The Rose Stone

by The Rose Stone (retail) (epub)

  Alex had joined his wife now, offering an eager, stubby finger to his grandchild, smiling delightedly as she grabbed for it imperiously.

  “Sophie—” Alice it was who spoke. High colour flushed her prominent cheekbones and her arms were clasped about the child as if she could never bear to let her go. “We wondered – would you, could you – bring yourself to visit Bissetts, sometimes, with Felicity?”

  Sophie blinked, as if at a stab of pain. “Not yet.”

  “Of course not.” The words were hasty, conciliatory. Desperate. “Oh, of course not. But – in a little while, perhaps?”

  Sophie said nothing.

  Alex cleared his throat. “And – Sophie, my dear – we’d like to settle a small amount upon Felicity. Just a little something, to help her – and you—” His voice faded into a discomfiting quiet.

  The face that Sophie turned to him was bleak. “I’d like to tell you to keep your money. Perhaps I ought to. But I won’t, for we need it. We’re living on Aunt Anna’s and Uncle Joss’s charity—” she ignored Anna’s automatic quick movement of protest “—and that isn’t good enough for Richard’s child. So we’ll take it. For his sake.” She hesitated, then added as if the simple words all but choked her, “Thank you.”

  Felicity, fingers tangled in her grandmother’s perfectly coiffed hair, crowed with pleasure.

  Chapter Twenty Two

  Nicholas Anatov had discovered the pictures that his mother kept in the exquisite nephrite box on her dressing table many years before he was old enough for their possible significance to occur to him. Always indulged by his mother he had been given – or more exactly had assumed – the right of open access to her room at a very early age and, since there was little either in the boy’s nature or in his upbringing to impel constraint or respect for the privacy of others, he had long taken that to mean that anything that was Anna’s was naturally open to his inquisitive eyes and fingers. The pictures intrigued him – especially the portrait that had been torn and so carefully repaired. Something in the face fascinated him, and as a small child, when his mother was from home – for however confident he might be of her indulgence, prudence nevertheless dictated even to Nicholas that there might be some things best kept from her knowledge – he would creep to his mother’s room, spread the sketch carefully upon the dressing table, smoothing the paper, studying it, moving his head a little so that the warm, life-like eyes seemed to follow him, smiling. Clearly the same man featured in the other sketch and, too, he recognized his mother. He guessed that she had drawn both these pictures – for how often, throughout his childhood, had she not done similar sketches for him – sketches of a moment, or of a person that she could capture precisely and deftly with a few swift strokes of her pencil. Nicholas, in so far as his indulged and self-centred nature allowed, adored his mother. No one else’s mother could do what she could do. As no one else’s mother could draw every eye in a room simply by appearing in the doorway. Or design jewellery so exquisite that the insects and flowers she was so fond of incorporating into her pieces seemed to the dazzled child to be all but alive, arrested movement spellbound into precious metal and stone. At first it had been simply this that had fascinated him about the portrait: the clear, bright eyes, the expression that tempted him to believe that if he looked for long enough that half-smile might break into laughter. As he grew older, however, and a gracelessly inquisitive nature began to assert itself, he found other things to intrigue him about the pictures, not least the character of the damage to the portrait that his mother obviously valued so highly. It could not, he surmised, have been accidental: the tears, precisely across the centre, were too obviously and deliberately destructive for that. Yet the picture had been painstakingly mended – the four pieces pasted carefully upon two strong strips of paper – and undoubtedly by his mother, for where the damage had been irreparable she had used her pencil and her skill to cover it up. Even more intriguing were the words that were still decipherable on the back of the picture, in another hand than his mother’s: “Anna, August 1900”. Over the years, in those odd moments that the child chose to indulge his curiosity and take advantage of his undoubtedly privileged position – for neither his brother nor his sister would have dared enter their mother’s room without permission, let alone touch any of her things – the strong, scrawling writing became as familiar to him as did the face. The possible significance of the strange attraction for him of that face however did not remotely occur to him until one day in the winter of 1916, a few months before his sixteenth birthday and a few days before his sister Victoria was to marry her Samuel.

