured softly. Tears were flowing down his cheeks, but he was unaware of them. ‘We can’t bring her back.’

‘I know,’ he cried out. ‘But if God got His son back, why can’t I have my wife?’

My Darling Dochenka,

If you are reading this I have done the worst possible thing a mother can ever do to her child. Gone. Left you. But then I’ve never been good at doing the mother act, have I, sweetheart? It’s my wedding day today. I’m writing this because a horrible sense of foreboding has settled on me. Like a shroud. A coldness squeezes my heart. But I know that you’d laugh and toss your shining head at me and say it’s the vodka talking. Maybe it is. Maybe it isn’t.

So. I have some things to say. Important things. Chyort! You know me, darling. I don’t tell. I keep secrets. I hoard them like jewels and hug them to me. So I’ll say them quickly.

First, I love you, my golden daughter. More than my life. So if I’m already cold in the earth, don’t grieve. I’ll be happy. Because you are surviving and that’s what counts. Anyway I was never much good at life. I expect to find that the Devil and I get along just fine. And for hell’s sake, don’t cry. It’ll ruin your pretty eyes.

Now the hard part. I don’t know where to start, so I’ll just spit it out.

Your father, Jens Friis, is alive. There. It’s said.

He’s in one of Stalin’s hateful forced labour prisons in some godforsaken hellhole in Russia. Ten years he’s been there. Can you imagine it? How do I know? Liev Popkov. He came and told me the day you arrived home and found him with me in our miserable attic. That was also the day I’d said yes to Alfred’s proposal of marriage. Ironic? Ha! I wanted to die, Lydia, just die of grief. But what good could your father be to you, stuck out somewhere on the frozen steppes of Siberia and probably going to die sometime soon? None of them live forever in those barbaric death camps.

So I got you a new father. Is that so bad? I got you one who would look out for you properly. And for me. Don’t forget me. I was tired of being… empty. Thin and empty. I want so much more for you.

There. That’s said. Don’t be angry that I didn’t tell you sooner.

Now. A secret I never planned to tell. The words stick in my throat. Even now I could take this one to my grave with me. Shall I?

All right, darling, all right. I can hear you shouting at me though the worms are in my ears. You want the truth. Very well. I give you the truth, my little alley cat, but it’ll do you no good.

I’ve told you before that when I first saw your father, he was like a glorious Viking warrior, his heart beating so strong I could hear it across the room as I played the piano for Tsar Nicholas. Ten years older than I, but I swore to myself there and then that I would marry this Norse god. It took me three years, but I did it. However, nothing in life is simple, and when I was too young and silly for him to look twice at me, he had been busy at the tsar’s court in the Alexander Palace at Tsarskoe Selo. Now this is the scorpion’s tail. He was busy having an affair. Oh yes, my Viking god was human after all. The affair was with that Russian bitch, Countess Natalia Serova, and she carried Jens’s child.

Yes. Alexei Serov is your half-brother.

Satisfied?

Even now it makes me weep, my tears blur his name. And the countess had the sense to get out of Russia before the Red storm broke over us, so she was able to take with her the child and her money and her jewels. And left her poor cuckolded husband Count Serov to die by the blade of a Bolshevik sabre.

Now you know. That is why I would not have that green-eyed bastard in my house. His eyes are his father’s eyes.

There, dochenka. I am confessed. Do what you will with my secrets. I beg you to forget them. Forget Russia and Russians. Become my dear Alfred’s proper little English miss. It is the only way forward for you. So adieu, my precious daughter. Remember my wishes – an English education, a career of your own, never to be owned by any man.

Don’t forget me.

Poof, to hell with this craziness. I refuse to die yet, so this letter will grow old and yellow wrapped up in my best pair of silk French underwear. You will never know.

I want to kiss you, darling.

So much love,

from your Mama

Mama, Mama, Mama.

A torrent of emotions hit her. She hid herself in her room and shook so hard the paper quivered in her hand, but she couldn’t stop herself crowing with delight.

Papa alive! Papa. Alive. And a brother. Right here in Junchow. Alexei. Oh Mama. You make me angry. Why didn’t you tell me? Why couldn’t we have shared it?

But she knew why. It was her mother’s warped idea of protecting her daughter. It was the survival instinct.

Mama, I know you think I’m wilful and headstrong, but I’d have listened to you. Really I would. You should have trusted me. Together we…

An image of her father leaped out of nowhere. It rose up and filled the inside of her skull. He was no longer tall, but hunched, gaunt, and white-haired. His feet in shackles and raw with festering sores. The Viking sheen she had always thought he carried so easily on his broad shoulders was gone. He was dirty all over. And cold. Shivering. She blinked, shocked. The image vanished. But in that moment before her eyelids closed, Jens Friis looked directly at her and smiled. It was the old smile, the one she remembered, the one part of him she still carried inside her.

‘Papa,’ she cried out.

By seven o’clock in the morning she’d built a shrine. A big one. In the drawing room. Alfred sat and watched her in mute stillness as she swept everything off the long walnut sideboard and draped it with her mother’s maroon and amber scarves. At each end she placed the tall candles from the dining room. In the centre, taking pride of place, she stood a photograph of Valentina. Laughing, with her head tilted to one side and an oiled-paper parasol in her hand to keep off the sun. A happy honeymoon snapshot. She looked so beautiful, fit to enchant the gods.

Possessions next. Lydia worked out what Valentina would need and positioned the items around her. Hairbrush and mirror, lipstick, compact and nail polish, her snakeskin handbag stuffed with money from Alfred’s wallet. Jewellery box, an absolute must. And right in front where Valentina could reach it easily, a crystal tumbler filled to the brim with Russian vodka.

More. She needed more.

On the right, a whole stack of sheet music and on the left, a book for her to read on Chopin’s affair with George Sand, as well as a pack of cards in case she grew bored. A bowl of fruit. A plate of marzipan sweets.