The Killing of Anna Karenina Page 2

  ‘Well, it’s here! Right beside us! A bicycling tour! Well, well.’ Oswald Holmcroft was now quite practical. ‘Tell you what, I’ll take you off to see our new quack. This isn’t too jarring, I hope?’

  ‘Tishe iedesh, tishe budesh!’ the prince murmured to himself, glad that the riverside track, largely overgrown with thick grass, offered a gentle, hissing bed for the wheels to pass through and did not jerk him about too much. He held his left forearm cradled across his chest, breathing in softly through lightly clenched teeth.

  ‘I shouldn’t really call him a quack, he’s too young,’ Oswald Holmcroft said. ‘But I’m sure he can patch you up.’ An uneasy pause followed. He added, as if speaking to the back of the pony: ‘I thought I detected an accent. There’s a compatriot of yours here, by the way. You are Russian, I suppose?’

  ‘I am. Who is… this, er… compatriot?’

  ‘We know him as “Crow”, Mr Kingston. I’ve never discovered his real name. You see, we have a little community here. Or we like to think it’s a community. Half a dozen of us, followers of your great writer Leo Tolstoy. We try to live according to the principles of Tolstoyanism. So we have needed someone to sort of initiate us and keep us informed, and Crow does just that. He translates. He also does some composing. But your name – Rostov – it made me wonder if you were related?’

  ‘Related?’

  ‘Not to old Crow, I mean. No, no. To your great Count Leo. You’re a prince, he’s a count. I know it may seem a long shot and I’m no respecter of titles myself, but it just seemed to me…’

  The prince interrupted him to say he was not directly related. ‘My grandfather was Prince Nikolay and my father was named after him.’

  ‘Ah, yes, of course. No, it seemed to me so appropriate – you being here, a Russian prince, I mean, just when we’re having our soiree.’

  At first it was one of those remarks spoken in an effort to appear affable but of no real consequence. On second thoughts, the prince realised how much in the way of inner speculation it could conceal. At the time he was naturally more concerned about the jabbing pain of his injury, although fully alerted to the strange little awkwardnesses and diffidences, the shadings, as it were, in Oswald Holmcroft’s manner. He reckoned he was a pleasant enough man in a stolid English way, but his insistence on prolonging his boyhood by sporting schoolboy bare knees, short trousers and so on suggested immaturity. His boots, for example, were especially odd. A real schoolboy would probably have spurned them. There was also the discrepancy of professing such a pacifist creed as Tolstoyanism while having a gun and shooting rabbits – if, of course, that was all the gun had been used for.

  He heard a distant rumbling. ‘What was that?’ he suddenly cried.

  The sound so upset him he was shaken by a fit of shivering. His teeth started chattering uncontrollably.

  Without a word, a kind of waterproof cape was fished out from beneath the seat. Oswald Holmcroft had obviously expected a storm.

  ‘Very likely thunder,’ he said. The gesture of handing the cape was so considerate the prince could barely thank him through the rat-tat-tat of his teeth.

  ‘Delayed sh-sh-shock,’ he explained. He tried to say that something similar had happened when he had been badly wounded in the Turkish war. The thunder had sounded like artillery.

  ‘Think nothing of it,’ his companion said.

  Huddled under the cape, the prince now clenched his teeth even tighter to suppress the shivers and hide them. He forced himself to pay close attention to the slowly passing scenery.

  It surprised him how everything had changed. No black boat to be seen, no red rose on the water, no cows in the shade. The far riverbank had become steep and thickly wooded. Deep shade at the water’s edge and what appeared to be inlets were almost like inverted reflections of tall turrets rising above the treetops at the summit. Oswald Holmcroft again came to his aid.

  ‘See up there, above the trees. It’s the Irminghams’ place. Lord and Lady Irmingham. Stadleigh Court.’

  Irmingham? The name rang no bells, except that Stadleigh was recognisable and had the strange effect of dispelling his shivers. He remembered seeing the name on the map and asked whether it was connected with a railway.

  ‘Quite right. Yes, absolutely correct. We do have a railway nearby. Stadleigh Halt is about a mile downriver. The railway comes down from Ross-on-Wye. It’s not for you, if I may say so. You’ll need to rest up a bit before going anywhere by train.’

