The Dream Begins Read online

  ‘Worked out what?’

  ‘Even in a mansion there’s nothing worse than boredom and domestic day-to-day tedium that’s crushed all excitement and challenge. Merthyr’s bad enough, think what it must be like for Mr Hughes in Greenwich. I’ve stayed with him and seen the endless round of social functions and refined dinner and tea parties his neighbours expect him and his wife to attend. You’re lucky to have Sarah. It wouldn’t hurt to let her know how much you appreciate her sense of adventure and lack of interest in female frippery and the social niceties. Compared to most of her sex, she’s a diamond.’

  Port of Taganrog, Sea of Azov

  September 1870

  The first familiar face Glyn saw on the quayside was Alexei Beletsky. The boy was standing in the middle of a throng of black-coated, top-hatted dignitaries. All were monitoring the small boats that were carrying personnel and luggage from John’s convey that had been forced to anchor some distance out from the dock.

  The moment John climbed out of a small boat he was mobbed by personnel from the consulate, distinguishable from the locals by the cut of their clothes. Alexei was in the centre of the group, but when he saw Glyn step out of one of the ferries he muttered his apologies to John and fought his way through the mob to join them. He drew Glyn past the porters hauling luggage; the food venders crying their wares, and the carriage drivers touting for trade.

  ‘Mr Thomas isn’t here. The construction workers went on strike in Hughesovka two weeks ago. Mr Thomas managed to get them back to work the day I left, but they were still grumbling. He didn’t want risk leaving them, so he sent me to meet you.’ Alexei looked at the ships. ‘It’s not going to be easy to unload those boilers.’

  ‘So Mr Hughes understands.’ Glyn looked around. Luggage was strewn from one end of the quay to the other. John was hemmed in on all sides. Hordes of people were milling around aimlessly and Glyn had no idea what he should do first, other than that he should do ‘something’.

  Alexei moved closer to Glyn so he could make himself heard above the cries of an old woman selling pickled cucumbers. ‘I’ve hired porters and brought the bullock carts down to the dock. They’re lined up behind the warehouses so the supplies can be loaded directly onto them.’

  Glyn recalled the arguments between Nicholas Beletsky and his son about ‘industry’ and hoped the count wasn’t lurking somewhere nearby waiting to make a scene. ‘Does your father know you’re here?’

  ‘He’s been in St Petersburg for the last three months attending to business. I’m here with my tutor, Father Theodore.’

  ‘He’s teaching you engineering and metallurgy?’

  ‘Theology and ancient Greek. Useless subjects but Father Theodore says the mind is like a muscle that needs constant exercise. The only problem is the amount of valuable time he insists my muscle spend on the tedious lessons he gives me.’

  ‘Where’s Father Theodore?’ Glyn saw no priest in high hat and black robe.

  ‘Sick. He ate bad oysters last night.’

  ‘You didn’t?’ Glyn was suspicious.

  ‘I don’t like oysters. My tutor will recover.’ Alexei shrugged.

  ‘From discussions with your father, I don’t believe he’d be happy with your presence here.’

  ‘My mother and grandmother know where I am,’ Alexei countered.

  ‘We didn’t expect so many people to meet us. I hope someone’s given a thought as to where we’re going to sleep. I don’t relish the thought of returning to my cabin.’

  ‘Mr Hughes, you and your family party are staying at the British consulate. The address is Petrovskaya Street. Number 67.’

  ‘You’re well informed.’

  ‘As Mr Thomas trusted me to meet you I’ve tried to think of everything. As soon as I arrived in Taganrog I went to your consulate. They told me your ships were expected today and they’d made arrangements to accommodate you in the consulate. If they hadn’t, I’d have organised rooms and meals in one of the better hotels.’

  Peter was overseeing the removal of the second tranche of their luggage from one of the boats. Glyn walked over to where Sarah, Richard, Anna, and Alf were standing guard over the more valuable items of their luggage. ‘Everyone, this is Alexei Beletsky. He and his family will be our nearest neighbours.’

  Alexei bowed and kissed Sarah and Anna’s hands although Anna pulled hers away before his lips could touch her glove. ‘I am pleased to meet you, ladies.’

  ‘My brother, Dr Edwards.’

