LUCY DE VRIES. I sat beside Alex Tobias at dinner. He was between me and Lady M. He was perfectly agreeable. He’d been to Cape Town, we vaguely knew some people in common. At first I thought he may look good and he’s obviously got money but like so many English guys I meet he’s fundamentally boring. But he wasn’t stupid and I always warm to intelligent people. Interestingly enough he paid as much attention to Rory as he did to Anna. Anna was across the table from him as far away as possible. There was a lot of careful reminiscing: people stepping delicately around their shared history.Richard seemed out of it – he’d drunk a lot in the pub but it seemed to me he was stoned in some way. He didn’t eat a thing.
ALEXANDER TOBIAS. Throughout dinner I kept half an eye on Frank/Rory. A good-looking man, one would have to say, but there was something swart and gypsyish about him that I found rebarbative. He gave no sign that he knew I knew who he was. He was perfectly friendly towards me. I noticed he went into the kitchen to supervise the serving of the pudding. Very much chez lui, very at home. Penny has turned into a real beauty: dark, gamine, her hair gelled into soft spikes, like black meringue. Smoky eye-shadow made her eyes lustrous.
ANNA MONTROSE. I thought Alex seemed a bit distant. Maybe meeting Rory affected him. Suddenly the concept of my marriage was no longer abstract but made flesh. After dinner Rory came up to me and whispered in my ear: ‘I approve.’
ALEXANDER TOBIAS. Over coffee Lady Montrose was very forth-coming about the development of the estate. There is a company, Marchmont Enterprises Ltd, or something, which is run by Rory, as I must learn to call him, and someone called Peter Fuller-Baird, the estate manager. She implied that she had financed its setting-up: ‘Some of the “family silver”, had to go, you know how it is.’ The company is paying for the conversion of the west wing into luxury guest suites, the establishing of a pick-your-own fruit farm and the stocking of the lake with trout. The fish will make their fortune, she says, people will pay hundreds of pounds a day to come and fish for trout at Marchmont, with everything catered for: food, accommodation, transport. The plans and schedule were very vague. ‘I don’t know what I would have done without Rory,’ she said, ‘he’s a marvel.’ The naivety is astounding. At one stage I noticed Richard make a signal to Rory and they both left the room. Rory returned alone ten minutes later.
ANNA MONTROSE. It felt strange lying in bed thinking of Alex in the Rose Room. But I was pleased Mamma had asked him: we could be friends now, I thought. Well, perhaps not friends – too much painful history – but we could see each other without anguish. Rory was very curious about how Alex had made his fortune. He analyses the movements of stock markets, I said, companies pay him for his advice and he writes reports about them that are published in funny financial journals with a circulation of about a hundred. How does that make you rich, he asked. You take your own advice, I said. So he’s a journalist. No, he’s an expert, I said. What’s he worth, Rory asked. I said I’d only heard rumours: millions, I suggested. Rory came and sat on the bed and took my hand. What a terrible mistake you made, he said, grinning. I reminded him I hadn’t had to make a choice: Alex had been long gone before I met you. Still, he said, imagine if you had all that money we wouldn’t be bothered with bloody trout and raspberries.
ALEXANDER TOBIAS. I met Frank Montrose about ten years ago, briefly, at a weekend twenty-first birthday party of a friend of mine from school. It was a grand party at his parents’ place in Perthshire. There was a shoot on the Friday and a ball on the Saturday. Frank Montrose was with, in every sense of the word, Hugo Stavordale. Both of them were wired for the whole weekend. There were a lot of drugs around generally and Hugo and Frank Montrose seemed to be supplying and consuming most of them. He wouldn’t remember me but I certainly remembered him. Hugo Stavordale died two years later – suicide, apparently. Frank Montrose was left a lot of money, Hugo’s flat in South Kensington and some paintings. The Stavordale family contested the will unsuccessfully. Frank Montrose went to live in Kenya in some style. That was the scandal and the gossip: and that was the last I’d heard of him until I met Rory.
LUCY DE VRIES. I woke up early and went for a walk. I saw Alex Tobias up on the scaffolding, poking about on the roof of the west wing, picking up bricks and lifting tiles. I didn’t think anything unusual about it. Maybe he knew a lot about building refurbishment.
