by Jilly Cooper
The good news was that all Hortense’s greedy relations had temporarily pushed off to another family house in Brittany to celebrate the sixty-fifth birthday of Tristan’s eldest brother Alexandre, the judge. With them, leaving the coast even clearer, had gone the even greedier Dupont, who was already carrion-crowing at the prospect of a large cut of Hortense’s estate.
The bad news was that Hortense, who’d kept such iron control of her life, was now lying upstairs under a mosquito net, morphinised up to the eyeballs, recognizing no-one.
‘Yesterday, she was convinced the Bolsheviks had taken over the château,’ sighed Florence, the kind, plump housekeeper, who was almost as old as her mistress. ‘Today the Nazis have moved in, and she’s back in the Resistance. So I’m afraid you won’t be very welcome,’ she added apologetically to Wolfie.
‘But Tristan could be in prison for life,’ begged Lucy. ‘The police think he killed Rannaldini to stop him spreading some vicious tale about his parentage.’ If she hadn’t seen a flicker of fear in Florence’s faded grey eyes, Lucy might not have persisted. ‘Hortense is the only person who might know the truth,’ she went on. ‘Please let me stay in case she regains consciousness.’
Florence was wavering when there was an imperious skidding crunch in the gravel and Rupert, resplendent in a pale yellow suit and grey striped shirt, emerged from a cloud of dust and a hired Mercedes. Apparently unaffected by the heat, he made Lucy feel plainer and hotter than ever.
‘What are you doing here?’ she snapped.
‘Resisting arrest, disobeying the orders of Gablecross, casing the joint. Bonjour, Madame.’ Slipping into effortless French, Rupert turned all his charm on Florence.
Absolutely bloody typical, fumed Lucy. She’ll take one look and roll over. But fortunately it seemed that Aunt Hortense loathed men, particularly those who looked like blond Luftwaffe pilots, almost as much as Germans. Rupert was sent packing as summarily as Wolfie.
Lucy, who was allowed to stay on for a little while, couldn’t hide a suspicion that both men were glad of an excuse to escape.
‘We’ll go back to La Reconnaissance and chivvy ambassadors,’ said Rupert, sauntering towards the Mercedes. ‘Join us for dinner if you can get away.’
‘We’ll leave everything in “your loyal hands”,’ quoted the ever-pragmatic Wolfie, clearly delighted at a chance to ingratiate himself with Tabitha’s father.
Frantic with thirst, Lucy gulped down a whole jug of orange pressé. Heat was coming in great waves through the kitchen window. Only endless sprinklers kept the garden green. Beyond, like purple shagpile, stretched fields of lavender.
Once the maid had disappeared to shop in Montvert, Florence relented and got out the family scrapbooks she’d kept since Tristan was a little boy. It wrung Lucy’s heart to see him always hovering at the edge of family groups, like an outfielder desperate not to miss a smile that miraculously Étienne might one day throw him.
At least the later scrapbooks were crowded with Tristan’s cuttings. Florence had already pasted in the marvellous reviews of The Lily in the Valley, dominated by the luminous beauty of Claudine Lauzerte.
To stop herself falling asleep, Lucy begged to be given a tour of the house. Downstairs big high rooms papered in cranberry reds, Prussian blues and deep snuff browns were the ideal setting for the Impressionist collection, acquired ahead of fashion in the late nineteenth century, and for Étienne’s great powerful oils, but not to lighten the heart of a little boy. Everywhere frayed tapestries of hunting scenes hung above cabinets lovingly painted with fruit, flowers and birds. Leggy gold tables and chairs seemed poised to race through the french windows into a park shimmering with heat-haze. You couldn’t see the mountains for dust.
The great hall housed the family portraits.
‘That was Louis who died at Crécy, and Edouard who was wounded at Agincourt, and there’s Blaize,’ Florence ran her finger inside the frame to test for dust, ‘who died in Spain on a secret mission. He was murdered by the Spanish Inquisition.’
Lucy peered at Blaize in excitement. Handsome, hawk-faced, with dark cynical watchful eyes, he was definitely a Montigny, and one of the reasons Tristan had embarked on Don Carlos.
‘And there’s Henri, painted by David,’ said Florence proudly, ‘Such a great general that Napoleon coaxed him out of exile to fight at Austerlitz and Borodino. The Montignys have always been a great military family.’
Soldier-citizens of the world like Posa, thought Lucy.
