He had not wanted Mersham – had returned to it reluctantly as to a burden he must face. In the few weeks she had been there, Anna had changed all this. Her feeling for his home was unerring, as inborn as perfect pitch in music. Bending to arrange a bowl of roses, standing rapt, with her feather duster, before the Titian in the morning room, bringing in the mare at daybreak, each time she seemed to be making him a gift of his inheritance. Like those dark Madonnas on the icons whose patient hands curve up towards their infants’ heads, Anna’s every gesture said: ‘Behold!’
Anna, in his arms, was without thoughts, without dreams. Rupert had imagined her folding her bones to shape them against his. She had done more. She had folded her very soul, given it into his keeping – and danced.
‘Oh, God!’ said the dowager softly. And then to Minna, standing beside her. ‘Did you know?’
‘That Peter was her brother? I guessed almost as soon as he came. Or did you mean . . . ?’
She did not finish. There had been no scandal yet – only a drama of the kind that any hostess must delight in. Her Harry had led Muriel first on to the floor; Tom, good soul that he was, was dancing with Lavinia; other couples had quickly joined in and were swaying and swirling beneath the glittering chandeliers. Yet it seemed to Minna and the dowager that there was no one in the ballroom except those two.
‘If only they would talk,’ said the dowager.
And indeed the silence in which those two danced was as terrible as an army with banners. Only Muriel, armoured by her outrage at Anna’s presumption as she gyrated heavily in the arms of her host, entirely failed to see what had happened.
‘What an extraordinary business,’ said the Lady Lavinia, lurching in her skirted codfish costume against the long-suffering Tom. ‘Is she really a countess?’
‘Yes.’
Tom had seen Susie come in. She was dressed as a gypsy and accompanied by her mother in the costume of a Noble Spanish Lady – and by that stout bullfighter, Leo Rabinovitch. If only he could get to Susie it would be easier to bear what he had seen in Rupert’s face.
‘Muriel doesn’t like it, does she?’ continued Lavinia with satisfaction. ‘She looks as though she’s swallowed a porcupine.’
Tom glanced at Rupert’s fiancée. Muriel certainly looked angry, but he could see no sign on her face of distress or pain.
But now the music was gathering itself up, manoeuv-ring for the climax. Mr Bartorolli had done all he could. With his fine social antennae he had understood exactly what was happening. The ball might be for the stiff, white-wigged lady in silver, but it was about the young girl with her ardour and her Byzantine eyes who seemed to be one flesh with the young Earl of Westerholme. So he had played the first repeat, the second, demanded – to the surprise of his orchestra – a reprise. But now there was nothing more to be done. For the last time, the melody soared towards its fulfilment, the dancers turned faster, faster . . . and with a last, dazzling crescendo, the music ceased.
It was over.
They drew apart and for a moment Anna stood looking up at him, dazed by the silence.
Then, for the last time, she curtsied.
If it hadn’t been for that curtsy, Rupert would have left her then and there. He expected no more miracles. But what she made of that gesture, combining her former respect and humility with the elegance, the lightness of the ballroom – yet all of it, somehow, heartbreakingly on a dying fall – was more than he could bear.
‘Come outside for a moment. You must be hot.’
She shook her head. ‘No, Rupert.’
He did not hear the denial, only that she had used his Christian name – and followed by every pair of eyes in the room he led her out, still protesting, through the French windows and on to the terrace. Nor did he stop there but, as familiar with Heslop as with Mersham, led her down a flight of shallow stone steps to an arbour with a lily pond and a stone bench, protected by a high, yew hedge.
‘Anna,’ he said, guiding her to the seat, ‘I shall do what is right. I shall not jilt Muriel. The mistake is my mistake and I will live by it. But if you have any mercy tell me just once that you feel as I do? That if things had been different . . .’ He drew breath, tried again. ‘That you love me, Anna. Is it possible for you to tell me that?’
She was silent, and suddenly he was more frightened than he had ever been. Then she turned towards him and gave him both her hands to hold and said very quietly: ‘I have no right to tell you, you belong to someone else. But I will tell you. Only I will tell you in my own language so that you will not understand. Or so that you will understand completely. Listen, then, mylienki, and listen well,’ said Anna – and began to speak.
