“Blimey Sue where on earth are you leading us?”
My flatmate Angela and I were well off the beaten track, as always. You didn’t truly get to know a place until you left the tourist tat behind.
We’d chosen Tallinn for a weekend away, not because it was a bucket list item, but because a budget airline had put it on the map. I did, however, have a small vested interest, my great-great-whatever grandmother had come from here. My mother, who had the unenviable task of growing up in grim ungentrified Bethnal Green with the name Anastasia, vaguely remembers her.
Exploring the backstreets now, where did she live? There, perhaps? Was she happy?
I had almost passed it before I noticed it, similar as it was to many buildings in this part of Tallinn; peeling paintwork and permanently closed.
Leaning in close to the window I squinted through the grime. It appeared to be a cross between an antique shop and a junk shop — old clothes, furniture, militaria, jewellery. The door was stiff and gave suddenly, setting off a peel of bells that startled me. The musty smell, carried in the dust that swirled around the interior, was not of damp but of dormancy.
Goosebumps, the soft hairs on the back of my neck stirring. A sigh on the air.
“Creepy,” Angela whispered behind me.
Not creepy, I thought, timeless.
Straight ahead was the counter, buried under piles of hardback books and curling newspapers. A pair of bespectacled eyes slowly rose over the top of a stack.
“Tere hommikust,” the old man said in a croaky voice that probably hadn’t been used in weeks.
I raised my hand in greeting and turned towards assorted crockery, displayed on a large wooden dresser. A small blue and white jug that looked like Wedgwood caught my untrained eye.
I picked it up.
The shop vanished.
And I found myself sitting across from a middle aged woman in a dress and bonnet talking softly about chintz, the milk jug on the table beside me. I instinctively reached for the jug and was back in the shop, the jug back in its place on top of the dresser.
A chill descended. I glanced over at the counter. The old man was in shadow but I sensed him there. I just didn’t get it. For seconds, mere seconds, I’d been dropped into a scene from Pride and Prejudice. But, even now, the memory was fading, like it’d never happened, logic denying it.
Still unnerved, I wandered aimlessly through the shop and, not thinking, reached down for an old tin hat. It was battered, the leather around the inside rim worn away in places, the chin strap broken.
Instantly I found myself ankle deep in mud. Screams rent the air. I threw myself down as the featureless mire to my left erupted, showering me in muck, the hat rolling from my head. The shrillness of another shell drowned out the cacophony of agony. I frantically crawled through the filth. Two men lay atop a crater ahead of me, their eyes wide with shock and astonishment. And as my fingers met the cold metal of the helmet, the shrillness deafening, they were gone.
I slowly opened my eyes, breathing hard, sweating harder. The filth, the reek of decay and death still filled my nostrils.
Hell, I had just witnessed hell. I swallowed, overcome with how sheltered my life was, how safe. Those two men had been erased from the world, their loved ones would never know what happened to them, there would be nothing to bury, nothing to make peace with.
Enough. I could not begin to understand what magic, evil, whatever, was happening in this place but I was out of here. Sharpish.
Weaving carefully through the clothes, my eyes set on the door, I caught sight of a nightdress out the corner of my eye. I stopped. Why, I cannot say, but yet… Something. Lost.
Ivory silk with fine lacework on the hem and full arms, it gathered at the bust and then flared out in folds. I guessed that it would reach to the floor on me. God, they didn’t make them like that anymore. I raised my arm… and stopped.
Shaking my head I looked up at the door. Leave. Now.
“Hey, Sue, look at this.”
I turned to look at Angela, holding something up.
My hand lightly brushed the lace with the tips of my fingers.
Beside me, atop a cabinet, stood a basin and ewer, in front of me a large brass bed, above that a small chandelier. I stood in a large window, the warm sun on my back. Beneath my feet a soft, lush rug, the pile gentle against my bare feet. The silk of the nightdress caressed my skin, both warm and cool, and I ran my hands down the sides of my breasts and over my hips. I sighed.
It was only then that I noticed the man staring at me from the door. He should have startled me but he didn’t; I expected him to be there. And without really understanding, I wanted him to be there. He was, without a shadow of a doubt, the most attractive man I’d ever seen. Tall and pale with short, dark, wavy hair and penetrating lapis eyes his name was Anton. He was a captain in the Russian Calvary and of Moscow aristocracy. My love for him filled every pore. My name, here, was Mila.
All this I just knew.
He was naked, except for a pair of breeches, and I noted, with raised eyebrows, that he appeared extremely pleased to see me. I became aware, then, that the nightdress was all but see-through. I didn’t care. In fact I wanted him to see me. Desire tingled below and spread up into my breasts. I flushed. He smiled and his eyes sparkled with joy. He took a step towards me and held out his arms. My desire voracious I slowly and brazenly eased the nightdress off my shoulders, feasting off his desire as it slowly dropped to my feet
I slept; satiated and serene. At some point in the night I heard someone come into the room and leave shortly after. It was only later, when I got up to use the chamber pot, that I discovered the nightdress had gone. Frantically shaking Anton awake he bemusedly assured me that the maid had only removed it for cleaning.
“Get it back!” I screamed like a banshee. “Get. It. Back.”
Anton had the hotel turned upside down, no doubt thinking me a mad woman. He brought me a huge selection of alternatives. Finally, alone for a moment that evening, howling hysterical tears, I had to face the fact.
The next fortnight whirled in a haze of fine dining, sumptuous balls, shopping and passionate sex. We were inseparable. Underlying it all, however, lay turmoil and dread. What was going to happen to me when Anton returned to his regiment, after all I had no family and no means, my ‘history’ an orphan? So, on the day before Anton was to leave me, I broached the subject. He laughed, his eyes twinkling as he rolled, naked, out of bed, and down on bended knee.
We had a one night honeymoon.
He promised to return in three months and take me home to Moscow.
I never saw him again.
I stayed in Tallinn and nine months later gave birth to a boy, Anton. He had his father’s eyes. I was financially secure and comfortable, but lonely. I thought, often, of my life back in 21st century England. Of cars, and electricity, appearing here soon I knew, and of my other family.
My comfort, back in those darker days, was my son, who grew up to be a successful trader and Guildsman in Tallinn and had three children of his own. As time passed the family grew and thoughts of my old life faded. In 1936 my grandson, a professor of Engineering, moved his family to London to escape the cancer growing in Europe and they took me with them. It was strange to be back, to see places that I recognised and yet didn’t, as if history was out of context.
I’m 93 now and yesterday I was introduced to the latest edition to my family, a little girl. I’d become a bit of a matriarch, which I found quite amusing. I suppose though, with 31 offspring, and that no one had ever known Anton, I was bound to become the figurehead of what was becoming a European dynasty, albeit much of which had been locked behind the Iron Curtain. At least for now. I longed to tell them.
I had smiled down at the beautiful baby, knowing what wonders she will come to know. But when Nicola had then told me the name that they were giving her I stared, my mouth gaping open. Goosebumps, and then a sigh that floated on the air. And a peculiar sensation, like the closing of a circle. I reached down and stroked her cheek.
Her name was Anastasia.
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