CHAPTER FIVE The Station
Twenty English girls stood underneath the clock in the Moskovsky Vokzal train station, waiting for their host families to arrive. The early start from school, the excitement of the flight from England, and the taxi across the city had left them all exhausted.
Miss Ellis, their language teacher, clapped her hands.
“We are now in Russia!” She spoke loudly, as if she were addressing a huge crowd rather than a group of twenty schoolgirls.
“Remember — and this especially means you, Nadine” — she glared at a sixteen-year-old whose hair had been backcombed into a Marie Antoinette birds’ nest and who was picking the silver varnish off her nails — “that you are ambassadors for your country! You are ambassadors for womanhood! You are ambassadors for New Bloomsbury College!”
Sophie didn’t care about being an ambassador.
She was in Saint Petersburg! She was actually here.
Not only that, there was a blizzard outside.
Real, proper snow. Wild, magical weather instead of London drizzle.
And the station itself was as beautiful as a palazzo.
She felt as if she were already somewhere enchanting, somewhere full of possibilities.
Sophie looked out over the crowded concourse.
Men wore fur hats. Their faces, under the lights, were the color of the meat in a pork pie.
The women looked bored and disdainful in long fur coats, but glamorous and foreign with their bright, waxy lipstick and thick black eyeliner.
In between the crowds, young soldiers in greatcoats wandered around, their faces impossibly clean, their eyes sleepy.
They carried large black machine guns on leather straps over their shoulders.
As the crowds parted, Sophie noticed a woman at the station café, beautifully if showily dressed in a long tapestry coat with a high fur collar.
Unlike many others in the station, she wore no hat.
Her short hair, which curled around her wide cheekbones like orchid petals, was very black and almost as shiny as her high patent-leather boots.
Every few seconds, the woman checked the time on her watch and glanced over to the station clock above Sophie’s head.
Sophie found her concentration fascinating.
What was the woman so concerned about that needed such careful attention to the passing of time?
Perhaps she was a countess, smuggling secrets, about to take the train through the snows and the forests to some dangerous assignation with a foreign agent?
Or was she about to start work on a cosmonaut base, training brave young Russians to travel to the stars?
Or was she even, Sophie wondered as she watched the woman lift a tiny cup to her lips, a famous ballerina who simply wanted to find some anonymity away from adoring audiences and a grueling dance schedule?
Delphine, dressed in a gray-and-silver tweed coat, a soft silk scarf at her neck, and a gray man’s homburg hat pulled down low over her loose blonde curls, pointed her toe and photographed her shoe.
Marianne, wearing her navy school coat, jeans, and sneakers, nudged her in the ribs. “Why are you taking photographs of your feet?”
“For my visual diary!” Delphine explained. “Don’t you think my shoes are pretty? And the herringbone pattern of my tights? I’m going to make a film when we get back to London.”
“Your feet?” Marianne repeated. She shook her head and waved her guidebook at Delphine. “With ‘all the splendors of the Tsars’ to be seen, you’re going to make a film of your feet?”
Sophie slipped her copy of the itinerary out of her rucksack.
Their hostess was called Dr. Galina Starova.
That sounded like a good name. A glamorous name.
What would a woman with a name like that be like?
Sophie thought. She decided she would greet her in Russian — if she didn’t become tongue-tied at the last minute.
How would she say hello? “Strast-vooo-id-tye,” she muttered.
This Dr. Starova, decided Sophie, was probably responsible for scientific research at a top secret institute.
She would be beautiful and clever, but also do wicked things like smoking, playing cards, and wearing fur.
She would be an excellent shot. She would definitely be wearing thick black eyeliner and too much lipstick.
“Paj-hal-ster.” It would be good to be able to say “please.”
By the end of the week, Dr. Starova and Sophie would be firm friends and write to each other for the rest of their lives.
“Spar-see-bar.” And always useful to say “thank you.”
Sophie liked the way her tongue rolled around in her mouth as she said these words.
They seemed so much more meaningful than just “please” or “thank you.” It amused her the way the vowels just knocked into each other.
There was nothing polite or clipped about Russian, nothing very kind or courteous about the sound of the words.
Nothing limited. They sounded rich and fat, like someone laughing.
Dr. Starova would teach her how to speak Russian, she just knew it.
And for once, Sophie would be good at something.
A middle-aged couple with a sulky-looking girl approached the group.
The woman was holding a piece of paper. Miss Ellis spoke to them in what appeared to be very stilted Russian, then checked her clipboard and called out, “Lydia? Lydia Sedgwick? Come on! Oh, will someone pinch her and get her headphones off? Can she not go for three seconds without blasting her brain with rap music?”
Lydia, looking slightly dazed, pushed her headphones off as her Russian hosts shook hands with her. Before the man had picked up her suitcase, however, she was pulling them back on.
“Honestly …” muttered Miss Ellis.
