Linnet's Letter

8

Linnet’s Letter

    The leaves were turning, the wind was whipping them off the trees, the woods were streaked with colour, there was the scent of woodsmoke in the air. Mathieu and his two younger boys were staying for the weekend at La Rance: occasionally a crack from their shot-guns could be heard in the distance.

    “Gilles, darling: whatever did you say to the girl?” said Roma numbly, lowering the letter from Australia.

    “Nothing!” he said angrily. “I mean of course I said that—that we had to settle the thing amicably in the only possible way the family could come out of it with honour.”

    Roma looked down at Linnet’s letter, frowning.

    “She—she—I don’t see how, but she must have taken it the wrong way!” he said desperately. “I swear to you, Maman, I told her they had a just claim and—and I even invited her to the house—well, said I was sure you would—her and the brother and sisters, of course... Hell, I wish I’d written to the boy instead!” he said bitterly.

    “Darling, I think if the eldest child misinterpreted your letter, there’s every chance a boy of eighteen would have done the same. She—she seems to have taken it that you meant exactly the opposite of what you said,” she said numbly.

    The Comte strode over to the window. “I can see that, thank you!”

    There was a short silence. Then his mother said cautiously: “Gilles: you wrote in English, I suppose?”

    “Of course!” he returned impatiently.

    “Oh, dear,” she said in that language.

    “My English isn’t that bad! I use it all the time! Well, whenever I have to go to London, or see one of our English customers. –Why is it that they can never speak our language?”

    “Francophobes,” replied Roma drily.

    “Eugh—oui!” he said with a little laugh. “Évidemment! But I make myself understood with them without the slightest difficulty!”

    “Mm. –Darling, did you actually say in so many words that you would give them the eighty percent of the ULR holdings and so forth that you feel is due to them?”

    “Of course I—” He broke off. “Well, perhaps not in those words. I made it quite clear, however. There was no possibility of mistake. Unless the girl’s a moron,” he added, scowling.

    “My darling boy, of course she isn’t a moron and of course there was every possibility of mistake! I suppose you fell back on the awful formal style your grandfather made you write letters in.”

    “Grandfather John?” he said in English, staring at her.

    “Actually I meant your Grandpère de Bellecourt. But Grandfather John, too!” said John McEwan’s daughter with a laugh. “His letters were always the dullest things! Mummy said she nearly broke off their engagement once, because he wrote her such an awful letter. All about how cold it was—he was up in Scotland with friends, dear—and how splendid the dogs at the horrid castle were, or some such rubbish, and signing himself ‘sincerely yours’—I ask you!”

    “Granny nearly broke off her engagement because he wrote her a boring letter?” he said, staring at her. “She was even dottier in those days than when I knew her, then!”

    “No! Gilles, what a thing to say! And of course she wasn’t dotty, you goose, she was terribly upset because it was so stiff and formal and she thought it meant he didn’t love her! Well: any man who can sign himself ‘Sincerely yours’ to his fiancée! And not a single word about missing her, or wishing he was with her!”

    “I see,” he said weakly. “But the cases are quite different. This was a business letter.”

    Roma groaned.

    The Comte’s high cheekbones flushed. “Really, Maman, there’s no need to be like that! I assure you I said what I meant to!”

    “I can assure you you didn’t,” said his mother drily. She picked up Linnet’s letter again. Her son watched her, frowning, as she read it over slowly.

Dear M. de Bellecourt,

    You appear to be labouring under several delusions. In the first place our name is not Müller but Muller. In the second place, my name is not ‘Lynette.’ And in the third place, whatever your ancestors may have done back in the 1920’s we’re not out to grab your rotten family fortune. I was thinking over what to do about the tontine when your letter arrived. I can see you’ve been spying on us, well too bad your spies couldn’t tell you what we’ve been talking about. Haven’t they got round to the hidden microphones yet?

    I know all about ULR, S.A., and Semences ULR and I know your family built the usines up from scratch even if they did do it on Gilles de Bellecourt’s tontine money. So although you’re a lot of rotten cheats how could it possibly be fair for us to claim eighty percent of what the investment’s yielded like the tontine agreement says? Uncle Jim’s lawyers want us to go for it and so does my brother. But like I said it wouldn’t be fair.

    I think maybe if we get half of what the tontine says, that is forty percent, that would be fair. I can see if we interpret it literally it means everything the tontine money brought you since 1918. That must be a lot of the stuff you own. We don’t want your rotten French furniture and stuff anyway. Or anything like that. The money founded ULR so it seems to me that forty percent of just the Bellecourt shares would be fair. Only if you have got any children maybe they could keep theirs. I mean little children.

    Personally I wouldn’t ask for a thing, I think your letter is a piece of bloody cheek and it may surprize you to know that not everybody in this world thinks of nothing but money morning, noon and night. But I have got my niece Fergie to think of. (No doubt your spies have told you her real name is Sarah Rose.) My sister Rose is not very well. And they’ve got a lot of debts.

    So what I am saying is, forty percent of the Bellecourt shares in ULR seems fair to me.

    You needn’t think we are going to set foot in your rotten château, because none of us would cross the street to speak to you or any of your family. Though I suppose it was kind of your mother to invite us. You can write to me about it if you like. I am going to get in touch with the lawyers straight away. And I’ll tell Jimmy not to ask for more than forty percent because that’s fair. And just thank your lucky stars we aren’t a lot of merciless money-grubbers like you assume. Because my Mémé Frazer wouldn’t have let you off with forty percent, I can tell you.

Yours faithfully,

Linnet Muller.

    “What are you— Are you counting?” said the Comte incredulously as his mother’s lips moved.

    “Yes. I’ve already done ‘rotten’: she uses it five times. Now I’m doing ‘fair’: just be quiet a minute, Gilles.”

    The Comte glared speechlessly as his mother counted how many times Linnet Muller had used the word “fair”.

    “Six,” she said.

    “It felt like more,” he said feebly.

    “Yes, didn’t it!” she said cordially.

    “Maman, that isn’t—” He broke off.

    “Fair,” said Roma composedly in English. “Non, peut-étre pas: given that your intentions were of the purest. –Gilles, I loved the bit about the spies and the microphones, didn’t you?”

    “No! It’s the rudest piece of— She must be an impertinent brat!” he said angrily.

    “Nonsense. She’s obviously quite fiercely honest and”—Roma’s pale sherry eyes twinkled: “—fair.”

    “Look, if all you’re going to do is joke about it—”

    “Mais non! Gilles, can’t you see the girl was terribly hurt when she wrote this? God knows what you said in your letter, but quite clearly she felt that you’d insulted her honour. And her family’s. –And just before you say anything you may regret,” she said grimly, as he opened his mouth, “if I hear one single word about obscure Australian farmers’ daughters or paysannes australiennes I’m walking straight out of here and going to live with Cousin Betty!”

    “Don’t do that: she’s battier than Granny was,” he said with a reluctant grin.

    Roma gave a little sigh of relief. “Stop looming over me, dearest, and come and sit down.”

    “Was I looming?” he said mildly, coming to sit in his big chair.

    “Horribly!” she replied with a gurgle. “Gilles, I’d like to meet her.”

    “Well, you won’t. She won’t set foot in our ‘rotten’ château.”

    “Mm: ‘none of us would cross the street to speak to you or any of your family,’” she read out.

    He bit his lip.

    “How long does it take to get to Australia?” she asked placidly

    “I’ve no idea. Well, it’s about a day’s flight, I suppose. And the question doesn’t arise: you’re not going.”

    “It must be spring down there,” she murmured.

    “Do they have spring in Botany Bay?”

    Roma took a deep breath.

    “I’m sorry,” he said meekly. “You know, I asked Louise to find me some books on Australia and all we have in the library here that’s even remotely connected with the Antipodes is a copy of Marion du Fresne’s voyages, and a thing called For The Term of His Natural Life. Faintly ersatz, I think. But I read it anyway.”

    Louise was the Comte’s secretary. She was an efficient woman, but more accustomed to finding information on such matters as share prices, the state of the cotton market, and so forth. Roma looked dubious.

    “Then I fell back on Great Expectations,” he said on a dry note.

    Roma’s jaw dropped.

    “Non—mais non!” he said with a laugh. “But it was salutary; I felt I ought to give it to Bertrand.”

    “And Guy,” she agreed grimly. “Oh: I see, dear: the convict—Marwick, was it?”

    “Oui, c’est ça. How appalling those vessels must have been,” he said, shuddering.

    She looked at him with affection. “Yes, dreadful. So your knowledge of Australia doesn’t really go past the beginning of the last century, darling?”

    “Well, Louise came up with a lot of stuff on wool and meat prices,” he admitted with a laugh. “And coal, did you know they’re very large exporters of coal?”

    “Not actually, no. Though of course I’m very glad to learn it.”

    “Bien sûr. –Oh, Joan Sutherland was Australian, of course,” he recalled.

    “And Dame Nellie Melba.”

    “Eugh—oui.”

    “She took her name from Melbourne. –The city, dear.”

    “Maman, where do you get this ragbag of knowledge of yours?” he demanded, staring at her.

    “It’s my English education, dear, I’ve tried to explain it to you before. It’s no more of a ragbag than an average Frenchwoman’s knowledge: it’s just a different ragbag.”

    “Sans doute!” he said, smiling at her. “—Oh, there is one other thing I know about Australia: Jean-Louis Duvallier at Semences ULR tells me the Australians are doing a lot of interesting research on gene-shears: it may be relevant to some of the disease-resistance stuff they’re working on.”

    “I see. Well, perhaps you could send him out there—he’d be company for you on the plane,” she said tranquilly.

