Kitabı oxu: «Silk»

Chapter One

Cheshire, Late November 1929

In less than an hour’s time Amber was to go downstairs to her grandmother’s study to receive the very special birthday gift her grandmother had promised her. Seventeen! She was almost a woman now. Grown up at last.

The fever of her anticipation had Amber dancing rather than walking across her bedroom. She knew what the ‘very special gift’ was, of course. How could she not?

Art school – where she would begin the training that would ultimately enable her to follow in her father’s footsteps. It was all she had wanted for as long as she could remember, and now at last her dreams could start to come true. And not just her dreams.

There had been cards at breakfast from her grandmother and her cousin, Greg; from Jay, her grandmother’s estate manager; from the household servants; from the manager of the family-owned silk mill in Macclesfield, and from Beth, her best friend at school. But, as had been the case for the past four years, there was no card from those she loved the most. Her parents.

Her emotions, mercurial today and unfamiliarly intense, turned her mood from excitement to sorrow as swiftly as the wind turned the November sky beyond the windows of her bedroom from clear autumn blue to grey.

On the desk that had been her mother’s, and in which she kept her sketchbooks, there was a photograph of Amber with her parents, taken on her twelfth birthday, just three weeks before their deaths. In it, they were all smiling, her father’s arm around her mother. Her mother was looking at her father with sheer adoration and he was looking back at her. Amber was standing in front of them, her mother’s arm sheltering her, her father’s free hand holding hers.

They had been so happy, the three of them – not wanting or needing others, their lives filled with their love for one another and for silk. Its delicate yarn had spun a web around them, like a special kind of magic that had bound them securely together, and made everything in their lives special. Amber missed them dreadfully. She could still remember how happy her parents had been on the day they died when they set out for the political rally. Her mother had kissed her lovingly and her father had seized her in one of his bear hugs, swinging her round until she was giddy with delight.

They had both been so full of life that even now there were times when she found it almost impossible to accept that they were dead.

It had been her grandmother who had coldly delivered the news of their deaths; and her cousin, Greg, who had later smuggled to her a newspaper article describing how the wooden floor of the building they were in, packed tight with those who, like them, had rallied to champion the cause of the working man and to demand better wages and conditions, had collapsed, plunging Amber’s parents and twenty-six other people to their deaths.

Amber moved away from the window and back to her desk, looking down at the design on which she had been working: an interweaving of mauve and silver in the form of a Celtic knot, which would ultimately form part of a border.

Her father had been a gifted designer, a Russian émigré who had been working for a small silk manufacturer in London when he and her mother had first met and fallen in love, defying her mother’s mother to be together.

Amber had always loved hearing the story of her parents’ romance. She remembered sitting in bed, her mother brushing Amber’s long golden hair with her antique silver brush and telling her about the day they had met.

They had both been attending a fabric fair in London, her father as a designer, and her mother as a representative of Denby Mill, the famous Macclesfield silk mill that belonged to Amber’s grandmother Blanche.

Silk had been the thread that had bound them together, her mother had often said to Amber, and silk was the strongest and best of all threads, as pure and strong as love itself.

Amber’s father had been in the first rank of a new wave of forward-thinking designers, and her mother had loved to tell her of the praise that had been given to his work.

It was their hope that Amber would follow in his footsteps, they had both always told her. They had passed to their daughter their passionate desire to combine silk and design to produce fabrics that were in their own right works of art. That had been their gift to her, and she was determined that hers to them would be her fulfilment of their dreams.

From the first moment she could hold a pencil, from the first moment she had been able to understand the concept of beauty and design, Amber’s father had guided and taught her, just as her mother had shown her how to recognise the unique splendour that was silk.

Whilst other young children learned their dull lessons, Amber’s parents taught her the history of silk, and with it the history of life, and how it bound together so many cultures and civilisations; how it stretched in the longest of journeys across deserts and seas, and how it inspired in humankind the greatest of passions, from love to greed.

The story Amber had loved best was of how the manufacture of silk had been brought out of China, firstly to Khotan, so it was said, via the silkworm eggs concealed in the headdress of a Chinese princess who had married a prince of Khotan, and then to the Byzantine Empire when the Emperor Justinian had persuaded two monks to journey to Khotan to steal the secret of sericulture. The monks had returned first with mulberry seeds and then with silkworm eggs concealed inside hollow bamboo sticks.

