The Red Gods Page 14

  “Take off your slip,” he commanded. “Let me look at you.” She gathered the slip, lifted it over her head, and let it fall to the floor. “Now the vest,” he said. Trembling, Jennie obeyed. She had the greatest urge to fold her arms across her breasts, but did not, instead stared at him, breathing deeply. “Perfection,” he said. “Now the drawers.”

  She slipped her knickers down to her ankles, and stepped out of them, still trembling, but it was at least partly with anticipation, which seemed to fill her entire being as he knelt before her, put both arms round her thighs, and drew her against him to nuzzle the pale curls on her groin. “Oh!” she said, without meaning to.

  Instantly he pulled his head back, to look up at her. “You do not wish me to?”

  “Oh, no. I wish you to...do whatever you wish.”

  He leaned forward again, and stroked her navel with his tongue, then straightened, slowly, keeping his tongue in contact with her flesh, up her rib cage and her right breast to her neck. “Now take off the stockings.”

  She did so while he stood in front of her.

  “I’ve never been with a man before,” she said. She felt she had to say that.

  “Unplait your hair.” She pulled it free, staring at him, because as she was doing so he was unbuckling his belt and letting his trousers fall to the floor, then letting his drawers fall too. “Oh!” she said. The thought of that inside her...but she knew he was going to be gentle.

  “Does he frighten you?”

  “No,” she said, as red-brown hair tumbled on to her shoulders.

  “Then touch him. Hold him. Kiss him.” Trembling, she knelt to obey him. “Not too much,” he said. “Or I will be spent.” He held her shoulders to raise her from the floor and hold her naked body against him. “And there is so much for him to do.”

  “Now I am yours,” Jennie said, when he rolled off her. Her entire body seemed alive, consumed, eager for what might be going to happen next.

  He rose on his elbow beside her, and she traced patterns through the thick hair on his chest. “I did not hurt you?”

  “No. Well, yes. But it doesn’t matter. I still loved it.”

  “Spread your legs.”

  She obeyed, and he put his forefinger between, then showed her the blood. “As you say, you are truly mine.”

  “Will you speak to Joe?”

  “What do you think will happen then?”

  “Well...he’d have to allow us to get married.”

  “And suppose he did not agree? You are a young girl of whom I have taken advantage.”

  “That’s nonsense. I came here of my own free will. And I wanted what happened.” She bit her lip.

  He kissed her breasts. “No one will believe you. I am a Red Russian revolutionary, remember. To many people, among them your brother and your cousin, those words are the same as describing me as a murderer, a sadist, and a rapist.”

  She hugged him against her. “I’ll talk to them.”

  “You won’t be allowed to, my darling girl. The very moment you tell them what happened I will be locked up. The very best I could hope for is deportation back to Russia.”

  “Well, then, I would come to Russia to find you.”

  “When would you do that, my Jennie? As you told me the other day, you are obliged to do whatever your brother wishes, until you are twenty-one. Five years!”

  “You would not wait for me?”

  “Of course I will wait for you. But five years! Who can tell what may happen in five years? Five years ago, our Soviet revolution had not yet begun. Now it is completed. Five years is a very long time.”

  Jennie sat up, shrouded in her hair. “Then what are we to do?”

  “You must tell me that. I am returning to Russia the day after tomorrow...”

  She turned, on her knees. “So soon?”

  “I was sent here on a mission. To, how shall I put it? Induce the Princess into returning to Russia. I have failed in that mission.”

  “So you seduced me instead.” But she was smiling.

  “I’m afraid I did not mean to do that. It just happened. Because I have fallen in love with you.”

  “Have you.” She kissed him for several seconds in her delight.

  “In Russia,” he sighed. “We could be married. As I am travelling on a Russian ship, we could even be married before we get to Russia, once we are out of British territorial waters.”

  “Is that really legal?”

  “It is, in Russia,” he assured her.

  “I meant, with me being under age...”

  “Sixteen is legally an adult, in Russia.”

  “Is it? Gosh.” She sat up again, thinking.

