© Korolev Victor, autor, 2020

© Publishing "Academizdat", 2020

From the Author

I have always been interested in the line that the author is allowed to cross in historical books, when he writes how everything happened, what exactly the characters of his work said. This line between fiction and speculation occupies me today. For detective or romance novels, this is not so important. And for historical novels it is very important.

As an author, it gives me great pleasure to tell the unknown about people who have left a noticeable mark in history. Such people very many, and here is know about them most often very few. And so it does not matter, in my opinion, what and how the characters say, what they wear and what they ride. These are details. And much more important are their actions, their difficult life path with all its repetitions.

A writer is not a historian. It doesn't work with sources. His task is to penetrate into the soul of his hero, see the world through his eyes, and then tell about what he saw. And not to lie at the same time, not to invent what was not and could not be. This is necessary if you write about a person not just real, but significant, known in his time.

I wanted to tell you about the British diplomat Archibald Kerr, who did a lot for Russia. He represented Britain in fifteen different countries. From 1942 to 1946 he was Ambassador to the USSR. I was very surprised to learn that there is no book about this interesting man in Russian. Moreover – and in English there is only one: Donald Gillies. “Radical Diplomat: The Life of Sir Archibald Clark Kerr, Lord Inverchapel, 1882–1951”.

It was published twenty years ago, has survived several editions, but today it is somehow forgotten.

The author of this English book faithfully, observing the chronology, described the vicissitudes of life of his hero. He had access to the diplomat's personal archives and diaries, and he cited hundreds of his letters. And only rarely commented on them and expressed his opinion about certain events. This is a very thorough work of the historian. His book cannot be called a work of art. But her help for the novel was enormous.

I would not like, of course, to idealize the hero of my novel, but I am very impressed with his views on the war. Archibald Kerr volunteered for the front as a private soldier, although service in the Foreign Office gave him reservations. And there, in the trenches of the First World War, he realized an important truth: war is the most terrible thing on earth. Only those who know how to negotiate – diplomats – can stop this evil.

Archibald Kerr was an excellent diplomat. One of the best in the twentieth century – now that I've read everything about him, I'm sure of it. Therefore, a novel was born about the life and amazing adventures of such an extraordinary person.

Instead of prologue
Thoughts about the hero, about which at first little was known

Everyone who laughed at the kilt was long dead

Oh, how I want to paint the birth of a son at John Kerr! The bright colours, the spicy smells, the screams of the gulls, the March sun rising, the mica glints on the snowy peaks of the distant Grampian Mountains, and the joyous cry of the old midwife:

‘It's a son! You have a son!’

And he would go into the house his grandfather had built, look at the pink, wrinkled face of his firstborn, put on his holiday kilt, and walk down the familiar path, and already painted with coloured crocuses. He would open the door to a tavern that smelled of salt and tar, and order a festive seven-course Scottish dinner: one bottle of whisky and six pints of good ale. And all familiar sailors and granite craftsmen will drink to the health of the heir:

‘John Kerr, we congratulate you on the new John Kerr!’

He was respected here. His father, also John Kerr, was remembered here. There was no doubt that another John Kerr had been born.

Half the friends in honour of such an event will be dressed in plaid shirts and canvas pants, a stake standing because of fish oil. Half the friends in honour of such an event will be dressed in tartan shirts and canvas pants, a stake standing because of fish oil. And those who are not in the sea or at the factory today came light, in plaid kilts. Fish scales sparkle in their beards like silver coins. So the day went on the right course, anger and sadness has no place in this smoky room today. Not all Scots drink whisky, but everyone will drink it tonight.

And let a few dark Englishmen in frock-coats and caps enter the tavern for a contrast – there will be enough room for all, no one has been at war for a long time. And let the youngest of them laugh, looking at the cheerful bearded man in a festive kilt. Not need to finger at poke, a boy, in the answer stonemason John Kerr grudgingly will raise with benches in the entire its six-foot growth and, showing fellow enormous fist, will tell on the entire hall:

‘Everyone who laughed at the kilt is dead!’

No one will get cutlasses, because no one ordered a fight. The Scots would order more whisky, for complete mugs, and move their mugs:

‘Drink to England!’

And they will drink for a long time and laugh even longer. Then they would drink again to the lady of the seas, winking at each other.

To the sound of bagpipes drunken John will be funny to dance in the middle of the hall, hammering boots into the floor with a pull and a thump. And when it gets dark, he'll go home. He would sit by his pale wife's bedside and watch her feed the baby. Then the child, wrapped in thin cambric swaddling clothes and a goat-hair blanket, would fall asleep, and they would talk, looking at the child's face, so bright in the firelight.

‘I'm so glad he's going to be John, too!’

‘When the midwife cries “son”, all are happy’ he will tell in the answer. ‘But then let a girl be born, I not against. When a lot of children in the house – it's to wealth.’

‘I want our John to have a few names. In honour of you and your father already is. And can be still in honour my mother’s?’

‘Clara? You're crazy!’

‘At least let it is Clark.’

‘Well, so be it. Clark is as short and clear as John.’

‘And Archibald – in honour of the fighters for the independence of Scotland, can you?’

‘Go to sleep!’

