Next of Kin (15 page)

‘Oh God, don't be ridiculous,' said Montignac with a laugh. ‘I can't remember the last time we even had one in stock, let alone sold one. You know a fellow came in a few days ago—just off the street—with one of his own paintings and asked to have it valued.'

‘And how was it?'

‘It was magnificent. A landscape. An unusual use of colour, almost a contemporary
sfumato
. Brushstrokes that would have made Van Gogh proud. Really, something quite extraordinary.'

‘And you sent the fellow away with a flea in his ear, I presume.'

‘Well naturally. There's no chance at all that we could sell something so obviously good. Our customers would look down their noses at it. No, I sent him next door to the Clarion. Under any other circumstances I might have made an offer on the thing myself.'

Alexander stopped smiling and he leaned forward slightly, making sure that no one could overhear him when there weren't any more
mots justes
to be thrown around. ‘How are you doing now anyway?' he asked. ‘Have you come to terms with what happened?'

‘With what exactly?' asked Montignac innocently.

‘Well you know. Your uncle's death. And the … unpleasantness afterwards.'

Montignac nodded. ‘If you're referring to the fact that I was entirely cut out of his will, then yes, let's just say I've managed to get the fact of it straight in my head. I'm learning to accept that for the time being I am a young man without any prospects. In fact, I rather think my uncle meant to teach me a lesson. To show me that, despite all the effort I've put in over the years, he has left me exactly as he found me.'

‘How do you mean?' asked Alexander.

‘As the poor relation,' said Montignac, the bitterness coming through clearly in his voice. ‘It turns out he wasn't such a traditionalist after all and that blood, real blood, turned out to be thicker than water.'

‘And how's Stella?' asked Alexander after a pause, unsure how to respond to the tone of bitterness.

‘Basking in glory.'

‘I see.'

‘Oh come on, Alexander, don't mind me,' said Montignac, slapping his friend on the shoulder in an attempt at jollity. ‘It's hardly the end of the world. What is it they say? I still have my health.' For the moment anyway, he thought.

The champagne and glasses came and they took them over to the table where Jasper and Gareth were engaged in an animated debate about whose responsibility the cab ride home should be. Both felt it should be the other's.

‘Montignac,' said Jasper in delight as he sat down at the booth. ‘Where the devil did you spring from?'

‘I found him alone and palely loitering at the bar,' explained Alexander. ‘And told him he should come and drown his sorrows with us. This is Gareth Bentley, an old friend of mine,' he said to Montignac, introducing the boy on the other side of the table who was rooting through his wallet to see how much money he had left. ‘And Gareth, this is my oldest friend in the world, Owen Montignac. We went to school together.'

Gareth looked up and opened his mouth to say hello but words of greeting caught in the back of his throat, as if his breath had been stolen from him for a moment. Forcing his eyes up a little higher he was so struck by the young man's startling white hair that he felt an unexpected urge to reach across and stroke it.

‘I believe it's your birthday,' said Montignac.

‘Yes. Yes, it is,' he replied quietly.

Montignac nodded and no one spoke while they waited for him to offer his congratulations but after a moment it became clear that none were to be forthcoming and an uneasy silence descended.

‘We've been leading Gareth down the road to rack and ruin at the roulette table,' said Jasper, interrupting it. ‘He cost me thirty pounds, would you believe.'

‘It was
my
thirty pounds,' protested Gareth. ‘My mother gave it to me this morning.'

‘Oh really, Gareth,' said Jasper with the air of a frustrated mentor. ‘If you can't afford to lose it, then you really shouldn't bring it with you.'

‘Three turns at the wheel,' said Gareth in a glum tone, appealing to Montignac's sense of right and wrong. ‘That was all it took. Three turns at the wheel and every penny was gone. Isn't that awful?'

‘If I was you I wouldn't allow myself to get led astray,' said Montignac who would have loved to have been able to return to the days when the loss of thirty pounds would have been a matter worth shedding tears over.

‘Don't worry, I've learned my lesson.'

‘Oh come on,' said Jasper irritably. ‘You can't give up just because of one bad night. That's hardly the action of a good loser, is it?'

