The Rose Stone

by The Rose Stone (retail) (epub)

“Why didn’t you answer? You must have heard me calling.” Her older brother, at nine as strong and stocky as a young tree, towered above her.

  She turned her head, looking away from him. “I was doing something else.”

  “You still have to answer when a person calls you.” The words were truculent. She felt the familiar frisson of irritation that any contact with Alex was likely to produce in her.

  “That’s only for grown-ups,” she said subversively, knowing very well the provocation she offered. “I don’t have to answer you if I don’t want to.”

  He glowered. “We’re waiting for you to come and play.”

  She shook her head, drew her knees up to her chin. “I don’t want to.”

  “We’re going to play French and English.” His tone was wheedling, the necessity to have an extra participant to even up the teams overcoming his ruffled temper. “You like French and English, you know you do.”

  “Not with the silly Smithsons,” she said with a dismissive sniff. “That Christopher’s such a ninny. He’ll get knocked over, and he’ll cry and he’ll run and tell his Mama and we’ll all get into trouble. Especially me.”

  Since this was indeed exactly the chain of events triggered off by the last occasion that they had played the boisterous and all-but-forbidden game with the visiting trio of Smithson boys Alex, never usually at a loss for words was, for the moment, nonplussed.

  “You shouldn’t have pushed him so hard,” he said lamely.

  With one of those swift changes of mood that so characterized her, Anna giggled. Christopher Smithson was a year her senior and at least twice her weight, a pampered, plump mother’s boy with an adenoidal voice whose corn-coloured, carefully arranged curls and band-box clothes always put her in mind of an overlarge and rather silly-looking doll. The remembered sight of his wrecked appearance at the end of that riotous game more than made up for the painful slapping she had received from Nanny Brown for being the cause of it. Nanny Brown thought little girls should present a civilized example to the young gentlemen around them, not take them on and occasionally even beat them at their own games. Anna heartily detested Nanny Brown, who had joined the household after the recent move; and she had more than good reason to believe that the feeling was mutual.

  The dragonfly swooped again, darting through the dappled shadows. Both children watched it.

  “Come on, Anna. Be a sport.”

  “Nanny Brown won’t let us play French and English anyway.”

  “She isn’t there. She’s gone for tea and a gossip with Nanny Smithson. There’s only Trudy. She won’t stop us.”

  Tempted, Anna scrambled to her feet. Her white stockings were grass-stained, her pinafore smeared with mud. Her brother looked at her with something approaching admiration and whistled – an accomplishment he had only just managed to acquire. “You’re filthy!”

  Anna shrugged.

  “Anna? Alexis?” Tanya’s clear voice, unmistakably accented, calling from the terrace at the back of the house.

  The children exchanged glances. “That’s torn it,” Alex said in disgust. “If they’re all back then we won’t be able to play after all. Honestly, Anna, you are a pain – if you’d just come when I called you—”

  Anna, hardly listening, had stooped to pick a feathery spray of grass. She stood quite still, studying it, moving it so that the laden head bowed and danced.

  “Come on,” her brother nudged her roughly, “they’re waiting.”

  Irritated again she pulled away from him.

  Alex snatched at the stem of grass. “Come on, I say—”

  Suddenly scarlet with fury, she turned on him. He took an entirely involuntary and slightly humiliating step backwards; Anna’s temper was something for even him to reckon with. She hung on to it by a thread.

  “Temper cat!” he taunted her with childish malice, seeing the efforts she made to control herself, but nevertheless judiciously poised for flight. “I’ll tell Nanny. You know what she says about young ladies and their tempers – you’ll get another good hiding.”

  Still she managed to restrain herself. “Tell tale tit, tongue shall be slit,” she chanted, pulling a ferocious face.

  “Baby!” he riposted. “You’ll be crying in a minute. You’re always crying—”

  “I am not!”

  “You are!”

  “I’m not!”

  “You are,—”

  “Alex! Anna! What are you doing?” A tall slim figure hurried towards them, fine white muslin blowing as she moved. At eighteen, Tanya Anatov had fulfilled all the promise of her childhood and was a truly lovely young woman. Her face, the wide brow furrowed now with concern, was pale and pointed as an elf’s, the great, oddly expressionless eyes fringed with long fair lashes. Her rare smile was like sunshine. “Your Mama and Papa are back. They wait on the lawn for you. Oh – Anna!” She lifted narrow, frail-boned hands in genuine shock, “You are so dirty!”

