69 Love Leaves at Midnight Read online

  Xenia thought that her mother had spoken very truly when she found in the huge luxury of Berkeley Towers no love and very little consideration for other people.

  “Good gracious, girl, but you have been a long time!” Mrs. Berkeley had remarked disagreeably when she had brought her something she had requested but which had been difficult to find.

  “It was right at the top of the house,” Xenia explained apologetically.

  “I am sure that you can run up a few stairs at your age!” Mrs. Berkeley had retorted. “When I want something, I want it at once! You must make up your mind to hurry.”

  ‘I have hurried,’ Xenia wanted to say.

  It was no use arguing, she thought. Mrs. Berkeley would find fault whatever she did.

  On other occasions she rebuked Xenia for running up and down the stairs, saying that it was undignified and a bad example to the servants.

  At night, when she lay in the large comfortable bedroom she was provided with at Berkeley Towers because it was near to her mistress and she could be summoned at a moment’s notice, she longed for the tiny bedroom with its sloping ceiling she had occupied at home.

  There, with its little casement of diamond panes under the thatch, she had thought the world outside was full of sunshine and laughter.

  Inside the tiny cottage there had been an atmosphere of peace and contentment that she had not really appreciated until it was lost.

  “You are not listening to what I am saying, Xenia!” Mrs. Berkeley said snappily now.

  “I am sorry,” Xenia said quickly. “The wheels are so noisy.”

  “I don’t expect to have to say the same thing twice to anyone. I was telling you that you must be very careful with our hand baggage when we reach Dover. All Continentals are thieves and robbers, and I don’t wish to find my precious possessions have all disappeared while you are wool-gathering.”

  “I will be very careful,” Xenia promised.

  “So I should hope,” Mrs. Berkeley said. “After all, it has cost me a lot of money to bring you on this trip.”

  “I know that,” Xenia said, “and I have thanked you many, many times.”

  “As you should!” Mrs. Berkeley replied. “That gown alone cost a considerable sum. After all I can hardly have a companion travelling with me looking like a ragged beggar.”

  This was such an untrue and offensive thing to say that Xenia felt the colour come into her cheeks, but she had learnt by now to say nothing to such taunts.

  Mrs. Berkeley had gone out of her way to disparage the clothes she was wearing when she had taken her from the cottage to Berkeley Towers.

  They were, it was true, of cheap materials, but they had been beautifully made by her mother and were in perfect taste.

  Mrs. Berkeley had bought Xenia some black gowns, but, after she had been in mourning for only five months, she had suddenly commanded her to dispense with everything she owned that was black.

  “I dislike the colour,” she said. “Besides it makes you look far too theatrical with that anaemic white skin of yours and that ostentatious red hair.”

  Obediently Xenia had put on the gowns she had worn before her father and mother died, only to be ridiculed and then obliged to be effusively grateful for the gowns that Mrs. Berkeley bought her in their place.

  She was well aware that they also annoyed her employer because every colour seemed to accentuate the whiteness of her skin.

  “She has a skin like yours, darling,” she heard her father say once to her mother. “It is like a magnolia both to touch and to kiss.”

  Mrs. Berkeley’s choice of gowns kept most of Xenia’s magnolia skin well concealed, but there was nothing she could do about her hair.

  It was the Titian red beloved by artists and was exactly the same colour as Winterhalter had portrayed in his picture of Elizabeth, Empress of Austria.

  “Are we related to the most beautiful Queen in Europe?” Xenia had asked her mother once.

  “As a matter of fact she is a distant cousin,” her mother replied, “and there is also Hungarian blood in you.”

  She smiled as she went on,

  “Now you understand why I want you to learn both German and Hungarian. Your father thought it was unnecessary, but I insisted.”

  “Perhaps one day, Mama, I could go to Slovia.”

  “Our people are a mixture of both the nations on either side of us,” her mother explained. “But we have fused the languages together and, while many words are German, others are completely Hungarian.”

  There had been an expression on her face which told Xenia she was looking back into the past as she added,

  “My father had always insisted that we should be good linguists and be able to talk to our neighbours in their own language. I remember when the King of Luthenia visited us he was delighted because both Dorottyn and I could talk to him in Luthenian.”

  “I feel I shall never be as proficient as you, Mama.”

  “It is difficult to learn a language if you have never visited the country of its origin,” Mrs. Sandon said, “but you will find when you do that it is not difficult if you know German, French and Hungarian and perhaps a little Greek to speak all the Balkan languages.”

  After Xenia had learnt her mother’s secret, she assiduously studied the languages that previously she had thought, as her father did, were rather a waste of time.

  When she and Mrs. Sandon were alone together they never spoke in English.

  Soon Xenia began to dream that one day, even if she went in the cheapest possible manner, she would visit Slovia and the other Kingdoms her mother had known so well.

  Now, she thought, it was one step forward that Mrs. Berkeley was taking her to France.

  “I don’t suppose you know any French?” her employer remarked.

