The Star of Kazan

Right at the bottom was a small parcel, wrapped not in newspaper but in a piece of black velvet. Inside was a box which opened to show a picture of a man and a woman standing in front of a house – a woman with thick, light hair, a man with a lean, intelligent face. It must have been one of the earliest photos ever taken, but Annika knew at once who they were.

‘That’s you and your painter, isn’t it? You look so happy.’

The old lady took the photo in its wooden frame, and as she cupped the picture in both hands, the jewels heaped on the bedspread were forgotten. ‘So happy . . .’ she said softly. ‘So very, very happy . . .’

‘You see,’ said Annika, when she got back home, ‘I told you she would get better.’

But the next day the old lady asked for a lawyer, though she had no money to leave, and for a priest. That evening the doctor’s carriage was seen in front of the Eggharts’ house. It was still there two hours later – and then the young maid was seen running wild-eyed towards the post office.

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Although the Eggharts had been sorry to cut their holiday short, the funeral which they gave their great-aunt was a very respectable affair.

‘No one can say we have not done all we should have done,’ said Herr Egghart as he pulled on the trousers of his funeral suit and fixed a black rosette into his buttonhole.

‘No indeed,’ said his wife. She had bought a new black-silk suit and her hat was veiled in yards of black netting. ‘In fact I’m not sure you haven’t overdone it a bit. With the church so near we could have had the coffin carried over by hand.’

‘Well, a bit of show doesn’t hurt,’ said her husband and he looked out of the window at the four black horses with their mourning headdresses of jet feathers. The coffin was just being loaded on to the hearse, and the horses would pull it across the square so that everybody could see that they had not stinted on the old lady’s funeral. ‘After all, she was an Egghart,’ he said.

And really it was tactful of his great-aunt to die after only a few months in their attic. He had been afraid that the mess and the expense would be long drawn out.

‘How do I look, Mummy?’ asked Loremarie, coming into the bedroom. She too had acquired a whole new outfit for the funeral: a purple velvet dress with lace round the collar, and black kid gloves.

The hearse set off for the short journey across the square. The Eggharts followed with bowed heads, and after them at a respectful distance came the Eggharts’ maids and their manservant, the snooty Leopold.

As they made their way to the front pew, the Eggharts noticed that quite ordinary and unimportant people had come to pay their respects to the old lady. There were three of the Bodek boys, the old bookseller and his granddaughter . . . and sitting with the professors, as though they had a right to be there, their servants, Ellie and Sigrid, and their adopted daughter, Annika. It is not possible to turn people out of a church during a funeral, but the Eggharts were not pleased. Fortunately the head of the asylum, a very eminent doctor, had also come, and two councillors from Herr Egghart’s office, as well as the manager of his bank.

Ellie and Sigrid had mourning dresses; so many of their elderly relations had died. Annika only had the black shawl that Sigrid wore to mass over her Sunday dress, and Loremarie turned round to throw her a contemptuous glance.

Annika didn’t even see her. She had watched the coffin carried up the aisle and, though she had promised herself not to cry any more, she couldn’t stop the tears coming, because La Rondine shouldn’t have been shut up in a box – no one should, but certainly not someone who had flown high over the stages of the world.

I should have gone to see her more often, thought Annika. I should have brought her more flowers, and stayed longer; she was so lonely.

Beside her, Ellie squeezed her arm.

‘She was glad to go, love,’ she whispered. ‘You know that. She was so tired.’

‘But I’m not glad,’ sobbed Annika. ‘I didn’t want her to die.’

The organ pealed out, the service began. Annika, not wanting to be seen in tears, wrapped herself in Sigrid’s shawl.

The Latin words of the service were dark and frightening. Though the priest spoke about resurrection, he seemed to spend more time on the yawning grave and the dust to dust. The incense swept through the church like smoke.

Annika heard the old lady’s voice: ‘The world was so beautiful in those days, Annika.’ And her own reply: ‘Honestly, it still is.’

She’d been wrong. The world was not beautiful. People you were fond of died, and got shovelled into holes.

The congregation rose for the last hymn. Annika let slip her enveloping shawl and lifted her head, to look up at the roof of the church.

And then for a moment she saw her! Not the exhausted old lady – but the girl on the swing. Higher she went, and higher, in time to the music; there were flowers in her hair and she was strewing the beams of light from the stained-glass windows.