  Anna shrugged exaggeratedly, feigning an indifference that in fact, at the thought of her mother, had suddenly deserted her. Nanny Brown was not the only one who disapproved of unladylike behaviour. More than anything in the world she wanted to please Mama. But, so often, she found herself doing exactly the opposite.

  Tanya, disregarding her own dress, dropped to one knee and began anxiously to brush Anna down with her hands. Anna suffered the attentions with good grace. After Mama and Papa she loved Tanya best in the world.

  “There. I think that’s a little better. Take your pinafore off – at least your dress is clean underneath. I’ll come back for it later.” Tanya used the discarded pinafore to rub the worst of the mud from the small buttoned boots. Then she folded the apron, laid it upon the grass for later recovery and stood up, smiling a little. “You are almost presentable. Smooth your hair – so – that’s right. Now, come see what Mr and Mrs Smithson have brought for you.”

  “Oh! Is it a birthday present? Is it? May I have it now, do you think?” Anna fairly danced beside the taller girl, holding her hand. Alex, still put out, glumly brought up the rear. Alex found anyone’s birthday apart from his own a bore.

  Tanya smiled. “I don’t know. Let’s see.”

  On the small lawn that led from the terrace at the back of the tall, narrow town house Grace and Josef Rose waited. Their other children were already grouped around them – six-year-old James, four-year-old Ralph and baby Michael asleep in his pram in the September sunshine. The visiting Smithson boys and their parents made up the party. Josef, as he so often did, found himself surveying the scene around him with a tinge of superstitious disbelief. Could this all indeed be his? Could his dreams have come true so absolutely? Or was it all some kind of monstrous joke played by a malignant fate that lurked somewhere, waiting to take it all from him? Behind him was the lovely house for which he and Grace had worked so hard and waited so long. In this, as in so many things, Grace had been right. She it was who had found the house: in one of the rather less fashionable squares of Bayswater it stood on the corner, had a fair-sized garden and was a little removed from the noisiest thoroughfares. Yet it was within easy and pleasant walking distance, through the park, of the new shop in Piccadilly. Each morning with clockwork regularity he followed that route – along the Serpentine to Hyde Park Corner and thence to Piccadilly; and hardly ever did he fail upon his arrival to stop for a moment, survey the small, expensively tasteful shop-front and wonder at the strange twists of fortune that had transformed Josef Rosenberg, penniless and desperate refugee, thief, possible murderer – he had never attempted to discover if van Heuten were alive or dead, nor did he ever intend to – into Josef Rose, naturalized Englishman, family man, respected, wealthy, a jeweller patronized by the rich and the titled, dealer in precious stones.

  He glanced at Grace, who was gently scolding James for some slip in etiquette regarding their young guests. Here, astonishingly, was the rock upon which his success and his content rested. Who might have guessed, all those years ago, at the strength, the foresight, th
e good sense that resided beneath that gentle and self-effacing exterior? He had married for convenience and discovered boundless energy, sagacity and – most amazing of all – devoted love. He had no doubts as to the debt he owed her. Grace it had been who had supported him in those early, difficult days, who had shown him how to harness his energies, his resources and his talents to such good effect that ten years had seen the firm establishment of a family business of repute and solid worth. This house was but another step upon a ladder he had once despaired of climbing. Not that it had been easy. He had worked hard – very hard – and Grace with him. She it was who had sat night after night, a baby often asleep beside her, an older child in bed in the room next door, helping him with accounts and time-consuming paperwork that his labours during the day and her duties to the growing children precluded their doing in the daylight hours. Stubbornly she had refused to squander any of their growing savings upon help. The time would come, she would say, and very pleased she would be when it did – but money made money and spending it made nothing, so work she would until such time as they were secure and established. The bitter lesson she had learned in watching her father’s ruin and disgrace now stood her in good stead. She had never despaired, never faltered, and her faith in him had spurred Josef to greater ambition than he had known he owned. Step by step their objectives had been achieved – culminating in the opening of the Piccadilly shop and the buying of this house. Now at last, and with enormous pleasure, he saw her in the situation that was hers by right; settled in a home that she ruled with a firm but gentle hand, with an adequate staff to aid her, her children growing around her. This was the ideal of the age – and neither of them saw any reason to question it. As for their rather more newly acquired aspirations – evidence of an advance in them stood here upon the lawn with them: Grace’s small coup in engaging the interest and affection of Hermione Smithson, wife of an M.P. and stalwart, as was Grace, in the Society for the Relief of the Deserving Poor, might well have been envied by a more practised social climber than she.

