Eden Falls

by Sanderson, Jane

  ‘Knollys says he’s already fired off a letter to Lord Crewe, demanding that he kick up a stink about it, and he’s asked Asquith to tell Lloyd George he’s gone too far this time.’

  ‘It was a little inflammatory,’ Henrietta said.

  ‘Goodness,’ said Clarissa. ‘Politics at the dinner table. How very outré.’

  ‘Sorry Mama,’ Tobias said.

  ‘I believe Lloyd George knows exactly what he’s doing,’ said Anna, who had no compunction about discussing politics at the dinner table: quite the contrary, in fact; at her own dinner table it was what they did much of the time. ‘He’s determined to push his budget through. I admire him enormously.’

  ‘Aren’t you meant to be for Labour?’ said Peregrine, with an expression of milk-curdling sourness.

  ‘Oh, well of course,’ Anna replied sunnily. ‘But still, I admire the chancellor for the strength of his conviction, and his courage. I don’t speak for my husband, or the Labour Party, naturally. This is just my opinion.’

  Peregrine looked across the table at his wife, whose mind was blessedly free of opinion, and said, ‘Dear one, if you can’t manage all your lamb?’

  ‘But Anna,’ Henrietta said, ‘Surely the chancellor knows there’s nothing to be gained by antagonising the very people with the power to veto his plans? The peers will never allow this budget to pass through Parliament.’

  ‘Heavens, Henry,’ said Clarissa. ‘Please desist.’

  ‘Exactly. It’s a clever trap, I believe,’ said Anna. ‘Traditionally, peers don’t interfere with finance bills. The last time they did there was a civil war and the king was beheaded.’

  Amandine gasped. ‘The king, beheaded?’ she said. Ulrich laughed, and Isabella said, ‘Charles the First, Amandine, not Edward the Seventh.’

  Perry said ‘Damned disgrace,’ through a mouthful of his wife’s lamb. ‘If Lloyd George thinks he can topple Bertie he’d better think again.’

  ‘No, no,’ Anna said. ‘I’m sure the chancellor means no disrespect to the king. But if the upper house rejects the finance bill and throws out Lloyd George’s budget, the king will have to dissolve Parliament and the Liberals will take their case to the country.’

  ‘Goodness, what a lesson we’re enduring. Parkinson, I think we have finished,’ the duchess said meaningfully. The butler shot her a small, colluding smile and began to clear the dinner plates.

  ‘And so?’ said Tobias to Anna, lured back into the debate in defiance of his mother, who looked at him coldly, her mouth pinched into a tight, straight line. ‘What of it? We have nothing to fear in the House of Lords from another general election.’

  ‘You might have, if the Liberals go to the country on the peers’ excessive powers of veto as well as on the budget.’ Anna smiled pleasantly at the peer whose hospitality she was currently enjoying. ‘Your days as a member of the ruling class could be numbered.’ There was a short, rather stunned silence, and then Peregrine said, ‘I say! That’s quite enough politics. There are ladies present, you know.’

  Anna laughed, and said she hoped she could count herself among their number; Clarissa looked at her doubtfully. At the other end of the table Thea clapped her hands for silence and said that clever little Maya knew a Russian folk song and had agreed to sing it for them, loudly enough that the tsar might hear.

  ‘On your chair, sweetie,’ she said to Maya, who looked at Anna for a nod of permission and, having received it, clambered nimbly into a standing position on her seat. ‘Now, the tsar’s yacht is just over there,’ Thea said, pointing to the middle of the harbour. ‘So face that direction and give it everything you’ve got.’

  Well, thought Clarissa, this really is the limit. The two people in the party who had least cause to draw attention to themselves were now dominating the evening. She glanced down the table at Archie to convey her displeasure, and saw that he was fast asleep.

