Next of Kin (29 page)

‘Just a trainee,' said Montignac, now that they were safely on the ground floor again. ‘We're learning to make frames, you see. It's costing the gallery a bloody fortune contracting the work out to craft shops and we're never so busy that we couldn't do it ourselves if we had the skills. Hence all the … woodworking going on upstairs,' he explained. ‘And the blank canvases. After they're secured we pull them off and start all over again.'

‘Right,' said Stella, who had already lost interest in the matter of the canvases. ‘Well that's not what I came to talk to you about anyway.'

‘Yes, well this isn't a good time really,' said Montignac. ‘Can't we meet tomorrow perhaps?'

‘No, Owen, we cannot meet tomorrow,' said Stella sharply. ‘As I'll be on the morning train for Leyville tomorrow. And if you recall I phoned you yesterday and you promised to meet me for lunch today but never showed up. Which meant I had to stay here another night when I had particular business to take care of at home.'

‘Oh that's right,' said Montignac, who had gone to the restaurant earlier in the day at the appointed time but turned back at the last minute, unable to face another conversation about money with his cousin when he was immersed in a new plan at the time. ‘Sorry about that. We were up to our eyes here.'

‘Well it seems that the only way I have of tracking you down these days is by just turning up here unannounced. Which is fine because if that's what it takes then that's what I'll do. I'm not going to let you just slip away, Owen, you know.'

Montignac licked his lips and recalled once when she had said that very line to him before; the memory seemed to have escaped her, though, as so many things had.

‘Aren't you?' he asked quietly.

‘No, I am not. I've told you before that I'm not going to allow the fact that Father is no longer with us to cause a separation between us. I want to see you, Owen. I want us to be friends. To be … family again. Like we once were.'

Montignac nodded. ‘Yes,' he said, eager to move her towards the door. ‘All right, but this isn't the best time for this conversation. If I don't get on with my work I'm going to be—'

‘Owen, there's something I need to tell you,' she said, interrupting him.

‘Do I want to hear it?'

‘It's about Raymond and me,' she said, looking away from him for a moment.

Montignac felt his stomach contract a little. Even the phrase
Raymond and me
, three words which implied a connection on so many levels between them—legally, spiritually, emotionally, sexually—was enough to cause him unparalleled pain within.

‘Then I'm sure I don't want to hear it,' he said bitterly.

‘Well you're going to have to hear it, I'm afraid, because I have to tell you. We've decided to get married.'

Montignac laughed. ‘You told me that at Christmas,' he said. ‘I told you that you were a fool then and I'll tell you that you're a fool now. If you want to spend the next few years engaged to that—'

‘No, you misunderstand me, Owen,' she said. ‘We're not just engaged any more. We've set a date.'

Words failed him for a moment. The idea of marriage was one thing; the reality of it something else entirely. It was unacceptable.

‘A date,' he said in a voice devoid of all emotion.

‘Yes, a date. The first Saturday in October in fact.'

Montignac thought about this for a moment. ‘Not this October, surely?' he said.

‘Yes, this October.'

‘But that's only…' He made a rapid calculation. ‘Two months away.'

‘Well it doesn't have to take years to prepare for, you know. Not for a simple ceremony.'

‘Your father's only been dead a few months,' he said, playing a card that he didn't particularly like to play. ‘Don't you think it's a little soon?'

‘I discussed that with Margaret and she said—'

‘She said it would be fine,' said Montignac, shaking his head. ‘I can just imagine. I'm surprised she doesn't want you to elope to Gretna Green. I'm amazed she didn't find a way to get a vicar down to Leyville to marry you in the bloody kitchen before you could change your mind.'

‘Owen, don't be cruel, please,' said Stella. ‘Can't you be happy for me just a little?'

He stared at her without expression and made the most imperceptible shake of his head. Stella looked away and hesitated before speaking again.

‘Margaret and I have both agreed that it wouldn't be a good idea for you to give me away,' she said.

