“Where is he? Did anyone see him go?”
“I did.” James, together with his wilting flag, clutched a scrap of paper. He was almost bursting with excitement and self-importance. “He told me to count to two hundred and then give this to you. I’d only reached a hundred and eighty-three—”
Joss, who still managed, despite the heat and the crowds, to look dapper in his check trousers and well-cut grey jacket, took the note and read it, his dark brows drawing together, the austere line of his mouth hardening.
“What’s the matter? Joss – what is it?” Josef reached a hand to Joss’s shoulder, “Is something wrong?”
“Boris is gone.”
“Gone? How can he be gone? He was here a minute ago.” Vaguely Josef looked around, as if expecting to see the bright head and laughing eyes bob out of the thinning crowd.
Joss shook his head. “He’s gone.” As so often in moments of emotion, his voice was absolutely expressionless, his accent strong. The rest of the party, puzzled, looked at him and waited. Joss stood for a long time staring at the note he held in his hand.
“Well?” prompted Josef uneasily, at last.
Joss lifted his head. His face was sharp with anger. “I have to apologize for my ungrateful brother. He has chosen to leave us.”
“Leave us?” Grace echoed blankly. “Whatever can you mean?”
In reply Joss lifted the note. “‘I thank you all for your kindness and care,’” he read evenly, “‘and I apologize if I distress you in this. Uncle Josef, I know a desk and a pen are not for me. Give them to Josef. I go to be a soldier. I ask you not to be angry. Pray God for me. Yours in affection and thanks. Boris.’”
There was a moment’s unbelieving silence.
“The whippersnapper!” Josef said, more in amazement than anger.
“Deary me!” said Sally, a scandalized hand to her mouth. “Well, deary me! There’s a thing!” Trudy nudged her, hard, to silence.
“The little devil!” Josef said, and then, suddenly and surprisingly, laughed. He turned to Joss, slapped him on the shoulder. “Well, Joss my boy – it’s just you and me, eh? Since your brother it seems is willing – anxious indeed – to exchange a place in Rose and Company for a dashing red coat—”
“If he wished to do this he should not have done it so. It shows ingratitude and thoughtlessness. Again I apologize for him.” Josef’s voice was still grim, but his anger was more for the manner of the action than for the action itself.
“Well I’ll say one thing for Mr Boris,” Sally’s stage whisper, intended for Trudy’s ear alone, reached them all in an unexpected lull in the noise around them, “he’s goin’ to look a treat in one o’ them uniforms. A real treat!” And as tension broke into laughter the martial drums and trumpets that had lured the restless Boris sounded again in the distance, a faint, challenging call to arms.
Chapter Seven
Sally was right – Boris did indeed make a striking figure in his uniform. On the day he came to Bayswater to tell the family of his regiment’s posting to India, the boys were goggle-eyed with envious admiration and the females of the household, one and all, were more than favourably impressed. Even Joss softened towards this scapegrace brother of his.
“I’ll have a stripe soon,” said Boris, confident as ever in his own abilities.
“You’ll be a brigadier in no time.” Joss’s voice was sardonic, but his expression softened as it did for few others.
“Oh, Boris – India! You’ll be careful?” Tanya’s lovely face was worried. “You’ll take care of yourself?”
Boris laughed and settled his plumed shako upon his head at a particularly rakish angle. “Of course I will! And if I can’t—” he saluted her with a light kiss upon her cheek “—I’ll get some lovely lady to do it for me. Who can resist the romantic, exiled son of a Russian Count?” He cocked his head on one side, “Even if he is only a lowly private.”
He was gone before Christmas. In the spring they heard from him, a rambling, almost illegible letter, the grammar atrocious, full of jokes about the army, the officers, the heat and the lice – Boris Anatov had obviously – at least for the time being – found his niche in life.
