Sophie renewed her slight and almost forgotten childhood acquaintanceship with Rupert Rose on a warm and breezy early June day when the air was fragrant with the scent of late spring flowers and busy with the hum of winged insects and the song of birds. A great chestnut tree, pink-flowered and full-leafed, rustled above the ruined cottage and swallows dipped and shrieked in the high air. Sophie was by her little pool in the overgrown yard-garden that had been her favourite place for as long as she could remember, watching with some concern a plump, clumsy baby blackbird as it hopped and staggered about the paving stones calling for its mother, when she heard, from behind her, the sound of scrambling footsteps in the tumbled bricks and rubble of the cottage. The baby bird, already frightened half to death, froze completely.
“Ssh! Maria! Do come quietly. There’s a poor little bird—” The footsteps stilled, then resumed, more quietly. Sophie held out a green-stained finger to the bird. “Tsk, tsk, tsk. Here, then. I won’t hurt you.”
The bird shivered and gaped. From the high sheltering wall its mother scolded with sharp, clucking sounds that rang with the awareness of danger. Sophie sat back on her heels. “What’s best to do, do you think? It can’t fly yet. And if we leave it here that beastly cat’s bound to get it—”
“Why don’t you put it up on the wall near its mother? If you don’t know where the nest is, that is.”
Startled, she looked up. A tall, slim youth, dark-haired, suntanned and pleasant-faced smiled down at her. He was wearing grey flannels and an open-necked shirt, a cricketing pullover slung about his shoulders. His smile widened as he looked at her green-stained fingers and skirt. “I say – what on earth are you doing?”
She glanced down at her dirty hands, in one of which she held a broken knife. “Gardening,” she said shortly, all the old defensiveness rising.
“With a kitchen knife?”
“It’s the only thing I’ve found that will get the weeds out from between the stones.”
“Oh, I see.” He glanced around. “Why, yes, of course!” His voice was warm, “You’re clearing the paving around the pool! What a good idea. It’s a shame to see it so overgrown.” He hunkered down beside her, bouncing on his heels. “Do you know that I’ve known Bissetts all of my life, but I didn’t know this was here? What a topping little spot.”
“Yes.” She could not keep the shortness of faint resentment from her voice.
Very faintly, beneath his tan, he flushed. Stood up. “I’m sorry,” he said stiffly, “I interrupted you. You were expecting your sister.”
“I wasn’t actually expecting anyone.”
The little bird squawked.
“I’ll put him on the wall,” the boy said, “where his mother can feed him.”
Sophie watched as, very gently, he captured the bird and set it upon the wall. She knew him to be a year or so younger than herself, but he did not look it. For all his pleasant diffidence, he had about him an air of adult confidence that went with the casual, well-cut clothes and the clipped, assured public school voice. She knew, of course – or almost knew – who he must be.
“Which one are you?” she asked, forthrightly.
He grinned, unoffended. “Rupert. And you’re Sophie of course, aren’t you? Gosh – it must be years and years since we’ve met. Mind you – I always remember, once, when we were little – I think it was in the Bayswater garden – you threw a frog at me—”
Sophie looked surprised. “I did?”
“You don’t remember?”
She shook her head.
“Lord – you’d think you’d remember something like that! How many people did you throw frogs at? Did you make a habit of it?”
She giggled. The atmosphere between them had suddenly eased. He looked around him, curiosity in his hazel eyes. “What exactly are you doing here?”
She shrugged, elaborately dismissive of an exciting idea and three days of surprisingly hard work. “Just fiddling about.”
“Looks like more than fiddling about to me.” He reached and pulled an enormous, coarse-leafed weed from between two stones. A strong earthy scent filled the air. “You’re clearing it, aren’t you? Making it a garden again?”
“I thought I might. I like it here.”
“I’m not surprised. It’s wonderful. So quiet and sheltered. I can’t understand how we haven’t found it before.” He paused, a little awkward again. “I say – it’s a bit of a cheek, my walking in on you like this. I mean – if you want the place to yourself I’d hate to intrude.”
She had to laugh. “Don’t be silly. It is your house.”
“Not this bit.”
“Of course it is.”
“Not if we didn’t even know it was here. I think you’ve probably got – what’s it called? – squatter’s rights, or something.”
She laughed, and he grinned, relieved. She began again to scrape at the cracks between the stones with the broken knife.
“I don’t suppose you could do with another pair of hands?”
“Help yourself. There’s enough weeds for both of us, I should say.”
He sat beside her, companionably, and began to haul enthusiastically on the weeds.
