“Here – give it to me,” Sophie tweaked the hat from her sister’s grasp. “There. Now – you get out, and I’ll hand it down.” This exercise safely accomplished, she herself jumped lightly from the trap and stood looking around her with interest. The lawns of Bissetts looked exactly like the picture of a fashionable race meeting that she had seen last week in the Illustrated London News. The elegant, slim-skirted, high-waisted and softly coloured ensembles of the ladies with their enormously wide-brimmed miraculously trimmed hats contrasted picturesquely with the sober and formal dress of their partners. On the other side of the lawn she could see Aunt Anna, talking animatedly to a flamboyantly dressed young man, her daughter Victoria demure and still by her side. Anna, as always, was dressed more strikingly than any other woman in the gathering. Sophie had never seen anything like the slim, layered, tunic-like costume that her aunt was wearing, in a deep rust colour that stood out like flame against the green of the trees; and upon her head, totally in contrast to what looked to Sophie like every other woman’s attempt to carry the entire contents of a fruit and vegetable barrow upon a hat whose breadth in many cases encompassed its wearer’s shoulders and made a kiss of greeting all but impossible, was a creation in matching colour that hugged her head and looked like nothing so much as a turban. Victoria, all fluffy hair and wide violet eyes, was dressed in white and navy blue that was simple, charming and utterly appropriate. Sophie, in the fussy gingham that hadn’t looked bad in Mr Burns’ Drapery Shop, smiled brightly at her father. “Looks as if the bunfight’s started.”
“Boris! Louisa!” Ralph, tall and quiet-faced, excused by the attire of his calling from the elegant uniform of the other men, detached himself from the crowd and as the trap wheeled and pulled away, hurried towards them, hand outstretched. “How marvellous to see you. Father’s around somewhere. He was asking after you—”
He ushered them through the crowds. Sophie hung back, eyes and ears eager, unashamedly eavesdropping as they moved from group to group.
“—nine times out of ten the damned – excuse the language my dear – the damned so-called working man doesn’t know when he’s well off! Unions my foot! What good are they?”
“—the Kaiser? All talk, old boy, all talk. He wouldn’t dare—”
They paused beside their hostess. “—such a shame the boys couldn’t make it. No, the South of France. The Bateleys – do you know them? They have a big place in Yorkshire. Such charming people. And so well-connected. Really too good an opportunity to miss, and they did so want to go. I couldn’t bear to say no, even though it was their grandfather’s seventieth. It’s all Richard’s fault, of course. He’s off like a runaway at the first chance to do anything, and nothing will do but that Rupert must be everywhere with him. They’re positively inseparable—” Alice, in midstream of conversation, barely bothered to pause, but nodded coolly at Louisa and Boris, and turned back to her listeners. Sophie valiantly resisted the almost overwhelming impulse to pull an extremely rude and childish face at the slim, dove-grey back.
“Boris! Louisa! Topping that you could make it!” Michael erupted into their path, shook Boris’s hand, grabbed the smiling Louisa and gave her a smacking kiss, then stood back to survey the two girls. “Good God, how you’ve grown! This can’t be little Sophie?”
Sophie indicated with a small, philosophically restrained smile that indeed it was, and reflected that it was likely that this would not be the only time today that she heard those words. She knew she was growing like a weed, regretted it bitterly, since her now patently unachievable hope had always been to be petite and trim as her mother. She found herself wondering, in one of those inconsequentially irreverent moments to which she was, according to Miss Bantry, so unnaturally prone, how adults would react if she greeted them with a phrase such as, “Golly, Uncle Alex – haven’t you got fat?” Remembering her promise to her father, however, she resolved not to try it. Not today, anyway.
“Michael—” The cool, firm voice of Michael’s young wife Jane cut through the general hubbub like a silver knife through butter. “The Russells are asking for you. Bertie wants to hear about the new motor car. Why Boris, Louisa, how nice to see you.” She greeted the newcomers with genuine pleasure, offered them each a small, slim hand then, smiling and firm, said, “You don’t mind if I steal Michael from you? There are some people waiting to meet him—” Like a lamb, Michael followed her into the crowd. Louisa and Boris exchanged smiling glances.