  ‘Have rooms been booked for us at a hotel, Mr Beletsky?’ Peter winced as a stevedore lifted a packing case marked with a large red cross from a boat only to drop it on the stone quayside.

  ‘It’s Alexei, Dr Edwards.’ He shouted at the man who’d dropped the packing case in Russian and the porter took better care of the next box he unloaded.

  ‘We’re staying at the consulate,’ Glyn answered Peter.

  ‘I’ve been assured that the rooms there are comfortable, I haven’t seen them …’

  ‘I’m sure they’ll be adequate, Alexei.’ Glyn snatched a box of photographic plates from a dock worker. ‘Peter, Alf, we need to safeguard our personal baggage and the hospital’s equipment.’

  ‘Leave it to me.’ Alexei whistled and a man Glyn recognised as Nicholas Beletsky’s coachman appeared. Alexei spoke rapidly to him in Russian and showed him the labels Sarah had affixed to her, Peter, Richard, Anna, and Glyn’s luggage. ‘Vlad will take care of your trunks, sirs.’

  ‘And all the boxes marked with a red cross?’ Peter added.

  ‘And all those marked with this sign.’ Glyn pointed to the ‘DELICATE’ signs he’d pasted on to the crates that held his photographic equipment.

  Alexei finished giving Vlad instructions. ‘All your luggage and the crates marked with a cross and that sign will be kept together in separate carts that Vlad will take care of.

  Glyn glimpsed John beckoning. ‘I have to go.’

  ‘We all do, Mr Edwards.’ Alexei indicated a raised dais that had been erected at the far end of the quay. ‘You will be expected to listen to the “Welcome to Russia” speeches the town council has rehearsed. There are chairs for the ladies …’

  The remainder of Alexei’s sentence was drowned out by a brass band striking a barely recognisable rendition of ‘God Save the Queen’.

  The ceremony Taganrog had organised to welcome John Hughes and his party was over an hour long, and because the speeches were in Russian, incomprehensible to most of the colliers and ironworkers. Given the wind that blew in from the sea, it was also cold. As soon as the brass band finished playing their final piece – the Russian National Anthem, ‘God Save the Tsar’ Glyn looked found Alexei.

  ‘Will you take Mrs Edwards, Richard, and Anna to the consulate, while my brother, Alf, and I, make sure that all our luggage has been loaded?’

  ‘I would be delighted and I will look after them well. Have no concern.’ Alexei offered Sarah his right arm and Anna his left. ‘Please, ladies, come with me.’

  ‘You’ll be safe with Alexei,’ Glyn assured Sarah and Anna. ‘Peter and I will join you as soon as we’re certain the more delicate boxes have been loaded.’

  Sarah gave Anna, who was clinging to Richard, a reassuring smile. ‘You men do what you have to, we’ll be fine.’

  ‘Can’t I help you and Dr Edwards?’ Richard asked.

  Conscious the boy was still weak, Glyn drew him aside. ‘Peter and I would appreciate it if you’d stay with Sarah and Anna. I know Alexei, but not well. I’d be happier if you were with them.’

  Richard suspected Glyn’s motives in asking him to stay with the women but didn’t argue.

  ‘I have a carriage here.’ Alexei shouted to a stevedore in Russian.

  ‘What a language! I’ll never learn it. What on earth did he say?’ Sarah asked.

  ‘He asked the porter to carry your overnight bags to the carriage he’s hired.’ Glyn picked up Sarah’s hat box.

  ‘I didn’t know you spoke Russian?’ Sarah
was dumbfounded.

  ‘I understand more than I can speak, unlike Mr Hughes, who’s proficient.’

  Alexei led Sarah to the carriage. The coachman climbed down from the box and opened the door.

  Alexei continued to bark orders in Russian before switching to English. ‘I told the driver to load your luggage,’ he explained. Anna and Sarah climbed inside, Alexei and Richard sat opposite them.

  Peter handed Sarah the small case she’d packed with her most personal possessions. ‘Don’t get used to travelling in style.’ He indicated the quilted leather interior of the carriage, ‘Glyn’s hoping we’ll leave tomorrow morning and we’ll be travelling by cart.’

  ‘Do we have far to go?’ Anna hadn’t shown much interest in either the journey or their destination. Sarah took her question as a positive sign of recovery.

