Next of Kin Page 20

  ‘You don’t think it’s too soon, do you?’ asked Stella after a moment, the smile fading from her face a little.

  ‘Too soon?’ said Margaret. ‘No, I don’t think so. You two have known each other for a couple of years now after all.’

  ‘No, I mean too soon after Father’s death,’ said Stella, correcting herself. ‘I mean it’s only been a few months since … since he passed away. You don’t think people will think it’s a little insensitive to have a wedding in the same year?’

  Margaret thought about it; there was no doubt there were some who would think that—had she been observing the family from a distance she would have muttered about it herself—but she couldn’t afford for Stella to be discouraged from going through with this in case, as Raymond had suggested, she changed her mind.

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘Not at all. By October it will have been four months since … since that happened.’ She found herself unable to get the words out. ‘It’s a perfectly decent amount of time to wait.’

  ‘Well I thought that,’ said Stella. ‘And after all, Father would want me to be happy, wouldn’t he?’

  ‘Of course he would,’ said Margaret, reaching across and squeezing her hand in happiness. ‘And if he was here he’d tell you that himself.’

  ‘Then it’s settled,’ said Raymond. ‘The first Saturday in October. We’ll do it here at Leyville and invite the whole world.’

  ‘Oh not the whole world, Raymond,’ protested Stella, laughing. ‘Let’s keep it relatively small. Sixty or seventy guests at most. Family and friends.’

  ‘Whatever you want,’ said Raymond, eager to please, delighted and amazed that she had actually accepted his proposal to set the date.

  ‘Did you tell Owen?’ asked Margaret cautiously after a few more minutes had passed. ‘When you were in London, I mean. Have you already let him know?’

  ‘Not yet,’ said Stella. ‘We went for dinner one evening a few weeks ago and then I met him at the gallery the next day but he’s been almost impossible to track down ever since. I don’t know what he’s up to. And Raymond and I only agreed on the date earlier in the week and I wanted to come here for the weekend to see you. I’ll write to Owen on Monday.’

  ‘You’ll write to him?’ asked Margaret.

  ‘Yes. That’s all right, isn’t it?’

  The two women locked eyes for a moment and it seemed to both that they were having a silent dialogue in those few seconds. Eventually, Margaret broke away and looked across at Raymond.

  ‘You do whatever you think is best,’ said Margaret. ‘I’m sure Owen will be as delighted for you both as I am.’

  ‘I doubt that very much,’ said Raymond.

  ‘Oh, Raymond, don’t say that,’ said Stella. ‘Please. You have to make an effort with him.’

  ‘I don’t think Owen likes me very much,’ explained Raymond to Margaret. ‘Perhaps he thinks I’m not good enough for his sister.’

  ‘I’m not his sister,’ insisted Stella.

  ‘No, but you know what I mean. You’re as good as.’

  ‘But I’m not,’ she repeated.

  ‘Don’t worry about Owen,’ said Margaret. ‘He’ll come around in time.’

  ‘I hope so,’ said Raymond. ‘I don’t have any brothers of my own. I quite like the idea of an in-law. I don’t know what it is he has against me anyway, to be honest. Perhaps he finds me a bit rough and ready.’

  He reached up to his face and could feel the stubble on his chin from a day and a half without a shave. Margaret bit her lip to resist laughing; Raymond Davis was one of the least rough and ready men she had ever met in her life.

  ‘I think I’ll bring the bags up, Stella,’ he said. ‘And have a wash and a shave. How about a walk into the village in an hour or so?’

  ‘Perfect,’ she said, accepting the kiss he planted on her cheek as he left the kitchen. Margaret watched him leave and waited until the door had closed before turning back to Stella with a smile.

  ‘I am doing the right thing, aren’t I, Margaret?’ asked Stella quietly.

  ‘Does he make you happy?’

  She considered it. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Yes he does. He’s very kind, he makes me laugh and I know he’ll never hurt me.’

  ‘You love him then?’

  Stella hesitated. ‘Margaret…’ she said with a sigh as if that was an unfair and, in the circumstances, almost cruel question.