“We don’t usually see you around here in the summer,” Sophie said, after a moment, curiosity in her voice.
“No, worse luck. Mama’s a born traveller, I’m afraid, and Papa isn’t. Almost ever since I can remember, every summer she’s dragged us off all over the place – Pa just won’t go, so Ritchie and I have to sort of take his place as escorts.”
“And this year?”
“Ah – well, what happened you see is that Richard and I were supposed to go on a school cricket tour for the first part of the hols. And Mama was dead set on a cruise up the Nile that started right in the middle of it. Poor Pa didn’t stand a chance.” He grinned. “He’s half-way up the Nile right now, and hating every minute of it. We had the very glummest postcard yesterday—”
Sophie laughed. “And the cricket tour? What happened to that?”
“Richard’s on it now. He’s Captain, actually.” There was sheer pride in his voice, “The youngest in the history of the school. It’s a great honour.”
“But – what about you? Why aren’t you there too?”
“Bit of rotten luck, actually. I sprained my left wrist just a couple of days before the end of term. I’m right-handed – but you need two hands for a cricket bat.”
“Yes,” Sophie agreed soberly, “I did know that.”
“So – here I am—”
“What a shame.”
He grinned suddenly. “Yes. I’m sure they’re all missing their slices of lemon.”
She looked at him enquiringly.
He shrugged philosophically. “Twelfth man,” he said. “And I probably wouldn’t have got that if it hadn’t been for Ritchie.” There was neither embarrassment nor self-pity in the words.
Sophie smiled sympathetically. It came to her that she could very much like this pleasant young man. “So – here you are – stuck all alone with a bad wrist.”
“Something like that, yes. Though it isn’t as dreary as it sounds. The wrist is much better, and I won’t be on my own for long. Ritchie’s due back at the end of next week.” A couple of martins had joined the swallows in their swooping pursuit of insects in the summer air. Rupert sat back on his heels and shaded his eyes with his hand, watching them. “I knew something nice was going to happen today,” he said unexpectedly. “Because the martins are back in the nest by my bedroom window. They’re my favourite birds. They bring me luck.”
Sophie put her head on one side. “Something nice?”
He waved a hand. “I found this. And I met you.”
“Me and a pile of weeds.”
Their clear young laughter was the very sound of friendship.
Had Sophie ever bothered to think of it – which she had not – she would certainly not have expected to like Rupert Rose, let alone to cement within days bonds of friendship and camaraderie as strong as any she had known with anyone. She had always disliked his parents, finding Alex exasperatingly pompous, and Alice purely detestable, and knowing of the bad blood that had existed between them and her own parents for some years. Yet from that moment of meeting it was as if she and Rupert had been fast friends since childhood. They spent the days together, talking to Josef, walking the countryside, clearing the little garden. When Rupert discovered Sophie’s passion for tennis he was absolutely delighted, and every day they played at least once, sometimes twice and often far into the long June evening. There was no one to oppose the blooming of their friendship – Rupert was alone at Bissetts apart from the staff; and Josef, sitting in his wheeled chair in his small garden smiled to himself at the sound of their young voices and their laughter. More often than not Maria would tag along, happy simply to be in their company. She adored Rupert from the moment she met him; Sophie, in private, teased her unmercifully about it. “I do believe you’re in love with him!”
Poor little Maria coloured to the roots of her light brown hair. She was a slight, rather plain child with her father’s blue eyes and pale skin. Sophie often declared that her delicate little sister made her feel like an over-active elephant – a comment that never failed to reduce the adoring Maria into uncontrollable giggles. “I’m not!” she said now. “Don’t be silly!”
Sophie surveyed her with apparently serious eyes. “Well, I’m not so sure about that. If I were you, my dear, I’d be very careful indeed—”
“What do you mean?”
“You might finish up with the most awful mother-in-law—”
“Oh, Sophie! You are just—just terrible’.”
“What’s so terrible about being honest? Come on – Rupert and I are going to play tennis. Are you coming?”
