The Rose Stone
Page 24
“Nothing I’d like better.” Over Louisa’s shoulder Anna caught Alice’s cold eyes upon her. Mischievously she sent her her sweetest smile. “I’ll just tell Papa and Joss where we’re going.”
She approached the three men, Joss, Josef and Boris, quietly. None of them noticed her coming. Joss was speaking, Josef and Boris both listening intently. Boris stood easily, the cruelly empty sleeve tucked into his pocket, nothing in his stance encouraging sentiment or sympathy. Anna watched him for a moment. He caught her eye and smiled a little.
“—always utterly unpredictable in time of war,” Joss was saying. “Consolidated are about to drop like a stone, or so I hear. Yet – strictly between ourselves – the new S.A. Mines look to be set to shoot up. And of course with today’s news and rumours of peace—” He stopped suddenly and looked sharply at Josef. “Josef – before we eat – might I take advantage of your new toy? I’ve just remembered that I shall be busy all day tomorrow – there’s someone I should like to contact.”
Josef seemed to shake himself from some abstraction. “My new – oh, the telephone. Yes, of course.”
Anna laid a hand upon her father’s arm. “Louisa and I should like to pop upstairs and take a peek at the children. Have we time? Papa,” her voice changed a little, in some consternation, “are you all right?”
He regained his breath, forced a smile. “Yes, my dear. Of course I am. By all means visit the girls. We have five minutes to the dinner gong.”
Upstairs on the nursery floor the sounds of the party could still be faintly heard. Anna paused for a moment, remembering. Then they entered the night nursery and were engulfed in a breathless flood of excited words.
“Have you seen the fireworks? Aren’t they wonderful? Is it eight o’clock yet? Isn’t Grandpa clever to give Daddy a party on a night when there are fireworks? Did he know there would be? Can you hear the people singing? Are you going to sing? Grandpa has a piano and he says I may learn to play it. Doesn’t he, Mama? I can sing, too—” Sophie, bright and pretty as her mother and woefully over-excited opened her mouth. Her mother shut it for her with a small spread hand.
“No, thank you dear. Your little sister is asleep.”
“She’s always asleep. Singing doesn’t wake her.”
“Well, don’t let’s take the chance, eh? Come on – say hello to this nice new aunty and then snuggle down to sleep like a good girl.”
“Hello,” Sophie said.
“Hello.”
The child lifted a small, soft face and Anna kissed her rosy cheek. Sophie held out a tattered rag doll. “Say hello to Podge.”
“Hello, Podge.”
The little girl beamed. “Can I have some blancmange?” she asked, beguilingly.
Louisa came to the rescue. “No you certainly may not.” From downstairs, faint against the continuing sounds of festival from outside came the sound of the dinner gong. “Off you go to sleep!” She tucked the child in then followed the smiling Anna out of the room. “She can be an absolute terror! Boris says she ought to go on the stage. I don’t know where she gets it—” She stopped as from behind the closed door a high little voice called.
“Mummy?”
“Yes?”
“Is Daddy all right?”
“Of course.”
“Does his poor arm hurt him?”
Louisa’s hesitation was fractional. “Of course not.” She did not look at Anna, and her smile had faded.
“Are you sure?”
“Of course I’m sure.” Louisa’s reply was much too quick, and if the child did not notice it Anna did.
“Oh, good. Will he come to see me?”
“No, Sophie, he won’t. He’s busy. Now – be a good girl and go to sleep. Good night. God bless.”
“Good night.” There was a moment’s silence. Louisa started to creep away from the door.
A small, extremely piercing voice was raised in song. “Baa, baa, black sheep—”
“Oh, Lord!” Louisa put a hand to her head in mock despair. “I’ll have to get her settled down or we’ll get no peace all night. You go on. I’ll be down in a minute.”
Anna smiled and started alone, quietly down the carpeted stairs. How marvellous that Boris should have – she stopped. Beneath her in the hall her father stood outside the half-open study door. Something in his attitude, a furtive, listening stance, took her attention sharply. She could hear Joss’s voice echoing faintly up the stairwell “—yes, that’s right. All we can lay our hands on, before the news gets out and the rush starts—” Her husband was speaking on the telephone. And Papa – Anna’s heart took up a slow, disturbing beat – Papa was listening. Eavesdropping. She stood for what seemed an endless moment, staring, trying – and failing – not to believe the evidence of her own eyes.
