Katerina's Secret (28 page)

Katerina saw the anguish plain on the girl's expressive face.

‘Kate? You are sad? That is not for you, child – I am so sorry, I did not want you to be sad. It's his birthday, when I come to give him my love.'

‘Señora,' said Kate, ‘I believe in God, I believe in love.'

‘Then you'll be cherished, my child,' said Katerina, and stooped to set the posy of flowers in the stone pot. Kate saw the photograph of Edward in the graveside frame. She recognized it. She had, during these last few afternoons, been shown other photographs of him. Here, in its frame, was one taken of him sitting on the garden patio. It showed him a lean man, and still young, really, with thick hair and a widow's peak, and a smile on his face, which was a little lined but not ravaged. Kate liked his mouth and his eyes. There was faded ink across the photograph.

August, 1931, at home.

‘There, my darling,' said Katerina and slowly straightened. Kate filled the pot from the little watering can, and the posy of flowers drew up the moisture and grew bright. She stood with Katerina for a few minutes, and then Katerina said, quite clearly, ‘They are here, they are both here, can't you feel them, Kate?'

‘Yes, Señora. They're here because you are here.'

She went daily, every afternoon without fail, to sit with Katerina, to talk with her, and each day the eyes were dreamier and farther away, the fragility more delicate, and Kate knew she was going to lose her dear and beloved friend. Her parents were puzzled by her obsession, and even worried by it, for it seemed so odd, a child of fifteen spending so many hours with an old lady who was over eighty. But they did not protest or interfere. Kate was Kate. And Kate was fortunate, for her parents gave her love, as they did to her young brother Bobby.

Kate went each day, after lunch, and did not return until six o'clock, when she would spend the time until dinner writing. It was all going down, the story of Katerina Pyotrovna.

Maria, Katerina's servant, watched the girl
and her mistress, and saw the love the old had for the young, and the devotion of the young.

They sat, one afternoon, when the sun was mellow and the breeze from the sea stirred the fringes of the umbrella and lightly teased Kate's flowing blue-black hair. Katerina was at her most articulate, her pleasure in the girl's company bringing smiles to her face and questions to her lips. They shared each other's secrets, though there were some that remained unspoken.

There was a question Kate wanted to ask. There was something she wanted to know about Celeste, something else she could write down about the one who had loved Edward, and Katerina, so much.

Oh, yes.

‘Señora, you've never said – did Celeste meet someone, did she get married?'

Katerina smiled and shook her head, and Kate thought she doesn't look so far away today, she's much more alert.

‘Celeste?' said Katerina. ‘No, Kate, she never took a husband. There must have been many men, I think, who would have wanted to marry her. But she loved only Edward, no one else. She loved him, my child, and so she gave him
to me. Where do such years go, Kate, except into the treasure house of the mind?' Katerina smiled again, and the memories came to lay their soft shadows on her face. ‘You are so like Celeste – such blue eyes, so like other eyes. You have been so sweet to me – so sweet—' Her lashes fell, then lifted, and the smile was there, warm with love and full of dreams. There was the faintest of sighs, and then she sat very still in her chair.

Kate's heart stopped.

‘Maria!' she cried out in anguish a moment later. ‘Maria!'

Maria hastened out and bent to look into the face of serenity.

She crossed herself.

‘She's at peace, señorita, and with God.'

The thick-walled church was comparatively cool. The mourning clothes of the Formenterans were sombre black. Katerina's middle-aged son and daughter were there, also in black, their heads bowed, their spouses beside them. Four grandchildren were present, two of them young women in bright summer clothes that seemed out of place to Kate. But because she was close to the spirit of Katerina, she knew her beloved Señora would not have
minded. They had come, they were there. That was all she would have wanted, to have them there.

One of them had marvellous auburn hair.

The church was packed. All these people of Formentera, so quiet in their mourning of her, had come to say goodbye to her. She had wanted to go, she had wanted to lie beside Edward, and she had gone so peacefully.

But Kate's heart was weeping.

The spirit of Katerina Pyotrovna reached out to her and her heart melted.

She dreamed her way through the service. The music was magnificent, a sung requiem to all the years of the Señora's life, the soaring voices filling the church with beautiful sound. And for Kate there were other voices, laughing voices and murmurous voices.

She knelt in wonder and love.

Maria's voice. ‘Come, señorita, it's over.'

They joined the people moving out of the church.

In the sunshine, Kate said, ‘Maria, oh, the music, it was beautiful, wasn't it?'

‘Music? There was no music, señorita.'

‘But there was.'

Maria looked at the girl, so young and so sensitive.

‘For you, señorita, yes, perhaps there was. But now we must watch them lay her to rest. Come.'