In those few days, as if they had been friends all of their lives, Sophie found with Rupert a real and honest companionship which she had discovered with few other people. His character was in general more serious than her own, yet his good humour allowed her to tease him as she might a brother, amused that often he could not tell if she were joking or not. He was sensitive and very intelligent, and in these qualities she delighted and would sit with him for hours listening in fascination as he spoke animatedly and with imagination of things that until now had interested her not at all. To hear John Milton’s stirring and beautiful words quoted in Rupert’s pleasant well-modulated voice and to discover that for the first time she actually understood and appreciated them was an entirely new experience for her, a large part of her literature lessons at St Hilary’s having been spent in watching other, as she considered it more fortunate, beings on the playing fields outside the window. The discovery that poetry could be a means to express ideas and emotions as opposed to being simply words that marched in rhythm and rhymed she found truly exciting. Their time, however, was far from entirely taken up in erudite discussion; at times they acted like children as they almost still were, simply revelling in youth’s energy and laughter and the warmth of a summer’s day. Sophie, to her delight, found that she could run faster than the long-legged Rupert, and no matter how determinedly he tried he could rarely beat her at tennis. Yet this too he took in good part. “Wait till Richard comes. I’d like to watch you two play—”
“I do like Rupert,” Sophie confided to Josef in her open way one still, sunny evening as she pushed his wheeled basket chair at strolling pace along the well-kept gravel drive. This was a favourite daily occupation of these two, and neither would miss the evening promenade for anything. “He’s just so nice. I suppose I shouldn’t say so – but he doesn’t seem to me to be a bit like his parents. I think,” she grinned down at him, mischief in her eyes, “I think he must take after his grandfather.”
“Which one?” Josef asked, solemnly innocent.
Sophie laughed. “Why, you of course! Weren’t you just like him when you were young. I bet you were—”
The laughter slipped suddenly from Josef’s face. “I don’t remember. I don’t think so.”
Sophie, intent upon her game, did not notice his change in mood. “Someone else, then. Your mother? Your father?”
There was a moment’s silence. “That I don’t know, my dear,” Josef said quietly, “I did not know my true parents.”
Sophie stopped walking, looked at him in astonished concern. “I didn’t know that.”
Josef shook his head a little tiredly. “It doesn’t matter. It’s all so very long ago.” He looked down at the old, bony hands that rested in his lap, the branded thumb uppermost. “All so very long ago,” he repeated, then lifted his head, his smile genuine enough so that the watching child did not see the pain beneath it. “I knew your father’s parents, though. Very well indeed. And his grandparents—”
“Tell me some of the stories again, Uncle Josef. Tell me about my grandfather, who you always say was so much like me.” Sophie was easily distracted, as Josef had known she would be. “Tell me about the picnic when he pushed you in the river and he’d forgotten you couldn’t swim—”
“Then jumped in fully clothed and rescued me, though the water was only three feet deep.”
She pulled a funny, rueful face. “Oh golly – yes, he does sound a bit like me, doesn’t he?” The wheels crunched again on the gravel. The birds sang. “Uncle Josef?’ Sophie said, softly, “tell me about Russia.”
“Ah, Russia,” Josef said, and the words were a small, thoughtful sigh. He shook his head. “It’s all so very far away, child. And so very long ago.”
“Aunt Anna went there, didn’t she?”
“Yes.”
“She never speaks of it.”
A small furrow appeared between Josef’s grizzled eyebrows. “No.”
“I shall go there one day. I shall see all the places you’ve told me about. I shall visit the famous Shuvenski family, as Aunt Anna did, and be made much of. I shall see the fabulous diamond that you created all those years ago.” She paused, tilted her head back to the last rays of the dying sun. “It must have been marvellous to have done such a thing,” she said.
Josef shivered. “I’m getting cold, child. It’s time to go back in.”
Later, when they had almost reached Josef’s small garden gate, Sophie, suddenly and with no preamble asked, “What’s Richard like? I mean – is he as nice as Rupert?”
Josef, with an effort, brought himself back to the present. “Richard? To tell the truth I don’t really know. I don’t know either of them as well as I know you and Maria, for all that they are my grandchildren. I’ve seen so little of them. They are, I believe, very alike, although they are not actually identical. And – no, I don’t believe they are all that alike in character. Richard was always the leader, ever since they were very young. Rupert, I think, is the dreamer, Richard the more positive of the two. As a small child I remember him being very lively, very determined. Anything he did he had to do better than anyone else.”
“Yes. That was the impression I got from Rupert.”
Josef turned his hand to look at her at the tone of the words. “Why so gloomy?”
“He’s coming home tomorrow,” she said, obliquely.
“So? That will make another companion—”
Sophie shook her head. “No. I don’t think so. Rupert talks about Richard a lot. All the time almost. Richard this, Richard that – I’m almost tired of him before I’ve met him, though I know that isn’t fair. I’ve got a feeling that I’m not going to like him. Or perhaps I’m afraid that he won’t like me. I don’t know. But – whatever – it isn’t going to be the same, is it? With him here? Rupert’s going to want to spend his time with him—”
“Of course. That’s only natural. But that doesn’t mean he won’t want to spend time with you as well.” His voice was gentle. Josef knew more than he admitted about this favourite child’s problems in the past.
