‘Decent,’ he said with a sneer. ‘Who wants decent? And Raymond is only interested in flowers, it seems to me. What kind of—’
‘Oh for heaven’s sake, Owen, you work in an art gallery. You’re neither of you exactly mountaineers or Arctic explorers. You can’t play the manly card when it comes to him so stop looking down your nose at him all the time.’
‘I don’t look down my nose at him, I just don’t like him sticking his nose in places where it doesn’t belong, that’s all.’
‘If it concerns me, it concerns him,’ she said sharply. ‘We are to be married and whatever happens from now on involves him.’ She hesitated, unsure whether she should say the next line or not but felt an uncommon urge to hurt him. ‘He loves me, after all,’ she said.
The smile drifted away from Montignac’s face. ‘Now I am starting to feel some sympathy for him,’ he said bitterly.
‘Owen—’
‘Look, I really have to get on if you don’t mind. I’m quite busy.’
‘There’s just one thing I wanted to ask you,’ she said, not moving away. ‘Something I was worried about. By your attitude last night, I mean.’
He raised an eyebrow and indicated that she could ask but he would not necessarily answer.
‘You’re not in any kind of trouble, are you?’ she said.
‘Trouble?’
‘Yes. I mean you don’t have any financial problems yourself? Anything I should know about?’
Montignac laughed and shook his head; he would never admit as much to her. ‘Not at all,’ he said. ‘Nothing I can’t handle anyway.’
‘Because I could always help you out if you did,’ she said. ‘I mean obviously you know the terms of the will. I can’t sell anything or touch the capital. But I have a healthy income. You only have to ask, you know.’
Montignac tried to control his temper. The temptation was so strong, to simply say yes, to throw himself on her mercy, to allow her to save him.
‘I’m fine,’ he said. ‘I don’t need your money.’
‘That’s what it’s all about, isn’t it?’ she asked in frustration. ‘The fact that it’s my money. I don’t know what Father was thinking of, changing things.’
‘But aren’t you glad he did?’ he asked with a smile and she didn’t have an opportunity to answer because at that moment Jason Parsons came clambering up the stairs and informed his boss that the delivery men would be there within the hour and they had to make sure that one of the downstairs walls was cleared in time.
8
LIKE ALL RIGHT-THINKING SONS, Gareth Bentley thrived on spurning as many of the opportunities that his father had offered him in life as possible but he was sensible enough to hold on to those ones which might benefit him in some way. His rent-free home represented one such advantage. His free food and laundry service was another. And a third lay in the form of his membership to White’s Club in StJames’s, an exclusive establishment for gentlemen and the sons of gentlemen, where the complimentary newspapers were all laid out on a side table every morning, the whisky was a touch on the expensive side but never less than a dozen years old and where they did a perfectly decent grilled salmon with baby potatoes, green beans and fresh herbs at lunchtime at a very reasonable price. Gareth had been coming here on and off since his twenty-first birthday three years earlier, when Roderick Bentley and another senior judge had sponsored him for membership and he found it a pleasant and relaxing way to while away a few idle hours while his bedlinen was being changed.
The gentlemen who attended White’s were almost all professional men, barristers and solicitors, doctors and politicians, even the odd novelist and philosopher. They sat around in book-lined, oak-panelled drawing rooms in leather wing-backed chairs, smoking pipes and cigars, and discussing what was wrong with the world, the government, the French and the young, in that order. There were fifteen handsome bedrooms available on the third and fourth floor but they had to be booked well in advance as there was always great demand for them. It goes without saying that ladies were not to be entertained.
‘Good afternoon, Mr Bentley,’ said Kenneth Milton, the on-duty porter that afternoon as he arrived. ‘Nice to see you again, sir.’
‘Afternoon, Milton,’ he replied, handing over his coat and hat. It had been almost a week since he’d last been there and he felt a sense of tranquillity as he looked into the parlours beyond, which were about one third full at this time of the day. He had spent many happy afternoons here since graduating from Cambridge with his lower second; it represented a pleasant respite from home and the answering of difficult questions regarding his future. ‘I wonder,’ he asked. ‘Have you noticed Mr Keys arriving today? Alexander Keys?’
