Marli liked Luca’s grandfather very much and didn’t mind him discovering their secret. She felt sure that he would be an ally in their scheme to bring Riversleigh back to its former glory.
‘Dad is taking Didi for a meeting with the lawyers today to sign the papers and pick up the keys,’ Marli said, perching on a marble bench. ‘He asked me if I wanted to go with them, but I said you and I had already made plans.’
‘That’s exciting,’ Luca replied and sprawled beside her. ‘Then I guess we won’t officially be trespassers anymore.’
Marli frowned at him. ‘But Dad has lost his job and plans to bulldoze the house and build apartments to make money – I wish I could change his mind somehow.’
Luca thought for a while. ‘Perhaps you have to convince him that there are other ways to make money,’ he suggested. ‘Like restoring the house and running it as some kind of business.’
Marli mulled over this for a few moments. She thought about some of the beautiful historic houses she had stayed in when she was travelling in Ireland with her mum. Some were run as guesthouses, restaurants, conference centres and beautiful wedding venues. She and Mum had been to a gorgeous wedding for one of Mum’s colleagues, which was held in a castle in the Connemara. Her mind started to buzz with possibilities.
‘Riversleigh could be a beautiful guesthouse, or a wedding venue, or a tea house, or anything! But how can I convince Dad?’
She thought of the house the way she liked to imagine it in the old days – full of light and love and beauty. Not cursed and forgotten.
‘I have an idea, Luca,’ Marli said, her voice pitched high with excitement. ‘Why don’t we have a party to celebrate the house returning to the family? We could invite Dad and Didi, and your grandparents, and your family. All of us have a link to Riversleigh.’
Luca looked at Marli in confusion. ‘What did you have in mind?’
‘We’ll have to work hard, but we have a few hours.’ Marli began outlining her plan.
Just before they began, Marli texted her mother: Say yes to job, Mum. Let’s move to Melbourne!
The sun still shone warmly in the early evening. Marli waited out the front of the wrought-iron gates of Riversleigh. Beside her on the footpath was a calico bag, and inside the bag was the fragile peacock hatbox that held Violet’s treasures. Marli swayed impatiently from foot to foot.
Dad and Didi were running late. Her muscles ached and she was tired, but it was a good tiredness. The day had been spent shopping, cleaning, moving furniture and scheming with Luca. They had taken Didi and Nonno partly into their confidence to help pull off the great surprise.
Now she was freshly showered and changed into her best summer dress. For once she wore her hair out long and wavy, gleaming copper and gold in the sunlight. She saw Dad parking his car on the roadway and ran forward to meet them.
‘Hello, Dad, hello, Didi,’ she cried as they climbed out of the car, giving them both a hug and a kiss.
‘Hello, Marli-myshka,’ Dad said. ‘You’re all dressed up. What’s the occasion?’
Marli exchanged a complicit glance with Didi. He, like Dad, was wearing a dark lounge suit and tie from their meeting with the lawyers.
‘I thought tonight should be a celebration,’ Marli said. ‘To celebrate getting the keys to our very own, long-lost, abandoned and possibly cursed mansion.’
Dad turned serious at the mention of a curse. ‘We found out something very surprising about that today, but we’ll tell you later. Perhaps we can go out for dinner after we’ve looked over the place?’
Marli laughed. ‘We’ll see.’
‘I brought my toolkit,’ Dad said, getting it out of the back of the car. ‘Apparently the house is all boarded up and there’s no electricity or running water. I brought a torch as well.’
The three walked up to the gate, with its stone-topped pillars and nameplate. Marli carried the peacock hatbox.
Dad flourished a big set of keys. ‘Well, here goes.’ He unlocked the padlock that fastened the chain around the metal barricade and dragged it away. Then, using another key, he removed the padlock on the tall wrought-iron gates.
Dad gestured to Didi. ‘Perhaps you should have the honour?’
‘Let’s do it together,’ Didi suggested.
The three of them pushed against the huge gate. It screeched in protest, the rusty hinges moving for the first time in a decade. They slipped through the opening and into the front garden of Riversleigh. Dad closed the gate behind them, stopping to gaze at the house, in all its faded grandeur.
‘Come on,’ urged Marli, taking them both by the hand. ‘Come and explore Riversleigh. Look how beautiful it is.’
