Lord and Master

by Kait Jagger

  ‘Oh, my dear, that looks lovely,’ her Ladyship said, putting down her Harrods bags and removing her leather gloves.

  Isabelle, meanwhile, collapsed dramatically on the sofa and announced, ‘I am literally gasping. Get us some tea, will you, Luna?’

  ‘Bella!’ Lady Wellstone said sharply. ‘You forget yourself.’ To a doe-eyed show of bafflement from her younger daughter, who looked at her as if to say, I’m just treating the help like the help, Mummy.

  During the second week of Stefan’s absence the entire family went off to the estate’s hunting lodge near Loch Lomond, a suggestion from Florian that he and his brother take one last opportunity to go salmon fishing before the season ended. Luna was surprised, really, at how much time Florian had been spending with the family lately. He and his Lordship had a somewhat strained relationship even at the best of times, particularly given that Lady Wellstone and Florian didn’t get on, but Florian seemed to be genuinely making an effort.

  Luna was returning from her morning run the day after the family left when her mobile rang. Smiling at the name on her caller ID, she answered, ‘Sören! This is an unexpected pleasure.’

  ‘My very lovely friend Luna, how are you?’

  ‘I’m well, and you?’

  ‘Very well, very well.’

  At which Luna laughed and said, ‘You sound exactly like your son. Or is it he who sounds like you?’

  ‘Oh, he like me for sure. What is it you English say, the acorn doesn’t fall far from the tree?’

  It occurred to Luna that she had no idea whether Stefan had told his father of their involvement, and even if he had she didn’t want Sören thinking she was some silly girl who lived to talk about his son. Reverting to business mode, she said, ‘So, Sören, what can I do for you?’

  ‘Ah, this is the right question, Luna. I have phoned to ask you for a very big favour. My associate Dagmar and I have scheduled a meeting with a potential supplier for my business, a gentleman travelling down from Scotland to London to meet with us. And I would like to have the meeting at Arborage, if I may…’

  Sören told her that this supplier was based in the Shetlands and raised a rare breed of sheep that produced wool of extraordinary quality. Dagmar, who was one of Sören’s buyers, wanted to establish an exclusive relationship with him for a new range of men’s outerwear for his stores. ‘As is so often the case with small suppliers, this is more tricky than it first appears,’ Sören explained. ‘So Dagmar and I want to meet him, woo him a little.’

  Luna nodded and pulled out her notepad. Sören Lundgren was the one person on earth with whom she believed the Marchioness would happily share her PA’s services, so it was with no hesitation that she got to work making arrangements for the meeting.

  Dagmar Bergqvist turned out to be a tall, angular woman with red hair, eyebrows and eyelashes so light they looked blond. She struck Luna as painfully shy, though that could also have been the language barrier – unlike practically every other Swede Luna had met, Dagmar’s grasp of English was tenuous.

  ‘Thank you,’ she said to Luna when she came to meet her at the portico on Thursday morning. Looking out onto the lawn, she added, ‘This will be good for our meeting.’

  ‘I hope so,’ Luna said with a smile. ‘I’ll show you where you’ll be dining, shall I?’

  Luna had arranged for them to use the restaurant in the old stable block, usually closed in the evenings but available for private hire. With its exposed brick walls and reclaimed oak floors, she thought it set the right tone. ‘But we’ve also arranged for a private tour of the house. Would you like to take the tour as well, Ms Bergqvist?’

  ‘No, not for me, old English houses,’ Dagmar replied. And Luna chose not to take offence, in view of the language barrier and the fact that Dagmar reminded her of a certain awkward sixteen-year-old Swedish boy she used to know.

  Still, she had to admit that she was relieved when Sören finally arrived in the mid-afternoon. Dressed in a lovely ankle-length black wool coat and an olive tweed suit underneath, he was slightly shorter and thinner than his son, but otherwise very much like him, with the same bright blue eyes and easy smile.

  ‘Beautiful Luna, our saviour,’ he exclaimed, kissing her on both cheeks and hugging her for good measure. Again, like his son, Sören had natural charisma, one of those people others liked to be around – the office actually seemed to become a few degrees warmer with him in it.

