Sally was right – Boris did indeed make a striking figure in his uniform. On the day he came to Bayswater to tell the family of his regiment’s posting to India, the boys were goggle-eyed with envious admiration and the females of the household, one and all, were more than favourably impressed. Even Joss softened towards this scapegrace brother of his.
“I’ll have a stripe soon,” said Boris, confident as ever in his own abilities.
“You’ll be a brigadier in no time.” Joss’s voice was sardonic, but his expression softened as it did for few others.
“Oh, Boris – India! You’ll be careful?” Tanya’s lovely face was worried. “You’ll take care of yourself?”
Boris laughed and settled his plumed shako upon his head at a particularly rakish angle. “Of course I will! And if I can’t—” he saluted her with a light kiss upon her cheek “—I’ll get some lovely lady to do it for me. Who can resist the romantic, exiled son of a Russian Count?” He cocked his head on one side, “Even if he is only a lowly private.”
He was gone before Christmas. In the spring they heard from him, a rambling, almost illegible letter, the grammar atrocious, full of jokes about the army, the officers, the heat and the lice – Boris Anatov had obviously – at least for the time being – found his niche in life.
So, indeed, had his brother. Early in 1888 Joss had persuaded Josef to allow him to visit South Africa, to make personal contact with some of the smaller suppliers. Whilst a power struggle raged in the diamond fields between the two giants, Cecil Rhodes and ‘Barney’ Barnato, there was little or no control over the price of diamonds and, as uncertainty reigned and prices fluctuated wildly, Joss knew that there was a place for a shrewd businessman and his money. A man on the spot could take advantage of the situation, and Joss acquired some very good stones at rock bottom prices. These he shipped to London, some to be sold at a profit, others to be used in the Hatton Garden workshops. Whilst in South Africa he also, on his own initiative, invested some of the company’s money in shares in a small, unproductive and unquestionably ill-run claim near the Kimberley mine. The claim was difficult to work and was making little or no money. Three months later the shares were at a premium as Rhodes and Barnato fought for control of Kimberley. Josef, whose first reaction when he had heard of Joss’s purchase of the apparently worthless shares had verged on the volcanic, now found himself the possessor of an unexpected and handsome profit and the recipient of congratulations on his shrewdness. Over a celebration lunch in the snug, discreetly opulent dining room where the more favoured clients of Rose and Company were sometimes entertained, he beamed with proprietary pride at the young man he was coming to regard almost as a son of his own blood. They had been examining the batch of stones that Joss had had shipped from South Africa, and the clouded, glass-like gems gleamed dully in the heavy-shaded light. Josef smiled. “More champagne, I think.” He nodded, smiling, to the waiter who stood attentively beside his chair. “Another magnum, Thomas, if you please. And then you may leave us. I’ll ring if I need you.”
“Yes, Sir. Thank you, Sir.” The white-gloved Thomas took a second bottle of champagne from the great ice-filled bucket, opened it with a flourish.
Josef took it from him. He leaned across the table to refill Joss’s glass, and both men watched the silver-gold wine stream, sparkling, into the tall, elegant glass. As the door shut quietly behind the manservant Josef filled his own glass, picked it up and lifted it in toast towards Joss. “To a very successful trip.”
Joss acknowledged the words with a small, graceful smile, and sipped his drink.
Josef’s eyes were glinting with mischief. “And here,” he added, innocently, lifting the glass again, “here’s to Rose and Company’s new Financial Director. Let’s hope we can all work with him without too much trouble.”
Joss’s narrow hand had stilled utterly, half-way to an answering salute. “I beg your pardon?” he asked of the silence, carefully polite. “A new Financial Director? I didn’t know—”
“But yes. Of course. The company is expanding. We need someone – don’t you agree?” He could not keep up the joke. He had drunk the better part of the first bottle of champagne – and that after several generous glasses of the dry Madeira that he so loved – and was now feeling expansively and happily relaxed. He laughed. “To Mr Josef Anatov,” he said, “new and very highly regarded Financial Director of Rose and Company.”
Joss did not move, nor, for a moment, did his expression change. Then, within his dark eyes, a sudden gleam of excitement kindled. “I?”
“But of course, you! Who else? You’re just what this company needs, my boy. Just what I need – young, energetic, astute—”
“I – don’t know what to say or how to thank you.” Joss’s voice was very quiet.
“Then don’t bother. It’s actually simple selfishness, and in fairness I shouldn’t be thanked for that.” Josef laughed again, pleased, and downed his glass of wine. “You know better than most what a donkey I am when it comes to matters of finance. It was fate, my boy, that sent you to me. Fate and nothing less! Now I will have more time for the things that I really enjoy—” He reached again for the champagne bottle.
Joss, absently, covered the top of his glass with his spread hand and shook his head a little. “No more, thank you.” His eyes, despite the small spark of excitement, were distant, veiled windows practised at disguising the subtleties behind them. Then, suddenly, as the full import of what Josef had said registered in his mind, he smiled brilliantly and his expression was more warmly happy than Josef had ever seen it. “Thank you, Josef. Thank you.” The simple words were heartfelt.
Josef brushed the thanks aside with a waved hand. “I tell you – it’s pure selfishness. To give me more time to spend in the workshops—” With the success that the company had achieved as the Rose name in jewellery design became better and better known in the exclusive circle that comprised their customers, the Hatton Garden workshops had long since been expanded to include those rooms where Josef and Grace had spent the early years of their married life.
Joss reached for the paper of uncut diamonds that lay between them, picked up a particularly fine, large, pebble-like stone and held it to the light between long, thin fingers. Josef’s hand lay upon the snow-white tablecloth, the thumb darkly marked.
“Would you never consider practising again your old craft?” the younger man asked, idly curious, half his mind still busy about its own affairs, his eyes still upon the caged light of the stone. “Doesn’t a gem like this ever make your fingers itch? I should have thought it must.”
