Book Read Free

The Rose Stone

Page 6

by The Rose Stone (retail) (epub)


  “And then – you’d never credit it—” the Dutchman stopped, peered around. “Dammit, Josef, where the hell are you?”

  “I’m here. Here,” Josef said, soothingly.

  “Ah. Well, then I said—”

  “Uncle Josef! Uncle Josef – Hendrikje’s found a kitten. A poor little lost kitten. May we—” Tanya’s precipitate entrance into the room took her almost into the arms of Pieter van Heuten before she could stop herself. As he reached for her, she froze. Van Heuten stopped talking, his bleary and reddened eyes upon the child’s suddenly still face. He licked his lips.

  Tanya, abashed, stepped back, pulling away from him.

  “Come now, little one. Little flower. Come to Uncle Piet.” The tone was maudlin, the hot eyes obscene.

  The child looked to Josef in desperation. His heart took up the slow hammer beat of tension. “Where have you been?” he asked severely.

  “Upstairs. Playing with Hendrikje. She’s—”

  He interrupted her. “You’re late.”

  The child looked surprised. “But—”

  “You’re late” he repeated sternly. “I’ve been waiting for you. I told you – I have to go out. To see a man about a job.”

  She looked puzzled. “You didn’t—”

  “Tanya – will you stop arguing?” Guilt made his voice sharper than he intended. “I tell you I have to go out. So come along now – get undressed and into bed.”

  The child glanced at the watching van Heuten, then, pleadingly, back at Josef. A poppy flush of embarrassment had risen in her cheeks. “Must I? Couldn’t I wait till – till you get back?”

  Josef hardened his heart. Five minutes. Nothing could possibly happen in five minutes. He saw the way van Heuten was watching the child, knew beyond doubt that the man would offer to stay with her. “Come,” he said again, severely, “into bed.”

  Reluctantly Tanya walked to the corner where her small mattress lay, turned her back on the room as she wriggled out of her threadbare blouse and skirt, van Heuten watched. Outside, the wind moaned, whistling through the cracks, bringing the child’s pale, pearl-smooth skin to goosebumps. In her petticoat and without turning round she slid swiftly into the cold bed, pulling the dirty blankets close up around her chin.

  “Don’t be so hard on her, Josef my friend,” van Heuten slurred. “She’s not ready for sleep yet. Are you my pet?” He lifted a drink-flushed, brutal face. “I’ll tell you what – you go about your business. I’ll stay with the child. I’ll tell her a story. Eh? You’d like that, wouldn’t you, little one?” He staggered to the mattress. She watched him come with wide, stricken eyes.

  Almost, then, Josef abandoned his plan. His conscience and his heart impelled him so – his brain told him that no such chance was likely to come again. The key in his hand might have been made of red hot metal. “Please yourself,” he heard himself say. “I shan’t be long. Five – ten minutes at the most. Make yourself comfortable. But Piet—”

  ‘The Dutchman looked up, surprise in his eyes at the sharpness of Josef’s tone.

  “—if you’re going to tell stories, make sure they’re suitable for young ears.”

  “Hah!” The man made a gesture of injured irritation. “You been listening to that cow upstairs? I know decent stories. Go – off you go.” He waved an unsteady hand at Josef. “Don’t worry. I’ll look after her. Uncle Piet will look after her.” He turned back to Tanya, who lay, mute, her face in shadow.

  Josef cleared his throat. “Yes. I’ll go. I won’t be long. Five minutes at the most—” He hesitated at the door.

  Van Heuten grunted and did not turn. Josef let himself out into the dark, draughty passage. The key he had taken from the Dutchman’s pocket had left a painful imprint upon his palm, so fast had he clutched it. He stumbled up the unlit stairs. A feral glint of eyes was followed by a skittering flight – cat or rat, it could have been either. The top landing where stood the Dutchman’s locked door was faintly lit by the lamps of the city that shone, diffused, through a narrow, dirty window. With trembling fingers he jammed the key into the lock. It rattled loosely and would not turn. Cursing, he forced his shaking hands to steadiness, guided the key more carefully into the keyhole. This time it caught, clicked, and the door yielded. Up here at the top of the house the wind noise was demented. The gale buffeted the windows, clattered the shutters, whistled down the chimney, found every crack. Like the landing, the room was lit dimly from the outside. Josef went straight to the cupboard where he knew van Heuten kept the stone.

