On the sixth of May 1910, the man who had waited so long to become King died after nine short years on the throne and both Britain and an unquiet Europe lost a valuable and virtually irreplaceable worker in the cause of European peace. The following week the peace of the living accommodation above the Red Lion was also disturbed, for Sophie Anatov, inevitably as she was herself coming to believe, was in disgrace again.
“You wrote this?” The words were barely a question. Her father lifted the piece of paper that he held, covered unmistakably in the ungainly scrawl that no effort by Sophie seemed able to discipline.
She all but shrugged, then, taking note of the dangerous gleam in his blue eyes, thought better of it. “Yes.”
Boris studied the paper for a moment and then read from it: “In a so-called civilized country where half the population is female, half the work force is female and all of the mothers are female—” He paused, looked at Sophie, unsmiling, “Isn’t that just a little heavy-handed?”
Unable to believe that he could truly stay angry with her, she grinned, swiftly and coaxingly, and then was sober again.
“—is surely an outrage that intelligent, responsible people should be barred from the political life of their country simply because of their sex.” He lifted his eyes.
Sophie flinched. “Miss Bantry didn’t like that word either,” she conceded, and rubbed her knuckles surreptitiously, remembering still the sharp cut of the ruler.
Her father sighed. “Sophie, as you well know, Miss Bantry didn’t like any of it. Any more than she liked last week’s effort on the iniquities of the calling-on system down at the docks, or your lecture last month on the recognition of Trades Unions. She knows you’re simply repeating what you hear here in the bar. And – not unreasonably – it doesn’t impress her. If you’re told to write a composition on ‘A Day At The Seaside’ she doesn’t expect you to get on your ill-informed soap-box and shout about the conditions on the docks.”
Sophie did shrug this time, her lower lip set rebelliously.
“And this one—” he held up the offending composition “—‘My Hobbies,’” he said. “‘My hobbies’?”
“I don’t have any hobbies,” Sophie said, perfectly and pertly truthful, “so I couldn’t write about keeping guinea pigs, or embroidering handkerchiefs, could I?”
“So you decided to repeat what you heard at your Aunt Anna’s last week?”
“I didn’t repeat it!” His daughter’s dark eyes met his own. He raised his brows and said nothing. The indignation in her strong-boned face gave way suddenly to that glint of mischief that was his delight and his bane. “I sort of rephrased it,” she said.
Boris laid the composition on the table, turned for a moment to the window. In the busy street below, cartwheels clattered, a fish vendor called raucously, an electric tram clanged noisily by. When he turned, his face was still serious. For the first time his daughter eyed him with a trace of nervousness. “Papa. You aren’t taking all this seriously, are you? Miss Bantry’s punished me already—” she rubbed her knuckles again, ruefully “—I’ve got the bruises to show for that. It’s only the same as the other times, isn’t it? All right – I suppose it’s a bit soon after the calling-on row – but, Papa – you know how beastly Miss Bantry can be – I don’t believe you like her yourself. And once she’s got it in for you,” she shook her head, “you could be the Virgin Mary and she’d—”
“Sophie!”
“Well, it’s true,” Sophie muttered. “All this silly fuss about a stupid old composition. She’s not satisfied with making my life a misery at school – she wants to get me into trouble here too. Pretending she’s going to expel me so that we all go up there again and crawl around her.” She stopped. Her father was shaking his bright, handsome head very slowly, and the faint sympathy in his eyes was alarming. “You can’t mean – that she wants me to leave?”
“This time – yes, I’m afraid so.”
Sophie’s face hardened defiantly. “Then good riddance to bad rubbish, I say. If the silly old bat’s going to get the stupid vapours about one word—”
“Sophie!” her father said again, and this time the reprimand brooked no argument. Sophie frowned ferociously. Her lower lip was trembling treacherously. “I’m sorry,” she muttered.
With commendable patience Boris kept his voice level. “It isn’t one word, and you know it. And it isn’t just what Miss Bantry sees as subversive or deliberately provocative compositions – yes, Sophie, deliberately provocative—” He held up a quick hand as his daughter made to intervene. “You may believe you can fool the rest of the world, but – please! – don’t think you can fool me. I know what you do. I can’t say I always understand why you do it—” He paused. Sophie said nothing. He strode to the bureau that stood in the corner and picking up a letter that lay there he read from it “—troublemaker, undisciplined and self-willed—”
Sophie blinked and bit her shaking lip hard.
“—incites misbehaviour in other pupils, is defiant and insolent when chastised—”
“I’m not!”