Milton looked down at his ledger and ran a finger along the list of names. ‘Yes, you’re in luck, sir,’ he said. ‘Mr Keys arrived about a half an hour ago.’
‘Oh, excellent,’ said Gareth.
‘He’s probably in the lounge, sir, or perhaps upstairs in the large drawing room.’
Gareth nodded and made his way through the doors, scanning the faces and seeing one or two nodding acquaintances as he went along. He recognized a celebrated actor who had recently achieved an unexpected triumph in motion pictures in Hollywood and who was celebrating by divorcing his wife; he noticed a former prime minister, sitting alone in his dotage, having difficulty refuelling his pipe. Then, seated in the corner with a confused expression on his face, immersed in a thick novel, he spotted his friend Alexander Keys.
‘Hello there,’ he said as Alexander looked up at him.
‘Oh hello, Gareth,’ he replied. ‘Didn’t expect to see you here today. How’s the head?’
‘Not too bad, all things considered. I tried not to drink too much.’
‘I noticed that,’ said Alexander. ‘I was very impressed by your willpower, despite old Jasper’s best efforts. What brings you here anyway?’
‘Escaping home,’ he said, as the well-trained waiter brought him a pot of tea immediately. ‘Hoped I might run into you actually. What’s that you’re reading?’ he asked as he lowered himself into the chair opposite.
‘It’s a new novel I’ve got to plough my way through,’ said Alexander. ‘By a fellow from Sheffield, if you please. A coal miner’s son. Still, takes all sorts, I suppose.’
‘Oh yes? What’s it about then?’
‘Who knows,’ replied Alexander with a shrug. ‘Five hundred and fifty pages long, all written in one paragraph without punctuation or dialogue, just this sort of internal monologue going on in the mind of the narrator.’
‘Sounds hideous,’ said Gareth with a shiver.
‘You have no idea,’ said Alexander with a sigh. ‘I’ve been stuck on page one hundred and forty-three for half an hour now and I can’t for the life of me figure out what’s going on. I read every sentence carefully, I try to place it in context with what’s come before but I just can’t comprehend a word of it. And I have to have five hundred words on it ready by tomorrow evening.’
‘Painful work,’ said Gareth. ‘Will you pan it?’
‘Oh good Lord no,’ replied Alexander, shaking his head. ‘They’ll be teaching it in the universities in a few years’ time I daresay. I better not say anything negative about it or they’ll say there goes the fellow who criticized the genius du jour. It’ll be a difficult one, though, especially since I don’t understand a word of it. This is a novel that defies simple explanation, I shall say. And to summarize such a fatuous concept as plot would be an insult to the art of the novelist. Then I’ll throw in a few things about metaphor and so on—’
‘That internal monologue line was rather good,’ suggested Gareth.
‘Yes, I’ll use that. I’ll make it all sound terribly clever and everyone will be happy.’
‘Except the poor slobs who spend their one and sixpence buying the masterpiece.’
‘Well yes,’ admitted Alexander. ‘But that’s no fault of mine, now is it? They should know better than to listen to me.’
>
Gareth nodded and smiled as he looked around the room. He could see a man he knew to be a retired Home Secretary snoozing in a corner with a cigar hanging out of his mouth and a thin line of drool tracing a path like a slowly creeping slug along his chin, and he looked away immediately in disgust. At another there were two men playing a game of cards which brought back bad memories of the previous night’s misadventure. Alexander noticed where his gaze was and picked up on it.
‘Bad luck on that thirty pounds of yours last night,’ he said. ‘Jasper’s a swine for encouraging people to throw their money away. Never wastes any of his own, mind you.’
‘Yes,’ said Gareth. ‘I could have done without it, that’s for sure.’
‘Well you live and learn. You’ll know not to gamble with quite such high stakes next time. Never been much of a roulette man myself to be honest. It’s all too based on chance. I prefer a good game of poker or whist. Something with a little skill attached to it.’
