by Eva Ibbotson
‘No,’ said the countess. ‘He has not. But the daughter of Colonel Terek has married a very rich man with many factories, and of course the Colonel has always had a tendresse for the baroness ever since she came from the Smolny, so he has sent Pupsik to a very expensive clinic in ’arley Street and they have made Röntgen rays and found absolutely clear the Rastrelli diamond in some part of him that begins, I think, with a “c”.’
‘That’s marvellous! So now they will be able to operate?’
‘They will be able,’ admitted the countess. ‘But they will not, because the baroness does not permit that Pupsik should suffer and has taken instead a job where she receives the washing parcels in a laundry in, I think, Clapham. But you see how there are always wonderful things.’
‘Yes, Mama,’ said Anna tenderly, getting up to kiss her.
She wandered over to the window. In three hours, Rupert and Muriel would be man and wife. ‘Help me to endure it,’ she prayed. ‘Oh, help me, please.’
‘There are many wonderful things,’ her mother had said. Well, she would have to find them somehow. Even in this wedding, perhaps. And suddenly, unbidden, she did find something. Ollie’s pride and joy as she walked down the aisle in her pink dress, holding up Muriel’s train. For Ollie would be all right now. Anna, slipping upstairs, meaning to say goodbye to Ollie, had seen Muriel go into the child’s room carrying a most beautiful doll. Clearly Muriel was sorry for what she had said and had come to make sure that nothing spoilt the little girl’s joy on her big day.
Lost in reverie, Anna did not at first pay any attention to the huge, black car which had drawn up in front of the house. A car with a pennant on the bonnet and two serious-looking men in dark suits in the back. Men who now descended to allow the chauffeur to hand out a figure wrapped in innumerable shawls . . . an old woman in a kerchief . . .
Anna gave a gasp. ‘Mama! Pinny!’
But when they reached her she could not speak and it was the countess, tears running down her cheek, who cried:
‘It’s Niannka! Dear God, it’s Niannka come back!’
The men from the Foreign Office had left, pointing out sternly that while they were delivering this old woman she was in fact stateless, without papers or permits, and that the authorities would be in touch. Nor was their departure attended by any expressions of gratitude on the part of Old Niannka herself, who clearly felt that in collecting her from the Orient Express and whisking her through customs, they had done no more than their duty. Now she sat on the sofa, emitting the familiar smell of camphor and oiled wool; toothless, emaciated, fierce as an eagle – and in her hoarse, Georgian dialect, told them her story.
She had been arrested on the way to their rendezvous in one of those pointless raids that were so much a feature of the times. For three weeks she and a haphazard collection of unfortunates scooped off the streets had been kept behind barbed wire in a detainment camp near Chudvo. From there, some wretches were marched off to permanent imprisonment or death, others, arbitrarily, were released, given back their ragged bundles and sent on their way.
Niannka was released, but when she reached Chudvo Station to meet her employers, the Grazinskys had gone. Since they themselves had not been certain of their destination, she thought the only thing to do was to go back to the palace in Petersburg and wait for news.
The Grazinsky Palace, however, had been taken over by the Metal Plate Workers’ Union – an organization which made it clear that she had better remove herself, and fast. When she wouldn’t leave, they sent for the Red Guard. The first time the soldiers escorted her over the Anchikov Bridge they were friendly, cracking jokes with the old woman. The second time they were not amused. The third time they told her that if she attempted to return to the palace she would be shot.
‘So I went home, Baryna,’ said Niannka now, shrugging aside the ten day journey in an unspeakable train across a war-torn country, the trek across the mountains without food.
Her relatives were not overjoyed to see her, but Niannka commandeered an adjoining cave, stowed her bundles and prepared to wait till the Little Father should be back on his throne and the Grazinskys return.
It was a hard time, she said, but she had done what she could to make herself useful, requisitioning the new babies as soon as they were born and preventing her pig of a brother-in-law from putting dead cats in the shashlik.
Then one day, a party of English with mules and porters had come to the village. Leading them was a tall man like a stork, who had begun to question her. At first she had laughed so much at his extraordinary Russian that she couldn’t hear what he said, but when she gathered that he knew where the Grazinskys were she stopped laughing very soon.
