Rose Rivers Read online

I ran to fetch my old drawing book. He held out his hand.

  ‘They’re very childish. I did most of them ages ago,’ I said breathlessly.

  Paris flipped through the book. He chuckled at the goblin Algies and paused at the Wild Girls.

  ‘Oh, Rose,’ he said. He stared long and hard, turning his head this way and that, noting every detail. Then he looked up at me, his eyes shining.

  ‘They’re good. They’re really good. Witty and wicked and wonderful! Your papa is quite wrong, bless him. This is serious work. Seriously original, seriously funny! You must carry on in this vein, Rose. I think they’ve got enormous potential.’

  ‘Truly? You’re not just being kind now?’

  ‘I’m not kind. I’m honest,’ said Paris. ‘I don’t believe in flattery.’

  ‘That’s not true! You’re forever flattering Mama!’ I protested.

  ‘That’s true, I grant you, because I’m hoping to be royally paid for the portrait,’ said Paris. ‘I flatter all potential patrons – but I’m brutally honest with my friends.’

  He counts me as his friend!

  I DEFINITELY DIDN’T want to sketch any more – but I didn’t want to miss out on the morning studio sessions! Up till noon every day I pretended to sketch. Whenever Mama glanced over she saw me bent over my sketchbook, working hard. I was doing my own comic drawing.

  I worked on a series of cartoons called The Artist and His Model. I drew Mama posing, simpering and self-conscious, while behind his easel Paris put his hand to his brow, despairing. He painted a life-like portrait of a foolish fat woman, and then crossed it out and started a flattering portrait. I ended up with a cartoon of Mama grinning like the Cheshire Cat at the finished painting, while a smiling Paris went off with a huge sack of money.

  If Mama had seen this she would have been mortified! I would have to hide my sketchbook carefully now. Heaven help me if Algie got hold of it. He seems to have a sixth sense about my secret things. I know he often searches through my drawers for hidden trinkets. I can always tell, because he leaves my ribbons and sashes and stockings in a tangle. He is the worst brother in the world.

  Sebastian is also in my bad books. He rescued a little brown mouse from a trap that Cook had set in the kitchen, christened her Miranda, and gave her to Montmorency as a bride. They seemed wary of each other initially, but soon settled into wedded bliss.

  ‘I think she might be going to have babies soon!’ Sebastian announced one day. ‘She needs a separate cage now – I’ve read all about it in Suitable Pet Animals for Boys.’

  He made her a little private residence in an old dented copper kettle, lining it with soft leaves and moss, liberally sprinkled with cheese crumbs.

  He looked at it, frowning. ‘I can’t keep it in the night nursery because Nurse will see it and make me set Miranda free in the garden, and then Mistletoe might catch her when he goes for his nightly prowl,’ he said.

  So I let Sebastian hide Miranda’s kettle in my room, because I rather liked the idea of baby mice, but later, when she was cleaning my room, Maggie knocked the kettle onto its side and Miranda and all her children escaped. Sebastian caught a couple, but couldn’t find the rest, and now I’m kept awake by scuffles and squeaks from behind the wainscoting.

  So both Algie and Sebastian were out of favour. I disliked all my brothers, especially Rupert, because he’d betrayed me and hadn’t written to me even once. I didn’t let myself get excited at the thought that he was coming home for half term, from Friday afternoon till Tuesday morning.

  Mama told Cook to prepare all Master Rupert’s favourite dishes, until the kitchen table and the larder shelves and even the windowsills were crowded with plates and bowls, and poor Mary-Jane was sobbing under the table because Cook had boxed her ears for letting the custard curdle.

  Papa painted a huge banner saying: Welcome Home, Rupert. He hung it over the door, flapping above the stone lions. The children were in such a state that Miss Rayner abandoned lessons and let them play Battledore and Shuttlecock in the garden to let off steam. Beth became overly excited too, saying Rupert’s name over and over again, tossing her head from side to side and wringing her hands until Nurse Budd gave her a dose of her medicine to calm her down.

  ‘I don’t know why you’re all getting in such a state,’ I said coolly. ‘Who cares if Rupert is coming back?’

  Mama and Papa went to the railway station to meet him. The whole household stood on the front steps, servants at the back, Nurse and the children at the front, while Nurse Budd and Beth peered out of the upstairs window.

  I was too proud to join them. I went to the window seat and sat there with a book, although I have to admit that I read a very long poem by Tennyson without taking in a word of it. I heard a great cheer as the hansom cab drove up. Then the entire household burst in through the door, laughing and shouting and clamouring like the crowds at the Queen’s Golden Jubilee.

  I stared at my page, the lines flashing up and down like skipping ropes. Then the book was snatched from my lap and tossed aside.

  ‘Hey, Miss Head-in-a-Book!’ Rupert was laughing in my face – the old Rupert, my twin, his hair tousled and falling in his eyes, his cheeks flushed with merriment.

  I burst into tears and threw my arms around his neck so violently I nearly tumbled both of us down the stairs.

  ‘Oh, Rupert, I’m so glad to see you,’ I sobbed.

  ‘Stow it, you silly,’ he said briskly. ‘Let me get my frightful uniform off. This collar is murder on a chap’s neck.’

  His uniform was actually very grand, the tail coat making him look like a real gentleman, though the trousers were already too short.

  ‘You’ve grown!’ I said.

  ‘It would be more surprising if I’d shrunk,’ said Rupert.

  ‘So what is school like? You’re so lucky! Can you speak Latin and Greek yet?’ I asked.

  ‘What was it they said about Shakespeare? “Small Latin and less Greek.” So far I can only chant about love and war and tables in Latin, and I can barely get through the Greek alphabet. Shame I can’t crib off you, Rosy Posy, you’d learn it all in a flash,’ said Rupert.

  He might have been an inch taller, but he was still my dear funny brother. He hadn’t turned into a ridiculous lovestruck ninny, even if he was pining after loathsome Pamela.

  We didn’t have time to talk properly for ages. Mama insisted we take tea in her drawing room, which was hard on the little ones because they were banished to the nursery. Rupert took them up a plate of cakes afterwards – cream buns and jam puffs and brandy snaps. They fell upon them with cries of joy. Algie and Clarrie seized a snap each, pretending they were cigars. Sebastian delicately licked the cream off his bun, and then, after two bites, put it in his pocket for Montmorency.

  Nurse protested that the cakes were much too rich and would give the children stomach ache. Rupert told her she was an old fusspot and insisted she had a jam puff to celebrate his homecoming. Nurse would have been sharp with me if I’d called her a fusspot, but she just giggled and said, ‘Really, Mr Rupert!’

  Mr Rupert? So he’d stopped being Master since he went away to school? We were exactly the same age, but he was treated like a man now, whereas I was still a child.

  Rupert didn’t forget Beth. He selected a meringue with pink whipped cream, and asked Cook to serve it on a little gold-rimmed pink plate from the best Sèvres china.

  ‘I hardly dare, Mr Rupert. Not for one of the children!’ she said, shocked.

  I was astonished too. ‘For Beth?’ I asked.

  ‘I want her to have the very best,’ said Rupert.

  ‘I want that too, but you know how she throws things.’

  ‘She won’t throw the plate. If she feels like throwing things she’ll chuck the meringue instead,’ said Rupert.

  ‘At Nurse Budd! Oh, I do hope she does.’

  ‘What’s she like, this Nurse Budd? Mama waxes lyrical about her in her letters.’

  ‘I can’t stand her. She pretends to be so f