‘You can’t go, Owen,’ she said. ‘We haven’t finished discussing things yet. We’ve barely begun.’
‘I’m sorry, but we’ll have to pick it up another time,’ he said. ‘I have important business to attend to.’
‘More important than this?’
‘Stella,’ he said quietly, equally tired with their ongoing battle. ‘The world doesn’t run to your timetable, you know.’
‘I don’t expect it to,’ she said, insulted. ‘But I wish I could just pin you down for five minutes and talk about what happens next. You seem so angry with me. The way you’re behaving anyone would think that I’d planned all of this.’
‘Would they,’ he stated in a matter-of-fact voice, looking her directly in the eye. ‘What an absurd idea.’
‘Look here, old fellow,’ said Raymond, using that phoney Englishman-in-Africa syntax that he’d picked up from the most recent Waugh. ‘All the old girl’s trying to say is—’
‘Drop round to the gallery tomorrow,’ Montignac said to his cousin. ‘Around lunchtime. We can talk then. Just the two of us.’ He ignored both Raymond’s interruption and his presence as if he was nothing more than a hovering maître d’, waiting to find out whether they wanted teas or coffees to finish.
‘Well you better be there,’ said Stella as he stood up. ‘If I arrive and you’ve gone off somewhere for the day—’
‘I’ll be there,’ he promised, attempting a smile, trying to avoid noticing how magnificent she looked in her new gown—an expensive, dark red taffeta dress that she had bought earlier in the day. ‘And we’ll talk then. Alone,’ he repeated for emphasis.
Leaving Claridge’s at breakneck speed, he stood outside on the street for a few minutes, trying to recover his composure, counting to ten to prevent himself from going back inside and dragging Raymond Davis out on to the street with him, or down some back alley to show him what happened to fools who thought they could come between him and Stella. A light drizzle began to threaten and he made his way along Brook Street, looking for a quiet bar where he might settle his nerves.
A few minutes later he was relaxing in the Duck and Dog with a large whisky, quietly watching a game of feathers being played by two middle-aged men opposite. The bar was half empty and he noticed a large man, tall and heavy in a dark suit, enter and look around before smiling at him for a moment and walking over towards the bar. He glanced around again, checking to see what Montignac was drinking, said something to the barman, and a moment later started to walk towards him with a glass in each hand.
‘Whisky’s your drink, I’m told,’ he said. ‘Here’s a top-up,’ he added, handing one across and keeping one for himself.
Montignac’s eyes narrowed. He looked across at the door and wondered whether he should just stand up and leave. Whether he would even be allowed. He didn’t touch the drink.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘Do I know you?’
‘You’ve met me before.’
‘I have?’ Montignac tried to recall; he was sure he would remember such a mountain of a man. ‘I’m sorry, I don’t—’
‘I work for Nicholas Delfy,’ said the man. ‘He was hoping that you might be able to pay him a visit this evening.’
Montignac felt his stomach sink a little. ‘Nicholas,’ he said quietly, considering it, pretending that it was difficult for him to remember who Nicholas Delfy actually was, his life being so full of important and powerful people that a few were always likely to slip through the cracks. ‘Yes of course. Nicholas. I haven’t spoken to him in quite some time.’
‘I believe that’s what he’s concerned about,’ said the man. ‘Perhaps he misses your company.’
Montignac smiled, although it wasn’t comforting that the man had a sense of humour. ‘Well you can tell him that he’s on my list,’ said Montignac hopefully. ‘I have a busy couple of days coming up but I’ll try to make it in to see him on Friday if that’s convenient.’
‘Friday,’ said the man in a neutral tone.
‘Yes.’
‘Morning or afternoon?’ he asked.
‘Oh, let’s say afternoon,’ said Montignac, finishing his own drink but ignoring the one the man had bought for him. ‘About three o’clock?’
He stood up and the man stood too, his face relaxing into a mocking smile.