They climbed up the front steps and onto the colonnaded verandah. Dad frowned when he saw the graffiti scrawled on the front of the house and the timber hoarding prised away from the arched front door. ‘It looks like vandals have been here. I hope they haven’t caused too much damage.’
‘Would you like to open the front door, Marli?’ Didi asked. ‘That seems apt.’
Marli unlocked the door and opened it wide, eager to be entering the house in the proper way for the first time. Didi and Dad chattered away, trying to guess what each room might have been used for originally.
‘You can tell by the white marble mantelpiece that this was the drawing room,’ Dad explained. ‘The feminine rooms had pale colours, while the masculine rooms – the library, billiard and smoking rooms – had the black marble mantels.’
Marli was nearly bursting with impatience as they toured each room.
‘Shall we go up?’ Dad suggested, standing at the bottom of the grand cedar staircase.
‘No,’ Marli insisted, motioning down the hall. ‘There are more rooms to see on this floor yet.’
‘The ballroom must be here somewhere,’ said Didi. ‘My mother said that Dame Nellie Melba sang a concert here in 1915.’
Marli hurried to the rear of the house and flung open the ballroom door.
‘What on earth?’ asked Dad, staring around in amazement. ‘How did you do this?’
The ballroom had been transformed. Not only had every surface been polished so that the crystal chandelier sparkled and the parquet floor gleamed, but Luca and Marli had set up a party. They had rummaged through the garage for ornamental bric-a-brac and borrowed bits of furniture from Luca’s family. Old chairs and milk crates with cushions had been set up in various groupings. A long table was set with candles in jam jars and bunches of fragrant roses arranged in old tins. The antique gramophone stood on a tea chest, its brass horn polished until it gleamed. A stack of old records had been placed alongside.
Eight sets of French doors were wide open to let the fresh air and sunshine flood in.
‘So this is what the mysterious surprise was,’ Didi chuckled.
‘That’s not all.’ Marli smiled so wide that her cheeks ached. She led them out onto the western terrace, bathed in late afternoon sun.
While the garden at the front still looked overgrown, the back looked completely different. The lawns were mown, the hedges clipped and the garden beds weeded. It was far from perfect, but it gave an idea of what the gardens must once have been like with pale roses, blue agapanthus and mauve-pink hydrangeas blooming.
‘You certainly have been busy,’ said Didi. ‘What a glorious afternoon to see it.’
‘And our guests are arriving,’ Marli announced, waving towards the southern wall. Luca led the procession, followed by Nonno and Nonna, Dani, Marc, Lia, Caterina and Siena, all carrying platters, bowls and baskets of food and calling out greetings.
‘I hope you don’t mind, Dad, but I used the money you gave me to buy party food for tonight,’ said Marli. ‘And Luca’s Nonna helped us do some cooking.’
Dad laughed as he looked around in wonder. ‘Young lady, I don’t think that even comes close to explaining what you’ve been up to.’
Marli twisted her bangle. ‘Well, you see, there is something else to celebrate. Mum’s been offered
an awesome job at Melbourne University, so we’re moving down here to live.’
‘Do you mean it?’ begged Dad. ‘That’s incredible news!’
Dad and Didi both beamed with joy as Marli told them the details. Then she had to explain it all over again to Luca and his family.
All the food was laid out on the table. Marli and Luca had bought prosciutto, mortadella sausage, marinated olives, sun-dried tomatoes, roasted capsicum, creamy brie, fetta and loaves of bread from the Italian delicatessen to make huge antipasto platters. Nonna had made meatballs, her famous pitticelle di zucchine, and arancini balls made from rice and mozzarella cheese, which were still warm from the pan. Dani had made raspberry tiramisu in individual glasses to eat with a spoon, while Marc carried an esky filled with ice-cold drinks.
‘What a feast!’ Dad said.
Everyone helped themselves to drinks. Marli pulled the top off her orangeade and clinked bottles with Luca.
‘Salute,’ said Luca.
‘Salute,’ replied Marli. ‘To new beginnings.’ Everyone clinked drinks and chatted. Nonna passed around the platters of pitticelle di zucchine and cheesy arancini balls.
‘You have to try the pitticelle, Dad – they’re amazing,’ Marli urged, helping herself to the fritters.