‘Tristan’s brother Laurent was brave, wasn’t he?’
‘More hotheaded,’ said Florence, somewhat disapprovingly. ‘A pied-noir builder fell off a ladder here one day. Madame Hortense rang six doctors but none would treat him. Laurent jumped in the Jeep, drove to the nearest, put a shotgun to his temple, and didn’t remove it until he’d come back and set the leg.’
‘How romantic,’ sighed Lucy. ‘No wonder Tristan hero-worships his memory. Why isn’t there a painting of him?’
Florence glanced round nervously.
Laurent’s portrait had hung in the hall, she admitted, smiling a welcome to everyone coming through the front door. But Étienne was so devastated when he was killed, the painting was locked away with everything else in his room.
‘But surely after Étienne’s death…’ protested Lucy.
‘He left instructions in his will that the door was to remain locked.’
‘At least let me look at Tristan’s room.’
‘It was very small.’ Florence looked unhappy. ‘When Tristan went to university Étienne turned it into an en suite bathroom.’
Don’t show your anger, Lucy had to keep telling herself.
‘There should be a portrait of Tristan. He’s the handsomest of the lot,’ she said crossly.
In answer Florence looked up at the gilt Montigny snake chained to the lintel. ‘“Seek not to disturb the serpent,”’ she whispered, her face creasing into a hundred folds of anxiety.
‘I’m only seeking to disturb the wretched thing’, Lucy was nearly in tears, ‘because I want to find out the truth. Tristan was desperate to question Hortense about his parents, but he was too busy with Carlos to fly out, and now it may be too late.’
‘It was a secret, Madame swore to Étienne she would take to the grave.’ Florence glanced up at a gold Empire clock, which featured Neptune brandishing his trident. ‘The nurse will be going in ten minutes. You can sit with her instead of me.’
Aunt Hortense had blurred, weather-beaten features and wild white hair, like a gargoyle caught in a snowstorm. She lay without covers, her long nightgown rucked up to show purple bruised shins and a plaster on every toe. Beside her on the bed were two marmalade cats and a tiny brindled Italian greyhound, which one of her gnarled, ringed, gardening-begrimed hands repeatedly caressed.
Opposite the bed, filling the wall, was a ravishing Rubens of milkmaids tending a herd of paddling red cows and chatting up a swain driving a horse and cart.
‘We hung it there last week,’ whispered Florence. ‘Madame wanted something beautiful to look at.’
To the right hung a small photograph of a young Hortense being handed the Croix de Guerre for her courage during the Resistance. With her boyish brown curls, her deep-set dark eyes and quick smile, she bore an uncanny resemblance to Tristan.
Perhaps? wondered Lucy. But Hortense would have been too old at fifty-five. Could she have had an illegitimate daughter? She must have a story to tell.
In moments of consciousness, Aunt Hortense played la grande dame for all her worth. ‘I wouldn’t dream of discussing family matters with a complete stranger,’ she told Lucy coldly.
‘I just wanted to talk about Tristan.’ Carefully Lucy explained the situation. That Tristan had been arrested for two murders that he hadn’t done.
Hortense, however, was only interested in why he hadn’t come to her party. ‘I broke totally with protocol and put him on my right and had to talk to air all lunch. I suppose his film and Claudine Lauzerte wer
e more important.’
‘He sent you a lovely present,’ said Lucy, recognizing Rozzy’s gift-wrapping on the Louis XV desk. ‘You haven’t even opened it.’
‘Why d’you stick your nose into everything?’ snapped Hortense. ‘Are you a journalist?’
‘Tristan stayed away from your party because he felt a fraud,’ said Lucy desperately. ‘Rannaldini had just told him he wasn’t a Montigny, that Étienne wasn’t his father at all.’
Stammering, Lucy went through all the palaver of Maxim being so jealous of Delphine marrying Étienne that he’d raped her. For a second, Hortense’s eyes opened a centimetre like an old crocodile.
‘Really?’
‘So Tristan’s father was his grandfather, and on his deathbed Étienne kept rambling on about fathers and grandfathers.’
‘We once had a footman called Maxim,’ confided Hortense.
‘Oh, for God’s sake,’ exploded Lucy.
There was a knock on the door, the nurse was back to give Hortense a shot.
‘Oh, please don’t,’ cried Lucy in despair. ‘She’ll go even more doo-lally.’
‘I will not,’ said Hortense tartly. ‘I’ll have you know, young woman, I’m in considerable pain, and there’s no need to shout.’