It was already dusk. The ancient yews which sheltered them stood black against a sky of amethyst and fading rose; close by the fountains splashed and from the ballroom came the sound of a mournful, syncopated melody filched from the negro slaves.
And Anna spoke. In the wonderful, damnable language that separated yet joined them, with its caressing rhythm, its wildness and searing tenderness. He was never to know what she said, but it seemed to him that the great love speeches of the world – Dido’s lament at Carthage, Juliet’s awakening passion on the balcony, Heloise’s paean to Abelard – must pale before the ardour, the strange, solemn integrity of Anna’s words. And allowing himself only to fold and unfold her pliant fingers as she spoke, he saw before him her whole life: the small child, shining like a candle in the rich darkness of her father’s palace, the awakening girl, wide-eyed at the horrors of war . . . He saw her as a bride, faltering at the church door, dazzled by joy, and as a mother, cupping her slender, votive hands round the head of her newborn child . . . He saw her greying and rueful at the passing of youth and steadfast in old age, her eyes, her fine bones triumphant over the complaining flesh. And he understood that she was offering him this, her life, for all eternity and understood, too, where she belonged because her sisters are everywhere in Russian literature: Natasha, who left her ballroom and shining youth to nurse her mortally wounded prince . . . Sonia, the street girl who followed Raskalnikov into exile in Siberia and gave that poor, tormented devil the only peace he ever knew.
‘Have you understood?’ she asked when she had finished.
‘I have understood,’ said Rupert when he could trust himself to speak.
Then he bent to kiss her once very lightly on the lips and went back to the house to find his bride.
Muriel, however, was nowhere to be found. She was not in the ballroom, nor in the great hall and Tom, the most recent of her partners, said that she had excused herself to go upstairs.
The sudden elevation of her lady’s maid to the status of a guest had infuriated Muriel, but she had suffered no personal anxieties. The thought that anyone could be preferred to herself was not one that had ever crossed her mind. And when she had danced with the admiring Dr Lightbody and the dutiful Tom, it seemed to her, Rupert being temporarily absent, a perfect moment to carry out her plan.
First, the cloakroom, where she had left a large parcel which she now retrieved, opening the cellophane-covered box and looking at its contents with a satisfied smile. Yes, the doll was a triumph! White porcelain eyelids with thick, blonde lashes closed with a click over round, china-blue eyes; golden curls clustered under a muslin bonnet and when up-ended she clearly and genteely pronounced the word: ‘Mama’. No, Muriel did not grudge the expense though it had been considerable. Ollie would love a doll like that and, after all, Dr Lightbody had been right that day at Fortman’s. Diplomacy was needed in a case like this – it wasn’t as though she was dealing with servants. Whereas if she carefully explained to Ollie how exhausting the ceremony would be, how harmful it would be for her to stand for a long time on her bad leg, how much better to rest quietly at home with this lovely doll, Ollie would surely cooperate.
Ollie’s marigold head had been absent for a while now from the minstrel’s gallery. The child would certainly be in bed by this time. Muriel had found out where
she slept. The problem now was seeing that she got to her alone.
Tom had been assiduous so far in the performance of his duties. He detested dressing up but he was wearing the navy sweater and bell-bottoms of a sailor in His Majesty’s Navy. He was indifferent to dancing, but he had waltzed with the detestable Lady Lavinia and snatched Muriel Hardwicke from Dr Lightbody’s arms when the music ceased, so as to give Rupert a few last minutes of happiness.
Now, however, he felt entitled to some solace and by this Tom meant – and had meant for the past two years – the company of the plump and bespectacled Susie Rabinovitch.
He found her, as he might have expected, with her mother, making easier by her uncomplicated presence the first emotional meeting between Hannah and the dowager since the day at Maidens Over.
‘I should have known,’ Hannah was saying. ‘I should have known that Miss Hardwicke’s note had nothing to do with you. It was so foolish – but this particular thing . . . we make jokes about it but for us it is like a deep, black hole, always there. Sometimes we don’t wait to be pushed, we jump.’
‘Oh, my dear.’ The dowager, already deeply shaken by what she had just learned about her son, pressed her friend’s hand. ‘What a wretched tangle it all is. I suppose you couldn’t come to the wedding just the same? It would make it all a little more bearable—’ She broke off. ‘Ah, here comes Tom! Have you come to claim Susie for a dance?’