  Grace, sensing Josef’s eyes upon her, lifted her head to him and smiled slightly before turning back to their son. She looked a little tired. For a moment Josef’s thought strayed to the new life that stirred now within her. Unlike the others, Michael’s birth had not been easy. He could not but wonder if he had been wise to allow her determination to conceive another child so early—

  “Where’s the birthday girl?” Jovial Obadiah Smithson, M.P., beamed around the garden. Tucked under one arm he held a large, prettily-ribboned box. “Have to be goin’ soon, you know – business to attend to – like to see the little ’un before we leave.” Obadiah had fathered three boys, a fact of which he was inordinately proud, but nevertheless he had a man’s weakness for the frills and furbelows of little girlhood, and spoiled Anna as if she were his own.

  “Here they are.”

  Josef looked up at his wife’s words. Coming through the small shrubbery in the centre of the garden were his eldest two children, flanking Tanya’s tall, slim figure. As always, at the sight of her, his peace of mind – so apparently assured, so fragile in fact – shattered. No matter how much he loved and cared for her he could not escape the fact that she was a constant reminder of the ugly past, the keeper of his unquiet conscience. That no one else in the world was a party to their never-mentioned secret helped not at all – like a flaw in an otherwise perfect jewel she – lovely, sweet-natured, vulnerable – was the blemish upon his life. He could not look upon her without guilt. He had told no one the true story of his acquisition of the stone that was now known as the Shuvenski Diamond. Even Grace believed that, in trouble with the secret police, he had fled Russia and smuggled the diamond with him. The Amsterdam Anatovs, in what they saw as their own interests, had been more than ready to back that story. As for Tanya herself – over the years her stable surroundings and the companionship and affection offered to her by Grace Rose, who though in fact only ten years her senior had happily accepted and successfully filled the role of foster mother, had apparently healed the worst wounds in the delicately unbalanced mind. She appeared to have forgotten the terrible events of her eighth year, together with the happy childhood that had preceded it. Yet still there was a strangeness about her, an aura of pitiful melancholy that disquieted others and distanced her from those about her. Most people – even, indeed, Grace herself – assumed her to be a little lacking in wits. Josef knew well that this was not so. She still suffered nightmares, both waking and sleeping, of that he was certain; she had simply learned to curb her screams. The knowledge racked him. Never by word or deed did she indicate to him that she remembered what had happened, or if she did that she in any way blamed him. On the contrary, it seemed to him that her occasional deep bouts of depression appeared to be turned entirely against herself. Yet she was, and always had been, wonderful with the children and they, accepting her unquestioningly, as children will, adored her. Companions of her own age she neither had nor apparently missed. She walked now, grave and graceful, holding Anna’s hand, towards the waiting group, and not for the first time Josef felt a surge of shame at his own faint and unjust antipathy.

  Anna, excited, broke away from Tanya and dashed forward, then – seeing the expression upon her mother’s face – stopped short and dropped a hasty but creditable curtsey.

  Her mother smiled.

  Obadiah Smithson bent to her, beaming. “Happy birthday, my dear.”

  She pecked at his proffered cheek. “It isn’t until tomorrow, actually.” She hated people to get things wrong.

  “I know, I know – but seeing that I’m busy tomorrow, and can’t get to your shindig,” with a flourish he presented the brightly-beribboned box to her, “I brought my small offering along today.”

  “Oh – may I open it now? May I?” She looked pleadingly at her parents. “May I, Papa?”

  Josef glanced at his wife. “My dear?”

  Grace hesitated, her face solemn, a twinkle in her eye. “It is a rule of the house, is it not, Mr Rose, that presents shall not be opened before the proper occasion.”

  “Oh – Mama – please!”