They found Josef with Anna, Victoria and the picturesque young man that Sophie had noticed earlier, who appeared to be hanging upon Anna’s every word as if on a sacred utterance. Anna introduced him as Carl Latimer, a rising young actor of whom even Sophie had heard. She looked him up and down in open interest which, since his entire attention was once again focused upon Anna disturbed him not at all. One of the most fascinating things about her altogether fascinating aunt, Sophie had long ago decided, was her exciting and unusual circle of friends. Not for Aunt Anna the orthodox middle-class acquaintanceships occasioned by church, or children, or husband’s occupation. Artists and actors, dancers and designers were more frequently to be found at the Bayswater house than the sharp-eyed, sharper-tonged, tea-drinking neighbours with little on their mind other than the more scurrilous current gossip whom Louisa tolerated for convention’s sake and Sophie unreservedly detested. Though she knew that the rest of the family sometimes eyed Anna’s friends with reservation, she herself both envied and admired her aunt’s ease and vivacity in their company. So too, quite obviously, did the almost-famous Mr Latimer, since he seemed unable to keep his eyes off her.
“Anna’s been gallivanting again,” Josef said, after greetings and congratulations had been exchanged.
“Where to this time?” Sophie heard the tiny note of envy in Louisa’s voice, and looking at her father knew that he too had recognized it.
Anna smiled. “Paris again. I had something in an exhibition – so Arabella and I took a couple of days off and went. There was a ballet we wanted to see, at the Theatre National de l’Opera—”
“Another Bakst?” Louisa was rather proud of herself to have remembered the somewhat odd name. No one could have been in contact with Anna over these past months without hearing her ecstatic reports of the costumes and decor designed by Leon Bakst, a Russian Jew newly launched upon Europe for the ballet Cléopatre, in Paris the year before. “Was it as good?”
“Good?” Anna made a sweeping gesture with both hands. “It was unbelievable! The man is an undoubted genius. An innovative genius—”
Sophie, bored with the adult conversation, smiled a little half-heartedly at Victoria. The cousins, though much the same age, were divided by temperament and environment and had never been particularly close. Sophie found Victoria dull to the point of tedium; had she but known it she, on occasion, terrified her older and quieter cousin almost speechless with her restless energy and quick mischief.
Victoria, as ever the soul of good manners, felt bound to react to the obviously well-meant overture. “Nicholas and Benjamin have gone to play in the orchard. Shall we go and find them?”
Anna, taking the question to be addressed to her, smiled absently at her daughter. “Oh, please do, darling. Nico is bound to be doing something outrageous. I’d feel happier if you’d keep an eye on him—”
Sophie, whose idea of a party was not to keep an eye on other people’s small boys, opened her mouth, then caught her father’s eye. He winked and jerked his head a little. A little less than graciously she extended a hand to Maria. “Come on, then. We might as well.”
Before they trailed off after Victoria, however, Josef – who had also noticed the small byplay – bent to her ear. “I’ve some special marzipan in the cottage. I stole it from the kitchen, right from under Mrs Brown’s nose! I saved it for you.”
Impulsively she kissed his lined cheek. “We’ll share it.” There was a very special friendship between these two, even though there were no ties of blood.
Th
e young people skirted the new deserted tennis court, followed the high old brick wall to the small gate that led into the garden and orchard. Within the walls it was shaded, warm, and comparatively quiet. At the foot of a gnarled old apple tree a small, bespectacled boy sat, snivelling.
“Oh, dear,” Victoria said, a combination of vague distress and timidity in her voice that produced in Sophie a quick rise of what she knew to be unreasonable irritation. “Benjamin? Oh dear – Benji—”
The boy sniffed and hiccoughed.
“What’s up?” Sophie asked.