‘Well I'd rather not be any kind of loser, thank you very much,' said Gareth, quite sensibly. ‘I'll stick to my other vices from now on.'

‘And what vices would they be?' asked Montignac, pricking up his ears.

‘Sloth and covetousness,' replied Gareth with a smile.

Montignac laughed. ‘The sloth I can understand,' he said. ‘But what exactly is it that you covet?'

‘The ability of the idle rich not to have to get a job,' he replied quickly.

‘You don't want to say that,' said Jasper. ‘Old Montignac here
is
one of the idle rich. He's worth millions.'

‘Sadly not,' said Montignac.

‘Really, Jasper,' interrupted Alexander, looking suitably embarrassed. ‘I hardly think that's a suitable subject for conversation.'

‘Quite right, quite right,' said Jasper apologetically, his face starting to redden now as all the alcohol he had consumed over the course of the evening began to take effect. ‘I never did get around to offering my condolences by the way, Owen. Over your uncle, I mean. I'd intended to write but it went clean out of my head. Anyway, I was sorry to hear the news.'

‘Thank you,' said Montignac, staring at the table.

‘Owen's uncle died recently,' Jasper explained to Gareth, beginning to slur his words so badly now that Alexander considered relieving him of his champagne glass. ‘One of the wealthiest landowners in England he was too. Left the whole stack to our friend here.'

‘Jasper, that's enough,' said Alexander sharply.

‘He disinherited me, Jasper,' said Montignac without a trace of embarrassment. ‘He left it all to my cousin.'

‘To Stella?'

‘Yes.'

‘Good God.'

‘Indeed.'

‘So that means you're—'

‘Stony broke and up to my eyeballs in debt,' he replied cheerfully, lifting his champagne flute and draining it in one mouthful.

‘I wouldn't have believed it,' said Jasper, shaking his head in surprise.

‘Well, there you are,' replied Montignac in a disinterested tone.

‘And is she still seeing that flower fellow or is she on the market?'

Montignac turned to face him and his lip curled slightly. He could feel a twinge of temper burning at the back of his brain and fought to control it. Jasper swallowed nervously, aware that he had caused offence.

‘Perhaps that didn't come out quite right,' he began but Montignac interrupted him by standing up and making a polite bow to the assembled group.

‘Gentlemen, it's very late and I'm very tired. I'm afraid I have to take my leave of you,' he announced.

‘Oh you're not going already, are you?' asked Gareth, who felt a peculiar desire for him to stay and for the others to leave instead. The manner in which he had answered Jasper back was exactly how he would have liked to have behaved at the roulette table earlier and he wanted to learn a little about it.

‘I'm afraid so. Nice to have met you, Mr Bentley. Alexander,' he added, with a nod to his friend. ‘Come and see me soon.'

And with that he turned on his heel and marched away, determined this time to escape the club without further assault.

10

THE RAIN HAD STARTED,
only a light drizzle at first but threatening more, and Montignac buttoned his overcoat and reached inside his pockets for his gloves but they weren't there; he frowned, wondering whether they had fallen out at Claridge's earlier, in his haste to get away from Stella and Raymond, in the pub from which he had been whisked away against his will or whether they had slipped out in the cloakroom of the Unicorn Ballrooms. They had been quite an expensive pair of leather gloves and he was sorry for the loss of them.

He glanced up the street for a taxicab but there was nothing coming yet. He looked at his watch and sighed in exhaustion; it was already half past midnight. Although only twenty-five years old, Montignac had never been one for late nights and the thought of rising at seven thirty after only a few hours' sleep to spend another day in the gallery, worrying about money, filled him with misery.

‘Mr Montignac!'

A voice called out from behind him and he looked around, unsure which of the many people from inside might have followed him out and for what reason, and was surprised to see his new acquaintance, Gareth Bentley, bounding towards him like a hound pursuing a rabbit, a broad smile plastered across his eager young face.

‘Mr Bentley,' he said. ‘Hello again.'

‘Please, call me Gareth,' he replied. ‘Alexander said you live in Bedford Place.'