‘I don’t think I have the temperament to be a gambler,’ said Gareth.
‘Wouldn’t look good for the newest member of the Rice Chambers to be caught in such a place either, I imagine,’ said Alexander with a laugh. ‘Still, it was your birthday.’
‘Well actually, Alexander, that’s what I wanted to talk to you about,’ said Gareth. ‘You remember me telling you how unhappy I was about joining the family firm?’
‘Yes.’
‘Well after I left the Unicorn last night I was waiting for a taxicab and I ran into that other friend of yours, Montignac, and we got talking.’
‘Ran into him?’ asked Alexander. ‘You fairly bounded out of the place after him, didn’t you?’
‘No,’ said Gareth, frowning. ‘It was time for me to leave anyway.’
There was only a slight hesitation on Alexander’s part as he took this in; after a moment he nodded his head. ‘Well he’s a good fellow, Montignac,’ he said.
‘Certainly seems to be,’ said Gareth. ‘We shared a taxi back home. He’s in Bedford Place and I’m in Tavistock Square so it was quite convenient.’
‘Yes I know,’ said Alexander. ‘I’ve never been to his flat there but I’ve been to Leyville many times. That’s his family seat, you know.’
‘I heard. How well do you know him anyway?’
‘Owen? Oh we go back a long way,’ said Alexander, trying to recall. ‘I think we met when we were … let me see … about seven years old. At Eton. We shared a room right through school. Became very close friends.’
‘Oh, I didn’t realize you knew him that well. I thought he was just an acquaintance.’
‘Well the thing about Owen Montignac is that no one really knows him that well,’ explained Alexander. ‘He’s always been something of a closed book. Used to get bullied mercilessly in the first few years of school. On account of his accent, I mean.’
‘His accent?’ asked Gareth. ‘I didn’t notice any accent.’
‘That’s because he learned to shake it off. He’s French by birth, you see. Spent the first few years of his life there if I have it right. I think his uncle took him in when he was about five or six, after his parents died. But when he first came to school he still spoke with a sort of French twist and he got ribbed about it constantly by the other fellows. Name-calling and so on. There were one or two fights as I recall.’ Alexander thought about it, trying not to recall certain incidents when he had perhaps let himself down in this respect. ‘Of course, after a few years he grew tired of being bullied and started to fight back and then there was … well an incident of sorts, and it all stopped.’
‘An incident?’
Alexander opened and closed his mouth nervously. He was not, by nature, a gossip and didn’t like talking about people behind their backs. He particularly didn’t like talking about Owen Montignac as he considered him his best friend and had always rather feared his volatility, that temper of his he had witnessed on only a few occasions.
‘One of the boys went a little far with the name-calling,’ said Alexander dismissively. ‘And Owen rather saw red over the whole thing. It was all a long time ago of course. There was an altercation of sorts. Quite a bit of trouble. But old Peter Montignac made sure that he kept his place.’
Gareth frowned and considered this; it had echoes of his own misadventure at Harrow, an incident that had clouded his life for some years.
‘Oh for heaven’s sake don’t look like that,’ said Alexander, attempting a laugh. ‘That was fifteen years ago. We were all just children. Owen’s a magnificent character, you know. A good friend to have.’
‘He gave me his card,’ said Gareth, ‘which said something about an art gallery on it. But my mother said the Montignacs are involved in land.’
‘His uncle was. His grandfather too. And his father, I imagine, before he was sent away. But Owen doesn’t have anything to do with that, I don’t think. He probably would have expected to, of course, but like he told us last night, the old man left it all to Stella.’
‘His cousin?’
‘Yes. Also a fine girl. I should introduce you sometime.’
Gareth shrugged, as if that was neither here nor there. ‘The thing is,’ he explained. ‘As we were driving home we talked a little about my … unwillingness to join my father in chambers and he suggested that he might have a position for me.’
‘Really? At the gallery?’
‘Well he didn’t specify. He just said that I should come down and talk to him some day and he might have one or two ideas.’
