“Oh, I see.” He glanced around. “Why, yes, of course!” His voice was warm, “You’re clearing the paving around the pool! What a good idea. It’s a shame to see it so overgrown.” He hunkered down beside her, bouncing on his heels. “Do you know that I’ve known Bissetts all of my life, but I didn’t know this was here? What a topping little spot.”
“Yes.” She could not keep the shortness of faint resentment from her voice.
Very faintly, beneath his tan, he flushed. Stood up. “I’m sorry,” he said stiffly, “I interrupted you. You were expecting your sister.”
“I wasn’t actually expecting anyone.”
The little bird squawked.
“I’ll put him on the wall,” the boy said, “where his mother can feed him.”
Sophie watched as, very gently, he captured the bird and set it upon the wall. She knew him to be a year or so younger than herself, but he did not look it. For all his pleasant diffidence, he had about him an air of adult confidence that went with the casual, well-cut clothes and the clipped, assured public school voice. She knew, of course – or almost knew – who he must be.
“Which one are you?” she asked, forthrightly.
He grinned, unoffended. “Rupert. And you’re Sophie of course, aren’t you? Gosh – it must be years and years since we’ve met. Mind you – I always remember, once, when we were little – I think it was in the Bayswater garden – you threw a frog at me—”
Sophie looked surprised. “I did?”
“You don’t remember?”
She shook her head.
“Lord – you’d think you’d remember something like that! How many people did you throw frogs at? Did you make a habit of it?”
She giggled. The atmosphere between them had suddenly eased. He looked around him, curiosity in his hazel eyes. “What exactly are you doing here?”
She shrugged, elaborately dismissive of an exciting idea and three days of surprisingly hard work. “Just fiddling about.”
“Looks like more than fiddling about to me.” He reached and pulled an enormous, coarse-leafed weed from between two stones. A strong earthy scent filled the air. “You’re clearing it, aren’t you? Making it a garden again?”
“I thought I might. I like it here.”
“I’m not surprised. It’s wonderful. So quiet and sheltered. I can’t understand how we haven’t found it before.” He paused, a little awkward again. “I say – it’s a bit of a cheek, my walking in on you like this. I mean – if you want the place to yourself I’d hate to intrude.”
She had to laugh. “Don’t be silly. It is your house.”
“Not this bit.”
“Of course it is.”
“Not if we didn’t even know it was here. I think you’ve probably got – what’s it called? – squatter’s rights, or something.”
She laughed, and he grinned, relieved. She began again to scrape at the cracks between the stones with the broken knife.
“I don’t suppose you could do with another pair of hands?”
“Help yourself. There’s enough weeds for both of us, I should say.”
He sat beside her, companionably, and began to haul enthusiastically on the weeds.
“We don’t usually see you around here in the summer,” Sophie said, after a moment, curiosity in her voice.
“No, worse luck. Mama’s a born traveller, I’m afraid, and Papa isn’t. Almost ever since I can remember, every summer she’s dragged us off all over the place – Pa just won’t go, so Ritchie and I have to sort of take his place as escorts.”
“And this year?”
“Ah – well, what happened you see is that Richard and I were supposed to go on a school cricket tour for the first part of the hols. And Mama was dead set on a cruise up the Nile that started right in the middle of it. Poor Pa didn’t stand a chance.” He grinned. “He’s half-way up the Nile right now, and hating every minute of it. We had the very glummest postcard yesterday—”
Sophie laughed. “And the cricket tour? What happened to that?”
“Richard’s on it now. He’s Captain, actually.” There was sheer pride in his voice, “The youngest in the history of the school. It’s a great honour.”
“But – what about you? Why aren’t you there too?”
“Bit of rotten luck, actually. I sprained my left wrist just a couple of days before the end of term. I’m right-handed – but you need two hands for a cricket bat.”
“Yes,” Sophie agreed soberly, “I did know that.”
“So – here I am—”
“What a shame.”
He grinned suddenly. “Yes. I’m sure they’re all missing their slices of lemon.”