    He opened his mouth, Then he shut it again. “Yes,” he said weakly.

    “And darling, when you see her, bear in mind that this girl must—must be as full of probity as you are. The letter was written in righteous indignation and not with any intention of deliberately insulting us.”

    “In spite of the five ‘rottens’? No, well, I dare say you’re right.”

    “Gilles,” she said urgently: “just put yourself in her place! How would you have felt if you’d received what she evidently perceived—yes, I think so—yes, what she evidently perceived to be not just a very insulting, but a very threatening letter?”

    “Threatening?”

    “Yes. I think she was frightened as well as angry when she wrote this.”

    “I don’t read that into it at all!”

    “Sans doute; but then it’s not your native language, is it, dear?” she said blandly.

    Gilles had gone very red. He took the letter off her again, frowning, and re-read it. “I still can’t see it.”

    “It’s nothing I can put my finger on. But I think the recurrence of the spies motif indicates she must have felt very threatened indeed, poor little thing. Là, tu vois? LA!” she said impatiently, pointing to the place, as her son looked blank.

    “Oh. ‘No doubt your spies have told you her real name is Sarah Rose.’ I don’t see... I read that as merely another insult.”

    Gilles’s mother corrected his pronunciation of Fergie’s name and told him he was an imbecile.

    “Oh,” he said meekly.

    “Don’t you think she sounds very sweet?” said Roma, reclaiming the letter. “Worrying about her sister’s little girl, and telling you she won’t take your children’s shares! ‘Little children,’” she quoted on a mournful note.

    “Don’t start that again.”

    “I’m not. –Well?”

    “Donne-moi ça!” He read the passages over, frowning.

    His mother watched with interest as he gradually turned a painful red.

    “When I got it I was so furious, I—I think I assumed that this passage was sheer hypocrisy. The bit about my children, I mean. I— No, she must be genuine. No-one but a complete innocent and a—a person of utter probity would commit herself on paper in this way.” He swallowed. “Don’t you think, Maman?”

    Roma beamed at him. “Of course I do, darling! It’s utterly sincere from beginning to end! –With its five ‘rottens’ and its six ‘fairs’,” she murmured.

    “Oui. En effet.” He got up, gave the letter back to her, and began to pace slowly round the room. Finally he came over to the fireplace and said lamely: “I don’t know what to do.”

    “Talk to her, obviously.”

    “Yes, but— Forty percent of the shares alone?”

    “Gilles, I think she has a point: the family did build up ULR from nothing.”

    “From the tontine money, you mean. Well, yes, they did, but... Oh, Hell, Maman, she says herself the sister’s in debt! And a widow with a small child—!”

    “Sarah Rose: it’s rather pretty. I wonder why on earth they call her Fergie.”

    “Qui sait? One of your British Commonwealth traditions, possibly,” he said on an acid note.

    “Nonsense. –I know!” said Roma, laughing suddenly.

    “Hé bien, quoi?” he said with a sigh.

    “She must have red hair!” she gurgled.

    “‘Poil de carotte’: yes, very possibly,” he agreed, smiling a little.

    “How old would she be, Gilles?”

    “Twenty-seven,” he returned immediately.

    Roma smiled to herself. “Not Linnet Muller, darling: little Fergie.”

    “Eugh… I forget. It’s in the papers from Pullen, somewhere or other. A toddler, I think.”

    “Mm... Do you think— She might take it as another insult, of course. But the sister isn’t very well... Gilles, do you think we could offer to—to bring up the little girl? Educate her, give her—well, some advantages that the Frazer children couldn’t, even with a considerable fortune behind them?”

    His jaw had sagged.

    “Take care of the mother, too!” she said quickly. “And of course there’s another sister, who must still be at school: darling, we could send her to ä nice finishing school and have her to live with us, too!”

    Gilles had shut his eyes. “Grandchildren substitutes,” he said faintly.

    “Well, you must admit Isabelle managed to let me see as little as possible of the two you produced for me,” she noted. “And of course I’m very fond of little Fabien, but it isn’t the same.”

    “Non,” he agreed with a sigh, opening his eyes. “Apparently not.”

    “It would certainly brighten up this barracks.”

    “Maman, we can’t possibly offer to take over ces Frazer lock, stock and barrel!”

    “Pourquoi pas?” she returned calmly.

    “Pourquoi pas?” he cried. “You’ve just said it yourself: they’d take it as an insult, that’s why not! And besides,” he said, frowning, “however—however decent and honest this Linnet Müller may be, their—their background and upbringing will be so entirely different from— Non, non: I’m not going to say a word about farmers’ daughters! But they may not want to be turned into genteel French ladies, had that occurred? Our whole way of life will very likely appear, not merely undesirable,” he said, frowning again: “but inimical to them. And—and how can I put it? Irrelevant, I think... Oui, c’est ça: irrelevant to anything they’ve been taught to want or conceive of as normal.”

    Roma was looking very sulky.

    “Darling Maman, I didn’t mean to— But you mustn’t build your hopes up. Ces Frazer come from half a world away, not only in terms of geographical distance, but in terms of culture. –I mean in the anthropological sense,” he finished heavily as she opened her mouth.

    She sighed. “Yes. Don’t go on, Gilles, I see what you mean.”

     He looked at her anxiously. “It’s true their grandmother was French, but... Une bourgeoise, tu sais, Maman.”

    “A very typical one, if that last sentence is any indication!”

    “Hein? Oh! Absolutely,” he said, laughing a little. Then he sighed. “I don’t know, Maman. I’m beginning to feel a little like Faust, if that’s not too fanciful a notion. The idea of forty percent, tempting though it may be, seems to me...” He went over to the window, and stared out, frowning. Finally he turned round and said: “Suppose I offer them half?”

    “Forty is half of eighty, Gilles.”

    “Non! Imbécile! –No, I beg your pardon, Maman. Half of everything.”

    Roma eyed him drily. “I think that’s only possible within the bonds of matrimony, isn’t it, dear?”

    “You’re being silly again,” he said tiredly.

    “All right, I’ll be sensible for a change. What would half of everything consist of? Half the grounds? Half of the picture collection?”

    He scowled.

    “Half of my jewels? Half of the house in town? Your great-grandfather bought that off the widow of a rich Jew who’d lost everything in the stock market crash of ’29,” she added reminiscently. “I’m afraid he gave the poor woman only a fraction of what it was worth. Your grandfather,” she noted drily, “was quite proud of the fact.”

    Gilles’s lips tightened. “I know that. I’m selling the place. I’ve always loathed it, in any case. It’s a prime site, it’ll fetch an enormous sum. The negotiations are under way, if you want to know. I think eighty percent of the proceeds should clearly go to Linnet Müller. And her brother and sisters.”

    “Good. I can keep the pearls, then?”

    “Stop JOKING!” he shouted.

    “I’m sorry, Gilles. But you don’t seem to be very clear about what you mean.”

    “I’m still thinking it out,” he said, clenching his fists.

    “I see. –Mon fils, don’t stride up and down the room like that: you’re exhausting me! Ring for tea.”

    He looked at his watch.

    “Never mind what the time is, Gilles, ring for TEA!” shouted his mother. “You’re getting as stuffy and hidebound as your grandfather!”

    “It’s old age,” he said drily, ringing the bell.

    “En effet,” agreed Roma grimly. “Not to mention the whatsanames—genes.”

    Gilles didn’t reply. But when old Bernadette in person came in, he said: “Even though it’s only two-thirty in the afternoon, Bernadette, could we have a five-o’clock?”

    “It’s nearly three, Monsieur Gilles,” responded the old cook. “And you can have whatever you whenever you like, it is your house.”

    Roma opened her mouth to say: “See?” but before she could speak the old servant continued: “But tea at this hour’s not going to do your liver any good at all, you know.”

    Roma whipped out her handkerchief and hid behind it, making muffled sounds.

    “Quoi que ce soit, Bernadette,” the Comte replied politely: “Maman wants tea.”

    “Not—fair!” gasped Roma in English from behind the hanky.

    “Très bien, Monsieur Gilles: un petit five-o’clock,” agreed Bernadette grimly, going out.

    The Comte flung himself into his chair and shouted with laughter.

    “Bernadette won that one,” noted Roma, blowing her nose.

    “She always does!” he said, grinning

    “Ça, c’est vrai.”

    “I’ve been so worried about her—if I had to sell the château… Well, she’s never lived anywhere else, she was born on the estate,” he said, sighing.

    “She’d come with us, of course. Well, with you,” she said, smiling at him.

    “Of course. But she wouldn’t be happy away from her home.”

    “No.” His mother looked at him cautiously. “So you won’t sell the château after all?”

    “I— Well, Béjart assures me the extra twenty percent for the Paris house will make up for a fair few ULR shares. What I mean is, Maman, we wouldn’t literally have to give ces Frazer eighty percent of each thing we own, only eighty percent of the value— You see that,” he said ruefully.

    “Of course. What else have we got that’s old and ugly and horrible?” she said thoughtfully.

    He raised his eyebrows. “Bertrand?”

    “Don’t!” she choked. “Well, he’s certainly not ugly, he’s a very handsome man.”

    “Old and horrible, though,” he said, grinning. “I think I might make him sell that barracks of his, he hardly ever uses it. And besides, self-sacrifice, they say, is so good for the soul. Though you may well argue that Bertrand sold his to the Devil some time since.”

    “Silly one. Eugh… there’s the villa.”

    “Yes. Pauline’s pointed out that at need it could replace Mathieu’s place, that was acquired with the income from ULR. So she’s offered to take it off my hands,” he said wryly. “For half of its market value, bien entendu.”