‘To claim her at all events. I thought she might like some lemonade.’
Susie smiled and followed him. But she was destined to get no lemonade that night. Tom led her out of the ballroom, through the great hall, and into an anteroom where they could be alone.
‘Susie,’ said Tom, and she saw that he was in an unusually grim and serious mood. ‘How many times have I asked you to marry me?’
‘I think, seventeen,’ said Susie in her quiet, pedantic voice, looking up at him and wishing yet again that he wasn’t quite so handsome. ‘But it may only be sixteen; I’m not completely sure.’
Tom had found a silver ashtray and was picking it up, putting it down again . . .
‘You saw Rupert and Anna just now?’
‘Yes, I saw them. Can nothing be done? They are so completely right for one another.’
‘Nothing,’ said Tom savagely. ‘Muriel will never let him go. She’s after that title like a stampeding buffalo. And Rupert’ll never jilt her because he’s a gentleman and because of some idiot promise about Mersham that he made to George before he died.’
Susie was silent and Tom stood looking down at her. Since the day he’d first seen her in her parents’ over-furnished drawing room, blinking like a plump owl through her spectacles and marking the pages of her book with a determined finger, he’d wanted ceaselessly to be with her. Hitherto, he’d been prepared to wait. Now, seeing what had happened to Rupert, he was prepared to wait no longer.
‘Susie, are you really going to ruin our happiness because of your parents’ wretched religious prejudices? Even though I’ve told you a hundred times that you can bring up our children in any way you like?’
Susie hesitated. She, too, had been badly shaken by seeing Rupert and Anna dance. ‘It’s not that. My parents aren’t so orthodox any more. They’d moan a little, but there’s no question of them disowning me or saying a kaddish over me. They’re far too kind and too concerned for my happiness.’
Tom stared at her, amazed. ‘But why, then, Susie? Why do you keep on saying no?’
Susie studied him carefully. ‘Tom, have you ever looked at me? At me? Not someone you’ve made up inside your head.’
She stepped forward so that the overhead light shone full on her face. The gypsy dress, as she well knew, was extremely unbecoming to her and she was flushed and mottled from the heat.
‘I’m plump now,’ she continued in her level, unemotional voice. ‘In ten years I’ll be fat, however much I diet. I have a hooked nose; most of the time I need glasses. My hair is frizzy and my ears—’
‘How dare you!’ Tom had seized her shoulders; he was shaking her, hurting her. The famous Byrne temper, scourge of his red-haired ancestors since Doomsday, blazed in his eyes. ‘How dare you talk to me like that! You are insulting me!’
‘What do you mean?’
‘How dare you suppose that I don’t know who you are or what you are? That I don’t understand what I see? Do you take me for some kind of besotted schoolboy? It is unspeakable! You could weigh as much as a hippopotamus and shave your head and wear a wig and it wouldn’t make any difference to me. I never said you were beautiful. I never thought it. I said that you were you.’
Susie loosened his hands. Then she smiled, that tender, wise smile that made nonsense of her ugliness and said, ‘Well, in that case we must just hope that our children don’t inherit your awful temper. Or my nose.’
‘Oi, Gewalt!’ said the Noble Spanish Lady, seeing their faces as they returned to the ballroom. ‘Look, Leo! It has happened! What shall I tell Moyshe and Rachel? And Cousin Steffi? You know she wanted Susie for her Isaac!’
‘To mind their own business,’ said that stout bullfighter, Leo Rabinovitch, hitching up his cummerbund. ‘That is what you shall tell Rachel and Moyshe, and Cousin Steffi also,’ – and went forward resignedly to greet his new son-in-law.