The silence that followed the words had about it the quality of shock. Puzzled, Joss glanced at Josef. The older man’s face was suddenly closed, like a door slammed shut and latched against intrusion. “No,” he said.
Joss lifted a shoulder. “What – never? Alone you cut and polished the stone upon which this company is founded, did you not?”
“Where did you hear that?”
The harsh tone raised the younger man’s eyebrows in astonishment. “But Josef – everyone knows. Well,” he paused, his sharp brain, as always and almost without volition weighing fact and figure, possibility and probability, “that’s the story most tell, anyway. Why Josef, you know how our small world gossips!”
“Yes. I know.” Josef, slowly, lifted his glass to his lips. The laughter had gone entirely from his face. “And what else do they say of me?” he asked, softly.
Joss, alerted, considered carefully. “They say,” he said at last, “that you – as so many of us – escaped from persecution in Russia – and that you brought with you—” he paused “—rough goods of enormous value. One stone, they say. There is, of course, speculation as to its origin—” He left a small, enquiring silence, to which Josef responded not at all, then half-shrugged. “It is said too that you carried with you into exile the tools of your trade. Indeed, we have all seen them, have we not – displayed there in the workshop? And that with these and with your skill and courage you created a wonderful stone. A stone that, ironically perhaps, then travelled back to Russia.” He paused, waiting for a moment before, his rare curiosity aroused by the expression on the other man’s face, he asked, “Is this not, then, the truth?”
Across Josef’s face passed a spasm of pain so acute that the younger man made an instinctive, swift, conciliatory gesture with his hand, quickly stilled. “It’s – true, yes.” Josef said at last, his voice grating in the sombre quiet, “At least—” For how long had he needed to speak of it? To excuse, explain, placate that pain of conscience that each sight of Tanya inflicted? His eyes were upon the unremarkable-looking diamonds, in the lines of his face an anguish that gave pause even to his companion who knew more than most of pain. “In Amsterdam,” he said, very quietly, “I—” He stopped. Closed his eyes. “Amsterdam.” The very tonelessness of the word bespoke an intolerable pain.
“What? What happened in Amsterdam?” Joss asked very gently.
There was a long, long silence. Josef sat with bowed head, his gaze unblinking upon the diamonds.
“Josef? What happened in Amsterdam?”
The older man lifted his head. His face was shuttered. He shook his head. “Nothing. Of course. Nothing happened in Amsterdam. Except that your damned relatives turned your sister and me away—”
“As they did us. Yes. I know the story.”
Josef’s face was haggard even in the shaded lights. “Their fault,” he said, softly and violently, as if to himself. “All of it. Their fault.”
“All of what?”
Josef poured more champagne, drank it with no enjoyment, like a man dying of thirst. Then he picked up one of the stones and held it in the hardened palm of his hand, rocking it a little. “Poor Tanya,” he said. “My poor little Tanya.”
Dark brows lowered in puzzlement. “It wasn’t your fault that the family wouldn’t help you.”
The quiet, sympathetic tone brought a bitter smile. “No. Of Course not. Not my fault. But – other things—”
“What other things?”
The temptation to confess at last was all but overwhelming – share his pain and guilt with another, to receive absolution from the young man with whom he felt such affinity. He lifted his head. “Joss, do you believe that good can ever come out of evil?”
Joss shrugged in his characteristic way. “I suppose – yes – sometimes.” He waited.
“Sacrifices have to be made, do they not? Sometimes.” Josef’s face was intense, his consonants a little slurred.
Joss shook his head. “Josef. You must know that I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Tanya,” Josef said, very low. “That accursed stone. All this—” He gestured at the expensively appointed room.
A faint, puzzled frown had appeared on the younger man’s dark face. “Are you saying,” he asked, slowly, “that there’s some sort of connection? Between my sister and – the Shuvenski?”
Sudden alarm bells rang, loudly and very clearly in Josef’s slightly befuddled brain. What in God’s name had he been about to do? He laughed unconvincingly, a sound that did little to ease the odd tension that had unexpectedly grown between them. “Connection? Of course not. How could there be? Truly, I shouldn’t drink champagne at lunch time. It makes me maudlin!” The bluffness of his manner was almost convincing. Joss watched him, the intent frown still creasing his brow. Josef stood up, swaying a very little. “Well – back to work, eh?” He pulled his gold watch from his pocket and consulted it. “Good Lord! Is that the time? Grace and little Anna will be here any minute. The child has pestered me into taking her to the workshops. Funny little thing she is – I can’t think what she believes she’ll find to interest her there.”
Joss said nothing. The level gaze had not faltered, neither had he smiled. Now, however, he stirred, stood and smiled and the peculiar tension was gone. “I’ll see you later then?”
“Yes, yes. Come to my office at four. We’ll all take tea together.”
For a long moment after the young man had left the room Josef stood, his hands white-knuckled upon the back of the high chair behind which he stood, gazing into the void into which he had so nearly thrown himself. He was sweating. Never again. Never, never again would he ever think of Amsterdam, let alone allow himself to mention it. To think that he had almost – he closed his eyes, took a long, shaking breath. In his mind’s eye, Joss’s dark, intelligent, guarded face watched him, a dawning and potentially terrifying question in the eyes. Josef shook his head sharply, reached for his jacket. Not a young man, that, to find forgiveness easy. And who could blame him? Josef strode to the door. “You may clear away now, Thomas.”
“Yes, Sir. Thank you, Sir.”
Heavily Josef mounted the shallow polished marble stairs that led to his office. The conversation with Joss still nagged in his head. Fool, he told himself savagely. To have roused his curiosity. To have invited him to make the connection between – he opened his office door.
“Papa! Papa! Where have you been? We’ve been waiting for absolutely ages, and the cab’s waiting—” Anna launched herself at him, velvet ribbons flying. “Can we go to the workshops? Can we go now?”