  Dr Samuel Bottomley – tall, balding, sparingly built, painfully reserved and himself believing until a short while before that surely he must be by now immune to Cupid’s painful darts – had surprised himself, to say nothing of the rest of the world, by the determination with which he had set out to win the approval of the Anatov household for his intention to marry Victoria, having already with an equal effort of will convinced first Victoria and then his own sceptical family. Slow-spoken, kindly and a dedicated man of medicine – even Joss had been immediately impressed by the man, and no one who came within a mile of Victoria could have had any doubts as to her feelings for her Samuel. As to the difference in their ages – Dr Bottomley had impressed Joss further by admitting freely that just a few short months before he himself might have frowned upon such a suitor for his own daughter, who was nearly two years Victoria’s senior. It was, however, with no apology and irreproachable dignity that he finally made his formal request to Joss for his daughter’s hand, and Joss, impressed as much by this as by the man’s obvious deep attachment to Victoria, found himself acceding with little reluctance. In this day and age, after all, there was something to be said for the security and comfort to be found as the wife of an older man. Already it was becoming obvious that the flower of a generation of young men would never reach maturity. So it was with few misgivings on either side that the wedding date was fixed for the week before Christmas, 1916 – and so it was that Nicholas, on holiday from school and driven from the old nursery by his sister’s continuous and fluttering talk of dresses and guest lists and bridesmaids and the exigent pressures of wartime rationing upon the nuptial celebrations, strolled without knocking into his mother’s room and found her sitting at her dressing table, the nephrite box open, the portrait spread before her. At her son’s entrance she gave a palpable start of shock, her pale, startled eyes meeting his in the mirror with an expression that – had he not dismissed the notion immediately as ridiculous – he might have called fear. A little disconcerted at her obvious alarm, he took refuge in the charm that never failed him, and smiled his improbably brilliant smile.

  “Hello Mumps. Mind if I join you for a bit? Victoria’s driving me barmy!” He spread graceful, long-fingered hands and smiled again, winningly. “Anyone would think that no one in the world has ever got married before.” The use of that private nickname, he knew, invariably disarmed her.

  Utterly unnerved by his unexpected entrance, Anna was still staring at him as if he had been a ghost, her forearms covering the picture that, for the first time in years, some strange impulse had driven her to take from its resting place to look at once more. Unsuccessfully she forced a smile. “Actually, darling – I’m a bit busy at the moment—”

  Totally assuredly he flung himself upon the bed. “That’s all right. I’ll be quiet as a mouse, I promise. I won’t say a word. Just protect me from timetables and veils and ribbons and flower-girls for a while. You wouldn’t stand by and watch me driven completely round the bend, now would you?”

  Anna relaxed a little, laughed, turned on the stool so that her back obscured the spread paper upon the dressing table. “Don’t be unkind, Nico. Victoria’s happy, that’s all. And so she should be. It isn’t every day that a girl gets married. And I have to say that it makes a change from talking about the wretched war—”

  The expression on Nicholas’s bright, handsome face showe
d clearly that he did not agree, but he did not argue. He rolled instead upon his stomach and propped his chin on his hands, his feet waving in the air. “Seems jolly strange, I must say, acquiring a brother-in-law who’s older than my own father!”

  “I expect it does, dear. But then – the decision is Victoria’s, after all. And I must say that, having come to know Samuel, I feel that she could have done a lot worse. He will certainly care for her. He can offer security, a good home—”

  Nicholas pulled a face.

