Free Sign of the Cross by Thomas Mogford

a bookcase, his right hand cupping his left elbow, his three-piece suit and waxed moustache suggesting a touch of the dandy in his early years. On the other side of the door frame, straight-backed in a Louis Quinze chair, sat the Baroness. Spike was reminded of the unusual beauty which even as a child had moved him. Golden hair snaking over bare shoulders, pale oval face with a heart-shaped mouth, the narrow hips and long svelte legs of a dancer . . . There was a reason she was seated, Spike thought – five in fact, one for each inch she towered over her husband.
    One might have taken their union as a straightforward transaction of looks and status, except that the Baroness’s family was said to outrank even her husband’s. Her mother had been a young Russian aristocrat, evacuated by the British after the Bolshevik revolution, arriving in Malta on HMS Marlborough in 1919 as part of a convoy of White Russian refugees. The Russian connection had been maintained by the Baroness teaching ballet in the years before she’d met her husband.
    ‘Hel-lo?’ came a shrill voice from behind the doorway.
    ‘It’s only us,’ Spike called back.
    As the doors opened, Spike glanced from portrait to subject: the Baroness’s cheekbones were more pronounced, her skin more parchment-like, yet she remained a beauty.
    ‘My darlinks!’
    Rufus was drawn into the Baroness’s floating chiffon dress, freezing like a cat in a child’s embrace. As he pulled away, Spike saw a touch of pinkness in his face.
    ‘And you,’ the Baroness said, turning to Spike. ‘Michael forewarned me, but what a man you have become.’ She pecked him on both cheeks, trailing a rose-scented powder. ‘Like that matinee idol of the forties, the Spaniard, so rangy and handsome, but with those eyes . . .’ She glanced back at Rufus. ‘Why, you have given him your blue eyes, Rufus! If I were only twenty years younger. Or five!’
    The maid was waiting on the stairs, mouth set. ‘Off you go, Clara,’ the Baroness snapped, before wafting inside past the image of her younger self.
    Rufus remained swaying on the landing; placing a hand on the small of his back, Spike encouraged him inside the drawing room. Frayed rugs lay seemingly at random over uneven oak floorboards; tucked against one wall was a harpsichord, its cypress-wood lid decorated with pastoral scenes. Tall windows gave onto an inner courtyard, orange trees growing from below, pressing their leaves to the glass as though seeking to eavesdrop. The central coffee table was piled with Russian art books, enclosed on three sides by sofas draped in moth-eaten cashmere throws.
    At the end of the drawing room, a covered balcony gave onto the street. The Baron emerged from its shelter, his faded blond hair combed back, pinstripe suit a little tight, a pink square of kerchief poking jauntily from his breast pocket. He glided between the antique furniture, one arm behind his back, with the rictus grin of a man well used to meeting and greeting. The only element detracting from the statesmanlike bearing was the geriatric Maltese terrier snuffling behind, nose pressed to his ankle.
    ‘Rufus Sanguinetti,’ he said. ‘What’s it been? Ten years?’
    ‘Seventeen.’
    Rufus stiffened slightly as the Baron shook his hand. Even with his father’s stoop, their height difference was less than expected: Spike glanced down and saw stacked leather heels on the Baron’s brogues.
    The Maltese terrier switched attention to Rufus’s trouser leg. ‘She can smell something,’ the Baron said.
    Rufus glanced down as well. ‘Must be the General.’
    ‘The General?’
    ‘General Ironside, our Jack Russell.’
    ‘You have a dog now, Rufus? I didn’t know.’
    ‘Why would you?’ Rufus screwed up his eyes. ‘Is that a nef?’
    The Baron turned. On the console table behind lay a gleaming model ship, a silver galleon with four masts. ‘My great-great-grandfather was awarded it for services to the Maltese fleet.’
    ‘A