R Raichev - The hunt for Sonya Dufrette

(Vorodin – corruption of ‘Borodin’?)

Well, the Vorodins are the epitome of cosmopolitan sophistication – slim, suave, accentless, with those glowing perma-tans. Though I understood them to be thirty-nine and thirty-eight respectively, they look barely out of their teens. They give the impression of being typical jet-setting wastrels and professional bon vivants. The kind of people who have drawing rooms that take half an hour to cross, Monets and Picassos hanging in the lavatory, truffles and Beluga caviar for dinner, which they eat with a spoon. However, looks can be very deceptive. Lady Mortlock told me that they were generous to a fault, philanthropists with a number of charities named after them. Most of the charities are for children.

As Sonya and Miss Haywood passed by, Veronica said, ‘She looks like an angel, doesn’t she? Such a sweet little girl. Helplessness personified.’

‘I always thought angels looked confident and a bit smug – if Christmas cards are anything to go by. What is wrong with her exactly, do you know?’

‘She is said to be autistic. I wish Lawrence and Lena would do something about it. They haven’t really seen “everybody”. It doesn’t all start and end with Harley Street. There are good specialists abroad… If I had a child like that, I’d love her more than I would a normal one!’ Veronica spoke vehemently, with genuine passion. ‘A mentally handicapped child is a very special child – a gift from God. A child like that would help me preserve my humanity – would prevent me from getting spoilt, keep me to the ground.’

How odd it is that one woman should consider a gift what another describes as punishment.

‘I love children, so does Anatole,’ Veronica went on. She had been a beauty queen and an actress, but she spoke simply and naturally, without the slightest trace of affectation. I found myself warming to her. ‘We don’t have any children, sadly. Do you?’

I told her I had a boy of Sonya’s age. Her face lit up. ‘A little boy! How wonderful for you. And he is – fine? He is in good health? I am so glad! You must be very happy. I’d love to meet him. What’s his name?’

‘David. I nearly brought him here with me.’

‘Oh, why didn’t you? I must send him something – some little present. How about a pair of platinum cuff links with the initial D?’

‘Oh, that’s very kind of you but I couldn’t possibly -’

‘Of course you can. It’s nothing. He can use them when he grows up. I have them in my room. We always carry two boxes full of cuff links that have all the letters of the alphabet on them. I carry the ones with A to K, Anatole has the rest. We present them to deserving little boys. I hope you won’t think us too peculiar!’ She laughed. ‘We have things for girls too.’ A shadow passed over her face. ‘We’d give anything to have a child. If you only knew what it means to us – ’ She broke off, then changed the subject. ‘Twiston is a lovely house, isn’t it? One thing we haven’t got is an English country house. Sorry, this sounds terribly spoilt of me!’

‘It is the kind of place exiles think of when they dream of home,’ I said.

‘Beautifully put… Perhaps one day I will buy this house and live in it.’

Lawrence Dufrette had strolled along and he was joined by Miss Haywood and Sonya. We watched him pick up Sonya and swing her round by her hands, making her scream with laughter. He then put her on his shoulder and unexpectedly broke into song.

‘Some to make hay, Dilly, Dilly,

Some to cut corn,

While you and I, Dilly, Dilly,

Keep ourselves warm.’

Sonya clapped her hands. She looked delighted.

Lawrence Dufrette was wearing a white shantung suit and a Panama hat, which he allowed Sonya to take off his head and throw down to the ground. This was repeated several times. She laughed. Her brown eyes were bright. He laughed too. I was amazed since I hadn’t thought Lawrence Dufrette capable of laughing like that. His whole face changed. He looked happy and relaxed. More importantly, it was clear to meat that moment that he loved his daughter. I said as much.

‘Oh yes, he loves her all right,’ Veronica said in a toneless voice. ‘Lawrence is nothing like Lena in that respect.’

Three men wearing overalls were walking towards the ancient oak tree. Veronica asked what they were doing, did I know? I did – Sir Michael had told me. ‘The tree is something of a historical monument. It was planted by James I. They are going to provide it with a cement base in an effort to preserve it. It is entirely hollow inside. It’s starting to disintegrate.’

‘It looks horrid. If it were up to me, I’d have it removed. Wasn’t there a poem about a hollow? Do you know the one? It always gives me the creeps when I remember it.’

‘Would that be Tennyson’s Maud?’

She looked blank. “‘I hate the dreadful hollow behind the little wood…” How did it go on?’

I completed it for her:

‘Its lips in the field above are dabbled with blood and heath,

The red ribb’d ledges drip with a silent horror of blood

And Echo there, whatever is ask’d her, answers “Death”.’

The Royal Wedding

The cuff links had been left on her dressing table, in a charming presentation box with an onyx lid. She had found them later that day. She gave them to David on his twenty-first birthday, though she hadn’t seen him wear them very often…

How many people had there been altogether? Antonia was standing in her kitchen now, heating some excellent Marks and Spencer’s asparagus soup in a pan. Ten? Twelve? Excluding Sir Michael and Lady Mortlock, that was. She counted on her fingers. The Dufrettes, the Vorodins, Major Nagle, somebody called Bill Kavanagh, whose bald head and thick black-rimmed glasses brought to mind a bank manager, um, Sheikh Umair, several FO types and their wives. A couple called Falconer and another called Lynch-Marquis. She remembered Mrs L-M. as a large woman with a Roedean voice, wearing a long white silk robe with black stripes from the shoulders down both sides of the skirt.

The argument. For some reason she kept thinking about the argument. It had taken place at breakfast on the morning of the 29th. Lawrence Dufrette and Major Nagle had been no strangers to one another. For a while they had worked together in the same department. Neither man could stand the other, it had soon become apparent to everyone. (Sir Michael should never have asked the two of them together. What could he have been thinking of?) The reason for the animosity? ‘Some sort of rivalry, the usual office in-fighting,’ Lady Mortlock had said dismissively. ‘That, and Lawrence’s tendency to poke his nose into other people’s affairs.’

Nagle, it transpired, had asked to be transferred to another department because of Dufrette. It had been as bad as that. The argument had started as a result of Dufrette making some disparaging remark about the royal family and Nagle countering it. Dufrette didn’t like to be contradicted and he had said something very personal and extremely inflammatory – something about Nagle’s wife?

After finishing her soup and feeding the cats, Antonia went back to the sitting room. Should she spend some time on her novel? Standing beside her desk, she looked down at the bottom drawer, which was now closed. She hadn’t made any progress with her novel. She did need to work out the details of the rather complicated plot; it was at a stage when everything appeared hopelessly absurd… No, the drowning of Sonya Dufrette first.

She resumed reading.

It had been a most unsettled morning – the morning of the royal wedding. It had started promisingly enough. At eight o‘clock Antonia had been woken up by birdsong and had drawn her curtains made of rich, pea-green moire silk, fringed with applique galloon three inches broad, upheld by stout clasps of gold foliage and draped and tasselled festoons, to see the sun shining from a cloudless blue sky. From her window she could see the river. The sun’s slanting rays had turned it into a stream of shimmering molten gold. A light rain had fallen during the night and the air was brighter and fresher than the day before, with the sweet scent of roses and honeysuckle wafting in from the garden. Somewhere a sprinkler hissed. She felt happy and at peace, but also exhilarated. She reflected sentimentally on the sweet young girl who would one day be Queen and remembered the eve of her own wedding. She thought wistfully of Richard, wishing more than ever that he was with her at that moment…