‘Mr Delfy would like to see you tonight,’ he said in a tone which suggested that he wasn’t going to take no for an answer.
Montignac nodded, recognizing the futility of trying to escape. ‘Fine,’ he said, reaching down and finishing the second drink in one mouthful. ‘Shall we go then?’
Twenty minutes later they pulled up outside the front doors of the Unicorn Ballrooms and marched straight past the doorman with only a quick exchange of nods between the two employees. In the dully lit corridor beyond, Montignac caught sight of his own reflection in one of the mirrors and the burst of white hair on his head stood out like a beacon in the darkness.
He had been to the club on many, many occasions in the past but had been deliberately avoiding it over the previous five or six weeks. Even at night, when he had the urge to drink or gamble, or the sudden thirsting need for a woman, he had stayed away. He’d written a letter to Delfy on the morning of his uncle’s funeral the previous month and that had been the only communication between the two during that time and, although he hardly dared to believe it, he had started to think that Delfy might have forgotten about him entirely and the matter would be dropped. It was a foolish thought, however; the debt was far too large to be simply written off. In fact, he had been waiting for just such a visit as the large man had made to the bar tonight—he must have been observing him from earlier in the evening and he was grateful that he hadn’t made his presence felt at Claridge’s—and knew that the inevitable could be put off no longer.
He didn’t look around as they went down the stairs to the bar area but could hear from the sounds of conversation and laughter around him that most of the booths were full. He could make out the distinctive whirring of the roulette tables in the distance, a sound that was like an addictive music to him, and remembered the first night he had ever come here, almost two years earlier, when he had entered the casino with just over a hundred pounds in his pocket and left having increased it fivefold. He’d gone home that night, enraptured by his success, and even started to make calculations of just how much money he could make at the tables if he devoted himself to them for a few hours every night, a wealth that could accumulate over five or six years into a figure that could rival even that of his uncle’s bank account.
Of course, that first night was the last time he had left as a winner.
Montignac felt like a prisoner being led to the scaffold as they reached the end of the corridor. The man who had escorted him to the Unicorn Ballrooms moved him slightly out of the way, rapped on the door of the office and opened it, pushing his charge inside before closing the door again and taking up his position outside.
‘Owen,’ said Nicholas Delfy, looking up from his paperwork. ‘I thought we’d have to send out the cavalry to track you down.’
4
STELLA MONTIGNAC AND RAYMOND Davis returned to her suite on the top floor of Claridge’s, having said little to each other along the way. During the walk from the table to the lobby, and again on the stairs and corridors that led to her room, Raymond had been expecting her to turn to him and give him the signal that it was time for him to depart for his own flat in Chelsea; he was unsure now whether she hadn’t suggested it because she desired him or simply because she was too exhausted by the events of the evening to even remember that he was there, trailing behind her like an attentive puppy dog.
‘Pour me a drink, Raymond, would you?’ Stella asked as he closed the door of the suite behind them. He nodded and walked over to the bar while she collapsed on the sofa for a moment before standing up again and pacing the floor like an expectant father. She let out a sigh of frustration. ‘That bloody boy,’ she added after a moment.
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‘A glass of wine, darling?’ asked Raymond.
‘Vodka and tonic,’ she said. ‘Plenty of vodka. Light on the tonic.’
He nodded and poured the drink. He’d felt all along that it was a mistake for him to join the cousins for dinner that evening but Stella had insisted and any opportunity to spend time with her was something he was only too happy to go along with. The look on Montignac’s face when he had walked in and seen him sitting there, however, had told a different story.
‘I don’t know what to do,’ said Stella as he handed her the glass. ‘I simply don’t know what to do for the best.’
‘He is a tricky customer,’ replied Raymond, unwilling to criticize him outright for he had learned before that only Stella claimed the right to do that.
‘He’s more than tricky, Raymond,’ said Stella irritably. ‘He’s downright difficult.’