Boris ignored the indignant interruption, read grimly on. “I very much regret having to tell you that I find Sophie a disobedient and unbiddable child and as such she can have no place in our small and happy establishment—”
“Hah!”
“—to which she contributes nothing but discontent and disorder.” Boris laid the letter down, looked at his scarlet-faced daughter. “Sophie”, he said, his voice gentle, “you know the trouble we had getting you and Maria into Miss Bantry’s in the first place—”
“Yes. And why? Because you run a public house! So what? Amy Brenton’s father runs a grocery shop, Annie Howard’s family are coal merchants! What’s so special about them? How dare she – how dare anyone – look down on you because you run a pub! It isn’t fair! It isn’t right!” The tears that were stinging her eyes lit them to angry brilliance. Her fair hair, always untidy, tumbled across her wide forehead. Boris had to resist the urge to reach and gently brush it away. He kept his voice stern.
“And what of Maria? Do you ever think of her in your mischief-making? How hard it makes it for her to be the younger sister of someone who’s always in trouble?”
Sophie hung her head. “She doesn’t care,” she muttered defiantly.
“Don’t be absurd – of course she cares! Do you think she enjoys seeing you constantly punished, constantly and publicly held up as a bad example to her and her friends? Oh, yes,” Sophie’s head had lifted at that, “we know what’s been going on. And not from Maria, either – she’d die before she’d tell on you. No – your mother has heard the stories from Mrs Howard, Mrs Brenton, Mrs Spencer! How do you think that makes her feel?”
There was a long, miserable silence. “But Papa,” Sophie said at last, “I don’t mean to be a trouble to you. Or to anyone. I don’t mean to be naughty. Honestly I don’t. It’s just – oh, I can’t bear it – all those silly rules and regulations – they’re not for anything, are they? They’re just for the sake of it, most of them: don’t do this, don’t say that – don’t think anything, because that’s bound to break a rule! And the girls, simpering and giggling and having crushes on the teachers, oh, it’s all so unbearably stupid!”
“You mean that everyone is out of step but you?”
“No, of course not—”
“Or that you think you can go through life obeying only those rules that you agree with?”
“No! But – Papa, you always say we should think for ourselves, don’t you? So I do – at least I try to. And then they cane me for it. They don’t talk about it, or explain anything – they just beat me and tell me I must do as I’m told.” She stuck out a rebellious lip. “Miss Bantry believes a young lady should be ‘mild, obedient, well-tempered and accomplished in those arts that will stand her in a good stead in her future home’. I ask you! Well, if that’s what being a young lady means then—” she paused, dramatically “—then I’d rather die!”
“Well, now,” her father’s voice was quiet and not terribly impressed by the threat, “from what I can gather since you are nowhere near approaching that state, I think we can say that your life is safe for now. What isn’t safe, however, is your immediate future. When you are grown up and able to take your own decisions, then of course you may do as you wish. But for now, Sophie, you are our responsibility and we must fulfil our obligations to the best of our ability. With or without your approval.”
At the tone of his voice Sophie had stilled and was watching him, wide-eyed. “What do you mean?” she asked bluntly, trepidation undisguised in the question.
“Miss Bantry, I fear, has made it quite clear that she has made absolutely certain not only that you lose your place in her establishment, but that you do not gain a place in any other of the same kind in the area.”
“But I don’t want—”
“Hold your tongue for a moment, will you?” The sharp edge of anger in his tone, brought on had she known it as much by his own distaste for this task as by anything else, made her jump. She clamped her mouth shut. “Try for a moment to consider what others want and need. You have disrupted not only your own education but your sister’s. You have caused distress to your mother and to me. You’re thirteen years old; you aren’t old enough yet to know what is best for you. Of course you are right – we have no desire to see you turned into an empty-headed little doll. But neither do we want a hoyden for a daughter. It is time you learned the virtues of obedience, modesty and – above all – self-control.” He paused, cleared his throat. She watched him, dawning horror in her eyes. “To that end,” he said, folding the letter he still held very precisely into quarters, and not looking at her, “we have applied to a school in Essex, near Saffron Walden, not far from where Uncle Josef lives—”
She was staring at him, aghast. “You’re sending me away?” she asked faintly.
He still could not look at her. “No! No, of couse not! You make it sound as if we’re putting you in prison—”
“You might as well.” The tears that the child had until now stubbornly resisted were pouring down her cheeks. “Papa – please don’t send me away! I’ll be good, I promise I will, I’ll apologize to Miss Bantry. I’ll get on my bended knees to her – I’ll do anything you want—” She ran to him. He caught her to him, strongly, with his one arm, rocked her gently, this brave, headstrong, vital child that he loved and suffered for so much.
