The Lost Sapphire (24 page)

‘What a feast!' Dad said.

Everyone helped themselves to drinks. Marli pulled the top off her orangeade and clinked bottles with Luca.

‘
Salute
,' said Luca.

‘
Salute
,' replied Marli. ‘To new beginnings.' Everyone clinked drinks and chatted. Nonna passed around the platters of
pitticelle di zucchine
and cheesy
arancini
balls.

‘You have to try the
pitticelle
, Dad – they're amazing,' Marli urged, helping herself to the fritters.

‘And so are Nonna's
arancini
balls,' Luca added.

‘Eat up, Luca
caro
,' said Nonna. ‘My darling boy was pale and sick and far too thin. But now he looks well again.'

Marli realised Nonna was right. The sunshine and fresh air of Riversleigh gardens had put a rose in Luca's cheeks and a sparkle in his eyes.

Dani nodded. ‘And he's so much nicer to be around. He's been like a grumpy bear for weeks!'

Luca hugged his mother. ‘Sorry, Mum, but it was very boring being sick for so long. It's been much more fun since Marli arrived.'

Marli opened the peacock hatbox and spread some of the items from it out on the table.

‘Luca and I have been researching the Hamilton family,' she explained to the others. ‘We've found out the most amazing things.'

She showed Dad the scrapbook with the photographs, articles and mementoes, and told him some of the stories they had discovered.

‘Violet was disinherited in 1928 when she insisted on marrying Nikolai as soon as she turned twenty-one,' Marli explained. ‘It caused a huge scandal at the time because not only was he poor and Russian, he had been her father's chauffeur. Shock-horror!' Marli struck a dramatic pose, hand on forehead. ‘But it all worked out well, though. Violet became a successful photographer while Nikolai Khakovsky changed his name to the more socially acceptable Nicholas Peterson and became one of Melbourne's top lawyers.'

Didi continued the story. ‘Albert Hamilton was already devastated because Violet's older sister, Imogen, was
doubly disgraced. She was engaged very young to one of her father's business associates, but she broke the engagement a few months later to marry for love. It was a “mixed” marriage, as they called it in those days, to an impoverished Catholic doctor called Tommy O'Byrne, who preferred treating poor slum-dwellers to making money from the rich. Albert refused to attend the wedding and didn't see her again for years.'

‘Poor Imogen,' said Marli. ‘But I bet she and Tommy were amazingly happy.'

‘No-one would raise an eyebrow in this day and age,' said Dani. ‘It seems strange to let a family be torn apart by something so trivial.'

Dad squeezed Marli's hand.

Luca pointed at the formal black-and-white photograph of the Riversleigh staff lined up outside the house. ‘There's our great-grandfather Giuseppe and his cousin Alf, although when he became a gardener the butler changed Giuseppe's name to Joseph. He said no-one could be expected to pronounce it otherwise.'

Everyone laughed. Lia, Caterina and Siena crowded around to look, giggling and chattering.

Luca showed them one of the other servants in the photo graph, a maid in a black dress with a prim white cap and apron. ‘And that's Nonno's mother, Sally. She worked as a housemaid here until she married Giuseppe in the late 1920s. They eventually started a hugely successful
trattoria
restaurant in Lonsdale Street.'

Dad pored over the photographs with Dani and Marc. Marli passed around the meatballs.

‘So why did Albert Hamilton give the house to the state
government?' Dad asked as he helped himself to more
pitticelle
.

‘He lost all his money in a bad investment before Violet was married,' Marli explained. ‘Albert tried to auction off Riversleigh and all its contents, but by 1929 Melbourne was in the grip of the Great Depression and no-one would buy it. So he offered the house to the government as a convalescent home for soldiers, in memory of his two sons who died in the First World War.'

Marli took a piece of bruschetta. Luca took over the story.

‘Albert lived here for a while, stubbornly refusing to see his daughters,' he said. ‘When Violet's son Michael – other wise known as Didi – was born, she brought him to see his grandfather. Albert was sick, so Violet insisted on taking him home with her and looking after him. Eventually he was reconciled with Violet and Imogen.'

‘There's one more surprise, Didi,' said Marli, giving her grandfather a hug. ‘I found something hidden in the very back of the scrapbook.'

Marli opened the scrapbook to the back cover. There was a loose black-and-white photograph of a couple on their wedding day. It wasn't the usual stiff formal shot – this photograph was more natural with the couple arm in arm, gazing into each other's eyes with utter adoration. The bride had a large, dark gemstone on her ring finger.

‘Violet and Nikolai,' said Didi, his voice heavy with emotion.

