When Humphrey returned from the office Hannah briefed him discreetly in his study. His face turned the colour of the plums in the garden and he knocked back a swig of Scotch. ‘He’ll marry her, by God,’ he said in a quiet voice. ‘She’s not going out to Argentina without that ring on her finger.’ Hannah felt more confident now her husband was back. Besides, when Humphrey spoke in such low tones he meant business. When the girls were growing up he never shouted at them when they caused trouble, just spoke to them with that icy calm and they trembled right down to their toes.
‘Have you talked to her?’ he asked.
‘No. Not yet.’
‘Well, let’s not make a mountain out of a molehill. After all, the boy’s just come back from the war, he needs time to adjust.’ Then just before he left the room he turned to her and added, ‘But I’ll tell you one thing, he’s not leading our Rita a merry dance and then not marrying her.’
No one mentioned George Bolton at dinner. Rita was aware that Eddie and Maddie were longing to discuss it, but she kept her thoughts to herself. She didn’t even tell them that she had been to see Megagran. When things got bad, Rita liked to lick her wounds in private.
Unable to sleep, she sat on the window seat and stared up at the moon. She wondered whether George was staring up at it too and thinking of her.
Max wandered across the garden and down to the estuary, his path illuminated by the bright, phosphorescent moon. In his hand he held a worn book of poetry that had once belonged to his mother. He thought of Rita and their conversation in the kitchen. At times like this he missed a mother’s advice. He’d like to tell her about Rita. He imagined she would have approved his choice, in spite of the fact that Rita wasn’t Jewish.
His mother had been an actress, a bohemian in long flowing dresses and soft fur stoles; his father a wealthy banker, ennobled by the last Emperor Charles for giving the imperial house its final loan. Max could remember hanging around the Imperial Theatre which his father had built especially for his mother after he had first seen her perform as a young girl. He used to relish telling them how he had lost his heart to her the moment she first floated onto the stage. So bright was the light that shone about her it had penetrated his very soul and dazzled him to the point that he was aware only of her presence and of his desperate need to have her. So he had built a small theatre with crimson velvet curtains and glittering chandeliers, commissioning the best craftsmen in Vienna to mould the ceiling with golden roses and swans, then knelt down on one knee and asked her to marry him. That was before he lost his fortune in 1918, when the empire fell apart leaving his mines in the newly independent Czechoslovakia. As a little boy, Max had loved hearing stories of his mother’s celebrity, how she had been the toast of Vienna. Great figures from Court had graced the gilded boxes to admire her, but none had given her as much pleasure as seeing her husband every night in the small, private box he had furnished for himself, not even the Prince of Wales who had insisted on attending to witness with his own eyes the legendary beauty of Vienna’s secret jewel.
Max pulled his coat tightly about his chest and gazed up the beach. Shallow pools shone silver in the moonlight for the tide was out and the sleeping birds of the sea were now silent. The breeze was strong and fresh and smelt of marshland. He cast his eyes to the sky, to the vast glowing sphere that hung suspended among glimmering stars, and thought how often he must have looked up as a child to see the same display of wonder. His heart ached for Rita. He couldn’t tell Primrose or Ruth of his secret; all he could do was read his mother’s poetry and try to derive comfort from others who had suffered as he did the pain of unrequited love.
Trees slept soundly, unaware of the anxiety that kept his wife up, sculpting in her small studio to the reassuring notes of Strauss’s Alpine Symphony. Her hands worked away at the clay, moulding and smoothing, but her mind churned, worrying about her son, unable to bear the thought of him leaving her again. She couldn’t help but resent her husband for his ability to rise above domestic strife. The only things that animated him these days were his walnut trees. Her thoughts drifted to Thadeus Walizhewski.
People in the village dismissed Thadeus as eccentric. He kept himself to himself, went about his own business, never spoke about himself. But he had invited Faye into his secret world and she had discovered a man of education, poise and dignity. He played the violin with the sensitivity of a man who has loved and lost and survived terrible times. He read Voltaire, the plays of Molière and the erotica of Count Mirabeau, and cried over the stanzas of his countryman, the great Polish poet, Adam Mickiewicz.