  ‘One hundred versts which is approximately,’ Alexei stared at the roof of the carriage as if the answer was written there, ‘sixty-two and a half of your English miles as a stork flies but eighty miles or more if we’re to avoid rough ground.’

  ‘One day or two’s travelling?’ Peter asked.

  ‘By ox cart, a week, possibly longer.’

  ‘You’re joking?’

  ‘Not at all, the … how do you say it … I know …the terrain is difficult, Dr Edwards. Even for ox carts.’

  Glyn joined them. ‘The packages marked with a red cross are easily sorted but I need you to identify the rest, Peter.’

  ‘I’m with you.’ Peter blew Sarah a kiss and followed Glyn.

  ‘Russian sounds impossible,’ Sarah commented.

  ‘I will teach you to speak it,’ Alexei spoke with supreme confidence. ‘Two months from now you’ll be conversing like a native.’

  ‘I doubt it. Not your ability to teach, but mine to learn.’ Sarah returned the blue-eyed, blond, fresh-faced young man’s smile. ‘I think Mr Hughes, Mr Edwards, and my husband are lucky to have you to help us.’

  ‘They are,’ Alexei assured her. ‘So are you. I will show you Taganrog. The town has many beautiful buildings. It was founded by our forward-looking Tsar Peter the Great in 1698.’

  ‘We get a history lesson too,’ Sarah teased gently.

  ‘I try to be knowledgeable about my country. First I will take you to the consulate so you can drink tea. You English always drink tea in the afternoon, don’t you?’

  ‘Yes, please, but we’re not English, we’re Welsh,’ Richard corrected.

  ‘Wales is the Western part of England?’

  ‘We’re a separate country,’ Richard growled.

  ‘You can educate me about the geography of your country of Wales. So few people in Russia know anything about foreign lands, it’s difficult to decide which travellers’ tales to believe.’ Alexei smiled at Anna.

  She didn’t return his smile or look him in the eye. After what the Paskey brothers had done to her she found it difficult to look at any man other than Richard. But she’d noticed that Alexei was good-looking. Very possibly the best-looking boy she’d ever seen.

  British Consulate, Taganrog

  Evening, September 1870

  The grand hall was hot, noisy, and odorous. The sweet, occasionally sickly perfumes of the ladies vied with the pungent, acrid scents of human perspiration and bullock dung carried in on shoes from the street. The place would have been considered heaving with half as many people crammed within its walls.

  The conversation was raucous, and in so many languages, all but one indecipherable, that Richard felt as though he’d been incarcerated in a madhouse.

  The reception the consulate staff had organised for John Hughes, his senior managers, and their relatives had been scheduled to last an hour, but three hours after the first guests arrived, waiters were still pouring champagne and handing out caviar, and porters were ushering latecomers towards the master of ceremonies so they could be announced.

  Richard gave up trying to decipher what was being said and retreated to a sofa set below the staircase. His hopes of indulging in quiet reflection ended when Alexei joined him.

  ‘You are an ironworker?’ Alexei handed him one of the glasses of champagne he’d taken from a waiter.

  ‘I was a collier, but when I left I was training to be a repairman,’ Richard said grandly.

  ‘What does a repairman do?’ Alexei shattered Richard’s hope that the title ‘repairman’ would impress.

  ‘Checks the props that keep the ceiling up in the tunnels are solid, makes sure the walls and ceiling of the shaft are sound and there’s no danger of falls or collapse.’

  ‘That’s an important job. So, you won’t be working in Mr Hughes’s ironworks but one of the mines Mr Hughes will sink to dig out coal to fuel his furnaces?’

  ‘It’s not been decided, but I may be working in the mine Mr Edwards hopes to open. It was Mr Edwards’ brother who recommended I join this expedition. He was my boss in Merthyr.’

  ‘Merthyr. That’s where Mr Crawshay has an ironworks?’

  ‘You know about Crawshay’s ironworks?’ Richard was surprised.

  ‘I have read everything I could find on modern industry. You’re young. How long have you been a collier?’

  ‘I started working as a trapper when I was eight years old. I worked the ventilator to get air into the shaft,’ Richard added when he saw Alexei’s puzzled look.

  ‘In Russia only the children of the very poor work in the mines.’

  ‘My father died when I was eight.’

  ‘So you were poor?’

  ‘My mother was left with nine children and no breadwinner.’