  The wind screamed across the roofs, hit the window as if intent upon breaking into the room.

  The diamond was not there.

  Frantically he hunted, blinded and deafened by the imperative need to find it. He could not – could not – come this far, take this risk, only to fail once again. The stone was here, somewhere, it had to be.

  The minutes ticked by. To the floor at his feet, abandoning caution, he threw dirty clothes, an untidily coiled length of tarred rope, an unwashed tin mug, a tangled ball of string—

  It had to be here.

  He glared around the room to where another cupboard stood against the wall. Careless of noise, he ran to it, colliding in his haste with a chair and knocking it flying. The cupboard was empty of all but a mouldy loaf and a few hard unappetizing-looking sausages. His eyes picked out in the gloom a chest of drawers. He dragged the drawers open, flung their contents aside.

  Nothing.

  The wind shrieked, derisively.

  And then he saw it in the shifting light – a familiar small box standing in full view on the cluttered mantelshelf. He reached for it with a shaking hand. A moment later the object of his search was in his hand, heavy, cold, wonderfully familiar. He closed his fingers over it, stood for a long moment, eyes closed, perfectly still, the stone clenched in his fist.

  It was then he heard, high above the banshee howl of the wind, Tanya’s piercing scream.

  The staircase was a pit of darkness. The diamond still in his fisted hand he half fell, half leapt down the first steep flight. The child screamed again; no door opened, no voice was raised in question – in this area of the city, indoors or out, a cry for help was best ignored. Josef slammed hard and painfully against a wall, knocking the breath from his body. He regained his balance, gasping for air, continued his breakneck descent. As he slipped and stumbled down the stairs he rammed the diamond into his pocket.

  The foot of the stairs was marked by the lighter square of the open street door. Wind buffeted along the passage, deadly cold.

  He reached the door of the room that he shared with Tanya, hurled himself through it. One glance took in the child’s white body, her terrified eyes, the smears of blood on thighs and belly. Van Heuten’s brutish face as he lifted it to the shrieking Josef was a picture of drunken astonishment. His trousers were around his ankles, hampering his movements. With no thought, Josef let his momentum carry him on across the room. He heard his own voice roaring outrage. Blinded by fury and a terrible guilt, he launched himself upon the much heavier man like an attacking animal, bearing him over by the sheer unexpectedness and ferocity of his assault. Van Heuten’s head cracked hard against the floor. The man squirmed, massively strong, beneath Josef’s lighter weight. Tanya screamed again, shrill and piercingly as the fighting men rolled on to her legs.

  “Swine! Vile animal!” Josef screamed the words in Russian. He beat at the perspiring face beneath him, heard the agonizing crack of bone. With a roar van Heuten gathered himself to throw his assailant off. Tanya scrambled silently into a corner, weeping silently now, collecting the shreds of her torn petticoat around her. Josef fell against the table leg, giving his shoulder a blow that normally might have half paralysed him. Bellowing, and still hampered by his tangled trousers, the seaman came after him, murder in his eyes. Josef rolled away, came up awkwardly on to his feet. The other man tried to stand, tripped and tumbled. For a moment he lay, prone and dazed, at Josef’s feet. In a move that was pure instin
ct Josef reached for the chair that stood by the table, swung it high in the air and brought it down with savage force upon van Heuten’s head. The man collapsed without a sound, sprawled obscenely, half-naked and bloody.

  Josef retched.

  The child sobbed, desolate.

  The door opened.

  “God in heaven.” Bea stood, hands on hips. “What’s this? What in Christ’s sweet name is this?”

  Josef straightened, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. He did not look at the woman; his eyes were upon the shuddering, whimpering child.

  Van Heuten did not move.

  For a long moment the room hung, suspended, in shocked silence. Then Josef moved stiffly to the child. He gathered her to him, rocking her back and forth, muttering her name over and over.