“Anna! Where did you leave your manners today?” Grace, however was smiling, her tone indulgent.
Anna swung on her father’s hand. He ruffled her hair. “Of course, my dear. Come along.”
“I want to see it all – absolutely all. Can I see them make a necklace? And can I see the enamellers?”
“‘May’, Anna.” Grace’s voice was sharper this time. “‘May I see—’”
Josef held up his hand to forestall another torrent. “You may see everything that we can pack into an hour. So – come along. My dear—” he offered his arm to his wife.
Ten minutes later they arrived in the busy thoroughfare of Hatton Garden. Anna, to her mother’s exasperation and her father’s somewhat abstracted amusement, had hardly stopped talking long enough to draw breath. “—and most of all I want to see the man that draws—” she finished as she tumbled from the cab.
“And so you shall.” Josef escorted them into the workshops. Grace’s face softened as she looked around her. These rooms – so familiar still despite their different use – held many memories.
“Here we are—” Josef pushed open a door. “We’ll start here, where the work starts.” He smiled down at Anna. “‘The man who draws’, as you so rightly called him, my dear. Good afternoon, Thompson.”
“Afternoon, Sir.” The young man so addressed made to scramble from his stool and was waved back to it by a smiling Josef. “No, no my boy. Don’t let us disturb you. This is my daughter, Anna. Would you mind if she watched you for a while?”
The young man grinned engagingly at the bright-eyed Anna. “Not a bit, sir.”
Anna very nearly got no further on her tour, so bewitched was she by the sure, delicate draughtsmanship, the intricate fragility of the design upon which the young man was working. But at last she allowed her father to tear her away, and was soon being instructed in the mysteries of the issues office, with its stores of precious materials, its little nondescript white paper packs of beautifully cut and polished gems. They then moved on to the scalloped workbench of the chief mounter, his leather apron spread across his knees to catch any valuable scraps that might fall. He was working, surrounded by the tools of his trade – tools so apt to their task that they had not been improved upon for centuries – upon a heavy gold bracelet which was, Josef told Anna, to be set with rubies, the rarest stones in the world.
“Even rarer than diamonds?” the child asked, wide-eyed.
“Even rarer than that.” Josef was finding it hard to devote his mind entirely to the child’s eager questions. Damn his wine-induced indiscretion! What had he said to Joss that had brought to the boy’s face that odd, disturbingly intent expression that he, Josef, was finding so hard to dismiss from his mind? The conversation in the dining room was a little muddled in his head. What had he said?
Anna’s small finger was poking amongst the mounter’s tools; handsaw, drill, file, and others with more exotic and esoteric names. “This is a scooper, isn’t it? And that’s – a graver. And that’s a swage block.” Jerked from his preoccupation Josef looked at her in surprise. “How on earth do you know that?”
“I saw them all in the book in your study.”
The mounter, an elderly man with thinning hair and a deeply lined face looked up at Josef with exasperated eyes. “Am I to get on with my work, Sir?”
Anna jumped at his tone and snatched the obviously offending hand from the precious tools.
“Yes, yes. Of course. We’re sorry to have troubled you. Anna, come—”
“But – I wanted to ask him about the solder. How he does it without melting the—”
“Anna!”
They visited the polishing shop, with its distinctive, tangy smell where Anna, mollified, was made much of and allowed to help polish with pumice a small silver brooch into which a carved cameo was to be set, and from there moved on to the well-lit room where the setters worked, painstakingly and delicately, bent over their benches, their concentration such that the visitors might not have entered the room at all.
Anna watched in commendable and absolute silence for a while. At last, his task done, the man she was watching sat back, straightening his bent frame, rubbing his back and eyeing the piece he had completed. Small diamonds glinted with their own distinctive fire.
“What happens next?” Anna asked very softly, even she was impressed by the almost church-like atmosphere of concentration.
“It goes back to be polished again,” Josef said. “And you, young lady, have seen quite enough for one day, I think—”
“Oh! But, Papa – we haven’t seen the enamellers! Or the—”
“Anna!”
The one word, in that tone, from her mother subdued her. Her father took pity on the disappointed little face. “Another time, my darling. We really do have to go now, for I promised Joss we’d meet him for tea. And then, if you’d like, Mr Simpson shall show you around the showrooms. I know you enjoy that.”
“Oh, yes! That would be lovely. But,” Anna glanced around again, “you do promise you’ll let me come back? Soon?”
Her father smiled. “I promise.”
That summer of 1888 Josef for the first time took a house by the sea for the summer months. Since her own illness and the death of the baby, Grace’s health had been a source of constant worry to him. So, together with their close friends the Smithsons, they rented a large family villa in a small seaside town on the south coast, the women and children moving there for the whole of the summer, the men joining their families whenever the pressure of business allowed, taking the train to the coast and finishing the journey in some style in the smart pony and trap that the stationmaster kept for just such contingencies. It was a happy time – a summer that Anna never forgot, and one that was to change her life and that of almost every other member of the family.