His mouth dropped open in horror at the very idea.

‘But Raymond obviously expects you to. As my only surviving male relative. So I wondered, if I could get him to ask you, whether you'd consider being his best man.'

‘Stella, tell me you're not serious,' he said, flabbergasted that she would even suggest such a thing.

‘It's the only way to explain to him why you're not walking me down the aisle.'

‘I can't believe you would even think that I would want to do that,' he said, stunned now by her cheek. ‘I simply can't believe it.'

‘Why not?'

‘You know why not,' he said, narrowing his eyes. ‘I don't even want to be there.'

‘But you have to be there,' she insisted. ‘You're my cousin. We grew up together. We're—'

‘Stella, don't you think it's a little late to play the cousin card now?' he asked with a bitter laugh. ‘It seems to me that I was only your cousin when I was of some use to you. And after that…' He clicked his fingers in the air, like a magician performing a disappearing trick.

‘And after that, what?' demanded Stella.

‘Let's just say that family loyalty was hardly your strong suit, was it? You did what you did to save your own neck and didn't much care what happened to me afterwards.
Cousin
,' he added, feeling as if he wanted to spit the word on the ground and tread on it, but resisting. ‘And besides, do you really think that Raymond would want me to act as his best man? What if he knew—'

‘Owen, don't!' she barked, a pink dot appearing on either cheek.

He bit his lip and looked away from her. ‘I don't want to do it,' he said quietly after a moment. ‘I think it's heartless of you to suggest it.'

‘Owen, when you think about it, it's really not that—'

A loud hammering sound came from upstairs and they both jumped and looked up there at the same time.

‘I have to get back to work,' he said, snapping out of his unhappiness and moving towards the door. ‘Can you just leave please?'

‘Well will you think about what I've said at least?' asked Stella. ‘Will you just tell me that you'll give it some thought? Please? For me?'

He breathed in deeply and nodded. ‘I'll think about it,' he said. ‘But now I have to get back to work. I'll be in touch, all right?'

‘Thank you, Owen. It means a lot to me.' She hesitated for a moment before turning back to stare at him. ‘And for the record,' she added, her voice faltering slightly, ‘you remember things entirely as you want to remember them; you do realize that, don't you? You can call me disloyal or cruel all you want but perhaps you should examine your own conscience about those days.'

Montignac snorted and looked away. ‘I have and it's clear,' he said.

‘Of course it is,' she said turning away. ‘Because nothing is ever your fault, is it?'

‘No,' said Montignac, seeing her through the door and locking it behind her.

Sometimes, he thought to himself, it's possible to look at a person and wonder how on earth you could ever have loved them in the first place.

And why it is, when they continue to hurt you, over and over again, you keep trying to make things better and you keep going back to let them take another punch at you.

It's because my love was an honest one
, he thought, answering his own question.
It was honest and true and I never would have betrayed her like she did me. No matter what she did. Cousin or not. I never would have done it. Not in a million years. I would have died first.

6

THEY WERE UNSURE HOW
to deal with him at first but it didn't take long for the Montignacs to feel that they couldn't remember life before their young nephew had come to live with them; after only two weeks at Leyville, Owen Montignac proved himself to be a favourite with his new family. The children were welcoming, Stella doting on her blue-eyed, white-haired cousin, treating him like a real-life doll who'd been thrust among them, while Andrew enjoyed the fact that he had a younger brother of sorts for the first time in his life, and one who was already grown and not a baby at that.

Of course one of the reasons he made himself so popular was because he ingratiated himself so much into their affections. He kept up a parade of jokes, tricks and good humour that had the family and the servants falling in love with him, even Margaret Richmond who didn't appreciate the kind of spontaneity that Owen brought to the house. She put that down to his French upbringing. (Or his ‘wild' French upbringing as she styled it.) After only a short while it felt like a room was empty if he wasn't in it.

