by nightfall, Clayton knew he was ruined. The stock market closed at one o'clock, in a vain effort to stop the frantic selling of shares, but for Clayton it was too late. The Exchange was to remain closed for the rest of the week, but he had already lost everything they had. All they had left were their homes, and everything in them. The rest was gone. Clayton walked all the way home, and he felt a weight on his chest like a stone. He could barely face Zoya as he walked into their bedroom.
“Darling? … what is it? …” His face was gray, as she turned to face him. She had been brushing her hair which she had grown long again because he hated the fashionable bobs so much, but he barely seemed to notice her as he walked into the room and stared into the fireplace with bleak eyes, and then slowly he turned to face her. “What's wrong?” Her brush clattered on the floor and she ran to his side. “Clayton … Clayton, what is it?”
His eyes reached into hers, and she was suddenly reminded of her father when Nicolai had been killed. “We've lost everything, Zoya … everything … I was a fool….” He attempted to explain everything to her as she listened with wide eyes, and she put her arms around him and held him as he cried. “My God … how could I have been so stupid … what will we do now?”
Her heart almost stopped, it was like the revolution again. But she had survived it before, and this time they had each other. “We'll sell everything … we'll work … we'll survive, Clayton. It doesn't matter.” But he wrenched himself from her arms and paced the room, frantic at the full realization that they were ruined, and his world had come crashing down around him.
“Are you crazy? I'm fifty-seven years old … what do you think I can do? Drive a taxi like Prince Vladimir? And you'll go back to the ballet? Don't be a fool, Zoya … we're ruined! Ruined! The children will starve….” He was crying as she took his hands in her own, and his were icy.
“They will not starve. I can work, so can you. If we sell what we have, we can live on it for years.” The diamond necklaces alone would keep them fed and housed for a long time, but he shook his head miserably, he understood the situation far better than she. He had already seen a man he knew leap from his office window. And she knew nothing of the enormous debts he had allowed to accrue, knowing he had the money to pay them whenever he wanted.
“And who will you sell it all to? All the others who've lost their shirts? It's all worthless, Zoya….”
“No, it's not,” she said quietly. “We have each other and the children. When I left Russia, we left on a troika with nothing, with rags, with two of Uncle Nicky's horses and what jewelry we could sew into the linings of our clothes, and we survived.” They both thought at the same time of the misery of her Paris apartment, but they had lived through it, and now she had him and the children. “Think of what the others lost … think of Nicky and Aunt Alix … don't cry, Clayton … if they could be brave in the face of that, there is nothing we can't face … is there, my love….” But he only cried in her arms unable to face it.
That night they went down to dinner, and he barely spoke. She was trying to think, to make plans, to decide what to sell and who to sell it to. They had two houses, all the antiques Elsie de Wolfe, now Lady Mendl, had helped them find, her jewelry, paintings, objects … it was endless. It was like planning an escape, as she made suggestions and tried to reassure him, but he walked upstairs with a heavy step, and as she talked to him from her dressing room while she undressed, she couldn't elicit an answer from him. She was desperately worried about him. It had been a terrible blow, but after surviving everything else that had happened in her life, she refused to be beaten now. She would help him fight, help him survive, she would scrub floors if she had to. She didn't care, and then as she listened, she wondered if