For Tanya, too, the temporary move to the seaside was a happy one. The house stood, gabled and verandahed, in its own small garden from which a small wicket gate gave on to a narrow, sanded road which led directly down to the quiet beach. She loved the sea. It did not threaten – was indeed one of the few things in life of which she was not faintly afraid. The hypnotic movement fascinated her, the incessant sound overcame as did nothing else those small, still, distant voices that murmured so often in her mind. She would sit, pensive, for hours, her knees drawn to her chin, watching the breakers roll in to wash the shingled sand, smooth and glistening, scoured fresh and clean in the sunshine, whilst around her the children played and squabbled, paddled, rode donkeys, built sand castles. Even Alex, thirteen now, home from school and considering himself very much a man of the world, enjoyed the beach games they all played with such gusto. With the Smithson boys to augment their numbers, there were games of cricket, of Kick the Can, and of beach croquet, where almost everyone cheated. The days were long, the weather on the whole kind, though often breezy. Grace and Hermione passed their time in happy companionship embroidering, watercolour painting, and helping the children with their scrapbooks. Tanya watched them all in quiet contentment – they were her world, she wanted nothing else: if they were happy, then so was she. The world beyond this closed circle terrified her, she wanted nothing of it – though the reasons for this were hazy in her mind, unnamed, confused, vaguely associated with the pain and darkness and dread that sometimes haunted her dreams. Faced with an intruder from this other, threatening world she withdrew like a snail into its shell, bewildered and made next to witless by a paralysis of nerves that she simply could not control. Even the proximity of the boisterous Smithson family, whom she knew so well, disturbed her a little, especially when bluff Obadiah visited the house with his loud voice and rumbustious laughter. It was then a shock when, seated upon the sand one day a little removed from the younger folk who were busy constructing a spectacularly intricate sand castle, her abstracted contemplation of the glittering waves was interrupted by a shadow which fell suddenly across her. Startled, she looked up and discovered a young man standing beside her, a bowler hat clutched a little awkwardly in his hand, the trouser legs of his neat suit dusted with sand. For that first moment he appeared as tongue-tied as she was herself. He had a boyish, fresh face with large, blue, innocent eyes and a soft mouth that was in no way disguised by the young and less than luxuriant moustache that decorated the upper lip. The blue eyes were fixed upon her face in something she could only interpret as an astonishment that amounted almost to shock – though why he should look so Tanya, the least vain of people, could not conceive. She felt blood rising to her cheeks, experienced that dreadful breathless thumping of her heart that any unexpected situation inflicted upon her.
The young man cleared his throat uncomfortably. “Er – Miss Anatov?”
Tanya’s voice had deserted her entirely. She glanced, quickly and anxiously, to where the children were playing under the comforting gaze of Trudy, then looked down at her hands, which, clasped around her knees, looked tense even in their little white lace gloves.
“You are Miss Anatov?” The young man’s voice was more confident.
Tanya nodded, not looking at him.
“I’m sorry – I startled you.” He was looking a little puzzled now, clearly unsure of what he had done to produce this rather strange reaction to his presence. “My name is Smithson. Matthew Smithson. I’m looking for my young cousins. Aunt Hermione said—”
“Cousin Matthew! Cousin Matthew!” Charles, the youngest Smithson, scampered across the sand towards them, “Mama didn’t tell us you were coming!”
Matthew Smithson, regardless of his London clothes, swept the youngster up into the air. “Didn’t know myself, young Charlie! Bashed off to the station and came down on the off chance—”
“Will you stay? Oh will you stay?” Charlie clung to him like a limpet and would not be put down.
The castle-building party had broken up as, shouting excitedly, the other Smithson boys joined their younger brother, plump Christopher panting in the wake of the younger Arthur. “Hello, Matthew!”
“Hello, you two.” Matthew smiled past his cousins to Anna and her brothers. “And you must be the Roses.”
“That’s right.” Anna liked the young man on sight. “I’m Anna. How do you do? This is Alex, Ralph and James. The little one’s Michael.”
“I’m not little!”
“Don’t be silly. Of course you are.”
“I’m not!”
Cousin Matthew hunkered down beside the child. “How old are you?”
“I’m six.” Michael cast a wary glance at his sister and added, “nearly.”
“Well! Six, eh? I’d certainly have said you were older than that. Six-and-a-half – seven, even.”
Well pleased, Michael beamed. Matthew stood up, turned again to Tanya. He was puzzled by her obvious and – it seemed to him – excessive agitation. He was also, for the first time in a fairly uneventful life, spellbound. Here, in pale silk and muslin, her lovely, anxious face shaded by a wide-brimmed, flower-trimmed straw hat was, quite simply, the most beautiful human being he had ever seen. Matthew Smithson was an extremely well brought up young man. He tried, unsuccessfully, not to stare, tried – equally ineffectively – to control the idiotic hammering of his heart. “Aunt Hermione and Mrs Rose sent me to find you all. They thought perhaps a stroll down into the town for tea.”
“Oh, lovely!” With no further ado, Anna began gathering buckets, spades and towels. “Come on, everyone, hurry. Oh, Alex! Do be careful. It took me all morning to collect those.”
Alex, in his haste, had kicked over a bucketful of small shells and pretty stones. “Oh, for goodness’ sake, Anna,” he said crossly, “not more of them? Your room’s full of the beastly things already. I can’t think how Tanya puts up with it. What with them, and the smelly seaweed – ugh!” He made to roll the bucket over with his foot.
“Don’t! You pig!” Anna flew at him.
Tanya, her voice trembling very slightly, said sharply, “Anna! Alex! Stop this at once. Alexis – help your sister pick up the things you spilled, Trudy – please help the boys to gather their things.” She stood up, apparently not seeing the hand that Matthew Smithson offered to steady her. The young stranger was watching her in a way that disturbed her intensely. Flustered, she busied herself with the younger children, gathered together her own book and parasol.
“Please, let me—” Refusing this time to be ignored, the young man determinedly took her small burden from her, smiling reassuringly.
“But, really, I—” she stopped. She could not meet his eyes.
Trudy, occupied with tidying young Michael’s disordered attire, glanced sideways at her with a glimmer of a smile: S’truth, Miss Tanya certainly blushed easy. And as for the young man – plain Trudy had never had a follower, though she lived in hope, but if she had she knew she’d be lucky if he ever looked at her the way this handsome Smithson cousin was looking at Tanya Anatov.
The precious stones and shells safely stowed, Anna straightened, swinging the heavy bucket.
“What on earth are you doing with all those things?” Christopher asked in honest mystification. “As Alex said – you’re always off collecting them. You must have millions.”