Above her a door closed noisily. “Shut up and go to sleep,” Louisa ordered in a peremptory fashion that could only have come directly from Sergeant Major Bentall.
In the hall below, Josef heard. He jerked his head, guiltily, looked up. Anna shrank into the shadows.
“Anna – are you there?” Louisa ran lightly down the stairs. Anna smiled very brightly, held out her hand to the other girl.
When she looked down into the hall her father had gone.
* * *
Anna was never able to decide whether Alice Rose’s snubbing of Louisa Anatov that evening at the dinner table was a calculated attempt on Alice’s part to establish once and for all what she saw as her own natural superiority over the other girl or if it were sheer mischief provoked by Louisa’s bright and burgeoning self-confidence, which Alice undoubtedly took as a personal affront. That a newly created baronet’s daughter should be asked to rub shoulders with the offspring of a Sergeant Major from Bow was bad enough; that that young woman should be bold enough to attract attention to herself was clearly too much. Whatever the reason, however, no one could be in any doubt that the small unfortunate incident paved the way for what followed.
The observation upon which Alice picked with such crushing effect was, in fact, intended only for Obadiah Smithson’s ears. Obadiah, happy as always to be in the company of an attractive and attentive young woman, had devoted a good deal of his time and conversation to lively Louisa, who was seated opposite him across the silver-gleaming candle-lit table – a fact that had certainly not escaped Alice’s watchful and hostile eye. Anna, a couple of places down the board, and seated between Boris and a rather elderly and dull friend of her father’s, was paying – in common with the rest of the diners – little attention to that conversation until Obadiah’s booming laughter, difficult to ignore at any time, brought a brief, smiling pause to all other talk.
“Think yourself lucky, my dear! In the long run, you know, girls will cost you a lot less than boys!”
“I’m sorry?” Louisa’s guileless face was openly puzzled. “I don’t think I see why that should be?”
“Why – isn’t it obvious?” Obadiah was enjoying himself, “With girls all you have to do is save up for the weddings. With boys you have the interminable expense of an education.” What he was saying was no more than many – perhaps most – people believed. Obadiah, however, as Anna knew to her cost, was not above a little heavy-handed teasing. She tried to catch Louisa’s eye and failed.
“You don’t believe girls should be educated?” Louisa asked, uncertain, as he intended, if he were serious or not. At the amused, listening silence that had fallen upon the room a faint colour had brightened the bones of her cheeks. At the far end of the table Alice watched and listened attentively, her expression suddenly bland.
“Of course not! Can’t bring anything but trouble! Young men – savages that they are – need civilized behaviour beaten into them. The ladies – bless their bright eyes—” Obadiah, well into his cups, toasted the table with his glass “—need no improvement. Best left to their charmin’ selves. A little of this, a little of that – embroidery – a pretty hand at the pianoforte—”
Louisa, heir to a working
background and mother of daughters was half-laughing, half-exasperated. For a moment she forgot the listeners. “And what of their brains?”
Obadiah opened his mouth to reply.
“Do you not think,” Alice asked, quietly and clearly and innocently questioning from the end of the table, “that to educate any child – girl or boy – beyond their own personal reasonable expectation in life is simply to court misery?”
Louisa, naïvety personified, fell straight into the trap. “Do you mean that you wouldn’t expect your sons’ wives to be educated at least well enough to hold an intelligent conversation about something apart from the weather and the latest fashions?”
Alice made a pretty, apologetic gesture. “Oh, but of course,” she said, gently, “I’m sorry. I misunderstood. I was not aware that it was to my sons’ future wives that you were referring. I assumed that you were speaking of your own daughters.”
The quiet words fell into a sudden, disquieted vacuum of silence. Louisa stared at the other girl, a slow stain of unbecoming colour lifting from her demurely-cut and unfashionably high neckline towards her clear, still sun-browned cheeks. Boris who had been talking quietly to his neighbour abruptly lifted his head, his eyes sharp, only half-aware of what was happening. He sensed the awkward silence, looked from Louisa to Alice, his brow furrowed.
