by Joan Lingard
‘There’s nothing here!’
‘Are you sure?’
Alex checked one more time.
‘We’ll just have to think again then,’ said his father.
They thought. They couldn’t think of any other titles on their shelves with ‘box’ in it.
Alex went up to his room and switched on his computer. He put in ‘receptacle’, then brought up the thesaurus. A fairly short list of synonyms was listed and it didn’t even include ‘box’.
Container
Can
Canister
Bin
Bucket
Package
Alex stared at the screen. Nothing there was very inspiring. What kind of title could you get with ‘bucket’ or ‘canister’ in it?
They waited until Anna rang and consulted her.
‘We thought it would be A Box of Delights, but it wasn’t,’ said Duncan, who had answered the phone. He listened for a moment, then broke off to say to Alex, ‘Your mother says we should have two copies of A Box of Delights.’
Alex began to search afresh. His mother stayed on the other end of the phone while he did.
‘Tell Mum I can’t see it,’ said Alex.
Duncan told her. Alex went on looking and double-checking. He was getting good at scanning titles quickly and he had a fair idea now where most things were.
‘Is she sure?’ he asked his father.
‘Are you sure?’ asked Duncan into the receiver. He listened again, then looked up at Alex. ‘She seems pretty certain about it. One copy was illustrated – that’s the one we’ve found – and the other wasn’t. Wait a minute!’ Anna was talking to him again. ‘She says she thinks it might have gone to the church fête along with a load of other books.’
TWENTY-FIVE
PARIS, 1919 THE MEETING OF NATASHA AND EUGENIE
They spent their first night in Paris sleeping under one of the bridges that spanned the Seine. They huddled close together for warmth, dozing intermittently. Natasha rose before it was fully light and walked up and down the towpath, flapping her arms about. She felt as stiff as a paving slab, and as cold.
Smudges of pink and pale green and lemon yellow began to nudge into the sky. She faced east to watch the dawn break. It was a spectacular dawn and as she watched, she forgot her stiff limbs and cold feet. The river rippled with the colours reflected from the sky. She turned to see her mother stirring.
‘Come and look, Mama!’
Eva joined her. They stood by the water’s edge until the sky had lightened completely and turned a milky blue. A barge passed and the bargee, who sported a red and white spotted scarf knotted around his throat, waved to them. They waved back and he gave them a little bow, which made them smile. It was still possible to smile, thought Natasha.
‘There’s the Eiffel Tower.’ Eva pointed downriver. ‘Your father and I went to the top and looked out over the city.’ She turned the other way. ‘And there’s the cathedral of Notre-Dame.’ She was still smiling. ‘Oh, I hope we can stay here, Natasha!’
‘We’ll find a way.’
But how were they even to begin to make this new start? They had nowhere to live, no contacts, and not much money. Leaving Marie and Kyril on a seat by the river Natasha and her mother went to a bank on one of the fine, wide boulevards to change their roubles into francs. They seemed not to get much for their Russian money. They looked at it in dismay.
‘We shall have to try to earn some,’ said Eva. But none of them had ever earned anything in their lives. What could they do? ‘We could work in a shop perhaps, Marie and I.’
‘I could too,’ said Natasha. She was tall and looked older than her age. She glanced down at her shabby clothes and then at her mother’s. ‘Do you think anyone would employ us dressed like this?’
Eva sighed. ‘If only we knew someone who could help us just to get started. I’m sure some of our old friends must be here, somewhere in the city, if only we knew where.’ Many of their friends and acquaintances had fled at the time of the revolution and Paris would have been the obvious place for them to make for since they spoke French fluently.
They spent the day on the move, roving along the boulevards and up the narrow side streets, slowing whenever they approached one of the city’s numerous cafes, seeking the sight of familiar faces, listening for the sound of the Russian language. By night-time they were tired and even Natasha was low in spirit.
‘We can’t sleep another night on the ground,’ said Marie. No one was prepared to argue.