  ‘When did you grow this?’ Luna laughed, gesturing to his slight goatee.

  ‘Ah, what do you think? I am trying facial hair on for size. My son, he does not approve and I am not so sure myself. You see how grey it is,’ he said, rubbing his chin. ‘It gives my age away.’

  ‘No, I think it’s very attractive. Don’t listen to your son.’

  It was extremely gratifying, as it always was for Luna with first-time visitors to Arborage, seeing the overawed expression on the supplier’s face when he walked up the portico steps two hours later. He had arrived at the perfect time of day, with the sky tinted purple in the sunset, reflecting off the windows in the west wing. Luna and Sören had come out to meet him, Dagmar having decided to join them later in the stable restaurant. Holding out his hand to Sören, the supplier said, ‘The photos I’ve seen of Arborage don’t do it justice.’

  ‘I’m glad you like it. My family is very proud of its heritage here,’ Sören said.

  After handing them over to Roland for their tour, Luna retired to her rooms, waiting until 9.30 to go check on them in the restaurant. They were seated at a small table near a window overlooking the cobbled courtyard, decked out in twinkling fairy lights for the festive season.

  ‘I hope you’ll at least consider our proposal, Malcolm,’ Sören was saying as Luna came to stand behind him. The supplier, a large, slightly florid man, smiled noncommittally. Dagmar, meanwhile, looked as if she’d been sitting on the edge of her seat all night.

  On a larger table next to them, the supplier had laid out several sample books and swatches. He saw Luna looking at them and smiled at her. ‘May I look?’ she asked.

  ‘Of course,’ he said, standing and joining her. Luna could practically feel Dagmar sagging with relief behind them, exchanging a few words in Swedish with Sören. The samples were a variety of chunky wool fabrics in various natural shades, including a lustrous black she thought she recognised.

  ‘This is what your coat is made of, isn’t it?’ she asked Sören, who smiled and nodded.

  ‘The coat is a prototype, one we’d like to produce on a larger scale,’ he said.

  ‘It’s incredibly soft,’ Luna marvelled, stroking the fabric. ‘It hardly even feels like wool…’

  The supplier grinned broadly at that, rocking up onto his toes. ‘It’s the breed of sheep we raise. And our finishing process for the wool, of course…’

  Sören shrugged eloquently when Luna asked him, after the other two had left for their hotel, how the meeting went.

  ‘The tour and meal were perfect, and thank you again for arranging these. I don’t think Malcolm is convinced by our proposal, but…sometimes they go not so well, these initial meetings. The trick is to persevere.’

  This was so like something Stefan had once said that Luna had to stop herself from remarking on it. Sören gestured to the bottle of Cabernet on the table, which was three-quarters full.

  ‘It seems a shame to let this excellent wine go to waste. Will you sit and have a drink with me, Luna?’

  They spoke at first of casual things: how work was going for both of them, the weather in Sweden (neither father nor son could seem to resist this topic), her recent trip to Miami, of which he was clearly aware. Again, not knowing whether Stefan had discussed their relationship with his father, Luna was careful not to speak directly of him until she raised the matter of his recent work for the Marchioness.

  ‘Do you mind me asking what your view on Stefan’s presentation was?’ she asked, toying with the stem of her wine glass.

  ‘I think it is
pretty clear that Arborage must modernise and I agree with the broad thrust of the presentation. Possibly I am more conscious than Stefan of the roadblocks we may face. It’s all very well, for example, to talk of transforming our relationship with the estate’s tenant farmers, but English law makes it very difficult to actually impose any changes on them. Not that we shouldn’t try. But it will be a long-term process.’

  Luna liked the way Sören took her question seriously, and didn’t talk down to her in his response. She imagined he might be quite someone to work for, and wondered whether Dagmar thought the same.

  ‘Of course,’ he continued, ‘if anyone could convince them, it would be Augusta. I believe she could charm the birds from the trees, if she was so inclined.’ He took a sip of wine, smiled at Luna and said, ‘Shall I tell you the story of when I first met Augusta?’

  Luna nodded eagerly and waited while he gathered his thoughts.

