The Red Staircase

Urgently I said: ‘Where is your medicine? You have some drops to take?’ She couldn’t answer. I turned to the old maid. ‘Anna, you know, I’m sure. Fetch me her medicine.’

At once Anna produced from a capacious pocket a tiny glass phial. I looked at it, assessed its contents as amyl-nitrate, and snapped it between my fingers and held it under the Princess’s nose so that she could inhale the fumes. All the time I could hear Anna’s jealous voice grumbling away.

As the vapours rose and entered her lungs, so the Princess relaxed; it was very quick, in a minute she was breathing easily.

‘Well, that’s better. So that’s the pain, is it?’

‘One of them,’ she managed, and even smiled wryly. ‘I have several devils that torment me.’

Angina, I thought, and the pain coming because her heart muscle is short of oxygen. But I also thought that she had another and more serious ailment, an obstruction of the gut somewhere which caused even more prolonged pain. And yet I doubted if she would die of either just yet. She was tough.

‘You have violet eyes,’ she murmured, staring up into them as I bent over her. ‘Women with violet eyes always have a sad destiny.’ She was an inveterate romantic.

‘Cheer up. In our family violet eyes turn to a dark grey as we grow older, so you see I shall end up happy.’

She even managed to laugh.

‘That’s better. Goodbye now. And don’t let that old maid of yours bully you.’

‘She bully me?’

‘I think she does.’

Anna managed to bang into me as I stood there, giving my hip a thump with the great bunch of keys she carried suspended from her waist. ‘Oh, the wickedness,’ she muttered. ‘She should be beaten. I’d beat her. Take no notice of her, Princess. Old Anna is the one who knows.’

‘Be quiet, you are an illiterate old woman and know nothing about anything,’ commanded her mistress. ‘I think this girl is very wise. From your face I see I can expect a greater pain. Is that what I must look for, then? More pain?’

‘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.