‘Even so, I was not stupid,’ she said, tapping the side of her nose. ‘“How do I know you are telling me the truth?” I said to him.’
But then, continued the old woman, he had described the Grazinskys – but most particularly Annoushka – in such amazing detail that her doubts were soon stilled. ‘For he knew everything, doushenka,’ she said, turning to Anna. ‘The way your hair jumps out from behind your ears and the way there are freckles only on the top of your nose and even the place where the chicken made a hole in your thumb, do you remember?’
So as soon as she had gone to the monastery to thank St Nino, she packed her belongings and prepared for the mule journey across the valley to where she could catch a train to England. And here, said Niannka, shaking her head, the Englishman had proved himself very slow in the uptake, not realizing that of course it was necessary for her to set off at once, that there was no question of her waiting till the expedition was ready to return. She had had to sit for several days actually on the bag of tools he was using for his digging to make this clear. But at last he had got the message and taken her down to Batumi and sent many telegrams and put her on the boat to Constantinople . . .
‘So now I am here,’ she finished, ‘and ready to work.’ Her fierce eyes swept the tiny room, looking for the missing icon. ‘But first, Baryna, I must ask for your forgiveness.’
And with tears springing to her eyes again, she began to apologize. She had not, she said, been able to bring the Crown of Kazan. It was so cumbersome and heavy that it would certainly have attracted suspicion, so she had buried it under some rocks just before she reached her village. She could remember the exact spot and would take them there as soon as the Little Father returned, if only the baryna would not be angry. Everything else, of course, she had brought.
‘Everything else?’ said the countess faintly.
Niannka bent down to the malodorous, mudstained carpetbag which had been lying like a sick animal against her skirts. Then she rose, carried it over to the green baize card table and, watched in a silence that even embraced Miss Pinfold’s sister’s budgerigar, began to unpack. She drew out a pair of woollen stockings, a flannel petticoat, a crucifix . . . There followed a wooden comb, a rolled up daguerrotype of St Xavier the Bleeding Heart . . . Then a large, flat piece of felting, stiffened with cardboard, the false bottom of the case. Then crumpled up newspaper, a great deal of it. Once more her hand came out, this time cradling a lake, a dazzling pool of blue . . .
‘My sapphires,’ cried the countess. ‘Oh, Niannka, my sapphires!’
Niannka nodded and turned back to her rooting. Then, with a grunt of satisfaction, she let fall on the green baize table the translucent, shimmering snake that was the famous triple row of pearls. Quite impervious to their exclamations and the countess’s tears, she unpacked the Potemkin pendant, a diamond tiara, a butterfly brooch, three pairs of earrings . . . There followed the Empress Sophia’s pectoral cross and the rubies that had been Anna’s christening present from her godmother. And lastly, laying the stones down respectfully but without undue excitement, as one completing delivery of a useful batch of groceries, what was arguably the most valuable set of jewellery in Christendom: the emerald parure.
15
Baskerville woke first on the morning of the wedding.
Woke, stretched and yawned in the small room in the bachelor’s wing which Rupert still occupied for this last night. Woke and padded over to the two suitcases, strapped and labelled for Switzerland and howled as dogs have howled at their master’s luggage for centuries.
And after Baskerville, came Proom.
Proom had seen to the arrangement of the trestle tables for the tenantry and the timing of the cars to go to church. He had supervised the setting out of the striped awning and the strip of red carpet that led from the front door down the steps. He had seen that the telegrams were laid out on a silver salver by the best man’s chair and that the Damascus steel knife from the Topkapi Palace was in place next to the wedding cake. He had even procured five pounds of rice from Mrs Park and ordered it to be parcelled out and delivered to the villagers, who, in the matter of spontaneous festive gestures, could not, where this particular wedding was concerned, be relied upon.
No one seeing him would believe how heavy his heart was, for his plan had not succeeded. He had wasted Rabinovitch’s money. He had failed.
It had been necessary to take the old-established servants into his confidence and they had played their parts to a man. By the time Proom, the previous night, had gone to Dr Lightbody’s room and requested a private interview with that eminent eugenicist, everything was ready. But though Proom had been able to substantiate his disclosures, though the doctor had been violently agitated and upset, he had not acted. ‘He hasn’t slept a wink,’ Sid, who had brought up his shaving water, had just reported, ‘but he hasn’t done a thing.’