The Duchess of Nettleford, helmeted and lightly daubed with woad, for she was nothing if not thorough, surveyed the dancers with an unusually benevolent eye. Things, it seemed, were going well for the girls. Like the Ancient British Queen she represented, she had led her troops into battle and she had conquered. Tom had opened the ball with Lavvy and was quite clearly interested. Beatrice (an undoubted and very yellow daffodil) was dancing with a young subaltern whom Minna had led up to them. And Gwendolyn, too, was on the floor – almost literally, for the poor girl could never master the tango and the wooden clogs of that staunch Northumbrian heroine, Grace Darling, did not really help. Fortunately the good-looking sunburned gentleman dressed as some kind of Greek who partnered her had seemed to be perfectly aware of the honour of standing up with the daughter of a duke. True, Hermione and Priscilla, clutching respectively the head of John the Baptist and an asp, were still sitting unclaimed beside her and there had been a disappointment about Tom Byrne’s younger brother. At thirteen he was too young, even for Beatrice, though in the old days when marriages had been sensibly arranged, no one would have bothered about nonsense like that. Still, on the whole, things were going well. As for that scandal at the beginning when some serving maid had turned out to be a countess or the other way round, the duchess had scarcely heeded it except to notice with pleasure how furious it had made the grocer’s daughter who had ensnared young Westerholme.
‘Ah, Lavvy,’ said the duchess as Lavinia, looking complacent and freshly caught, came up to her. ‘How’s it going, eh?’
‘Very well, Mother,’ said Lavinia, smirking. ‘Tom says he knows he can trust me to look after Ollie at the church.’
‘Ah, knows he can trust you, does he!’ The duchess was delighted. ‘Did you . . . you know, give him a bit of a hint?’
Lavinia dropped her eyes. ‘Well, Mother . . . you know . . .’
‘Look, there’s Tom now,’ said Priscilla, pointing with her asp. ‘What’s he doing with that dumpy Jewish girl, do you suppose?’
‘He took her out just now,’ said Lavinia. ‘I expect she was feeling ill.’
The music stopped. With an alacrity that was proper but not quite pleasing, the Ladies Beatrice and Gwendolyn were returned by their partners to Boadicea’s side, and on the dais, Mr Bartorolli wiped his brow.
‘The Byrnes are very democratic, aren’t they,’ drawled Hermione. ‘Lady Byrne’s kissing that Jewish girl now.’
Lavinia, perfectly confident, waited. And her confidence was justified. Tom, his deep happiness assured, moved by his stepmother’s unforced pleasure on his behalf, had determined to do everything that was needed to make the ball a success. And what was needed, as Minna had just assured h
im, was for someone – anyone – to dance with the Nettleford girls.
So Tom, radiant with happiness, approached the Boadicean Camp and aware that he had already danced with the eldest and the worst of them, bowed before one who seemed to be dressed in a great many muslin nappies and to be nursing a papier mâché head dipped in tomato juice.
But Hermione’s triumph was short-lived. They had scarcely circled the ballroom half a dozen times when the music stopped abruptly and was succeeded by a fanfare. And looking up at the dais, the dancers saw Lord Byrne standing beside Mr Bartorolli and holding up his hands.
‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ he said. ‘I have an announcement to make. An announcement which I know will give great pleasure to everybody present . . .’
Anna stayed for a while in the garden, standing with her back to a great cedar as though thereby she could draw in some of its strength. She was as cold, as still, as stone.
Rupert had gone. She must live without him. It was done.
There were just a few things to do before she slipped away. Explain to the dowager that she was leaving, thank the Byrnes, say goodbye to Ollie . . . And after that, Mersham, to pick up her things and wait for the milk train to London. It was ten miles by road from Heslop to Mersham, but from her dawn rides on the mare she knew of a short cut across the fields which she would find even in the dark. By the time the other servants woke, she would be gone.
But first, Petya. She had promised him a dance. Back to the ballroom, then, whatever it cost . . .
He had been searching for her. ‘Ah, there you are, Annoushka,’ he said, beginning to talk excitedly in Russian. ‘You’ve missed such an exciting thing! Tom is engaged to marry Susie Rabinovitch and they stopped the orchestra and announced it and everyone clapped. And you know that girl dressed like a fish – only she’s not meant to be a fish, Hugh says – well, I was standing next to her and she sort of whooped when Lord Byrne announced it and went purple, just like in a book, and then she rushed out! Tom’s very happy and Susie’s really nice and there’s going to be lots and lots of champagne. And Lady Byrne’s going to ask you to stay here instead of Mersham – she says you’ve been there long enough as a guest and it’s her turn to have you, so do come, ’Noushka, because they’re so nice and their horses are fabulous!’