“I s’pose not.” Sophie was silent for a moment. “They’re lucky, aren’t they? It must be nice to have someone so close, so much a part of you—” They had reached the narrow path that led to the back door of the cottage. Sophie stopped, clicked the brake firmly on and held out a hand to help Josef from the chair. Holding his hand she smiled suddenly, and her strong face was transformed. “That’s not all I envy them.”
A little breathless, but steady on his feet Josef looked at her with raised eyebrows. “Oh?”
She leaned to kiss his cheek. “I envy them their grandfather. I don’t care how dashing mine was. I don’t care if he was a Count or whatever. I’ll bet he wasn’t as nice as you.” She stood, young and strong and fair in the last rays of the evening light – Alexei’s granddaughter – and for a moment forty years were like a mist that shifts and clears as if it had never been. The strong, white smile, the reckless eyes, the hand of friendship. Then the mist closed again.
“We ought to go in,” he said, very gently. “Mrs Saunders will be fretting and my chocolate will be cold.”
Rupert and Sophie were playing tennis when Richard arrived the next day. Sophie saw him first – a tall, blazered figure swinging across the lawns towards them – and fluffed a sitting duck of a shot like a novice, her eye distracted from the ball. Rupert finished the point off in short order. “My advantage,” he called, cheerily, and turned to walk back to the serving line. “Richard!” Balls and racquet went flying from him. “Richard old chap! You’re back! How perfectly spiffing to see you! How did it go? Did you win the Varsity? Gosh – you seem to have been gone an age!”
Sophie stood, alone and awkward, a total outsider as these two, brothers and more than brothers, greeted each other enthusiastically, shaking hands, slapping each other on the shoulder, talking excitedly. Her eyes were upon Richard’s face. Josef had been right; the twins were like and yet unlike each other. In Richard the bones were sharper, the laughing hazel eyes clearer, the movements more positive. The two boys were still thumping each other on the back, laughing in sheer pleasure at the reunion. Sophie, watching, caught a swift impression of a dark, lifted head, an open smile, a tall, slight, sportsman’s body. To her utter astonishment something extremely strange had happened to her breathing and to the beating of her heart. She bent to pick up a ball at her feet. The trembling of her legs had absolutely nothing to do with her recent exertions. She felt a mortifying blush of colour mounting in her already exercise-flushed cheeks. She straightened, smoothed her calf-length grass-stained white linen skirt, rescued the navy blue tie that had slipped almost round to her ear. Her white shirt was grubby and had slipped from its constraining belt. Her hair was a bird’s nest.
“Come and meet Sophie. You remember? Sophie Anatov. Aunt Anna’s niece. She’s here for the summer—”
She transferred her racquet to her left hand, rubbed the right one furiously and furtively on her skirt. He stood before her, cool, unruffled, smiling easily, a young god on his own ground. She felt the awkward falseness of her own smile. “Hello.”
He took the proffered hand. “Hello.”
“Rupert says you’ve been on a cricket tour.” The words were stiff. “I hope it was successful.”
Richard grinned at his brother. “Won every match, that’s all.”
Rupert whooped. Sophie watched him. She had never seen him so excited, so lively. It was as if the coming of his brother had injected new life into him. “I’d better go,” she said, abruptly.
“Oh – no – please—” Rupert was all concern. “We haven’t finished our game.”
“We can finish it later. You and – and Richard—” to her confusion she discovered that she had some difficulty in speaking the name “—must have a lot to talk about.” Woodenly, and aware of two pairs of faintly surprised eyes she turned from them and walked away. Behind her she heard Richard’s voice, lighter than Rupert’s, a little worried.
“I say – I hope I didn’t break in at an awkward moment. I could have waited up at the house I suppose—”
“No, no. Of course not. Come on – let’s see if we can cadge tea and cakes off Mrs Brown—”
Sophie’s steps, without conscious thought, were directed not back to the cottage, but to the tiny, cleared garden and shimmering pool. She stood for a moment, looking into the water, then dropped her tennis racquet and sat, straight and still, beside the pool. Above her the pair of martins swooped and called. The ridiculous thumping of her heart had eased a little. She sat for a long time, contemplating the still water. What on earth had happened to her? The sight of Richard Rose had hit her like a physical blow. She had acted stupidly. Made a complete fool of herself. And – oh, Lord! – she must have looked a positive sight!
