The Rose Stone

by The Rose Stone (retail) (epub)

  Trudy had had enough of such pussy-footing affectation. “Lord ’ave mercy. You aren’t trying to tell me it’s escaped your notice that the poor young man’s ’ead over ’eels in love with you?”

  Tanya stared. “Don’t be silly.” Her voice was small, childlike, her long fingers clutched again at the ribbons at her throat. “Trudy, you mustn’t joke about such things. It isn’t right.”

  There was a short, offended silence. Then, “Sorry I spoke, Miss.” The nursemaid’s voice was huffy. “Sorry I spoke I’m sure.” She brushed down her apron busily. “Well, if you don’t mind I’d better be off. I’ve to see to Miss Anna yet. She’s bound to be in a pickle—”

  “I – yes – thank you for doing my hair, Trudy. It was very kind of you. No one does it quite like you.”

  Mollified, Trudy smiled. “Want me to lace you before I go?”

  Tanya shook her head. “No. Thank you. I can manage.”

  As the door closed behind the other girl Tanya stared at her own reflection in the mirror. Recollections flitted through her mind like small birds through the branches of a tree. A smile here. A word, an expression there. The brief touch of a hand. Blue and gentle eyes upon her. And – suddenly – Grace and Hermione smiling, exchanging glances. “Why don’t you two go ahead with Trudy and the children? We’ll be along later—”

  Inexplicably in the warm evening, she shivered.

  Outside the window the clatter of hooves, the racket of ironshod wheels, the joyous sounds of arrival.

  She crossed her arms over her breasts, wrapping her fingers about her upper arms, holding herself still. She felt a little giddy. Panic fought with a strange mixture of fear and excitement.

  Fear. Why fear?

  Upon the bed lay starched petticoats, drawers, chemise, corset and the yellow dress that had prompted Trudy’s comment. With odd, stiff movements she stood and began to dress. The house was humming with activity now – voices called, doors slammed, there was laughter and a snatch of song. Tanya herself, in this quiet little room, was walled into an all too familiar cell of silence. She did not herself know why the possibility of Matthew’s devotion to her should arouse such a sudden and disturbing storm of confusion and dread – she only knew, with no reason, that somewhere in the love of that kindly soft-spoken young man there was a terrible threat. A threat that stopped her breath in her throat and keened in her mind like a distant scream.

  Half dressed she stood, looking into darkness, trying to remember.

  “Tanya! Oh, Tanya, do hurry! Papa is here, and Joss and Mr Smithson. Papa has brought Mama the most enormous present. And he’s teasing her terribly – he won’t let her open it until we’re all there – Tanya!” Anna’s voice rose in exasperation, “You aren’t even dressed! Here – let me help you with your laces – and oh, do hurry. There. One petticoat will do. That’s it. Now the dress—” As the lemon muslin fluttered and settled softly about Tanya’s white-stockinged ankles Anna stood back, hushed. “Oh, Tanya, you look truly beautiful. Honest you do. I’ll never be able to look like that—” Her voice was perfectly matter of fact.

  Tanya, with an effort, focused upon the child. “Don’t be silly, little one. Of course you will.” She slipped her feet into soft kid slippers.

  Anna shook her head just a little glumly. “No. I’m not pretty now – growing up isn’t going to make much difference, is it?”

  “What nonsense.” Tanya took her by the shoulders and marched her to the mirror. “Now, see,” she pulled the tow hair up and back softly from the child’s face, “how lovely your eyes are. And how straight and fine your mouth.”

  “I’m miles too thin. And I’ve got big hands and feet. They seem to be getting bigger every day.”

  “No, not big.” Tanya took the girl’s hand, straightened the fingers on the palm of her own. “Long. Artistic. Dear Anna – there are many kinds of beauty – you of all people should know that. You show it in your art. You have a beauty of your own.”

  Anna shrugged, unimpressed.

  “And talent. The boxes are truly beautiful.”

  The words brought them both back to the urgency of the moment. “Will you help me carry one?” asked Anna, a little nervously – she would die, just die, if the mothers did not like them. “I can’t manage both on my own.”