  ‘My cousin married Augusta in…1978, I think it was, and they decided to take part of their honeymoon in Sweden. They came to visit us in my family’s summer house in Gotland. You must understand, Luna, at that time we had had very limited contact with that side of the family for many years. As you may be aware, my father and John’s father did not get along. I won’t go so far as to call it a feud, but the bitter feelings on both sides ran deep. Me, I think it was Augusta’s idea to come to Sweden, to mend fences in her new family…’

  Sören paused to top up Luna’s wine glass and his own. ‘At any rate, they came to visit us. I was fifteen, maybe sixteen at the time, the youngest of three boys – an “afterthought” by my parents, I think you English would say? – and otch, when I first saw John and Augusta together, it was like the wind had blown something exotic to our country house in Visby. Sweden is many, many good things but glamorous is not one of them, and John and Augusta were glamorous – very cosmopolitan, very cultured. They met at Studio 54 in New York, did Augusta ever tell you that?’

  ‘No,’ Luna said with a laugh. ‘I had no idea!’

  ‘And let me tell you, Bianca Jagger had nothing on Augusta. She was a stunning woman, still is a stunning woman, and to a one, we all fell in love with her. Even my father, who could be an irascible man and who was most unwilling to be charmed, even he fell under her spell…’

  He hesitated, as if considering his next words. ‘Have you ever wondered, Luna, how it is that John and Augusta have managed to retain control of Arborage, when so many others in this country let their family heritage fall to wrack and ruin, or sell out to the National Trust, or create trusts of their own and give up day-to-day control of their birthright?’

  Luna looked at him seriously. ‘I have.’

  ‘Well, I believe Augusta came to Sweden not only to mend fences but with a plan. A plan to restore Arborage’s fortunes. My uncle had died two years previously and with your country’s ruinous death duties, the estate was on precarious footing. So before she left Visby, Augusta somehow convinced my father to loan her the money to pay off Arborage’s debts.’

  Luna blinked. ‘It must have been a fairly substantial loan…’

  ‘It was. And on very favourable terms, I might add. Oh, I believe my father insisted on the transfer of a few family assets as part of the arrangement, but really, it must have been a quite extraordinary exchange between the two of them, one my brothers and I have long speculated about. It taught me a lesson: never underestimate a beautiful woman. Augusta has a will of steel under that pleasant exterior…the things she really wants, she gets.’

  Luna was in bed later that night, still thinking about her exchange with Sören, when her mobile rang. Nancy.

  ‘Hey,’ she said groggily.

  ‘Well, he’s done it, Lou. He’s gone and fucked it all up.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Robert. He’s been cheating on me. For months.’ With that, her strong, slightly scary friend began to cry.

  Chapter Twenty–Seven

  It was when Nancy pulled out a container of lighter fluid and began pouring it onto Robert’s bed that Luna realised that things had gone too far.

  She had flown over to New York on the earliest flight she could find the day after her friend’s call, genuinely worried after listening to an hour of increasingly incoherent sobbing that she might do something desperate. But Luna arrived at Nancy’s apartment in Brooklyn’s Prospect Heights to find her eerily calm, having prepared a game plan for how they would proceed.

  ‘We’re going to go over to his studio,’ Nancy said, holding up a key, ‘and I’m going to collect every single thing I’ve ever given him.’ Behind her wire-rim glasses, Nancy’s eyes were red and swollen, but her lips were tight and her expression obdurate, so Luna didn’t dare raise any objections.

  ‘Okay, but—’ she began.

  ‘Do you know that he’s been screwing her on the mattress I bought him? All he had was that rock-hard futon until I decided it was time for him to graduate from Ikea.’

  Robert’s studio was located in Williamsburg, an arty enclave in north Brooklyn about two miles from Nancy’s place. In happier times, when Nancy had first started dating him four years earlier, Luna had visited with Jem and Kayla while their friend was apartment hunting nearby. Luna could remember that proximity to her new boyfriend came second only to desirability of the neighbourhood on Nancy’s extensive wish list.

  Even in Prospect Heights, which at the time had yet to be gentrified like nearby Park Slope, with its Victorian era brownstones and leafy parks, Nancy’s money combined with a small inheritance from her grandmother could only stretch to a one-bedroom duplex next to a liquor store just off Washington Avenue. But they’d spent some happy times there over the years, often involving Robert and his mates, and it made Luna both sad and angry to think how he’d squandered all of this.