She frowned ferociously at her dim reflection. At St Hilary’s there had been a girl named Lucy Burton, whose passion for forbidden, fatuous penny romances and simpering attitude to any member of the opposite sex regardless of age or attraction had made of her a despised laughing stock amongst Sophie’s particular group of friends. The undoubtedly exaggerated – not to say completely untrue – tales of her romantic adventures during the holidays were doted upon by some girls and dismissed as ludicrous by others, including Sophie. Since Lucy had turned thirteen, it seemed that every young man she had met, from visiting cousins to butchers’ boys, she had fallen irrevocably in love with. “Oh, but I could simply have swooned!’ she was in the habit of saying, “Simply swooned when he looked at me. And when he touched my hand—” The cataclysmic event would be illustrated by dramatic gestures and upturned eyes. Sophie had always considered her and her stories to be puerile, childish and utterly silly.
But it had happened.
She shook her head, confused and strangely angry. It couldn’t have happened. It wasn’t reasonable – wasn’t logical – that one person should have that kind of impact on another. She had always believed firmly that such things existed only in the overactive imaginations of silly little girls like Lucy Burton.
But – it had happened. The sight of Richard swinging lightly across the lawn towards her had all but stopped her heart. His simple presence had choked her voice in her throat. She must be going mad.
She stood up abruptly, and brushed herself down.
He’d certainly take Rupert from her, of course. She’d be alone again.
She didn’t care. Why should she care?
He was quite the most beautiful person she had ever seen. The thought came from nowhere and lodged within her, strangely, an indefinable ache.
She snatched up her racquet. She’d stay away from him. Right away. That was the answer. How dare he make her feel as foolish as silly Lucy Burton?
Her resolution, however, lasted for less than five minutes. Richard, with Rupert, was at the cottage with Josef and Maria when she got back.
“Ah – Sophie my dear – see who’s come to visit.” Josef lifted his face for her kiss.
“Yes. We met earlier.” She felt huge. Huge and clumsy and untidy to the point of ugliness. “Excuse me. I really must change.” She turned, to find Richard’s eyes upon her. He smiled, charmingly.
She fled.
Changed, and at least somewhat more composed, she rejoined them in the garden some fifteen minutes later. To her own utter disgust she had taken a great deal of trouble with her appearance. Her white muslin, trimmed with green, became her well she knew, and her heavy hair was caught softly back from her face with a matching ribbon. Maria’s eyes opened wide when she saw her. Sophie studiously ignored the look. She did not notice Josef’s quiet smile.
“I say—”
She turned at the already-familiar, light voice. He stood behind her, and to her surprise there was a certain diffidence in his manner. Over his shoulder she could see Maria and Rupert, bending to where Josef sat, laughing with him. She waited, unsmiling, hoping that he did not suspect the uncertain hammering of her heart.
“I say – I do hope I didn’t upset you this afternoon?”
“Upset me?”
“Interrupting your game the way I did. It was terribly rude of me. I really shouldn’t have just barged in like that—”
“Nonsense. It really didn’t matter.”
He looked unfeignedly relieved. “Oh, good. I’d hate for us to get off on the wrong foot. Rupert’s been telling me all about you.”
“Oh?” Something warm and happy was moving in Sophie. “What’s he been saying?” She smiled brilliantly. He liked her. She did not know how she knew it, but she did. He liked her.
He cleared his throat self-consciously. “Oh – just what good friends you’ve become. What fun you’ve been having. Quite made me feel as if I’d missed out on something—” He laughed, a little too loudly, and cleared his throat again.
Sophie, for no apparent reason, felt suddenly as if she stood upon a rainbow. She could have sung. Shouted. Danced. She lowered her eyes. “I’m sure your cricket tour was much more exciting.”
He did not answer. She lifted her eyes to his. He was looking at her intently, an expression in his hazel-flecked eyes that brought a slow rise of colour to her cheeks. They stood for a long, still moment, unspeaking.
“Grandfather’s coming up to the house for dinner tonight,” he said, and his voice was faintly husky with a strange kind of excitement that she knew to be mirrored in her own face. “Would you join us? You and your sister?”
Sophie hesitated, the sudden picture of an outraged Alice in her mind’s eye. “Well – I—”
“Please. Oh, please come. We’d both love to have you.”
“All right.”
His boyish smile was bright with delight.
“Richard!” Rupert called, “Come on and tell Grandfather about your fifty in the Varsity match—”
That evening Sophie dressed with great care. Her simple, Grecian-style gown, the most grown-up dress that she owned, was in a soft pale green that complemented her fair hair and dark eyes. A wide chiffon scarf, long gloves and kid slippers completed the ensemble. In her hair she wore a spray of sweet-smelling hawthorn.