  From downstairs a voice called. “Miss Anatov? Anna? Are you there? Everyone’s waiting—”

  “That’s Matthew! I didn’t know he’d arrived!” Anna picked up one of the precious boxes and flew from the room.

  Tanya followed much more slowly.

  * * *

  Matthew Smithson’s official courtship of Tanya Anatov began that very day, the day of the double birthday party. The dinner was an enormous success, the high spot undoubtedly being the presentation of the various gifts and in particular, to Anna’s delighted embarrassment, of her own efforts – the two shell boxes and their contents. Hermione, on discovering the butterfly brooch that hers held was unfeignedly charmed. “My dear, where ever did you get such a pretty thing? You must have emptied your money box.”

  Anna blushed to the roots of her hair. “I made it. From shells and things, like the boxes.” Her eyes were upon her mother who was sitting, her own box on her lap unopened, watching her friend’s delight with undisguised pleasure of her own.

  “Made it? But – my goodness – Mr Rose, just look at this! The child’s a true artist.” She held out a pudgy hand. The butterfly perched like a living thing.

  Josef took it, studied it, looked at Anna. “It’s lovely, darling. Well done.”

  “Papa got me the pin from the workshop,” Anna explained. “But I wouldn’t let him see what I wanted it for. I wanted it to be a real surprise. Didn’t I, Papa?” Josef nodded thoughtfully and handed the pretty thing back. Anna looked expectantly at her mother, “Mama?”

  Grace looked up questioningly, then exclaimed, “Why, surely not one for me too?” She opened the box, stilled for a moment, then reached a careful hand into it. “Anna!” she said softly. “It’s truly beautiful.”

  “I wanted to make it into a brooch, like Aunt Hermione’s. But I couldn’t. I couldn’t make it fit on to the pin. It turned out too big. Does it matter?” Anna’s voice trailed off. Her eyes were anxious.

  “Of course it doesn’t matter. It’s lovely just as it is.” In Grace’s small hand nestled a dragonfly a few inches long, fashioned of silver wire, gossamer material and tiny, shimmering glass beads.

  “I made it before we came. It took all spring. Papa gave me the bits and pieces. And then he looked after it, so that you wouldn’t see it till today—”

  “All these secrets,” jovial Obadiah laughed.

  Joss reached for the glittering insect. “Why, Anna – it’s one of the prettiest things I’ve ever seen.” He was not looking at the child, did not see the depth of colour that rose in her face at his praise.

  Grace opened her arms to her daughter. “They’re quite the nicest presents that I’ve ever seen. See, Josef, we have a little jeweller in the family.”

  Anna, within the circle of her mother’s arms, watched her father inspect the glittering insect and held her breath. Would he remember? Would he? The promise had been made, casually, months ago—

  Josef looked up. “It seems, little one, that you have certainly earned another visit to the workshop.”

  Delighted, she flew to him. “Oh Papa! When? When can I?”

  He laughed. “As soon as you’re back home, if you’d like.”

  “Oh, yes! Yes, please! You won’t forget? Promise you won’t forget?”

  He shook his head, amused. “I won’t forget.”

  Grace stood up. “Hermione, my dear. Children – shall we take a stroll in the garden and leave the gentlemen to their port?”

  It was later that same evening as twilight dimmed the sky that a strangely tense Matthew cornered Josef and Joss and asked, awkwardly formal, for a private word. They gathered in the small room that was designated the parlour. The others were st
ill in the garden, their voices lifting above the evening birdsong and the distant shingled whispering of the sea. Matthew cleared his throat. “I do apologize if this seems a little clumsy. The truth is that I wasn’t certain which one of you I should speak to – and so decided that the proper thing might be to speak to both.” The stilted words fell into a silence that on Josef’s side was mildly amused, on Joss’s surprised. Two pairs of dark eyes watched Matthew. He struggled on. “You, Mr Rose are, I believe, Miss Anatov’s guardian. You, Joss, her brother—”

  Josef smiled. Joss’s brow furrowed.