‘And so are Nonna’s arancini balls,’ Luca added.
‘Eat up, Luca caro,’ said Nonna. ‘My darling boy was pale and sick and far too thin. But now he looks well again.’
Marli realised Nonna was right. The sunshine and fresh air of Riversleigh gardens had put a rose in Luca’s cheeks and a sparkle in his eyes.
Dani nodded. ‘And he’s so much nicer to be around. He’s been like a grumpy bear for weeks!’
Luca hugged his mother. ‘Sorry, Mum, but it was very boring being sick for so long. It’s been much more fun since Marli arrived.’
Marli opened the peacock hatbox and spread some of the items from it out on the table.
‘Luca and I have been researching the Hamilton family,’ she explained to the others. ‘We’ve found out the most amazing things.’
She showed Dad the scrapbook with the photographs, articles and mementoes, and told him some of the stories they had discovered.
‘Violet was disinherited in 1928 when she insisted on marrying Nikolai as soon as she turned twenty-one,’ Marli explained. ‘It caused a huge scandal at the time because not only was he poor and Russian, he had been her father’s chauffeur. Shock-horror!’ Marli struck a dramatic pose, hand on forehead. ‘But it all worked out well, though. Violet became a successful photographer while Nikolai Khakovsky changed his name to the more socially acceptable Nicholas Peterson and became one of Melbourne’s top lawyers.’
Didi continued the story. ‘Albert Hamilton was already devastated because Violet’s older sister, Imogen, was doubly disgraced. She was engaged very young to one of her father’s business associates, but she broke the engagement a few months later to marry for love. It was a “mixed” marriage, as they called it in those days, to an impoverished Catholic doctor called Tommy O’Byrne, who preferred treating poor slum-dwellers to making money from the rich. Albert refused to attend the wedding and didn’t see her again for years.’
‘Poor Imogen,’ said Marli. ‘But I bet she and Tommy were amazingly happy.’
‘No-one would raise an eyebrow in this day and age,’ said Dani. ‘It seems strange to let a family be torn apart by something so trivial.’
Dad squeezed Marli’s hand.
Luca pointed at the formal black-and-white photograph of the Riversleigh staff lined up outside the house. ‘There’s our great-grandfather Giuseppe and his cousin Alf, although when he became a gardener the butler changed Giuseppe’s name to Joseph. He said no-one could be expected to pronounce it otherwise.’
Everyone laughed. Lia, Caterina and Siena crowded around to look, giggling and chattering.
Luca showed them one of the other servants in the photo graph, a maid in a black dress with a prim white cap and apron. ‘And that’s Nonno’s mother, Sally. She worked as a housemaid here until she married Giuseppe in the late 1920s. They eventually started a hugely successful trattoria restaurant in Lonsdale Street.’
Dad pored over the photographs with Dani and Marc. Marli passed around the meatballs.
‘So why did Albert Hamilton give the house to the state government?’ Dad asked as he helped himself to more pitticelle.
‘He lost all his money in a bad investment before Violet was married,’ Marli explained. ‘Albert tried to auction off Riversleigh and all its contents, but by 1929 Melbourne was in the grip of the Great Depression and no-one would buy it. So he offered the house to the government as a convalescent home for soldiers, in memory of his two sons who died in the First World War.’
Marli took a piece of bruschetta. Luca took over the story.
‘Albert lived here for a while, stubbornly refusing to see his daughters,’ he said. ‘When Violet’s son Michael – other wise known as Didi – was born, she brought him to see his grandfather. Albert was sick, so Violet insisted on taking him home with her and looking after him. Eventually he was reconciled with Violet and Imogen.’
‘There’s one more surprise, Didi,’ said Marli, giving her grandfather a hug. ‘I found something hidden in the very back of the scrapbook.’
Marli opened the scrapbook to the back cover. There was a loose black-and-white photograph of a couple on their wedding day. It wasn’t the usual stiff formal shot – this photograph was more natural with the couple arm in arm, gazing into each other’s eyes with utter adoration. The bride had a large, dark gemstone on her ring finger.
‘Violet and Nikolai,’ said Didi, his voice heavy with emotion.