“Golly,” Maria said, graphically, when this vision descended the narrow stairs.
“My dear, you look charming.” Josef too had dressed for the occasion, formally, in dinner suit and white shirt with tiny gold and pearl buttons that had been designed by Anna. “Utterly charming!” His eyes twinkled as he surveyed her, “And so very, very grown up!”
They paraded up the drive, a strangely assorted trio, Sophie pushing Josef’s basket chair, Maria in her best pink silk that had dimmed just a little in her own eyes since she had seen her sister’s splendour, slowing her pace to theirs. At the door of the big house the brothers met them, both handsome in their dinner suits, both solicitous for Josef as they helped him from the chair and up to the wide shallow steps.
Sophie had never been inside the house before. As Rupert guided Josef through the tall door that led into the drawing room, followed by an unusually voluble Maria, she stopped for a moment and looked around her. The house was big but pleasantly proportioned and in no way overawing. Opposite the drawing room was an identical tall door through which she could see a high-ceilinged room, well-lit and lined with bookshelves.
“The library.”
She turned. Richard stood, smiling, at her elbow. “And the door over there is the dining room. The passage beyond the staircase there leads to the kitchen and servants’ quarters. That door there—” he pointed up the wide, curved staircase “—see it? On the half-landing? That’s the old school room. Pa’s had it turned into a billiard room. I wonder—” he stopped.
“Yes?”
“—if you might like to see over the house later? I’d love to show it to you.”
“I’d like that very much.”
That evening was an occasion that Sophie Anatov was never to forget. Mrs Brown outdid herself, the company was convivial, and from across the table, candle-lit as the evening light faded, Richard’s eyes were warm and bright with interest. She sparkled. She teased Rupert, flirted a little inexpertly with Richard, held sway over the table with her vivacity and laughter.
Richard, a shade daringly, had raided his father’s cellar. Josef shook his head, delightedly reproving. “Champagne, young man?”
Richard laughed. “Pa wouldn’t mind. It’s a special occasion.”
After dinner they returned to the drawing room, where Josef, comfortably ensconced in an enormous armchair, promptly nodded off.
“I thought,” Richard said, elaborately casual, “that I might show Sophie the house.”
“Lovely idea!” Maria bounced out of her chair, beaming. “I’ve always wanted to see it!”
Rupert, ever observant, did not miss the faint look of disconcerted disappointment on the other two faces. “Later, poppet,” he said evenly, his own small heartache ignored. “Didn’t you say you wanted to see the guinea pigs? There’ll be no light left at all. Come on – I’ll take you out to see them first, then I’ll show you the house.”
Richard led Sophie out into the hall. “This is the hall,” he said solemnly.
“I rather thought it was.” The champagne had lightened both their heads. They laughed like children. “The portraits,” Richard said “are absolutely nothing to do with us. Mama got them as a job lot because she thought they looked grand.”
“They certainly do that.”
“And this—” he pushed open the tall door “—is still the library.”
“What a lovely room! And what a huge fireplace! It must be marvellous in here in the winter.”
He looked at her, pleased. “It is. It’s my very favourite room.”
“And all these books.” She walked alongside a bookshelf, running her finger along the ranked spines. “Don’t tell me you’ve read them all.”
“Good Lord, no! Not half, actually. They came with the portraits—” He was looking not at the books but at her.
Self-consciously she spun gracefully upon her toes and looked out of the tall window. “And such a pretty view. You can see right down to the stables and the cottage—”
“Yes.”
There was a sudden silence. From the hall came the sound of Maria’s and Rupert’s voices, and a door banged. Panic suddenly and unexpectedly took Sophie. “I want to see the room half-way up the stairs,” she said, gaily, “that you said was the old school room.” She was past him and, lightly, had started up the stairs before he could move. Laughing, he followed.
The old school room was a long, well-proportioned room with a high ceiling and tall windows. A large billiard table above which hung two long, fringe-shaded lights, took up the centre of the room, whilst several comfortable armchairs lined the walls and there was a heavy mahogany bar at the end of the room. Faintly in the air hung the smell of stale cigar smoke. “Did you and Rupert ever use it as a school room?” Sophie asked.
“Oh, no. We had a tutor at the London house and then we went away to school.” He was looking at her again in that intent and intimate way that both excited and frightened her. “Sophie—”
“And do you like it? School, I mean? I hated it. Absolutely hated it. I ran away, did you know? Three times. Once I got all the way back here—” She was gabbling. She pressed her lips firmly together to stop herself, her too-loud voice echoing in her own ears.