Lucy fought sleep. It was still unbearably hot and the scent of jasmine growing up the still warm walls was almost sickly. The melon frames gleamed in the moonlight. She watched the tractors, hung with lamps, going back and forth, labouring to get the harvest in before next week’s forecast storm. The combines roared so loudly it was like working in a munitions factory, grumbled Hortense.
Down in the village they were celebrating Bastille Day. Fireworks rose and fell against a pearly grey night; Lucy could hear the accordion playing ‘La Vie en rose’.
Glancing at Hortense, she noticed tears trickling down her wrinkled cheeks and took her hand.
‘I’m so sorry to hassle you. Could Rannaldini possibly be Tristan’s father?’
‘I wouldn’t put anything past that devil, always hanging round Delphine like a wasp round a melon.’
‘Or Bernard.’
‘Have you seen the ghost of the Montigny snake yet?’ said Hortense, as she drifted off to sleep.
70
‘At last I’ve found someone I can charm,’ announced Rupert.
The proprietor of La Reconnaissance had sloped off to a Bastille Day party, but his busty, henna-haired wife had taken one look at Monsieur Campbell-Black, personally cooked him and Wolfie foie-gras pancakes and miraculous coq au vin and unearthed several bottles of the best claret Rupert had ever tasted.
For five hours, he and Wolfie had not drawn breath, not chivvying ambassadors but discussing everyone on the unit, and particularly the polo shoot. They had enjoyed a glorious bitch about Isa and Helen, and Rupert was touched by the way Wolfie’s rather solid face lit up whenever Tab’s name was mentioned. Now they had moved on to Tristan and a large bottle of Armagnac.
‘I’m sure he’s not Papa’s son.’ Wolfie decided against a second piece of Camembert. ‘If Papa had fathered such a genius he could not have resisted boasting about it. Also Papa was half German and I don’t think Tristan’s got any German blood. With him one thinks of the shifting subtlety of composers like Ravel and Debussy rather than heavyweights like Brahms, Beethoven and Bruckner.’
‘Does one?’ yawned Rupert. ‘I wouldn’t know. I suppose Rannaldini could have made up the story about Maxim years ago just to crucify Étienne. He was such a manipulative shit.’
‘He could have,’ reflected Wolfie, filling their glasses. It was a relief to talk about his father objectively: people always pussyfooted round the subject.
‘Why are you actually here?’ asked Rupert suddenly.
‘Because I owe Tristan,’ replied Wolfie. ‘My father fucked him up and I’ve got to find out the truth. And because I adore Tab.’ Wolfie’s drunkenly crossed eyes filled with tears. ‘And I can only compete with Tristan when he’s no longer crippled by this awful stigma. It’s like fighting a man with both hands chained behind his back.
‘Anyway,’ Wolfie smiled slightly, ‘Tab told me not to hang around like a stuck pig, and get Tristan out of prison. And also I really love the guy, he’s so great to work for. You feel like a dry leaf suddenly swept up by the warm south-west wind of his enthusiasm. I couldn’t go back to straight law again.’
‘Hum,’ said Rupert. ‘Did you kill your father?’
‘When Tab told me he’d r-r-raped her I wanted to, but it seemed more important to find out if she was safe.’
Wolfie longed to ask if Rupert had killed his father. He felt the man was quite capable of murder but also had enough sense of fair play that, if he had killed Rannaldini and Beattie, not to want Tristan to take the rap.
Was that why Rupert was so sure Tristan wasn’t guilty? On the other hand, had he come down here to check out the Montignys as suitable in-laws for Tab, or was he merely a commercial animal in search of his director?
‘I know Tabitha loves Tristan,’ Wolfie added wistfully, ‘but I’m in that state of love so well described by Stendhal, “utter despair poisoned still further by a shred of hope”.’
He is a clever boy, thought Rupert, probably too clever for Tab.
‘Tab’s not perfect,’ he told Wolfie. ‘She’s got my terrible temper, she can be an appalling drama queen, and she doesn’t have the greatest sense of humour.’
‘Nor do I,’ sighed Wolfie. ‘People always tell me I’m too serious. I’ve heard all those jokes about slim volumes containing two thousand years of German humour.’
‘I like Krauts,’ said Rupert. ‘I knew a lot on the show-jumping circuit — good blokes, feet on the ground but knew how to party.’