Anna tapped a thin little nose with a thin little finger. “You wait and see. It’s a secret.”
“Something to do with the mothers’ birthdays?” Christopher was more astute than he looked.
Anna pulled a distinctly unladylike face. “Wait and see,” she said again.
“I say, that’s a pretty one.” Matthew reached into the bucket and took out a small, cone-shaped, pale pearly shell.
“It’s a top-shell,” Anna said eagerly. “I’ve got some lovely ones—”
“See, Miss Anatov – isn’t it pretty?” As if enticing some highly-strung small animal, he held the shell towards Tanya on the palm of his outstretched hand. If only she would look at him—
Tanya did – a fluttering, nervous glance that netted his heart as surely as if she had been the most practised coquette in the land. “Is it not pretty?” he urged again.
“It – yes, indeed it is. Very pretty.”
He watched her, gently insistent, willing her to smile.
“We’re ready. Come on, Ralphy, get a move on. Oh, I do hope Mama will take us to Brown’s – they do the most scrumptious teacakes—” Anna, ever-restless, was dancing round them. Tanya did smile then, not at Matthew, but at the eager child. It was enough.
“Are you staying, Cousin Matthew?” Little Charles caught his hand and swung upon it like a little monkey.
Matthew laughed, and lifted him high. “Just for the day this time, young Charlie. But,” he glanced at Tanya, who was over busy trying to tidy Anna’s flying hair, “I’ll come back. If you’ll have me?”
“Oh, good! Often? You’ll come often?”
Tanya straightened. A small swirl of wind gusted from the sea and her full, soft skirts billowed. With a quiet exclamation she put up a hand to secure her wide-brimmed hat.
“Oh, yes,” Matthew Smithson said, a little abstractedly, “quite often, I should think.”
He was – to all the children’s delight, for he soon became a firm favourite with them all – as good as his word and in no time had become a welcome and familiar figure at the house. There being no spare rooms – the house, big as it was, was already filled to capacity by the two families and their servants – he found a room not far from them in a fisherman’s cottage, close to the beach. He joined his aunt and cousins and their friends for all meals except breakfast, with pleasure squired the ladies when they required an escort, played with the children with gusto and good humour, graced the social evenings of music and games that they all so much enjoyed and daily and very obviously fell further and further beneath Tanya’s spell.
She herself was truly unconscious of this, although the situation was charmingly obvious to the older members of the party. So inexperienced was she that the simple possibility that Matthew might be courting her never entered her head. She was aware of how often he would come and find his young cousins on the beach and how often on those occasions he would, after a short and boisterous game, settle quietly beside her, talking or not as her mood dictated, until she grew quite used to his company. It seemed also remarkably frequently she would find him sitting next to her at the table, or in the evening as they played charades or sang around the painfully tuneless little piano that stood in the cluttered parlour. Certainly her diffidence and acute nervousness eased considerably as his easy companionship became more familiar – she came, almost without realizing it, to look for his coming when he was away. It took Trudy, however, to open her eyes to the astonishing fact that the young man was pursuing more than her friendship.
Tanya had washed her hair, and Trudy, with brush and towel, was drying and attempting to tame it – a task which Tanya herself found almost impossible. It was Grace’s birthday – coincidentally in the same week as Hermione’s – and tonight was to be a double celebration. Josef, Obadiah and Joss were expected at any moment, the children, bathed, brushed and shining-clean, were watching impatiently from the open windows downstairs, appetizing smells wafting from the kitchen. All over the house prettily-wrapped, long-guarded presents were being brought out of hiding. On the dressing table of this, the room that Tanya shared with Anna, stood two beautifully decorated boxes, patterned intricately with tiny shells and stones. On the lid of each, picked out in pale, translucent colours, a dragonfly swooped, elegant wings outstretched. Trudy stilled her movements for a moment, looked at the boxes.
“’Oever’d a’ thought Miss Anna ’ad it in ’er to do something like that? They’re as good as anything Mr Josef’s got in ’is shop, I’ll be bound.”
“They’re certainly very beautiful. And she drew all the designs herself.” Tanya smiled. She had watched with admiration and affection the painstaking hours Anna had spent on the boxes and their contents. “Anna sometimes sees things, I think, with different eyes than others.”
Trudy resumed her brushing. “Well, I don’t know about that. I just wish I ’ad that way with me ’ands meself. Must be lovely to be able to make things like that.”
“Yes.”
The smell and sound of the sea came to them through the open window, mingled with the sound of the children’s voices, calling to each other. A gull cried, oddly desolate in the softly pleasant evening. Tanya looked to where the bird wheeled gracefully in the sky, drifting and swooping on the gentle breeze.
“There.” With her fingers Trudy arranged the fashionable tiny curls upon Tanya’s forehead, teased the fair, still damp tendrils on her neck. The girl’s thick hair was swept up and coiled on the top of her head, perfectly setting off the spectacular bone structure and pearly skin of her face. Trudy surveyed the effect of her labours in the dressing table mirror with a mixture of satisfaction and mild envy. “You wearing the yellow?”
“I thought I might, yes.”
Trudy nodded sagely. “Look a treat, that will, with your ’air all shining. ’E’ll like that. I ’eard ’im say just the other day that yellow was the colour suited you best.” She stopped as she caught Tanya’s astonished, lifted eyes in the mirror.
“He?” Tanya asked.
Trudy began to gather the paraphernalia of hairdressing from the dressing table. “Why, Mr Matthew, of course.”
“Mr Matthew? Why should it concern Mr Matthew what I wear?”