    “Gilles! You won’t let her!”

    “I won’t let her get away with it, no. I’ll sell it to her if she’ll make a decent offer.”

    “Has she got that much?”

    He sniffed slightly. “Apparently. That old uncle who died a few years back—on her mother’s side—apparently he left a fair bit.”

    “Well, good, that’ll be a few million, won’t it, darling?”

    “Ouais… I—I really can’t accept Mlle Müller’s offer of forty percent, though. It’s—it’s very generous of her,” he said, swallowing, “only…”

    “Well, fifty percent seems very fair, dear. Though I would like to keep the pearls.”

    “Maman, I’m not asking you to sell the pearls!” he shouted. “It was a joke!”

    Bernadette came in with the tea at that moment and reproved him severely for speaking to his mother like that. And that was a baba, if he insisted on ruining his liver; and that, glaring at it, was a recipe of Madame la Comtesse’s. English. She went out on this note of foreboding.

    The Comte looked at the English cake with a little doubtful grimace on his face.

    “Anything Bernadette cooks will be marvellous, you silly boy,” said Roma placidly. “It’s an orange cake. A family recipe.”

    “Oh. Well, Granny always had ‘jolly decent teas,’” he conceded, grinning.

    “Of course! So do the cousins. I thought we’d try some English recipes, if the Frazer children are coming to stay.”

    Gilles had picked up a plate. Sèvres. He dropped it. Fortunately on the rug.

    “Maman, you’re incorrigible! –And why is Bernadette using the good china?” he said limply, picking it up.

    “Possibly to remind you of its existence. She’s not deaf or stupid, you know.”

    “Eugh—non,” he agreed, frowning. What Bernadette knew, the whole household would very speedily know, followed quickly by the village… “Merde,” he muttered.

    “Don’t swear. And mind you try both cakes.”

    “You’re the one who wanted this tea, in case you’ve forgotten it! –Oh, very well.”

    Roma watched pleasedly as he helped himself to the baba. He’d hardly touched his lunch. She knew, of course, that Bernadette was also aware of this fact: hence the presence of the two cakes at three o’clock in the afternoon—in spite of the remark about his liver.

    “I think the best thing might be,” she said, after her son had drunk two cups of tea, eaten a large portion of baba, a large slice of orange cake, and was embarking, apparently without realizing he was doing so, on a second slice of the latter, “to ask Linnet Muller what she thinks.”

    “Ça se prononce ‘Linnet’?” he said in astonishment.

    “Yes,” said Roma in English: “it’s not a version of ‘Lynette’, at all. I’ve never heard it used as a girl’s name, actually, but it’s pretty, isn’t it? It’s the name of a little bird. A dear little brown songbird. Une linotte,” she explained, going back to French.

    “Une linotte?” he said, starting to smile. “Mais c’est charmant, ça!”

    “En effet. And before you start recalling the times innumerable you’ve shot and eaten the poor little things over in the flax fields, Gilles, let me just remind you that the British don’t approve of that. Songbirds,” she said firmly in English, “are not game, and not food.”

    The Comte cried in astonishment: “But I’ve seen you eat— Oh. No. I understand,” he said weakly.

    “I don’t think I’ve ever eaten linnets,” said Roma dispassionately in her son’s preferred language. “But I’ve certainly eaten larks. And snipe. –I wonder if Mathieu and the boys are having any luck?”

    “Mathieu and Jean-Paul, perhaps. Fabien may possibly bag a barn or two if he’s on form.”

    She gave a smothered giggle.

    “Well, he’s a good boy,” he said with a smile. “I wish it was in my power to disinherit Guy in his favour.”

    “Oui. Well, there’s no need to leave any of the property to Guy.”

    “No: the property must go with the title,” he said, scowling.

    Roma didn’t say anything about marrying and getting a son to cut Guy out, she merely poured herself more tea and said: “Did you hear what I said?”

    “When? Before or after you’d maundered off onto the subject of songbirds?”

    “About asking Linnet Muller what she thinks about their share.”

    “Oui,” he said, grimacing. “At least I’ll get an honest answer from her. Which is more than I’ll get from my own dear relatives!”

    “That’s what I think,” agreed Roma placidly.

    “She’ll hold out for forty percent, you know,” he said, frowning.

    “And you’ll hold out for more. Yes. Just try not to be stubborn, dear. And think about what I said. The Muller children and the little girl will be very welcome here.”

    “I can’t see that they— No, all right, we’ve been through all that. I’ll bear it in mind. Thank you, Maman.”

    “Oh, I’m doing it for myself as well!” said Roma with a laugh.

    He looked at her affectionately. “Oui, je sais. But if they’re large and coarse and—and loud, please don’t expect me to make the offer.”

    “Loud?”

    “Those Australians that old Louis chased out of our woods last summer were certainly loud. And worse, according to his account.”

    “Were they Australians?”

    “They were anglophones and had a van with a kangaroo painted on it: I think they must have been.”

    “I see. Couldn’t you have let them camp, Gilles? Would it have done any harm? After all, we have the Scouts down by the river every year.”

    “Apart from the fact that the woods were like tinder and they’d left a fire smouldering, not to mention the damned cans and plastic rubbish they’d littered the place with, I wasn’t here, tu te rappelles?”

    As he’d gone up to Scandinavia on a week’s cruise of the fjords with his mistress, Roma could only reply feebly to this: “Oh: was it the week you were away?”

    “Henriette thinks I should fight them,” he said abruptly.

    Roma looked at his frown. “I see, dear.”

    “I thought at least that she… She didn’t appear to see that there was a moral position involved at all!” he said with a cross laugh.

    Roma wasn’t surprized. She didn’t see very much of her son’s mistress, but as Henriette Verdeuil came from very much the same social background as the Bellecourts, she did bump into her from time to time at dinners or receptions. “No, well, Henriette is a very practical person, my dear, you’ve always recognized that.”

    “Oui, mais— Oh, never mind!” he said impatiently.

    Had they had a row? Roma didn’t ask. As he never normally spoke of Henriette to her she was a little surprized that he’d done so now. But concluded that it was because he was annoyed with the woman and wanted confirmation that his annoyance was justified.

    “So you are going to Australia?” she said, after Bernadette in person had come in to clear, noted with approval that her master had eaten something, and gone out again.

    “Oui. The visas shouldn’t take long.”

    “Perhaps I should come, too,” she murmured.

    “To translate,” he noted sardonically.

    Roma merely looked at him drily.

    “Don’t worry, I’ll spell it out, Maman.”

    “Sans doute; but will you do it kindly, Gilles?”

     He stared at her. “Kindly?”

    “Oui, mon chéri, kindly. Because I think you’ve hurt this little Linnet enough already.”

    “Hurt— Little!” he spluttered. “Maman, she’s probably a two-metre female wrestler with shoulders on her like a Gargantua!”

    “And teeth like a horse. You’ve been listening to Fabien and Jean-Paul,” she said heavily.

    “I’m reliably informed they grow them like that out there.” He raised his eyebrows. “Prenons La Stupenda, par exemple.”

    “Don’t be absurd,” she said weakly. “I’m sure they come in all shapes and sizes.”

    The door opened as she spoke; Fabien came in, grinning. “Qui ça, Tante Roma?”

    “Les paysennes australiennes. And have you changed your boots?” replied his “Oncle” Gilles disagreeably.

    “Ouais, ouais; t’en fais pas,” he replied soothingly.

    Gilles glared; Roma swallowed a giggle.

    Fabien came over to the fire. “They come in all the shapes and sizes of female wrestlers. –It’s getting chilly; we’re really into autumn, now.”

    “Fabien, dear, are you cold?” asked Roma anxiously.

    “Only my hands,” he said, rubbing them before the blaze. “—Bernadette’s bringing tea,” he added cheerfully.

    Roma sniggered.

    “What’s the joke?”

    The Comte got up. “Nothing. We’ve had our tea: your Tante Roma was peckish. If you want a lift back to Paris, I’m leaving at five tomorrow morning.”

    “Five?” said Roma weakly. Fabien just goggled in dismay.

    “This may allow me to put in a decent day’s work at the office. –I was assuming it would also allow you to put in a decent day’s work on your studies, but possibly I was wrong,” he said to Fabien.

    “I have got an early lecture,” he admitted feebly.

    Gilles gave a faint sniff.

    “He did work quite hard last year, dear,” said Roma.

    “Quite hard?” retorted Gilles witheringly, going out.

    “Oh, dear,” said Roma to herself.

    “What’s up with him?” asked Fabien.

    “Oh—nothing, dear,” she lied.

    “If it’s this tontine thing, you don’t have to worry, Tante Roma: Guy and Jean-Paul have sorted it all out between them. Guy will take the eldest paysanne australienne and Jean-Paul will take the widow. –He likes women of experience,” he said airily. “And we think we might suggest to Marie-Claire that she’d better have the brother. He’ll be a bit young for her but she can call him a ‘toyboy’, it’ll be a new high for her. And I’ll have the cadette! We’ll have a long engagement to gladden Maman’s heart.”

    “Fabien, don’t talk like that, it upsets Gilles so.”

    “Upsets him? Enrages him, you mean!” he said with a laugh.

    “Well, exactly. –Fabien, dear, what is a ‘toy boy’?” she asked weakly, pronouncing it in English rather than as he had.

    “Tante Roma, you really live in the Middle Ages, don’t you?” he said with kindly scorn. “All the older ladies have them these days!”

    “I don’t think I want to know,” she said faintly.

    “‘Zheust a gigolo...’” sang Fabian in execrable English.