They sat in the morning sunshine, Kate and Maria, on a little seat in the cemetery, waiting for the cortège to arrive, with Katerina's family.

‘Maria, when did her husband die?' said Kate. ‘I asked her once, and she smiled and said, “Go into the villa, Kate, and you'll find him there.”'

‘He went ten years ago, señorita, ten years,' said Maria. ‘But he lived far longer than he might have done, all because of her care. Seventy-seven, and always afflicted, but never have I known a man so peaceable towards life and people. Never have I known a more loving woman. She gave everything of herself. I grumbled at her many times, and he would protest too. But she said to me once, “Maria, he has given me life and freedom, and I will do for him what I will, so stop your grumbling.” And she was almost seventy then. When he died three years later, life for her was never the same. She had no one to give her love to, no one to lavish her care on. Her son and daughter had long
since married and gone away. While Señor Somers was alive, for her there was always the future, yes, always. When he died, there was only the past. So many dreams she had, señorita, about her other family, her papa and mama, and her sisters and brother. Who they were, I never knew. There was her own family, there were her grandchildren. But they were not the children of her world. Her granddaughters were divorced almost as soon as they were married, and living with men to whom they weren't married, which was not as God ordained or as she wished. It made her so sad. “Maria,” she said, “they know nothing of love, nothing.” Señorita, you are to have her villa when you come of age, do you know that? And all her correspondence, all her letters from her husband and Celeste and others.'

‘Oh, Maria, no,' gasped Kate. ‘Oh, I'd like her letters, yes, I would – but not her villa. Her family will expect it – I'd be so embarrassed. Maria, I can't.'

‘Señorita, you must,' said Maria. ‘You must for her sake. Her son is a fine man, her daughter kind, but their interests aren't here. They would sell the villa. It was her home for over fifty years. She loved it and every moment
she spent in it. She told me she wished it to go into the hands of love. “Kate shall have it, Maria,” she said. “It might have been Celeste's, but it shall go to our sweet Kate. Kate will give it love.” And she asked if I agreed, and I said yes. Carlos and I – Carlos was my husband who died six years ago – we served her after her previous servants, Anna and Sandro, went to their rest. For thirty years I was with her, señorita. Señor Somers was a man of great kindness. The Señora was a lady of great beauty, which is not something one wears on one's face alone. Señorita, you must have the villa, and old Maria with it.'

‘Maria, oh, I'm so confused – you must come and meet my parents – we must talk about it. They'll help us decide. Maria, she's here – look.'

The cortège had arrived.

A little later, Kate and Maria joined those who wished to spill the earth on to the lowered coffin. Kate bit her lip, fighting to hold back her tears. Hands touched her shoulders. She turned. Her parents were behind her.

‘Just to help you say goodbye to her, darling.'

It was through her tears that she saw Katerina Pyotrovna had come to lie beside Edward, for the headstone was complete.

SOMERS

EDWARD

and

TATIANA

In Care Of Each Other

And Kate, who thought little of science or mathematics, but was fascinated by history, knew then who Katerina Pyotrovna really was.

And she knew too that she would have the villa, and dwell there whenever she could in the warm shadows of Edward, Celeste and her beloved Señora, a Grand Duchess of Imperial Russia.

The End

Mary Jane Staples
was born, bred and educated in Walworth, and is the author of many bestselling novels, including the ever-popular cockney sagas featuring the Adams family.

Down Lambeth Way

Our Emily

King of Camberwell

On Mother Brown's Doorstep

A Family Affair

Missing Person

Pride of Walworth

Echoes of Yesterday

The Young Ones

The Camberwell Raid

The Last Summer

The Family at War

Fire Over London

Churchill's People

Bright Day, Dark Night

Tomorrow is Another Day

The Way Ahead

Year of Victory

The Homecoming

Sons and Daughters

Appointment at the Palace

Changing Times

Spreading Wings

Family Fortunes

A Girl Next Door

Ups and Downs

Out of the Shadows

A Sign of the Times

The Soldier's Girl

 

Two for Three Farthings

The Lodger

Rising Summer

The Pearly Queen

Sergeant Joe

The Trap

The Ghost of Whitechapel

Escape to London

The Price of Freedom

A Wartime Marriage

Katernia's Secret

The Summer Day is Done

The Longest Winter

Natasha's Dream

Nurse Anna's War

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KATERINA'S SECRET

A CORGI BOOK: 9780552150903
Version 1.0 Epub ISBN 9781446488409

First published in Great Britain in 1983 by

Hamlyn Publishing Group Ltd as
Shadows in the Afternoon

under the name Robert Tyler Stevens

Corgi edition published 2008

Copyright © Robert Tyler Stevens 1983

Mary Jane Staples has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work.

This book is a work of fiction and, except in the case of historical fact, any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

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