But the die was cast, and he knew it. They had given in once too often. “Too late, little one, I’m afraid. Miss Bantry has made it perfectly plain that she would not take you back under any circumstances. We have also verified the fact that no other private establishment around here will take you. Miss Bantry has a long arm, I fear.”
She lifted her head, her eyes pleading. “But there’s St Michael’s just around the corner – why couldn’t I go there?”
“No. I’ll not have you attending that place.”
“But why not? It wouldn’t cost you anything – other people round here don’t pay for their children to go to places like stupid Miss B’s. Why should we be different?” In the miserable uncertainty of the question, had Boris had the ears to hear it, lay the core of his daughter’s frustration and confusion.
He moved from her, turned her gently to face him, lifted her chin with his finger. Her tear-streaked face was woebegone in the May sunshine that filtered through Louisa’s well-laundered lace curtains. “Listen to me, Sophie, with your undoubtedly clever little head, not just with your ears. We’re only trying to do what we believe to be best for you. You must trust us. You must try to—” he paused, searching for words “—to have patience with the world. To see it, and to see yourself, as others do, at least sometimes.”
“I will! I promise! But please don’t sent me away!”
“We aren’t ‘sending you away’. St Hilary’s is a fine school – it isn’t too big—” he tried to smile, not very successfully “—nor too expensive. Just think – it will be an adventure. A chance to prove yourself.”
“I shall hate it.”
“Well, of course you will if you don’t give yourself a chance to do anything else.”
Unhappily the girl looked down at the hands that were clasped, twisted, before her and again the untidy, heavy fair hair fell across her eyes. She tossed it back, eyed her father with faint defiance. “When do I have to go?”
“They’ll take you in October, after you’re fourteen.”
“I see,” she said, very quietly. “It’s all arranged then?”
“I’m afraid so,” her father said gently.
She nodded briefly, her lips tight.
In the silence Louisa called from another room and Maria answered. A door opened and the noise from the bar drifted up the stairs, died again as the door closed with a bang. “You’ll be able to visit Uncle Josef sometimes from the school. I know he’d love to have you. Which reminds me – he asked if you’d like to stay for a few days, you and Maria, after his birthday party. Your mother and I can only make it overnight, of course – with the business to care for – but if you like, we could leave you—” His voice, despite himself, was coaxing.
Stonily she ignored the tacit appeal. “That would be nice.” The high colour had receded from her face and her mouth was set. Her father knew the expression well. He sighed. She looked him in the eye, open provocation in the lift of her head. “Papa?”
“Yes?”
“Why are we to stay in the cottage for Uncle Josef’s party, when everyone else is staying in the big house?”
“Because,” Boris said with quiet patience, refusing to rise to the bait, “Uncle Josef invited us to. It is his seventieth birthday after all, and we are to be his guests.”
She watched him unblinking. Waiting.
“Besides,” his gaze was unruffled, “as you well know, Aunt Anna’s brother Alex and I don’t get on well. He has every right to have – or not – whoever he likes to stay at Bissetts. It’s his house.”
“Only because his beastly wife’s father made a fortune out of other people, then died and left it to him.”
“Sophie, I will not have you speak so—”
“Well it’s true. She is beastly. And so’s he. I can’t imagine how Aunt Anna managed to have such a horrid brother! The airs and graces they put on you’d think they were royalty at least.”
“That – is – enough.”
Knowing herself to have pushed him far enough, she subsided.
Boris, his face stern, perched on the edge of the table and held out his hand. “Sophie. Come here.”
Reluctantly she walked to him.
“Look at me.”
She lifted her reddened eyes.
He looked at her for a long time. “Whose fault is it that you’re having to be sent away to school?”
She opened her mouth, hesitated. Then, “Mine,” she said.
“Exactly. Now – be my brave girl. Make the best of it. A new start. Make up your mind to make a success of it. You know you could if you really tried. Perhaps in a couple of years, when she’s old enough, we’ll be able to get together enough money for Maria to join you. Let her be proud of you if she does.” He paused. “Let us all be proud of you.”
She nodded. Stubbornly she was biting back tears again.
“And Sophie?”
His voice had changed a little – the stern note was ebbing, the warmth that usually so characterized it and that his daughter so loved was back. “Yes?”
“The party. At Bissetts. Best behaviour? Please?”
She made a sudden, funny, rueful face and sniffed. “Yes.”
“Promise?”
“Promise.”