    Roma went into a terrible spluttering fit and had recourse to her handkerchief. “Don’t you dare use that expression in front of your Oncle Gilles!” she gasped.

    “Pas si bête,” returned Fabian, grinning. He sat down on the rug at her feet and added: “Guy’s got a second scenario, did Jean-Paul say?” Before Roma could tell him not to, he went on: “Oncle Gilles marries the one that’s coiffé Sainte Catherine; Guy takes the widow—he thinks she’ll be a bit more domesticated, likely to put up with being immured in the country all year; and Jean-Paul takes the ‘bunny’!” he finished, using the English word but once again mangling it horribly.

    Roma descended so far as to object to this: “You don’t know she’s a bunny, Fabien.”

    “True. But if we don’t lose the family fortune after all, Tante Roma,” he said, stretching out before the fire and looking up at her with twinkling brown eyes, “Jean-Paul says there’s a lot can be done these days with plastic surgery—tu sais?”

    Alas, the Comtesse de Bellecourt, quite caught out, went into a terrific giggling fit.

    Marie-Claire sat on her mother’s sofa, looking sulky. Isabelle had once owned some lovely Louis XV furniture: what had happened to it, Roma didn’t know. The sofa Marie-Claire was on was hideous: white leather with strange, low, flap-like cushions for arms. The chair she herself was in was even worse: a sheet of black leather strung on aluminium poles. It was far too deep for her, even though she was not a particularly small woman: she had had to ask for a couple of cushions. Marie-Claire had fetched them off the giant white wool Chose—Roma de Bellecourt thought of it as “une Chose”—that stood beneath the picture window of Isabelle’s large appartement in a high-rise immeuble grand standing: not a sofa, there were several pieces to it, and not a divan, as the pieces did have backs, more a... Possibly it was what Americans called “a sectional”. Well, it certainly had sections. Five, each about two metres long. Rather like a large station waiting-room, only cleaner. No doubt the white wool would mark horribly, but no doubt also, Isabelle Fleuriot du Hamel would tire of it pretty soon and get rid of it anyway. –She had remarried after the divorce but had not produced further offspring. “Zizi” Fleuriot du Hamel was a banker, a plump, cheery man considerably older than Isabelle: in his late sixties, Roma thought. No-one in the Bellecourt family knew the origin of the nickname, but everyone called him Zizi. It was true he had already had a grown-up family when he married Isabelle but nevertheless Roma not infrequently wondered why on earth he’d done it. He was so clearly the sort of happy, home-loving fellow whose natural environment, one would have said, was a big, old, untidy country house full of dogs and noise and laughter, surrounded by his children and grandchildren. Whereas Isabelle’s wasn’t.

    “Now, don’t look like that, Marie-Claire,” Roma said firmly to the sulky look.

    “Mais Grannie, he’s unreasonable!” –-Both of Gilles’s girls called her “Grannie”. It had been Isabelle’s notion. The Englishness of it gave it a nice cachet, she thought. Privately Roma thought it was silly: “Gra-nie,” in a strong French accent with a very strong stress on the second syllable, had nothing particularly English about it. She would have preferred “Grandmère” or “Mémé” if they couldn’t manage “Granny.”

    “Your father’s giving up far more than you are, Marie-Claire,” she said firmly.

    “Not in proportion,” said Marie-Claire, pouting.

    Roma took a deep breath. “I don’t think you realize, dear, that the alternative is for ces Frazer to take each of you children to court separately and sue you for eighty percent of everything you’ve had from the factories over the years—not just eighty percent of your shares. As soon as he can, your Papa will reimburse you for the shares; you know that, Marie-Claire. Now come along, don’t be silly. Gilles has got enough on his plate without you girls creating silly fusses over nothing, when you should be helping him.”

    “Au nom de Dieu, Marie-Claire,” said her mother in a bored voice from the depths of her white leather armchair, “do what Grannie says and stop making a fuss. You and Annie between you own an infinitesimal number of ULR shares, anyway.”

    “We don’t!” snapped Marie-Claire. “And anyway they bring in good interest!”

    Isabelle raised her finely arched eyebrows very high at her ex-mother-in-law. Roma had to swallow. Heretofore both of them would have taken a Bible oath that Marie-Claire neither knew nor cared what any of the careful investments her father had made for her brought in.

    Marie-Claire de Bellecourt at this point in time was twenty-three years of age. She was a short young woman, about five-foot-three, and the type that naturally inclines to plumpness: round face, rounded little body, shapely but solid legs. So far the regular visits to the gym, the tennis and the skiing were keeping the embonpoint at bay, but, thought her grandmother drily as Marie-Claire engulfed a huge forkful of baba au rhum, if she went on like that, she’d end up as boulotte as Isabelle’s mother before she was thirty. Marie-Claire, along with the sherry-coloured eyes, had inherited the thick, wavy, pale honey hair that Roma had had in her day: the sort of shade that looks merely fawnish and dull if not given the best of care. Marie-Claire’s hair got the best of care. Her genius of a hairdresser had cut it about three inches long all over and swept it back strongly off her face and up, so that it stood out and away from the head. The result gave her a little height and diminished the plumpness of the cheeks. The tips just curled over towards the face. It was charming; but the face beneath it was usually pouting and discontented.

    Roma could remember Marie-Claire as the happiest of little things, as a child: a plump, laughing little creature. By the time she was seventeen, all that had changed. Her grandmother wasn’t too sure why, though she worried over Marie-Claire rather a lot. Perhaps it had been the divorce. Or partly: it must have been clear to the girls for years that their parents didn’t get on and in fact were rarely together.

    At seventeen Marie-Claire had eloped from her exclusive finishing-school with a racing-car driver. He wasn’t even a famous racing-car driver, he was a totally obscure racing-car driver with a face like a ferret and an underfed little working-class body and, as far as Marie-Claire’s relatives had been able to determine, completely devoid of charm. Her father had had the marriage annulled, and paid the fellow off.

    The school had refused to take her back, so her mother had taken her on a cruise of the West Indies. On their return Marie-Claire had embarked on a round of parties, discos, etcetera. With more third-class racing-car drivers, obscure pop singers, hangers-on to the not-quite-jet-set, and their ilk. She had rather soon got pregnant by a married man. Isabelle had had that taken care of in an exclusive private clinic. Then she’d got engaged to a skiing instructor. Her father had paid him off, too. Informing her after he’d done so that he was getting bored with this succession of clichés.

    Marie-Claire had embarked on an even dizzier round of parties, discos and more parties, and cruises and skiing expeditions and, this time, gambling parties. After she’d lost an immense sum at roulette without apparently even being aware she’d done so, Gilles had cut off her allowance and told her she could work for a living. He didn’t much care at what, but she could choose a respectable occupation and he’d see she was started off in it. Marie-Claire was by now twenty-one. She had sulked for weeks, complained endlessly to her mother, who was impervious to all complaints and most particularly those which ended with a request for money, complained to her stepfather who, though he was a pretty soft touch, had agreed with Gilles to ignore her this time round, and finally, sulkily, agreed to go into interior decorating. Her friend Suzanne was interested, too. Gilles had set Marie-Claire and Suzanne up in a little business with a third partner, a talented young man who had been highly recommended (and vetted by Béjart et Labouchère). After six months the business had started to take off, Suzanne and the third partner were working like beavers, and Marie-Claire had lost interest. She got engaged to one of their clients, a charming young Arab gentleman. In banking. Zizi’s contacts discovered for Gilles without the slightest difficulty that the gentleman had a wife and four children back home in the Middle East.

    Marie-Claire had taken an overdose. Mostly aspirins with a couple of sleeping-pills, a belt of vodka and a little speed to ginger it up. She’d taken it in her mother’s flat approximately an hour before Isabelle and Zizi were due home from a large reception and had left a note prominently displayed on the coffee table in the middle of Isabelle’s sitting-room, so it was pretty clear she hadn’t intended to die. The cocktail certainly hadn’t been lethal but it had been very nasty and she’d had to have her stomach pumped, which was even nastier, and had felt very sick for some time afterwards. Her father had endeavoured to have her put into a detoxification programme (the expensive sort, at an exclusive private clinic) but the doctor who ran the place had told him very drily that, tempted though he was to take his money, Monsieur le Comte, his daughter didn’t appear addicted to anything except boredom.

    Isabelle had taken Marie-Claire on a cruise of the Greek islands. This had signally not worked, though the family had had to admit it had been well meant. Marie-Claire had had a brief but torrid fling with a Greek fisherman and they’d then had a panic about AIDS. It wasn’t the onset of AIDS, though she was pretty sick for some time: it was a combination of a bad piece of squid, an allergy to tomatoes which they all thought she’d grown out of, as it hadn’t surfaced since she was about five, a bad case of sunburn—they must have done it in some very odd positions in full sun, the doctor reported to the furious Isabelle—and crabs. Yes, crabs, Mme Fleuriot du Hamel. No, not even a mild case of VD, though if Mme Fleuriot du Hamel would excuse the doctor, her daughter was very lucky indeed to have escaped that.

    Even though the Greek doctor read Marie-Claire a humiliating lecture on sexual hygiene, common sense, and the use of the condom, Marie-Claire fell head-over-heels in love with him. Well, as her Bellecourt cousins remarked, she hadn’t had one of those so far: probably she was due for one. Although he was a startlingly handsome man, he was considerably older than Marie-Claire’s own father. She put on her best nightie and lots of Y perfume and suggested he divorce his wife of thirty-odd years, but Dr Iannopoulos merely laughed at her and read her a humiliating lecture on father-fixations and adolescent fantasies that it was time she’d outgrown. And advised her to look for a nice young man who’d give her plenty of sons and keep her busy looking after his house and making nice meals for him.