  When the yellow cab driver pulled up outside Robert’s studio, located in a converted garage near the Queens Expressway, Nancy told him to wait. ‘This won’t take long,’ she said in a voice so ominous that Luna knew a moment’s dread, trailing warily behind her with an empty cardboard box as Nancy walked up to the metal roller shutters on the studio, unlocking and opening them with a clang.

  ‘Are you sure about this?’ Luna ventured, peering into the darkened interior.

  ‘Oh, don’t worry. He’s in Hoboken at his mom’s house. Too scared he might actually have to face me.’

  They completely bypassed the studio in the garage, with its lighting and photographic equipment, as well as stacks of framed prints from a recent exhibition of his work – ‘the one I slaved to make a success for him,’ Nancy seethed – and went straight back to his small, cluttered bedroom in what used to be the garage’s office. Nancy immediately made a beeline to a clothes rack against the wall and began pulling shirts and suits out of it.

  ‘I gave him this. And this. And look at this, a freaking Armani suit. The man bought all his clothes from Banana Republic when I first met him. I revolutionise his wardrobe, give him a sense of style that he has heretofore completely lacked, and it’s like I’ve created a monster…’

  Within a few minutes she had transferred more than half the contents of his clothes rail into a pile on his bed. Rifling through a plastic crate beside the rack, she held up a framed photo of her and Robert to Luna.

  ‘This—’ she broke off, tears welling up in her eyes. ‘This is how I knew. I came over here day before yesterday to pick up a pair of shoes I needed and I found all my stuff hidden away in here. And then I looked at the bed and I just…knew. He didn’t even try to deny it when I phoned him at his mom’s. Said he had some serious thinking to do and he was torn between his head and his heart…I don’t even know which one of those I am…’ Nancy sobbed.

  ‘That wanker. That bloody wanker,’ Luna replied vehemently, fully prepared to give her friend every ounce of her support…till she saw her pick up Robert’s prized baseball bat, the one signed by every member of the 2009 Yankees team.

  Nodding to the antique mirror above the bed, Nanc
y said, ‘I gave him that too.’

  Two minutes later, the mirror lay in shattered pieces all over the bed and Luna was standing pressed against a wall, more than a little horrified by the carnage she’d just witnessed. Nancy, meanwhile, had moved on to the bathroom where she was retrieving her toiletries, chucking them en masse into the cardboard box. She held up a compact and some Eve Lom moisturiser, observing, ‘These aren’t mine,’ and tossing them onto the bed along with Robert’s clothes, the entire collection of framed photos of the two of them, the iPod and docking station she gave him for his last birthday, and all that shattered glass. Then she picked up her Louis Vuitton bag and extracted the container of lighter fluid.

  ‘What the—’ Luna shook her head as Nancy began to squirt it liberally all over Robert’s clothes. ‘You can’t do that.’

  ‘The hell I can’t.’ Nancy threw the empty container onto the bed and began rifling through her bag again.

  ‘Nancy, no.’

  But as Luna put her hands out to stop her, Nancy pulled out a box of kitchen matches, stepped backwards out of her reach, and lit a match. Which she threw onto the bed, watching with a bitter smile as the pile caught fire with a whoof. Next thing Luna knew, Nancy was on her way back into the garage, leaving her standing in front of a burning pyre in the middle of Robert’s bed. Accelerated by the lighter fluid, flames were licking up towards the ceiling. Luna cursed and quickly grabbed the plastic crate, running into the bathroom.

  It took two trips to douse the fire, by which point the smoke alarm was ringing shrilly in the garage. Pausing to make absolutely sure the fire was out – Robert would not be wearing his Armani suit again, that was for sure – Luna walked out to the cab, where Nancy was sitting primly in the back seat, cardboard box perched on her knee.

  ‘No need to worry. I’m fine,’ Luna coughed caustically, getting into the cab next to her.

  ‘You didn’t put it out, did you?’

  ‘Yes I bloody put it out!’ Luna shrieked. ‘For fuck’s sake, Nancy, I can’t have you committing arson, no matter how much you hate Robert.’