  “—and I think that, at the bottom of it, these are the things that Victoria probably most needs.” Anna tried to keep her face severe before her son’s bright, teasing eyes. “We can’t all be the same you know.” With Victoria leaving home, Anna felt inclined to be generous towards the daughter that she had never herself truly understood or been close to. “Victoria’s different from you, that’s all. She’s—”

  “—dull.” Nicholas said, grinning caustically. “Dull. Dull. Dull. That’s what Victoria is.”

  “Nico!”

  “Oh, Mumps – you know it’s true. I can’t imagine how you came to have her – she isn’t a bit like you.” He rolled over, dropped like a cat gracefully from the bed. “I say –I rather like that – is it your outfit for the wedding?”

  Disarmed as he knew she would be by his not altogether feigned interest, she smiled. “Yes, it is. I’ve actually had the material since before the war. Now seemed as good a time as any to use it. Arabella designed it specially. And I thought perhaps the jet and amber pendant and earrings.” She could not hide her pleasure. She joined him by the dummy upon which the new clothes were displayed. Of golden velvet, its tiered skirt and matching hat trimmed with sleek black fur, it was fashionable rather than exotic – for Anna was well aware that there were times when her more flamboyant clothes embarrassed her daughter, and had thought to spare the girl that on her wedding day.

  “The jet’ll look spiffing with it.” Grinning, Nicholas tweaked the skirt. “Mind you – bit daring isn’t it? You’ll show a fair bit of leg in that. Not—” that he added with another flashing smile “—that you don’t have a fair bit of leg to show, of course.”

  Laughing, she slapped his hand away. “For goodness’ sake – look at those dirty paws! And – it isn’t that short – shorter skirts are very fashionable at the moment.” She was fussing with the neckline of the jacket when she caught a movement from the corner of her eye. She spun around. “Nico!” Her voice had changed, rang suddenly with alarm as her son, apparently aimlessly, wandered across the room to the dressing table, “What are you doing?”

  “Hel-lo – who’s this?” Before she could reach him he had picked up the picture, looked at it, grinning. “Bit of a devil, this one, from the look of him. Who is he?” He lifted his head, caught sight in the mirror of his mother’s face, frozen in guilt, over his shoulder. Saw in that instant something else too, for the first time. Saw beneath a falling lock of hair a pair of eyes that glittered, and laughed, a well-shaped, straight mouth that tilted to a smile. Saw the face each time he looked into a mirror. Then looked down again at the picture he held.

  “Give it to me,” Anna said grimly, her voice brooking no argument.

  Wordlessly, he folded it and handed it to her. She snatched it, regardless of its frail state. Carelessly and lucently the boy smiled. “I’m sorry. I didn’t realize it was private.”

  “It’s just – someone I knew. A long time ago.”

  “I didn’t mean to pry.”

  “Of course not.”

  He leaned to her, kissed her lightly upon the cheek. “I suppose I’d better go and rescue Ben from our almost-married sister’s clutches. Poor Ben would actually allow himself to be done to death by boredom before he’d do anything about it. See you later, Mumps.”

  “’Bye, darling.” Her breath still caught in her throat; despite all she could do to prevent it the words were jerky.

  She closed the door behind him, leaned upon it for a moment, the crumpled paper in her hand. The picture couldn’t have meant anything to him. It couldn’t.

  Nicholas ran lightly up the stairs, his quick, precocious brain flitting from one thing to another, forming theories, testing them. Outside the nursery door he paused, his eyes very thoughtful.

  “—and I do hope that Samuel’s son can get back from France in time to be best man,” Victoria was saying, worriedly. “And, oh dear – if he does come I do hope he likes me. He’s the only one I haven’t met.”

  “Oh, of course he will. How could he not?” Ben’s voice was reassuring.

  “It’s just – it’s all so very nerve-wracking—”

  In Nicholas’s head at last a small, interesting piece of the puzzle had clicked satisfyingly into place. “Anna, August 1900,” he said softly. “Nineteen hundred. Well, well, well.” He pushed open the door, his smile brilliant. “Hey – I’ve an idea—”

  Two faces turned to him surprised and – from long experience – wary.