    Marie-Claire didn’t take another overdose, perhaps she’d learnt her lesson. And her stomach still hadn’t recovered from the food poisoning. However, it was the first time in her life she’d been turned down by a man whom she wanted and she was very, very humiliated. It didn’t occur to her that hitherto none of the men she’d wanted had been particularly admirable specimens, let alone the sort of respectable and decent man that Dr Iannopoulos was. She retired to La Rance, sulking.

    There Roma and old Bernadette had duly fussed over her—she’d lost a terrible lot of weight, not surprisingly—fed her up on delicious, tempting little meals, taken her for drives, gone on little walks with her, and so forth. For a while it looked as if Marie-Claire might settle to the country life. She’d renewed old acquaintances in the neighbourhood, taken up riding again, joined the rather tepid local tennis club in the local town, Tôq, and was even allowing, on the one hand, old Louis to teach her about game preserves and where to find rabbits and snipe and how to handle a shot-gun properly, and on the other, old Bernadette to teach her how to make a nice, simple baba, how to prepare pâté de lièvre ou de lapin, and how to make confitures de almost anything.

    Perhaps it didn’t dawn on her immediate relatives, not even on Roma, that the girls from the district whom Marie-Claire had known in her youth were now busy young married women. Certainly they found time for tennis and riding, and one or two of them even went out with the guns. There was a gym in Tôq, and the more up-to-date of them played squash there and went to exercise classes or did jazzercize. A few of them had jobs and therefore necessarily very busy schedules indeed, in which there was little room for Marie-Claire. But even the others were very busy: their days were pretty well filled with driving their husbands in to work or to the station, taking their young children to kindergarten, doing the family shopping, making tempting little lunches in the case of those whose husbands worked locally, collecting the children from kindergarten and the husbands from work or the station, making tempting little dinners, and looking after the home. Most of them had a woman come in from the village to help with the housework but even so, being properly brought up, conventionally-minded young Frenchwomen, they spent several hours a day tidying and polishing. In all these activities there was, of course, no place for Marie-Claire. Sometimes she lunched with those whose husbands didn’t work locally, but these lunches were very often in the company of petit Michel or petit Fernand or petite Suzie or petite Chloé. There were no little children at all in Marie-Claire’s immediate family and although she felt no aversion to these little extensions of her old friends’ selves, she really didn’t at all know how to deal with them. More especially as their mothers were without exception totally capable and managed the little ones calmly and cheerfully without ever getting into flaps or needing a hand. What with all this, and the further fact that although the young mothers could talk fashion and interior decorating, Marie-Claire couldn’t talk cooking and childcare, gradually she began going back to Paris for the day, and then for a couple of days, and then for the week...

    By now she was only gracing La Rance with her presence for the odd weekend. She’d gone back to the parties and discos but had started to socialize rather more with Zizi’s banking set. Isabelle was quite pleased, she thought that Marie-Claire would meet some nice young banker’s son and settle down with him, but the astute Zizi was uneasily aware that it was more the fathers than the sons that Marie-Claire was interested in. She’d told him that she was fed up with boring, stupid young men and wanted someone who could give her a decent life. He sincerely doubted that any of his acquaintances would oblige: many of them were already into their second marriages and Marie-Claire, though pretty enough, was not really striking, and was pretty dumb. It was true she was well-connected, but she was not, of course, rich in her own right. In Zizi’s opinion any proposal from the wealthy men who were encouraging his stepdaughter was not likely to be one of marriage. And if she did become the mistress of a much older man, he rather thought it would finish her chances with the younger banking set. Fooling around with your contemporaries and sowing your wild oats was one thing. Sleeping with their fathers or uncles was quite another. They were a conservative lot of young stuffed-shirts and Zizi couldn’t see them condescending to take Marie-Claire after an episode like that. He was very worried about the girl but couldn’t see what the Hell to do about it.

    Having finished raising her eyebrows at her former mother-in-law, Isabelle said in a very bored voice to her elder daughter: “If you don’t agree to sign this paper, Marie-Claire, Zizi and I will advise Gilles to cut off your allowance.”

    “All RIGHT!” she cried angrily. “I’ll do it! But Papa’s just mean!”

    “Ouais: mean and supporting you,” noted her younger sister Annie, from her position cross-legged on the pristine white hand-woven rug.

    Marie-Claire pouted and didn’t answer.

    “That’s sensible, dear,” approved Roma. “There’s no sense in making your papa angry for nothing.”

    “It isn’t nothing,” she muttered.

    “Mercenary little toad,” noted Annie.

    “Who do you imagine pays your rent?” retorted Marie-Claire swiftly.

    Isabelle rose gracefully from the clinging leather curves of the big white armchair. “That’s enough. If you wish to make childish scenes the two of you can go elsewhere. So we may expect Gilles at any moment, Roma, my dear, do I have that right?”

    Roma was aware that Isabelle had almost undoubtedly had nothing better to do this afternoon than wait indoors for her ex-husband to turn up with the share transfers for his daughters to sign; nevertheless she had to repress a wince. “He said five o’clock, dear,” she murmured.

    Isabelle consulted the pretty little diamond-ringed watch which depended from a pretty little bow of diamonds on her skinny bosom. “Four-thirty. Would anyone care for more tea?”

    “Oui, s’il te plaît, Maman,” said Annie from the rug. And from inside one of Isabelle’s fashion magazines.

    Roma also agreed she would like more tea. The lapsang souchong had got cold while they argued with Marie-Claire. –Annie, on the other hand, had agreed immediately that Gilles must sell her ULR shares. She was totally indifferent to anything to do with the family wealth.

    Isabelle rang for the maid. The maid immediately appeared, immaculate in the pale grey which Isabelle apparently considered subfusc enough not to clash with her black and white modern décor and not as hopelessly outmoded as black. There was a white organdie apron over the grey, true.

    Isabelle then excused herself gracefully on the grounds of having to make a phone call and went out.

    Roma eyed her grandchildren nervously. “Dears—”

    “What now, Grannie?” said Marie-Claire sulkily.

    Annie looked up without interest from the fashion magazine. Though she was not interested in fashion, either. “What?”

    Roma swallowed a sigh. “I told you that your father is determined to go to Australia and see ces Fr— the Muller children, didn’t I?”

    “Ouais,” conceded Annie. Marie-Claire just gave a bored sigh.

    “I—well, I was wondering if either of you would like to go with him,” said Roma without hope.

    “Peux pas. Trop occupée,” replied Annie into her magazine.

    “That stupid architecture course? You’ll never pass! Girls don’t do that!” said Marie-Claire scornfully, becoming almost animated.

    “Ta geuele! What would you know, t’es bête comme une oie!” retorted Annie immediately.

    Roma sighed. Isabelle had made the right move, getting out of it when they started in on each other. Isabelle had always been expert at walking away from rows. Frequently those she had provoked, true.

    “Just stop bickering for a moment, girls,” she said tiredly, “Annie, it would only be for a week at the most. I’m sure the university could spare you that long. And the Fr— the Muller boy is studying architecture, too: wouldn’t you like to meet him?”

    “Australian architecture?” responded Annie incredulously, with a scornful crack of laughter.

    “Um—well—they must have it, dear.”

    “Ouais: the Sydney Opera House,” she said, shrugging. “It wasn’t designed by an Australian, before you start, Grannie.”

    “I wasn’t going to... Well, that’s good, dear, Gilles likes the opera, he can go!”

    “To see Dame Nellie Melba, ouais,” she agreed into the magazine.

    “Don’t be silly, Annie. Um—Dame Joan Sutherland?”

    “Past it,” said Annie into the magazine. She then looked up and delivered the standard pithy leftish student lecture on outmoded cultural icons which should not be subventionnés by the government.

    Roma didn’t listen. She rather liked opera. Not Wagner, though. She was also aware that Annie had inherited this liking through Gilles and sometimes went in the cheapest seats, up in the paradis. Rather than accompany her father and sit in the lush, padded comfort of the fauteuils, thus possibly paying the State back something of its huge subsidies. She looked at her younger granddaughter and sighed.

    Where Marie-Claire was elegantly and conventionally clad for the afternoon in a straight tan dress in a lightweight wool—moderate shoulder pads, one big gold brooch high on the shoulder that matched the big plain gold earrings, spider-web fine, pale tights on the well-shaped legs and neat lizard shoes—Annie was dressed according to another French convention entirely. The scruffy student thing. Very dark jeans—these days the jeans were either very dark or very pale, in the latter case usually also very raggy, Roma had noticed—black sweater about six sizes too big for her, black leather boots, an old brown leather flying-jacket which she had not picked up at Les Puces but had bought for an enormous sum from a boutique which specialized in such recycled tat, and a man’s cream silk scarf knotted around the neck. Second-hand and from Les Puces, though the layer of grime on it was probably all Annie’s own. Not washing appeared to form part of the student ethos. Incidentally, the money for the jacket had come from her despised father, who on the occasion of her eighteenth birthday had been so misguided as (a) to present her with a lovely rope of pearls, and (b) to suggest she buy herself a pretty dress or two “with this.”