The old bricks of Bissetts glowed with a mellow warmth in the June sun as Josef walked slowly up the winding lift of wooded drive that led from the stables and his cottage to the big house. Seventy years old. No matter how often it was said, how often he told himself, it was still almost impossible to believe. Seventy years, that stretched from one life to another, that encompassed happiness and misery, striving and achievement. That held at its core a shame he could not obliterate no matter how hard he tried. Each time he saw his grandchild, Victoria, so like that other, docile, lovely child, the knife turned in his heart. Ah, Joss – should that not be enough? He stopped for a moment, leaning on his stout walking stick surveying the peaceful scene of house, and lawns, of ancient trees, herbaceous borders and the solid tile-crowned walls of the enclosed garden and small orchard. The sweep of gravel in front of the house was freshly cleaned and raked, as was the main drive which curved from where he stood past the house and on to the road. On the lawns that were planted here and there with magnificent specimen trees, tables and chairs were set, the white cloths blowing a little in the light breeze that whispered too in the leaves. Soon the place would be full of people, most of whom he would not know, despite the fact that this was supposed to be his party. The chairs and music stands of the musicians were already set up near the little thatched summerhouse in the shade of a great stand of flowering rhododendrons. He stood quietly for a moment, to let his breathing ease.
Joss would not be here.
His refusal had been polite, his excuse perfectly acceptable. Josef sighed. This party had not been his own idea, but Alice’s – ready always to show off to the family her own social expertise and connections. And yet he had been happy at the thought; amongst the strangers that his daughter-in-law would invite – to impress them or to impress others – would be his own family, Grace’s family, all together again for the first time in years. And he had hoped an old man’s hope: that Joss would find it in himself to forget twelve years of bitterness and would come. A man of seventy could surely hope to be forgiven by others – if not by himself – for the sins committed by a young man he had almost forgotten what it had been like to be.
A small dog, a King Charles spaniel, appeared on the top of the wide, shallow steps that led from the porticoed front doors, which stood open to the sunwarmed air. It sniffed the breeze excitedly, then, spying Josef, went into an ecstasy of yelping greeting and scampered to him, flag tail waving. He bent, smiling, to stroke the long, soft coat and to quieten the little animal.
“Father-in-law! Why, look at you! – you aren’t dressed!” Alice had followed the dog out on to the steps. She was dressed exquisitely in pastel grey and white, the narrow hobble skirt and high waistline of her dress emphasizing with elegance her slight build. Upon her softly swept-up hair was perched a very wide-brimmed dove grey hat that was crowned with roses of pink and white. She looked, Josef told himself with the irreverence that he often, in self-defence, found himself employing against his domineering daughter-in-law, like nothing so much as an extremely elegant, flower-trimmed mushroom. “Everyone will be here in no time at all. Alex!” She turned to her husband who stood in the shadows behind her, did not bother to lower her voice, her tone sharp with annoyance. “For heaven’s sake! He’s wandering around out there as if he’s got all day! He looks like the gardener! Alex – do something—”
Alex, splendid and portly in his formal day dress and black top hat came down the steps towards Josef. “Come along, Father.” He was jovial, a man of the world. “Let’s get you home and changed. Can’t have a party y’know, without the guest of honour, what?”
Alice tapped a small, grey-kid-shod foot impatiently as she watched Alex shepherd his father back towards the cottage. Honestly the old man could be utterly impossible. And after all the trouble she had taken to arrange this celebration for him! Such a pity that the twins were away – it would have been nice to show them off, her two tall, enviable sons, to the rest of the family. She knew that she looked well flanked by her handsome, impeccably mannered boys. She turned back into the house, stopped in front of a large mirror, leaned to it for a moment regarding her reflection critically. Then she tucked a charmingly stray hair back beneath her hat, smiled a little and lifted her voice. “Hetty? Hetty – here at once! The hall mirror has not been polished.”
Boris, Louisa and the girls, despite their best efforts, were late. By the time they arrived the manicured lawns were crowded, the string ensemble was in full flight and all but being drowned out by the clatter of cups and saucers and the hum of conversation and laughter. Louisa climbed out of the hired trap that had brought them from the station, nervously smoothed down her last-year’s dark blue serge that was much too hot for the day, and put an anxious hand to her small straw boater. A strong, long-fingered hand stopped her fidgeting. She looked up into her husband’s smiling face. “Leave it. You look wonderful.” She thought he looked pretty dashing himself in his borrowed striped trousers and black frock coat, despite the empty sleeve, and did not miss the covert glances thrown in his direction by a young lady in fashionable lemon and leaf-green who stood not far from them. Little Maria, sweet in Sophie’s cut-down white muslin, was guarding her father’s top hat with as much care as if it had been made of solid gold.