On the inside back cover of the scrapbook was a leather pocket for storing extra photos or papers. Marli opened the flap and fished around inside, pulling out something that
she hid in her closed fist. She slowly unfurled her fingers to reveal an oval cornflower-blue sapphire ring, surrounded by sixteen diamonds set in rose gold.

‘Oooh,' said Dani.

‘It's Violet's missing engagement ring,' Marli explained. ‘She must have hidden it there.'

Marli passed the sapphire to Didi, who held it up to the light with trembling fingers, the gemstones flashing brilliantly.

‘The Khakovsky Sapphire,' said Didi, his voice lowered with reverence. ‘The ring that my father, Nikolai, smuggled out of Russia, sewn into the hem of his waistcoat. I thought it was lost forever.'

Didi weighed the ring in his palm for a moment before slipping it onto Marli's finger. ‘It's yours now – the ring given to my grandmother, Countess Khakovska, by Tsarina Alexandra as a wedding present. It's priceless.'

Marli felt a sting of tears. ‘I'll treasure it always, Didi.'

Dad examined the ring closely. ‘Simply stunning, and what a history!'

‘Just like Riversleigh, Dad,' Marli said. ‘Please promise me you won't bulldoze the house. With all your building contacts, you could do an amazing job restoring it back to its former glory, just like you used to do in Brisbane. We could run it as a guesthouse or a wedding venue … It's far too precious to destroy.'

Dad pulled a sheaf of papers out of his inside pocket. ‘Actually, there is one more surprise, Marli. You know that Didi and I went to see the lawyers today to sign the paperwork for the handover of Riversleigh back to the Peterson family?'

Marli frowned. ‘Yes?'

‘Well, the house doesn't actually belong to Didi as we thought,' Dad continued. ‘When Albert Hamilton was on his deathbed, he changed his will. The house had been signed away to the government for ninety years, so he couldn't leave it to his daughters.'

Marli's heart sunk with disappointment. ‘Oh no. Who did Albert leave it to?'

Didi beamed at Marli. ‘To you.'

‘
Me?
' Marli shrieked. ‘That's impossible!'

Dad laughed. ‘Yes, well, technically he left it to Violet's eldest female descendant. Who is one delightful young lady called Amalia Violet Peterson.'

Marli was speechless. ‘Wow! You're an heiress,' cried Luca. ‘So I guess you'd better start behaving in a more ladylike fashion. No more climbing trees and breaking into abandoned houses for you.'

Marli put her hands on her hips and raised an eyebrow. ‘Why ever not?' she demanded. ‘I don't want to be ladylike. I'd much rather be a brave and an intrepid adventuress, just like Violet.'

She looked at her father beseechingly. ‘Please don't knock my house down, Dad. I love it.'

Dad raised his hands in surrender and laughed. ‘I wouldn't dare do that, myshka.' He gave Marli a hug. ‘It will be hard work, but we can make it beautiful again, together.'

• More than one million Russians fled Russia between 1917 and 1920, mostly via Turkey.
  
• Nikolai's hometown of St Petersburg has had several name changes over the years. In 1914 the name was changed to Petrograd, then in 1924 to Leningrad, then back to St Petersburg in 1991.
  
• Melbourne – often called ‘Marvellous Melbourne' – was the capital of the Commonwealth of Australia from 1901 until 1927, when Canberra was built.
  
• The years after the First World War and before the Great Depression were ones of enormous change.
  
• Nearly sixty-two thousand Australian soldiers were killed during the war. Of these, about sixteen thousand were from Victoria (the youngest of whom was James Charles Martin of Hawthorn, who was only fourteen years and nine months old when he died at Gallipoli). In Australia, two thousand eight hundred sets of brothers died in the First World War. A further ten thousand Australians died of the Spanish influenza, including approximately four thousand Victorians.
  
• In the 1920s, Australia was still primarily a population of British descent, and migrants from non-British backgrounds were often treated with suspicion.
  
• The Australian Government placed an embargo on Russian immigration to Australia during the Russian Revolution and Civil War from 1917 to 1922. However, the prohibition was lifted once the White Army had been defeated by the Bolsheviks. Most of these White émigrés came to Australia via Siberia and Manchuria after the Red Army seized control of Vladivostok in 1922.
  
• On 31 August 1922, a Russian national, Alexander Zuzenko, was deported from Australia after being arrested in Melbourne as a Bolshevik spy. Zuzenko had travelled to Australia on a false Norwegian passport, via New Zealand, hoping to escape detection. Zuzenko believed that Australia in 1922 was ripe for a communist revolution. While in Australia, he helped establish the Communist Party in Melbourne and spoke at numerous gatherings, encouraging Melburnian workers to rebel against capitalism by burning down buildings, cutting telephone wires and shooting perceived enemies.
  
