Rosie

by Alan Titchmarsh

  ‘Serious but not critical,’ she said. She smiled kindly. But he thought he saw worry too.

  ‘Thank you,’ he said, walked slowly out of the hospital and drove home.

  Henry was incredulous. ‘But I was with her first thing this morning and she was in fine fettle.’

  ‘I know. Apparently it happened quite suddenly.’

  Henry plonked himself down on a wooden captain’s chair, which creaked under his weight. ‘Well, I’ll be . . . I’d no idea. Well, you wouldn’t have. I mean, she was so . . .’

  Nick nodded. ‘I know.’

  ‘So I suppose I can stand my niece down.’

  ‘Yes. I’m afraid they don’t know when she’ll be coming out now. It all depends on how quickly she recovers.’

  Henry looked at him. ‘And are you all right?’

  ‘Yes. Yes, I’m fine,’ he said distractedly.

  ‘Well, you don’t look it. You look exhausted. It’s the shock. Let me make you some coffee with something stronger in it.’ Henry pushed himself out of the chair with an effort.

  ‘Thanks.’ Nick wandered through to the back room in the wake of his burly patron.

  Henry switched on the kettle. ‘And that’s not all, is it?’

  ‘Mmm?’ Nick was distant. Preoccupied.

  ‘There’s something else, isn’t there?’ And then, seeing he was not getting through, ‘Woman trouble, is it?’

  ‘What?’ Nick came to. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘You know, Nicholas and Alexandra.’

  Nick was defensive. ‘What about Nicholas and Alexandra?’

  ‘Look, dear boy, I’ve not asked any questions – I’ve been very circumspect, and after all, it’s none of my business, but if two of my protégés are at a tricky stage in their relationship I’d just like to know so that I don’t put my foot in it. They’re not very big feet, but they do have quite a lot of weight above them.’

  Nick hesitated, then tried to speak but settled instead for a sigh.

  Henry busied himself with cups, sugar and coffee, and spoke over his shoulder. His tone was gentle, his language considered. ‘Look. It was never going to be easy, was it? There’s a lot of history there. A lot of – what is it they say nowadays? – a lot of issues. God! I hate that phrase.’

  Nick was staring at the floor.

  Henry warmed to his subject: ‘Life is full of these expressions, isn’t it? “I have issues”, “Your family is dysfunctional”, “They have trouble parenting”. Load of cock, if you ask me. What happened before those neat little boxes were invented? I’m not sure that the circumstances existed until the vocabulary came along. In the good old days, instead of “having issues”, somebody was “temperamental”. Dysfunctional families were “not people like us” and “parenting” was something that happened, coincidentally, while you tried to bring up your family as best you could.’

  ‘It’s all so confusing,’ murmured Nick.

  ‘Oh. Right. Well, if we’re going there you’ll need quite a large tot.’ He tipped a generous measure of Famous Grouse into the coffee, and handed the cup to Nick. ‘She did talk to me, you know,’ Henry went on. ‘Alex.’

  Nick took a sip of the brew and gasped at its strength.

  ‘Nothing intimate. Not about you,’ Henry assured him, ‘but about . . . what was his name? Paul. Nothing physical, no violence, but quite a lot of mental cruelty. And that phrase has been around for a long time, more’s the pity.’

  Nick said nothing.

  Henry continued. ‘He wasn’t the most faithful of husbands, you see, and it wasn’t just the odd affair. He was a serial adulterer, by the sound of it. Travelled a lot, woman in every port – that sort of thing. She never found out until about three years ago, when he started living a double life, half in the States and half over here. Came across some letters in his dirty washing. And not just from one woman. Careless, eh? But maybe he wanted her to find out. Anyway, she tried to patch it up for the sake of the child.’

  Nick was shocked. ‘She didn’t tell me about the women.’

  ‘No? Well, you wouldn’t, would you? It’s not something to boast about. Eventually she realized she was on a hiding to nothing and told him she’d had enough. He agreed to go – there was yet another woman. Now she just wants to give her daughter a fresh start.’

  ‘I know. That’s the trouble.’ Nick paused. ‘She doesn’t seem to set much store by her own happiness. Doesn’t want to risk another relationship. She’d rather stay on her own so that Victoria has a stable upbringing.’