They decided to use a little of their money to rent a room in a cheap hotel at the top of the Boulevard Saint Michel, not far from the Luxembourg Gardens. The corridors were dark and dingy and the smelly toilet at the end of the passage consisted of a hole in the ground and two places to put one’s feet. But that was preferable to having to squat under a bridge.
Their room contained little furniture, only a high double bed with two dirty grey blankets, a scabby velvet chaise longue and an upright chair. Eva, Marie and Kyril slept in the bed, and Natasha on the chaise longue. The latter was not overly comfortable, but after the unyielding ground it felt inviting and Natasha dropped at once into a deep sleep.
In the morning, she got up feeling rested for the first time in days. She went out to a boulangerie to get their morning bread and it was there that she met Eugenie, who would in due course of time become the grandmother of Anna and the great-grandmother of Alex and Sonya.
The baker’s shop was busy with people buying their breakfast baguettes. In the queue, in front of Natasha, there was a girl of about her own age. She had long, wavy dark hair that hung to her waist and was wearing a pretty blue dress with a deeper blue jacket over it. Her hair shone with cleanliness and her teeth, when she laughed, showed white and even. Natasha shrank back against the wall feeling grubby and shoddy. No one would imagine that once upon a time she too had worn nice clothes and had had shiny hair.
The girl was talking to another in the queue in front of her. They were discussing an outing, a proposed picnic to a park. They were hoping the weather would stay fair. It took a moment for Natasha to register the fact that they were speaking in Russian!
The girl in blue glanced round and Natasha stammered, in that language, ‘Excuse me, are you from Russia?’
‘No, Paris.’
‘Oh.’ Natasha could not hold back her disappointment. ‘You’ve always lived here?’
‘This is where I was born. My mother is Russian, but my father was French. He’s dead.’ There was a catch in the girl’s voice. ‘He was killed in the war.’
‘So was mine.’ They had more than one thing in common then. ‘We had to leave our home in St Petersburg because of the revolution.’
‘That’s where my mother was born. She came to Paris to marry my father. My mother would love to meet you, I’m sure she would.’
The girl bought her bread and waited while Natasha paid for hers. They left the shop together.
‘Would you come to visit us, this afternoon perhaps? We live near by.’
Natasha said that she would love to visit them and asked if she could bring her mother and her aunt and small cousin with her, explaining that it would be difficult to leave them behind. ‘Would that be all right?’
‘Of course,’ said the girl. She had a wide smile. ‘By the way, my name is Eugénie.’
‘And I am Natasha.’
TWENTY-SIX
IN PURSUIT OF PLEASURE
Alex jumped on his bike and pedalled at speed into the village. He must find out who had bought A Box of Delights at the village fête. Their future could depend on it. His father had warned him that it might be difficult. Anyone could have bought the book. And it might not necessarily have been someone in the village. Sometimes dealers from far afield came to the fair looking for bargains.
Alex went first to the manse, a good place to start when one had any query. The minister had gone to visit a sick parishioner, but Mrs Bell was in the kitchen making scones. The fi
rst batch was cooling on a wire tray and smelt delicious.
‘Have one,’ she invited. ‘There’s some of my new strawberry jam there to go with it.’
While Alex ate his scone he told her about the book.
‘That could be some job to track down!’ said Mrs Bell. ‘Folk come from all over, as you know. Your best bet would be to go and see Mrs Crawford. She was running the book stall this year.’
Mrs Crawford lived in a house at the other end of the street. The front door was closed. Alex knocked and waited, but nobody came. He knocked again and kicked his heels on the edge of the kerb. He couldn’t stand still.
The next-door neighbour pushed up her window. ‘They went out. An hour or two ago. I think they were going shopping in the town.’
‘You don’t know when they’ll be back, I suppose?’
‘Couldn’t say, I’m afraid. How’s Sonya? No change?’ She shook her head. ‘Terrible business, that. As if you hadn’t enough on your plate. Troubles never come singly, so they say.’
Alex lingered. ‘Did you go to the fête this year?’
The woman looked at him. Well, of course she had. A funny question that to be asking. ‘You were there yourself, were you not?’