LADY MARCHMONT. Actually, it was Rory who suggested that we bring Alex into Marchmont Enterprises. Alex knew the family, he said, he loved the house – who could be better. I thought it was a super idea. We would give him a substantial share of the business in return for some capital investment. Rory said he reckoned it was best if Anna asked him – just to see how the land lay. I thought it was a marvellous idea.
RICHARD MARCHMONT. Alex asked me if I fancied a game of tennis. I won’t play a ‘game’, I said, but I’ll give you a knock up. I got tired after about ten minutes – he’s clearly very fit, Alex – so we sat on the bench and smoked a cigarette. He started asking me about Rory, asking me if I’d ever heard of someone called Stavordale. I said no. There was something about his questioning that I didn’t like so I told him straight: Rory is a great man, I said. He saved my life and he’s keeping me pretty well clean and sober. I love him like a brother and I won’t hear a word said against him. That shut him up. Of all the emotions I detest in this world I think jealousy takes first prize.
LUCY DE VRIES. I played tennis with Alex. He was good. But I’m good too and we worked up quite a sweat. After the game I knew he was looking at me differently – we can always tell, you know. We smoked a cigarette and walked back to the house. I need a shower, he said. I put my hand on his bum and said: care to join me? I don’t know what made me quite so brazen. Anyway, it shook him up. I’m joking, I laughed, relax. Some other time, he said, but I could tell he didn’t mean it. Penny must have seen us and she caught me on the stairs to my room. Hands off, she said, he’s mine.
ALEXANDER TOBIAS. Things are becoming clearer. After lunch I had a chat with Lady Marchmont and dug out the information that the two Constable sketches had been sold and various bits of porcelain that her grandfather had brought back from China. They’d managed to raise about 150 grand. Probably 125,000 has gone into the pockets of Rory and his ‘partner’, Peter Fuller-Baird: certainly barely anything’s been spent on the west wing. Then she started talking about the mortgage. What mortgage, I asked. It turns out they mortgaged the estate for half a million two years ago. She started rambling on about how once the income from the fishing and the guest suites started flowing they’d be fine. We’ve had a lot of bad luck, she said: the first lot of trout they put into the lake all died; the west wing was rotten and damp and she had a shockingly big, wholly unexpected demand from Lloyd’s. The Marchmonts are plainly broke: it looks like everything is about to go down the pan.
PENELOPE MARCHMONT. I knew Lucy had the hots for Alex and I suppose that’s what made me do it. And the fact that I’d drunk about three bottles of wine. After supper I said to him let’s play a game of snooker. We went into the snooker room and he took the cover off the table. I didn’t know you played snooker, he said. I know how to play strip-snooker, I said. I was standing beside him and I kissed him. He broke us apart very gently. We can’t do this, Penny, he said. I started to cry – I was really drunk – why not, I said. Because of Anna. What’s Anna got to do with anything, I said. Anna’s a married woman. It doesn’t matter, he said. Then he left me. What did he mean: it didn’t matter?
ALEXANDER TOBIAS. After Penny tried to ‘seduce’ me I wasn’t really thinking straight and went downstairs instead of upstairs. I turned a corner and at the end of the corridor saw two men. I stopped. It was Rory and Richard. They were in each other’s arms. I couldn’t tell if they were kissing. I backed off. They never saw me. I went out into the garden for a smoke, wondering what to do. When I returned to the drawing room only Anna was there. What happened to you, she asked. Everyone’s gone to bed.
ANNA MONTROSE. It conceivabl
y wasn’t the ideal moment to bring up the question of money but I knew Rory wanted an answer as soon as possible and also it was probably the only chance I’d get to be alone with Alex. I poured him a brandy and we talked a bit about our missing four years. He seemed interested in how I’d met Rory. I told him about my holiday in Cape Town and the party. Oh, so it was South Africa, he said, not Kenya. How did you know he’d lived in Kenya, I asked. Something he mentioned – Alex was being very vague and evasive. I came and sat beside him on the sofa. Alex, there’s something I want to ask you. Don’t say yes, don’t say no, just think about it. So, I asked him. He sat very still and his face was expressionless. How much do you need, he said. I told him what Rory said was the absolute bottom line. I put my hand on his and said: just think about it Alex. You know us and we all love you, you know that. I’ve never seen Mamma so happy this weekend. And if we could get the house up and running, all together, wouldn’t it be amazing? Think of it as an investment, not a favour. You’d get your money back. Rory says we’ll be making a profit in a couple of years. And then he kissed me.