On the inside back cover of the scrapbook was a leather pocket for storing extra photos or papers. Marli opened the flap and fished around inside, pulling out something that she hid in her closed fist. She slowly unfurled her fingers to reveal an oval cornflower-blue sapphire ring, surrounded by sixteen diamonds set in rose gold.
‘Oooh,’ said Dani.
‘It’s Violet’s missing engagement ring,’ Marli explained. ‘She must have hidden it there.’
Marli passed the sapphire to Didi, who held it up to the light with trembling fingers, the gemstones flashing brilliantly.
‘The Khakovsky Sapphire,’ said Didi, his voice lowered with reverence. ‘The ring that my father, Nikolai, smuggled out of Russia, sewn into the hem of his waistcoat. I thought it was lost forever.’
Didi weighed the ring in his palm for a moment before slipping it onto Marli’s finger. ‘It’s yours now – the ring given to my grandmother, Countess Khakovska, by Tsarina Alexandra as a wedding present. It’s priceless.’
Marli felt a sting of tears. ‘I’ll treasure it always, Didi.’
Dad examined the ring closely. ‘Simply stunning, and what a history!’
‘Just like Riversleigh, Dad,’ Marli said. ‘Please promise me you won’t bulldoze the house. With all your building contacts, you could do an amazing job restoring it back to its former glory, just like you used to do in Brisbane. We could run it as a guesthouse or a wedding venue … It’s far too precious to destroy.’
Dad pulled a sheaf of papers out of his inside pocket. ‘Actually, there is one more surprise, Marli. You know that Didi and I went to see the lawyers today to sign the paperwork for the handover of Riversleigh back to the Peterson family?’
Marli frowned. ‘Yes?’
‘Well, the house doesn’t actually belong to Didi as we thought,’ Dad continued. ‘When Albert Hamilton was on his deathbed, he changed his will. The house had been signed away to the government for ninety years, so he couldn’t leave it to his daughters.’
Marli’s heart sunk with disappointment. ‘Oh no. Who did Albert leave it to?’
Didi beamed at Marli. ‘To you.’
‘Me?’ Marli shrieked. ‘That’s impossible!’
Dad laughed. ‘Yes, well, technically he left it to Violet’s eldest female desc
endant. Who is one delightful young lady called Amalia Violet Peterson.’
Marli was speechless. ‘Wow! You’re an heiress,’ cried Luca. ‘So I guess you’d better start behaving in a more ladylike fashion. No more climbing trees and breaking into abandoned houses for you.’
Marli put her hands on her hips and raised an eyebrow. ‘Why ever not?’ she demanded. ‘I don’t want to be ladylike. I’d much rather be a brave and an intrepid adventuress, just like Violet.’
She looked at her father beseechingly. ‘Please don’t knock my house down, Dad. I love it.’
Dad raised his hands in surrender and laughed. ‘I wouldn’t dare do that, myshka.’ He gave Marli a hug. ‘It will be hard work, but we can make it beautiful again, together.’
Fast Facts about 1920s Melbourne and Russia
More than one million Russians fled Russia between 1917 and 1920, mostly via Turkey.
Nikolai’s hometown of St Petersburg has had several name changes over the years. In 1914 the name was changed to Petrograd, then in 1924 to Leningrad, then back to St Petersburg in 1991.
Melbourne – often called ‘Marvellous Melbourne’ – was the capital of the Commonwealth of Australia from 1901 until 1927, when Canberra was built.
The years after the First World War and before the Great Depression were ones of enormous change.
Nearly sixty-two thousand Australian soldiers were killed during the war. Of these, about sixteen thousand were from Victoria (the youngest of whom was James Charles Martin of Hawthorn, who was only fourteen years and nine months old when he died at Gallipoli). In Australia, two thousand eight hundred sets of brothers died in the First World War. A further ten thousand Australians died of the Spanish influenza, including approximately four thousand Victorians.
In the 1920s, Australia was still primarily a population of British descent, and migrants from non-British backgrounds were often treated with suspicion.
The Australian Government placed an embargo on Russian immigration to Australia during the Russian Revolution and Civil War from 1917 to 1922. However, the prohibition was lifted once the White Army had been defeated by the Bolsheviks. Most of these White émigrés came to Australia via Siberia and Manchuria after the Red Army seized control of Vladivostok in 1922.
The Lost Sapphire Page 24