  Chapter 50

  When Anna was thirteen years old, Tsar Alexander died and the news was a shock to all of Russia. Anna’s parents, in the cataclysmic spirit of the moment, undertook the long and arduous train journey from Kiev to St Petersburg, in order that they and their children might pay their respects. It was November. Anna and her brother Alexei were wrapped in wool and fur but, even so, their hands and feet lost all feeling, standing amid thousands of mourners in the dirty snow of Nevsky Prospect. Anna was so cold that she forgot to mourn, and while all around her people hung their heads, she instead stared boldly at the red and gold carriages, trying to pick out their occupants. The cortège moved at a snail’s pace, advancing slowly towards the Cathedral of Peter and Paul, where all the Romanov tsars were buried. Behind the imperial family, alone in a coach of her own, the young and beautiful Princess Alix of Hesse was hidden behind heavy veils, but little Anna saw what she believed was a sad half-smile, directed only at her. She started, as if she was about to run to the carriage, and she believed she might have done if her mother hadn’t grabbed her arm roughly and hissed, ‘Be still! Bow your head and pray.’

  ‘It’s the new tsar’s bride, Mama,’ Anna had whispered, and her mother had crossed herself and said darkly, ‘She has come to us behind a coffin.’ The next day they had shuffled in a line of thousands past Alexander’s bier while priests chanted litanies and a hidden choir sang sorrowful hymns. Anna’s father had lifted her so that she could say a respectful farewell to the dead emperor. He had a holy picture in his hands, which seemed a simple thing to be carrying after all the luxury of his life. His face wore an expression of mild contentment, although his skin was waxy and pallid like a doll’s. He looked, to Anna, as if he had never actually been alive. ‘What a shame I only ever saw him dead,’ she had said, too loudly; her father put her down at once, and her mother slapped the back of her head.

  These were the memories that ran through her mind now as she stood at the harbourside, looking out at the Standart with the same frank curiosity as she had shown for the cortège fifteen years earlier. The hull of the imperial yacht looked freshly blacked in the bright morning light, like a new kitchen range. Her decks were swagged with awnings of white canvas and there were wicker chairs and steamers set out, some of which were in use, though it was hard from this distance to know by whom. The people on board were indistinct; she could tell women from men, but not empresses from servants. There was a relaxed informality on deck, though – she could tell that – and there were children too, who must surely be the daughters and son of Nicholas and Alexandra. There had been three girls before Anna fled Russia: Olga, Tatiana and Maria, three little grand duchesses. Then, after she arrived in England, she read that Anastasia had been born, and finally Alexis, the tsarevich. They must worry for their frail son, Anna thought: a terrible burden to be heir apparent to the monstrous powder keg that was Russia. She wondered what he understood of his responsibilities at not quite five years old. If she were tsarina, she would bring him ashore to play on the beach.

  Anna considered the size of the vessel. Really, she was meant to drop anchor in the Finnish fjords or a remote Baltic cove, or beneath the towering cliffs of the Crimea, where her mighty bulk would be in proportion with the surroundings. Here, in the confines of Cowes harbour, she dominated the scene, a colossus of the seas. The yacht was still surrounded by its security cordon of destroyers, and there was doubtless a whole platoon of guards on board to ward off assailants. This meeting of the emperor and the king had been arranged here precisely because the harbour was easy to seal off and guard, but the scheme had placed the socially reticent tsar into the very centre of a whirlpool of glamorous posturing and pageantry. Anna felt sorry for him; he appeared careworn in photographs, and she thought she could detect kindness in his eyes.

  This was not an acceptable view for the wife of a Labour MP, or indeed for a Russian émigrée who had fled the pogroms. She knew she was meant to hate him and, certainly, his empire was corrupt and unjust and cruel, and when she’d escaped with her first husband, she hadn’t felt safe until their ship set sail
from Bremen. But in all fairness, could one man be held responsible for the evil prejudices of a million others? The vast empire was ungovernable, the potential for wickedness immense. She knew by heart all of Amos’s strident opinions on the evils of imperial Russia; from the sidelines, he cheered the revolutionaries on. But she wondered how he would have managed, if by an accident of birth he’d become Emperor of all the Russias on his father’s death. This made her smile; the thought of Amos in his pit boots and cap acknowledging the crowds outside the Winter Palace. He would make rather an effective autocrat in another life. His belligerent bearing and stubborn self-belief would serve him well.

  She scanned the decks of the Standart one last time, looking for the empress, but stopped when she realised that she was being watched by a heavily bearded officer who was out to bag an assassin before lunch. The poor Romanovs, thought Anna; they see a throng of gaily dressed people and wonder who among them would like them dead.

