Eva Ibbotson

Henry has shed his fears and his spectacles, and his good nature was proverbial. Nevertheless, his detestation of the “Tea Ladies” who had made Harriet’s childhood a misery was almost as great as his uncle’s. If he had volunteered to show them Stavely, it was by way of a thank-offering—for on the previous day he had won his long-standing battle with the man who had been more than a father to him. Rom had fought harder than the old General, for Henry was an excellent scholar and to let him turn down three years at Oxford seemed madness; but in the end he had conceded defeat.

“Go back, then, if you must. God knows they’ll welcome you with open arms at Follina. I don’t think the good times will come again, but perhaps one doesn’t want them to—the world’s a different place now and something can be done still, I’m sure. Alvarez’ report actually throws up some interesting angles where the minerals are concerned. And of course Harriet will expect you to have the Opera House open again for Natasha’s debut!”

If his offer to show the ladies around had sprung from gratitude, Henry found himself enjoying the tour, for he never wearied of pointing out the beauties of Stavely or ceased to take pleasure in the contrast of the cold, neglected house or his early childhood and the lovely cared-for place it had become.

“Goodness, who is that lady?” asked the buck-toothed Cynthia, who was obeying her godmother’s instructions to the letter. “She looks most unusual!”

They had reached the picture gallery on the top floor and that part of the house reserved for recent portraits of the family and friends.

“That’s Galina Simonova—the ballerina. It was painted in 1913 after her triumph at the Maryinsky. That diamond star she’s wearing was given to her by the Tsar.”

The slight melancholy which attacked the ladies at the mention of the murdered Tsar was dispelled by the next picture—that of an imperious-looking, red-haired woman in a white gown, standing on the steps of a flag-bedecked mansion and flanked by a pair of elephants en grande tenue.

” ‘The Lady Isobel de Lame,’ ” read Cynthia, giggling coyly. “She has exactly the same color hair as you, Mr. Brandon. Is she a relative?”

“My mother,” admitted Henry, looking with amused affection at the flamboyant portrait of Isobel, now living in immense style with her diplomat husband in Udaipur.

In front of an enormous Sargent entitled “The Brandon Family at Home,” the ladies insisted on staying for a considerable time. Painted three years earlier in the last months of the war, it showed Rom Brandon still in his Colonel’s uniform, his arm in a sling and on his face the exact look of boredom at this time-wasting procedure which was to be seen on the portrait of his father on the opposite wall. Beside him, very close to her husband, was Harriet, one slim hand resting on the fawn hair of her daughter, Natasha, in an effort to hold her down long enough to enable the painter to do his work. Henry himself stood beside Harriet and on a low stool—still boasting his baby ringlets and apparently strangling (with loving concentration) the white puppy in his lap—sat Paul Alexander, Stavely’s heir whose birth Henry had greeted with unconcealed relief. For Henry had never wavered in his determination to return to the Amazon and but for Paul’s birth would have felt obliged to repay his debt to Rom by learning to take over at Stavely.

The furthest part of the gallery had been set aside for photographs and Henry led the way toward these with alacrity, for he had become a keen photographer and many of the pictures were his own.

The ladies exclaimed at the christening pictures of Paul Alexander in the arms of his French godmother, of whom Henry had taken more photographs than were strictly necessary. There was a photo of Madame Simonova, upstaging a French duchess who was declaring open the Simonova École de Dance; a recent one of the eight-year-old Natasha as a butterly at Madame Lavarre’s end-of-term dancing display…

And one at which Cynthia stopped and said, “Goodness! What on earth is that?”

“A goat,” said Henry. “A very special one. It has won innumerable prizes.”

But the picture was not only of a goat. Hanging on to the animal was a man in Lederhosen with embroidered braces and a Loden hat. Also in the picture, but a little out of focus, was a peasant lady in a kerchief holding what appeared to be a basket full of enormous runner beans.

“Strange!” said Mrs. Belper, peering at the photograph. “The face looks familiar.” And then: “Good gracious—it is him! It’s the young man Louisa wanted for Harriet!”