  ‘Shame,’ said Henry.

  ‘That’s what I think.’ Nick drained his cup. ‘I’d better be off.’

  ‘What are you going to do now?’

  ‘Who knows? I’ll go back and see Rosie this evening. Nothing else to do except,’ he pointed to the walls of the gallery, ‘fill these, I suppose. But I can’t get into the mood.’

  ‘Look,’ said Henry, ‘there’s no pressure. I have enough to keep me going for a week or so. Don’t feel you’ve got to knuckle down. You’ll need time to sort Rosie out, and yourself. Really there’s no rush. Concentrate on the important things for now.’ As Nick closed the door, he shouted after him, ‘Both of them.’

  ‘Why did you want me to read you that bit?’ Alex had avoided the subject all day. Now it was late afternoon, and having taken Victoria swimming, and then shopping for clothes – a girly bonding session to try to obliterate the memory of the last couple of days – she found herself facing up to the inevitable.

  Victoria was staring out of the window, as she had been for the past ten minutes. Alex had noticed that she had been more introspective than usual all day. It was time to get to the bottom of things.

  ‘Victoria?’

  The child did not move.

  ‘Are you cross with me?’

  Victoria shook her head but did not turn round.

  ‘What, then?’ Alex realized she was crying. ‘What is it?’ She walked over and put her arms round her daughter, rocking her.

  Victoria sobbed silently as Alex stroked the back of her head. ‘Hey, come on! It can’t be that bad, can it?’

  The child nodded.

  ‘What, then?’

  No reply.

  ‘Come on. Come and sit with me.’ She shepherded Victoria to the sofa, and sat with her as she sniffed back the tears.

  ‘It’s just . . . things,’ she choked out.

  ‘What sort of things?’

  ‘I don’t . . . know.’ There were more sobs between the words.

  ‘Are you unhappy?’

  Victoria nodded again.

  ‘Why, then? What is it?’

  ‘I try to be happy, but I can’t be. Not here.’

  ‘Oh, poppet, I know. But what can I do?’

  Victoria’s cheeks were red and puffy. ‘Can’t we go back?’

  ‘To the island?’

  Another nod.

  ‘Not really, sweetheart. Not now.’ Alex stroked her daughter’s hair.

  ‘But why?’ The child sniffed loudly. ‘I thought you liked it there.’

  ‘Well, I do, but it’s just that life is a bit complicated at the moment.’

  ‘But it wouldn’t be. Not there,’ Victoria said pleadingly.

  ‘Oh, angel, if only you knew . . .’ Alex gave her daughter a squeeze.

  ‘I know he loves you.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Nick. He loves you.’

  ‘Well, it’s up to me to decide what I’m going to do about that, isn’t it?’

  Victoria eased away from her. ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘What don’t you understand?’

  ‘Well, you weren’t happy with Daddy, were you, but you kept on being with him?’

  ‘Yes. Because – because you do. You can’t give up on someone just like that. Someone you’ve had a baby with. You have to try to make it work.’

  ‘But in the end you couldn’t make it work?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘So if that happens, ar
e you ever allowed to try again?’

  ‘Well, yes, of course you are. But you might need a bit of time to get over it.’

  ‘How much time?’

  ‘I don’t know, sweetheart. I really don’t know,’ Alex sighed.

  ‘Marianne Dashwood didn’t need much time – not when she saw how kind and nice Colonel Brandon was after Mr Willoughby had run off with that other woman for her fortune.’

  ‘Oh, I see. That’s what it is.’ Alex put her arm round Victoria’s shoulders and drew her close. ‘The trouble is, poppet, things don’t always work out the way they do in stories. Sometimes they’re a bit more complicated.’

  ‘Why?’ Victoria persisted.

  ‘I don’t know, they just are. I suppose people’s emotions are not always so straightforward in real life.’

  ‘But I thought you said Jane Austen was the best writer that ever lived?’

  ‘Well, yes, she is, but—’

  ‘And that she was very good with emotions?’

  ‘Well, yes – but she was writing almost two hundred years ago. Society was different then.’