‘Well you must remember the whole thing has come as an enormous shock to him. I wouldn’t say he was looking forward to profiting from your father’s death exactly—’
‘Raymond, don’t!’
‘No, I don’t mean profit,’ he said, correcting himself quickly. ‘But he may have had certain plans laid out for his future. Things that he was hoping to do. I mean when the contents of the will were read, it had to have come as a most unexpected blow.’
Stella gave a brief laugh. ‘You have no idea,’ she said. ‘You should have been in the room with us. His face went even whiter than his hair.’
Raymond poured himself a drink and sat down opposite her. They had known each other for almost a year and a half now, having met through mutual friends on Ladies’ Day at Ascot. Raymond had fallen for her immediately; on any day she was a stunning girl but dressed to the nines with a hat that was the envy of most of the crowd, he had been unable to take his eyes off her. It had become something of a joke between them that he had missed most of the races that afternoon, and even the fact that he had had a 16/1 winner and filled a four-horse accumulator, because he was too busy staring at her.
For her part Stella liked to play along and tell him that she had liked him immediately too but for the life of her, and she tried very hard, she couldn’t remember that first introduction. She recalled being at the races, of course, and she remembered her friends introducing her to some new people, but then that happened all the time and really, as she told herself, how could she possibly hope to keep them all straight in her head?
But Raymond had done a most extraordinary thing, out of character for him and totally unexpected for her. He had called on her at Leyville a few days later, claiming to have been in the area, and offered to take her to lunch.
‘It’s Raymond Davis,’ he said, extending his hand, quick to give her his name in order to avoid the embarrassment of her having to ask for it. ‘We met at Ascot, don’t you remember?’
‘Of course I remember,’ she lied. ‘It was a lovely day and you were perfectly charming.’
‘We said we should have lunch some day. If I was ever down here. And here I am. Down here,’ he added nervously.
‘Well then, we should have lunch,’ she said, for he seemed a personable enough chap and a girl had to eat after all. ‘Let me just get my coat.’
They had taken a stroll down to the local village and dined in the restaurant there where Raymond had told her all about his own background. His father was retired from the navy, where he had been an admiral, and his two older brothers held various ranks there now. One of them was currently stationed somewhere in the Caribbean, near an island whose name he could never remember.
‘You didn’t want to join up?’ asked Stella.
‘I don’t like the water,’ said Raymond apologetically, which made her laugh. ‘I can’t even swim. So it seemed a little pointless.’
‘I bet that went down well with the family,’ she said with a smile. Raymond had found in the past that most girls lost interest in him when he admitted to failings like this but Stella, always contrary to most girls, seemed to think it a point in his favour.
‘Not very well,’ he admitted. ‘I am something of the black sheep.’
Her smile faded a little and she looked out the window to where some noisy children were being allowed to run wild. ‘Every family has one of them,’ she said. ‘Or creates one for themselves anyway.’
‘I don’t mind too much,’ he said, sounding like a man who minded rather a lot.
‘So what do you do then?’ she asked.
‘I studied for a degree in botany,’ he told her. ‘And I’m currently working at the Royal Horticultural Society in London, researching and propagating some new species of roses. Hybrid Teas, mostly. Some floribundas and climbers. It’s tremendously interesting.’
‘Flowers,’ she said, simplifying things rather.
‘Well … yes,’ he admitted with a nod. ‘I mean there’s rather more to it than that, of course, but I suppose at its most basic level … it’s flowers, yes.’
Stella leaned forward and took his hand for a moment, squeezing it tightly, and he opened his eyes wide, surprised and thrilled by the intimacy. ‘I think that must have been a very brave choice,’ she said, as if he had just admitted to a perversion he was hoping to conquer, before releasing him and leaning back in her chair.
‘Do you … do you do anything?’ he asked after a few moments, once he had managed to compose himself again. ‘For a living, I mean.’