  Realising he’d been tactless, Alexei said, ‘You must have gained a great deal of experience as you started work so young.’

  ‘Some, not as much as many of the colliers Mr Hughes has recruited. Why are you so interested in mining, Mr Hughes, and his affairs?’ Richard was suspicious.

  ‘I’m interested in progress. I’ve travelled a little, not as much as I would have liked, but I’ve seen Paris, Berlin, Rome, Venice, and London. Of all the cities, I thought London the most interesting. Your country has built so much since it entered the industrial age, yet it’s so small. When Russia embraces modernisation, I believe it will become a rival for Britain’s crown as the pioneering engineering nation of the world. My family owns land where Mr Hughes will sink his mines and build his ironworks, so we will be neighbours. I hope we’re going to become great friends.’

  Richard avoided commenting. ‘Will your family develop your land?’

  ‘My father has sold some to Mr Hughes. I would like to develop the rest, which is why I want to learn all I can about the production of metals, mining, and engineering.’

  ‘Mr Edwards told me there’ll be nothing to hold me back in Russia except the limit of my ambition.

  ‘You are ambitious?’

  ‘Very. I have two younger brothers and …’ Richard fell silent when he realised he was about to mention Alice to someone he’d only just met. But Alexei wasn’t like anyone he’d known.

  ‘You’d like to own your own mine one day?’ Alexei suggested.

  ‘That really is a dream.’

  ‘Why? I have land, you have the skills, and you seem to be a thoroughly nice fellow. I think we could work well together.’

  ‘I’m only seventeen.’

  ‘I’m eighteen. The right age to make dreams happen. It’s boring here. Would you like to creep out and look round the town? There are a few places that sell good vodka and can offer young people fun.’

  ‘Mr Edwards said we’ll be leaving very early tomorrow,’ Richard cautioned.

  Alexei laughed. ‘By bullock cart? All the animals have to be harnessed. Even if the drivers begin work before sunrise they won’t finish until late afternoon. We won’t be leaving early tomorrow. So what do you say to tasting the nightlife of Taganrog?’

  Richard looked at Glyn. ‘I’ll have to ask Mr Edwards, but he won’t mind as long as we’re not out too late.’

  ‘Tell him you’re
going to share my hotel room. There are two beds and that way he won’t know how late we stay out.’ Alexei winked. ‘We’ll be back before breakfast. I’ll get my coat and ask the porter to hire us a carriage.’

  Chapter Six

  Taganrog

  Evening, September 1870

  Richard gazed out of the carriage window at the broad streets and palatial white stone and red brick buildings illuminated by brilliant street lights. ‘I didn’t expect this.’

  ‘This what?’ Alexei asked.

  ‘This incredible city. It’s beautiful. The street lighting is so bright, so clear. So different from the gas lamps back home.’

  ‘The lighting’s oil and Taganrog’s a town, not a city.’

  ‘So’s Merthyr.’

  ‘You surprise me. With the ironworks there I thought it would be a city. I wanted to visit the place when my father took me on a tour of Europe but when we reached Great Britain he wouldn’t leave London.’

  ‘Dr and Mr Edwards talk about London sometimes. I’ve never been there.’ Richard wondered if he’d ever have the opportunity to visit the city now he’d left Britain.

  ‘What’s Merthyr like?’

  ‘Small compared to this, with narrow streets. The ironworks are in the centre, and pump out smoke day and night, dirtying the air and the streets. This is so clean and there are so many enormous buildings. It’s how I imagined ancient cities like Rome. Is that a church?’

  ‘Greek Orthodox, St Helen and St Konstantine.’ Alexei recited like a tour guide. ‘Taganrog has to cater for many religions because it’s a port and sailors are of many faiths. There’s a German Lutheran church, a Greek monastery, a synagogue, the Russian Orthodox St Mikhail, you can see two of its five domes over there, shining in the moonlight.’

  ‘Do you have a Catholic church?’

  ‘You are Catholic?’ Alexei found a pack of cigars, opened it, and extracted two.

  ‘Welsh chapel.’

  Alexei laughed. ‘Whatever that is, I don’t think Taganrog has a church to cater for it. That’s the library, the assembly hall, the court …’

  ‘That is beautiful, like a palace.’ Richard pulled down the window of the carriage and leaned forward to get a better view.