  Thea had made quite a pet of Maya, and today the two of them had been sea bathing together, taking a dip from the back of a quaint bathing machine that had been towed for them to the water’s edge by a horse. Maya had a lavender-coloured costume, with straight, knee-length knickers and a skirt with a white-trimmed frill. She was proud of it – rightly so, Thea told her – and she bemoaned the fact that it hardly ever got an outing. She wanted to keep it on while they ate ices on the grass by the bandstand, but even Thea, who didn’t exhibit nearly so many dull, adult preoccupations as most grown-ups, would not allow it, so they both changed into their normal clothes in the privacy of their rented mobile hut.

  Anna was already waiting for them on Prince’s Green when they arrived, pink and exhilarated from the sun and the cold salt water. Maya told her about the horse, and said she should have come too; Anna said it would have taken more than one horse to get her into the chilly waters of the Solent. They talked about plans for later: Thea said they were dining with the Duchess of Manchester in the house she’d taken for the week, but Anna and Maya were welcome to dine on the Lady Isabella if they wished. Anna said she wouldn’t hear of putting their staff to such trouble on what would otherwise be an evening off. They would eat fish and chips, and then see what they could see. That sounded nice, said Thea a little wistfully, and Maya said, ‘You’re more than welcome to join us,’ which made her mother and Thea laugh, even though Maya knew it had been exactly the right thing to say. Then, suddenly, the child shot up, dropping her ice and startling a seagull, which cawed and flapped and caused a small outbreak of chaos on their part of the green.

  ‘Dad!’ she shouted. ‘We’re here! Amos!’

  She turned her shining face to Anna and Thea and said, ‘It’s Amos. My dad,’ and then she pelted across the grass and Anna saw him, dressed in his summer suit and his winter Homburg, and her heart leapt at the incongruity of him, and the shock.

  They made an unlikely party, Amos, Anna, Maya and Thea, but if Amos was feeling uncomfortable, it didn’t show in his face, which was arranged into an expression of benign interest. Thea was talking about her plans for opening the gardens of Netherwood Hall to the public, because she thought it a waste and a shame that so few people were able to appreciate their magnificence.

  ‘I thought, perhaps, every Sunday, but Toby thinks that might be too much, so he suggested bank holidays, but that seems too little.’

  Amos nodded very nicely. ‘Also,’ he said mildly, ‘you don’t close your pits on bank ’olidays.’

  ‘Don’t we?’

  ‘Not when I worked in one, anyroad.’

  ‘Ah, back in the bad old days,’ Thea said merrily. ‘I think Henrietta’s reformed us now. Anyway, it’s neither here nor there, because I’ve plumped for the last Sunday of the month, from May to August. We’ll have one at the end of this month, because I can’t wait until next May.’

  She paused, as if waiting for applause. Anna said, ‘It sounds an excellent plan. Does Mr MacLeod know of it?’

  ‘No-o,’ Thea said, ‘I haven’t seen him in weeks and weeks. But it’s for him, really, so I don’t see how he could object. He works so hard, and sometimes entire borders bloom and die without anyone other than Henry and me showing an interest.’

  They were standing on a jetty, waiting for the boat that would carry the countess back to her yacht. When it came, Tobias was in it. Amos’s face was unreadable, but he shook the earl’s proffered hand. Tobias turned to Anna.

  ‘I didn’t know your husband was in Cowes, Mrs Sykes.’

  ‘Neither did I,’ Anna said.

  ‘Ha! Very good! Well, in you hop, darling, steady as you go.’ Tobias reached for Thea and handed her carefully into the craft: she was precious cargo. ‘I say, Mr Sykes?’ he said, when Thea was seated.

  Amos didn’t exactly answer, only looked at the earl and raised an enquiring eyebrow. This could have been construed as rude, but not, apparently, by the earl. ‘I was thinking about a cricket match. My wife here has decided she wants to fling open our gates to all and sundry, and I thought an inaugural cricket match would be entertaining.’

  ‘Oh?’ Amos said neutrally. Toffs v. Nobs, he thought: no thank you very much.

  ‘So, I wondered if you might know anyone in Netherwood who could field an opposition? I’ll provide the house team – call in some favours, get any available chaps over from Chatsworth, Wentworth Castle and whatnot. Do you know any cricketers?’

  Now here was something. Amos rocked on his heels and smiled. ‘One or two,’ he said.