She looked at him enquiringly.
He shrugged philosophically. “Twelfth man,” he said. “And I probably wouldn’t have got that if it hadn’t been for Ritchie.” There was neither embarrassment nor self-pity in the words.
Sophie smiled sympathetically. It came to her that she could very much like this pleasant young man. “So – here you are – stuck all alone with a bad wrist.”
“Something like that, yes. Though it isn’t as dreary as it sounds. The wrist is much better, and I won’t be on my own for long. Ritchie’s due back at the end of next week.” A couple of martins had joined the swallows in their swooping pursuit of insects in the summer air. Rupert sat back on his heels and shaded his eyes with his hand, watching them. “I knew something nice was going to happen today,” he said unexpectedly. “Because the martins are back in the nest by my bedroom window. They’re my favourite birds. They bring me luck.”
Sophie put her head on one side. “Something nice?”
He waved a hand. “I found this. And I met you.”
“Me and a pile of weeds.”
Their clear young laughter was the very sound of friendship.
* * *
Had Sophie ever bothered to think of it – which she had not – she would certainly not have expected to like Rupert Rose, let alone to cement within days bonds of friendship and camaraderie as strong as any she had known with anyone. She had always disliked his parents, finding Alex exasperatingly pompous, and Alice purely detestable, and knowing of the bad blood that had existed between them and her own parents for some years. Yet from that moment of meeting it was as if she and Rupert had been fast friends since childhood. They spent the days together, talking to Josef, walking the countryside, clearing the little garden. When Rupert discovered Sophie’s passion for tennis he was absolutely delighted, and every day they played at least once, sometimes twice and often far into the long June evening. There was no one to oppose the blooming of their friendship – Rupert was alone at Bissetts apart from the staff; and Josef, sitting in his wheeled chair in his small garden smiled to himself at the sound of their young voices and their laughter. More often than not Maria would tag along, happy simply to be in their company. She adored Rupert from the moment she met him; Sophie, in private, teased her unmercifully about it. “I do believe you’re in love with him!”
Poor little Maria coloured to the roots of her light brown hair. She was a slight, rather plain child with her father’s blue eyes and pale skin. Sophie often declared that her delicate little sister made her feel like an over-active elephant – a comment that never failed to reduce the adoring Maria into uncontrollable giggles. “I’m not!” she said now. “Don’t be silly!”
Sophie surveyed her with apparently serious eyes. “Well, I’m not so sure about that. If I were you, my dear, I’d be very careful indeed—”
“What do you mean?”
“You might finish up with the most awful mother-in-law—”
“Oh, Sophie! You are just—just terrible’.”
“What’s so terrible about being honest? Come on – Rupert and I are going to play tennis. Are you coming?”
In those few days, as if they had been friends all of their lives, Sophie found with Rupert a real and honest companionship which she had discovered with few other people. His c
haracter was in general more serious than her own, yet his good humour allowed her to tease him as she might a brother, amused that often he could not tell if she were joking or not. He was sensitive and very intelligent, and in these qualities she delighted and would sit with him for hours listening in fascination as he spoke animatedly and with imagination of things that until now had interested her not at all. To hear John Milton’s stirring and beautiful words quoted in Rupert’s pleasant well-modulated voice and to discover that for the first time she actually understood and appreciated them was an entirely new experience for her, a large part of her literature lessons at St Hilary’s having been spent in watching other, as she considered it more fortunate, beings on the playing fields outside the window. The discovery that poetry could be a means to express ideas and emotions as opposed to being simply words that marched in rhythm and rhymed she found truly exciting. Their time, however, was far from entirely taken up in erudite discussion; at times they acted like children as they almost still were, simply revelling in youth’s energy and laughter and the warmth of a summer’s day. Sophie, to her delight, found that she could run faster than the long-legged Rupert, and no matter how determinedly he tried he could rarely beat her at tennis. Yet this too he took in good part. “Wait till Richard comes. I’d like to watch you two play—”
“I do like Rupert,” Sophie confided to Josef in her open way one still, sunny evening as she pushed his wheeled basket chair at strolling pace along the well-kept gravel drive. This was a favourite daily occupation of these two, and neither would miss the evening promenade for anything. “He’s just so nice. I suppose I shouldn’t say so – but he doesn’t seem to me to be a bit like his parents. I think,” she grinned down at him, mischief in her eyes, “I think he must take after his grandfather.”
