My Name Is Rose (5 page)

Rose watched the girl as she walked ahead of them and took an instant dislike to her. She had an arrogance, a self-assurance that showed itself in the swaying of her hips and the tossing of her hair. She was slim, her long limbs bare and brown. She was wearing a lacy white blouse and a pair of pink shorts pulled in at the waist by a silver belt. Nicu would have told her to cover herself up, that she was exposing too much flesh. Once or twice, she peered round at Rose with a look of sheer disdain, before pulling her father closer to her in a statement of possession.

Rose was used to such looks. She was a Roma, after all. They had long since ceased to bother her. Esme and Nicu had taught her to expect far more than disdain from the gadje, or non-Roma.

‘Simmering hatred is what we get from a lot of people. We might just as well be vermin the way they feel about us,' Nicu used to say. ‘They don't know anything about who we are individually, they just judge us as a group.'

‘Some of our kind deserve their bad reputation,' Esme would occasionally respond to Nicu's rantings. ‘There are rotten apples in every basket and they spoil it for the rest of us.'

‘There are plenty of rotten apples among the gadje. We don't judge all of them by that.'

The truth was that they kept away from the gadje as much as possible.

‘We've been shoved from place to place, from country to country, ever since time began,' Nicu often told his family. ‘We're outsiders. We don't fit in because we don't lead our lives the way the gadje think we should. As if there's only one way.'

Rose felt a shock of unease as she approached the front door of the Lucas' home. She was entering enemy territory. It had been bad enough sitting with them on the plane and in the car. Now she was going to live with them. Her family would have been horrified. She hesitated on the doorstep as Mrs Luca took her elbow and ushered her in, and wondered whether anyone would chase after her if she tried to run away.

‘Don't be shy, Anna. You're with friends here. You'll soon feel at home and then I'm sure you'll find your voice again. I can't wait for that moment. We'll have to have a celebration when it happens.'

Mrs Luca pushed her forward into a huge hallway, where a wide central staircase ascended from a marble floor and was flanked on either side above by a galleried landing. There were so many doors leading off the hallway and the landing that Rose wondered where they could possibly all lead and how many people lived behind them. It was like something from a film she had once seen on Uncle Aleksandar's television and she half expected all the doors to open at once and a chorus of dancers and singers to appear.

From behind one of the doors on the left she heard the jingle of cutlery, and from close by she heard the voices of Mr Luca and his daughter, followed by peals of laughter. Mrs Luca headed in that direction.

‘Come, Anna. We'll have a well-earned cup of tea, then I'll show you around.'

The laughter stopped the minute they crossed the threshold of a large room dominated by a huge open fireplace, whose dark wood surround was ornately decorated with spirals and twists. Mr Luca was sitting in a high-backed leather chair, his daughter perched on one arm with her hand in his.

‘Here we are,' said Mrs Luca, smiling happily and striding towards a leather sofa covered with an animal hide. ‘Why don't you sit next to me over here?'

Rose heard the words and thought they were aimed at her. As she sat down, she realised that Mrs Luca had in fact been looking at Victoria when she said them. However, Victoria made no attempt to change places and her mother quickly concealed her disappointment by pretending that she had meant Rose all along.

An awkward silence descended. It was broken when Mr Luca tutted loudly and tapped on his watch.

‘Shall I go and hurry her up, Daddy?' Victoria asked.

‘I'm sure she's doing her best,' said Mrs Luca. ‘How have you been coping without us, darling? How's your schoolwork?'

‘Boring, boring, boring,' said Victoria. ‘What's the point of learning Latin when nobody speaks it any more?'

‘There's plenty of point and we've been through this before. Latin is the root of many other languages and many everyday words derive from it,' Mrs Luca replied.

‘So what? Who needs to know where words come from?' Victoria retorted.

‘You might as well say there's no point in learning history since it's all about things that have happened in the past and can't be revisited,' argued Mrs Luca.

‘There
isn't
any point in learning history, except perhaps what happened a few years ago,' said Victoria.

‘But history is what has shaped who we are,' Mrs Luca disagreed.

‘Far better to learn about business and finance, I say,' interjected Mr Luca, just as Marina appeared with a tray of tea and biscuits. ‘This house wasn't bought on history and Latin.'

‘What do you think, Anna?' Victoria suddenly addressed her. ‘Do you think history and Latin are a waste of time?'

Rose could feel herself blushing with confusion and looked to Mrs Luca for help.

‘How would you like your tea, Anna? With milk? Sugar?' Mrs Luca picked up the plate of
biscuits and offered it to Rose. Rose nodded in response to both questions and took three biscuits from the plate. She was hungry, despite the enormous breakfast she had eaten that morning.

Victoria immediately gasped, then snorted with derision. ‘She's taken three in one go, Mummy!' She turned to her father and said something to him that Rose didn't understand.

‘The poor girl's hungry!' Mrs Luca defended Rose. ‘As you would be if you'd been living on hospital meals for weeks on end. And I won't have you talking in English in front of her, thank you, Victoria. Not until she learns how to speak it herself.'

‘But she can't speak at all, Mummy.' Victoria pouted.

‘You know what I mean, and she can understand our own language perfectly well.'

Again, Victoria muttered something to her father, who grunted and demanded his tea.

Rose was amazed that the tea was being served from a silver pot and that the sugar and milk were also in silver containers. She balanced her cup and saucer on her knee, terrified she might spill something on the pale, patterned carpet. She hardly dared lift a biscuit to her mouth in case it caused Victoria more mirth, and wondered if she should put two of them back on the plate instead of leaving them to stare at her accusingly from her saucer.