“Here – give it to me,” Sophie tweaked the hat from her sister’s grasp. “There. Now – you get out, and I’ll hand it down.” This exercise safely accomplished, she herself jumped lightly from the trap and stood looking around her with interest. The lawns of Bissetts looked exactly like the picture of a fashionable race meeting that she had seen last week in the Illustrated London News. The elegant, slim-skirted, high-waisted and softly coloured ensembles of the ladies with their enormously wide-brimmed miraculously trimmed hats contrasted picturesquely with the sober and formal dress of their partners. On the other side of the lawn she could see Aunt Anna, talking animatedly to a flamboyantly dressed young man, her daughter Victoria demure and still by her side. Anna, as always, was dressed more strikingly than any other woman in the gathering. Sophie had never seen anything like the slim, layered, tunic-like costume that her aunt was wearing, in a deep rust colour that stood out like flame against the green of the trees; and upon her head, totally in contrast to what looked to Sophie like every other woman’s attempt to carry the entire contents of a fruit and vegetable barrow upon a hat whose breadth in many cases encompassed its wearer’s shoulders and made a kiss of greeting all but impossible, was a creation in matching colour that hugged her head and looked like nothing so much as a turban. Victoria, all fluffy hair and wide violet eyes, was dressed in white and navy blue that was simple, charming and utterly appropriate. Sophie, in the fussy gingham that hadn’t looked bad in Mr Burns’ Drapery Shop, smiled brightly at her father. “Looks as if the bunfight’s started.”
“Boris! Louisa!” Ralph, tall and quiet-faced, excused by the attire of his calling from the elegant uniform of the other men, detached himself from the crowd and as the trap wheeled and pulled away, hurried towards them, hand outstretched. “How marvellous to see you. Father’s around somewhere. He was asking after you—”
He ushered them through the crowds. Sophie hung back, eyes and ears eager, unashamedly eavesdropping as they moved from group to group.
“—nine times out of ten the damned – excuse the language my dear – the damned so-called working man doesn’t know when he’s well off! Unions my foot! What good are they?”
“—the Kaiser? All talk, old boy, all talk. He wouldn’t dare—”
They paused beside their hostess. “—such a shame the boys couldn’t make it. No, the South of France. The Bateleys – do you know them? They have a big place in Yorkshire. Such charming people. And so well-connected. Really too good an opportunity to miss, and they did so want to go. I couldn’t bear to say no, even though it was their grandfather’s seventieth. It’s all Richard’s fault, of course. He’s off like a runaway at the first chance to do anything, and nothing will do but that Rupert must be everywhere with him. They’re positively inseparable—” Alice, in midstream of conversation, barely bothered to pause, but nodded coolly at Louisa and Boris, and turned back to her listeners. Sophie valiantly resisted the almost overwhelming impulse to pull an extremely rude and childish face at the slim, dove-grey back.
“Boris! Louisa! Topping that you could make it!” Michael erupted into their path, shook Boris’s hand, grabbed the smiling Louisa and gave her a smacking kiss, then stood back to survey the two girls. “Good God, how you’ve grown! This can’t be little Sophie?”
Sophie indicated with a small, philosophically restrained smile that indeed it was, and reflected that it was likely that this would not be the only time today that she heard those words. She knew she was growing like a weed, regretted it bitterly, since her now patently unachievable hope had always been to be petite and trim as her mother. She found herself wondering, in one of those inconsequentially irreverent moments to which she was, according to Miss Bantry, so unnaturally prone, how adults would react if she greeted them with a phrase such as, “Golly, Uncle Alex – haven’t you got fat?” Remembering her promise to her father, however, she resolved not to try it. Not today, anyway.
“Michael—” The cool, firm voice of Michael’s young wife Jane cut through the general hubbub like a silver knife through butter. “The Russells are asking for you. Bertie wants to hear about the new motor car. Why Boris, Louisa, how nice to see you.” She greeted the newcomers with genuine pleasure, offered them each a small, slim hand then, smiling and firm, said, “You don’t mind if I steal Michael from you? There are some people waiting to meet him—” Like a lamb, Michael followed her into the crowd. Louisa and Boris exchanged smiling glances.