And he will sit for a long time at the fading fireplace, which he folded with his own hands before the wedding. And he carved the mantelpiece himself out of local Aberdeen granite with spangles of mica. It was warm in the house old John had built.

Of all the tight people his grandfather was the tightest. And so he saved up for a house, and his father bought goats and the first sheep. Thank you grandfather and father for house, for goats and for sheep! Then John, who built the house, died; father died in a factory explosion of a steam engine. And for his son today began a new life. He had a son of his own today.

He adored his young wife. Kat Louise- that was her name – had brought a considerable dowry to the house, and she was easy-going and domesticated, and life in the family began to improve quickly. She loved her husband, too, though she sometimes made fun of him. Over his red beard, which, as she argued, well brush you’re not only pans, but and drunken snout. She did not beat her husband, like her other girlfriends.

She knew that if it happened, it would be the first and last time. Nor did he imagine himself alone. He dreamed of a large family and well celebrated today the birth of a son…

…About so I wanted to paint the birth of the firstborn in the family of Kerr, a resident of the old Scottish city of Aberdeen. But that wasn't really the case. Maybe it's better this way?

…Future diplomat Archibald Clark John Kerr was not born in Scotland, but in Australia. It happened on March 17, 1882.

So the father of the as yet unborn John Kerr – also John, son of John, and grandson of old hoarder John, who had saved for a house – was married to a young woman with a good dowry. They all hail from Aberdeen, the former capital of the Scottish kings. Their ancestors still managed to participate in the ongoing wars with the British for the independence of their part of the island. But that was a century and a half ago.

When the industrial revolution began, Aberdeen stonemasons had a hard time. New machines drove the grinders out of their homes. Well, if they still had time to hire a sailor on a sailing ship of the East India Company in their home Harbor or in Glasgow.

The diplomat's father was already a master of the axe and had joined a merchant ship. He enriched the local merchants with Indian spices by going to Bengal. He'd heard a lot of bilge stories over the months about the mad races of tea clippers ship and unbearably, childishly longed for home and for the still beardless friends on the bench in the tavern.

The ship finally docked in London. Port was recruiting for the East India Company's own clipper ship, built exactly to the plans of an American ship, but John decided to return to Aberdeen. It was right. The clipper sank before reaching Shanghai. And then there were the opium wars in China and the war in India. In short, when the money earned came to an end, he returned to port in Aberdeen. But it was different. All sailing vessels were scrapped, giving way to steamers. Carpenters were not needed, mechanics were needed.

John Kerr-senior had already become familiar with steam engines at the factory, these thundering monsters, shooting jets of scalding steam and splashes of hot oil. And he said to his son:

‘You've seen whales in the North Sea, weathered storms in the ocean – don't you have to be afraid of steam boilers? Go learn to read and write!’

And John Kerr Jr. went to the newly opened free school. He was twenty years old, nearly six feet tall, and weighed nine stone. When one of his classmates decided to make fun of his kilt, he with one hand lifted mischief's to the ceiling and said to the others:

‘Everyone who laughed at the kilt is dead!’ Kilt for a Scotsman-this pride, his need to earn.’

For two years of study ahead of all, learned to read and count quickly, learned the basics of navigation and safety when working with steam engines. His father died in a factory accident. Then John Kerr Jr. buried his grandfather and mother. Forty days later he brought home his young wife, her name was Kat Louise Robertson.

Now, it seems, everything is as it was in reality. But life in his family did not improve. At first it was unbearably hard, and then harder and harder. What's the Celtic revival? Even after many, many years, the already well-formed diplomat Archibald Clark John Kerr will walk away from talking about that period, tacitly stating that neither the rich Celts nor the noble Welsh, his relatives have nothing to do, his father was a simple worker and, not to die of hunger, sold the house and went to Australia in search of a better life.

People were being squeezed out of Aberdeen. At night someone set fire to wooden houses – whole streets burned. Someone was setting them on fire to make room for new factory floors. The English had the best seats in the town hall and in the port. Thousands of Scots went to Glasgow, London – wherever they had to.

They had no work. They had no children either. In the evenings John Kerr and Kat sat by the fire. He read aloud to his wife a book about cruel pirates, talked about storms and distant lands, about amazing Indian animals as tall as a house and a nose as long as a hose. She did not believe that there were such big animals in the world, she called her husband a sea – wolf and a storyteller, but her eyes burned, and her face shone with the expectation of female happiness.

‘I really want to see it all, if you're not kidding!’ she whispered, hugging her husband.

Almost all the neighbors and friends left the old town. And one day John picked up an old Edinburgh paper in the harbor. He glanced at the big headline and raced home.

‘Look what's happening! The British bought shares in the Suez Canal! Now Australia can be reached in just a month! Going?’

The house and the goats were sold at half price, enough money for the journey to London, two one-way steamer tickets, and not much left.

‘Let the starboard side, but a separate cabin for two, it's an unthinkable luxury!’ John the sea wolf laughed. ‘You have no idea, Kat, how cramped we were on the ship for a year!’

There were so many things that he had to return to the dock several times. At last he hauled the last of the trunks over, shrugging off the heavy sack.

‘What's the matter with you? Why are you so sad?’