u.The men did not make any move toward the door. “Do you know them?” Rebecca whispered.
Sarah seemed frozen.
“Turn on the outside light,” Rebecca said quietly.
Sarah flicked the switch. The two men developed faces and became human.
“I’m not sure,” she said. Then, “Oh, it’s Halina’s friend.” She opened the screen door with hesitation.
Rebecca pulled back up the stairs. She didn’t have the heart to leave Sarah with a house full of strangers.
The first man stepped in. “I am so sorry to disturb you when you have a guest, but Janek is very anxious to see Halina.”
Sarah moved aside so he could pass. A tall middle-aged man with an attractive tan bowed his head graciously. A strand of sandy-coloured hair fell across his forehead.
“Rebecca, this is Count Michael Oginski,” said Sarah. “This is my daughter-in-law.”
Rebecca smiled a greeting from the second step. She had never met a count before.
She reached out for a polite handshake, but to her surprise, he lifted her hand and bent over it in the pantomime of a kiss. “Please, call me Michael.” He held her eyes, studying her, until she looked away self-consciously.
Behind him followed an older, much shorter man shaped like a bulldog, squat with jowls. He wore dark, horn-rimmed glasses. The man looked familiar. Rebecca had seen his picture in the paper.
“I’d like you to meet John Baron,” the tall man said. “This is Sarah and… Rebecca.”
That was it, thought Rebecca: Baron Mines. He owned a uranium mine that had been in the news lately. Some problem with the workers.
“Very good biblical names,” said the older man with a thick accent, squinting at them with a critical eye. He wore an expensively tailored charcoal grey suit despite the heat. His small blue eyes flashed with impatience to the top of the entrance stairs.
“Where is she?” he asked.
Sarah started up the stairs. “This way.”
Both women stood waiting at the edge of the living room, Halina with her head high, arms loose at her sides, Natalka a few steps behind, her chin at an expectant angle.
John Baron stopped at the top of the stairs. When he spotted Halina, a crooked grin spread across his jowly face. He tilted his head in a show of examining her. She gave a small, nervous smile. Finally he spread out his arms and stepped forward to kiss her on both cheeks, then held her at arms’ length.
“Hela, Hela!” the man exclaimed.
He jabbered some comments in Polish that Rebecca took for compliments because Halina blushed and pushed the white-blond hair back from her face.
She put her arm out for Natalka and brought her forward. Baron kissed her politely on both cheeks, then pulled back in another show of observation. From the rising intonation of his voice and the exclamation at the end, Rebecca guessed he had offered up some more superlatives. Natalka smiled graciously and blushed.
Halina must have countered with some kind of suggestion because Baron tilted his head and wagged his finger at her. Sarah nodded and smiled politely, murmuring a phrase in Polish. Then she translated for Rebecca.
“Halina has invited them to hear Natalka play.”
Natalka stiffened. “But I’m not prepared. I’m sorry but…”
Halina whispered in her ear while Natalka stared straight ahead, setting her jaw.
“Of course, Mama.”
Halina nodded happily to Sarah who gestured everyone into the living room.
“Please stay, too,” Sarah said to Rebecca.
Rebecca wished she had made good her escape a few minutes before the men arrived. Except that Michael was still watching her, and Michael was interesting.
Halina led Baron to the sofa, while Sarah removed two chairs from the dining room table and brought them to face the piano. She sat down in one. Rebecca hesitated until Michael gestured toward the loveseat. When she was seated, he sat down beside her.
Natalka marched to the piano bench, her back straight in that practised way of performers, haughty, controlled. Rebecca saw her glancing sideways at Baron. She sat down on the bench and took a deep breath. She opened and closed her fingers a few times, then sat with her hands poised above the keys, concentrating.
Finally her fingers pounced onto the keyboard with an expressive chord that announced a Chopin waltz. Her elbows moved in and out with the grace of a cat, her long-fingered hands stroking, pounding, stroking the notes.
Baron sat back in the sofa, looking ill at ease, his arms folded across his chest. His head bobbed up and down with the beat of the music. Michael sat on the edge of his seat, engrossed.
Rebecca didn’t know much about music, but she knew she had never heard anyone play like this. They all clapped enthusiastically when Natalka finished.