They found Josef with Anna, Victoria and the picturesque young man that Sophie had noticed earlier, who appeared to be hanging upon Anna’s every word as if on a sacred utterance. Anna introduced him as Carl Latimer, a rising young actor of whom even Sophie had heard. She looked him up and down in open interest which, since his entire attention was once again focused upon Anna disturbed him not at all. One of the most fascinating things about her altogether fascinating aunt, Sophie had long ago decided, was her exciting and unusual circle of friends. Not for Aunt Anna the orthodox middle-class acquaintanceships occasioned by church, or children, or husband’s occupation. Artists and actors, dancers and designers were more frequently to be found at the Bayswater house than the sharp-eyed, sharper-tonged, tea-drinking neighbours with little on their mind other than the more scurrilous current gossip whom Louisa tolerated for convention’s sake and Sophie unreservedly detested. Though she knew that the rest of the family sometimes eyed Anna’s friends with reservation, she herself both envied and admired her aunt’s ease and vivacity in their company. So too, quite obviously, did the almost-famous Mr Latimer, since he seemed unable to keep his eyes off her.
“Anna’s been gallivanting again,” Josef said, after greetings and congratulations had been exchanged.
“Where to this time?” Sophie heard the tiny note of envy in Louisa’s voice, and looking at her father knew that he too had recognized it.
Anna smiled. “Paris again. I had something in an exhibition – so Arabella and I took a couple of days off and went. There was a ballet we wanted to see, at the Theatre National de l’Opera—”
“Another Bakst?” Louisa was rather proud of herself to have remembered the somewhat odd name. No one could have been in contact with Anna over these past months without hearing her ecstatic reports of the costumes and decor designed by Leon Bakst, a Russian Jew newly launched upon Europe for the ballet Cléopatre, in Paris the year before. “Was it as good?”
“Good?” Anna made a sweeping gesture with both hands. “It was unbelievable! The man is an undoubted genius. An innovative genius—”
Sophie, bored with the adult conversation, smiled a little half-heartedly at Victoria. The cousins, though much the same age, were divided by temperament and environment and had never been particularly close. Sophie found Victoria dull to the point of tedium; had she but known it she, on occasion, terrified her older and quieter cousin almost speechless with her restless energy and quick mischief.
Victoria, as ever the soul of good manners, felt bound to react to the obviously well-meant overture. “Nicholas and Benjamin have gone to play in the orchard. Shall we go and find them?”
Anna, taking the question to be addressed to her, smiled absently at her daughter. “Oh, please do, darling. Nico is bound to be doing something outrageous. I’d feel happier if you’d keep an eye on him—”
Sophie, whose idea of a party was not to keep an eye on other people’s small boys, opened her mouth, then caught her father’s eye. He winked and jerked his head a little. A little less than graciously she extended a hand to Maria. “Come on, then. We might as well.”
Before they trailed off after Victoria, however, Josef – who had also noticed the small byplay – bent to her ear. “I’ve some special marzipan in the cottage. I stole it from the kitchen, right from under Mrs Brown’s nose! I saved it for you.”
Impulsively she kissed his lined cheek. “We’ll share it.” There was a very special friendship between these two, even though there were no ties of blood.
The young people skirted the new deserted tennis court, followed the high old brick wall to the small gate that led into the garden and orchard. Within the walls it was shaded, warm, and comparatively quiet. At the foot of a gnarled old apple tree a small, bespectacled boy sat, snivelling.
“Oh, dear,” Victoria said, a combination of vague distress and timidity in her voice that produced in Sophie a quick rise of what she knew to be unreasonable irritation. “Benjamin? Oh dear – Benji—”
The boy sniffed and hiccoughed.
“What’s up?” Sophie asked.
“I can’t find Nicholas. He ran away from me. He won’t come back—”
“Oh dear,” Victoria said again, and looked round vaguely, as if expecting to see her brother pop up from the ground. “Nico? Nicholas – where are you?”
“He won’t come,” sniffed the desolate Benjamin. “He said he was going to run away to sea and never come back.”
“How silly,” Sophie said.
“Nicholas!” Victoria shouted again.
Silence.
Maria tugged at Sophie’s hand.
“Ni-cho-las!”
Sophie looked down at her sister. The smaller girl pointed. Sophie crouched down. Dangling amongst the thick foliage of a tree perhaps a dozen yards from where they stood was a small, woollen-stockinged foot in a shiny black leather shoe.
Sophie dropped her sister’s hand, put her finger to her lips and crept forward. With a sudden movement she grabbed the foot and jerked. There was a shriek and a crackling of branches, and Nicholas Anatov, red-faced and absolutely furious, was deposited at their feet in a sprawling heap.