“I can’t find Nicholas. He ran away from me. He won’t come back—”
“Oh dear,” Victoria said again, and looked round vaguely, as if expecting to see her brother pop up from the ground. “Nico? Nicholas – where are you?”
“He won’t come,” sniffed the desolate Benjamin. “He said he was going to run away to sea and never come back.”
“How silly,” Sophie said.
“Nicholas!” Victoria shouted again.
Silence.
Maria tugged at Sophie’s hand.
“Ni-cho-las!”
Sophie looked down at her sister. The smaller girl pointed. Sophie crouched down. Dangling amongst the thick foliage of a tree perhaps a dozen yards from where they stood was a small, woollen-stockinged foot in a shiny black leather shoe.
Sophie dropped her sister’s hand, put her finger to her lips and crept forward. With a sudden movement she grabbed the foot and jerked. There was a shriek and a crackling of branches, and Nicholas Anatov, red-faced and absolutely furious, was deposited at their feet in a sprawling heap.
“Beastly thing! What do you think you’re doing?” He leapt to his feet, fists at the ready, then subsided a little upon finding himself face to face with a girl. “Oh. It’s you,” he said.
“Yes, it is,” Sophie snapped back brusquely. “And never mind about what I’m doing – what about you? Poor little Ben was in tears—”
“It doesn’t matter.” Small Benjamin had taken off his glasses to wipe his eyes. Now he replaced them, carefully, and blinked owlishly, “It really doesn’t matter. Nico was only playing,” he said anxiously.
“Funny sort of play that makes people cry.”
“Silly sort of idiots that cry at a game,” Nicholas clipped back, his eyes repressive upon his brother.
“I wasn’t really crying.”
Victoria, always the peacemaker, broke in hastily. “Why – why don’t we go and find some lemonade or something? It’s most frightfully hot and Mrs Brown does make the most lovely lemonade – I’m sure there must be some somewhere—”
They sat in the shadow of the wall, Sophie, Nicholas and Ben – Ben sitting as close to his brother as he could and still sniffing – Victoria and Maria discussing with well-informed interests the ladies’ dresses and hats. Sophie, losing interest at last in the unproductive business of swapping mild insults with Nicholas stood up. “I’m going to find Uncle Josef—”
She discovered him sitting alone at a table beneath the magnificent spread of a cedar tree, a cup of tea and a large plate of cream cakes untouched before him. “Fancy sitting all by yourself at your own birthday party!” She dropped with inelegant force into the chair beside him.
He smiled. “It is one of the privileges of age, my dear. To choose one’s company. Even at one’s own birthday party.”
She giggled. “Do you want me to leave?”
“Good Lord, of course not!”
“I say—” she pointed to the cakes “—can you spare one of?”
“I can spare them all. Help yourself.”
She laughed, hunted through the plate of cakes for the one that looked biggest and most interesting. “Are you enjoying it?” she asked through an unladylike mouthful. “The party, I mean?”
A small, open trap carrying one passenger had turned in at the drive and was approaching the house. Josef watched it, idly. “Yes. Very much. It’s nice to—”
Sophie looked up from her cake at the sudden dying of his voice. The trap had stopped not far from them and its single occupant was stepping from it. Joss Anatov, slight, unruffled, paused to pay the driver. “Good heavens. Isn’t that Uncle Joss? I thought he wasn’t coming?” Sophie took another bite of cake. “I say, these are awfully good. Are you sure you won’t have one?”
“No – thank you.”
Sophie took her attention away from the cake again. “Uncle Josef? Is something wrong?”
“No, my dear. Nothing.” Josef was watching the newcomer, a strangely apprehensive look upon his face. Anna too had seen Joss and was hurrying to him through the crowds. As she spoke to him he shrugged, shook his head, looked round.
Josef stood up.
Sophie, pondering the advisability of another cream cake, glanced up as Joss and Anna joined them and smiled her sudden, brilliant smile. She rather liked her Uncle Joss, though it had not escaped her attention that some others did not. She thought him handsome, rather exciting and always interesting. Like now, for instance. From the look on Aunt Anna’s and Uncle Josef’s face they neither expected him nor knew what to expect now that he had arrived – Sophie took another cake and watched with interest.