“Bravo!” Baron cried. “Bravo!” He murmured something to Halina, who averted her eyes.
“Magnificent!” Michael said.
Baron stood up suddenly and held his hand out for Halina. She questioned her daughter with her eyes, then took the proffered hand and stood up. Natalka had an expectant look on her face.
Baron took three steps to stand in front of Michael. He spat out a few words in Polish and stuck out his hand. Michael stood up. He glanced at Halina, puzzled, but after some prodding from Baron, he reached into the pocket of his blazer and fished out his car keys.
Baron grabbed the keys, turned and gave a curt bow of his head to the company. He kissed Natalka on both cheeks, then, taking Halina’s arm, he propelled her toward the front door.
Rebecca had a fleeting impulse to try to stop him, but the look on Halina’s face was not fear. She was not resisting. She was embarrassed.
Baron marched her down the stairs and out the front door without a look back. Sarah stepped down to close the door he had left open.
“I apologize,” Michael said in a hesitant voice. “You must excuse him. He has not seen his wife for thirty-five years.”
Rebecca glanced at Sarah to see whether she knew.
Sarah stared in the direction of the door, looking shell-shocked. “She got married just before the war,” Sarah muttered. “I never knew her husband’s name.”
Rebecca glanced at Natalka. The woman’s eyes were closed and she had gone pale. Michael was the first to reach her as she clung to the piano. He spoke to her softly in Polish, then gently took her elbow and guided her to the sofa as if she were made of glass.
Rebecca and Sarah stood awkwardly at the edge of the room.
“I beg your pardon,” Natalka said, looking up at the two women. “I don’t remember my father. But I was hoping… I thought he would be interested to…” She turned away.
Michael sat next to her, his arm extended behind her on the back of the sofa. “When the war broke out,” he said, motioning them to sit down, “Janek joined the Armia Krajowa. The Home Army, in exile in Britain. He fought in many battles and distinguished himself as a soldier. When the war ended, the Communists took over Poland. He came home to see his wife, but he couldn’t live in a Communist country. That’s when he immigrated here.”
So Natalka hadn’t seen her father in thirty-five years, and now that she was here, he hadn’t spent more than fifteen minutes with her before bolting out the door. Rebecca could understand why she was upset.
Natalka brushed her hand over her eyes. “What he is like?” she said, facing Michael. “Tell me about him.”
Michael leaned back into the sofa. “Janek is a very strong, determined man. He knows what he wants, and he’ll do anything to get it. That’s a recipe for success in business, and he has been very successful.”
“Those men with the pickets downtown,” Sarah said. “Is that his company?”
Michael winced. “They’ve come down from the mines to demonstrate here. The situation is serious.”
“Excuse me,” Natalka said, “but I must ask: Why he didn’t take us with him when he left?”
The room went quiet. Michael blinked several times as if thinking. “I can’t tell you that. I don’t know.” He seemed embarrassed, as if he did know but wouldn’t say. “But at the end of the war nothing was simple. Everyone was in a state of shock. Maybe he wanted to go and your mother wanted to stay. All I know is… that he has always loved you. He’s very proud of you.”
Natalka turned belligerently to face him. “How you know that?”
He paused a moment, looking at her. “He told me. I’ve known him for years. You’re his only daughter. He has a son with his second wife.”
“Then… why he never wrote to me, or tried contact me? He only answered when Mama wrote.”
Michael smiled tiredly and turned to examine the empty bookshelves. “Janek is a talker, not a writer.”
Picking up some of the books piled on the coffee table, he veered in a different conversational direction. “When we were here yesterday,” he said to Sarah, “your shelves were full of books.”
“I’m rearranging things,” she said.
Michael put down the book he was holding, glanced at Rebecca, then stood up. He strolled past the small table on which the sheet music had been deposited. Bending over it, he flipped through some of the pages.
“Mrs. Adler, do you sing? Your card said you teach vocal students.”
Sarah nodded.
“I’d love to hear both of you together. You and Natalka.”
The two women looked at each other. Finally Natalka said, “My mother told me you had a beautiful voice.” Discreetly, she wiped away a tear.
Suddenly Michael gasped, lifting out a sheet.
