Читать книгу Five Silver Daughters - Louis Golding - Страница 21

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“It would be interesting to go to Russia some time,” said Susan, returning the album to its cupboard one Saturday evening. “It would be interesting, I mean, to pick up the threads.”

She had taken the album down an hour or two earlier, and had set herself to study it, with her usual air of scientific detachment. But, one way or another, the photograph of this uncle or that brother had set Mrs. Silver remembering—the pearls, the cellar, the apricot-tree, the pearls. Only the daughters were there, even Silver was out. So she went on talking, and the others listening. They did not notice, or they forgot, that Polednik had come in, and had sat down on the kitchen-step, not wishing to disturb them.

“I often wonder about them all,” Susan went on.

For, of course, there had been no communication between Hannah and her Russian family for years after her disappearance. It certainly had been no credit to the Dobkins, the big Jew family of Terkass, that a Dobkin girl had gone off with a pick-lock wastrel of a tailor, who had no doubt seduced her into the bargain. More recently the lordly Alex had written once or twice and sent photographs. So had Leon, and Leon’s eldest daughter, Esther; she was of the same age as Hannah’s Esther, so she, too, had sent greetings. The old man had sent one or two post-cards furtively. He had not been able to do more than that. Shevka kept too tight a hold of him. She had never forgiven the theft of her pearls.

“Yes,” Susan said, in a voice softer than was usual with her. “I wonder if Alex is still so grand. And do you think Gallia’s nose turns up quite as unpleasantly? What does cousin Esther do with her spare time? It would be interesting to go and find out for oneself.”

“Perhaps you will go and find out sooner than you think,” said Polednik from the kitchen-step. The voice was tart and terse, each syllable a cold pebble.

She turned round suddenly. She felt quite unaccountably furious. She had addressed herself to the grand-daughters of Feivel Dobkin, farmer and wine-merchant, the daughters of a wandering tailor who had been a knight to a sore-pressed damsel, and won her amulet for her at great peril.

She had been talking, or what was worse, feeling, like a romantic schoolgirl, a colonel’s daughter. He was always spying on her, spotting the namby-pamby sentimentalist she could never quite exorcise. She was furious.

“I wasn’t talking to you!” she thrust at him. “Mind your own business!”

He said nothing. He made a polite gesture, apologising for his intrusion.