‘I just wondered… You wouldn’t have bought a copy of A Box of Delights, by any chance?’
‘Box of Delights?’
‘It’s a book.’
‘Never heard of it.’
‘It’s just that we gave a copy to the fête and there was a letter left inside it.’
‘Oh, I see. Well, if I hear of anyone finding it, I’ll let you know. What did you say it was called?’ Alex repeated the title and she withdrew her head and let the window down.
He thought next of Mrs Gordon, the schoolteacher. She might have bought it for the school. He cycled along to the schoolhouse, which was next door to the two-teacher primary school. He had been a pupil there until he was twelve and Sonya had left at the end of last term, ready to go up to the secondary school in the town with him. Would she ever go there now? She didn’t seem to be making any progress. For a moment he felt down, then he gave himself a shake. He had to get on with the job in hand.
This house also looked terribly shut up. It was the school holidays of course. There was still a week to go till term started. He rang the bell, but as he listened to it echoing away inside the house he had a horrible feeling he was going to strike unlucky here too. Mrs Gordon might have the copy of A Box of Delights, but if she did it would be behind the locked door of either the house or the school.
The postie’s van came along and slowed up. ‘They’re away,’ he called, putting his head out of the window. ‘Went to Majorca yesterday. For the week.’
‘Thanks,’ said Alex. Then he waved to the postman and shouted, ‘Hang on a minute, would you, Hamish!’
Hamish hung on. Alex ran over to the van and told him about his quest.
‘I’ll spread the news,’ said Hamish. ‘I’ll ask everybody I see. And I do see everybody most days in the week.’
He took off.
The shop, thought Alex. That was another place where news spread like wildfire, too much so at times.
‘Why don’t you put a notice up on the board?’ suggested Mrs Robertson. ‘Everybody that comes in reads the board. Here’s a postcard for you to write it on.’
Alex took the plain white postcard to the postoffice counter and wrote the message with the postoffice pen that was attached by a cord to the wall.
‘Would anyone who bought A Box of Delights by John Masefield at the village fête in June or who knows of anyone who did, please get in touch with either Duncan or Alex McKinnon.’ He printed their phone number at the bottom.
He pinned the card to the board, alongside all the others advertising joinery and plumbing services, cottages for rent, and goods for sale, which ranged from loads of hardwood logs to push-chairs, second-hand gardening tools and electric cookers.
As he was leaving the shop the Crawfords’ car went by. Alex raced along the street after it. The Crawfords stopped in front of their door and Mrs Crawford got out of the passenger side.
‘Mrs Crawford,’ panted Alex, ‘could I speak to you for a moment?’ When he had recovered his breath he said, ‘It’s about the village fête. The book stall. You wouldn’t happen to remember who bought A Box of Delights, would you?’
‘Why yes, I would,’ she said with a smile. ‘I did. For my grandson. He’s just seven, but he loves books. You’ve met Rory, haven’t you?’
‘Oh, yes, yes I have. Where is it that he lives?’ Not in the village, anyway, Alex knew that.
‘Edinburgh.’
‘Edinburgh?’
‘Why yes. Anything the matter, Alex?’
‘Well, we’re not sure, but there might be a note in the book, an important note. Do you think you could ring them up and ask them to look?’
‘I don’t have to do that. I haven’t given it to Rory yet, I was waiting till he came up to visit us.’
‘So you’ve still got it?’
‘I have. Come on in and I’ll find it.’
Alex followed her into the living room.
‘Now where did I put it?’ She frowned. ‘I believe Malcolm was looking at it. Malcolm,’ Mrs Crawford called to her husband, who was coming into the hall now, ‘do you know where that copy of A Box of Delights is that I bought at the fête?’
Mr Crawford had a carton of groceries in his arms. ‘I’ve been reading it. Enjoying it too. Hang on a minute till I get rid of this lot.’ He took the carton into the kitchen and then came back. ‘It should be beside my chair.’ He reached down beside one of the armchairs. ‘Here it is!’ He presented Alex with the book.