* * *
So, indeed, had his brother. Early in 1888 Joss had persuaded Josef to allow him to visit South Africa, to make personal contact with some of the smaller suppliers. Whilst a power struggle raged in the diamond fields between the two giants, Cecil Rhodes and ‘Barney’ Barnato, there was little or no control over the price of diamonds and, as uncertainty reigned and prices fluctuated wildly, Joss knew that there was a place for a shrewd businessman and his money. A man on the spot could take advantage of the situation, and Joss acquired some very good stones at rock bottom prices. These he shipped to London, some to be sold at a profit, others to be used in the Hatton Garden workshops. Whilst in South Africa he also, on his own initiative, invested some of the company’s money in shares in a small, unproductive and unquestionably ill-run claim near the Kimberley mine. The claim was difficult to work and was making little or no money. Three months later the shares were at a premium as Rhodes and Barnato fought for control of Kimberley. Josef, whose first reaction when he had heard of Joss’s purchase of the apparently worthless shares had verged on the volcanic, now found himself the possessor of an unexpected and handsome profit and the recipient of congratulations on his shrewdness. Over a celebration lunch in the snug, discreetly opulent dining room where the more favoured clients of Rose and Company were sometimes entertained, he beamed with proprietary pride at the young man he was coming to regard almost as a son of his own blood. They had been examining the batch of stones that Joss had had shipped from South Africa, and the clouded, glass-like gems gleamed dully in the heavy-shaded light. Josef smiled. “More champagne, I think.” He nodded, smiling, to the waiter who stood attentively beside his chair. “Another magnum, Thomas, if you please. And then you may leave us. I’ll ring if I need you.”
“Yes, Sir. Thank you, Sir.” The white-gloved Thomas took a second bottle of champagne from the great ice-filled bucket, opened it with a flourish.
Josef took it from him. He leaned across the table to refill Joss’s glass, and both men watched the silver-gold wine stream, sparkling, into the tall, elegant glass. As the door shut quietly behind the manservant Josef filled his own glass, picked it up and lifted it in toast towards Joss. “To a very successful trip.”
Joss acknowledged the words with a small, graceful smile, and sipped his drink.
Josef’s eyes were glinting with mischief. “And here,” he added, innocently, lifting the glass again, “here’s to Rose and Company’s new Financial Director. Let’s hope we can all work with him without too much trouble.”
Joss’s narrow hand had stilled utterly, half-way to an answering salute. “I beg your pardon?” he asked of the silence, carefully polite. “A new Financial Director? I didn’t know—”
“But yes. Of course. The company is expanding. We need someone – don’t you agree?” He could not keep up the joke. He had drunk the better part of the first bottle of champagne – and that after several generous glasses of the dry Madeira that he so loved – and was now feeling expansively and happily relaxed. He laughed. “To Mr Josef Anatov,” he said, “new and very highly regarded Financial Director of Rose and Company.”
Joss did not move, nor, for a moment, did his expression change. Then, within his dark eyes, a sudden gleam of excitement kindled. “I?”
“But of course, you! Who else? You’re just what this company needs, my boy. Just what I need – young, energetic, astute—”
“I – don’t know what to say or how to thank you.” Joss’s voice was very quiet.
“Then don’t bother. It’s actually simple selfishness, and in fairness I shouldn’t be thanked for that.” Josef laughed again, pleased, and downed his glass of wine. “You know better than most what a donkey I am when it comes to matters of finance. It was fate, my boy, that sent you to me. Fate and nothing less!
Now I will have more time for the things that I really enjoy—” He reached again for the champagne bottle.
Joss, absently, covered the top of his glass with his spread hand and shook his head a little. “No more, thank you.” His eyes, despite the small spark of excitement, were distant, veiled windows practised at disguising the subtleties behind them. Then, suddenly, as the full import of what Josef had said registered in his mind, he smiled brilliantly and his expression was more warmly happy than Josef had ever seen it. “Thank you, Josef. Thank you.” The simple words were heartfelt.
Josef brushed the thanks aside with a waved hand. “I tell you – it’s pure selfishness. To give me more time to spend in the workshops—” With the success that the company had achieved as the Rose name in jewellery design became better and better known in the exclusive circle that comprised their customers, the Hatton Garden workshops had long since been expanded to include those rooms where Josef and Grace had spent the early years of their married life.
Joss reached for the paper of uncut diamonds that lay between them, picked up a particularly fine, large, pebble-like stone and held it to the light between long, thin fingers. Josef’s hand lay upon the snow-white tablecloth, the thumb darkly marked.