  “I wish – to ask – that is, to ascertain – if either of you would have any objection to my – to my addressing my attentions to Miss Anatov, with a view—” He had, in nervous preparation for this moment, partaken rather more liberally than usual of Josef’s port. To his horror his mind had become suddenly and disconcertingly empty and his carefully prepared speech slipped from it like water from a holed bucket. He looked helplessly from one to the other, “with a view to persuading her – to become my wife.”

  Josef, sitting in an inappropriately small floral armchair, steepled his fingers. “Well, now—” he paused, looked at Joss, a twinkle in his eye. He, too, had drunk well of the port and – primed by the astute Grace – had been awaiting this interview all evening. Had Matthew but known it, all enquiries regarding his character and his prospects had already been made, discreetly, via the ladies. “I daresay that we might see our way clear to allowing that – providing Miss Anatov has no great objections of her own. Joss?”

  Joss grunted half-heartedly. His expression was still notably unimpressed, his eyes piercing.

  Matthew was a little unbalanced by the unexpected ease of it. “I, oh, I say. That’s wonderful. Thank you, Mr Rose. Joss—”

  “Don’t thank me yet, lad,” Josef said, smiling. “We’ve only given you permission to engage in the battle – we don’t guarantee the outcome, eh, Joss?” Not for the first time that day he pushed determinedly aside an absurd worm of doubt. How many times must he tell himself that yesterday was yesterday, and its nightmare best forgotten? For indeed sometimes, when recollections of a shambled room, a terrified, bleeding child, the slumped, bloody body of a man, invaded his mind it seemed to him that it must be just that – a dreadful dream, best forgotten, something that had happened to other people in another life, that could have nothing to do with them now. He stood up, slapped Matthew jovially on the shoulder. “And now – before the ladies begin to suspect another round of the port bottle – shall we join them?”

  * * *

  And so it began, the quiet, gentle courtship. Through that long holiday summer, slowly as a flower in the sunshine, Tanya bloomed in the warmth of Matthew’s love. His wooing was a graceful combination of determination and restraint, of courteous persistence and tender care that would have done credit to one much older than he. He did not rush her, yet neither did he allow her to escape his diligent attentions. Where she was, there was he, attentive and entertaining, anticipating her every whim, her servant in all things but one – he would not allow her to dismiss him. They were hardly ever actually alone together – the tenets of middle-class society saw to that – but in company with the children and Trudy – who was often ready to conspire in setting them a little apart – they walked the country lanes, ran barefoot on the tide-wet sands, laughed at Punch and Judy, rode in the pony and trap across the wide, windswept Southern downs and slowly, slowly, his gentle and devoted friendship began to succeed where a more passionate assault would most certainly have failed. He made her laugh. He teased and pampered her. Nothing was too much trouble if Tanya’s happiness or comfort were at stake. He had loved her from the first sight of her lifted, lovely face; having found such treasure, having, incredibly, been given the chance to possess it, he had no intention of letting it slip through his fingers. To his love-struck eyes Tanya’s strangeness, that distanced her from others, was an added spur – if it were harder to make her laugh, to draw her from herself, to gain admittance to that shuttered private place to which she still too often retired, then so much the more rewarding was success.

  Grace watched the progress of the courtship with a lively interest that amounted to undisguised if tacit encouragement. At twenty-one Tanya was, in those days of early wedlock, well on the way to old-maidship – a terrible fate in the eyes of that society. That her first and only admirer should be a young man of such character and standing as the young Matthew Smithson – nephew of Obadiah Smithson, M.P., son of a merchant banker whose interests ranged from railway companies in the United States to sheep farming in Australia – was a bonus indeed. Grace was honestly surprised that such a young man should show such interest in her foster daughter, despite her beauty, and was more than ready to encourage his hopes at every opportunity. Tanya herself, as the weeks passed, changed visibly. She became less tense, less withdrawn. She smiled more often. Her laughter, so rare before, rang through the house like a peal of bells. Matthew demanded little of her, sensing still beneath this outward change that tense timidity that reminded him of the wild deer he had encountered on a trip to Scotland – lovely, timorous, ready to flee at the slightest threatening movement.

  “When I grow up,” Anna said one afternoon, a little wistfully to Alex, “I don’t suppose anyone’ll run around after me like that.”