“Papa – look who’s here—” Anna’s face was flushed, her voice over-bright.
“Joss,” Josef said quietly, “I thought – I understood – that you would not be coming.”
“The business I had to attend to finished sooner than I thought. There was a train—” Joss made a small, sparely graceful gesture with his hand. Sophie nearly smiled; one of the things she liked most about Uncle Joss was that, like her father, no matter how English he might think himself there was always about him a spectacular ‘foreignness’ that in her eyes added splendidly to his attraction. “—so I caught it.” His voice was even. In his hand he held a small parcel. Oddly abrupt, he held it out to Josef. “I found this. I thought – a small gift—”
Josef took the package with hands that trembled a little. Anna was watching her husband with eyes in which astonishment, exasperation and disbelief warred. Sophie turned her attention back to the cake, which was lamentably leaking cream on to the tablecloth.
“I found it in a secondhand bookshop,” Joss said. “The illustrations were very beautiful, I thought. As you see, it was bound in St Petersburg.”
Josef held the little book in hands that were now truly shaking. “Thank you.”
“Sit down, Papa.” Anna was at his side, her hand gentle upon his arm. “You mustn’t overtire yourself.” She settled him in his chair, straightened and looked at her husband. Her unpredictable, infuriating, unfathomable husband.
“I wish a word with Boris,” he said, coolly polite, and left them. She watched him through the crowd. How was it that after all this time, all the bitterness, he could still stir her so unexpectedly? Why, when she had seen him arrive, had she left her young and attentive escort and hurried to him? He had greeted her politely, of course, congratulated her with faultless good manners on her appearance. What else had she expected? Nothing, of course. Nothing.
Sophie stood up, licked the last of the cream from her long index finger. “I’d better go and find Maria and the others. May I take these – if you don’t want them?”
“Of course.”
“Thanks, Uncle Josef.” She kissed him again, smiled at Aunt Anna, who did not notice because her eyes were still fixed upon Uncle Joss, who was talking to Papa, and, plate precariously balanced, made her way back to the shadow of the wall. “Your Papa has arrived,” she told Victoria. “He’s over there – see? Have a cake—”
“Gosh – thanks,” Ben said.
“I thought he wasn’t coming.” Victoria’s sweet face was puzzled.
“Well, he has. Here – tuck in before they all go—”
It was later, as the crowds began to thin and a steady stream of carriages crunched through the gate and up the gravel drive to pick up their passengers, that Sophie finally gave in to her own desires and slipped off a
lone.
* * *
“Where’s Sophie?” Victoria asked Maria.
Maria shrugged. “Don’t know. Gone off somewhere. I say – just look at that carriage – isn’t it grand? Must belong to a Lord or something, mustn’t it?”
With the final guests seen at last on their way, most of the family gathered at a table beneath an enormous oak tree, bottles of champagne open before them. The sun slanted through the branches, not yet in their full leaf, and the air rang with bird song. Jane and Michael had changed from their finery and were playing tennis, their laughing voices and the singing of the ball from the racquet echoing from the sun-warmed walls of the old house.
Anna and Louisa, escaping from Alice by mutual and silent agreement, strolled beneath the trees.
Louisa turned her head. “I – wanted to ask you a favour.”
“Of course,” Anna said, instantly, “what is it?” These two, though not often in each other’s company and necessarily divided, as were their daughters, by interests and environment, were still fast friends.
“It’s Sophie. We’re having a little trouble with her again. She’s been – well, I’m afraid she’s been expelled from school. We’re sending her to a boarding establishment not far from here. In October. It’s a very nice school. It really is. I found the headmistress most charming – most understanding—” She trailed off. Anna waited. “But Sophie – oh, dear, she does so hate the idea. And has simply made up her mind to be miserable. I wondered – if you perhaps had a word. She does admire you – she might listen to you.”
The Rose Stone Page 33