“Which one?” Josef asked, solemnly innocent.
Sophie laughed. “Why, you of course! Weren’t you just like him when you were young. I bet you were—”
The laughter slipped suddenly from Josef’s face. “I don’t remember. I don’t think so.”
Sophie, intent upon her game, did not notice his change in mood. “Someone else, then. Your mother? Your father?”
There was a moment’s silence. “That I don’t know, my dear,” Josef said quietly, “I did not know my true parents.”
Sophie stopped walking, looked at him in astonished concern. “I didn’t know that.”
Josef shook his head a little tiredly. “It doesn’t matter. It’s all so very long ago.” He looked down at the old, bony hands that rested in his lap, the branded thumb uppermost. “All so very long ago,” he repeated, then lifted his head, his smile genuine enough so that the watching child did not see the pain beneath it. “I knew your father’s parents, though. Very well indeed. And his grandparents—”
“Tell me some of the stories again, Uncle Josef. Tell me about my grandfather, who you always say was so much like me.” Sophie was easily distracted, as Josef had known she would be. “Tell me about the picnic when he pushed you in the river and he’d forgotten you couldn’t swim—”
“Then jumped in fully clothed and rescued me, though the water was only three feet deep.”
She pulled a funny, rueful face. “Oh golly – yes, he does sound a bit like me, doesn’t he?” The wheels crunched again on the gravel. The birds sang. “Uncle Josef?’ Sophie said, softly, “tell me about Russia.”
“Ah, Russia,” Josef said, and the words were a small, thoughtful sigh. He shook his head. “It’s all so very far away, child. And so very long ago.”
“Aunt Anna went there, didn’t she?”
“Yes.”
“She never speaks of it.”
A small furrow appeared between Josef’s grizzled eyebrows. “No.”
“I shall go there one day. I shall see all the places you’ve told me about. I shall visit the famous Shuvenski family, as Aunt Anna did, and be made much of. I shall see the fabulous diamond that you created all those years ago.” She paused, tilted her head back to the last rays of the dying sun. “It must have been marvellous to have done such a thing,” she said.
Josef shivered. “I’m getting cold, child. It’s time to go back in.”
Later, when they had almost reached Josef’s small garden gate, Sophie, suddenly and with no preamble asked, “What’s Richard like? I mean – is he as nice as Rupert?”
Josef, with an effort, brought himself back to the present. “Richard? To tell the truth I don’t really know. I don’t know either of them as well as I know you and Maria, for all that they are my grandchildren. I’ve seen so little of them. They are, I believe, very alike, although they are not actually identical. And – no, I don’t believe they are all that alike in character. Richard was always the leader, ever since they were very young. Rupert, I think, is the dreamer, Richard the more positive of the two. As a small child I remember him being very lively, very determined. Anything he did he had to do better than anyone else.”
“Yes. That was the impression I got from Rupert.”
Josef turned his hand to look at her at the tone of the words. “Why so gloomy?”
“He’s coming home tomorrow,” she said, obliquely.
“So? That will make another companion—”
Sophie shook her head. “No. I don’t think so. Rupert talks about Richard a lot. All the time almost. Richard this, Richard that – I’m almost tired of him before I’ve met him, though I know that isn’t fair. I’ve got a feeling that I’m not going to like him. Or perhaps I’m afraid that he won’t like me. I don’t know. But – whatever – it isn’t going to be the same, is it? With him here? Rupert’s going to want to spend his time with him—”
“Of course. That’s only natural. But that doesn’t mean he won’t want to spend time with you as well.” His voice was gentle. Josef knew more than he admitted about this favourite child’s problems in the past.