“Beastly thing! What do you think you’re doing?” He leapt to his feet, fists at the ready, then subsided a little upon finding himself face to face with a girl. “Oh. It’s you,” he said.
“Yes, it is,” Sophie snapped back brusquely. “And never mind about what I’m doing – what about you? Poor little Ben was in tears—”
“It doesn’t matter.” Small Benjamin had taken off his glasses to wipe his eyes. Now he replaced them, carefully, and blinked owlishly, “It really doesn’t matter. Nico was only playing,” he said anxiously.
“Funny sort of play that makes people cry.”
“Silly sort of idiots that cry at a game,” Nicholas clipped back, his eyes repressive upon his brother.
“I wasn’t really crying.”
Victoria, always the peacemaker, broke in hastily. “Why – why don’t we go and find some lemonade or something? It’s most frightfully hot and Mrs Brown does make the most lovely lemonade – I’m sure there must be some somewhere—”
They sat in the shadow of the wall, Sophie, Nicholas and Ben – Ben sitting as close to his brother as he could and still sniffing – Victoria and Maria discussing with well-informed interests the ladies’ dresses and hats. Sophie, losing interest at last in the unproductive business of swapping mild insults with Nicholas stood up. “I’m going to find Uncle Josef—”
She discovered him sitting alone at a table beneath the magnificent spread of a cedar tree, a cup of tea and a large plate of cream cakes untouched before him. “Fancy sitting all by yourself at your own birthday party!” She dropped with inelegant force into the chair beside him.
He smiled. “It is one of the privileges of age, my dear. To choose one’s company. Even at one’s own birthday party.”
She giggled. “Do you want me to leave?”
“Good Lord, of course not!”
“I say—” she pointed to the cakes “—can you spare one of?”
“I can spare them all. Help yourself.”
She laughed, hunted through the plate of cakes for the one that looked biggest and most interesting. “Are you enjoying it?” she asked through an unladylike mouthful. “The party, I mean?”
A small, open trap carrying one passenger had turned in at the drive and was approaching the house. Josef watched it, idly. “Yes. Very much. It’s nice to—”
Sophie looked up from her cake at the sudden dying of his voice. The trap had stopped not far from them and its single occupant was stepping from it. Joss Anatov, slight, unruffled, paused to pay the driver. “Good heavens. Isn’t that Uncle Joss? I thought he wasn’t coming?” Sophie took another bite of cake. “I say, these are awfully good. Are you sure you won’t have one?”
“No – thank you.”
Sophie took her attention away from the cake again. “Uncle Josef? Is something wrong?”
“No, my dear. Nothing.” Josef was watching the newcomer, a strangely apprehensive look upon his face. Anna too had seen Joss and was hurrying to him through the crowds. As she spoke to him he shrugged, shook his head, looked round.
Josef stood up.
Sophie, pondering the advisability of another cream cake, glanced up as Joss and Anna joined them and smiled her sudden, brilliant smile. She rather liked her Uncle Joss, though it had not escaped her attention that some others did not. She thought him handsome, rather exciting and always interesting. Like now, for instance. From the look on Aunt Anna’s and Uncle Josef’s face they neither expected him nor knew what to expect now that he had arrived – Sophie took another cake and watched with interest.
“Papa – look who’s here—” Anna’s face was flushed, her voice over-bright.
“Joss,” Josef said quietly, “I thought – I understood – that you would not be coming.”
“The business I had to attend to finished sooner than I thought. There was a train—” Joss made a small, sparely graceful gesture with his hand. Sophie nearly smiled; one of the things she liked most about Uncle Joss was that, like her father, no matter how English he might think himself there was always about him a spectacular ‘foreignness’ that in her eyes added splendidly to his attraction. “—so I caught it.” His voice was even. In his hand he held a small parcel. Oddly abrupt, he held it out to Josef. “I found this. I thought – a small gift—”
Josef took the package with hands that trembled a little. Anna was watching her husband with eyes in which astonishment, exasperation and disbelief warred. Sophie turned her attention back to the cake, which was lamentably leaking cream on to the tablecloth.
“I found it in a secondhand bookshop,” Joss said. “The illustrations were very beautiful, I thought. As you see, it was bound in St Petersburg.”
Josef held the little book in hands that were now truly shaking. “Thank you.”
“Sit down, Papa.” Anna was at his side, her hand gentle upon his arm. “You mustn’t overtire yourself.” She settled him in his chair, straightened and looked at her husband. Her unpredictable, infuriating, unfathomable husband.