  Bea advanced into the room and with a dispassion that amounted to callousness grasped van Heuten’s hair and turned his face to the light of the lamp. “You’ve made a mess of this one.” Her tone was quite unruffled. “If I was you I’d be away before he wakes up. If he ever does.”

  The words brought Josef back to his senses. He stood up, fighting the weakness of reaction that invaded his muscles and turned them to water. He bent to wrap Tanya in the dirty blanket that lay crumpled upon the mattress. The child stood as if mindstruck, no longer crying, the violent trembling her only movement.

  “Poor little mite.” The woman moved towards her. Tanya drew back, shrinking against Josef. “Can’t say I didn’t warn you, though. Filth!” This last, viciously spoken word she spat at van Heuten’s prone body.

  An almost paralysing calm had settled over Josef. Ignoring the woman he settled the blanket around the child, lifted her frail weight in his arms.

  “You got somewhere you can go?”

  He looked at her then, dark eyes burning in a face bone-white in the lamplight. He did not reply.

  The woman nodded, stood aside. “You’re right. Best I shouldn’t know. Just make sure it’s a good long way away.”

  Holding the still child as he might a baby, Josef walked past her and past the sprawled body at her feet without a glance, out into the windy darkness.

  * * *

  The house on the Herrengracht was ablaze with light. Despite the still gusting wind, the front door stood open and there was every evidence that a well-attended social gathering was in progress. Josef allowed himself a faint, grim lift of relief. All the better. Walking through the night-dark, gale-swept streets he had tried not to think of the consequences if this, the second half of his plan, went as badly as had the first. The sight of the lit windows and queueing carriages cheered him a little; an audience could surely only make his chances of success stronger.

  He entered the house by the simple expedient of marching up the steps and through the open doors with a crowd of elegantly attired arriving guests. He was almost half-way up the staircase before the astonished servants had grasped what was happening.

  “Hey!”

  He neither stopped nor looked round. His body ached, his face smarted where van Heuten’s clawing nails had caught him, the child’s light weight after the walk from the waterfront was leaden. Doggedly he climbed the wide, shallow stairs, the focus for a dozen pairs of astonished eyes.

  “What’s this?” On the landing above, flanked by several openly intrigued guests, stood Sergei Anatov, his harsh voice tense with the same rage that whitened his handsome face to the tone of ivory in the light of the glittering chandeliers.

  Josef neither spoke nor stopped until he reached the landing and stood eye to eye with the man he had come to confront. A liveried servant stepped forward. Sergei Anatov, his eyes flicking from the perilously challenging face of the man before him to the blanket-wrapped child that he carried, held up a restraining hand. For a moment they stood so, the two men, the one resplendent in perfectly cut evening clothes, diamonds sparking in the studs of his shirt and at his snowy cuffs, the other thin, shabby, his face scratched, his eyes exhausted.

  “My dear Sergei—” A slim, blonde young woman in shimmering pink, frill-bedecked, draped and exaggeratedly bustled, her bare shoulders gleaming in the light, leaned to Anatov and tapped his arm playfully with her fan. “How very entertaining! A charade. It is a charade, isn’t it?” Her voice was piercing, her pink mouth smiled, her eyes were sharp and avidly curious as she quite unashamedly craned her neck, trying to see the cowering child’s face. “What are we supposed to do? Is this,” she laughed spitefully, “some kind of Russian game?”

  “It’s no game, Madame.” Josef’s eyes remained fixed steadily upon Anatov. “I’m going to talk to you,” he said, simply and quietly to the other man, “either here in public or elsewhere in private. The choice is yours.”

  For a moment it looked as if Anatov might unleash the anger that simmered beneath his surface calm. Then, with an obvious effort, he spoke softly in Russian. “In the study.”

  “Sergei – Sergei, for Heaven’s sake, what’s—” Madame Anatov’s gay voice died and she stopped, staring dumbfounded at the tableau. Music drifted through the open doors of the drawing room. Very slowly, deep colour rose, mottling her shoulders and throat and staining her cheeks.