ALEXANDER TOBIAS. The trouble was she was wearing that black velvet dress that I remembered, with the scoop neck and the long lace sleeves. When she came and sat beside me on the sofa I thought I’d stop breathing, my lungs seemed made of brass, immovable. The brandy went down my throat like fire. They needed £200,000, cash. An injection of capital – she said it so sweetly. I was barely listening: I was just aware of her sitting that close to me. And I thought: four years ago, with everybody in bed, we’d have slid into each other’s arms and then gone up to the blue room and made love… That’s what made me kiss her. And she didn’t push me off. We kissed each other, her mouth opened and our tongues met and for a few seconds I felt my old life come back, as if nothing had changed – and then it disappeared when I broke away. Anna, I said – and I know my voice was trembling – you know that I love you. She sat there with her head bowed: I don’t blame you, Alex, but please don’t do that again. Please don’t make me – I stopped her and apologized. I had to get away from her. I said I would think about her proposition, give them an answer the next day.
ANNA MONTROSE. Rory was awake when I went up. I told him quickly what Alex had said so he wouldn’t sense my disequilibrium, my turmoil. Rory asked me if I thought Alex would do it and spontaneously I said yes. I don’t know why: perhaps because it was obvious what Alex felt for me – what he still felt for me and what he would do for me, if I asked him. I thought that if he could help me in any way, he would. Rory was incredibly relieved and said that, for someone like Alex, 200 grand was like a taxi fare, that it wasn’t as if we were asking him to mortgage his future to help us out. As I lay in bed I felt sad for Alex. After we’d kissed I couldn’t bring myself to look at him. I couldn’t see that blind devotion in his eyes, knowing all the time that I could never help him – that only he could help us.
ALEXANDER TOBIAS. I slept well. I woke early, had a bath and took a turn in the garden watching the sun rise. I felt good, confident, I knew exactly what to do. There was a heavy dew on the lawn and soon my feet were soaked. I looked round and Rory was standing on the terrace looking down at me. Shall we walk out with a couple of guns, he said. It’s a fantastic morning for it. He lent me some gum boots and an old jacket and we wandered off to North End Wood with one of the dogs, a setter with a limp. I felt very calm being alone with him, not at all uneasy. I knew that Anna would have told him what I’d said. For the first time since coming to Marchmont I felt that the power suddenly all resided with me. We had a couple of shots at some wood pigeons. We could have had any number of rabbits but Rory said Anna didn’t like us shooting rabbits, for some reason. Then he said: have you come to any kind of decision? And I said: not yet – Frank. He looked at me, oddly. Do you ever see anything of the Stavordales, I asked? And to my surprise he laughed, quite genuinely. You are a strange fellow, he said, keeping all this bottled up. I know all about you, I said, what you were, what you did, where you got your money. Does Anna know you were once called Frank? Of course, he said, she knows everything. It was my turn to laugh now. We headed back to the house. My name is Rory Francis Montrose, he said. When I went to Kenya I realized I wanted to change – didn’t want to be a Frank any more so I took up Rory again. My mother calls me Rory. He looked at me, very squarely, not a flicker of insecurity in his eye. I was almost impressed. Anna knows everything, he repeated. There’s nothing you can tell her she doesn’t know.
LUCY DE VRIES. I saw them coming out of the woods with their guns. It was like something out of a sporting print: two English gentlemen with their guns and dog. It was a fantastic, beautiful morning.
