she drove back towards Lake Akanabee, with the pendant resting on her breastbone, Kitty was overcome with curiosity about her great-grandfather. If he could afford a Fabergé jewelled pendant, he must have been rather a good writer. Why had she never heard of him?
A mile or so before the track to her cabin, she passed a vacation park with a coffee shop and reversed to have a look. On the sign it read ‘Free Wi-Fi’, so she parked and went inside with her laptop tucked under her arm.
‘Hi, can I be cheeky and ask for your wi-fi code and some electricity?’ she began, explaining that her cabin, a few miles up the road, had no electric hook-up.
‘Be my guest,’ the lad serving the coffee said, pointing to a socket where she could charge her laptop. His name was Jeff, he told her, pouring her a latte, and he worked there for the summer then went back to college in the fall. She explained about her inheritance and Jeff was amazed when he heard which cabin she was renovating. ‘I thought that was a goner. You must know what you’re doing.’
‘I’ve never taken on a challenge quite like this,’ she told him, ‘but I’ll work it out as I go along.’
When her laptop had charged sufficiently, she opened her browser and googled the name Dmitri Yakovlevich. First of all she found biographies for a Russian Arctic explorer, a Jewish composer and a Constructivist artist, but none of their dates seemed to fit. She added ‘writer’ after her search term and up came a short Wikipedia page about a man who had been born in 1891 in Russia and had written five novels: Interminable Love (1924), Exile (1927), The Boot That Kicked (1933), In the Pale Light of Dawn (1944) and Toward the Sunset (1947). There was nothing else about him, not even a date of death.
Next she went to the site of a second-hand book dealer and entered Dmitri’s name in the search facility. The only book of his in stock was Interminable Love. Kitty ordered a copy, paying for it with her credit card, and Jeff said she could have it delivered to their office, since the local mailman was unlikely to trek down to her cabin.
Next she hovered over the icon for opening her email account. It was tempting to click on it and see what mails came in. She had texted her editor at the newspaper to say she’d been called away on family business, so she wasn’t expecting any work emails. There would almost certainly be some mails from Tom – either pathetic attempts at self-justification or perhaps he would be asking for a divorce. The thought made her shudder. She was sure Amber would have been in touch as well, but if she contacted Amber she would have to discuss Tom’s infidelity and that would mean thinking about it and she simply did not feel ready. Out there in the wilderness, on a separate continent, she had already begun to feel like the independent, capable person she used to be before she got married. To get back in touch with Amber and Tom – with anyone from her old life – would make her feel sad and anxious and needy.
So many questions would have to be considered. If Tom wanted a divorce, what would happen about money? She couldn’t live on the pittance she earned writing theatre reviews and the money she’d made doing up properties had been swallowed up by the house they lived in now, but her pride wouldn’t let her take a penny from Tom. They’d have to sell the house and she’d need to get a proper job doing God knows what. But if he wanted to save the marriage, would she ever be able to trust him again? Would she be able to make love without thinking about ‘Karren’ with the double ‘r’? Memories of the naked woman on Tom’s phone made Kitty’s gut clench and tears welled up in her eyes. She took her last sip of coffee.
Let him wait. Maybe it would give him time to get Karren out of his system. Meanwhile she would fix up her cabin. When she had woken that morning, she’d gone for an early swim in the shimmering crystal water, listening to the noisy chatter of birds disputing their territory. There was dense green forest, sparkly blue water and hazy blue sky for as far as the eye could see. The sense of being part of this awe-inspiring landscape brought a kind of clarity in the midst of her emotional turmoil. After one night there, she was already falling in love with Lake Akanabee.
Eastern Front, Lithuania, 5th March 1916
Time weighed heavy for Dmitri during the winter of 1915 to 1916 and made him yearn for Tatiana more than ever. Both the Russian and German armies had dug into the earth, trying to find shelter from the brutal blizzards that obscured their vision two feet ahead and made it impossible to venture out of the trench for fear of accidentally wandering into no man’s land. Dmitri still rode out on reconnaissance missions but it was clear that cavalry would play little part in the next stage of the war so he also took lessons on how to position the big guns that were just beginning to arrive from Russian armaments factories, guessing that this would be the only way to drive the Germans back from the territories they had captured in Poland, Lithuania and Belarus.
He got through the days by dreaming of the life he and Tatiana would lead together once the war was over. Would they stay in St Petersburg in a wing of one of the palaces? He would prefer to be in the country; he was more at home in wide open spaces. Still it didn’t feel real; he couldn’t allow himself to believe they would be married until her parents had given consent. In truth they had not known each other long. They’d had less than three months together before he came back to the front, and he could sense Tatiana had changed while he was away. Before she had been light-hearted and almost carefree; now she had grown up. She said as much in her letters:
Malama sweetheart,
Can you believe it is fifteen months since that December day when I waved farewell to you outside the Catherine Palace? I was a mere child in those innocent weeks at the start of the war, with no idea of what I would have to confront. Now I often assist as surgeons amputate men’s limbs; I dress stinking gangrenous wounds; I give injections and distribute medicines; I comfort those who are dying; and yesterday I was even able to calm a man who had some kind of fit of terror. He was staring straight ahead, rocking backwards and forwards and uttering a moaning sound that disturbed the other patients. At first I just talked in a low voice but he didn’t seem to hear or see me. Finally I began to sing, upon which he stopped moaning to listen, and at last he fell asleep for the first time since he arrived on our ward. I think my singing must be particularly soporific!
The patients give me a little insight into the life you are leading at the front and I am terrified on your behalf. I know that you are holding the line somewhere in Lithuania and are not currently in battle, but that shells pound the earth and snipers watch for any careless movement. Malama, I beg you to be extra-cautious and avoid any heroics. Souvenez vous que vous tenez mon coeur entre vos mains.
Tatiana’s endearments still amazed Dmitri after all this time. He was loved by his mother and sisters – perhaps his father even loved him in his own strict, old-fashioned way – but they were family and were supposed to love him; Tatiana had chosen to love him and he couldn’t understand why. What was special about him? He could list a thousand reasons why he loved her but they only made him feel even more unworthy: her gentle nature, her quiet dignity … he loved the way her eyes sometimes seemed to be gazing from a place deep inside her and focusing somewhere far in the distance, hinting at the intelligence of her inner world.
He glowed with pride when she sent him a newspaper clipping describing Olga and her as ‘The White Sisters of the War’. As well as nursing, Tatiana told him she headed a committee that helped to provide aid for the refugees who had poured into Russia from German-occupied territories, and she travelled the country inspecting facilities. Dmitri knew she was being modest in her letters when she wrote that she felt shy at committee meetings and wanted to dive under the table. He heard from other soldiers that Tatiana’s was by far the most popular of the picture postcards of the grand duchesses being sold to help fund the war, and surely that spoke volumes about her achievements as well as her beauty.
Her mother, on the other hand, was increasingly criticised in the press. ‘Rumours Spread that Rasputin urges Alexandra to Broker Peace