“I wish a word with Boris,” he said, coolly polite, and left them. She watched him through the crowd. How was it that after all this time, all the bitterness, he could still stir her so unexpectedly? Why, when she had seen him arrive, had she left her young and attentive escort and hurried to him? He had greeted her politely, of course, congratulated her with faultless good manners on her appearance. What else had she expected? Nothing, of course. Nothing.
Sophie stood up, licked the last of the cream from her long index finger. “I’d better go and find Maria and the others. May I take these – if you don’t want them?”
“Of course.”
“Thanks, Uncle Josef.” She kissed him again, smiled at Aunt Anna, who did not notice because her eyes were still fixed upon Uncle Joss, who was talking to Papa, and, plate precariously balanced, made her way back to the shadow of the wall. “Your Papa has arrived,” she told Victoria. “He’s over there – see? Have a cake—”
“Gosh – thanks,” Ben said.
“I thought he wasn’t coming.” Victoria’s sweet face was puzzled.
“Well, he has. Here – tuck in before they all go—”
It was later, as the crowds began to thin and a steady stream of carriages crunched through the gate and up the gravel drive to pick up their passengers, that Sophie finally gave in to her own desires and slipped off alone.
“Where’s Sophie?” Victoria asked Maria.
Maria shrugged. “Don’t know. Gone off somewhere. I say – just look at that carriage – isn’t it grand? Must belong to a Lord or something, mustn’t it?”
With the final guests seen at last on their way, most of the family gathered at a table beneath an enormous oak tree, bottles of champagne open before them. The sun slanted through the branches, not yet in their full leaf, and the air rang with bird song. Jane and Michael had changed from their finery and were playing tennis, their laughing voices and the singing of the ball from the racquet echoing from the sun-warmed walls of the old house.
Anna and Louisa, escaping from Alice by mutual and silent agreement, strolled beneath the trees.
Louisa turned her head. “I – wanted to ask you a favour.”
“Of course,” Anna said, instantly, “what is it?” These two, though not often in each other’s company and necessarily divided, as were their daughters, by interests and environment, were still fast friends.
“It’s Sophie. We’re having a little trouble with her again. She’s been – well, I’m afraid she’s been expelled from school. We’re sending her to a boarding establishment not far from here. In October. It’s a very nice school. It really is. I found the headmistress most charming – most understanding—” She trailed off. Anna waited. “But Sophie – oh, dear, she does so hate the idea. And has simply made up her mind to be miserable. I wondered – if you perhaps had a word. She does admire you – she might listen to you.”
Their feet rustled in the fresh and fragile grass of early summer. “I’ll try. If you think it will help.”
“I’d be very grateful.”
Anna looked around. Maria and Victoria were still sitting by the wall, their skirts spread prettily around them, their attention taken by the tennis players. Nicholas and Benjamin were playing fivestones on the path not far away. Of Sophie there was no sign. “Where is she?”
“Maria.” Louisa lifted her voice, “Where’s Sophie?”
Maria shook her head. “I don’t know, Mama. She went off on her own.”
Louisa looked at Anna in exasperation. “You see what I mean?”
Sophie was at that moment in her favourite spot at Bissetts. Beyond the lawns and kitchen gardens at the back of the house, by the overgrown, thicketed boundary that gave on to meadows and a distant church spire was a small ruin. Once it had been a two-roomed cottage, then a makeshift stable. Now the building had all but fallen down and was nothing more than a nettle-infested, ivy-grown heap of tumbled bricks. Two walls still stood, however, and enclosed what had once been a small yard-garden. It was sheltered and sunny and had within it a tiny pool, scummed now and overgrown with weeds and water plants. Sophie had discovered this place many years ago, once, whilst staying with Uncle Josef, and had shared it with no one. She had believed it then, when the world had been kinder, an enchanted place. She loved it still, and still, too, half-believed in the magic with which her childhood had invested it. She sat, gingham green-stained and crumpled, knees drawn up, watching the busy insect life of the little pool. She picked up a small handful of gravel stones and held them high above the surface, letting them drop one by one, watching the wide ripples for the magic pattern that she had once believed meant a wish fulfilled.
—I wish I could stay here – just here – for ever;
—I wish horrible Miss Bantry had never been born;
—I wish I could be like Victoria;
—No, I don’t. But I wouldn’t mind being less like me;
—I wish I were grown up. I wish I were Aunt Anna;
—I wish Papa hadn’t lost his arm;
—I wish people wouldn’t be so absolutely awful sometimes.
A cuckoo called in the distance. Something scurried through the undergrowth beside her.
—I wish, I wish, I wish that there was no such thing in the world as boarding schools.