‘See how it mirrors life,’ Amber’s mother had told her, the child on her knee as she let the fabric slip richly through Amber’s tiny hand. ‘It runs through the fingers like water, yet stretched tight it has such strength, and yet that strength is so supple that it escapes capture. The human spirit is like silk, Amber,’ she had declared. ‘It too cannot be captured; it too has great strength, and great beauty for those with the gift to see it. Always remember that, my darling …’

‘Amber? Are you in there?’

The sound of her cousin Greg’s voice brought her back to the present.

Greg was twenty-three years old, and a year down from Oxford, a handsome young man with broad shoulders and thick wavy fair year, confident in that way that a certain type of indulged young man from a wealthy background often was. He was his grandmother’s favourite just as his father, Marcus, had been her favourite child.

Greg’s father had died when Greg had been a child, killed in action in the trenches during the Great War, and his mother had died giving birth to her stillborn much-longed-for second child when the news had reached them of her husband’s death, leaving Greg to be brought up by their grandmother.

Athletic and extrovert, always ready to have a joke and eager to have fun, Greg had got over the initial boredom he had felt leaving Oxford and his friends behind to return home to Macclesfield, by becoming friends with a group of young men, like himself from moneyed backgrounds, who spent their time indulging in the pleasures of racing cars, learning to fly, playing tennis and attending house parties to flirt with pretty girls. Financed by family wealth, and not required to work for a living, Greg and his set were determined not to look back over their shoulders to the terrible war that had taken so many of those born a generation before them, young men dead before they had properly lived. That was never going to happen to them, and the hectic pace of their lives was proof of their determination to make sure that it didn’t. If they were haunted by the horror of what they had been spared it was never spoken of. Life was for living and that was exactly what they intended to do. The only thing they took seriously was ‘having fun’.

Amber looked on Greg more as an older brother than a cousin. He was good company, and he had always been kind to her.

In addition to inheriting Denby Mill, Greg would also inherit Denham Place, its lands and the bulk of the vast fortune their grandmother had inherited, first from her father and then later from her maternal uncle, a Liverpool ship owner. Amber, meanwhile, had her own dreams. She’d make her own way.

‘Happy birthday,’ Greg grinned, handing her a small, prettily wrapped box, before walking over to the fireplace with a confident swagger.

Amber had seen him drive off earlier in his new roadster and, knowing Greg as she did, she suspected that her birthday gift had probably been a spur-of-the-moment purchase, bought in Macclesfield that morning whilst he had been in the town attending a Conservative Party meeting. Greg was to become a Member of Parliament when the existing Member stepped down in six months’ time, or at least that was what their grandmother said.

‘Oh, Greg,’ she thanked him, throwing her arms around his neck and kissing him on the cheek. ‘But I can’t open it yet. I’ve got to go and see Grandmother about my birthday surprise.’

Amber couldn’t keep the excitement out of her voice. She had longed so much for this moment, talking about it, and dreaming about it even before she had left her select boarding school in the summer.

‘I can hardly believe that in a few weeks’ time I’ll be going to London to study art. Which art school do you think Grandmother will have chosen? I do hope it’s the Slade, although I’m not sure I’d be good enough. She never asked me for any of my art work to show them, but I suppose she will have asked Monsieur Lafitte at school to vouch for me. He always said that he would. Greg, I’m so excited, it’s all I’ve ever wanted, and my parents—’

‘Steady on, old girl. I don’t want to spoil your fun, but I don’t think you should get your hopes up too high.’

Amber frowned. ‘What do you mean?’

Greg cursed himself under his breath. He wished now that he hadn’t said anything. The trouble with Amber was that she just wasn’t the smart sort of girl who knew what was what. If she had been then she’d have known what he was trying to hint. But then, of course, if she had known he wouldn’t have needed to do any hinting – or any warning.

‘Dash it all, Amber,’ he protested uncomfortably, ‘you can’t really think that Grandmother would let you go to art school. You know what she’s like.’

‘But she said she had a special surprise for me. Something that will change my whole life and that I’m very lucky to have.’

‘I dare say she did, but it ain’t art school she’s talking about, Amber. I know that for a fact.’

‘Then what is it?’

Greg shook his head and turned towards the door, but Amber moved faster, getting there first, closing it, leaning on it and looking determinedly at him.