“No. I didn’t know.”
“Aunt Anna was here. She was very kind. I do like Aunt Anna.”
“Yes.”
It was almost dark now, the small lamp that Richard had lit threw long shadows on wall and ceiling. The moment stretched between them, waiting for words that neither of them could find.
Downstairs a door banged. “Hello? Richard? Sophie? Are you there?”
Sophie raised her voice “Up—”
“Ssh!” Richard, his face suddenly alight with mischief had sped to the lamp and turned it out.
“What on earth—”
He came swiftly back to her, caught her hand and pulled her into a crouching position behind an enormous wing armchair. In the faint light he put a warning finger to his lips. She stifled a giggle. He grinned. “Ssh!”
“Richard? Sophie?” Rupert’s puzzled voice was just outside the room. The door opened for a moment, then closed again. “No,” he called to Maria, “they don’t seem to be up here.”
Richard waited for a moment, then caught Sophie’s hand again and crept with her through the darkness to the door. He opened it very quietly, peered out and, the coast clear, towed her at a quiet run up the stairs. On the wide landing he paused and leaned over the heavy banisters, looking down to where Maria and Rupert stood in the hall below. “Grandfather’s nose!” he hissed.
“What was that?” Maria’s voice was startled, and clashed with Rupert’s quick call.
“Done! Come on Maria – they’re upstairs somewhere. The attics most likely—”
Richard, laughing almost too much to run, was however towing Sophie not towards the small flight of stairs that led to the warrened attics but along a narrow landing towards the back of the house.
“Grandfather’s nose?” Sophie gasped, giggling as she ran.
“That’s the target. We have to touch it before they can catch us. Come on!” He opened a door that led on to an uncarpeted corridor with plain, painted walls adorned by pictures, quite obviously the upper floor of the servants’ quarters.
“Are we supposed to be here?” Sophie asked, a little nervously.
“Not strictly,” he conceded with a grin. “Look out – here they come—”
Behind them Rupert called, above Maria’s excited laughter.
Richard opened another door. A narrow flight of steps led up and down. “Take a chance,” he said, and they clattered downwards and burst through a narrow doorway into a vast kitchen, at one end of which, in comfortable armchairs set around the kitchen range, sat Mrs Lawson and Mrs Brown nursing large, steaming mugs whilst at the other Mary, the little housemaid, tackled a veritable mountain of washing up in the deep old sink.
“Mr Richard!” Mrs Brown raised scandalized hands, “I do declare! Whatever do you think you’re doing?”
“Downstairs!” Rupert called from above. “They’re downstairs! Quick – run and guard the drawing room door—”
“Dinner was topping, Mrs Brown,” Richard called gaily, “thanks a lot. One of your very best! Come on, Sophie—”
Sophie made a small, half-embarrassed and apologetic gesture to the two women as she allowed herself to be dragged to a small door at the far end of the room. Once through it she found herself to be back in the dining room, cleared now, the polished table gleaming in lamplight. Richard stopped, put his finger to his lips, and tiptoed to the big door that led out into the hall. He peered through it, then slipped back to her side, shaking his head. “The window,” he said.
The tall windows stood open still to the evening air. Richard flung a leg over the sill and stepped easily into the garden. Ready for anything now, Sophie with no hesitation kilted her skirt about her knees and followed him. “That’s the girl!!” The whisper from the darkness was jubilant. “Here – give me your hand. And watch your step – it’s very dark.”
They crept through the shrubbery and round to the front of the house. The drawing room windows stood open. Lamplight flowed softly. Josef still slept in his chair. For an odd, quiet moment the two young people stood watching him, very close to each other. It seemed to Sophie as they stood there that the warmth of Richard’s body was reaching through her flesh to kindle a small fire, a core of lovely warmth, deep within her.
Then, “Can you manage?” Richard asked. In his voice Sophie thought she heard the same trembling excitement that coursed in her own blood.
“Of course.” She sat on the windowsill and swung her legs through the window. Richard scrambled in after her.
“What’s that?” Maria squealed from outside the door. “Rupert – I’m sure I heard something—”
Richard streaked across the room just as the door opened. “Home!”
“What the—” Josef opened his eyes at the light touch on his nose, eyed the four hilarious young people in puzzlement. “What have you young scoundrels been up to, eh?”