Trudy gave a small, disbelieving puff of laughter. Miss Tanya might have a bit of a screw loose, but surely – not even she could be that daft? “Why indeed, Miss Tanya. No fault of yours if ’e’s sweet on you, eh? None of ’is business what you wear. That’s what I like to ’ear. Keep ’em dangling, say I—”
Flaming colour was possessing Tanya’s face. Her hand fluttered nervously at the neck ribbons of her flowered cotton robe. “Trudy? What do you mean?”
Trudy had had enough of such pussy-footing affectation. “Lord ’ave mercy. You aren’t trying to tell me it’s escaped your notice that the poor young man’s ’ead over ’eels in love with you?”
Tanya stared. “Don’t be silly.” Her voice was small, childlike, her long fingers clutched again at the ribbons at her throat. “Trudy, you mustn’t joke about such things. It isn’t right.”
There was a short, offended silence. Then, “Sorry I spoke, Miss.” The nursemaid’s voice was huffy. “Sorry I spoke I’m sure.” She brushed down her apron busily. “Well, if you don’t mind I’d better be off. I’ve to see to Miss Anna yet. She’s bound to be in a pickle—”
“I – yes – thank you for doing my hair, Trudy. It was very kind of you. No one does it quite like you.”
Mollified, Trudy smiled. “Want me to lace you before I go?”
Tanya shook her head. “No. Thank you. I can manage.”
As the door closed behind the other girl Tanya stared at her own reflection in the mirror. Recollections flitted through her mind like small birds through the branches of a tree. A smile here. A word, an expression there. The brief touch of a hand. Blue and gentle eyes upon her. And – suddenly – Grace and Hermione smiling, exchanging glances. “Why don’t you two go ahead with Trudy and the children? We’ll be along later—”
Inexplicably in the warm evening, she shivered.
Outside the window the clatter of hooves, the racket of ironshod wheels, the joyous sounds of arrival.
She crossed her arms over her breasts, wrapping her fingers about her upper arms, holding herself still. She felt a little giddy. Panic fought with a strange mixture of fear and excitement.
Fear. Why fear?
Upon the bed lay starched petticoats, drawers, chemise, corset and the yellow dress that had prompted Trudy’s comment. With odd, stiff movements she stood and began to dress. The house was humming with activity now – voices called, doors slammed, there was laughter and a snatch of song. Tanya herself, in this quiet little room, was walled into an all too familiar cell of silence. She did not herself know why the possibility of Matthew’s devotion to her should arouse such a sudden and disturbing storm of confusion and dread – she only knew, with no reason, that somewhere in the love of that kindly soft-spoken young man there was a terrible threat. A threat that stopped her breath in her throat and keened in her mind like a distant scream.
Half dressed she stood, looking into darkness, trying to remember.
“Tanya! Oh, Tanya, do hurry! Papa is here, and Joss and Mr Smithson. Papa has brought Mama the most enormous present. And he’s teasing her terribly – he won’t let her open it until we’re all there – Tanya!” Anna’s voice rose in exasperation, “You aren’t even dressed! Here – let me help you with your laces – and oh, do hurry. There. One petticoat will do. That’s it. Now the dress—” As the lemon muslin fluttered and settled softly about Tanya’s white-stockinged ankles Anna stood back, hushed. “Oh, Tanya, you look truly beautiful. Honest you do. I’ll never be able to look like that—” Her voice was perfectly matter of fact.
Tanya, with an effort, focused upon the child. “Don’t be silly, little one. Of course you will.” She slipped her feet into soft kid slippers.
Anna shook her head just a little glumly. “No. I’m not pretty now – growing up isn’t going to make much difference, is it?”
“What nonsense.” Tanya took her by the shoulders and marched her to the mirror. “Now, see,” she pulled the tow hair up and back softly from the child’s face, “how lovely your eyes are. And how straight and fine your mouth.”
“I’m miles too thin. And I’ve got big hands and feet. They seem to be getting bigger every day.”
“No, not big.” Tanya took the girl’s hand, straightened the fingers on the palm of her own. “Long. Artistic. Dear Anna – there are many kinds of beauty – you of all people should know that. You show it in your art. You have a beauty of your own.”
Anna shrugged, unimpressed.
“And talent. The boxes are truly beautiful.”
The words brought them both back to the urgency of the moment. “Will you help me carry one?” asked Anna, a little nervously – she would die, just die, if the mothers did not like them. “I can’t manage both on my own.”
From downstairs a voice called. “Miss Anatov? Anna? Are you there? Everyone’s waiting—”
“That’s Matthew! I didn’t know he’d arrived!” Anna picked up one of the precious boxes and flew from the room.
Tanya followed much more slowly.
Matthew Smithson’s official courtship of Tanya Anatov began that very day, the day of the double birthday party. The dinner was an enormous success, the high spot undoubtedly being the presentation of the various gifts and in particular, to Anna’s delighted embarrassment, of her own efforts – the two shell boxes and their contents. Hermione, on discovering the butterfly brooch that hers held was unfeignedly charmed. “My dear, where ever did you get such a pretty thing? You must have emptied your money box.”
Anna blushed to the roots of her hair. “I made it. From shells and things, like the boxes.” Her eyes were upon her mother who was sitting, her own box on her lap unopened, watching her friend’s delight with undisguised pleasure of her own.
“Made it? But – my goodness – Mr Rose, just look at this! The child’s a true artist.” She held out a pudgy hand. The butterfly perched like a living thing.
Josef took it, studied it, looked at Anna. “It’s lovely, darling. Well done.”
“Papa got me the pin from the workshop,” Anna explained. “But I wouldn’t let him see what I wanted it for. I wanted it to be a real surprise. Didn’t I, Papa?” Josef nodded thoughtfully and handed the pretty thing back. Anna looked expectantly at her mother, “Mama?”
Grace looked up questioningly, then exclaimed, “Why, surely not one for me too?” She opened the box, stilled for a moment, then reached a careful hand into it. “Anna!” she said softly. “It’s truly beautiful.”
