Mary Nichols - The Kirilov Star

‘You cannot both sit on Grandpa’s lap,’ Lydia said, removing him and divesting him of his outdoor clothes. ‘Come and look at your picture book with Claudia while I cook lunch.’

‘I hope it’s not that dreadful whale meat,’ Edward said. ‘It’s enough to make a body turn vegetarian.’ Whale meat had been heralded as a good alternative to beef, but it had not proved popular with the public.

‘No, it’s chicken. They’ve stopped laying, so we may as well eat them.’ To augment their rations, they had turned over a portion of their large garden to vegetables, half a dozen chickens and a cockerel who scratched in the dirt and ruined the flowerbeds, and a nanny goat which they kept for her milk. Claudia had even managed to make goat’s cheese.

‘Then what do we do for eggs?’

‘Rely on the ration and dried egg,’ Lydia said.

‘We were better off during the war,’ he said, echoing a favourite cry of much of the population. ‘What we need is Winnie back at the helm.’

Winston Churchill’s Conservatives had lost the 1945 election and Labour under Clement Attlee had come to power. One of their first enactments was to nationalise the coal mines and bring them under the control of a Minister of Fuel and Power in the shape of Emanuel Shinwell. The weather and his apparent lack of forethought over coal stocks, together with strikes and absenteeism, meant he was decidedly unpopular.

It wasn’t only the weather that had made everyone gloomy, but the austerity of the aftermath of the war, the strikes and shortages. Factories closed for lack of power. Meat, eggs, cheese, bacon, sugar and sweets were still rationed and so were bread and potatoes, something that had never happened during hostilities. The newspapers were cut back to their wartime size of four pages and holidays abroad were banned. There were those who said Britain had won the war but lost the peace.

The troubles at home were reflected abroad with the need to rebuild Europe. This was not helped by the attitude of the Soviet Union and those eastern countries it controlled. Winston Churchill, in a speech in America the year before, had said: ‘From Stettin in the Baltic, to Trieste in the Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended across the Continent.’ Neither Lydia nor Edward were surprised by this. It seemed to symbolise the way she had been cut off from Yuri. She would never cease to feel guilty about what had happened, telling herself she should have realised what Kolya and Olga were planning and taken steps to prevent it. But she had been so overcome by misery over her husband’s betrayal, she had not been thinking properly. Papa had told her not to blame herself, but she still did. Perhaps one day, when life returned to normal, she might try and find him. But what was normal? Was it never being afraid? Never being hungry? Was it never being short of anything? Was it having time to enjoy life? Being free to travel?

Robert came in carrying a basket full of logs which he put down beside the stove. ‘I’ll go out after lunch and see if I can find some more,’ he said. ‘The weight of snow on the branches is bringing some of them down.’ He walked into the hall, picked up the telephone and listened for a few seconds. ‘Dead as a dodo,’ he said, returning to fiddle with the knobs on the wireless. During the war the wireless had been the main means of communication between the government and the people, but even that service had been curtailed to save power.

The news was all about the arctic weather. The temperature in London had not risen above forty degrees Fahrenheit all month and on one night went down to sixteen. Listeners were urged to conserve fuel supplies and find other methods to keep warm. More snow was forecast for the whole country.

‘It’s as bad as Russia,’ Lydia said, peeling potatoes which had been grown in their own kitchen garden and stored in clamps since the previous autumn. Percy Wadham, their gardener, who should have retired years before, had managed to shift enough snow to unearth some of them, though sadly they were frostbitten. ‘Worse really because they are used to it and know how to cope, while we flounder. I wonder what it’s like there now.’

‘Cold,’ Robert said and looked at Edward, who had glanced up from the newspaper he had been reading.

She saw the look that passed between them. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I didn’t mean…’ She stopped, unsure what she had meant. Not criticism of Robert, who was the best of husbands and fathers; it was simply something inside her which, even after seven years, stopped her letting go of that part of her life, to put it behind her.