  ‘You can’t write to Owen,’ she repeated suddenly. ‘That’s just being spiteful.’

  ‘Do you think he’d give me away?’ Stella asked, ignoring what Margaret had just said. ‘Since Father isn’t here any more? Do you think he’d walk me down the aisle?’

  Margaret stood up and cleared away the breakfast things, shaking her head.

  ‘You take your mind off what he’ll do and think about what you’re going to do,’ said Margaret. ‘We have a wedding to plan, don’t we? And you’re the head of the Montignac family now, no one else. So let’s concentrate on that.’

  Stella watched her as she placed the dishes in the sink and knew that she was right. She would tell Owen herself and if he didn’t like it, if he wanted to create a fuss about it or insult Raymond some more, then he was perfectly entitled not to attend the wedding at all.

  Still, it wasn’t a conversation she was looking forward to.

  3

  GARETH ARRIVED AT THE back door of the Threadbare Gallery just after midnight, dressed entirely in black as he’d been instructed earlier. It had been two months since he first met Owen Montignac on the night of his twenty-fourth birthday party and the time between then and now had consisted of a cat-and-mouse game on their parts as Montignac attempted to judge the motives and courage of his new employee and Gareth set out to prove that he would do anything to keep himself away from a life sentence at the Rice Chambers.

  Right from the start Montignac had made it clear to him that there were more opportunities out there to make money than the strictly legal ones but had hesitated to imply that he himself was someone who would take advantage of them. After all, his new charge had studied the law himself and came from a family well known for upholding it; there were only so many chances one could take with a fellow like Gareth Bentley. Should he tell his father too much about Montignac’s schemes, for example, there might be trouble ahead.

  ‘The thing you have to understand about me,’ Gareth told him, a few weeks into their relationship while they ate lunch together, ‘is that I’m extremely lazy. I’d like to dress it up in better clothes than that but there we are. That’s me. A lazy good-for-nothing.’

  ‘You make it sound like a virtue,’ said Montignac, smiling.

  ‘Well it is in a way,’ said Gareth, thinking about it. ‘At least I’m honest about it. I don’t pretend to be something I’m not. I’m not the sort who wants to go in and out of an office every day for the rest of his life. There are other things I want to do. Holidays, travel, cars,’ he said extravagantly, waving his hands in the air.

  ‘All things which require money,’ Montignac suggested.

  ‘Exactly. And unfortunately I don’t have very much of that.’

  ‘Every person who is honest with himself recognizes that the only worthwhile pursuit in life is the pursuit of money,’ said Montignac with a shrug, looking around the restaurant as if the world agreed with him. ‘All the other things that one wants out of life—happiness, friends, love, sex—they can all come about if one can afford to pay for them. In fact the most ridiculous cliché of all is that money cannot buy you happiness.’

  ‘Do you really think so?’ asked Gareth. ‘Isn’t that a little cynical?’

  ‘Not at all. Show me a wealthy, unhappy man and I’ll show you a man who just isn’t trying hard enough.’

  Gareth smiled. ‘Perhaps you’re right,’ he said, nodding his head.

  ‘I am right,’ said Montignac with confidence. ‘The only question is how far one is willing to go to achieve that happiness. So tell me,’ he asked, leaning forwards,
‘just how far are you prepared to go, Gareth?’

  ‘However far I have to,’ he said, betraying only a slight note of nervousness. ‘Within reason, of course.’

  Conversations like this one had gone on for a few weeks now until the barriers had come down and it had become clear to Montignac that Gareth, a pleasant enough boy if a little dim, would do anything to avoid the life of enslavement which was otherwise being set up for him and had no great moral compass guiding him in the pursuit of his goal. It was clear to him that he saw life as one great adventure, something to be laughed at and enjoyed; he would never do anything truly bad, of course, nothing that could actively hurt someone else but he was open to suggestion for harmless schemes.

  And of course he didn’t drink. Montignac noticed that from the first evening he came to visit him at the Threadbare. He had taken him out to the pub down the road but the younger man had stuck to water.