  “But of course that is far too vast a step for you to contemplate. I mean, I am not a wealthy man,” Andrei explained. “I have only my salary from the state.”

  “But you are a friend of Comrade Lenin.”

  “A friend? I hope I am a friend. He is my boss, but I know he trusts me.”

  “Then in Russia you are a wealthy man.”

  He considered, then smiled. “Why, perhaps you are right. I shall never want, anyway. Except for wanting you.”

  “You will never want, for anything,” Jennie promised him.

  *

  “You’re very late, Miss Jennie,” Grishka remarked. “And whatever happened to your hair?”

  “There was an extra lesson,” Jennie lied glibly. “And afterwards some of us let our hair down, that’s all. Joe and Priscilla aren’t home yet, are they?”

  “No. Will you have supper, or wait?”

  “Oh, I’ll wait,” Jennie said. “I want to have a hot bath.” And think. She lay in her tub, her hair piled on top of her head and secured with a ribbon, surrounded by bubbles, and tried to remember everything Andrei had told her. Anyway, her instructions — he must have been sure she would do that all along — were delightfully simple. It was just a matter of waiting forty-eight hours. The difficult part was in acting naturally.

  “Priscilla and I thought we might go to the races on Saturday,” Joseph said at supper. “Care to come?” His approach was tentative; his sister had been in a rather distracted mood since Gosykin’s visit.

  But Jennie gave a bright smile. “I think that’s a lovely idea.”

  “We’ll all go,” Priscilla decided. “Make a real picnic of it.” She was as relieved as Joseph that any crisis had been defused.

  On Saturday, Jennie thought happily, I shall be on the high seas. As the ship was leaving on Friday morning, by Saturday she would be married! It was all absurdly easy. On Friday night she emptied her school valise of all its books, and replaced them with sufficient clothes to get her to Russia; Andrei had said they would buy her an entirely new outfit when they got to Leningrad.

  She was so excited she hardly slept, but was pleased with her self-control at breakfast the following morning. She regretted it was not possible to wish Joseph a proper goodbye, but that would be too risky; she would write him from Russia, and in any event, Andrei had said she could return to England whenever she wished, so it would not be long before she saw him again, once she was sure he would not try to have her marriage annulled. So she accepted his usual peck on the cheek as he left the house for the office, and in turn gave Priscilla her usual kiss before leaving for school. Andrei was waiting just round the corner.

  It had been Priscilla’s idea to put an advertisement in The Times asking for anyone who had any information regarding the fate or present whereabouts of Prince Colin Bolugayevski to contact her. She supposed it was remiss of her not to have done this before, but she had assumed that Colin himself would contact her as soon as he was able, or wished to — she had never really considered the possibility of his being dead until that ghastly man Gosykin had suggested it. She had also placed an advertisement in Le Figaro, as she knew a great many Russian emigres had gone to France in preference to Britain. Thus she opened each day’s mail with some anticipation. Of course she did not wish Colin to be dead. But if he were...their
relationship had been an odd one. She was only a few years older than he, and she had suddenly appeared on Bolugayen as his stepmother, just before the war, when he had been in his most impressionable early teens. She had worked hard at building up a rapport with him, and had thought she was succeeding — far more than she had ever done with Anna — but then had come the war, and like his father, he had gone off to fight. By the time he had returned, with his father, she had been a prisoner for almost a year of the Reds holding Bolugayen. So where was Colin?

  And if he was nowhere...Alexei’s plans for the future had been put on hold until the Civil War had been won. And as he had died before the Civil War had been lost, they had remained on hold, so far as Priscilla was concerned. In her few years as Princess of Bolugayen she had accepted that everything in Russia, the Russia she knew and loved, Tsarist Russia, had to be done with absolute correctness. Alexei had made no legal provision for replacing his eldest son with his youngest, and Alexei was dead. Therefore Colin remained Prince of Bolugayen. But she had always dreamed of Little Alexei having that title. And now...she threw letters left and right in disgust; there was not one of any interest. Which increasingly made it likely that Gosykin had been right in suggesting that Colin was dead.