‘That's right, yes.'

‘Are you getting a taxicab?'

‘Yes, do you want to share?'

‘If you don't mind.'

‘I don't mind at all,' said Montignac with a shrug of the shoulders, pleased to share the expense even if it would be just a trifling amount. He considered in his head for a moment the fact that there could be no such thing as trifling amounts for him any more; every shilling needed to be accounted for. ‘But were you finished with your party?'

‘Oh I'd had enough of that,' said Gareth dismissively as if the whole evening had been nothing important and merely a prelude to getting home again.

‘Didn't they mind you leaving so suddenly?' Montignac asked, considering the speed with which he had followed him out of the club.

‘They'll barely even notice,' he replied, anxious to change the subject. ‘Anyway, I was tired. It was time to go home.'

‘Indeed,' said Montignac. ‘So are you for Bedford Place too then?'

‘Tavistock Square,' he said. ‘But we can drop you off and I'll take it the rest of the way. If that's convenient for you, I mean.'

Montignac shrugged and pointed down the street. ‘Well we should probably start walking this way then,' he said. ‘I think we'll find it easier to pick one up on the main road. They don't often come down here.'

Gareth nodded and they began to walk along together as the rain continued to drizzle down on them. The street seemed surprisingly empty of people and the traffic was light.

‘I was glad of the opportunity to leave actually,' confided Gareth. ‘I'm not much good at long nights out.'

‘Not even on your birthday?'

‘Especially not on my birthday. It reminds me how old I am.'

‘And how old is that?' asked Montignac, guessing that he was no more than twenty or twenty-one years old for he had a very youthful countenance to him, clear of skin and full of good health. His personality seemed childlike too, as if he had never known the difficulty of life as an adult; his stride along the street betrayed a happy-go-lucky, entirely carefree young man.

‘Twenty-four,' said Gareth sadly. ‘Ancient.'

Montignac laughed. ‘Well I'm twenty-five,' he said. ‘We're not exactly on the scrap heap yet, you know.'

‘I feel like I am.'

Montignac sighed; he didn't really have the energy for vanity such as this. If all the boy had to worry about in his life was the trauma of entering his twenty-fifth year, then he wasn't doing too badly for himself. After all, he himself was wondering whether he would even see the end of his.

‘My cousin died when he was eighteen,' said Montignac, wondering whether it was terribly hypocritical of him to mention this. ‘I think he'd have given rather a lot to get to our age.'

Gareth nodded but didn't offer any condolences as Montignac had failed to congratulate him on his birthday earlier. It seemed ridiculous to him to offer sympathy to a man he didn't know over the death of a boy he never would.

Montignac whistled suddenly as a cab approached and it slowed down and they got inside. ‘Bedford Place,' he said, pleased to be out of the rain at last. ‘And then on to Tavistock Square.'

‘Right you are, sir,' said the driver as he pulled out again.

‘So how do you know Alexander?' asked Montignac after a moment. ‘I haven't heard him mention you before.'

‘We met at my club,' explained Gareth. ‘Well my father's club, actually. White's, in StJames's. Do you know it?'

‘Yes, I'm a member, although I rarely have the time to go there.'

‘Well then you know that it's Alexander's too. I go there sometimes to read the newspapers in the late afternoon and he's often to be found sitting there, engrossed in a book.'

‘Yes, apparently he calls that work,' said Montignac.

‘He told me that. It seems like rather a good job if you ask me.'

Montignac shrugged. ‘And Jasper Conway,' he asked. ‘He's a particular friend of yours?'

‘Not really,' he replied, shaking his head. ‘He's more friends with Alexander than with me. I don't like him enormously, if you want to know the truth.'

‘Really?' asked Montignac, who didn't care for Jasper either. ‘Why not?'

‘He's terribly vain and arrogant and never pays for anything. And he cost me thirty pounds tonight which I could scarcely afford to lose and he seemed to take great delight in doing so. To be honest I left because I knew he'd end up insisting that I pay for his trip home too. That and the fact that he kept forcing me to drink.'