  The last remark was true even if it sounded like a rebuke. The prince’s native pride was threatened by what it implied. He murmured quietly that he never liked giving in to anything. Especially not to pain.

  ‘No one likes giving in to pain, prince, that is absolutely correct,’ said Oswald Holmcroft. ‘But sometimes you have to, you know. It can get too much.’

  This left the prince puzzled.

  ‘It can go on and on,’ the other added.

  ‘Oh, of course.’

  ‘For generations. I mean it – for generations.’ The reins were flicked gently and the pony responded with a modest increase in pace.

  The prince said nothing.

  ‘There comes a time when the sense of loss becomes as malignant as a disease, I can tell you. I know a bit about illness and injury. When I realised you were having an attack of the shivers, I knew exactly how you felt. There’s not a lot you can do about a cracked rib. Bind it up and hope for the pain to go away is the usual treatment. And plenty of rest.’

  The trap bowled along.

  ‘I get attacks like that. They don’t last long. Some rest, some tea and having our young doctor look at you, that’ll do the trick. I shall be glad of some tea myself. If we get thunder, there’ll be rain. I think I can smell it in the air.’

  They went past a wooden bridge wide enough for a horse but hardly for a vehicle.

  ‘That’s our footbridge to the Court,’ it was explained in an offhand way. ‘Everything follows the river here – the railway, the lane…and of course the river also dictates who owns what.’

  The prince was about to ask more about who owned what when their route suddenly wound away from the river between low hedges and turned abruptly into what appeared to be a group of houses, farm buildings and a small stone church with a short spire. All surprise, let alone inquiries, vanished the moment the other remarked: ‘You speak very good English, prince, if I may be permitted to say so.’

  ‘Thank you. I was partly educated here. Oxford. I am perhaps more English than the English. After twenty years I think I can claim…’

  He acknowledged to himself instantly what nonsense this was. The idea of being more English than the English was so preposterous it made him blush with shame. Oswald Holmcroft leaned close and asked sotto voce: ‘Better? The shivers?’

  ‘Yes… yes.’

  Then still sotto voce: ‘All this used to belong to us, I have to tell you. Irmingham, the present owner’s father, bought the Court from my father. We, the Holmcrofts, are more native to Stadleigh Court than its present occupants.’

  It was as if the prince’s claim to be more English than the English had simply been parried in the way it deserved. In short, Oswald Holmcroft was asserting a prior right to both his Englishness and this domain, without a trace of envy. He drew the trap calmly to a halt as he spoke and sprang down to the ground, all his resonant manner once more restored.

  ‘Here we are! Oh, by the way, there’s something you should know. Lady Helen Swanning is sure to want to meet you. Shall I introduce you as a prince?’

  ‘Thank you, no.’ The prince told him that Dmitry Rostov would do. After two decades spent in England it still amused him to note the sorts of uneasy protocol caused by the title.

  ‘Oh, come, I mean…’

  They had stopped in front of the only thatched cottage in a line of small, tight-packed two-storey brick houses. Fronted though they were by small gardens and hedges, these brick houses appeared wilfully untidy, with peeling paintwork, missing roo
f tiles and neglected guttering. They seemed implanted here, like alien growths in the rural scene. The prince could not help feeling that they represented their own kind of “gap in nature”. But the idea took an instant pratfall the moment Oswald Holcroft helped him to the ground.

  ‘Oh!’ he found himself exclaiming.

  Bloodstained and unkempt as he was, he was caught completely off-guard by the young woman he saw standing in front of him. She looked impossibly exotic in such surroundings, so striking was her Italianate beauty, and far too young, far too young, for someone called Lady Helen Swanning, who should have been much older, the prince felt, and far less beautiful! Against a background of such conventional decorative features as a pergola, hollyhocks, roses and an apple tree, she struck him as having a startling and wildly improbable resemblance to Rosetti’s Monna Vanna. Her abundant copper-red hair and beautiful features made luminous by the shade of a wide-brimmed straw hat, especially as the pergola had the effect of a frame, seemed to give her the appearance of gazing from a pre-Raphaelite portrait. Her eyes were a deep blue, though the shadow of the brim darkened them slightly, but their crystal whites shone brightly in the warmth of a welcoming smile that lit up her entire face. However statuesque she might appear standing on the brick pathway in a simple blue dress without any ornament, she seemed quite self-confidently ready to downplay her youth and beauty in the interests of hospitality.