• There were many articles in the newspapers in late 1922, discussing the threat of Russian Bolshevik spies in Melbourne, including interviews with Madame Varvara Kossovskaia, a Russian prima donna and a former soldier in the White Army, who said her life had been threatened by a secret society of Russian Bolsheviks in Melbourne.
  
• Italians are the second-largest ethnic group in Melbourne after Anglo-Celtic Australians, with nearly half the Australians of Italian descent living in Melbourne. Italian migration to Australia increased markedly in the early 1920s, primarily with peasants from the northern regions escaping poverty and those opposed to the rise of fascism in Italy.
  
• In 1922, the average male worked forty-six hours per week, and the average wage for factory workers was about four pounds per week (or two pounds per week for women). However, servants worked much longer hours, up to fifteen hours per day, from 5.00 or 6.00 am until 10.00 pm, for much less pay.
  
• During the early 1920s, Australia was one of the few countries where most women could vote. Women in South Australia received the right to vote in 1895, with Australian women having the right to vote and stand for election in all states from 1902, although Indigenous Australians did not receive this right until 1962. All women could not vote in the USA until 1920 and the UK until 1928. Many European, African and Asian countries did not give women the vote until much later – France (1944), Italy (1945) and Switzerland (1971).
  
• Edith Cowan, in 1921, was the first woman elected to an Australian parliament in Western Australia.
  
• The national currency from 1910 until 1966 was based on pounds, shillings and pence. There were twelve pennies to a shilling, and twenty shillings to a pound.
  

There is something totally fascinating about walled gardens and abandoned houses. One of my favourite books as a child was
The Secret Garden
, written by Frances Hodgson Burnett in 1910. Some of the ideas for
The Lost Sapphire
were inspired by this book, particularly family secrets and discord, and the idea of a girl and a boy, who initially don't get on, building a friendship and being healed by bringing a lost garden back to life. The cheeky robin, who helped show the way into the garden, inspired my fairy wren.

The first idea of writing a book about an abandoned house was suggested to me by Leeza Wishart and her daughter Ella. The Wishart family, who love my books, raised money for me to visit their home town of Tenterfield in northern New South Wales, to visit a number of local schools and run writing workshops. While I was there, Leeza organised for me to be invited to visit Tenterfield
Station homestead, the original homestead for the area established in the 1840s, which had been abandoned for many years and was slowly being restored. This old house was filled with history and stories – it was where Banjo Paterson met and later married one of the daughters of the station family, Alice Emily Walker, and the homestead is rumoured to be haunted by the ghosts of old tragedies.

I loved writing this book, particularly the vibrant history of the 1920s. Some of the books I used to research etiquette, entertaining and homes in this era included
The House in Good Taste
by Elsie de Wolfe, and
Etiquette
by Emily Post, written in 1922. For an insight into the experience of refugees fleeing the Russian Revolution, I studied several memoirs, including
Russians in Exile
by Valerian Obolensky,
Lost Splendour
by Felix Youssoupoff and
The Russian Countess: Escaping Revolutionary Russia
by Edith Sollohub.

Life in Melbourne during the 1920s was brought to life by newspaper articles, film clips and memoirs of wealthy debutantes, factory workers and servants. The Hamilton Glove factory was inspired by the Simpson's Glove Factory, which was located on Victoria Street, Richmond, and its collection of artefacts held by Museum Victoria. Riversleigh was inspired by several old Melbourne mansions I visited, including Como House, Labassa, Balmerino and Rippon Lea.

My father's family was originally from Melbourne, and I spent many long summer holidays playing and swimming on the banks of the Yarra River. More recently, I have explored this beautiful city on multiple trips, visiting old mansions and gardens; wandering the streets, laneways
and markets; and eating food from many different cultural backgrounds, including Vietnamese, Chinese, Italian, Greek, French and Russian. It is one of my favourite cities in the world!

A big thank you to my wonderful Random House marketing team, Dot Tonkin and Zoe Bechara, together with my illustrator, Serena Geddes, who have spent many hours showing me around Melbourne on book tours.

As always, enormous thanks go to my brilliant publishing team – publisher Zoe Walton, editor Brandon VanOver and agent Pippa Masson – who always have plenty of brilliant ideas, advice, suggestions and support. I have been working with them now for ten amazing years.

Much love and gratitude to my first readers and research assistants, Rob and Emily Murrell.