  Alex snorted. “I should jolly think not!” In Alex’s thirteen-year-old masculine eyes Matthew Smithson was letting the side down badly with all this dilly-dallying.

  It was a quiet Saturday afternoon, very late in August. Most of the adults were resting, the younger children had gone to the beach with Trudy. Tanya and Matthew were in the garden below the window where Anna sat drawing. Tanya, her skirts spread around her in a pastel cloud, was swaying gently to and fro on the swing that Josef had fixed from the apple tree for the children. Matthew sat on the grass, a long-stemmed flower in his hand, watching her.

  Anna smiled.

  “What tommy rot!” Alex turned from the window in disgust.

  The garden gate clicked. Through the bushes Anna saw Joss coming up the path. She slipped from her chair.

  “Where are you going?”

  “Out,” she said with sisterly brusqueness.

  Joss was standing talking to Tanya and Matthew when she caught up with him. He smiled at her, absently, in mid sentence, and tweaked her hair. She took his hand. “Joss, do come for a walk? I haven’t seen you for ages—”

  Joss glanced towards the house. “Well—”

  “Oh, please. Just across the cliff and back? It’ll be the last chance you get. You know you like the view, and we’ll all be home next week.”

  He smiled. “All right, then, little one. Why not?”

  They walked down the lane and along the quiet seafront to where the track lifted over low, chalky cliffs. A light, chill wind blew from the sea, capping the waves with white. Bathing machines were lined like defensive weapons along the seashore. Parasols fluttered in the wind, small figures dashed about the beach below. Two donkeys plodded back and forth, heads down, their small, excited burdens clinging like limpets.

  “Oh, look, there’s Trudy and Michael! I’m sure it’s them – he’s having a donkey ride! Coo-ee!” Anna danced up and down, waving her arms.

  Joss was amused. “They’ll never see you.”

  “I suppose not.” She subsided, fell happily again into step beside him, glancing up at the dark, hawk-like face as she spoke. “What do you think of Matthew?”

  “Think of him?” His voice gave nothing away.

  She tugged at his hand. “You know – Matthew and Tanya.”

  He shrugged slightly.

  “Don’t you like him?” she persisted, surprise in her voice. How on earth could someone not like Matthew?

  “Yes, I like him.” Others of his acquaintance might have stopped there, taking into consideration that particular tone of voice.

  “Well, you don’t sound as if you do.”

  He did not re
ply.

  “Joss?”

  Exasperated, he stopped and looked down at her. She looked back at him, wide-eyed for a moment before an almost comical look of understanding came over her face. “Ah.” She nodded sagely, totally baffled: honestly, grown-ups could be peculiar at times, even this one. “You don’t want to talk about it.”

  He nodded. “That’s right.”

  “Why not?”

  “Anna!”

  “Sorry,” she said hastily, and took his hand again, tugging him along the path. “Come down here. It’s a lovely quiet bit of beach. It’s my favourite – it’s where I collected my stones and shells.”

  He glanced back the way they had come. “Truly, Anna, I think perhaps—”

  “Oh, please! Please! It’s my favourite place – and you’ve never seen it—”

  He shrugged. “All right.” He followed her down the steep, crumbling path, watched as she scuttled across the sand, looking for shells. “Will you be sorry to go home?”

  She lifted a surprised face. Her skin was golden brown, despite the dubious protection of the floppy sunbonnet that she was supposed to wear, but that spent most of its time, as now, dangling by its strings untidily down her back. There was a streak of sandy mud on her white cotton skirt. “Oh, no. Of course not.”

  He raised surprised brows. “But I would have thought—”

  “No! I’ve enjoyed it, of course. Very much. But when we get home Papa is going to let me visit the workshop again – don’t you remember? And—” her eyes were aglow, her face alight with anticipation “—Papa has promised to let me have some bits and pieces to make Christmas presents for Mama and Tanya. Proper things, from the workshop. He really liked the things I made. He says that if I want to I can learn how to do things properly.”

  “And do you?”

  “Oh, yes! More than anything in the world.” She glanced at him, slyly, “Well, almost anything.” She blushed at her own daring. He did not notice the look, nor did he for a moment suspect the significance of the words.