  ‘Lady Helen, may I introduce a visitor and new patient for our doctor, a Prince Dmitry…’

  ‘Rostov. Dmitry Rostov,’ the prince managed to stammer, trying painfully to bow.

  ‘Prince Dmitry Rostov.’

  Oswald Holmcroft sneaked in the title almost triumphantly and then, as if it qualified him to speak on the prince’s behalf, explained briefly that he had been on a bicycling holiday and had ‘come a cropper’ down by the old ford.

  ‘Oh, good heavens, that’s such an out-of-the-way place now! I haven’t been there for ages! So nice to meet you, prince. I can see you’re in need of our doctor.’

  She immediately turned towards the house and called out the name ‘James!’ in a ringing voice. When she then asked in the same tone of voice if he’d rather wait for the doctor or follow her to the house, he was so overwhelmed that the shivering resumed slightly – more in awe and excitement than in anything like pain. He knew how easily he could be affected by the touch of a woman’s hand on his arm in a dance, for instance, and her hand was already on his arm. She continued smiling, literally as if she had expected that reaction, and began leading him carefully up the garden path.

  ‘My dear prince, it is such a privilege! We are delighted to help! Dear Oswald may have told you…’

  But whatever he may have told him remained unsaid because at that moment she changed her mind and once more called out the name James.

  ‘James!’ she repeated, ‘James!’

  He apologised for being a nuisance.

  ‘Oh, what nonsense! You’re nothing of the kind. We’ll be delighted if you can stay for our soiree. Dear Oswald may have told you about it.’

  3

  They went up the garden path and entered the narrow hallway of her cottage. A tall young man in shirtsleeves dashed out of a side room. He tripped over several pairs of boots lined up by the skirting, apologised and immediately tried putting them back in place.

  ‘Dear, dear James, please! Our Dr Parkinson,’ said Lady Helen rather airily, as if she were talking about a clumsy dog, ‘so keen. But a tremendous asset to us. I’m sure he’ll be able to help. His consulting-room is just there.’

  Propelled forward and given the description of a Russian prince, the new arrival could do no more than let himself be offered up as a new exhibit. The bloodstained bandage proved as scarlet as the young doctor’s scarlet cheeks. He glanced at the injuries and waved him into the room from which he had just rushed. Lady Helen said she was sure everything would be all right.

  ‘Such a shock, a bicycling accident,’ she added on parting. ‘James’ll look after you.’

  The door to the consulting-room was closed. James himself immediately started apologising: ‘So clumsy of me! She called, you see, and…’

  ‘I know what you mean.’ The prince finished the sentence for him. ‘Lady Helen is a woman of commanding beauty.’

  ‘Commanding,’ he agreed. Brief glances of conspiratorial understanding were exchanged. ‘She does love to keep all those boots there for patients. They’re for when the weather’s bad. Good works, that sort of thing.’

  The prince could guess what he meant, even if it sounded odd. The doctor’s tone then changed as he ordered his new patient to sit down: ‘Willya nae tell me what caused this.’

  A straight-backed wooden chair was pushed forward as he spoke. The sharp gesture was sudden and somewhat awkward as if matching the plainly false Scottish accent. The prince did not question the reason for what seemed at best a professional mannerism rather similar to Lady Helen’s remarkable, if showy, Monna Vanna beauty. He concentrated on sitting down and described as best he could what had happened.

  ‘So it’s anoother accident due to bye-cycling, is it? An’ a sad sight y’are, if I may say. So I’ll need to make a wee preparation. Just bide your time a wee while.’

  A busy, taciturn washing followed, evidently designed to impress. It no doubt drew attention away from the consulting-room’s contents – or the lack of them. The prince let his eye roam over a table, an old microscope, a shelf of medical texts and a few bottles containing variously tinted liquids, but could hardly fail to notice a large unframed wall chart of the human anatomy depicting the skeleton and various body parts picked out in lurid blues, yellows and reds. No doubt it frightened the life out of impressionable villagers.