  Her mother’s plain-featured face lit with a smile. In her blue satin afternoon gown, stylishly trimmed with dark green satin ribbons and insets, a small dark green bonnet embellished with a cluster of violets perched upon her tightly-curled hair, she looked to her daughter the very image of elegance. Beside her, large Mrs Smithson in a fuss of red velvet and gaudily flowered satin looked positively vulgar. Anna was suddenly aware of her own slightly wild appearance, but for once her mother seemed willing to overlook impropriety for the sake of occasion. Grace inclined a neat head to Obadiah Smithson. “What do you think, Mr Smithson?”

  “My dear Mrs Rose, of course the child must open it. Indeed, it would spoil my pleasure if she did not.”

  Anna needed no further prompting. In her haste she fumbled with the ribbon that tied the box, tangled it into a knot.

  “Tch, tch, Anna, why must you always be so impatient? Here – give it to me.” Gently her mother took it from her, untangled the ribbon and took the lid off the box. “There.”

  Revealed lying in a nest of tissue paper was a plump-faced doll, the size of a human baby, dressed daintily and expensively in christening gown and bonnet. Anna regarded it as much in awe as in pleasure. Tentatively she put out a small, dirty hand.

  “I should think not, Miss!” Her mother’s voice was sharp, “What a dirty paw it is! Whatever next? Don’t dare to touch the pretty thing until you’ve washed your hands!”

  Anna withdrew the offending hand, stared at the doll, who stared back with flat, blue, unimpressed eyes.

  “Have you left your manners at the bottom of the garden with your apron?” Sharp eyes – sharp tongue – Mama, whatever the appearances, missed absolutely nothing.

  Anna flushed. “N-no Mama. Thank you very much, Mr Smithson. Mrs Smithson.” She reached dutifully to kiss them, hoping fervently that Mama would not insist that she ex
tend the thanks to the rest of the Smithson family. She wouldn’t kiss awful Christopher, birthday present or no.

  Grace, however, was satisfied. She turned briskly, offered her arm to Hermione Smithson. “Before you go, Mrs Smithson, do please come in and inspect our new pianoforte – I believe you play very well. We plan a musical evening quite soon – I’d rather hoped that you might join us. Anna!” This over her shoulder to Anna who, gingerly, had reached into the box to lift the doll’s lacy white skirt.

  Anna froze. For goodness’ sake – did Mama really have eyes in the back of her head, as Trudy said Nanny Brown had?

  “Don’t touch that until you’ve washed your hands. Go with Trudy now. Give the doll to Tanya fora moment.” She resumed then, without taking a breath, her conversation with Mrs Smithson. “I was saying just the other day to Mr Rose how pleasant it would be—”

  “Run along, poppet.” Josef tousled Anna’s already untidy hair. This, for no reason that he could clearly define, was his favourite child, named for the wife he had lost in another life, another world. He followed the children and the nursemaid across the lawn to the small terrace. Once there something impelled him to look back. Tanya, alone, had seated herself upon the grass, her skirts spread about her like the petals of a flower. As he watched she took the doll carefully from its box. Something in her attitude unexpectedly twisted Josef’s heart. She held the doll for a moment, sitting herself as still as a carved image then, very slowly, she enfolded it in her arms, holding it as she might a real child, in the crook of her arm, her head bowed. Pain moved within Josef, blurred his eyes.

  “Mr Rose? Our visitors are leaving.”

  He turned. “I’m coming.”

  * * *

  Anna’s birthday party had for weeks been the subject of much anticipation and in no way did it disappoint. With the fine weather holding, the youngsters were banished to the garden for the more boisterous games, whilst the adults partook of tea and sandwiches indoors. A gaggle of nursemaids and nannies sat beneath the chestnut tree and watched, fondly or otherwise, their various charges as they stampeded about the garden playing Hunt the Slipper, What’s the Time, Mr Wolf? and other energy-consuming games; then they too repaired for tea in the kitchen, whereupon Armageddon was let loose as the young male guests, left almost unsupervised, took the opportunity afforded by breaks between games to even up old scores or, here and there, to create new ones, and rolled around on the grass kicking, biting and punching whilst the girls, by and large, gathered their pretty skirts and fled. By the time tea arrived many a white sailor suit was grubby and grass-stained, many a pair of stockings torn. On the whole, Anna reflected, presiding over a gargantuan feast of sandwiches, cakes and lemonade, the occasion was going remarkably satisfactorily.