‘You’re not leaving this room until you tell me, Greg.’

‘You won’t like it,’ he prophesied. ‘I know I wasn’t keen when she told me that I’ve got to be an MP, but you know Grandmother, and she holds the purse strings.’

Their grandmother made no secret of her preference for her grandson, and Amber had always assumed that Greg got everything he wanted. It was a new idea to her to realise that that might not be the case, and a disturbing one, like suddenly finding that the calm waters of the estate’s pretty lake concealed dangerous currents.

‘But if you don’t want to be a Member of Parliament then why—’

‘It isn’t as simple as that, Amber – nothing ever is.’

Greg sighed and sat down on one of the elegant Sheraton chairs set either side of the fireplace, the sharp sunlight cruelly picking out the faded chintz cushions.

‘Come and sit down,’ he told her, leaning forward to pat the seat of the chair opposite, then stretching his long legs out in front of him. ‘We’ve got a few minutes yet before you have to go down and see Grandmother.’

Obediently Amber did as he asked.

‘Grandmother isn’t sending you to London to go to art school. She’s sending you there to be finished.’

‘Finished?’

‘Yes, as in prepared to make your social entrance as a débutante, and find yourself a titled husband.’

It took several seconds for Amber to absorb the meaning of his words, but once she had, she shook her head in denial.

‘No. She can’t do that. It’s impossible. I don’t want … I won’t …’ She had left her seat without even being aware that she had moved, and was standing in front of Greg, her hands bunched into small fists. ‘You’re wrong, Greg. She can’t mean to do that. She couldn’t, anyway, since there is no one in the family who could present me.’

Amber had learned all about the arcane process of becoming a débutante, and the rules attached to it, at boarding school, where it had been impressed on her that the granddaughter of a mere mill owner, no matter how wealthy, did not have the right kind of pedigree to be accepted as a member of the exclusive club that was the aristocracy. That was fine by her. She couldn’t think of a worse fate than being forced into the kind of dynastic marriage she knew would be the fate of most of the girls with whom she had been at school.

‘Grandmother will always find a way to do whatever she wants to do, Amber.’

‘But why would she want to?’

Greg shrugged. He felt sorry for Amber, but he had not intended to get involved in this kind of discussion. Now, though, it was too late to wish he had left well alone.

‘Barrant de Vries,’ he told her succinctly. ‘That’s why.’

‘Jay’s grandfather? I don’t understand.’

‘It’s a long story, and one I’ve only heard pretty recently myself, but from an impeccable source.’ Greg paused, wondering how much he should say. Amber was naïve and trusting, and he didn’t want to take unnecessary risks. Amber did not need to know the source of his information.

‘When she was a young girl Grandmother set her sights on marrying Barrant de Vries and she didn’t make any secret of it either.’

Amber gasped, but Greg ignored her reaction and continued hurriedly, ‘Of course, the fact that the whole county knew that Barrant and his father thought she wasn’t good enough or rich enough to marry into the de Vries family would be a bitter blow to Grandmother’s pride. I dare say there were plenty to laugh at her behind her back for her ambitions.’

‘But she must have known? I mean, everyone knows that Barrant de Vries is obscenely proud.’

‘Well, yes, I don’t doubt she did, but she was a great beauty, of course, and Great-grandfather was pretty well-to-do. I’d wager she convinced herself that she would land him. She was accepted socially by the county set, from what I’ve been told, and that must have made her think that she stood a good chance of becoming Barrant’s wife.’

‘The county set?’ Amber queried. ‘Like the Fitton Leghs and the Bromley Davenports?’

‘Well, the Bromley Davenports, certainly; I’m not so sure about the Fitton Leghs, seeing as Barrant de Vries eventually married a Fitton Legh.’

‘But Grandmother socialises with the Dowager Marchioness of Cholmondeley now. They are on the same charitable committees, and—’

‘There is a vast difference, my dear Amber, between socialising with a person and allowing them to marry into one’s family,’ Greg told Amber in such a good imitation of their grandmother’s voice and manner that Amber couldn’t help but smile.

‘One day Grandmother will hear you doing that and then you’ll be in trouble.’

‘You’ll be the one in trouble if you go downstairs talking about art school.’

‘But I still can’t see what Barrant de Vries not wanting to marry Grandmother has to do with her wanting me to be presented, Greg.’