Alice smiled serenely, knowing herself now utterly in control of the situation. “Michael, darling – for heaven’s sake – are you going to nurse the onion sauce all night?”
Dumbly with a look of pure dislike Michael passed the silver sauce boat along the table. Alice laughed quietly, her clear, chiming laugh. “It’s a positive vice, I know, but I do so adore onion sauce! I’m sure dear Mrs – oh, dear, I have such a deplorable head for names! Father-in-law, what is her name, your extremely efficient housekeeper?”
Josef smiled, abstractedly, apparently unaware of undercurrents, “Acton.”
“Of course. Mrs Acton, I’m just certain that dear Mrs Acton makes sure to serve her special onion sauce when she knows I’m going to be here.”
Louisa was sitting now, cheeks crimson, staring at her plate. Deftly handled, the moment when she might have countered the insult so blatantly offered had passed.
Anna watched her, willing her to look up so that she could offer at least the moral support of a sympathetic smile, but the other girl sat as if struck, head bowed, unmoving.
“Alexis, darling,” Alice was sparkling, “do tell everyone about that awful little man who came to do the drains at Bissetts—”
Anna leaned across the table. “Lou?” It was the first time she had used the diminutive that she had heard only Boris use.
Louisa lifted her head. Her eyes were unfocused and bright with mortification.
Anna could think of no words that would not simply aggravate the hurt. “Have some mustard sauce,” she said with a subversively bright smile. “It’s much nicer than the onion. Mrs Acton calls it ‘her special’.” She was rewarded with at least the shadow of a smile.
Beyond the heavy, drawn curtains London revelled still. Beside Anna, Boris unobtrusively leaned his left elbow upon the table and wrapped his forearm across his body. Anna was reminded suddenly of Sophie’s concern for her father. She leaned to him. “Does it hurt?” she asked, with direct sympathy.
He shook his head in an automatic negative. “The shoulder? No.”
She persevered. “But—”
He half-laughed. “You won’t believe me.”
“Try.”
“The arm. The hand. They hurt.” He saw the look she could not suppress, and laughed wryly. “Sounds absurd, doesn’t it?”
“You mean – the arm and hand that you don’t have – actually hurt?”
“Just that. Hurt. And itch like the devil. It’s the nerves, so the surgeon said. There’s nothing to be done—” His eyes, watchful and worried, were upon his wife’s subdued face. Every now and again they flicked briefly to the end of the table, where Alice held court.
“I’m sorry,” Anna said.
He shook his head, smiling.
“Will it ever get any better?”
“The doctor said—”
Alex’s voice from further down the table lifted suddenly and drowned what he was about to say. “—and good riddance! Hang the lot of ’em, I say. In front of their wives if necessary. P’raps that’d teach ’em – damned bunch of rebellious Dutchmen!”
In the brief moment’s silence that followed Boris turned and surveyed the other man, a dangerous gleam of dislike in his eyes. “It’s been done,” he said, quietly. “And I’m sure you’ll be surprised to know that the effect was not a salutary one. For every man we hanged another picked up his gun and mounted his pony. For every farm we burned a woman urged her son to fight us—”
Alex, a little red-faced, waved his dessert spoon belligerently in the air. “So we hang every last one and burn every last farm. See what they make of that!”
“You think that’s the way to make war?” Boris’s voice was still quiet. Louisa glanced at him, sharply and with concern in her eyes.
“Of course it isn’t – but whose fault’s that? Who started the damned war? Who didn’t have the decency to stand and fight?”
Anna saw the look of pain that flickered upon her father’s face. “Alex – for Heaven’s sake—”
But Alex had the bit between his teeth and was not to be stopped. Was he not simply repeating the views that had received such admiration, approbation at his club just last week? “If a bunch of bigoted, bull-headed foreigners think they can get away with ignoring the decent, civilized rules of war—”
Boris shifted in his chair, shook his head in clear disbelief at what he was hearing.
“—then they’ll damned well have to take the consequences and not scream ‘foul’ if our own boys step over the boundaries a bit.”
Louisa’s faced paled. She glanced at her husband, opened her mouth. Shut it again.
Anna, disturbed, said, “Alex – really – I don’t think—”
“The damned cowards need to be taught a lesson.”