    Annie was a tall, skinny, dark girl. The short black curls were from the Bellecourt side of the family but her eyes were not the Bellecourt ice blue but a deep cornflower, set in creamy, heavy lids thickly fringed with curled black lashes. Even when she hadn’t been up till all hours studying and/or smoking pot, they were normally smudged with blue under the lower lids: Irish eyes, from Roma’s side. She also had the broadness across the cheekbones from that side. Her chin tended to the squarish, and her mouth was wide and generous. Though so far this trait hadn’t appeared anywhere in her personality: Annie was not malicious or spiteful and not an unkind or mean person, but she certainly never thought of any but Annie’s wants and needs. She was letting her father put her through her architecture degree—this would be her second year, and it was true she hadn’t distinguished herself in the first year; and letting him subsidize her flat; but had declared her intention of cutting loose after that from the family and their filthy lucre and supporting herself for the rest of her life. That her father had been very hurt by this declaration had not occurred to her. Nor would she have found it reasonable in him if it had occurred.

    Marie-Claire had waxed most indignant over the story of the Mullers’ tontine claim; Annie, on the other hand, had shrugged and said that she’d always thought Oncle Bertrand and his side were a pack of crooks. Adding as an afterthought that ces Frazer ought to go for it.

    “Your Papa would like your company, Annie, dear. And isn’t Sydney a modern, go-ahead sort of city?”

    The young Parisienne cast her a look of tolerant scorn. “Grannie, Papa doesn’t want company, he’d ignore me all the way: he’d be reading a business report or something: you know what he is. And Sydney’s a provincial dump. Ça serait marrant.”

    “You can’t know that, dear. I’ve heard it’s very—well, a beautiful setting.”

    “Ouais: it and its opera house. I’m not going, Grannie: ça serait marrant.” She retired inside the magazine.

    “Well, what about you, Marie-Claire?” ventured Roma. “Gilles especially asked me to ask you, he’s sure you’d find it interesting.”

    “No, I wouldn’t, Grannie, Annie’s right: it’d be dead boring. Provincial.” Marie-Claire picked up a fashion magazine from the huge, misshapen black glass object that was the so-called coffee table—it was more the area, though not the shape, of a billiards table—and immersed herself in it.

    “You might find some nice little boutiques, dear.”

    No response.

    “Marie-Claire, don’t you even want to go with your father?” said Roma despairingly.

    “Non,” said Marie-Claire flatly from inside her magazine. “He’s boring.”

    “Ouais: marrant,” agreed Annie drily from inside hers.

    “All right!” said Roma in a high, angry voice. “Just don’t be surprized if—if he comes back married to one of ces Frazer and—and cuts the pair of you out!”

    “Gran-nie,”  moaned Annie. “T’es dingue.”

    “He’s more likely to marry that cow; Henriette Verdeuil,” said Marie-Claire into her magazine.

    “Ouais. –We’ve got our own lives to lead, Grannie,” explained Annie on a tolerant note.

    “And Australia’s hot,” said Marie-Claire.

    “Marie-Claire, you spend thousands every year going off to hot places to get a tan!” cried her grandmother. “—Oh: thank you,” she said weakly as the maid brought in the fresh tray of tea.

    “Australia isn’t exotic, Grannie,” said Marie-Claire tolerantly.

    Annie had been about to say the very same thing, but in a very sardonic voice. She gulped.

    Roma poured tea. “Ces Frazer—I mean the Mullers,” she said limply, “sound very nice, dears.”

    “Gran-nie!” moaned Annie.

    “Australiens,” said Marie-Claire, shrugging.

    “Marrants,” agreed Annie with a sniff.

    “You’re a pair of Francocentric little snobs!” said their grandmother crossly. “Don’t you even care if your father wants your company?”

    “He doesn’t, Grannie,” said Annie tolerantly.

    “Non,” agreed Marie-Claire. “Anyway, I can’t go. I’ve got a week at a health farm next month. And Michel’s taking me to— I forget. Some play. Molière, I think.”

    Annie made a scornful noise.

    “Michel, dear?” said Roma faintly.

    “That old freak Michel Béjart: one of Papa’s lawyers, he won’t like that!” noted Annie with horrid satisfaction.

    “Marie-Claire, isn’t he a little old for you?” faltered her grandmother.

    “And a little married,” agreed Annie into her magazine.

    Marie-Claire pouted. “They’re thinking of separating. Anyway, at least he behaves as if I’m alive. and not part of the furniture!”

    There was a short silence.

    “Compared with who, dear?” asked Roma weakly.

    Marie-Claire just pouted.

    “Darling, if you—you went with your father on some of the trips he—he asks you to accompany him on, you’d—you’d feel much closer to him,” she ventured.

    “Grannie, you know perfectly well he’d dump me in some awful hotel while he was off at his business meetings all day,” said Marie-Claire in a bored voice. “Regarde: qu’est-ce t’en penses?” she said to her sister, holding up her magazine.

    Annie glanced at it without interest. “Marrant.”

    Marie-Claire looked at it and sighed. “T’as raison. C’est pas marrant.”

    “French!” said Roma loudly and crossly in English.

    The girls looked up in surprize.

    “Qu’est ce qu’il ya, Grannie?” asked Marie-Claire.

    “’Y’a quelque chose qui cloche?” asked Annie, less elegantly.

    Roma got up. “I think I’ll walk back to the house. I can’t take another ‘marrant’—or ‘pas marrant’—this afternoon.

    “Don’t do that, Papa’ll do his nut,” said Annie.

    “Ouais: it’s cold out, Grannie. And it’s getting dark,” said Marie-Claire.

    “Splendid: perhaps I may be mugged. And if I’m very lucky the mugger won’t say marrant or pas marrant while he does it!”

    Isabelle had come in while she was speaking: she said immediately to the girls: “I’ve told you two a thousand times not to use that coarse way of speaking. It’s vulgar.”

    “C’est pas marrant, non plus,” agreed Annie.

    “That will do, thank you, Annie,” said Isabelle, ice-cold. “Roma, my dear, you’re not going, are you?”

    “I thought I might,” she said weakly.

    “Nonsense, my dear, wait for Gilles,” ordered Isabelle calmly. “He’ll take you back in the car. –Ah: more tea, splendid.”

    Roma swallowed a sigh and sat down again. “I’ve tried to persuade them he’d like their company on the trip to Sydney. –You wouldn’t have to go on to Adelaide unless you wanted to, dears, you could stay in Sydney and—and—”

    “Go to the opera,” said Annie in a bored voice. “Marrant.”

    “Ça suffit,” said Isabelle very coldly indeed.—Annie didn’t look up or reply but behind the shelter of her magazine her ears went very red.—“Well, it’s kind of Gilles to ask, but I can’t believe he really wants the company of either of these little sillies on a flight to the other side of the world.”

    “I am not a little silly, Maman,” said Marie-Claire in a choked voice.

    “Non? You give very little evidence of that, Marie-Claire.”

    Marie-Claire bounced up with a choked sob and rushed out of the room.

    “It’s that father fixation again,” noted Annie. “Jean-Paul thought the Greek doctor thing might have got it out of her system. I said he was wrong: he owes me mille balles—marrant, hein?”

    “What did you say?” said Isabelle in a very steely voice.

    Annie went very red and pouted.

    “I don’t care what sort of language you use in the company of your appalling student friends,” said Isabelle. “—My dear, the quality of the persons they let into these technical courses these days you would not believe!” she added in an aside to Roma—“but I will not have that sort of coarse, careless talk in my home. And you may apologize to your grandmother.”

    Annie choked: “I won’t! It was a joke! You’re not fair, Maman!” and rushed out of the room.

    “My dear, the remark about the technical course was a little unfair, wasn’t it?” ventured Roma limply.

    Isabelle sipped lapsang souchong with a rock-steady hand. “No. If she’d put in the work on her bac that she was capable of and got the decent marks that she was capable of, she could have got into a decent university and done a respectable degree.”

    “But she does seem quite genuine about the architecture, Isabelle,” said Roma weakly.

    Isabelle sniffed slightly. “Now; perhaps. My dear, what do you think of the lapsang? I’ve changed my supplier; I think this brand—”

    Weakly Roma let her ex-daughter-in-law talk teas.

    By the time Gilles was half an hour late Isabelle had been talking calmly for some time, without reference to either the preceding scene with the girls or her ex-husband’s tardiness. Only someone who knew her as well as Roma did would have been aware that under the cool exterior she was icily annoyed.

    The Comte was late because after a couple of hours wrangling with the Béjart brothers he’d been to see his mistress. Not in search of a little human comfort before going to confront the icy Isabelle and his two sulky daughters, no: Henriette Verdeuil  was not that sort of woman.

    Where Isabelle’s high-rise appartement grand standing was modern and flashy and tasteless and cold, Henriette’s old-fashioned flat at Neuilly, with its view of the equally old-fashioned apartment houses over the road and the street trees in between, was almost equally tasteless and nearly as cold. Though in more traditionally French style. Her ex-husband was a wealthy man but the flat was Henriette’s own and had been in her family for three generations. When she had inherited it from an aunt it had been painted a dark cream throughout. It had been repainted since then, but still in a dark cream. The floors were all dark polished wood overlaid with heavy carpets in dull fawn, with scrolls and stylized flowers in old rose, browns, and dim olive greens. Most of the windows were hung with heavy velvet curtains in a plain fawn. Behind these, cream net veiled the rooms from the view of the curious at the other side of the wide street. The furniture was a mixture of one or two genuine Louis XVI pieces, a good deal of 19th-century reproduction Louis XVI, some considerably inferior 1930s reproduction Louis XVI, and a few pleasant genuine Second Empire pieces. It was covered in dull olive velvet, dull fawn velvet, or a floral brocade of dull olive and old rose on fawn. Everything, in short, toned; everything was in quiet good taste; and nothing looked as if had been chosen because someone loved it. There were few cushions in the sitting-room and only a few carefully placed ornaments, though certainly there were several well polished cabinets in which pieces of china might have been hiding. A formal arrangement of roses usually stood on a small, round Second Empire table in the balcony window of this room.