“The ‘Skye Boat Song’!” he exclaimed. “I’ve come across this in my research but I’ve never heard it. Can you do this one?”
He handed the page to Natalka, who perused it briefly.
Sarah blinked, glancing self-consciously at Rebecca. “It’s an old folk song for choirs.”
Michael watched her expectantly. When she didn’t move, he said, “Oh, humour me, ladies. This song is dear to my heart. I’m longing to hear the melody. Do you know the history behind it?”
Sarah and Natalka exchanged glances, thereby admitting their ignorance.
“The doctor must know about Bonnie Prince Charlie?” He turned his dark blue eyes toward Rebecca, who shrugged her shoulders.
“Well, then, if you sing it for me, I’ll tell you what it means.”
He stepped toward the two musicians, a handsome figure in his navy blazer, his sandy hair falling over his ears. He held out a long, graceful hand first to Natalka, then to Sarah, leading them to their places.
Sarah stood in the curve of the baby grand piano. She squared her shoulders and tilted her head back. Loosely clasping her hands in front of her, she stared straight ahead, concentrating.
Rebecca noticed her diaphragm working up and down in preparation. She knew Sarah made some extra money giving vocal lessons, but she herself hadn’t actually heard her sing since the wedding eight years earlier. One of those tearjerkers from Fiddler on the Roof. Rebecca had been too preoccupied at the time to take much notice.
Natalka began to play a simple melody in chords. Sarah began with a soft, clear soprano that grew stronger until it filled the room.
Speed bonnie boat like a bird on the wing,
Onward the sailors cry,
Carry the lad that’s born to be king,
Over the sea to Skye.
Rebecca was stunned by the richness of her voice. The slight Polish accent she always spoke with disappeared in the song, and the words flowed out of her throat with a poignant clarity.
Loud the winds howl loud the waves roar,
Thunderclaps rend the air,
Baffled our foes stand on the shore,
Follow they will not dare.
Many’s the lad fought on that day,
Well the claymore did wield,
When the night came silently lay,
Dead on Culloden field.
The song was a haunting melody rendered in Sarah’s liquid voice. Rebecca sat bathed in the sound. She didn’t want to move. She looked up at Michael, who also appeared spellbound. He was the first to speak.
“I can’t tell you how glorious that was. You have such a beautiful voice. You should’ve been on the stage.”
Sarah smiled and blushed with pleasure.
“You took me right into Scotland. A glorious song for a glorious time.”
Rebecca waited for the two women to sit down. “Tell us about the Prince,” she said.
“I’m writing a historical novel that takes place around 1750. It’s hard to avoid the Young Pretender — Bonnie Prince Charlie — if you’re interested in the eighteenth century. His father was the Catholic James III of Scotland — the Old Pretender — but the interesting connection was that Prince Charles Edward Stuart, his real name, had a Polish mother.”
Sarah raised a skeptical eyebrow. Rebecca, however, was impressed with an artistic project as large as a novel and wondered what his connection was to the crude John Baron.
“Yes,” he nodded with emphasis. “His mother was a Polish princess. Maria Clementina Sobieska, the granddaughter of the seventeenth-century Polish king, Jan Sobieski. I’ve even read that the Prince spoke English with a Polish accent, though he was raised in Italy. His mother called him Carluu.
“What I found fascinating was the interconnectedness of everything. My main interest is the last king of Poland, Stanislaw Poniatowski, who ruled in the eighteenth century. You have, no doubt, heard of him.” He playfully directed this at Sarah, who bowed her head in acknowledgement.
“Well, here was a significant portion of British society ready to fight for the succession of a ‘real’ British king, a descendant of King James, the Bonnie Prince Charles Edward Stuart. Only one of his many given names was Casimir, and he wasn’t really any more British than the German King George.”
Rebecca vaguely recalled the Stuart pretenders to the throne from her high school history and was amused by this revisionist slant.
“Part of my story is set in England and so I kept bumping into information about the Bonnie Prince and Culloden in Scotland, where a ferocious battle was fought in his name. Many Scots fought and died for the Prince. They were massacred by the King’s soldiers, and then their families were massacred. The Prince had to be whisked away in a boat to the Isle of Skye. He’d been supported by the French king, who hoped to put a Catholic prince in his control on the throne of England. The Prince roamed Europe for a while, then lived the rest of his life in Italy, disappointed and drunk.”