  The telephone rang. Grishka, who found things like telephones fascinating, immediately answered it. “It is for you, Your Highness.”

  “Ah!” Anticipation stirred once again. Priscilla held the receiver to her ear. “Yes?”

  “Princess Bolugayevska?” A woman’s voice, familiar.

  “Yes?” Priscilla frowned at the phone.

  “I’m calling to find out how Jennie is.”

  “Oh, Miss Adams! Jennie’s fine. But...isn’t she at school?”

  “She hasn’t come in today. That’s why I thought she must be ill.”

  “Oh, good lord!” Priscilla remarked. But Jennie playing truant? That wasn’t in character. Therefore...

  “There’s nothing wrong, is there?” asked the schoolmistress.

  “Leave it with me,” Priscilla said. “I’ll get back to you.” She replaced the phone, picked up the receiver again, and asked for Joseph’s office number.

  Joseph came home at once. “She’s been kidnapped,” Priscilla said. “I just know she’s been kidnapped.” The other two children were at school. Grishka was hovering anxiously, but Priscilla had no secrets from Grishka.

  “Let’s have a look at her room,” Joseph suggested.

  It was easy to determine that Jennie had known she wasn’t coming back. “You mean she’s run away?” Priscilla was aghast. “Where to? What for? Why?”

  Joseph went downstairs to use the phone. He rang various contacts in the shipping business, his face growing longer by the moment. “The Russian merchant vessel Lena cleared London this morning, bound for Leningrad. They’re getting hold of a passenger list for me, but I don’t think it’ll help us much; they’re almost certainly using false names.”

  “They?”

  “I think Gosykin is probably with her. Trouble is, we can’t check; he was careful not to give us an address.”

  “You think Gosykin has kidnapped Jennie? My God, I always knew he was a thug.”

  “I don’t think we can assume she was kidnapped,” Joseph said. “Because of the way she left here, she knew where she was going and what she was doing. I suspect she was seduced.”

  “Wednesday evening,” Grishka said. “While you were out, Jennie came home with her hair loose, and sort of hot and bothered. And that night she rinsed out her own drawers.”

  “And you said nothing?” Priscilla demanded.

  Grishka hung her head. “It never occurred to me...I mean, Miss Jennie...”

  “Is my mother’s daughter,” Joseph said. “Something we are always inclined to forget.”

  “So let’s face the worst possible scenario,” Priscilla said. “Jennie has been abducted. It does not matter whether she agreed to go with that monster.. The fact is that she is only sixteen and is therefore not an adult in the eyes of the law. You must have that ship stopped, Joe, and have them both brought back.”

  “That’s not possible,” Joseph said. “Neither you nor I, nor Jennie, are British citizens. Oh, I could perhaps get some kind of a court order, but long before I could do that the Lena would be outside the three-mile limit; she left the Pool of London some three hours ago. And I suspect the Royal Navy would be a little chary of stopping a ship on the high seas, especially where, as I say, one of their nationals is not involved.”

  “You’re not going to let Gosykin get away with it? She’s your sister!”

  “And I’m going to get her back. But there’s no point in losing our heads. I’ll have to go to Russia.”

  “You? They’d never let you in. And if they did, you’d be arrested and shot as a White officer.”

  He nodded. “We’ll have to use what friends we have. Sonia sent Gosykin to us. I’ll write her.”

  “You’re speaking of weeks. What happens to Jennie in that time?”

  “Let us hope and pray, it is nothing that she might later regret.”

  *

  “I’m so excited,” Jennie confessed. She had been excited throughout the three-day voyage, which had been a honeymoon.

  “Have you not been to Leningrad before?” Andrei asked, as the palaces and fortresses came into view.

  “Oh, yes. But that was in 1911. I was only five years old. I don’t remember anything about it, really.”

  “I will show you all of it,” he promised.

  “What about Moscow?” he asked, a week later.