  Averting his eyes from its alarming presence, he glanced towards the window and through net curtains saw Oliver Holmcroft busy at that moment collecting the broken bicycle from the back of the trap. As for Dr James Parkinson, with his back bent over his ablutions, he appeared slender and boyish in his shirtsleeves with his curly fair hair rising above the collar at the nape of his neck.

  ‘So I must ask you, sir, if you’ll allow me to remove your waistcoat and shirt,’ he said, drying his hands with a towel.

  These items were removed and the examination began. It was done efficiently, with a firm and gentle touch. The difference between this treatment and the harsh treatment the prince had received at the field-station after being wounded in the war against the Turks was striking. It may have occurred two decades previously but he had been reminded of it by the accident. He complimented the young doctor on being so considerate and the latter gave him a querying look.

  ‘So you’re also one of ’em, sir?’

  ‘One of ’em?’

  ‘I think they’re called Russophiles.’ The Scottish accent was a little less noticeable and a faint sparkle could be discerned in the doctor’s eyes. ‘They’re all over the place here.’

  The prince was utterly bewildered and said so. The doctor reverted to broad Scots: ‘Weel, all I can tellya is ye fell off your bye-cycle, did all this hurt to your poor arm, but nae a fracture, which is a blessing, an’ I’ve washed and dressed the wound as best I can, but it’s your rib-cage, tha’s wheer I’m not sure. You’ve maybe cracked your rib an’ maybe it’s just a nastie bruise, d’ya ken what I mean? So I’ll gie ye a wee length o’ bandage and bind it up. Mind, it’ll hurt, but it’ll be for the best.’

  ‘I assume,’ said the prince as the doctor paused, ‘you’re from Scotland, from Edinburgh perhaps…’

  Whether this was a query or an observation became irrelevant when there was a tap on the door and a young maidservant came in carrying the prince’s suitcase.

  ‘Oh, yes, thank you, Jane.’ She was directed to open it and extract a fresh shirt. A playful smile stretched the doctor’s lips. The fresh shirt was extracted, Jane left the room and the bandaging proceeded. ‘I always put on a Scottish accent,’ Dr James Parkinson announced casually. ‘People
down here in the south don’t believe you’re a doctor unless you have a Scottish accent. I was trained at Birmingham, you see. If you say you qualified at Birmingham people wonder why you weren’t good enough to qualify at Cambridge. You are not a native Sassenach, sir, are you?’

  The prince would never have dreamed of assuming a foreign accent. His whole aim over the last twenty years had been to be more English than the English. He compromised by saying somewhat neutrally: ‘I confess I have an accent. I am not native. I am Russian.’

  ‘For the soiree?’

  ‘No. What is this soiree?’

  ‘I am not entirely sure what it is. I’m too new here, you see. But if anyone turns up, it is assumed it is for the soiree. That’s all I can tell you. Being Russian yourself, sir, and what they call a Russophile – well, sir, I imagine you’re a Russophile, being Russian…’ a princely nod greeted the logic ‘…you’ll most likely want to stay for the soiree. In any case, as your doctor, I am giving you medical orders to rest for at least three days and the soiree is in three days’ time. Does that satisfy you, sir?’ A despairing gesture followed. He stood up and began tidying away his things. ‘Mind you, if it satisfies you, it certainly doesn’t satisfy me. I mean, look at what I’m expected to work with. No proper equipment, shortages of materials. That bandage was the last one I had.’

  The prince said he would gladly pay for it, of course, just as he would pay for the treatment. The bandage was painfully tight and he would be happy for the doctor to remove it. The offer was ignored. Instead there was a lot of busy activity over emptying the bowl that had been used for washing and replacing iodine bottles in a cabinet that was then carefully locked.

  ‘Beggars cannot be choosers,’ was Dr James Parkinson’s eventual response as he looped a sling round the prince’s neck to support the left arm. ‘You may pay me, sir, if you wish. Personally, I would prefer it if all medical help were free.’

  ‘Free! Surely, if you have to buy bandages and I can afford to pay, then I should.’ The prince’s free right hand slammed down two sovereigns on the table.