The first night he slept at Leyville, only a few hours after his uncle Peter had brought him there following the long drive from Dover, Montignac crawled into the enormous bed in the room he was to share with his cousin Andrew and lay awake, trying to keep his fears at bay while he decided how he would behave now that he had finally arrived.

It had been only two months since his mother was killed when the munitions factory in which she worked was blown up; five weeks after that his father, a soldier in the British army, was killed at the battle of the Somme. His mother's family had been caring for him ever since and had written to his uncle to inform him of his new address in case they wanted to contact him; it had not been their intention to send the boy to England but events had overtaken them.

After the letter arrived, Peter and Ann had discussed what they should do for the best.

‘Well we don't have any choice in the matter,' reasoned Peter. ‘He'll have to come to live here with us.'

‘At Leyville?'

‘Of course. Where else?' he said, rereading the letter. ‘He's still a Montignac. We can't have him growing up with a different family, let alone a foreign one.'

‘But he doesn't even know us, Peter,' she said. ‘And he must have known the Reims family his whole life.' She reread the letter. ‘They seem to be a big family too. His grandparents are looking after three grandsons and a granddaughter already. I'm sure they'll take care of him.'

‘He's only five years old, Ann,' said Peter sternly. ‘We can't do that to him. Montignacs should be here. At Leyville.'

Ann wasn't entirely happy with the situation but had little choice in the matter and Peter wrote to France, insisting that the boy be returned to England immediately. At first, Montignac's maternal grandmother was reluctant to let him go, but Peter threatened legal action as well as pointing out what a better position he was in to give the child a comfortable upbringing, and she finally relented. He sent enough money for the boy's passage, and collected him at Dover a few weeks later.

‘All I can say is I'm glad your father's not here to witness this,' said Ann, the night before his arrival. ‘He'd be rolling in his grave if he knew what was about to happen.'

‘What happened between Henry and Father should never have happened,' said Peter, the beneficiary of their falling-out. ‘They both lost out. For heaven's sake it's not as if the marriage between my brother and his wife didn't work out. Presumably they were happy together. The poor lad must be traumatized by losing both his parents so close together. We have a responsibility to the boy to make up for what his own father missed out on. Don't forget, Henry was my brother. We grew up together.'

‘But by rights Leyville belongs to him. Don't you think he'll want it back someday?'

‘It's not his by rights,' pointed out Peter. ‘Father left it to me. And I shall leave it to Andrew. He'll be looked after, though. He'll be happy with that.'

The young Owen had one sepia-toned photograph of his parents and he kept it beside him on his bedside locker. It had been taken on their wedding day and they both had a ghostly pallor to them that didn't recall their faces for him at all. His mother's long blonde hair and his father's wavy blond hair stood out dramatically from the dark tones surrounding them.

‘You know your father was disinherited,' Andrew told him a year or two later after some fight between the two. ‘He upset Grandfather and was cut off without a penny.'

‘No, because we always lived in France,' said Owen, with the logic of a child who bases all he believes on his own memories. ‘We were never here before.'

‘
You
weren't here before,' said Andrew. ‘But your father grew up here. With my father. In fact yours was the elder brother but there was some sort of commotion when he chose to get married and that's when he slunk off to France.'

Montignac narrowed his eyes. He wasn't sure what the verb
slunk
meant but he didn't like the sound of it. He had worked hard at losing his own French accent over the last year or two as it had only provided the other boys in school with an excuse to tease him but on occasion it rose up again and he remembered a string of words, some of which he threw at his cousin now.

‘Steady on,' said Andrew. ‘Don't use that Frog speak here. Hasn't Father told you about that?'

The relationship between Andrew and Owen was always a fractious one; most of the time they got along fairly well but there was always the possibility, on an hour-by-hour basis, that they would end up rolling around on the floor, knocking the stuffing out of each other. And despite the fact that Andrew was three years older and a good deal bigger, he always came off worse in any such confrontation.