The man whistled softly, laughing. ‘What a battleaxe!’
Davie grinned back. ‘She didn’t even know what she was talking about. Marianne North didn’t go to Russia. Not so far as I know, anyway. And she didn’t do many of her drawings in Europe, either.’
The man glanced around. ‘She certainly produced an amazing body of work. And, as poor downtrodden Tilda pointed out, all so beautifully detailed—’
‘There are more than eight hundred.’ Davie leaned back on the bench, chewing on his pencil. ‘I think they’re smashing. I like the Indian ones best. Or at least, I think I do. The South African ones are super as well. It’s really hard to choose, and sometimes I change my mind. Mother prefers the Australian ones.’
The man glanced interestedly at the sketch pad on the boy’s knees, then back up at the earnest face. ‘You obviously know a lot about them.’
Self-composedly the child lifted a shoulder. ‘I’m going to be a botanist when I grow up. I shall travel all over the world and draw things, like Marianne North did. I hope I’ll discover a plant no one’s ever seen before, and have it named after me.’ The tone was assured. ‘And perhaps I’ll have one named after Mother as well,’ he added.
‘Your mother doesn’t have a problem with your plans?’ his companion asked, in entertained curiosity. ‘It seems a slightly unusual ambition?’
‘Oh, no. Mother doesn’t mind at all. In fact she thinks it a very good idea.’
The man smiled again. Davie, a perceptive child of immediate likes and dislikes, had already decided that he had an extremely nice smile; it crinkled his narrow, brightly hazel eyes in a very infectious way. ‘So how are you going to put this grand plan into action?’ He sounded genuinely interested.
‘I haven’t exactly worked it out yet.’ Davie was earnest. ‘I shall go to university, of course. Mother says I don’t have to decide which one yet, and I expect she’s right. I read a lot already. And I draw a lot, too.’ The boy looked down at his sketch, putting his head on one side as he studied it, frowning a little.
‘Would you mind if I had a look?’ the stranger asked quietly. ‘I know a little about art. I came to Kew specifically to see the North pictures.’
Davie hesitated for a moment.
‘It doesn’t matter if you’d rather not.’ The words, and the smile that accompanied them, were quick.
‘Oh, no. Go ahead. Here—’ Davie handed him the sketchbook, then watched him with wary, suddenly watchful eyes.
There was a moment of silence; then the man lifted his head, still smiling. ‘You have a great deal of talent, young man.’ He handed the pad back. ‘You get the botany bit right and I don’t think you’ll have any problems with the pictures!’
‘Thank you, Mr—?’ Davie, reaching out to take the pad, looked at his new friend expectantly.
‘Ross. Richard Ross.’ The man extended a large-boned hand.
Davie took it, his own long, narrow hand all but disappearing. ‘I’m David. David Sancerre. Everyone calls me Davie.’
Dark brows lifted. ‘That’s an unusual name. It sounds French?’
‘Yes. My father – my real father – was French. I never knew him. He died before I was born. In the war, you know.’ Obviously from the matter-of-fact way the child spoke it was a fairly oft-repeated explanation. ‘I was born in Paris.’
Richard Ross raised suddenly startled eyebrows. ‘Paris? Well, I’ll be blowed! My business has a branch in Paris! I have an apartment there. In the rue Jacob. Do you know it?’
Davie shook his head. ‘Actually I don’t know Paris at all. I’ve never been there. Not that I remember, if you see what I mean,’ he added, with a meticulous accuracy that brought another quick smile.
‘Oh?’
Davie turned a page, rummaged in his pocket for a pencil sharpener. ‘It’s Mother. She won’t go there. She’s – well, she just won’t. She says it’s best that I wait till I’m grown up.’ He glanced at his watch. ‘I can’t think where she’s got to, actually. She should have been here ages ago. There must have been a queue at the post office. She stopped off to send a telegram to my Nan.’
‘So – your mother won’t go to Paris? What a pity. It’s such a lovely city.’
‘It isn’t just Paris. She doesn’t like boats. But even if she did, I suppose it would make her sad. Paris, I mean. With my father dying and everything.’