“Would you never consider practising again your old craft?” the younger man asked, idly curious, half his mind still busy about its own affairs, his eyes still upon the caged light of the stone. “Doesn’t a gem like this ever make your fingers itch? I should have thought it must.”
The silence that followed the words had about it the quality of shock. Puzzled, Joss glanced at Josef. The older man’s face was suddenly closed, like a door slammed shut and latched against intrusion. “No,” he said.
Joss lifted a shoulder. “What – never? Alone you cut and polished the stone upon which this company is founded, did you not?”
“Where did you hear that?”
The harsh tone raised the younger man’s eyebrows in astonishment. “But Josef – everyone knows. Well,” he paused, his sharp brain, as always and almost without volition weighing fact and figure, possibility and probability, “that’s the story most tell, anyway. Why Josef, you know how our small world gossips!”
“Yes. I know.” Josef, slowly, lifted his glass to his lips. The laughter had gone entirely from his face. “And what else do they say of me?” he asked, softly.
Joss, alerted, considered carefully. “They say,” he said at last, “that you – as so many of us – escaped from persecution in Russia – and that you brought with you—” he paused “—rough goods of enormous value. One stone, they say. There is, of course, speculation as to its origin—” He left a small, enquiring silence, to which Josef responded not at all, then half-shrugged. “It is said too that you carried with you into exile the tools of your trade. Indeed, we have all seen them, have we not – displayed there in the workshop? And that with these and with your skill and courage you created a wonderful stone. A stone that, ironically perhaps, then travelled back to Russia.” He paused, waiting for a moment before, his rare curiosity aroused by the expression on the other man’s face, he asked, “Is this not, then, the truth?”
Across Josef’s face passed a spasm of pain so acute that the younger man made an instinctive, swift, conciliatory gesture with his hand, quickly stilled. “It’s – true, yes.” Josef said at last, his voice grating in the sombre quiet, “At least—” For how long had he needed to speak of it? To excuse, explain, placate that pain of conscience that each sight of Tanya inflicted? His eyes were upon the unremarkable-looking diamonds, in the lines of his face an anguish that gave pause even to his companion who knew more than most of pain. “In Amsterdam,” he said, very quietly, “I—” He stopped. Closed his eyes. “Amsterdam.” The very tonelessness of the word bespoke an intolerable pain.
“What? What happened in Amsterdam?” Joss asked very gently.
There was a long, long silence. Josef sat with bowed head, his gaze unblinking upon the diamonds.
“Josef? What happened in Amsterdam?”
The older man lifted his head. His face was shuttered. He shook his head. “Nothing. Of course. Nothing happened in Amsterdam. Except that your damned relatives turned your sister and me away—”
“As they did us. Yes. I know the story.”
Josef’s face was haggard even in the shaded lights. “Their fault,” he said, softly and violently, as if to himself. “All of it. Their fault.”
“All of what?”
Josef poured more champagne, drank it with no enjoyment, like a man dying of thirst. Then he picked up one of the stones and held it in the hardened palm of his hand, rocking it a little. “Poor Tanya,” he said. “My poor little Tanya.”
Dark brows lowered in puzzlement. “It wasn’t your fault that the family wouldn’t help you.”
The quiet, sympathetic tone brought a bitter smile. “No. Of Course not. Not my fault. But – other things—”
“What other things?”
The temptation to confess at last was all but overwhelming – share his pain and guilt with another, to receive absolution from the young man with whom he felt such affinity. He lifted his head. “Joss, do you believe that good can ever come out of evil?”
Joss shrugged in his characteristic way. “I suppose – yes – sometimes.” He waited.
“Sacrifices have to be made, do they not? Sometimes.” Josef’s face was intense, his consonants a little slurred.
Joss shook his head. “Josef. You must know that I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Tanya,” Josef said, very low. “That accursed stone. All this—” He gestured at the expensively appointed room.
A faint, puzzled frown had appeared on the younger man’s dark face. “Are you saying,” he asked, slowly, “that there’s some sort of connection? Between my sister and – the Shuvenski?”