Getting up, he wandered unsteadily over to the window, unzipped his flies, peed into the garden, causing scuffling and angry mewings from Madame’s two cats, and only just zipped up in time as a besotted Madame returned with an even more ancient bottle of brandy. If Monsieur Campbell-Black would come into the back room, Tristan’s arrest was on the late-night news.
Clips were being shown of Valhalla, of Rannaldini conducting, of Tristan arriving at the police station and of Étienne in a big straw hat painting in the château gardens. When Hermione appeared, opening her big eyes and saying she had every confidence because her very good friends Chief Constable Swallow, Rupert Campbell-Black and Sexton Kemp were now at the helm, Rupert and Wolfie collapsed with howls of drunken laughter.
‘I’m suffering from Dutch Helm Disease,’ said Rupert, pretending to fall over.
‘Poor old Tristan, but bloody good publicity,’ said Wolfie wiping his eyes.
‘Christ, she’s beautiful,’ sighed Rupert, as Claudine Lauzerte was shown talking to Tristan on the set of The Lily in the Valley.
‘Très jolie, très chic,’ agreed Madame.
‘Oscar’s lighting helped,’ said Wolfie quickly. ‘Tab’s much more beautiful.’
‘So’s Taggie,’ admitted Rupert. ‘Even so, I wouldn’t mind having Madame Lauzerte as my luxury on Desert Island Discs.’
‘Thank you,’ said Wolfie, as Madame filled up his glass. ‘I should like to pick up the tab on this,’ he told Rupert firmly. ‘I should like to pick up Tab any time,’ he added.
Perhaps he did have a sense of humour after all.
‘You have a very charming son,’ Madame told Rupert skittishly. ‘It is rare for fathers and sons to get on so well.’
‘Very,’ agreed Rupert, then turning to Wolfie, ‘If Tristan had really loved Tab, he wouldn’t have backed off after a one-night stand. I don’t believe in that kind of sacrifice.’
‘Yes, you do,’ said Wolfie resolutely. ‘Tab told me you backed off for nearly a year because you didn’t feel you were good enough for Taggie.’
‘Maybe I did.’ Rupert scratched his head in pleased surprise. ‘Maybe I did. And, talking of self-sacrifice, why’s Lucy here?’
‘Because she wants to slay the dragon of this frightful cal
umny,’ said Wolfie. ‘And unconsciously in the hope that Tristan will be so touched by her enterprise and nobility, he’ll realize she’s the one he loves not Tab.’
‘He won’t, unfortunately. Men don’t love buckets like that, just for their virtues.’
‘Lucy’s not a bucket,’ protested Wolfie. ‘She can look gorgeous.’
Rupert raised a sleek sceptical blond eyebrow.
‘I wouldn’t ask you to shoot on a cocks-only day,’ he drawled.
‘Telephone,’ called out Madame.
It was Lucy.
‘Any progress?’ Wolfie asked her.
‘None.’ Lucy lowered her voice. ‘She’s a stubborn old bat. She wouldn’t squeal when the Gestapo tugged out her toenails and she’s not likely to tell me anything. She was wandering so badly this evening that she insisted on having the blackout put up in her room.’
Hearing a burst of music, Wolfie looked round and saw Madame was teaching Rupert the can-can and started to laugh.
‘Do you want us to come and get you?’
‘Neither of you sounds capable,’ snapped Lucy, then after a pause, ‘I’m sorry, it’s been a long day, but Florence is letting me stay the night. She made me a gorgeous Gruyère omelette and opened a bottle of Sancerre. I just wish… Are you OK, Wolfie?’
‘Hunky-dory. Thingsh will be better in the morning. Goo’ night, Lucy.’
Lucy couldn’t remember ever being more tired. But just as she was about to fall into the arms of Morpheus she thought of Tristan in his small cell, and how much she would prefer the arms to be his. By this time, Morpheus had retreated in a sulk, and Lucy was left to agonize until four in the morning, when the roar of the combines and the waiting started again.
She went downstairs and raided the family albums, poring over photographs of picnics, balls and shooting-parties, of weddings and christenings, when the limes in the avenue were only shoulder high and the jasmine round the house wasn’t planted. Étienne was everywhere, always surrounded by adoring women, while Hortense and his three elder sons looked on, stolid and disapproving. But she found no sign of Laurent, unless he was that beautiful young man with the lively, restless, not-very-happy face to the rear of one group, gazing down at a girl whose slim back was to the camera and whose long dark hair was tied back with a scarlet ribbon.