‘Perhaps. Yes, I can see that.’ Richard Ross crossed long legs and leaned forward, his elbow upon his knees. ‘So – tell me about some of the pictures here. Do you have a favourite?’
‘Oh yes,’ Davie said immediately, pointing. ‘It’s been my favourite ever since I was a little boy. And it’s down at the bottom where I can see it properly. It’s over there, number forty-two: Fror Imperiale, Coral Snake and Spider, Brazil. She painted it in 1873, I think.’
Richard Ross laughed. ‘Snakes and spiders. That sounds about right to attract a lad.’ He leaned back, stretched his arms along the back of the bench, brown head thrown back as he surveyed the charmingly idiosyncratic exhibition in its equally charming and idiosyncratic setting. The pictures ranged about them, set so close together that the walls between could barely be seen. The artist herself had arranged them so more than forty years before, as she had designed and painted the frieze which ran beneath the splendid clerestory windows that lit the paintings from above, and the intricate decorations that surrounded the doors.
‘So what about the paintings right at the top?’ Richard Ross asked amusedly. ‘Are you saving them for when you grow up, too? Or do you have a ladder?’
Davie laughed. ‘Mother used to lift me up, but I’m too big now. I sometimes stand on the benches if there’s no one around,’ he added with artless honesty, then turned his head and jumped to his feet as the door opened again. ‘Mother! There you are! Wherever have you been?’
Annie hesitated a little, smiled. ‘There were a lot of people in the post office. I had to wait.’
Richard Ross had risen courteously at her entrance. Annie looked from one to the other, faintly enquiring.
The man held out his hand. ‘Richard Ross,’ he said quickly. ‘Young Davie here has been telling me about the pictures.’ His voice was light and pleasant, his bright, flecked eyes suddenly sharp and lit with interest.
Annie, responding to the engaging smile, took his proffered hand. ‘Annette Hill,’ she said. His hand was warm, the clasp firm. ‘How do you do? I do hope he hasn’t been bothering you?’
‘Mother!’
Richard Ross shook his head. ‘Not at all. We’ve had a very enlightening conversation.’ He was, she guessed, in his early thirties, tall, rangily built, dressed in Oxford bags and a sports jacket that were both fashionable and expensive-looking.
‘He knows all about art and he likes my picture. Don’t you, Mr Ross? Look, Mother – I’ve been copying the Australian flowers that you like. I’ll have to come back, though; they’re nowhere near finished. I’ll paint them for you if you want. For your birthday.’ David held out his sketchbook.
Annie, very aware of the open and undisguised interest in Richard Ross’s narrow eyes, withdrew her hand from his. ‘Davie – I’m sorry, but I really think we ought to go.’
‘What? But you said—’
‘We can come back tomorrow.’
‘I’m at school tomorrow.’
‘After school.’ Firmly polite, she nodded to Richard Ross and, turning, held out her hand to her son. ‘Goodbye, Mr Ross. It was pleasant meeting you.’
‘Goodbye, Mrs Hill. Goodbye, Davie.’
‘Bye.’ Frowning, Davie turned to his mother. ‘Mother, it’s not fair – you did say—’
‘Home, Davie. Uncle Fergus is coming to tea. He has something to ask you.’
Richard Ross moved to open the door and held it for them, watching as they walked the verdant path away from the gallery, the pleated skirt of Annie’s printed chiffon dress swishing about legs that he had already noticed and appreciated. Davie turned to wave. Smi
ling, he waved back. Annie, tall, graceful, reserved, her dark bob swinging as she walked, did not look round.
* * *
‘Well, young man. What do you say?’ Fergus Cameron’s deep voice was gentle.
Davie sucked his lip for a moment, and turned his wide eyes upon his mother. The three of them were sitting at the tea table, the remains of the meal still laid upon it.
Annie said nothing, but her own eyes were watchful.
‘It will be very nice, I expect,’ the boy said carefully, then looked sharply up at the man. ‘But we will still live here, won’t we? We’ll stay in Kew?’
‘Certainly. Your mother has already made the point. Your school is here, your friends are here.’ Fergus smiled reassuringly. ‘The idea is to make you happier, Davie, not to make you miserable—’
‘I am happy.’ The words were just a little too quick.