“They hid from us—” Maria said, almost beside herself with happy excitement at having been part of such a game “—and we chased them. And they had to touch your nose—” She went off into peals of laughter. Sophie’s attention, however, was not on her sister. As if it were the most natural thing in the world Richard had taken her hand again. She did not try to disengage it, but lifted her head and looked at him with huge, dark, suddenly serious eyes. The hand that held hers tightened and he smiled.
“Well,” Josef said gently, his old eyes soft, “it seems that you’ve all had a very successful evening.”
It was perhaps predictable that Sophie should fall in love in the same headlong, open-hearted and passionate way that she did everything else. From that first day she would have died for Richard, to ensure his welfare and happiness. That he should feel the same way about her was almost incredible to her; she had not believed such happiness existed. In the enclosed, idyllic surroundings of Bissetts over the next weeks their innocent, exciting love blossomed free and unafraid. They spent every moment together, mostly in the company of others, occasionally – and how precious these occasions were to both of them – alone. Shyly, then, they would hold hands and talk of their past lives that, incredibly, had not included each other and, vaguely, of the future which surely always must. Their first sweet, hesitant kiss was exchanged beneath a tree in the little walled orchard; Richard’s lips were warm and firm, the feel of his body infinitely exciting.
“I love you, Sophie,” he said, quietly, as he drew back from her. “Truly I do.”
“And I you.”
“I’ll always love you.”
“Yes.”
“You’ll wait? You don’t mind that we’re so young?”
“Of course not.”
“We’ll never be parted. I promise you.”
Smiling, she lifted her lips to his again.
Why it never occurred to them that parental opposition might be incited by more than the simple matter of their youth, Sophie never afterwards knew, but at that time it did not. They were young and in love, and the carefree, happy plans that they made for the future during those June weeks seemed totally logical and achievable. Sophie, quite simply, lived to see Richard; every moment spent out of his company, out of range of his voice, was a wasted one. She loved him more than life itself. Nothing, she was certain, could ever change that. Nothing and no one could keep them apart. It would be too cruel.
Of outside events she took little notice, until the late June day that she awaited Richard by the little pool in the secret garden that had lately become their habitual meeting place. Not even she, that morning, could have missed Uncle Josef’s agitation at the news that had filtered into their closed small world. She pondered it now as she watched the water insects busy about the glimmering surface of the water. They reminded her of the lovely jewellery her Aunt Anna designed, their bodies gleaming in the sun against the metallic background of the water.
“Sophie! Sophie!” The unmistakable footsteps on the path beyond the cottage were swift, the voice breathless, “Sophie – are you there?”
“Here – yes, I’m here.”
Richard scrambled through the tumbled bricks. “Have you heard?” he asked with no preamble.
“What – that some old duke’s been assassinated in Sara-something by some beastly anarchist? Yes – Uncle Josef seemed very upset about it all. But what—”
“No, no! Ma and Pa – they’re home! Came home unexpectedly early this morning!” Richard’s face was flushed and excited. He reached for her hand.
It was as if someone had rudely shaken her awake in the heart of a dream. Her pulse had taken up an irregular hammer-beat of apprehension.
“But – surely – they weren’t due home till the end of next week?” All the light-hearted certainty that had attended the last delightful weeks had deserted her entirely.
“That’s right. But Pa detested Egypt, and with all the stupid war talk that’s been going on – well, they just decided to call it a day and come home.”
Sophie spoke with some difficulty. “It wasn’t – wasn’t because someone told them about us?”
He threw back his dark head and laughed. “Of course not, silly! Oh, I can’t wait to tell them! Don’t worry, my darling, darling Sophie! They’ll love you. Just as I do! What else could they do?”
She stood in shaking silence, and at last her apprehension touched him. He stepped to her and caught her in his arms, resting his face on her tumbled air. “Don’t worry!” he said again, more seriously. “It will be all right. I promise it will. For heaven’s sake, Sophie, Ma and Pa aren’t ogres, you know—”
As they drew apart a cloud slid over the sun and the garden around them darkened.
“No, of course not.” Sophie summoned a not very convincing smile. “It’s just that—”
“What?”
“I don’t know – something’s changed, hasn’t it? And nothing is ever going to be exactly the same again. I’m just not ready for it, that’s all. Richard,” she caught his hand suddenly, urgently, “let’s not tell them? Not yet—”
He smiled his brilliant, confident smile. “Not tell them? Don’t be daft – why shouldn’t we tell them? They’ll be delighted, you’ll see. And as for things changing—” he took her hand and they strolled towards the cottage, “—things change all the time, don’t they? Nothing ever really stays the same. It can’t.”
“I suppose not.”
For both of them the events in far-off Sarajevo were already forgotten.