She was relieved when Mr Luca finished his tea and stood up.

‘I shall have my bath and then I expect to be left in peace for the rest of the day,' he announced, before walking stiffly out of the room.

Victoria jumped to her feet. ‘I'm going for a ride,' she said abruptly.

‘Oh, but, darling, I was looking forward to having a catch-up with you,' protested Mrs Luca. ‘It's been so long since we were together.'

‘Later,' said Victoria. ‘Anyway, you've got
her
to keep you company.'

Chapter 10

Rose lay among the plumped-up pillows of her enormous bed and listened in the pitch-black silence. Heavy curtains at the windows prevented even the smallest glimmer of light from entering the room, making it difficult for her to tell what time it was. She had tried to sleep, turning from one side to the other, pushing back the thick, quilted covers because she was too hot, then pulling them over herself again because she was cold. After Mrs Luca had pecked her on the cheek and said her goodnights, and before settling down, Rose had tiptoed to the bedroom door to see if she could lock it, and had been disappointed to find that there was no key. She didn't like being shut in, but she wanted to keep everyone else out.

She thought about the events of the last two days. They felt like the longest two days of her life. Only the previous morning she had woken in her hard, narrow, starched hospital bed, surrounded by the familiar sounds and smells of sickness and suffering, but comfortable in the cocoon she had built around herself. Since then, she had flown across the world into the chilly, privileged lives of a family who might just as well have come from outer space for all that they bore any relation to Rose's own family, and where unfettered luxury threatened to smother her.
I'd give anything to be snuggled up at the back of the wagon or camped underneath the stars
.

Rose clambered out of bed, crept over to the windows and peered through the curtains. She gazed up at the sky, but there were no stars. The moon was just visible through a sweep of cloud and picked out the tops of trees with thin shafts of light. There was a spill of light too on the water spurting from the whale fountain, which made it look as though it was dancing on hot coals. Rose opened a window slowly, carefully, wanting to breathe the night air and hear the night sounds. The gentle flurry of a breeze greeted her, still mild but with a cool edge that made her shiver. Somewhere in the distance a tawny owl hooted, and closer by a vixen screeched.

The crunch of gravel made Rose pull back sharply. She leant forward again slowly, screening herself with the curtain, and stared down. A tiny red glow hovered in the darkness, disappeared, flickered, then disappeared again. There was a muffled cough, a further crunch of gravel. The red glow moved agitatedly backwards and forwards, then suddenly the entire area in front of the house was drowned in white light.

‘Blast!' Rose heard as she dropped the curtain. ‘Wretched lights!'

She stood to the side of the window and moved the curtain just enough to enable her to see who it was. Mr Luca, wearing striped pyjamas, was stalking up and down directly below her. Seconds later, he dropped his cigar­ette to the ground, trod on it savagely and turned his head up in the direction of Rose's window. He stayed there for a while, staring, before striding back into the house. The security lights stayed on as though expecting this intruder to return, but eventually abandoned their vigil, and the house and grounds were plunged into a deeper blackness as the moon was swallowed up by the clouds.

Rose crept quickly back to bed, heart pounding, legs like jelly.
Did he see me? Is Mr Luca on his way upstairs to ask me why I was spying on him?
She pulled all the bedding right up to her chin and listened for any sound that might warn her he was on his way, wishing again that she had been able to lock the door.

A clock began to chime.
One, two, three
, she counted.
Why was Mr Luca wandering around outside at three o'clock in the morning?
It was sweltering under the covers, but she dared not push them back – not yet, not until she could be sure that nobody was coming.

At last, she decided it was safe to emerge. She pushed the covers away and sat up against the pillows.
I haven't
done anything wrong
, she decided.
Why should he be cross with me just because I wasn't asleep?
She had looked out of the window and seen him smoking, that was all. Except that it wasn't all. What she had seen was that he was able to walk perfectly normally – that all the limping and groaning was a sham.
So what?
she thought.
He wants people to feel sorry for him. He wants attention
.

Uncle Aleksandar could be like that, Rose remembered Esme saying. Uncle Aleksandar could describe a minor stomach discomfort as a major digestive problem and have poor Aunt Mirela running around after him with lotions and potions until she was ready to drop, while he, when she wasn't looking, would indulge himself with multiple bars of chocolate and too much home-brewed ale. He loved the attention and sympathy his wife gave him, but Esme said that Aunt Mirela knew exactly what he was about and didn't mind playing the game with him.

‘She loves him, that's the fact of it,' said Esme. ‘She'll do anything for him. And if he makes a song and dance about things from time to time, so what?'

Rose found it easy to understand why Aunt Mirela loved him. Uncle Aleksandar was big and loud and funny and full of beans – at least when he wasn't full of ale, which tended to make him soppy. He played the cello to Nicu's violin, and what he lacked in talent he made up for in melodrama. During ballads he swayed from side to side, drawing his bow across the strings with exaggerated sweeps and pulling such sad faces that he looked as if he would dissolve into tears, which indeed he seemed to when, at the end, he wiped a handkerchief across his brow and dabbed at his eyes. During jigs and reels he rocked on his seat and tapped his feet, nodding his head furiously at the same time and grinning from ear to ear. He couldn't sing, though occasionally he tried to join in, until Nicu shot him a warning look, but he still hummed and whistled and clicked his tongue.

He was a boxer too, one of the best in his day, Esme told her, before his waistline gave in to his appetite. He still liked to think he could hold his own against the young pretenders who wanted to challenge him, but Aunt Mirela protected him by sending them away.

‘We all know you were the best,' she tutted. ‘You don't have to keep proving it. And you know if you do insist you'll be laid up for days.'