  She spoke in a manner that made Xenia feel she hoped she was right and would therefore be able to show her own superiority.

  “I speak French,” Xenia answered.

  “You do?” Mrs. Berkeley raised her eyebrows, then added, “But of course you have foreign blood in you. There is no doubt of that. Neither you nor your late mother looked English.”

  It was not a compliment and Xenia could not help replying,

  “Mama was not English! She came from the Balkans.”

  “Oh – the Balkans!” Mrs. Berkeley made it sound as if there was something degrading about such a connection.

  Because Xenia was afraid that she might lose her temper, she had quickly changed the subject.

  Now she wondered if her mother would have been pleased that she was going to France.

  Often when she was alone in bed she would talk to her mother just as if she was there, telling her how miserable she was without her.

  At the same time she knew it would be the utmost selfishness on her part to wish either her father or her mother to be alive without the other.

  They had loved her, she did not doubt that, but their real love had been for each other and she knew that if either of them had survived they would have wanted only to die so that they could be together again.

  Mrs. Berkeley looked at her watch.

  “We should not be long now,” she said. “Really, I find travelling by train extremely tiring. I am sure the poor creatures in the Second and Third Class carriages find it quite exhausting.”

  This remark, Xenia knew, was intended to point out to her how fortunate she was to be able to travel in expensive luxury.

  The words were just about to come obediently to her lips when suddenly there was a noise like an explosion and at the same time a crash that made the whole coach shudder. There was a shrill shriek from Mrs. Berkeley and the coach turned over.

  Xenia did not scream, she only knew a fear that made her reach out with her hands to hold onto something and find it was not there.

  Then she was hurled sideways and lost consciousness –

  *

  Xenia came slowly back to reality to hear a noise that was almost indescribable beating in her ear
s and realised that she was lying on the ground.

  She was vaguely aware that somebody lifted her and carried her a little way and put her down on the grass.

  Without opening her eyes she could hear shouts and screams mingled with the shrill hiss of escaping steam, which made all other sounds indistinguishable.

  Then she felt herself being picked up again and, because she was dazed and still only half-conscious, she did not make any effort to show that she was aware of what was happening.

  It slowly percolated her mind that she was on a stretcher of some sort, but the noise made it hard to think.

  The sound of escaping steam seemed to intensify so that after a moment she thought that whoever carried her must have been taking her past the engine.

  They went on and then a man’s voice said,

  “It’s a relief we found her so quickly! That’s a bit of luck and better still that the station’s so near.”

  ‘I know what has – happened,’ Xenia told herself. ‘I have been in a – railway crash.’

  It seemed to her silly that she had not realised it before, but it had all occurred so quickly, the shaking coach, the explosion and then unconsciousness.

  Vaguely she told herself that she should ask about Mrs. Berkeley, but it was too much effort.

  She felt herself drifting away into oblivion – until once again she became aware of what was happening and realised that she was being carried into a building, for she could hear heavy footsteps on wooden floorboards.

  “She’ll be all right here,” a man’s voice said. “I’ll send along a doctor if I can get hold of one.”

  “You’d better do that,” another man replied, “and tell ’is Nibs we’ve got ’old of ’er. Ravin’ like a madman, ’e was!”

  Xenia felt herself being put down on the floor. There was the sound of two men leaving the room and shutting the door behind them.

  She lay still for some minutes and then with an effort opened her eyes.

  She found herself looking up at the ceiling and gazing at the walls painted an unpleasant shade of brown and guessed that she was in the waiting room of a station.

  Hazily she remembered someone saying that the station was near to the scene of the accident.

  She forced herself to sit up and found that she was right in thinking she had been carried on a stretcher. It had been put down on a linoleum-covered floor.

  The room was smaller than the usual waiting room and besides the inevitable hard bench there were two armchairs in front of a fireplace.

  Slowly, very very slowly, Xenia rose to her feet.

  ‘There are no bones broken,’ she thought with satisfaction.

  Indeed, apart from the fact that she had a headache, there was really nothing wrong.

  Feeling, however, weak and rather frightened she sat down on the bench.

  Her hands were bare as her gloves were lost. She undid the ribbons of her bonnet and drew it from her head, feeling that she would be able to think more clearly without it.

  ‘There has – been a – railway accident,’ she told herself. ‘The train must have hit something, perhaps another – train and the – collision forced it – off the line.’

  She gave a sigh and found that she was shaking and her hands as well as her legs felt unsteady.

  ‘That is – shock,’ she thought practically. ‘What I – ought to – have now is a – warm drink.’

  Then hurriedly, because she was ashamed of thinking so much about herself, she decided she must find out what had happened to Mrs. Berkeley.

  It seemed strange that more people were not being brought into the waiting room.

  She noticed that there were two doors and the one at the far end of the room had opaque glass panels and looked as if it might lead into a cloakroom.

  Once again Xenia got to her feet.

  Her hip felt a little bruised, but there was obviously nothing wrong with any other part of her body. She walked to the door and opened it.