  ‘Splendid. Could you field a team, do you suppose?’

  ‘Leave it with me. Last Sunday in August, did you say?’

  ‘That’s it. Not much notice, but it’ll just be a bit of fun. I’ll bet some of your mining pals could probably wield a bat if we gave them one.’

  ‘They do say,’ said Amos, ‘that if you need a decent cricketer you should whistle down a mine shaft.’

  The earl chortled at the thought of recruiting a team from anywhere other than the playing fields of Eton and Harrow. ‘Jolly good,’ he said. ‘Tell them it’s a six if the ball hits the house, and there’s a prize of twenty-five pounds to any man who can break a window.’ He barked with laughter. ‘That should kindle some interest, what?’

  ‘Oh aye,’ Amos said. ‘I should think so.’

  ‘Right we are, anchors aweigh.’ The little motorboat chugged off from the jetty, and Thea made Maya squeal with laughter by waving her silk handkerchief and pretending to cry. Anna gave Amos a shrewd look and said, ‘One or two?’

  ‘One or two bad ’uns, I meant,’ he said. ‘Eleven or twelve belters.’ He grinned at her, but she resisted him and said, ‘Anyway, why are you here?’

  ‘Oh that’s nice, I must say.’

  ‘I mean, have you come to stir up trouble?’

  He held out his arms in mute appeal. ‘Do I look like a troublemaker?’

  ‘You do, actually, Dad,’ said Maya. ‘Your hat’s at a funny angle.’

  He roared with laughter, picked her up, and rubbed his stubbly chin on her soft cheek until she begged forgiveness. Anna watched them and felt lighter and happier than she had for weeks.

  ‘It’s good to see you,’ she said.

  He put Maya down. ‘It’s very good to see you.’

  ‘Why did you come, though? You were dead against it.’

  He shrugged, shoved his hands in his pockets, jangling his change. ‘Fancied some sea air,’ he said. He looked about him, left and right; everywhere there were lords and ladies in bespoke versions of casual yachting costumes, and the harbour bristled with masts and sails. ‘It’s busy though,’ he said. ‘Is there summat going on?’

  ‘Seriously,’ Anna said.

  ‘Seriously, I wanted to see you. Correction, I needed to see you. I needed to see you to tell you I’m sorry. I’ve been a brute and a clot, and I’m sorry.’

  ‘I don’t remember you ever apologising to me before.’ She felt a little churlish, reminding him of this now, but nevertheless it mattered. It had a
lways been her, never him, who broke a silence.

  ‘Then you’ll know what it means that I’m saying it now.’

  ‘And now, you should kiss,’ Maya said, so they did.

  When Henrietta came to find them the next day she was taken aback to see Amos, although she managed very well to hide her surprise and he managed very well to be polite. They were hiring bicycles, Anna said: could she join them? Henrietta demurred, reluctant to impose, and in the end it was Amos who insisted. ‘More t’merrier,’ he said. ‘You can ride a bike, can’t you?’ It was this indirect challenge that Henrietta couldn’t resist. She could ride a bicycle perfectly well, and in fact led the way from Cowes to a sandy cove, where they ate cheese and pickle rolls.

  Maya collected shells and those stones which, to her, and sometimes inexplicably, were interesting. The adults watched her, and talked, and Henrietta showed such an informed interest in the ructions created by the chancellor that, before he realised what was happening, Amos found he had complimented her on her grasp of the matter.

  ‘Thank you,’ Henrietta said, ‘but I can’t take all the credit.’ She smiled at Anna. ‘We had a lesson in radical Liberal tactics from your wife. My mother is still lying in a darkened room with an ice pack on her forehead.’

  Anna said, ‘Did she think I was dreadful?’

  ‘Shocking.’ Henrietta looked at Amos and said, ‘Anna was quite magnificent. We were all quaking, by the end, at the thought of the House of Lords razed to the ground and all the Tory peers castrated. You would have been proud of her.’

  Amos looked at Anna, who was laughing with Henrietta, and his heart was full. ‘Oh, I am’ he said.

  His wife smiled warmly at him, pleased at the effort he was making, and Amos, who didn’t want to give the impression that he was warming to Lady Henrietta Hoyland, had to look away. He was here in Cowes for Anna, and for his marriage, and for Maya. He wasn’t here to make friends with the foe.