prospect of leaving the Savoy Hotel and its luxury, high-class food available at all hours of the day and night.
‘Is this place what we would call a palace, Fokine?’
‘I do not think, if it is anything like the Buckingham, it will be what we could call a palace at all. It sounded to me like a superior sort of hunting lodge with great military honours displayed on the inside.’
‘And they expect us to put on our art in a hunting lodge for five thousand pounds in all the uncertainties of the damned English weather? What do we do if itrains, in heaven’s name? The colour would start to run out of your bloody costumes, Bakst, wouldn’t it?’
Bakst laughed. ‘Sergei Pavlovich, it would be a lasting reminder of the impermanence of art, the transient nature of beauty.’
‘Do you think the bloody peasants will appreciate that? I bet their smocks don’t disintegrate in the rain. I don’t want to accept the offer, gentlemen. But I don’t want to upset any of the English aristocracy. Some of them have enormous incomes from coal and investments. They could bail out our poor company and not notice they’d done it.’ Diaghilev picked up the purple scarf and let it run through his fingers. ‘Would these colours hold in the rain, Bakst? Don’t tell me. I know what we are going to do. Fokine, can you get back in touch with the Duke’s man of business? Tell him we are honoured by his invitation. It would be a great tribute to the Ballets Russes to perform in such an august location. Lay it on with a trowel, Fokine, you know how to do that. Just tell him the money is wrong.’
‘What do you want me to say? Eight? Ten, for heaven’s sake?’
‘Let’s not beat about the bush, gentlemen. Great art has its price. Tell him twenty-five thousand pounds.’
Captain Yuri Gorodetsky of the London branch of the Russian Secret Service, the Okhrana, had always suffered from anxieties about the telephone. There was nothing rational about his concerns – he had even read through a manual for one of the wretched objects and understood how it worked. But he wondered,often last thing at night after a couple of hefty swigs at the vodka bottle, if other voices might come out of it, Peter the Great come to upbraid the inhabitants about their slowness in building his great city St Petersburg, Tolstoy on the line urging all those connected by those strange wires to abandon the sins of the flesh and join him in the universe of love on the way to some provincial railway station. His tidings this morning, as he waited for the connection to General Kilyagin in Paris, were undoubtedly out of the ordinary run of secret-service intelligence.
‘Gorodetsky, you old rogue,’ the voice of his master boomed out of the phone with considerable force, as if the General himself was one of those night-time phantoms. ‘What news of the Bolsheviks from Bethnal Green?’
‘Good morning, General, the news is most unusual.’
‘What do you mean unusual?’
‘I mean, I don’t think anybody could have predicted it!’
‘Out with it, man. Have those pocket-sized London Lenins robbed the banks as well as changing their money?’
‘It’s nothing like that, General. They simply ran away.’
‘What do you mean? Did they never even get as far as the bloody banks?’
‘You’re nearly there, General.’
‘They got as far as the bloody banks and couldn’t face going in?’
‘Exactly so, General. Only one of them had ever been in a bank before and that had to do with his mother’s funeral.’
‘Hold on a minute, Captain. Did our funereal friend at least make it inside the doors?’
‘On the contrary. His experience deserted him, or maybe it didn’t. He told the leader afterwards that he was so overcome by the memories of his mother’s death that he started running back to the East End as fast as he could go.’
‘Do we have eye witnesses to this tragic story?’
‘Mostly the head porters, sir, the men on guard at the entry to the
‘Is this place what we would call a palace, Fokine?’
‘I do not think, if it is anything like the Buckingham, it will be what we could call a palace at all. It sounded to me like a superior sort of hunting lodge with great military honours displayed on the inside.’
‘And they expect us to put on our art in a hunting lodge for five thousand pounds in all the uncertainties of the damned English weather? What do we do if itrains, in heaven’s name? The colour would start to run out of your bloody costumes, Bakst, wouldn’t it?’
Bakst laughed. ‘Sergei Pavlovich, it would be a lasting reminder of the impermanence of art, the transient nature of beauty.’
‘Do you think the bloody peasants will appreciate that? I bet their smocks don’t disintegrate in the rain. I don’t want to accept the offer, gentlemen. But I don’t want to upset any of the English aristocracy. Some of them have enormous incomes from coal and investments. They could bail out our poor company and not notice they’d done it.’ Diaghilev picked up the purple scarf and let it run through his fingers. ‘Would these colours hold in the rain, Bakst? Don’t tell me. I know what we are going to do. Fokine, can you get back in touch with the Duke’s man of business? Tell him we are honoured by his invitation. It would be a great tribute to the Ballets Russes to perform in such an august location. Lay it on with a trowel, Fokine, you know how to do that. Just tell him the money is wrong.’
‘What do you want me to say? Eight? Ten, for heaven’s sake?’
‘Let’s not beat about the bush, gentlemen. Great art has its price. Tell him twenty-five thousand pounds.’
Captain Yuri Gorodetsky of the London branch of the Russian Secret Service, the Okhrana, had always suffered from anxieties about the telephone. There was nothing rational about his concerns – he had even read through a manual for one of the wretched objects and understood how it worked. But he wondered,often last thing at night after a couple of hefty swigs at the vodka bottle, if other voices might come out of it, Peter the Great come to upbraid the inhabitants about their slowness in building his great city St Petersburg, Tolstoy on the line urging all those connected by those strange wires to abandon the sins of the flesh and join him in the universe of love on the way to some provincial railway station. His tidings this morning, as he waited for the connection to General Kilyagin in Paris, were undoubtedly out of the ordinary run of secret-service intelligence.
‘Gorodetsky, you old rogue,’ the voice of his master boomed out of the phone with considerable force, as if the General himself was one of those night-time phantoms. ‘What news of the Bolsheviks from Bethnal Green?’
‘Good morning, General, the news is most unusual.’
‘What do you mean unusual?’
‘I mean, I don’t think anybody could have predicted it!’
‘Out with it, man. Have those pocket-sized London Lenins robbed the banks as well as changing their money?’
‘It’s nothing like that, General. They simply ran away.’
‘What do you mean? Did they never even get as far as the bloody banks?’
‘You’re nearly there, General.’
‘They got as far as the bloody banks and couldn’t face going in?’
‘Exactly so, General. Only one of them had ever been in a bank before and that had to do with his mother’s funeral.’
‘Hold on a minute, Captain. Did our funereal friend at least make it inside the doors?’
‘On the contrary. His experience deserted him, or maybe it didn’t. He told the leader afterwards that he was so overcome by the memories of his mother’s death that he started running back to the East End as fast as he could go.’
‘Do we have eye witnesses to this tragic story?’
‘Mostly the head porters, sir, the men on guard at the entry to the
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