  She had been right. It was a cloakroom and over the basin there was a looking glass.

  She stared at herself seeing that her face was very pale with shock, which made her eyes seem dark and enormous.

  ‘I will have a – drink of – water,’ she decided, ‘then I will go in – search of – Mrs. Berkeley.’

  There were two glasses on the basin and she let the tap run as her mother had always taught her to do to remove any rust or dirt that might have accumulated in it and filled one of the glasses.

  The water was cold and it seemed to clear away some of her feelings of shock and inertia.

  ‘I really must – try to find – Mrs. Berkeley,’ she thought again.

  She washed her hands with cold water and then pressed them against her forehead.

  ‘I have to – think clearly. I am unhurt – and I must – find Mrs. Berkeley.’

  She felt as if the words repeated and re-repeated themselves in her mind, then resolutely she turned back towards the waiting room.

  As she opened the door, she saw that while she had been away someone else had come into the room.

  It was a woman and she had her back to Xenia as she walked towards the bench where she had left her bonnet.

  She had reached it and picked it up by its ribbons when the woman turned round.

  For a moment Xenia thought it was hard to see her properly and then she told herself that her eyes were out of focus and that she was still looking at her reflection in the mirror in the cloakroom.

  ‘I am – still dazed,’ she thought.

  Then the woman spoke.

  “Good Heavens!” she exclaimed. “Who are you?”

  Xenia found it impossible to reply.

  As she stared at the stranger, she saw that she had the same red hair, the same white skin, the same green eyes framed with dark lashes as she had.

  “What is your name?”

  The question was sharp and had an authoritative note in it.

  “X-Xenia – Sandon.”

  “I might have guessed it without having to ask you.”

  “Y-you – mean – ?”

  “You are my cousin. I always knew I had one, but I did not expect her to look so exactly like me, even though our mothers were twins.”

  The information burst into Xenia’s bemused consciousness like the explosion of a firebomb.

  “Y-you mean – you are the daughter of – my aunt – Dorottyn?”

  “Of course! My name is Johanna – or rather Johanna Xenia. I believe our mothers promised each other that if they had a daughter she would be called Xenia, which was the name of their favourite doll.”

  Xenia laughed. It was a shaky little sound.

  “Mama told me that – but I never believed – I never thought – there would be anyone in the whole world who looked – so like me.”

  “We are exactly alike,” Johanna said. “But it’s not really surprising considering that our mothers looked identical and I look exactly like mine.”

  “As I look – like mine,” Xenia replied.

  She swayed a little as she spoke and Johanna said,

  “You had better sit down. Were you hurt?”

  “No. I was only knocked – unconscious for a moment and they carried me in – here.”

  Johanna gave a little laugh.

  “Do you know,” she said, “I think they thought that they were carrying me.”

  “Why do you say that?” Xenia asked.

  She looked up at her cousin in a puzzled manner.

  “Well, this happens to be the special station of the Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports – at least so I was told – and I imagine this is the private room reserved only for him. The rest of the passengers will be in the public waiting rooms.”

  “Oh – I see,” Xenia said. “I do remember now that a man said, ‘it’s a relief we found her so soon’.”

  “Then they did think that you were me,” Johanna answered.

  She sat down in a chair beside Xenia and there was a silence befo
re she asked,

  “Where are you going? Why were you on the train?”

  “I am going to France with a Mrs. Berkeley to whom I am – a companion. My father and mother both – died last – year.”

  “I am sorry,” Johanna said. “That must have been terrible for you.”

  “We were very happy and at least they are together,” Xenia answered.

  Her cousin looked at her searchingly.

  “Do you mean that? Was your mother really happy after she ran away? I have often wondered about her and I know my mother wondered too.”

  “Mama and Papa were blissfully happy together,” Xenia replied. “Mama often said that she never regretted having to be poor with Papa in a tiny cottage instead of living in a Palace.”

  “Your mother was exceptional. I don’t believe that I should ever feel like that.”

  “You would, if you were in love.”

  “I am in love,” Johanna said, “but how can I give up everything – everything I have always known – even to be with Robert?”

  Xenia looked at her in surprise.

  “Are you in love with an Englishman?”

  “Yes, just like your mother, with an Englishman.”

  “And are you going to run away with him?”

  “I would like to,” Johanna replied, “but quite frankly, I am not brave enough.”

  “Then you are not really in love.”

  “It’s all very well for you to talk like that, but I am to marry King István of Luthenia, so I should not only have my father and mother furious with me but him as well.”

  “Mama was in exactly the same position,” Xenia said. “She was supposed to marry the Arch-Duke Frederi – ”

  She stopped suddenly, remembering her mother had told her that he had afterwards married her twin sister.

  Johanna was staring at her incredulously.

  “Do you really mean that your mother was supposed to marry my Papa?”

  She threw back her head and laughed.

  “Oh, now I understand so many things that were kept from me! It must have infuriated Papa to think that anybody could turn him down for a commoner and an Englishman at that!”

  “But he married your mother,” Xenia said quickly.