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So Charlotte still used that little room! Lydia moved closer, more reluctant now to disturb Charlotte’s privacy, but tempted all the same. No, she thought; I’ll leave her be.
Then she heard voices.
Was Charlotte talking to herself?
Lydia listened carefully.
Talking to herself in Russian?
Then there was another voice, a man’s voice, replying in Russian, in low tones: a voice like a caress, a voice which sent a sexual shudder through Lydia’s body.
Feliks was in there.
Lydia thought she would faint. Feliks! Within touching distance! Hidden, in Walden Hall, while the police searched the county for him! Hidden by Charlotte.
I mustn’t scream!
She put her fist to her mouth and bit herself. She was shaking.
I must get away. I can’t think straight. I don’t know what to do.
Her head ached horribly. I need a dose of laudanum, she thought. That prospect gave her strength. She controlled her trembling. After a moment she tiptoed out of the nursery.
She almost ran along the corridor and down the stairs to her room. The laudanum was in the dresser. She opened the bottle. She could not hold the spoon steady, so she took a gulp directly from the bottle. After a few moments she began to feel calmer. She put the bottle and the spoon away and closed the drawer. A feeling of mild contentment began to come over her as her nerves settled down. Her head ached less. Nothing would really matter now for a while. She went to her wardrobe and opened the door. She stood staring at the rows of dresses, totally unable to make up her mind what to wear for lunch.
Feliks paced the tiny room like a caged tiger, three steps each way, bending his head to avoid the ceiling, listening to Charlotte.
“Aleks’s door is always locked,” she said. “There are two armed guards inside and one outside. The inside ones won’t unlock the door unless their colleague outside tells them to.”
“One outside, and two inside.” Feliks scratched his head and cursed in Russian. Difficulties, there are always difficulties, he thought. Here I am, right in the house, with an accomplice in the household, and still it isn’t easy. Why shouldn’t I have the luck of those boys in Sarajevo? Why did it have to turn out that I’m a part of this family? He looked at Charlotte and thought: Not that I regret it.
She caught his look, and said: “What?”
“Nothing. Whatever happens, I’m glad I found you.”
“Me too. But what are you going to do about Aleks?”
“Could you draw a plan of the house?”
Charlotte made a face. “I can try.”
“You must know it-you’ve lived here all your life.”
“Well, I know this part, of course-but there are bits of the house I’ve never been in. The butler’s bedroom, the housekeeper’s rooms, the cellars, the place over the kitchens where they store flour and things…”
“Do your best. One plan for each floor.”
She found a piece of paper and a pencil among her childish treasures and knelt at the little table.
Feliks ate another sandwich and drank the rest of the milk. She had taken a long time to bring him the food because the maids had been working in her corridor. As he ate he watched her draw, frowning and biting the end of her pencil. At one point she said: “One doesn’t realize how difficult this is until one tries it.” She found an eraser among her old crayons and used it frequently. Feliks noticed that she was able to draw perfectly straight lines without using a rule. He found the sight of her like this very touching. So she must have sat, he thought, for years in the schoolroom, drawing houses, then Mama and “Papa,” and later the map of Europe, the leaves of the English trees, the park in winter… Walden must have seen her like this many times.
“Why have you changed your clothes?” Feliks asked.
“Oh, everybody has to change all the time here. Every hour of the day has its appropriate clothes, you see. You must show your shoulders at di
He nodded. He was no longer capable of being surprised by the degeneracy of the ruling class.
She handed him her sketches, and he became businesslike again. He studied them. “Where are the guns kept?” he said.
She touched his arm. “Don’t be so abrupt,” she said. “I’m on your side-remember?”
Suddenly she was grown-up again. Feliks smiled ruefully. “I had forgotten,” he said.
“The guns are kept in the gun room.” She pointed it out on the plan. “You really did have an affair with Mama.”
“Yes.”
“I find it so hard to believe that she would do such a thing.”
“She was very wild, then. She still is, but she pretends otherwise.”
“You really think she’s still like that?”
“I know it.”
“Everything, everything turns out to be different from how I thought it was.”
“That’s called growing up.”
She was pensive. “What should I call you, I wonder.”
“What do you mean?”
“I should feel very strange, calling you Father.”
“Feliks will do for now. You need time to get used to the idea of me as your father.”
“Shall I have time?”
Her young face was so grave that he held her hand. “Why not?”
“What will you do when you have Aleks?”
He looked away so that she should not see the guilt in his eyes. “That depends just how and when I kidnap him, but most likely I’ll keep him tied up right here. You’ll have to bring us food, and you’ll have to send a telegram to my friends in Geneva, in code, telling them what has happened. Then, when the news has achieved what we want it to achieve, we’ll let Orlov go.”
“And then?”
“They will look for me in London, so I’ll go north. There seem to be some big towns-Birmingham, Manchester, Hull-where I could lose myself. After a few weeks I’ll make my way back to Switzerland, then eventually to St. Petersburg-that’s the place to be, that’s where the revolution will start.”
“So I’ll never see you again.”
You won’t want to, he thought. He said: “Why not? I may come back to London. You may go to St. Petersburg. We might meet in Paris. Who can tell? If there is such a thing as Fate, it seems determined to bring us together.” I wish I could believe this. I wish I could.
“That’s true,” she said with a brittle smile, and he saw that she did not believe it either. She got to her feet. “Now I must get you some water to wash in.”
“Don’t bother. I’ve been a good deal dirtier than this. I don’t mind.”
“But I do. You smell awful. I’ll be back in a minute.”
With that she went out.
It was the dreariest luncheon Walden could remember in years. Lydia was in some kind of daze. teristically nervy, dropping her cutlery and knocking over a glass. Thomson was taciturn. Sir Arthur Langley attempted to be convivial but nobody responded. Walden himself was withdrawn, obsessed by the puzzle of how Feliks had found out that Aleks was at Walden Hall. He was tortured by the ugly suspicion that it had something to do with Lydia. After all, Lydia had told Feliks that Aleks was at the Savoy Hotel; and she had admitted that Feliks was “vaguely familiar” from St. Petersburg days. Could it be that Feliks had some kind of hold on her? She had been behaving oddly, as if distracted, all summer. And now, as he thought about Lydia in a detached way for the first time in nineteen years, he admitted to himself that she was sexually lukewarm. Of course, well-bred women were supposed to be like that; but he knew perfectly well that this was a polite fiction, and that women generally suffered the same longings as men. Was it that Lydia longed for someone else, someone from her past? That would explain all sorts of things which until now had not seemed to need explanation. It was perfectly horrible, he found, to look at his lifetime companion and see a stranger.