And now it was too late.
‘No luck, then?’ enquired Mr Potter, fetching the white ribbons to tie on the Daimler – a query echoed with increasing hopelessness by Louise, directing the extra village women hired to carry the jellies and syllabubs, the patés and terrines upstairs, by James, busy with the wine coolers, by Mr Cameron, bringing in the corsage for the dowager and the buttonholes for the bridegroom and the guests . . .
By eleven o’clock no one even asked any more, and on the instructions of Mr Proom they went upstairs to change for church. But when the maids came down in their polka dot muslins and cherry trimmed hats, they found Mrs Park still in her overalls.
‘I’m not going to the church,’ she said with finality. ‘I can’t leave Win.’ The little kitchen maid whom Mrs Park had put in her own bed was slowly recovering, but she was still very weak.
‘Oh, Mrs Park,’ wailed Peggy. ‘And your new foulard and all!’
‘I don’t mind,’ said Mrs Park. ‘I’m not keen. It’s just Miss Ollie I’d like to have seen.’
Upstairs, the dowager’s Alice was lowering Mrs Bunford’s powder blue silk over her employer’s head. ‘It’s not too bad,’ she said. ‘Except for the sleeves, of course.’ She sighed, noticing the dowager’s shadowed eyes, the lines of strain round her mouth. Well, there was nothing to be done. They were packed and ready to go to the Mill House on the following day and a damp, dark hole it seemed to Alice and the worst place you could think of for her rheumatism, but where Lady Westerholme went there Alice Spinks would follow. ‘Mr Cameron’s waiting, my lady, with your corsage. He wanted to give it to you himself.’
‘Oh, Mr Cameron, how beautiful! It’s got your new rose in it!’ The dowager’s eyes misted. The garden at the Mill House was small and overshadowed, and she and this dour old Scotsman had shared thirty years of delight in flowers. ‘Have you found a name for it yet?’ she asked into his ear-trumpet which had proved staunchly Muriel-proof. ‘Anna said you were thinking of naming it for Miss Hardwicke?’
The old man’s face broke into a crafty smile. ‘Aye,’ he said, ‘I’m calling it “Countess”.’
‘Just “Countess”?’ said the dowager, puzzled.
The gardener nodded and began to wheeze with his special brand of private laughter. ‘Just “Countess”,’ he said – and took his leave.
‘It’s time to go, my lady,’ said Alice gently.
‘Yes.’
Well, at least, thought the dowager, letting Alice adjust her hat, I’ve been spared the Herrings.
For Proom, sent to settle the Herrings’ outstanding fares and bring them back to Mersham, had returned empty-handed. The Herrings, it seemed, had taken umbrage and returned to Birmingham. God did that sometimes, the dowager had observed. Pushed you to the limit and then gave you just one little bonus: in this case, a wedding without Melvyn, Myrtle and the twins.
In the east wing, James, offering to valet Uncle Sebastien, had been repulsed by the sour-faced nurse, who was now helping the old man to get ready, talking to him like a child, with a dreadful, arch coyness. ‘We’re going to be very important today, aren’t we? We’re going to give the bride away, aren’t we? So we don’t want any nasty cigarette ash on our nice clean clothes, do we?’
And in her bedroom the baulked and furious Lady Lavinia snapped the gold bracelet that had been the bridegroom’s present to the bridesmaids on to her scraggy wrist and went along to Queen Caroline’s bedchamber.
But at the sight of the bride even Lavinia’s ill-temper subsided and she gave an involuntary gasp of admiration. Flanked by the obsequious Cynthia and the new Swiss maid who had providentially arrived the day before, standing erect and without a trace of nervousness in her glorious ivory dress, the future Countess of Westerholme was quite simply breathtaking.
‘My prayerbook and my gloves, please,’ she ordered. ‘Cynthia, pick up my train. I’m ready.’
Mr Morland, robed and waiting in the vestry, came forward with outstretched hands to greet the bridegroom. If the medieval saints had gone to their deaths as to a wedding, the Earl of Westerholme, thought the kind and scholarly vicar, looked as if he was preparing to invert the trend.