Boris shook his head. He was making an obvious and valiant attempt to keep his temper. “You’re wrong, Alex. Bigoted, yes. Stiff-necked. Pig-headed. But cowardly? No. No one who had been in South Africa would call the Boers cowardly.”
The pinprick did not even scratch Alex’s thick skin. “What else would you call them? They snap and run like curs. Why don’t they stand and fight like men?”
“Because they are not an army. They are not professional soldiers, drilled and regimented. They are individuals. Brave, obstinate individuals who are defending their homes—”
“Defending their homes? Defending their homes against whom? I’ll tell you – against the properly constituted authority that—”
“Oh, for God’s sake, Alex!” Boris’s restraint snapped. “You don’t really believe that – that nonsense?” He leaned across the table. “What do you and those armchair soldiers you spend so much time with at your club think this war is about?”
Alex opened his mouth.
Boris’s one hand crashed down on to the table so that the silver jumped and rattled. “I’ll tell you. Greed. Pure and simple. It’s about gold. It’s about diamonds. Don’t be fooled by all this talk of national pride, of honour and glory. There’s precious little honour in what’s going on in South Africa. And no glory at all. The Boers are a people for whom, as individuals, I have very little sympathy. Their religion is harsh and humourless, they treat the natives worse – much worse – than they treat their dogs. But it cannot be denied that they are a people who have fought a living from a hard, a hostile land for years, only to find that despite their efforts to avoid confrontation and the arrogance of British rule that land is being arbitrarily taken from them because of the riches that have been discovered beneath it—”
“Boris—” Louisa’s voice was miserable.
“Are you saying they’re right?” Alex was outraged.
Boris leaned back. He looked suddenly tired. “Right? Who knows who’s right? What right have we to be there? What right have they to be there? Perhaps everyone’s right. Perhaps no one is. But one thing’s certain – it is always the innocent that suffer most, and to turn angry men loose upon a stubborn civilian population is no way to fight a war.”
“What are you suggesting?” Alex’s voice was cold. “Are you inferring that our men are in any way acting improperly towards the civilian population?”
Boris looked at him for a long moment. “Yes, Alex, I am. I am suggesting that to send men out to burn the roofs over the heads of the families of the men that are away is acting improperly. I’m suggesting that in such circumstances incidents happen of which no nation could be proud.”
“It seems to me, Boris,” Alex snapped, contempt in his voice, “that you lost more than your arm in South Africa.”
“Alex!”
Boris, pale to the lips, lifted his head, but said nothing. Into Louisa’s face, slowly, rose the bright blood of anger.
“Alex – that’s enough,” Josef said.
“No,” Alex said, stiffly, “I’m sorry, father, to distress you; but I’ve had enough of listening to Boris’s treasonable views. Are we not allowed to question what he says? Must we remain still and hear him denigrate our country and its fighting men?”
“Boris did not start this conversation.” It was Joss, speaking for the first time, his eyes sharp and hard upon Alex’s face. “He did not force his views upon you.”
Alice, delicately, eyes lowered, nibbled at a tiny spoonful of dessert. She was the only one still eating.
“It’s a damned bad show,” Alex said heavily, “when a man can sit at the table of the house that’s lost a son to this war and talk treasonably and cowardly rubbish and not be contradicted—”
“For God’s sake, Alex, everyone doesn’t have to agree with you,” Anna’s irritation at her brother was clear in the words.
Louisa, very slowly, stood up, her eyes fixed upon Alex. “What’s the matter with you?” she asked quietly, her voice shaking. “Are you really as stupid as you sound? Do you really believe that you know better than everyone else about everything? Can you really be so self-centred? So blind? What do you know? Have you been there? Have you seen what’s happening? When your fine soldiers march to burn a farm that is occupied only by women and children, what do you think they do? Tip their hats and ask them nicely to leave? A handful of men has held to ransom these past few months the greatest army the world has seen in centuries. How do you think that army reacts to that now it is no longer losing? Many of them are bent upon vengeance – and no one is trying particularly hard to stop them.” She paused. Alex was looking at her in utter astonishment, as if some inanimate object had suddenly given offensive tongue. “Do you want to know how Boris lost his arm?” she asked, quietly.