Annie opened her mouth, but Fergus spoke first. ‘Of course you are. But, surely – there’s always room for a little extra happiness in anyone’s life, isn’t there?’
Davie’s face was strained. He had not smiled. ‘I suppose so.’ The words did not carry conviction.
‘Don’t you like the idea of having a father again?’
The child nodded.
‘Then may I ask you formally for your mother’s hand in marriage?’ Fergus’s eyes were twinkling now. Davie had always thought that, with his white moustache and hair and his rotund figure, Uncle Fergus sometimes looked like Father Christmas dressed up in a business suit. His mother could have done worse, he supposed. She might have ended up marrying someone like Peter Saunders’ dreadful father, who never did anything but shout, and who bullied everyone fearfully.
‘All right,’ he said. ‘I don’t mind.’
Annie reached out an arm to him. He slipped from the chair and moved to her, putting an arm about her shoulders and leaning against her. ‘It’ll be fine, darling,’ she said softly. ‘You’ll see.’
He stood for a moment, rubbing a strand of her straight, shining dark hair between finger and thumb in a faintly babyish way that wrung her heart. ‘May I go and play in the garden, please?’
‘Of course. Off you go.’
He closed the door very quietly behind him, upon silence. Fergus was watching Annie steadily. She fiddled with a teaspoon in her saucer. ‘Would you like a fresh cup of tea?’
‘No. Thank you.’
‘I don’t mind making a pot.’
He shook his head.
She got up and went to the long French windows that looked onto the garden. Davie was sitting on his makeshift swing that hung from the branch of an old apple tree, twisting it round and round, then taking his feet from the ground and letting it spin back. As she watched, it stopped, rocked back and forth for a moment, then settled to stillness. Davie sat, arms linked about the ropes, head down, his bare legs swinging.
‘He’ll get used to the idea.’ Fergus had come up behind her.
Will he? Will I? ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Of course he will.’
There was a small silence; then she felt his hand on her shoulder. ‘You’ve made me a very happy man, my dear. Thank you.’
In the garden Davie, very slowly, was twisting the ropes of the swing again, leaning back, his eyes closed.
* * *
The spring night was warm, the house very quiet. Annie, propped comfortably upon her pillows, struggled to concentrate on her book. She had read the last sentence at least three times, and had made no sense of it at all. Sighing, she laid the book open and face-down beside her and leaned her head against the pillow, eyes distant.
Fergus was a dear, dependable man. He cared for her and he cared for Davie. He would make a good husband. What was it she had said to her mother on the beach at Southwold? Safety and good sense…
She reached to turn the light off, slipped out of bed and walked to the window, drawing open the curtains. The lino was cool on her bare feet. The garden below was flooded with silver moonlight, the sharp-edged shadows black as ink. Annie leaned her elbows on the windowsill and her chin on her cupped hands. The smell of blossom drifted in through the window, a bird twittered sleepily, and in one of the other gardens a girl laughed softly. On the nearby river a tug hooted. The dazzling lantern of the moon hung motionless in the sky. It was a night to share, a night for lovers.
Davie had been conceived on a night not unlike this, and in a garden.
She shivered a little and closed her eyes for a moment, a taste on her tongue, a haunting shadow in her mind.
Safety and good sense. There was undoubtedly a lot to be said for both…
She remained at the window for a long time before finally straightening, stretching tiredly and turning back to her bed. As she did so she stepped into a beam of moonlight and caught sight of herself in the long mirror on the door of the wardrobe: a tall figure, white-shouldered, pale satin of her nightdress clinging sensuously to the curve of her neat waist and hips.
The dark eyes that looked back at her were pensive and held, as she supposed they always did, a shadow of remembered pain.
Chapter Three
‘—they said in their hundred voices, ‘No, not yet,’ and the sky said, ‘No, not there.’