Edward, who understood her better than most, wished she would count her blessings, as he did. All in all, life had been good to him. He had been fortunate to have Margaret’s love and devotion and a fulfilling job, a job that had brought Lydia into his life. That had been fate, he supposed, a benign fate. He remembered the traumatised child she had been and the woman she had become – a good wife and mother, but one deeply scarred. He was well aware of how things stood between her and Robert. He could see the bleakness in Robert’s eyes whenever Lydia mentioned Russia. The poor man obviously adored her, and though she was always affectionate and loving and, apart from an occasional tiff that was soon over, he had never heard them quarrel, there was something missing, something vital: the beating heart of a marriage. She did not seem to understand Robert’s needs, nor he hers. Robert would have to come out of the navy at some point, and then what? They ought to have a home of their own, not live with a decrepit old man. Supposing he made the house over to her and moved out himself, would that answer? On reflection, he didn’t think it would because Robert needed to be the provider. He sighed and returned to his newspaper.

‘I can’t think why you want to,’ Robert said in answer to Sir Edward’s suggestion.

‘I just thought we could make a few enquiries,’ Sir Edward explained. ‘The war’s been over nearly eight years, things have settled down a bit and I’ve still got a few useful contacts.’

The two men were sitting in the library, having a general discussion about Edward’s plans for the future. Gradually the country had pulled itself out of the post-war blues. The National Health Service had come into being and London hosted the Olympic Games. Clothes rationing came to an end and the couturiers took full advantage of it and produced the New Look. Full skirts worn well below the knee became the fashion. Lydia loved it.

New houses were being built everywhere, including Upstone, which was growing from a village into a small town, and Edward was considering selling some land on the fringes of the estate for much-needed housing. It was not a subject Robert was particularly interested in; he had no stake in the property. It was after that, apropos of nothing, Edward had brought up the subject of Yuri. ‘There must be records somewhere. At least, we could try.’

‘Why are you so keen for him to be traced? You’re as bad as Lydia. She’s too firmly wedded to the past.’

‘I’d like to make her happy.’

‘She is happy, or so she assures me.’

‘Well, she would say that, wouldn’t she? That doesn’t mean that there isn’t a great hole in her life. Knowing where Yuri is and that he understands she had no choice but to leave him in Russia would be the best thing for her. Make her more content.’

‘You haven’t told her this, have you?’ Robert asked.

‘No, I wouldn’t want to get her hopes up for nothing.’

‘And it would be for nothing. Even if you find him, what good would it do? They can’t be reunited, that’s just not possible. It’s past, Sir Edward, past and gone. We all have to move on. She’s got Bobby and Tatty and that should be enough.’

Edward had not realised how strongly Robert felt over Lydia’s past, but he supposed it was understandable; it was a past he could not share. And now, instead of improving matters, he had made them worse.

‘Who’s Yuri?’ Bobby appeared suddenly, sitting on the floor almost at their feet, startling them both. Neither had noticed him sprawled on the carpet playing with the cat.

His father seemed reluctant to answer him, so Sir Edward did. ‘Your mother had a baby in Russia at the beginning of the Second World War and she had to leave him behind.’

‘A baby!’ he exclaimed. ‘How did that come about?’

‘It’s a long story and best forgotten,’ Robert said.

‘But why did she leave him behind? Did she have a love affair?’ Bobby’s curiosity had been roused and he wasn’t going to let the subject drop.

Edward smiled; where had the boy learnt such terms? ‘No, she was married to a Russian. He was killed early in the war.’

‘I never knew that.’

‘No reason why you should,’ his father said. ‘Now, run along and play.’

‘But I want to know more.’

‘Then I suggest you go and ask your mother.’

Which is exactly what he did, when he found her making an apple pie in the kitchen. He loved his mother’s pastry, especially when she had a little left over, sprinkled it with sugar and dried fruit before rolling it up and cutting it into slices before baking. He could never wait for the slices to grow cold before he wolfed them. ‘Mum, I want to ask you something.’

‘Ask away.’

‘I heard Dad and Grandpa talking about someone called Yuri. Dad said if I wanted to know about him, I was to ask you.’

She was taken by surprise. ‘Why were they talking about Yuri?’

‘They were talking about trying to find him; Grandad was telling Dad they ought to make enquiries, but Dad said it was useless. When I asked who Yuri was, Grandpa said he was your son and Dad said if I wanted to know about him to ask you. I never knew you had another son, Mum.’