  “Let’s go and see Sophie. Cheer her up a bit.”

  Undisguised relief cleared the way for assenting smiles.

  He looked from one to the other, the very picture of injured innocence. “Why – what on earth did you think I was going to?”

  * * *

  The wedding, to Anna’s well-hidden relief, was not the trial it might have been. Any celebration in this time when there seemed so little to celebrate, though welcome, could be so easily marred by the absence of so many who would under happier circumstances have attended. Many people simply could not bring themselves to ask after a missing face for fear of the news that the answer might bring, and so quite often Anna had noticed about these affairs a fierce and artificial gaiety that she found at the same time pathetic and wearing. Adding to this the fact that this particular occasion would bring together two very different families and their friends, the odds had seemed to her to be stacked in favour of disaster. Already she knew from a few unguarded comments from her ingenuous daughter that the Bottomleys as a family, whilst approving wholeheartedly of Victoria herself, entertained some reservations about the more flamboyant Anatovs. That the reverse might also hold true Anna suspected would not have occurred to them: but it was not only Nicholas – who referred to them invariably and to his sister’s distress as ‘the worthy Bottomleys’ – who was convinced that Victoria’s future in-laws were likely to be sober, virtuous, and deadly dull.

  The day itself dawned bright and clear and very cold. The proximity of Christmas lent to the festivities an added zest. Victoria was a breathtaking picture in her white satin, fur-trimmed gown, her bouquet a brilliant, seasonal splash of colour with its red-berried holly, shining laurel and trailing ivy. The church too was decked for Christmas, and a small, charmingly candle-lit crib stood to one side of the altar. Victoria, pale with nerves, stood rigid in the porch of the church as her mother smoothed and arranged the folds of her skirt.

  “Honestly, Mama, I still don’t see why we couldn’t have had a much quieter wedding. It doesn’t seem—”

  “Nonsense, dear. There. Turn around.” Anna straightened. “That looks lovely.” She looked at Joss who, with one of his rare smiles, extended an arm to his daughter. Anna stood for a moment, surveying them both, astonished by a sudden and unexpected constriction of her throat. She swallowed, said briskly, “I’d better go and find my place. Good luck.”

  Impulsively Victoria stepped to her, hugged her close. “Thank you, Mama,” she said, softly and simply.

  Smiling, Anna turned and walked, her breath clouding the cold air, down the long, columned aisle to her place beside the two boys. Ridiculously the light of the candles blurred and danced as she walked. She blinked rapidly, acknowledged soft greetings and smiles. In her seat she sat very straight and resisted the impulse to mop at her idiotically damp eyes. There was a stir of expectation, then, in the body of the church and the organ’s first dramatic note sounded. As the ceremony started Anna found herself watching not Victoria and Samuel but Joss, wh
o stood, handsome as ever in his morning suit beside his daughter. Did he, Anna wondered, remember their wedding in this very church more than Victoria’s lifetime ago? So much had happened since – to them, and to the world – that it almost seemed two strangers had once stood here and taken these same vows that Victoria now spoke in a tremulous voice. Almost. As Joss took his place in the pew beside her, Anna glanced at him. The look he returned was utterly unreadable. She turned her attention back to the altar.

  The reception was held at home in Bayswater, and the house was filled to bursting. Men in uniform, or morning dress, a predominance of women in pre-war finery carefully refurbished, children beginning the afternoon as models of good behaviour and ending it, despite a gaggle of nursemaids and nannies, under everyone’s feet. There had been no question in this time of shortages of providing a full-blown meal, but the cook and the caterers between them had managed a very satisfactory buffet and Joss, from some mysterious source known only to himself, had provided more than enough champagne to oil the wheels of celebration. He and Anna had their first real conversation of the day half-way through the afternoon as the guests gathered in the long drawing room to watch the newly-weds cut a cake that might a few short years before have been considerably bigger.