The Kirilov Star by Mary Nichols Page B

or not being ‘sufficiently vigilant’, for which little proof was needed. A simple denunciation was enough. Out of loyalty to the Party, or greed, or jealousy, neighbour was denouncing neighbour, sons and daughters were denouncingfathers, wives their husbands. It had become a cult of fear. It was an omission he would come bitterly to regret.
    He delivered her back to Edward and Margaret and others came to ask her to dance and he did not see her again until they went into supper, when Edward asked him to join them.
    ‘Lydia tells me she is thinking of becoming a translator,’ he said to Edward, as they enjoyed a lavish meal.
    ‘It is one of her ideas,’ Edward said, smiling. ‘I don’t think she knows what she wants.’
    ‘She doesn’t have to do anything,’ Margaret put in. ‘She can stay here with us until she marries. I am sure that won’t be long.’
    Lydia laughed. ‘I’m not ready for marriage yet, I want to live a little first. Besides, I haven’t met anyone I want to marry.’
    Alex was not sure whether to be pleased or sorry about that. The little waif he had befriended was long gone and been replaced by a lovely woman, spoilt and yet not spoilt, whom he loved. The trouble was she was not aware of it and he would not tell her. He had nothing much to offer her. The money his mother had managed to bring out of Russia had soon been used up, and like so many others, he had been obliged to work for a living. He owed his present job at the Foreign Office to Sir Edward. He was thankful they paid him well and in time he would be in a position to marry, but the job he was doing could be dangerous and it would not be fair to Lydia to ask her to share his life. Besides, she must be allowed to make up her own mind about the man she married and he was perfectly aware she looked on him as a kind of older brother.
    He escorted her back to the ballroom after supper andclaimed another dance before relinquishing her to others: lively, confident young men who knew their place in the world. He watched her treating them with smiling courtesy, listening to their compliments with her head cocked on one side, intent on what they were saying. By the end of the evening more than one was sighing after her.
     
    When the last waltz was over, everyone, except those who had come some distance and were staying the night, made preparations to leave. Lydia stood beside Edward and Margaret, wishing them goodnight and thanking them for their gifts. Then she looked round for Alex, but he was nowhere to be seen. She said goodnight to everyone else and made her way to her bedroom. The evening had gone off without a hitch and she was tired and happy and a little tipsy on champagne. But it was too bad of Alex to disappear like that; she would have liked to mull it all over with him and talk to him about his gift of Tolstoy’s War and Peace in the original Russian. She wondered if it was a message to her not to forget her roots.
     
    She went with her parents to Paris for the last two weeks in June, taking the train to Dover and then the ferry to Calais, where Edward hired a car and drove them to Paris and the Hôtel St-Germain-des-Prés on the Rue Bonaparte. It was warm and sunny and their days were filled with sightseeing, visiting museums and exhibitions, and going to concerts and the theatre. And when they weren’t doing that she and Margaret shopped for clothes at the best couturiers, until both were exhausted and Lydia began to wonder how they would get everything into their trunks for the return journey.
    Paris was home to a great many Russian émigrés who tended to congregate in the area of the 15th arrondissement. Most of them were educated, former aristocrats, bourgeoisie, skilled workers, poets and writers, but few were wealthy enough to support themselves without work and had been obliged to take menial jobs in order to survive. But they maintained their own culture. They had their magazines, publishers, theatre companies,