Annie snapped shut the book and tilted her head back, resting it against the tree under which she was sitting, gazing into the middle distance through half-closed eyes – her attention for once not immediately caught and held by the great glass structure that was Kew’s magnificent Temperate House on the far side of this part of the gardens. She had read A Passage to India twice in as many weeks; the book fascinated and yet at the same time somehow repelled her. It was – she searched for the word – it seemed a shame to call such a book ‘dispiriting’, but this was the word that came repeatedly to mind.
Her thoughts distracted, she did not at first see Davie coming out of the Marianne North Gallery accompanied by the tall figure of Richard Ross. They were almost upon her before she noticed them.
She jumped to her feet, brushing her skirt. ‘Mr Ross. Good afternoon.’
He smiled his quick, cheery smile. ‘Good afternoon. I do hope you don’t mind… I came across this young man in the Gallery – I left my fountain pen there yesterday after I had taken some notes and had to return to retrieve it – and we had the mutual thought that a glass of lemonade might be of benefit. What do you think?’
‘And a bun.’ Davie grinned up at him. ‘You did mention a bun—’
‘Indeed I did.’ Richard Ross looked back at Annie.
Annie hesitated, uncertain. ‘I’m not sure that—’
Davie’s face dropped. ‘But we often go and have a lemonade. Why can’t we today?’
Richard Ross’s bright, narrow eyes were steady and smiling on hers. He cocked a questioning eyebrow; almost, she might have thought, a challenging one.
‘Please?’ Her graceless son beamed at her, all confidence that he would get his own way.
She shrugged and gave in. ‘All right. Why not? It is very warm.’ She tucked the book under her arm, took the folder that Davie held out to her, and turned to stroll beside Richard Ross towards the Refreshment Pavilion, while Davie streaked away across the grass making engine noises. ‘In case you’re wondering,’ Annie said dryly, ‘he’s a motor car. His one dream in life – apart from being a botanist – is to own a motor car. Until he’s old enough he has to put up with pretending he is one.’
The man beside her laughed. ‘He told me. In the Gallery. We had quite a chat.’ His laugh, like his smile, was quick, warm and infectious.
She smiled up at him. ‘Do you have children, Mr Ross?’
He shook his head. ‘No.’ He hesitated a moment, then added, ‘I’m not married. Not…’ he hesitated. ‘Not any more, that is.’
He spoke with a perfectly easy straightforwardness, yet somehow the confidence disconcerted her, made her feel as if her words had been unmannerly. Annie felt a faint uncomfortable colour rising in her face. She ducked her head to hide it and the book
she was carrying slipped from her hand.
He bent swiftly to retrieve it for her. ‘A Passage to India.’ He handed it to her. ‘I read that last year, when it first came out. What do you think of it? Are you enjoying it?’
Annie, the complexities of the thing still in her mind, thought seriously for a moment. ‘Is “enjoy” quite the right word for a book like that? I’m not certain it is. I’ve read it twice, and no, I’m not sure that I do actually like it. It’s marvellously written, but it isn’t exactly the most cheerful of works, is it?’
Still smiling, he shook his head. ‘Some of the best books aren’t. But I do know what you mean.’
‘It’s…’ She hesitated. ‘It’s a very thought-provoking book.’ Suddenly, as she sensed he had wanted, she was at ease again, and laughing. ‘I’m just not altogether sure I can organise the thoughts it provokes. Some of the – I suppose you’d call them philosophical – bits stump me entirely. I’ve read and reread Godbole’s piece about good and evil and although I think I can see some underlying sense of what he’s saying, I can’t really grasp it—’
‘Aren’t you just proving one of the points the book is trying to make?’ he asked. ‘East is East and West is West…’ He let the words trail off.
‘And women are women and men are men, and never the twain shall understand each other,’ she supplied wryly. ‘Yes. I suppose I am.’ They turned and started to stroll towards the Refreshment Pavilion again. ‘But – surely – we don’t really live like that, do we? No one seems to mean what they say. No one seems to understand their own or anyone else’s motives or ideas. Worse, they don’t even appear to try. Forster writes as if life is just one big muddle. A misunderstanding. Or worse, a deceit. People say one thing and mean another. Or say one thing and do another, which is horrible. Most of their actions seem predicated on snobbery, ignorance, prejudice or self-interest—’
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