  ‘Oh. I see.’

  Alex stroked her daughter’s arm.

  Victoria spoke again: ‘Colonel Brandon loved Marianne, didn’t he?’

  ‘Yes, he did. Very much.’

  ‘But although he was . . . very nice . . . she wasn’t sure she loved him?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘But she still agreed to marry him, because she thought that being nice was important.’

  ‘Well, she had great respect for him.’

  ‘Was she wise, do you think?’

  ‘She probably had her own reasons for doing what she did.’

  ‘If she had loved Colonel Brandon as much as he had loved her, would it have been more straightforward?’

  ‘Oh, yes. Much more straightforward. I don’t suppose she’d have hesitated at all then.’

  ‘I see.’ Victoria looked up into her mother’s eyes. ‘Do you love Nick?’ she asked.

  At first Alex found herself unable to answer. Then she looked away, swallowed hard, took a deep breath, and said, ‘Yes. I do.’

  33

  Semi-Plena

  . . . deserving more attention . . .

  By evening Rosie seemed to have rallied a little. Nick sat with her, holding her hand, for the better part of two hours. Sometimes she drifted off to sleep, sometimes she woke and lay with her eyes open but said nothing. Occasionally, she asked him about the car, or the wild flowers on the cliff. Then her eyes would close again.

  He worried about her long-term prospects. She couldn’t die! She was never ill! Watching her now made him anxious, and irritable. He needed her to get better and listen to him. Then he was ashamed of his selfishness.

  Someone touched his shoulder and he looked up.

  Alex was standing over him. ‘Hello,’ she said.

  He slipped his hand out of Rosie’s and got up. ‘Hello,’ he said uncertainly.

  They looked at each other, then Alex put her arms round him and laid her head on his chest. ‘I’m sorry.’

  At first he thought she was talking about Rosie. ‘They think she’ll be all right, but they can’t be certain yet,’ he said stiffly.

  Alex nodded. ‘I do hope so.’ She stepped away from him.

  ‘Thank you for coming,’ he said, hoping that she’d leave soon and not prolong the agony.

  ‘I had to come. Too many things to say.’

  Nick looked at her quizzically.

  ‘Sometimes it’s difficult to think straight,’ she said, ‘and to see the wood for the trees.’

  He wasn’t sure he had heard her correctly, and didn’t want to pre-empt the situation by saying anything.

  ‘I was a bit hasty,’ she went on. ‘Like you said, if I shut myself away in case of what might happen, I’ll never know joy . . .’ There was a catch in her voice. ‘And I’d quite like to know joy. So, if it’s all right with you . . .’

  Nick held out his arms and said, ‘Come here.’

  Alex saw the tears welling up, and wrapped her arms round him again.

  ‘I’m so glad you’re back,’ he whispered. ‘So glad.’

  At ten o’clock he took her to the ferry, kissed her tenderly, then watched the lights of the vessel recede into the distance until they were swallowed up by the night. She had gone again, but this time he knew she would return.

  Tomorrow was Sunday, and she had said she would bring Victoria over for the day. His pleasure at the prospect was tempered by concern for Rosie. He looked up at the star-filled sky and hoped with all his heart that both of the women he loved would make tomorrow a day to remember.

  ‘I have a surprise for you,’ said Alex.

  They were sitting in a café at Seaview, breakfasting outdoors in the early-morning sun, before they drove to Newport to see Rosie.

  ‘I’ve had enough of those,’ said Nick.

  ‘This is a nice one,’ Victoria told him.

  ‘Mmm?’ Nick was less than convinced.

  ‘Mummy’s been researching.’

  ‘That sounds very official.’

  ‘Very unofficial, actually,’ confessed Alex.

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘Well, I promised I’d do some digging around to see if I could discover anything about Rosie’s parents. And I’m not making any outrageous claims, but I do have one or two suggestions.’

  Nick dipped a piece of croissant into his coffee and popped it into his mouth. ‘Well?’

  ‘I’ve been at the library in Portsmouth.’ Alex dug deep into her rucksack. ‘You know you said that Rosie’s mother’s name – I mean her real mother – was given as Matilda Kitching?’