  “Look to our guests, my dear.” Anatov’s voice, to his credit, was now totally under control, “I’ll see to this.” More people had gathered around them, the women gowned and gleaming with jewels, the men elegant in evening clothes, their faces without exception lit with the same voracious interest that the girl in pink had shown. Here was something that promised to lighten the boredom in the salons of Amsterdam – something to make a change from the latest love affair, the latest scurrilous gossip. Eyes moved from one face to the other, trying to probe beneath the filthy blanket that hid the child from view.

  “The study,” Anatov said again, tightly, and moved from the crowd, past Josef, to the study door. Looking at no one, Josef followed. As if a spell had been broken, everyone moved then, the guests being ushered into the drawing room by Madame Anatov – though there were some still to send speculatively curious glances towards the study door as it closed sharply behind the two men.

  The study was in darkness, lit only by the glow of firelight. Anatov, his movements brisk with the anger he would not show, lit a lamp that stood upon the wide desk, adjusted it so that its light sent shadows dancing on the walls and drawn curtains. Josef gently laid his silent burden upon a leather couch, tucked a cushion beneath Tanya’s head and folded the tattered blanket tenderly about her. The child’s eyes were open, unblinking. She made no sound. The sight of the small white face hardened his resolution. He must not fail.

  Anatov watched in silence, frowning. “What’s happened to the child?”

  “She’s been – hurt.” Josef’s voice held a faint tremor. “Please – she needs some decent clothes – perhaps also a bowl of milk?”

  “Certainly,” Anatov said coldly, paused, and then added very quietly, “but I doubt that that is all you have come here to demand.”

  The door opened, and the sound of music and laughter swelled as Madame Anatov entered the room, closing the door quietly behind her and leaning upon it, her eyes on the two men.

  Josef straightened. “I have come for two things,” he said. “A loan. And – a favour.”

  “I see. And if I refuse to grant either and have you thrown out on to the street as you deserve?”

  In answer Josef leaned to the child and drew back the blanket from the bright head. What might have been Anatov’s own eyes looked at him, emptily and apparently without understanding. “Your guests seemed very interested in the child,” Josef said quietly. “I very much doubt if you could have us thrown out of the house in such a manner as to arouse no curiosity. And – if you did – it would be an easy matter for me, I think, to discover their names – contact them later—” He let the words fall gently into the silence of the room. Anatov watched him contemplatively. His wife stood tense as a strung wire at the door.

  “To what purpose?” The man’s voice was
even.

  “To – shall we say – satisfy their curiosity. To beg a little help for the child – to explain the sad circumstances of her birth – the shame of her parenthood—”

  “Ah,” Anatov said.

  The woman by the door drew a sharp breath, her eyes on her husband, doubt and question open upon her face. The man ignored her, watched Josef with an unfathomable gleam in his eyes. “I thought we might come to something like this,” he said softly. “Come, explain to us the – shame – of the child’s birth.”

  “It’s a sad story. My poor sister, seduced, ruined, abandoned, died giving birth to the love child of the man who betrayed her. All these years it has taken me to track the scoundrel down, and now – despite the evidence of anyone’s eyes – he repudiates the child, abandons her as he abandoned her poor mother to poverty and death.”

  “All lies.”

  Josef lifted suddenly peaceful eyes. The woman by the door visibly held her breath, watching him. “Of course,” he said, and the woman’s eyelids fluttered, veiling her relief. “But since the truth served for nothing but to get me thrown from your door – what else is there for me but to resort to deceit? It isn’t of my choosing.”

  “Is it not?” Sergei Anatov walked to where another lamp stood upon a small table in a corner by the window. His movements studied, as if unaware of the eyes focused upon him, he lit it, carefully adjusted the wick to his satisfaction. The silence stretched on, punctuated by the muffled sounds of music and laughter, the crackle of a burning log. The man turned. “Money you said. And a favour. What favour?”

  Josef hesitated. Here was the final throw, the gamble upon which all might be won. Or lost. He held out his hand, palm up, to Anatov. The man stood for a moment, absolutely still, his eyes upon the stone that lay in Josef’s open hand. Then very slowly he reached for it, held it between two tapering fingers towards the light. “Where in God’s name did you get this?” Josef shook his head. “You don’t need to know that.”

 

‹ Prev