Alexander hesitated for a moment but couldn’t see any harm in it. ‘Well I think that’s splendid,’ he said. ‘I think you should take him up on his offer. Like I told you, he’s a magnificent fellow. My very best friend.’ He used the word ‘best’ rather than ‘closest’, as it was difficult for him to imagine anyone being very close, emotionally speaking, to Owen Montignac.
‘Right,’ said Gareth, pleased with the result of this conversation. ‘Well that’s all right then. I just wanted to check him out really before throwing in my lot with him.’
‘Well I wouldn’t throw too much in with him if I was you,’ said Alexander cautiously. ‘I mean not under my recommendation at least. Just play it carefully.’
Gareth frowned. ‘Carefully?’ he asked. ‘Why do you say that?’
‘For the same reason that you should take any new opportunity carefully,’ he replied, thinking that was quite a good reason for his hesitancy. ‘Talk to him by all means. See what he has in mind. But think it through. You studied law for several years, you know, Gareth, it does seem rather foolish just to—’
‘Everyone says that,’ insisted Gareth, his voice rising a little in frustration. ‘But do you know, the thing I dread the most in the world, the thing that keeps me awake at night, is the idea that five years from now I’ll be doing something I don’t want to do, be with someone I don’t want to be with, just because I’m too frightened to actually be the man I really am. If that happened, if I turned out like that…’ He shook his head slowly at the idea. ‘Well I’d rather die than have that happen to me.’
Alexander bit his lip. ‘I think you need to be careful then, Gareth,’ he said. ‘Don’t expect too much from Owen.’
‘I believe I’ll talk to him,’ he said quickly. ‘He struck me as a very interesting character.’
‘Oh he is that all right.’
‘Thanks, Alexander,’ he said, standing up. ‘I’ll let you get back to your book.’
‘Do you have to?’ he asked with a groan. ‘I’m worried that the more I read the closer I’ll come to having an aneurysm.’
Gareth smiled, patted him on the shoulder and walked back to retrieve his coat and hat. Alexander watched him for a few moments, wondering why Montignac would have offered a job to a complete stranger. It seemed quite out of character for him. And then, before returning to page one hundred and forty-three, he spent several minutes convincing himself that, unlike the novels he spent so much time reading and reviewing, everyt
hing would turn out fine in the end and that there was nothing for him to worry about at all.
9
‘YOU MAKE A START on it,’ Montignac told Jason Parsons, who wanted help in clearing the paintings off one of the walls in order to prepare for the new delivery. ‘That’s what you’re paid for, isn’t it?’
‘It’s a two-man job,’ he protested. ‘Some of those pieces are too heavy to handle on my own.’
Montignac sighed and ran a hand across his eyes in frustration. ‘Well just get going with the smaller ones for the moment then,’ he said. ‘And I’ll be with you in a few minutes, all right?’
Jason stared at him irritably, wanting to protest but lacking the confidence to do so, and made his way back down the stairs, muttering as he went.
‘I should probably go,’ said Stella, who had been watching out the window at the street below while the two men talked, filled with the kind of tension she had hoped would never exist between her and her cousin again. ‘I can see you’re busy.’
‘A little bit, but it’s all right,’ said Montignac. ‘I am sorry about last night, you know,’ he added in a neutral tone after a moment.
Stella stared at him, unsure whether he was being sincere or not. ‘If you’d just give Raymond a chance,’ she began hurriedly but he cut her off.
‘If it makes you happy, then I’ll try,’ he said. ‘Although I doubt that I’ll be seeing all that much of him, will I?’
‘Why not?’
‘Well I’ll have to spend most of my time in London, working. While you’ll be down at Leyville. And I don’t think that Raymond and I are going to be meeting up in town to go to the theatre together anytime soon.’
‘Don’t suddenly stop coming down, though,’ said Stella. ‘Leyville’s your home too.’
‘Is it?’
‘You know it is. For pity’s sake, Owen, haven’t we always made you feel welcome there?’
Montignac stared at her, amazed that she could say something so insensitive. The thing that Stella seemed so keen to forget was that the house, by rights, should have come to his father and not hers, and thereafter to him. For after all, Henry had been the elder of the two boys.