Alex flicked excitedly through the pages, his heart racing. He couldn’t find anything. He went through it again.
‘It’s not there!’ he cried.
‘He’s looking for a note, Malcolm,’ explained Mrs Crawford. ‘You didn’t find any bits of paper in it, did you?’
‘Well, actually, I did. There was a piece of paper with a couple of lines scrawled on it. Didn’t make much sense. I threw it away, I’m afraid. I hope it wasn’t important?’
TWENTY-SEVEN
PARIS, 1919 THE BEGINNING OF A LONG FRIENDSHIP
Eiugénie lived with her mother Vera in an airy, spacious flat overlooking the Luxembourg Gardens. Vera welcomed them and over coffee and cake she and Eva soon discovered that they had had friends in common in St Petersburg. When she found that they had nowhere to live she immediately offered them the use of two of their spare rooms. ‘We have a lot of extra space and now there is only Eugénie and I.’
The two women became firm friends, as did their daughters. Eugénie gave Natasha a couple of her dresses, insisting that she take them, and Vera passed on some of her clothes to Eva and Marie. They were in such need of them that they accepted gratefully. They threw their rags away.
‘We won’t impose on you for ever, Vera,’ said Eva. ‘We’ll stay only until we manage to get back on our feet.’ What she didn’t know is that she would stay until she died, and Natasha until she married Alasdair Fleming and went to live in Scotland.
Vera’s husband had been a financier, whose money had been invested in a Swiss bank. He had therefore left his widow comfortably off.
‘We are not short of money,’ Vera told Eva.
‘But we can’t let you keep us,’ Eva protested.
‘You mustn’t let it worry you.’
But it did worry Eva, and Natasha too. They discussed the problem in the privacy of their room.
‘We shall have to find some means of earning our living,’ said Eva. ‘Perhaps Marie and I could do some sewing. Marie is a fine needlewoman and although I’m not as good as she is, I’m not too bad. I think I would enjoy using patterns and cutting out.’
The women had done embroidery mostly, although Marie had made a few christening gowns, including the ones that Natasha and Kyril had worn. They had been sad to leave those behind. But then
they had had to leave so much behind.
To begin with, Marie said, ‘Go into business? We don’t know anything about such things.’
‘We shall learn,’ said Eva. ‘And Natasha will help us. She has a good head on her.’
Marie continued to protest and express doubts, but they could see that she was becoming interested. Eventually she said, ‘I suppose we have no choice?’
‘None,’ said Eva firmly, who wanted to waste no more time.
‘Unless you would rather scrub floors,’ said Natasha, a little wickedly. ‘The cafe on the corner is looking for a cleaner.’
They went ahead and set themselves up in the dressmaking business. A lot of women needed to replenish their wardrobes after the war. They would offer favourable rates.
Their first customer was Russian – a large number of émigrés were living in Paris – and a friend of Vera’s. She ordered an afternoon dress. She was delighted with the result and went on to order a suit. Then she sent her daughter along to have an evening dress made. After that came a friend of the daughter who, having seen the dress, decided that she would like to have one made for herself. And so it went on. The business grew by word of mouth and gradually the women were able to support themselves.
Natasha joined Eugénie at her school. They walked there together daily, sat next to each other in class, were seldom apart. They liked the same things and quarrelled but rarely. When they finished school they went to university, commencing at the same time, Eugénie to study music, Natasha to study medicine. The girls were of the same height and build and could have been twins, except that Natasha was fair and Eugénie dark. Everyone commented on their closeness. It was thought that nothing could separate them.
Eugénie married before Natasha. Pierre was a violinist, quite a brilliant one. Natasha was chief bridesmaid at the wedding. A year later, Eugénie gave birth to a daughter. Natasha was godmother.
And then Natasha met a Scotsman, Alasdair Fleming, when he was on holiday in Paris. They fell in love and six months later, decided to marry. Eugénie was appalled. ‘You can’t go and live in Scotland!’ But Natasha had already taken the decision to do so.