  ‘It’s bad for me,’ he explained, unwilling to offer any further information on his affliction for the moment. ‘It’s always best that I keep a clear mind.’

  Montignac pressed him on his reasons for his sobriety but Gareth just shook his head and said he didn’t want to talk about them. ‘Another time,’ he said, laughing it off as if it really wasn’t that important. ‘After all, you never tell me anything about yourself, do you?’

  ‘No,’ he admitted. ‘No, I never do.’

  The fact that he didn’t was not enough to stop Gareth from wondering. Montignac had an air about him, a confidence, something that might be termed an arrogant swagger, that made him admire him more and more each day. He tried hard to put his finger on exactly what it was but it was difficult to define. It was in the way he dressed, the way he casually despised the art in his gallery but was in awe of the works, situated elsewhere, that he considered masterpieces. It was in how he smoked a cigarette at his desk while reading the morning paper and seemed to barely notice it as it drifted to and from his lips. It was the ease with which he could sweet-talk some rich old lady into thinking that the painting she was staring at in bewilderment would make her wealthier, younger, sexier, if she just wrote him a cheque there and then and took it off his hands; as if its very presence in her home would take years off her and have young men clamouring for her attentions. It was in the way he kept himself to himself and seemed to have few friends worth speaking of and yet had somehow invited him into this august body. For years Gareth had wondered on and off what he wanted to be and was never able to define it; now all he had to do was look across the room and there, strolling around, caught up in his own schemes, stood the answer.

  Montignac opened the back door and looked out on to the laneway just as Gareth arrived.

  ‘You’re late,’ he hissed. ‘I told you to be here at twelve.’

  ‘Sorry,’ said Gareth. ‘I got held up. Anyway it’s only a few minutes past.’

  ‘If we’re going to do this, we have to be punctual,’ said Montignac, ushering him inside. He looked at the boy and was pleased to note that he had dressed as required. ‘No one saw you leaving?’

  ‘I went up to my room before everyone else and even wished them goodnight,’ he said. ‘My parents must think I’m falling ill or something,’ he added with a smile. ‘As far as they’re concerned I’m tucked up in bed right now.’

  ‘Good. And no one saw you come down the laneway?’

  ‘No one. It was deserted, just like you said it would be.’

  Montignac, a stickler for preparation, had spent every night for the past two weeks at the Threadbare Gallery late at night, patrolling the streets and laneways outside. From around nine o’clock they were almost entirely empty and when the nearby pub let out just after ten thirty there were always a few people milling around, but by midnight the place was deserted again and one could slip in and out the back door without being noticed.

  They stepped inside the gallery now but kept the lights switched off. The recently repaired streetlight outside offered a little brightness but other than that they simply used a torch to make their way up to the mezzanine level and from there they continued up the steps that led to the doorway.

  Montignac unlocked the door to the storeroom and immediately a rush of stale air spread out towards them. They moved back instinctively and covered their mouths.

  ‘Good God,’ said Gareth. ‘It smells dreadful in here. Don’t you ever clean it out?’

  ‘We never have any cause to use it,’ he explained. ‘I haven’t opened that door in over a year.’

  Gareth handed the torch over and the two men stepped through the doorway into the darkness beyond. The bulb was dim and Montignac kept a hand stretched out before him as he walked in order to avoid crashing into anything. The ceiling seemed to sink lower and within about fifteen feet he was crouched down as he tried to make his way through. For a moment he thought the whole area was going to be sealed off but, almost at the last possible moment, the ceiling rose again and they were faced with a solid wooden wall before them.

  ‘That’s the partition,’ said Montignac, turning the torch on it and frowning. ‘It would be a lot easier if they’d left a door in it.’

  Gareth leaned past him and knocked sharply on it.

  ‘What do you think you’re doing?’ hissed Montignac quickly.

  ‘There’s no one around to hear.’

  ‘There’s also no way through a solid wall with an oak bookcase on the other side of it so let’s not waste time, all right?’