  “We passed through it on that trip in 1911, but we didn’t stop. Is it as beautiful as Leningrad?”

  Jennie peered from the train window in the hope of seeing the city. There had still been a lot of damaged houses and roads in Leningrad, but people were at work putting them back together. The workmen hadn’t looked very happy, but as Andrei smilingly said, “Those are ex-Tsarist officers, working out their prison sentences.”

  “Why are they imprisoned?” she asked. “Just for being ex-Tsarist officers?”

  “Well, in a manner of speaking, yes. They are imprisoned for crimes against the people of Russia. These crimes were carried out as Tsarist officers. You must know there was a great deal of injustice in Russia, during the Tsarist days.”

  Jennie agreed. “Does that mean that if Joe were to come to Russia he would be arrested and imprisoned?”

  “I should not think so. First, because he was never a Tsarist officer, only a White, and that war is over. And secondly, because he is your brother. And you are my wife.” She loved it when he spoke like that, and certainly being Mrs Andrei Gosykin was important, because he was a member of the Party, and a friend of Lenin’s. They stayed in the best hotel, the Astoria, and they ate at the best restaurants, places like the Café de Paris, where only Party members were allowed.

  “When I think of all those stories about people starving,” Jennie remarked.

  “Well, there are food shortages,” Andrei conceded. “But not for Party members.”

  “Are there lots of Party members?”

  “Oh, no. Less than one per cent of the population belong to the Party.”

  Jennie was puzzled, and a little alarmed. “You mean less than one per cent of the population support the government?”

  “Good heavens, no,” he laughed. “It is difficult to estimate how large a percentage of the population actually supports the government. But I can tell you that nearly everyone in Russia has learned to obey the government. As for the Party, well, we have to be very sure of the credentials of anyone wanting to join us.”

  Jennie was even more puzzled. “I would have thought you’d want the whole nation to belong to the Party.”

  “That would not be a good thing at all. Every country needs a ruling elite. In Russia, that is the Party. If everyone belonged to the Party, there would be no one left to rule.”

  An elementary lesson in politics, she thought. Besides,
she was now anxious. “Am I a member of the Party?”

  “Not you, my poppet.” He squeezed her hand. “But as my wife, you have all the perquisites with none of the responsibilities.”

  She didn’t know how to tell him that she wanted to share in the responsibilities more than in the perquisites, because she wanted to play her part in the rebuilding of Russia.

  He had to do some more explaining as the train had taken them south, for the country through which they passed looked dreadfully impoverished, as did the people they saw standing beside the tracks. “The muzhiks have always been poor,” Andrei said. “It was far worse under the tsars. Comrade Lenin intends to improve their lot, of course, but these things take time.”

  At least, Jennie reflected, they all waved at the train.

  Now he was smiling at her again. “Moscow is not beautiful at all,” he said. “It is about the ugliest city in Russia.” And although she had to concede he was right about Moscow, she found the Red Square impressive, and the onion domes of St Basil’s breath-taking, while the Kremlin was quite awe-inspiring.

  Chapter 7 - The Gods Reach Out

  “Patricia’s daughter.” Having embraced Jennie, Lenin held her at arm’s length. “I would have recognised you anywhere.”

  “Thank you, Comrade.” Andrei had told her this was how she must address Party members.

  “Welcome to Russia,” Lenin said. “This is my wife, Olga.”

  “Comrade Lenina.” Jennie gave a little bow.

  Krupskaya’s gaze was cold. “She prefers to be known as Krupskaya,” Lenin explained. “She is a feminist. And this is our Party Secretary, Josef Stalin.”

  Jennie found herself being given a bear-hug by a stocky man, shorter than herself, who had a walrus moustache but a beaming, welcoming expression. “I knew your mother,” he said eagerly.

  “Josef really runs the Party,” Lenin explained. “I only give the orders. He is the man who carries them out.” Stalin looked embarrassed, and gave Krupskaya an anxious glance. “Now, where are Leon and Sonia?” Lenin asked.

  “I sent for them,” Stalin said. “They should be here any moment.”