The Firebird

Miss Margaret Ross was not what I’d expected, not our usual sort of client. For one thing she was plainly dressed, but dressed with so much care I knew she’d taken pains to look her best. And although I was usually quite good at guessing ages, I had trouble guessing hers. She had to be at least a decade older than myself, so nearing forty at the least, but while her clothing and the way she held herself suggested she might be still older, there was something in her quiet gaze that seemed distinctly youthful, even innocent.

‘Good morning.’ She was Scottish. ‘I’m afraid that I’ve been wasting Mr St-Croix’s time.’

Sebastian, ever charming, shook his head. ‘No, not at all. That’s what I’m here for. And even if it can’t be proved, you still have a fascinating story to tell your grandchildren.’

She cast her eyes down as though she were hiding disappointment. ‘Yes.’

‘Tell Nicola.’ Sebastian’s tone was meant to salve her feelings, make her feel that what she had to say was fascinating, even if it wasn’t. He was good, that way. To me he said, ‘She brought this carving in for an appraisal.’

It looked to me, at first, an undistinguished lump of wood that curved to fit his upraised palm, but when I looked again I saw it was a small carved bird, wings folded tightly to its sides, a sparrow or a wren. Sebastian was saying, ‘It’s been in her family … how long?’

Margaret Ross roused herself to his smooth prompting. ‘Nearly three hundred years, so I’m told. It was given to one of my ancestors by Empress Catherine of Russia. Not Catherine the Great,’ she said, showing her knowledge. ‘The first Catherine.’

Sebastian smiled encouragement. ‘Peter the Great’s widow, yes. So, the 1720s, sometime. And it very well might be that old.’ Holding the carving as though it were priceless, he studied it.

Margaret Ross told him, ‘We call it the Firebird. That’s what it’s always been called, in our family. It sat under glass in my grandmother’s house, and we children were never allowed to come near it. My mother said …’ there was the tiniest break in her voice, but she covered it over ‘… she said, with Andrew gone – Andrew’s my brother, he died in Afghanistan – with him gone, and me not likely to have any family myself now, my mother said there was no point in the Firebird sitting there, going to waste. She said I should sell it, and use all the money to travel, like I’d always wanted to do.’

‘Miss Ross,’ said Sebastian, to me, ‘lost her mother quite recently.’

I understood his manner now, his sympathy. I told her, ‘I’m so sorry.’

‘That’s all right. She had MS – it wasn’t the easiest life for her. And she felt guilty for having me there to look after her. But,’ she said, trying to smile, ‘I looked after my aunties as well, till they passed, and she was my own mother. I couldn’t have left her alone, could I?’

Looking again at her eyes I decided their youthfulness came from the fact that she’d never been able to live her own life as a woman. She’d put her own life into limbo while caring for others. I felt for her. And I felt, too, for the mother who’d hoped that her daughter would sell their one prized family heirloom, and finally have money and comfort to live just a little. To travel.

‘The thing is,’ Sebastian said, kindly, ‘without any documentation or proof, what we dealers call “provenance”, we simply can’t know for certain. And without that provenance, I’m afraid this poor creature has little real value. We can’t even tell if it’s Russian.’ He looked at me. ‘Nicola? What would you say?’

He passed it to me and I took it, not thinking, forgetting my mind had already been breached once this morning. It wasn’t until I was holding it, light in my hands, that I realised I’d made a mistake.

Instantly I felt a warmth that had nothing to do with the carving itself. I closed my eyes to try to stop the vision, but that only made it worse. I saw a slanting fall of light, with fine dust dancing through it. Two women, one ageing but lovely, with heavy black eyebrows; the other respectfully bent, perhaps kneeling, her young face upturned in uncertainty. ‘My darling Anna,’ the first woman said to the other in elegant Russian, and smiled. ‘You were never a nobody.’

I opened my eyes quickly, maybe a little too quickly, but to my relief no one seemed to have noticed. ‘I really don’t know,’ I said, giving the small carved bird back to Sebastian.

He looked at it with a commendable blend of admiration and regret.

‘The trouble is,’ he told our would-be client, ‘it’s so difficult to date this sort of thing with any certainty. If it is Russian, it was very likely peasant-made; there is no maker’s mark or factory stamp to go by, and without any documentation …’ He raised one shoulder slightly in a shrug that seemed to speak to the unfairness of it all. ‘If she had brought you back an icon, now, this ancestor of yours, or some small piece of jewellery – that I might have helped you with.’

‘I understand,’ said Margaret Ross. Her tone was bleak.

Sebastian turned the little carving over in his hands one final time, and I knew he was searching for some small thing to praise, to let this woman down as gently as he could. ‘Certainly it’s very old,’ was what he ended up with, ‘and I’m sure it’s had a few adventures.’

Margaret Ross wasn’t sure about that. ‘It’s been sitting there under that glass for as long as I’ve known it, and likely it sat there a good while before that.’