“I wanted to make it into a brooch, like Aunt Hermione’s. But I couldn’t. I couldn’t make it fit on to the pin. It turned out too big. Does it matter?” Anna’s voice trailed off. Her eyes were anxious.
“Of course it doesn’t matter. It’s lovely just as it is.” In Grace’s small hand nestled a dragonfly a few inches long, fashioned of silver wire, gossamer material and tiny, shimmering glass beads.
“I made it before we came. It took all spring. Papa gave me the bits and pieces. And then he looked after it, so that you wouldn’t see it till today—”
“All these secrets,” jovial Obadiah laughed.
Joss reached for the glittering insect. “Why, Anna – it’s one of the prettiest things I’ve ever seen.” He was not looking at the child, did not see the depth of colour that rose in her face at his praise.
Grace opened her arms to her daughter. “They’re quite the nicest presents that I’ve ever seen. See, Josef, we have a little jeweller in the family.”
Anna, within the circle of her mother’s arms, watched her father inspect the glittering insect and held her breath. Would he remember? Would he? The promise had been made, casually, months ago—
Josef looked up. “It seems, little one, that you have certainly earned another visit to the workshop.”
Delighted, she flew to him. “Oh Papa! When? When can I?”
He laughed. “As soon as you’re back home, if you’d like.”
“Oh, yes! Yes, please! You won’t forget? Promise you won’t forget?”
He shook his head, amused. “I won’t forget.”
Grace stood up. “Hermione, my dear. Children – shall we take a stroll in the garden and leave the gentlemen to their port?”
It was later that same evening as twilight dimmed the sky that a strangely tense Matthew cornered Josef and Joss and asked, awkwardly formal, for a private word. They gathered in the small room that was designated the parlour. The others were still in the garden, their voices lifting above the evening birdsong and the distant shingled whispering of the sea. Matthew cleared his throat. “I do apologize if this seems a little clumsy. The truth is that I wasn’t certain which one of you I should speak to – and so decided that the proper thing might be to speak to both.” The stilted words fell into a silence that on Josef’s side was mildly amused, on Joss’s surprised. Two pairs of dark eyes watched Matthew. He struggled on. “You, Mr Rose are, I believe, Miss Anatov’s guardian. You, Joss, her brother—”
Josef smiled. Joss’s brow furrowed.
“I wish – to ask – that is, to ascertain – if either of you would have any objection to my – to my addressing my attentions to Miss Anatov, with a view—” He had, in nervous preparation for this moment, partaken rather more liberally than usual of Josef’s port. To his horror his mind had become suddenly and disconcertingly empty and his carefully prepared speech slipped from it like water from a holed bucket. He looked helplessly from one to the other, “with a view to persuading her – to become my wife.”
Josef, sitting in an inappropriately small floral armchair, steepled his fingers. “Well, now—” he paused, looked at Joss, a twinkle in his eye. He, too, had drunk well of the port and – primed by the astute Grace – had been awaiting this interview all evening. Had Matthew but known it, all enquiries regarding his character and his prospects had already been made, discreetly, via the ladies. “I daresay that we might see our way clear to allowing that – providing Miss Anatov has no great objections of her own. Joss?”
Joss grunted half-heartedly. His expression was still notably unimpressed, his eyes piercing.
Matthew was a little unbalanced by the unexpected ease of it. “I, oh, I say. That’s wonderful. Thank you, Mr Rose. Joss—”
“Don’t thank me yet, lad,” Josef said, smiling. “We’ve only given you permission to engage in the battle – we don’t guarantee the outcome, eh, Joss?” Not for the first time that day he pushed determinedly aside an absurd worm of doubt. How many times must he tell himself that yesterday was yesterday, and its nightmare best forgotten? For indeed sometimes, when recollections of a shambled room, a terrified, bleeding child, the slumped, bloody body of a man, invaded his mind it seemed to him that it must be just that – a dreadful dream, best forgotten, something that had happened to other people in another life, that could have nothing to do with them now. He stood up, slapped Matthew jovially on the shoulder. “And now – before the ladies begin to suspect another round of the port bottle – shall we join them?”
And so it began, the quiet, gentle courtship. Through that long holiday summer, slowly as a flower in the sunshine, Tanya bloomed in the warmth of Matthew’s love. His wooing was a graceful combination of determination and restraint, of courteous persistence and tender care that would have done credit to one much older than he. He did not rush her, yet neither did he allow her to escape his diligent attentions. Where she was, there was he, attentive and entertaining, anticipating her every whim, her servant in all things but one – he would not allow her to dismiss him. They were hardly ever actually alone together – the tenets of middle-class society saw to that – but in company with the children and Trudy – who was often ready to conspire in setting them a little apart – they walked the country lanes, ran barefoot on the tide-wet sands, laughed at Punch and Judy, rode in the pony and trap across the wide, windswept Southern downs and slowly, slowly, his gentle and devoted friendship began to succeed where a more passionate assault would most certainly have failed. He made her laugh. He teased and pampered her. Nothing was too much trouble if Tanya’s happiness or comfort were at stake. He had loved her from the first sight of her lifted, lovely face; having found such treasure, having, incredibly, been given the chance to possess it, he had no intention of letting it slip through his fingers. To his love-struck eyes Tanya’s strangeness, that distanced her from others, was an added spur – if it were harder to make her laugh, to draw her from herself, to gain admittance to that shuttered private place to which she still too often retired, then so much the more rewarding was success.