  He shone the torch across the ceiling and located the panel into the attic. ‘Pass me that chair,’ he said, turning around and indicating a chair with a broken back that was standing against the wall, alongside a heap of empty boxes, broken picture frames and age-old furniture. Gareth passed the chair across and held it carefully as Montignac stood on top, pushing the panel upwards. It shifted noisily and he ducked out of the way while a drizzle of dust particles fell down from above.

  ‘Bloody hell,’ said Gareth. ‘It’s filthy up here. What’s it going to be like inside? And will the floorboards hold you?’

  ‘Only one way to find out,’ said Montignac, pulling himself up with great effort into the gap and pushing through until he lay in the darkened space above their heads. He rested there for a moment, waiting to see whether anything untoward would happen, but already he could feel that the boards were quite solid. ‘It’s all right,’ he said, poking his head through the hole again and looking down. ‘But I’ll go across first and then you follow. There’s no point risking the weight of both of us.’

  Gareth nodded and Montignac crawled along the dark attic space like a caterpillar, dragging his lower body forwards first, then his upper. He reached upwards but it was no more than three or four feet high, certainly not enough for a grown man to stand erect in. There were quite a few pieces of broken wood and old paint pots in his way, discarded there perhaps fifty years before, but he kept advancing forwards until he knew that he must be over the Clarion and felt for a similar panel. Very soon, a raised square of wood was before him and he took a hold of it and pulled it up, smiling as he looked down into the restoration room of the gallery next door. He adjusted his body around and carefully lowered himself down.

  ‘I’m through,’ he called back, something of a half-shout and a half-whisper. He stood there quietly as he heard Gareth’s grunts as he lifted himself through the panel from the Threadbare Gallery and shuffled along the overhead corridor. A few minutes later he had jumped down too and the two men stood together and looked around.

  They stood there without saying a word for a few moments, their hearts beating sharply inside their chests, and Montignac turned the torch around on the walls. In front of the wall he noticed an extraordinary bookcase, filled to capacity with hardback books, and realized that it would have been impossible to move, even if there had been a door behind it. Locating a light switch he went over and flicked it on, pleased to note that there were no windows up here to let the light out, and turned to his accomplice and smiled. />
  ‘We’re in,’ he said.

  They looked around at the restoration room in admiration. In the Threadbare there were a couple of small storage rooms off the top floor that were in a permanent state of disarray and had become little more than glorified dumping spots. The management of the Clarion, on the other hand, obviously had a very different approach to their work. The room was spotless. One wall was lined with implements for constructing frames—brackets, nails, tiny hammers, razors, mat-cutters, frame clamps—another was filled with paints and restorative cleansers. Against the wall there were a pile of unframed canvases which had been stapled to their backgrounds but the prize, the main prize, stood on a dozen easels around them.

  ‘The Cézannes,’ said Montignac appreciatively.

  The twelve paintings by Cézanne had been removed from their old frames and the canvases stood starkly on their easels. Montignac took a few moments to examine them appreciatively. He had studied them, of course, at Cambridge and had even seen some of the master’s work once at the Hermitage Museum in Leningrad on a class expedition to Russia, and also at the Louvre on several occasions, but this was the most intimate viewing he had ever enjoyed. Even the sight of them made him want to return to the Threadbare and set fire to those artistic impostors he displayed there before they could pollute the aesthetic world any further.

  ‘Magnificent, aren’t they?’ he mused. ‘Look at the restraint he shows in his portraiture, the broad use of the palette knife. Of course, they say that Cézanne—’

  ‘Oughtn’t we to get started?’ said Gareth, who was feeling distinctly nervous about being here and wasn’t keen on an art history lesson; he glanced at his watch with concern. ‘We don’t want to be stuck here all night.’

  ‘Philistine,’ said Montignac irritably. ‘Aren’t you even a little moved by them?’

  Gareth stepped forwards and peered at the paintings, hoping that an intelligent response might occur to him that would impress his employer. But where Montignac saw colour and weight, all he could see was paint on a canvas.