Rebecca glanced at Sarah, whose face was pale with fatigue. “Thank you for the history lesson,” she said. “I look forward to reading your book when it’s finished.”
She stood up. “It’s late, and I have an early day tomorrow.”
“Before you go,” Michael said, “I wanted to invite all of you to my house on Saturday. I have a beautiful pool in the back. It’ll still be hot and we can all go swimming. Those too lazy to swim can sit around the pool and sip wine. What do you say?”
Rebecca and Sarah exchanged questioning glances.
Natalka folded her arms across her stomach. “I have no clothes for this.”
“What you’re wearing is fine,” he said. “You can sit in one of the lounge chairs and sip wine in the sun.”
She smiled.
Michael jumped to his feet. “Good. Then it’s settled. Come over after lunch. I’m a bachelor and I don’t cook, but I serve lots of wine.” He took a business card out of his wallet and wrote an address on the back. “It’s on Baby Point Road just off Jane Street north of Bloor.” He handed the card to Rebecca.
“By the way,” he said sheepishly, “do you think you could drop me somewhere? Janek took my car.”
“Of course,” she said, a surprising excitement rising in her throat. She glanced at Sarah with some guilt.
“Rebecca just lives around the corner,” Sarah said. “Maybe I can call you a taxi.”
Rebecca avoided eye contact with her mother-in-law. She wasn’t sure she wanted Sarah to know what she was thinking.
Michael looked from one woman to the other. “Of course. It was thoughtless of me. It’s not far to the subway. I can get Janek’s car at the office.”
When they were heading to the door, Rebecca took heart and said, “I can drop you at the subway. I’m going in that direction.” She gave Sarah a reassuring look.
She led him outside to the driveway.
“This is a beautiful car,” he said, easing himself into the passenger side of her Jaguar XKE.
It had been David’s before he’d gone blind. He’d been so attached to it that she hadn’t had the heart to sell it, even after he died. She’d sold her own car, an Oldsmobile, and kept his. It still felt odd having a strange man in the car.
Sarah waved from the door as they pulled away.
Rebecca felt Michael watching her. “How long have you been working on your novel?” she asked as she drove down Spadina Road.
He hesitated. “A long time. I don’t usually talk about it, but I felt very comfortable in the company.” He looked sideways at her.
“How far along are you?”
“I’ve got twelve chapters, almost two hundred pages.”
“You’ve done a lot of research?”
“Years,” he said. “The eighteenth century was very exciting. It was really the beginning of the modern era — the Enlightenment, the intrigues between the major powers in Europe. And the revolutions: the birth of the United States and the rebirth of France. I’ve buried myself quite completely in the period and I’m enjoying myself immensely.”
Rebecca drove along St. Clair Avenue toward Yonge Street. She pulled over, in sight of the subway stop at the corner. During the day the volume of traffic at this intersection would have prevented her from sitting at the side of the road for more than a minute. But at this hour on a weeknight only a few cars passed by. Across the road, red lights spelled out “Fran’s” over the twenty-four-hour restaurant. The large, simple letters glowed red in a cursive script underlined in hot neon.
“Where does the king of Poland come in?” she asked.
“He’s one of my main characters,” Michael said. “A handsome, charming fellow with the best of intentions who managed, by an inevitable series of circumstances, to wipe Poland off the face of the map. It took one hundred and twenty-six years and World War One to restore it. But my story is more personal. I’m interested in the king as a man.”
He looked out to where the lights of Fran’s marquee blinked amid the surfeit of neon. “We can talk about it over coffee,” he said, pointing his chin at the restaurant.
“I can’t, tonight,” she said.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m so excited about my book I become a bore. Is your husband waiting for you at home?”
“I’m a widow,” she said.
“I’m so sorry.” He paused a moment watching her.
“How about tomorrow night?” he said.
Her eyes travelled over his face, the long patrician nose, the lines creasing the skin around his clear blue eyes. He was older than she was, but cut a dashing figure. He had managed to impress her and put her at ease at the same time. She had never had coffee with a count before.
She was having dinner at her parents’ house tomorrow night. “I’ll meet you in there at nine-thirty,” she said.