    An inventory of the contents of Henriette’s sitting-room and that of the little downstairs sitting-room at La Rance might well have suggested the two were considerably alike: the room at La Rance also contained a good deal of Louis XVI and Second Empire furniture. But the impression Henriette’s formal, quiet, dim salon gave was nothing like that of the easy, light charm of the Comte’s mother’s flower-filled room.

    Gilles had never been particularly comfortable in Henriette’s sitting-room, though he had never been able to put his finger on what he disliked about it. The fact that when he walked into it this particular afternoon he could see at a glance that the flowers were not the huge, shaggy, exuberant bronze chrysanthemums he had sent her earlier in the day did not immediately improve his mood.

    Where Gilles de Bellecourt’s ex-wife was a tall, slim, cold, acidulated woman, who dieted rigidly to attain the fashionable figure of the moment, Henriette Verdeuil was one of those short, upholstered-looking Frenchwomen who, once over thirty-five or so, have to diet rigidly in order not to become frankly plump. Perhaps he had chosen her because in figure she was so unlike Isabelle? God knew, though his male relations had certainly speculated on it freely and unflatteringly amongst themselves.

    In spite of the upholstered, rigidly-controlled curves Henriette in manner was as cold as Isabelle.—Frying pans and fires had been mentioned in this context.—Certainly she had wanted Gilles de Bellecourt very much at first. Now that he had been hers for quite some years the ardour had cooled somewhat. Guy, Jean-Paul and even Mathieu were of the opinion that it had cooled once it had dawned on the fair Henriette that she was never going to get to be Madame la Comtesse de Bellecourt. Even in these enlightened times Bellecourts did not marry divorced women. Guy, in fact, had once got rather drunk at a party at which Mme Verdeuil was also present and had clearly explained this fact to her.

    If the relationship had cooled even further since then, the credit was entirely Guy’s. And if Henriette had since done her best to drive a wedge between the Comte and Guy the fault was entirely Guy’s, too. Guy was aware of this, and aware that she loathed him and would do anything in her power to cut him out. He was also aware, though neither of them had ever said a word on the subject to each other, that Henriette Verdeuil fancied him. Fancied him dead rotten, actually. Guy was biding his time over this. It might or might or not be to his advantage to do something about it. He’d see.

    Besides the upholstered figure Henriette had thick, dark brown hair which she wore cut short at the neck and smartly curled over the forehead, a round face with a small, neat nose and a small, pursed, very red mouth. Her eyes were very dark brown and her skin was olive and a little inclined to be sallow. This fact was, however, normally disguised by her skilful, discreet makeup. She wore a lot of black, Not only was black considered appropriate wear for an upper-class Frenchwoman of her age (even in these enlightened times), it was flattering to the figure. With it she usually wore a considerable amount of the excellent jewellery she owned. Some of it inherited from her family, some of it bought by the ex-husband and retained by Henriette as a matter of course, and some of it presented to her by Gilles de Bellecourt. He still gave her such presents but he no longer did so spontaneously. It had never occurred to Henriette that she might refuse them or that there might be anything degrading in accepting such gifts from the man she was sleeping with. On the contrary: she considered them her due.

   This afternoon Henriette was again in black: a square-shouldered straight dress which emphasized the well-upholstered bust. She was wearing a double string of pearls with a large garnet and diamond catch, earrings of three matched large pearls round a small diamond centre, and a large brooch of diamonds and pearls in the shape of a curlicue slashed by a bar. Her small, plump hands wore their usual heavy complement of rings. Being a short woman, she wore very high heels, today black patent with small clips of brilliants on them, which showed off her shapely legs to great advantage. The more so as they were clad in black tights of a gossamer thinness.

    She allowed Gilles to embrace her politely on the cheek, did not offer to return the embrace, as was her habit, and motioned him to a seat. “This is an unexpected pleasure, my dear,” she noted.

    He knew she didn’t like him to call without warning: therefore he felt himself to be in the wrong and replied with a little frown: “I’m merely between appointments. I thought you wouldn’t mind. However, if I’m in the way—”

    Henriette gave an airy laugh. “What a silly notion! Of course you’re not in the way! Would you care for tea?”

    He glanced at his watch. Henriette’s eyes followed this move with displeasure. “Non, merci: I can’t stay very long. And I suppose Isabelle may very well have some tea waiting.”

    “Oh?” Her eyebrows rose very slightly.

    “Oui,” he said, sighing. “I have to see the girls. Well, it’s about this damned tontine thing. I thought Isabelle— En tout cas, Annie won’t care. But I doubt if I can make Marie-Claire see sense about it unaided. Maman said she’d go over there, too.”

    “Your mother is in town, then?” said Henriette, smoothing her skirt on her knees.

    “Hein? Oh: yes, she is. She thought she might do some shopping.” His mouth twitched a little. “Well, frankly, she thought she might talk me into letting her come to Australia with me.”

    Henriette’s hand was suddenly very still on her skirt. As usual, he would have told every single person in his family about his plans before telling her. She took a deep breath and said carefully: “Australia? That sounds exciting, Gilles.”

    “It won’t be: merely business. I’ve decided I must see ces Frazer.”

    “Is that wise?” she murmured, raising the eyebrows.

    “Béjart tells me it’s most unwise. But I—” He hesitated. Then he said: “I’ve had a letter. See what you think.” He reached inside his jacket. “Here,” he said, handing her Linnet’s letter.

    It was faintly warm from being carried against his chest all day. Henriette’s nostrils flickered slightly. She read it through with raised eyebrows.

    “This persuaded you to go to Australia?” she said, handing it back to him.

    “Certainly. I told you I wrote to them, didn’t I?”

    “You did, yes. And you get this extraordinary piece of impertinence in reply and find it necessary to go rushing off to the other side of the world on the strength of it? Really, Gilles! I’m not surprized Béjart objected: I’m only surprized he didn’t have you clapped up!”

    “So that’s how it strikes you?” he said slowly. “I must admit I felt the same when I first read it. But when I’d cooled down a bit, and talked it over with Maman,”—he was unaware of the slight tightening of Henriette’s small, pursed mouth at this point—“of course I saw that the girl had written it in righteous indignation!” He gave a little anxious laugh.

    “Rubbish,” she said. “And ‘girl’? I thought you said she was a woman of thirty?”

    “Non—eugh—twenty-seven,” he fumbled, looking at her doubtfully.

    She sniffed. “Old enough to know better than to write this sort of gross impertinence to you, then. Who did she imagine she was writing to? One of her common Australian pals?”

    “Non—eugh—look, Henriette, clearly she completely misinterpreted what I’d written!”

    “Either that or she’s got some tricky manoeuvre in mind,” she said with a shrug. “But if you wish to go all the way to Australia on the strength of it, that’s your business.”

    “What tricky manoeuvre could she possibly— She’s entitled to ask for eighty percent of everything, and she’s asked for forty percent of the shares alone!” He stared at her.

    Henriette shrugged. “So it appears. Possibly ces Frazer know something about the validity of this so-called claim that you don’t. –Well, as I said, that’s your business. –Are you going already?” she said in surprize as he tucked the letter away again, and rose.

    “Yes, I’d better: the traffic was starting to thicken as we came. Old Jeannot hates the Paris traffic, I’d better not hold him up any longer.”

    Henriette also rose. “Really, Gilles, why you insist on surrounding yourself with these old family retainers—!”

    “Jeannot knew my father when they were boys and fought with him during—”

    “Oui, je sais. Don’t let’s refight the Normandy campaign, Gilles, it’ll make you late. –Well;” she said, taking a deep breath and trying to smile nicely: “shall I see you before you leave for Australia, or not?”

    “Eugh—I’m not sure... I’ll be pretty busy, I’ll have to see Ferry again before I— May I ring you?” he ended lamely.

    Henriette inclined her head. “Of course.” She then allowed him to embrace her on each cheek, did not return the embrace, did not offer a more intimate kiss, and saw him out.

    She walked slowly back into the salon, frowning, lips tight. Clearly she’d made a mess of that. On the other hand, she had a fair idea that whatever she had said or done, he wouldn’t have cared. And it was pretty clear that he wouldn’t bother to come and see her before he left. Although she had a quick, sharp mind it did not at this moment occur to her that her attitude over the letter had made it just so much the less likely that he would come.

    She went over to the window and stood in the shelter of the heavy swags of fawn velvet, looking down, still frowning. She saw him come out of the building, replacing his hat, and get into the car. Then the big black Citroen that old Jeannot usually drove him in—it made him look like a damned politician—drew slowly out from the curb, hooted illegally at a Renault that tried to cut it off, and crept off in the thickening traffic of a grey Paris afternoon.

    Henriette shrugged a little. She hadn’t really expected an invitation to accompany him. He never took her on business trips.

    When the phone rang she was sitting in her armchair by the gas fire, frowning, and thinking over her position very hard.

    “Allô, oui, j’écoute,” she said. Not really thinking it was Gilles ringing to say he’d changed his mind and would she like to come, but—

    “Salut, ma chère,” said a light baritone voice with a laugh in it that was certainly nothing like Gilles de Bellecourt’s measured tones. “Ici Guy.”

    “What do you want?” said Henriette crossly, not pausing to think it would have been far more politic to have pretended she didn’t know which Guy it was.

    Guy de Bellecourt replied, still with a laugh in his voice: “I thought we might get together and—eugh—have a council of war.’“

    “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said coldly.

    He laughed. “Oh, I think you do! Has Gilles shown you that absurd letter from Australia?”

    “And if he has? Doesn’t that more or less let all of you off the hook? What was it—forty percent of the shares alone instead of eighty percent of everything?”