‘Good Lord, no,’ she said, laughing a little at the thought of it. ‘Nothing at all. There was talk a year or two ago of me getting a career but in the end it came to nothing. Nothing appealed to me, you see. I try to keep busy by doing some charity work of course. I ran a tombola last summer at Leyville to help provide medicine to the children of miners in the North-East and it was a tremendous success. And earlier this year I raised almost three thousand pounds for the local hospital by organizing a village fête. My father’s very wealthy, of course.’
‘Yes, I know,’ said Raymond, instantly regretting the way that sentence had come out; it made him sound like a gold-digger. ‘Mine is pretty well off too,’ he added then in order to atone for it, and then worried that he was coming across as competitive. ‘And you have brothers, I suppose?’
Stella shook her head. ‘I had one brother,’ she told him. ‘Andrew. But he died when he was eighteen. A shooting accident.’
‘I’m sorry,’ said Raymond.
She shrugged her shoulders and looked away for a moment. She had become immune to people saying that whenever the subject came up.
‘So there’s just you?’ he asked.
‘Well, no,’ she told him. ‘I have a cousin, Owen, who lives with us. He’s a few months younger than me. I suppose he’s more of a brother in a way. He came to us when he was five, just after his parents died and he’s been with us ever since. We were all very close as children, actually.’
‘And what does he do?’ asked Raymond.
‘He studied history of art at Cambridge,’ said Stella. ‘He took a first and then got his master’s in record time. And now he’s working at an art gallery in London. I’ve been there. It’s very contemporary, and Father says it’s all rot of course. They don’t allow anything in that was produced before nineteen hundred.’
‘Really?’ asked Raymond in surprise. ‘And has there been any decent art produced over the last thirty years?’
‘None whatsoever,’ said Stella, breaking into a laugh. ‘But it’s awfully good fun looking at the rubbish that gets put on show there all the same. Everyone’s afraid to criticize it because no one wants to appear old-fashioned. So they sell these dreadful canvasses for huge amounts of money and Cousin Owen pockets a fairly decent commission, I imagine. Not that he’s in it for the money of course. Nothing as vulgar as that. I think he quite enjoys his job. He seems committed to it anyway.’
‘Well, we all need money,’ said Raymond with a smile.
‘Not Owen. He stands to inherit the entire Montignac fortune. The Montignacs always inherit on the
male line,’ she explained. ‘Right through our ancestry. They’ve never let a girl take over the estate, the sexist swine. It should have gone to Andrew, of course, but since he died … well Owen’s stood as heir ever since. His father was my father’s elder brother. He was cut off in a scandal years before I was born but then he died during the war and there was nothing else my father could do but take the boy in. And he’s very fond of him.’
Raymond nodded; he wasn’t particularly interested in the financial operations of the Montignac family but he enjoyed watching her talk about them because it gave him an excuse to stare directly at her. As usual she was wearing very little make-up and her porcelain-like skin made him want to reach across and touch her, like one might have the urge to stroke a sheet of satin in a fabric shop. Stella turned away from the window and looked across at him, narrowing her eyes for a moment as if she was deciding something for herself.
‘I suppose we might start seeing more of each other from now on then,’ she said decisively and he nodded quickly and that was that.
In the eighteen months since then they had officially established themselves as a couple. They spent much of their time in London where Stella lived the charmed life of a lady of leisure during the day and by night they went to plays and restaurants with their friends. From time to time—and Raymond could never predict when—Stella would invite him to stay in her suite with her and they would make love so passionately that he couldn’t understand why he was so quickly dismissed again the following morning. She wasn’t the only girl he had ever been with but he couldn’t imagine another any more, despite the fact that there remained something of an emotional distance between them, a wall that she wouldn’t allow him to climb over.
‘I don’t like talking about love affairs,’ she told him once. ‘I did it once, a long time ago, and it was very nearly the death of me. Quite literally.’
He tried to press her on this former romance but she was close-mouthed about it and he had since stopped trying.