ANNA MONTROSE. I was dressed and just about to go down to breakfast when he knocked on the bedroom door. He was wearing the clothes he’d arrived in, which I thought was a bit strange. He started talking about Rory in a low intense voice. There are things you should know about him, he said. Then he went on and on about drugs, Rory’s gay past, that he had stolen money, the alleged suicide of Hugo Stavordale, that ‘Frank’ was his real name, and that even now he was having an affair with Richard. Then he grabbed me and began ranting about how he loved me, about how if I kicked Rory out he would do everything for this family. Renovate the house, pump money into the estate, everything. He kept saying that he had ruined his life and coming back to Marchmont had made him see what a disaster it had been to leave me. Tears filled his eyes. Think what I can do, he said, think what it would be like for us here at Marchmont. Divorce him, he said, I beg you: he’s scum, a worthless liar, he’s bleeding this family dry and he’s fucking your brother behind your back. Get rid of him, marry me and everything will be all right. I didn’t say anything: I let him spill it all out. Then I made him sit down. We’re just asking you to help, I said. We want you to share in everything. We’ll pay you back. But he wasn’t listening. Leave him, he kept saying, throw him out, be with me. I can’t be with you, I said. You can, he said, he stood up and reached for me again. I love you, Anna, he said, we have to spend the rest of our life together. I’m pregnant, I said.
ALEXANDER TOBIAS. He was so clever, Rory/Frank. He had an answer for everything. It was as if he’d brainwashed Anna. Poor, sad Anna. Love is blind, they say. Rory had sunk all his money into Marchmont, she said: if the family went down he would lose everything. She knew all about his life as ‘Frank’. He was young, he was wild, stupid – we all were. He was reconciled with the Stavordales. Richard was a damaged, sick person who leant on Rory for all emotional support. It was Rory who monitored his medication, and was weaning him off his anti-depressants, etc., etc. It made me sick. And I saw suddenly how I’d been used. The first major repayment of the loans fell due the following week. They were in hock up to their armpits. The bailiffs were at the gates, the banks poised to seize the estate. Do you happen to know any rich suckers? Rory must have said. Wasn’t it curious how Lady Marchmont just happened to be in the food hall? I never go to Harrods, so somebody must have been following me. Do come down for the weekend, Alex, Anna would love to see you…
I remembered I stopped the car before I reached the south lodge and had a look back at the park and the lake. The day’s promise had never materialized and the sky was filled with mousegrey clouds and the lake appeared cold and brackish, with a surface of tarnished steel. God, I thought to myself, what a farce. They can all rot in hell. I hope they lose every last penny. Rory and Anna and their brat. I drove back to London with the night coming on.
Visions Fugitives
‘Keep straight on, and shortly St Julien (St Julien-sur-Meuse) comes into view. The village (completely ruined) is reached after crossing first the railway and then the small River Andon. Motor cars can climb as far as the church. Turn to the right after passing the church. Numerous German dug-outs and gun emplacements can be observed here. Down the lane about three hundred yards from the village there comes into view on the side of the hill a very large American cemetery containing some 28,000 graves. There is
a fine view from here of the lower town and the valley of the Meuse (photo pp. 12 and 13).’
Paris. Yesterday. Watery November sunshine on glossy cobbles. A rime of sleet melted by breakfast. With sullen aplomb the waiter scooped our plates and coffee cups from the table. My daughter’s hands were raw and scraped from shucking four hundred oysters the night before, her knuckles freckled with tiny, brilliant, forming scabs. I saw, as she handed me back the letter and the old guidebook, that her fingernails were bitten half way down to the cuticle. She looked beautiful, I thought, but deadly tired, her beauty draining from her.
‘Who’s the little girl with Grandma?’ she asked. ‘No, Great-grandma.’
I took the photograph from her. ‘You look malnourished, Millie,’ I said. ‘It’s your Great-aunt Sarah.’
‘Malnourished… All chefs are malnourished,’ she laughed. My daughter had been working in Paris since the summer. ‘Do you know where you’re going?’
‘I’m heading for Metz.’
‘Well, drive carefully. What’s gotten into you, anyway? I thought you were on holiday. Is this wise?’
‘I am on holiday. I’m seeing you. And I’m going to St Julien. I have to be there on the 4th.’ I handed her a cutting from a French newspaper. ‘This was what inspired me.’