“I s’pose not.” Sophie was silent for a moment. “They’re lucky, aren’t they? It must be nice to have someone so close, so much a part of you—” They had reached the narrow path that led to the back door of the cottage. Sophie stopped, clicked the brake firmly on and held out a hand to help Josef from the chair. Holding his hand she smiled suddenly, and her strong face was transformed. “That’s not all I envy them.”
A little breathless, but steady on his feet Josef looked at her with raised eyebrows. “Oh?”
She leaned to kiss his cheek. “I envy them their grandfather. I don’t care how dashing mine was. I don’t care if he was a Count or whatever. I’ll bet he wasn’t as nice as you.” She stood, young and strong and fair in the last rays of the evening light – Alexei’s granddaughter – and for a moment forty years were like a mist that shifts and clears as if it had never been. The strong, white smile, the reckless eyes, the hand of friendship. Then the mist closed again.
“We ought to go in,” he said, very gently. “Mrs Saunders will be fretting and my chocolate will be cold.”
* * *
Rupert and Sophie were playing tennis when Richard arrived the next day. Sophie saw him first – a tall, blazered figure swinging across the lawns towards them – and fluffed a sitting duck of a shot like a novice, her eye distracted from the ball. Rupert finished the point off in short order. “My advantage,” he called, cheerily, and turned to walk back to the serving line. “Richard!” Balls and racquet went flying from him. “Richard old chap! You’re back! How perfectly spiffing to see you! How did it go? Did you win the Varsity? Gosh – you seem to have been gone an age!”
Sophie stood, alone and awkward, a total outsider as these two, brothers and more than brothers, greeted each other enthusiastically, shaking hands, slapping each other on the shoulder, talking excitedly. Her eyes were upon Richard’s face. Josef had been right; the twins were like and yet unlike each other. In Richard the bones were sharper, the laughing hazel eyes clearer, the movements more positive. The two boys were still thumping each other on the back, laughing in sheer pleasure at the
reunion. Sophie, watching, caught a swift impression of a dark, lifted head, an open smile, a tall, slight, sportsman’s body. To her utter astonishment something extremely strange had happened to her breathing and to the beating of her heart. She bent to pick up a ball at her feet. The trembling of her legs had absolutely nothing to do with her recent exertions. She felt a mortifying blush of colour mounting in her already exercise-flushed cheeks. She straightened, smoothed her calf-length grass-stained white linen skirt, rescued the navy blue tie that had slipped almost round to her ear. Her white shirt was grubby and had slipped from its constraining belt. Her hair was a bird’s nest.
“Come and meet Sophie. You remember? Sophie Anatov. Aunt Anna’s niece. She’s here for the summer—”
She transferred her racquet to her left hand, rubbed the right one furiously and furtively on her skirt. He stood before her, cool, unruffled, smiling easily, a young god on his own ground. She felt the awkward falseness of her own smile. “Hello.”
He took the proffered hand. “Hello.”
“Rupert says you’ve been on a cricket tour.” The words were stiff. “I hope it was successful.”
Richard grinned at his brother. “Won every match, that’s all.”
Rupert whooped. Sophie watched him. She had never seen him so excited, so lively. It was as if the coming of his brother had injected new life into him. “I’d better go,” she said, abruptly.
“Oh – no – please—” Rupert was all concern. “We haven’t finished our game.”
“We can finish it later. You and – and Richard—” to her confusion she discovered that she had some difficulty in speaking the name “—must have a lot to talk about.” Woodenly, and aware of two pairs of faintly surprised eyes she turned from them and walked away. Behind her she heard Richard’s voice, lighter than Rupert’s, a little worried.
“I say – I hope I didn’t break in at an awkward moment. I could have waited up at the house I suppose—”
“No, no. Of course not. Come on – let’s see if we can cadge tea and cakes off Mrs Brown—”
The Rose Stone Page 36