  Nick nodded as he chewed.

  ‘And her father’s name . . .’ Alex flipped through her shorthand pad until she found the page she wanted. ‘. . . was George Michaels.’

  ‘Yes.’ He took another sip of coffee.

  ‘Well, as Rosie said, there was no mention of either in the National Archive at Kew. Not with the right dates, anyway. You can call things up from there on the Internet now so the research wasn’t too difficult.’

  ‘No joy, then?’

  ‘Well, not until I started to look at the names of other people involved, who might have been around at the time.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘George Michaels was supposed to be part of a British delegation, wasn’t he? I tracked down that particular visit. It was pure luck, but I suppose all researchers need luck as well as intelligence. Anyway, it struck me that I’d often seen pictures of the two of them – George the Fifth and the Tsar – in naval uniform, and Portsmouth has been the home of the Royal Navy since God knows when. I found a naval archive in Portsmouth library that dealt with diplomatic relations between the British and Russian navies during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In 1917, the British sent a secret delegation over there. It was during the First World War, remember, so it must have been difficult.’

  ‘They didn’t give the names of all the people involved, did they?’ asked Nick excitedly.

  Alex paused, the better to build the tension. ‘Oh, yes, they did. Right down to the last button polisher. The junior naval attaché at the Admiralty was called . . . George Carmichael.’

  ‘You clever thing!’ Nick made to take the pad from Alex’s hand.

  ‘Not so fast. I’ve not finished yet.’

  Victoria beamed. ‘She’s very clever, isn’t she?’

  ‘Brilliant!’ he agreed.

  ‘That was too much of a coincidence to pass over. But what it didn’t do, of course, was give me any information about the mother. It also failed to show any meeting between the grand duchesses and the delegation. In fact, they had been in two different places – the delegation was sent to Murmansk, right up north on the Barents Sea. It had only been linked to St Petersburg by rail in 1916 and was just about to become an important port because it remained ice-free all the year round. Anyway, when the delegation was in Murmansk,
most of the royal family were in St Petersburg, more than five hundred miles away, and there is no record of the delegation going there. They sailed from Portsmouth, up round the Norwegian coast and the North Cape, direct to Murmansk where they met the Tsar. They did not go via the Baltic to St Petersburg and take the train north.’

  ‘Which knocks Rosie’s theory on the head,’ said Nick, despondent.

  ‘Well, it does seem to rule out the grand duchesses.’

  ‘I feel a but coming on,’ said Nick.

  ‘And there is one. Before he was married the Tsar had a mistress. Now I can only guess at this, and I may be wrong, and there are a lot of ifs.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘If the Tsar had not relinquished the love of his life, and they still occasionally had liaisons, and one happened to be in Murmansk during the time of the naval delegation . . . and if the mistress did not confine her attentions to the Tsar . . .’

  ‘You’re right – there are a lot of ifs.’

  ‘It would hardly stand up in court. Pure conjecture, that’s all.’

  ‘But what was the mistress’s name?’

  Alex spun the book round and showed him. ‘Mathilde Kschessinska.’

  He was stunned. ‘Matilda Kitching?’ he wondered aloud.

  ‘It’s possible.’ She smiled tentatively.

  ‘What happened to her?’

  ‘She eventually married one of the Tsar’s cousins, Grand Duke Andrei, in Cannes in 1921.’

  ‘They escaped the revolution, then?’

  ‘Yes, although Mathilde’s mansion was ransacked. She eventually ran a ballet studio in Paris – even taught Margot Fonteyn.’

  ‘But she’s dead now?’

  ‘Oh, yes.’

  ‘So I don’t suppose we’ll ever know for certain?’

  Alex shook her head. ‘It seems unlikely.’

  Nick reached out and squeezed her hand. ‘Thank you for going to all the trouble.’

  ‘It was a pleasure. But I’ve probably just uncovered a lot of coincidences.’

  Nick leaned back in his chair. ‘It’s a lot to take in, isn’t it?’

  ‘Interesting, though,’ piped up Victoria.

  ‘Yes. Very.’

  ‘Are you going to tell Rosie?’

  ‘That depends on how she is.’ Nick’s face bore a distracted look.