Other families arrived, and girls were quickly ticked off the list and accompanied out of the station. By six forty-five, only Miss Ellis, Sophie, Delphine, and Marianne were left.
Miss Ellis’s own host, the head of modern languages at School 59, was standing slightly to one side, looking bored. He wandered over to Miss Ellis and they had a conversation that involved lots of looking at watches and shrugging of shoulders.
“Miss Ellis?”
Sophie gasped.
It was the woman from the café, the one with the short black hair and the tapestry coat. She had appeared as if from nowhere.
“I am sorry to be late. I am Dr. Galina Starova.” She smiled at Miss Ellis’s host and the man grinned foolishly, his bored manner completely extinguished. “Dr. Karenin! I have heard so much about you!”
The man stood taller and his shoulders seemed to broaden under his thick overcoat.
“You will excuse me.” The woman leaned toward Miss Ellis as if she were about to tell her a great secret.
“My car, he would not start. The weather!” She showed a set of extremely even, incredibly white teeth.
Her eyelids gleamed with pearly blue eye shadow, which made her pale eyes look even larger.
The way she bent like a tulip toward Miss Ellis, the slow smile, that rich voice, the enormous pale blue eyes … Now Sophie wanted to gasp again, but felt too astonished. She’d been watching this woman at the café without realizing that she’d seen her before.
She turned to Marianne. “It’s her!” she whispered.
“Who?” Marianne looked around.
“The woman who came to our school.”
“What woman?”
But before Sophie could reply, Miss Ellis snapped, “Well, at least you’re here.” She did not bother to hide her irritation. “It is very late for the girls, Dr. Starova. They are very tired after their long journey.”
“But of course.” Dr. Starova looked serious.
She placed a gloved hand on Miss Ellis’s arm, and glanced across at Dr. Karenin, lowering her eyelids once more.
“I understand. You worry! But now I am here and girls all safe!” She turned to the girls and opened her eyes wide.
“So, we say good-bye to Miss Ellis and charming Dr. Karenin, and we hurry into night. Snow not worry us!” She almost pushed Miss Ellis away. “Good-bye! See you Monday!”
Miss Ellis gave Dr. Starova a quizzical look, then turned to the girls.
“Please be on your best behavior,” she said, staring at Sophie meaningfully, then started walking briskly toward the Metro.
Dr. Karenin shook himself as if from a daydream, and followed slowly behind, but he kept glancing over his shoulder, as if he were no longer eager to leave the station and the mesmerizing Dr. Starova.
“Wave good-bye, girls!” Dr. Starova beamed.
Sophie, Marianne, and Delphine waved limply to their teacher’s unseeing back. Dr. Starova watched the escalator intently, waiting until Miss Ellis and her host had completely disappeared.
Then Sophie couldn’t stop herself. “It’s you!” she cried.
The woman narrowed her pale eyes and looked at Sophie, then quickly looked away again. “Who else could I be but me?” she said.
“I mean, it’s you. From the school. You came to my school. In London.” Sophie wasn’t sure if she was making herself clear. “I showed you the playground,” Sophie insisted. “You took my photograph. To show Natalya.”
“Who?” The woman frowned.
Sophie felt confused. Had she got it wrong? “Natalya, your daughter …”
The woman waved her hand airily. “Ah, yes. Perhaps. I travel often. I visit many schools!” She smiled approvingly at Delphine. “That is good coat. Good for Russian weather.” She reached out and stroked the fabric. “Is designer?”
Delphine smiled. “Of course!”
“So now,” announced Dr. Starova, checking her tiny wristwatch, “we run for train!”
They scarcely had time to pick up their bags before Dr. Starova was marching smartly toward the platforms. Sophie, seeing that Delphine was struggling, took one of her suitcases and Marianne the other.
They set off after the elegant figure of their host, feeling awkward and out of place, trying to get past commuters and travelers who were not in the habit of moving to accommodate three hobbling schoolgirls.
“Where’s she going?” Delphine said. “Why aren’t we taking the Metro?”
“Just don’t take your eyes off her,” Marianne replied, her breathing shallow. “If we lose her, I don’t get the feeling she’ll come back for us.”
“Quick!” Dr. Starova called over her shoulder as they reached a platform. “The train is leaving. We must not miss him. Next train tomorrow!”
The girls immediately upped their pace, almost breaking into a run as the woman strode alongside an old-fashioned-looking train, which seemed to go on for miles.
Eventually, Dr. Starova thrust her tickets at a uniformed guard standing at the farthest door, fluttering them like a fan under his nose and laughing coquettishly.
He waved them on without looking once at the tickets.
“We are just in time!” she said, smiling at them all.
The girls struggled up the steps with their bags, Dr. Starova doing nothing to help.
“Turn right! Second compartment!” she called. “Hurry!” She stepped lightly up behind them, banging the door shut.
The train jolted, then began to move.