    “And no court case: ouais. But then, you see, my plan was that we would not lose anything!” he said airily. “Well, possibly the boy’s portion, if we couldn’t marry him off to one of Gilles’s frightful daughters.

    “You’re fantasizing,” she said coldly.

    “Non, non, pas du tout!” he replied cheerfully. “But since you introduced the topic, didn’t you notice that it was he who appears to be fantasizing? Tell me, did he produce the letter from the ‘pauvre petite’ from next his heart when he showed it to you? He did with us: very affecting, we found it, Jean-Paul was in tears.”

    “He keeps it in his inside pocket, so what?”

    “If it was me, I’d keep it in the bank,” said Guy simply.

    So would Henriette. “You have a point. –What do you mean, pauvre petite?” she added before she could stop herself.

    “Oh, didn’t he say that to you?” said Guy airily.

    “No, he didn’t!” said Henriette in annoyed tones, remembering that he’d certainly called the Australian petite. “Is this another of your fantasies?”

    “Mais non! Even my respected Tante Roma was driven to remark on it.”

    “This is ridiculous,” she said valiantly. “If that’s all you have to say, I’m hanging up.”

    “Hang up by all means, if you want to lose him to some damned Australian farmer’s daughter,” Guy agreed cordially.

    “You are fantasizing; that’s absurd,” she said coldly.

    “Is it? You know, I’d have thought you had more sense than that. I’m reliably informed he reads the damn thing ten times a day; he broods over it in his study; he’s told Papa approximately fifteen times the girl has more probity, I think was the unlikely expression—yes, more probity in her little finger than all of his horrid family put together... Dis-moi, Henriette,” he said sweetly: “did he invite you to accompany him to Australia?”

    “Non!” she snapped. “Et ne me tutoyez pas! –And I didn’t expect him to invite me,” she added lamely.

    Ignoring this, Guy returned: “Grandpère and Jean-Paul and I incline to the theory that he’s decided to—eugh—wash his hands, so to speak, of our side of the family, and offer the pauvre petite Australienne marriage: so as to found a new Bellecourt dynasty. With clean blood.”

    “Well, that’ll cut you out!” she said viciously.

    “Oh, quite. But unless she’s as horse-faced as Jean-Paul and Fabien fear, I really think, my dear, that it’ll be your death knell, too. Well: twenty-seven and available twenty-four hours a day, instead of—what is it you admit to, these days, dear? Forty-seven, is it?”

    “Forty-five!” she snapped.

    “Oh, yes,” he drawled. “Forty-five. It’s been forty-five for two years now, hasn’t it, Henriette?”

    Her hand clenched on the receiver. She took a deep breath and said: “There is no point in continuing this conversation. Your fantasies are as unlikely as your insults are unwelcome.” And hung up on him.

    Guy put his receiver down, laughing. He’d expected actually, that she’d crash the phone down in his ear a good deal earlier. So he wasn’t at all disappointed by the results of his effort.

    Henriette returned to her chair and sat there, red-cheeked, furious, and shaking a little, for quite some time. Guy had introduced this marriage notion merely to frighten her, she knew; but twenty-seven... Marry him if she could, or supplant her, Henriette, as his mistress: possibly that was precisely the cunning manoeuvre the little bitch had had in mind when she wrote the letter! Especially if the Frazers knew their claim was very rocky, and if their investigators had found out what sort of an upright, prudish stick Gilles de Bellecourt was! A display of—of what was it Gilles had said? “Righteous indignation,” yes: a display of righteous indignation was exactly what was calculated to appeal to his outdated sense of—of chivalry, or honour, or some such absurd thing!

    Unaware that the room had darkened round her and the noise of traffic outside had settled down into the dull roar of the heures de pointe, Henriette sat on with clenched fists, plotting.

    “I don’t care about your stupid Australienne and her stupid letter, Papa, I’ve got my career to think of,” said Annie grimly.

    “I could speak to your teachers: you’d only be away a week—”

    “Don’t do me any FAVOURS!” shouted Annie furiously. She grabbed up the expensive flying-jacket and marched out, muttering about filthy capitalists.

    “Gilles, don’t let her go out alone at this hour,” said his mother anxiously.

    “Paris is one of the safest cities in the world, Maman,” he said with a sigh. “She’ll be perfectly all right, she’ll take the Métro. –Marie-Claire, why don’t you want to come? It would be very pleasant. You wouldn’t have to come to Adelaide with me to meet the Mullers if you didn’t want to, you could stay in Sydney, I’m told it’s very beautiful—”

    “I don’t want to stay in some stupid, boring city where they only speak English all BY MYSELF!” shouted Marie-Claire.

    “Marie-Claire, dear, what if we both went?” said Roma quickly.

    Gilles sighed again. “Maman, you know you don’t like aeroplanes. And the doctor said long periods sitting would be very bad for you.”

    “We can go first class. And I was thinking: we could take the Concorde to New York, and see the cousins there, and go on to Los Angeles, and see my old friend Heather’s daughter and her husband, he’s teaching at one of the universities there; and after that we could go to Tahiti, Marie-Claire: you’d like that, wouldn’t you, dear?”

    “And after that it’s only another eighteen hours or so to Australia,” said the Comte heavily. “Well, does that-appeal?”

    “Can we stay at Club Med?” asked Marie-Claire suspiciously.

    “Eugh—well, if there is one in Tahiti, I suppose... Well, yes, if there is one, darling.”

    “I was talking to Cousin Betty only the other day—you know she and Gilbert were out there not long after the War with the High Commission—and she said Australia’s very interesting,” Roma contributed.

    “Grannie, Cousin Betty’s nuts!” returned Marie-Claire witheringly.

    Roma looked at her hopefully. “But what do you think, dear?”

    “Eugh… non,” she said, pouting. “I had to wait ages for the booking at the health farm.”

    Gilles got up, looking grim. “Comme tu veux. –Come along, Maman. Thank you for putting up with us, Isabelle—and all of this,” he said on a grim note.

    Looking very dry, his ex-wife replied: “Not at all.”

    Zizi had come in just a few minutes previously—in time to hear his stepdaughter refuse a trip to Club Med Tahiti. “But you’ll stay for dinner, surely?”

    “Not tonight, thank you, Zizi,” the Comte replied grimly. He reiterated his thanks to Isabelle, bade them all goodbye, and was out of the room before Isabelle could ring for the maid to show them out.

    “You’re an idiot,” she said coldly to her daughter.

    Zizi eyed her nervously but said: “Oui, oui, Marie-Claire: elle a raison, ta mère. If only you’d just sometimes do what your Papa wants you to—”

    “Do what he wants me to do? He’s never in my life let me do what I wanted to do!” shouted Marie-Claire, bright red and furious. She rushed out, bursting into tears as she went.

    “Darling, we must do something about her!” said Zizi urgently.

    In spite of her cold manner Isabelle wasn’t an unnatural mother: witness her efforts after Marie-Claire’s various crises. She replied simply: “I can’t think of anything to do.”

    Zizi bit his lip, frowning.

    “She is an adult,” she offered.

    He sighed. “Does that mean she has to go to perdition in her own way, ma mie?”

    “Apparently,” said Isabelle—drily, but not as if she enjoyed the thought,

    “They’re both so stubborn!” he burst out.

    Isabelle looked at him with wry affection. “Quite. Just like their father; I always did maintain that was Gilles’s most irritating trait. That and his complete inability to see anyone else’s point of view. –Come along, my dear: hurry up and change. The Lachaises will be here soon.”

    “Oh—I’d forgotten it was tonight we’d asked them for.” He went over to the door, hesitated, and said: “Isabelle, my dear, have you thought any more about what I said to you before about Marie-Claire and her cousin Guy?”

    “Yes, certainly. And I grant you may be right. But even if she is still hankering after him, he would be quite wrong for her. He has a cruel streak. And Marie-Claire can’t cope very well with that hardness of her father’s; I don’t think she’d be able to handle Guy at all.”

    He sighed. “No. –Hardness?”

    Isabelle nodded. “I grant you he’s never shown it much to the girls—yet. But he’s beginning to.”

    “He isn’t a happy man, my dear. –Ah, mais dis donc,” he cried, his eyes lighting up: “t’as vu la lettre?”

    “The famous letter,” said Isabelle with a sigh. “No. And please don’t gossip about it amongst your horrid cronies, Zizi, I don’t want the girls’ father to be the laughingstock of your repulsive clubs.”

    “Guy de Bellecourt reports it’s really worth seeing. Tears a strip off him and his damned family honour!” he said, little brown eyes twinkling.

    “Good. –Go and get changed!”

    Hurriedly Zizi went.

    Isabelle had changed during her ex-husband’s talk with the girls. She went over to the big picture window and looked out over the lights of Paris.

    Finally she sighed and said aloud: “Well, they’re both idiots! If it was my father preparing to whistle forty percent of his fortune down the wind—! Added to which, what in God’s name do we know of ces Frazer? The girl may be an outright hussy, on the catch for him! ...And he hasn’t even validated this damned claim!”

    She hesitated. But no, she decided, she wouldn’t urge Zizi to do something about it. She knew her ex-husband too well. Legal proof or not, if Gilles was convinced ces Frazer had a moral right, there was no power on God’s earth that would move him. Stubborn! Isabelle sighed again. She wasn’t in the habit of drinking spirits, but just at this moment— She went over to the drinks cabinet, poured herself a small Cognac, and drank it off. No-one ever had been able to tell Gilles de Bellecourt what to do, not even his mother. And he was, very clearly, getting worse with advancing age!

Next chapter:

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