Grace watched the progress of the courtship with a lively interest that amounted to undisguised if tacit encouragement. At twenty-one Tanya was, in those days of early wedlock, well on the way to old-maidship – a terrible fate in the eyes of that society. That her first and only admirer should be a young man of such character and standing as the young Matthew Smithson – nephew of Obadiah Smithson, M.P., son of a merchant banker whose interests ranged from railway companies in the United States to sheep farming in Australia – was a bonus indeed. Grace was honestly surprised that such a young man should show such interest in her foster daughter, despite her beauty, and was more than ready to encourage his hopes at every opportunity. Tanya herself, as the weeks passed, changed visibly. She became less tense, less withdrawn. She smiled more often. Her laughter, so rare before, rang through the house like a peal of bells. Matthew demanded little of her, sensing still beneath this outward change that tense timidity that reminded him of the wild deer he had encountered on a trip to Scotland – lovely, timorous, ready to flee at the slightest threatening movement.
“When I grow up,” Anna said one afternoon, a little wistfully to Alex, “I don’t suppose anyone’ll run around after me like that.”
Alex snorted. “I should jolly think not!” In Alex’s thirteen-year-old masculine eyes Matthew Smithson was letting the side down badly with all this dilly-dallying.
It was a quiet Saturday afternoon, very late in August. Most of the adults were resting, the younger children had gone to the beach with Trudy. Tanya and Matthew were in the garden below the window where Anna sat drawing. Tanya, her skirts spread around her in a pastel cloud, was swaying gently to and fro on the swing that Josef had fixed from the apple tree for the children. Matthew sat on the grass, a long-stemmed flower in his hand, watching her.
Anna smiled.
“What tommy rot!” Alex turned from the window in disgust.
The garden gate clicked. Through the bushes Anna saw Joss coming up the path. She slipped from her chair.
“Where are you going?”
“Out,” she said with sisterly brusqueness.
Joss was standing talking to Tanya and Matthew when she caught up with him. He smiled at her, absently, in mid sentence, and tweaked her hair. She took his hand. “Joss, do come for a walk? I haven’t seen you for ages—”
Joss glanced towards the house. “Well—”
“Oh, please. Just across the cliff and back? It’ll be the last chance you get. You know you like the view, and we’ll all be home next week.”
He smiled. “All right, then, little one. Why not?”
They walked down the lane and along the quiet seafront to where the track lifted over low, chalky cliffs. A light, chill wind blew from the sea, capping the waves with white. Bathing machines were lined like defensive weapons along the seashore. Parasols fluttered in the wind, small figures dashed about the beach below. Two donkeys plodded back and forth, heads down, their small, excited burdens clinging like limpets.
“Oh, look, there’s Trudy and Michael! I’m sure it’s them – he’s having a donkey ride! Coo-ee!” Anna danced up and down, waving her arms.
Joss was amused. “They’ll never see you.”
“I suppose not.” She subsided, fell happily again into step beside him, glancing up at the dark, hawk-like face as she spoke. “What do you think of Matthew?”
“Think of him?” His voice gave nothing away.
She tugged at his hand. “You know – Matthew and Tanya.”
He shrugged slightly.
“Don’t you like him?” she persisted, surprise in her voice. How on earth could someone not like Matthew?
“Yes, I like him.” Others of his acquaintance might have stopped there, taking into consideration that particular tone of voice.
“Well, you don’t sound as if you do.”
He did not reply.
“Joss?”
Exasperated, he stopped and looked down at her. She looked back at him, wide-eyed for a moment before an almost comical look of understanding came over her face. “Ah.” She nodded sagely, totally baffled: honestly, grown-ups could be peculiar at times, even this one. “You don’t want to talk about it.”
He nodded. “That’s right.”
“Why not?”
“Anna!”
“Sorry,” she said hastily, and took his hand again, tugging him along the path. “Come down here. It’s a lovely quiet bit of beach. It’s my favourite – it’s where I collected my stones and shells.”
He glanced back the way they had come. “Truly, Anna, I think perhaps—”
“Oh, please! Please! It’s my favourite place – and you’ve never seen it—”
He shrugged. “All right.” He followed her down the steep, crumbling path, watched as she scuttled across the sand, looking for shells. “Will you be sorry to go home?”
She lifted a surprised face. Her skin was golden brown, despite the dubious protection of the floppy sunbonnet that she was supposed to wear, but that spent most of its time, as now, dangling by its strings untidily down her back. There was a streak of sandy mud on her white cotton skirt. “Oh, no. Of course not.”
He raised surprised brows. “But I would have thought—”
“No! I’ve enjoyed it, of course. Very much. But when we get home Papa is going to let me visit the workshop again – don’t you remember? And—” her eyes were aglow, her face alight with anticipation “—Papa has promised to let me have some bits and pieces to make Christmas presents for Mama and Tanya. Proper things, from the workshop. He really liked the things I made. He says that if I want to I can learn how to do things properly.”
“And do you?”
“Oh, yes! More than anything in the world.” She glanced at him, slyly, “Well, almost anything.” She blushed at her own daring. He did not notice the look, nor did he for a moment suspect the significance of the words.
A wave broke, ran up the sand almost to their feet. Joss stood up. “Time to go, little one.”
“Just a minute. There’s a pretty piece of seaweed over there.” She ran and picked it up, and folded its smelly length carefully into her pocket. “Joss?”
“Mmm?”
“Do you think – one day – that you might get married?”
He looked at her in astonishment. “What a question! What brought that on?”
“I – just wondered. Will you?”
Another wave swept almost to their feet. They sprinted for the path. Joss lifted her over a chalky outcrop, smiled into her face.
“Will you?” she persisted. “Get married?”
“Oh – I shouldn’t think so.”
“Why not?”
He laughed. “What an exasperating young lady you can be once you set your mind on something! I won’t get married because—” he thought for a moment, then, uncharacteristically impulsive, he leaned to her and touched her nose with his finger “—because I’ll never find anyone as pretty as you.”
He was taken aback by the effect of his words. Colour flared in the thin cheeks, anger sparked in her eyes. “I think you’re horrible,” she said flatly, and turning, marched straight-backed away from him.
Puzzled – as he often was – by the perversity of female nature, Joss followed.