‘Well, you should. She’s not the kind to forget a slight or an insult, is she?’

Amber shook her head. What Greg was saying was true. Their grandmother could be ruthless when it suited her. She had certainly never forgiven Amber’s own mother for marrying Amber’s father against her wishes.

Amber gave a small shiver.

‘Knowing what I do now, it’s my belief that Grandmother only bought this estate because it’s right next to the de Vrieses’ lands, and to let Barrant de Vries know that she owns more land and a bigger house than he does,’ Greg went on. ‘She’s even employing his grandson as her estate manager. It’s her way of humiliating Barrant for humiliating her. Everyone knows that Barrant de Vries lost virtually everything after the war, including his only son – who died without producing an heir. But that’s not enough for Grandmother, Amber. She wants us to get for her what she could not get for herself. Especially you. I cannot, after all, marry a title, but you can. The war has beggared any number of aristocratic families. You only have to think of how many of them are marrying off their sons to the daughters of American millionaires to know that.’

Amber did know it. After all, their neighbour, Lord Fitton Legh, had married an American heiress the previous year, and it was widely accepted that the marriage had been brokered to provide him with money and the bride with a title.

As though he had read her mind Greg teased her, ‘You should think yourself lucky that Grandmother obviously didn’t think the Fitton Legh title good enough. But then, of course she’ll want one that outranks the de Vries title, you can bet on that, and that’s why she’ll want you to be presented at court.’

Before Amber could say anything Greg went on, ‘Grandmother may have the money to buy a title for you, but it ain’t that easy. What I mean is, you’ll need to be mixing with the right people, and you can’t do that unless you’ve got the right credentials, and for a girl that means a court presentation. What Grandmother wants is a granddaughter who will have a title far, far better than the one that Barrant de Vries denied her, and that she can flaunt in front of everyone who laughed at her behind her back when Barrant rejected her.’

It was almost too much for Amber to take in.

‘Greg, please don’t say things like that. It isn’t nice,’ she begged her cousin. ‘I know you like to play jokes on me but—’

‘Amber, I’m not joking.’

‘Has Grandmother told you that this is the case?’

‘No.’

‘So you’re just guessing, Greg. I’m sure you’re wrong. For one thing—’

‘I’m not wrong, Amber. If you must have the truth I happened to be outside her study when she was talking to Jay Fulshawe about it. Something to do with making a payment to some Lady somebody or other to bring you out.’

‘Jay knows?’ It seemed like a double betrayal. She liked Jay, and had even felt sorry for him, obliged to work so very hard for her grandmother, whilst Greg, who had been at Eton with him, enjoyed a life of leisure.

Amber had to sit down, she was trembling so much. It couldn’t be true. It mustn’t be true.

‘I don’t want a titled husband. I don’t want to get married yet and when I do—’

‘It’s what Grandmother wants that counts. Not what we want.’

Greg wasn’t joking now. In fact he looked more serious than Amber could ever remember seeing him before.

‘There’s no doubt about that,’ he warned her. ‘She always gets what she wants.’ He looked at her and smiled wryly. ‘Remember the way she got this house and the estate. Lord Talbot’s trustees didn’t really want to sell Denham Place to her, but in the end they had no choice, not with the death duties the estate had to pay after Lord Talbot died without an heir.’

Greg’s mention of Denham Place momentarily diverted Amber. She loved the beautiful Vanbrugh-designed house, with its classical lines and its famously elegant row of rooms on the first floor. Not that Denham would ever be hers.

‘Denham is beautiful, Greg,’ she told her cousin dreamily. ‘It’s supposed to be among Vanbrugh’s own favourites, even though it’s one of the smallest houses he designed.’

Greg shrugged. He wasn’t in the least bit interested in architecture or design.

The clock struck three. ‘Grandmother will be waiting for you.’

And Greg had an appointment to keep, although the truth of the matter was that he was not so sure that he really wanted to keep it. What had begun as exciting had recently started to become burdensome. Greg didn’t particularly care for intense emotions, and he certainly did not like tearful scenes, but the devil of it was that he was now in a situation from which he was finding it damnably difficult to extricate himself.

Given half a chance he would have leaped at the opportunity to go to London, with its private supper clubs and the louche living available to those of privilege. Drinking, gambling, flirting with pretty women who knew the rules of the game – these were far more to his taste than dull meetings with members of the local Conservative Party committee.