Sudden alarm bells rang, loudly and very clearly in Josef’s slightly befuddled brain. What in God’s name had he been about to do? He laughed unconvincingly, a sound that did little to ease the odd tension that had unexpectedly grown between them. “Connection? Of course not. How could there be? Truly, I shouldn’t drink champagne at lunch time. It makes me maudlin!” The bluffness of his manner was almost convincing. Joss watched him, the intent frown still creasing his brow. Josef stood up, swaying a very little. “Well – back to work, eh?” He pulled his gold watch from his pocket and consulted it. “Good Lord! Is that the time? Grace and little Anna will be here any minute. The child has pestered me into taking her to the workshops. Funny little thing she is – I can’t think what she believes she’ll find to interest her there.”
Joss said nothing. The level gaze had not faltered, neither had he smiled. Now, however, he stirred, stood and smiled and the peculiar tension was gone. “I’ll see you later then?”
“Yes, yes. Come to my office at four. We’ll all take tea together.”
For a long moment after the young man had left the room Josef stood, his hands white-knuckled upon the back of the high chair behind which he stood, gazing into the void into which he had so nearly thrown himself. He was sweating. Never again. Never, never again would he ever think of Amsterdam, let alone allow himself to mention it. To think that he had almost – he closed his eyes, took a long, shaking breath. In his mind’s eye, Joss’s dark, intelligent, guarded face watched him, a dawning and potentially terrifying question in the eyes. Josef shook his head sharply, reached for his jacket. Not a young man, that, to find forgiveness easy. And who could blame him? Josef strode to the door. “You may clear away now, Thomas.”
“Yes, Sir. Thank you, Sir.”
Heavily Josef mounted the shallow polished marble stairs that led to his office. The conversation with Joss still nagged in his head. Fool, he told himself savagely. To have roused his curiosity. To have invited him to make the connection between – he opened his office door.
“Papa! Papa! Where have you been? We’ve been waiting for absolutely ages, and the cab’s waiti
ng—” Anna launched herself at him, velvet ribbons flying. “Can we go to the workshops? Can we go now?”
“Anna! Where did you leave your manners today?” Grace, however was smiling, her tone indulgent.
Anna swung on her father’s hand. He ruffled her hair. “Of course, my dear. Come along.”
“I want to see it all – absolutely all. Can I see them make a necklace? And can I see the enamellers?”
“‘May’, Anna.” Grace’s voice was sharper this time. “‘May I see—’”
Josef held up his hand to forestall another torrent. “You may see everything that we can pack into an hour. So – come along. My dear—” he offered his arm to his wife.
Ten minutes later they arrived in the busy thoroughfare of Hatton Garden. Anna, to her mother’s exasperation and her father’s somewhat abstracted amusement, had hardly stopped talking long enough to draw breath. “—and most of all I want to see the man that draws—” she finished as she tumbled from the cab.
“And so you shall.” Josef escorted them into the workshops. Grace’s face softened as she looked around her. These rooms – so familiar still despite their different use – held many memories.
“Here we are—” Josef pushed open a door. “We’ll start here, where the work starts.” He smiled down at Anna. “‘The man who draws’, as you so rightly called him, my dear. Good afternoon, Thompson.”
“Afternoon, Sir.” The young man so addressed made to scramble from his stool and was waved back to it by a smiling Josef. “No, no my boy. Don’t let us disturb you. This is my daughter, Anna. Would you mind if she watched you for a while?”
The young man grinned engagingly at the bright-eyed Anna. “Not a bit, sir.”
Anna very nearly got no further on her tour, so bewitched was she by the sure, delicate draughtsmanship, the intricate fragility of the design upon which the young man was working. But at last she allowed her father to tear her away, and was soon being instructed in the mysteries of the issues office, with its stores of precious materials, its little nondescript white paper packs of beautifully cut and polished gems. They then moved on to the scalloped workbench of the chief mounter, his leather apron spread across his knees to catch any valuable scraps that might fall. He was working, surrounded by the tools of his trade – tools so apt to their task that they had not been improved upon for centuries – upon a heavy gold bracelet which was, Josef told Anna, to be set with rubies, the rarest stones in the world.
The Rose Stone Page 13