‘I’m afraid Mr Byrne’s not here yet,’ he said, concealing his surprise, for the best man had hitherto been most punctilious in the performance of his duties.
He moved over to the door and stood looking out at the congregation. Sad that the bride had no relatives at all. In the packed church only her erstwhile chaperone represented her side of the family. At the organ, Miss Frensham was peering with her half-blind eyes at the keys, anxiously memorizing the strange piece that Miss Hardwicke had ordered instead of ‘Lohengrin’. The formal urns of lilies, the gardenias and carnations stiffly wired to the pew ends by the London florists who had replaced Miss Tonks and Miss Mortimer gave off an almost overpowering scent.
Mr Morland frowned. What was it that struck him as so unusual?
And then he realized. Absolutely no one was crying! Strange, thought Mr Morland, who could not remember such a thing. Exceedingly strange.
But if no one was crying there was one member of the congregation who was clearly in extremis. Dr Lightbody, sitting beside old Lady Templeton in the pew behind the dowager, was in a piteous state. Sweat had broken out on his forehead, his hands were shaking and once he rose in his seat and threw out an arm as if he were about to break into anguished speech.
‘Are you ill?’ whispered Lady Templeton, who could not approve such conduct in the House of God. ‘Do you wish to go out?’
The doctor managed to shake his head, but the phantoms that had haunted him since the Mersham butler, nursing a grievance against the family as these old retainers were apt to do, had been to see him, ran riot in his brain. For the fate awaiting Muriel Hardwicke was too terrible to contemplate. This white goddess, this vessel of perfection was going – and on this very night – to be most hideously defiled by the satanic brute that she had chosen to espouse. And he had been too weak to save her. Well, it was too late now. He closed his eyes, buried his head in his hands. Let him at least not see . . .
Five minutes passed, ten . . . The congregation was growing a little restive. Miss Frensham’s store of introductory music was running dangerously low. But it was not the bride who was causing the delay. It was the best man, who should have been here hours ago to help and succour the bridegroom.
‘Of course his presence is not ess
ential to the ceremony,’ said Mr Morland. ‘Even if he has the ring.’
But now Tom came striding into the vestry. His apologies were perfunctory, his expression grim and it was almost with hostility that he led Rupert – whose sense of being caught in a nightmare from which he could not wake was growing stronger by the minute – to the chancel steps.
And now it was beginning. With her old mouth nervously puckered, Miss Frensham began to play the strange piece demanded by Miss Hardwicke – and on the arm of Mr Sebastien Frayne, the bride entered.
A gasp of sheer admiration greeted her. A slightly different gasp followed the entry of the two adult bridesmaids in their pink ruffles and petalled caps.
Then a rustling, whispers of surprise, of indignation, murmurs of disappointment, puzzled looks . . .
The bride reached the altar rails, handed her prayerbook to the Lady Lavinia; Mr Morland cleared his throat, when the voice of the bridegroom was heard saying clearly and imperiously, ‘Wait! Where is the third bridesmaid? Where is Ollie Byrne?’
Tom turned to his friend. Everything in him longed to blurt out what Muriel had done. Longed to show him Ollie as he had left her, lying white and despairing in her bed because there was nothing, now, to get up for and nowhere, now, to go. Ollie, who had seen so totally and searingly through Muriel’s concern for her health, her unctuous bribery . . . who had told the nursemaid coming to brush her marigold curls that there was no point because cripples didn’t need to be tidy, and now lay with her face to the wall beyond reach of comfort or of hope.
But Muriel, shocked at a voice raised in church, whispered, ‘Hush, dear. Ollie isn’t well, it seems,’ – and Mr Morland bent his head and began to repeat what are surely the best-loved words in the world:
Dearly beloved, we are gathered here in the sight of God and in the face of this congregation, to join together this Man and this Woman in Holy Matrimony . . .
But Tom’s disclosure would have been superfluous. Rupert had understood, and as clearly as if he were again present he remembered Ollie’s sad little question in the taxi on the way from Fortman’s and his own answer: ‘If you are not a bridesmaid at my wedding then there will be no wedding, and that I swear.’