The French Connection

7

The French Connection

    The coffees had been finished, and the secretary had come in and cleared the afternoon tea things away.

    “Um—well, was that all, Mr Morpeth?” said Linnet nervously.

    “No!” cried Buffy in horror. “Usines La Rance! We gotta get our money outa them Bellecourts!“

    “Uh—quite. Is this more clippings and so forth you haven’t sent me?” said Mr Morpeth grimly to Linnet.

    “Not really. Well, there are one or two cuttings in French.”

    “You do mean ULR, the big French fabric company?” said Peter Morpeth with a cautious glance at his uncle.

    “Yeah! ’Course!” cried Buffy. “Tell them, Linnet!”

    “Um—we think Gilles de Bellecourt put all his tontine money into the first ULR factory,” admitted Linnet.

    “See, Uncle George?” cried Peter unguardedly.

    “Look,” he said, leaning forward urgently: “send me every last damned scrap of paper you’ve got! If we can prove ULR was founded by the tontine money, you’re a very wealthy young woman indeed, Dr Muller!”

    “Me, too,” said Buffy.

    “All of you.”

    “I’d already worked that out,” said Linnet calmly. “But there’s a letter in Uncle Jim’s papers—I did send that to you,” she noted—“where it’s clear that back in the 1920s the Bellecourts had already—um—”

    “Nicked it,” said Buffy grimly.

    “Embezzled, I think would be the correct term. But nicked is what they did, all right,” said Linnet with a twinkle in her eye. “The Bellecourts had already nicked the tontine inheritance back in the 1920s, after Gilles de Bellecourt died. –What’s the matter?” she said as Peter twitched.

    “Uh—nothing: the present man’s a Gilles de Bellecourt, too. Um, we made very cautious preliminary enquiries in France, Dr Muller, after it became clear that the tontine wasn’t just, um—”

    “A figment of our imaginations?”

    “Not that,” he said quickly. “But—um—something that had fallen by the way.”

    “It’s fallen by the way as far as the Bellecourt family’s concerned, I’m quite sure,” said Linnet drily, “and I think it’d cost us as much as we’re likely to get out of it, to fight ULR in a French court. –You might not know it, but the French don’t like foreigners. And that extends to their justice system,” she said drily.

    “Mémé was all right,” said Buffy tolerantly

    “Mémé was rabid!” returned Linnet in astonishment.

    “What? Oh: well, she was rabidly French, if that’s whatcha mean, but she was all right.”

    “Be that as it may,” said Linnet, glaring at her, “we’re distracting Mr Morpeth and Mr—”

    “Just Peter,” he said, smiling at her.

    “Yes,” said Linnet weakly. “And what I was going to say is, I’d better talk this over. With Jimmy and Rose, I mean. And please, don’t spend any more money on investigations in France until—until we say,” she ended, going very pink.

    Naturally George Morpeth attempted to persuade her otherwise. Had she any idea of the extent of the De Bellecourt holdings? They were vast, and if it could be proved that even a fraction of them came from the tontine investment—

    “No. I don’t want you to!” said Linnet, very pink.

    Peter shifted anxiously in his chair. “Look, Dr— Can I call you Lynette?” he asked.

    “No. It’s Linnet.”

    “I’m sorry,” he said weakly, reddening. “What a very unusual name.”

    “It’s a little bird. English. Mum got it out of a book. Mémé used to call her Tête de linotte,” said Buffy helpfully.

    “Uh—yeah,” replied Peter Morpeth weakly. “Well, Linnet, then,” he said.

    “Oh,” said Linnet, jumping, as she realized he was waiting for her permission. “Yes, all right. Go on.”

    “Well, then, Linnet,” he said, giving her a nice smile to which Linnet did not react, “our representative picked up some odd rumours about ULR and the De Bellecourts when he was in France. Um—well, one rumour was that Gilles de Bellecourt is putting the château—that’s the family home—on the market. And—um—well, it sounded rather as if they were having some sort of an audit... You wouldn’t have done anything silly like writing direct to the De Bellecourts, would you?” he asked anxiously.

    “No,” said Linnet flatly. “I’m not that dumb.”

    “Mémé might of,” said Buffy.

    “Don’t be an idiot: she had a stroke a week after Mum and Dad died, and then she was very sick and died herself! When would she have had the time?”

    Uncrushed, the supermodel replied: “Heck, ya know what she was, Linnet! She could of written to her rellies, that week.”

    Linnet opened her mouth. She shut it again. “Um—well, she was very hot on doing the right thing and telling everybody about births and deaths and engagements and stuff...”

    “I’m sorry, Dr Muller: who is this Mémé?” asked George Morpeth desperately.

    “Our mother’s mother. She came from the village near the Château de la Rance.”

    “WHAT?” shouted Peter Morpeth in horror.

    “Hell’s teeth,” said his uncle numbly.

    “That’s how I knew about ULR, really,” added Linnet calmly.

    “Uncle George, I think we’ll have to assume they’re onto it! This auditing business can’t be a coincidence!” said Peter urgently.

    “No. –Linnet, you must see how urgent it is for us to make investigations in France!” urged the senior partner, forgetting to call her Dr Muller.

    “Yeah, before they destroy the evidence,” said Buffy.

    “Buffy’s right, you know,” agreed the middle-aged lawyer grimly.

    “I’ll still have to ask the others. If the Bellecourts know that the tontine’s being wound up I’m sure they will be covering their tracks. –Well, if this lot are as crooked as the ones back in Uncle Jim’s day,” she added on a note of scorn.

    “The current Gilles de Bellecourt is—um—well, I gather he’s pretty much known as a hard man,” said Peter uneasily.

    “I see,” said Linnet. “Well, in that case, though I can see the temptation to move fast, I think we need to think it over very carefully. If they’re ready to fight, it’d cost us even more to take them to court and there’d be even less likelihood that we’d win.”

    George Morpeth hesitated; then he said: “You do have a point: but if I could speak to you alone, Linnet, I think I might be able to persuade you.”

    Peter got up, grinning. “Come on, Small Change. Wanna see the fax machine?” he said kindly to Buffy.

    Buffy got up with dignity. Not to say grace: they’d undoubtedly had lessons in that. “All right. But I’m not a schoolkid, ya know. –And don’t let him talk you into anything!” she warned Linnet.

    “I won’t.”

    They went out.

    Into the sudden silence Linnet said awkwardly: “Um, you were gonna write out a cheque, Mr Morpeth. Could it be five thousand?”

    George Morpeth jumped. “Yes—I’m sorry,” he said lamely. He finished writing out the cheque and passed it to her.

    “Thank you.” Linnet put it carefully into her wallet inside the crocodile handbag. “Go on. Only I warn you, I’m not likely to be persuaded.”

    “No,” he said, biting his lip. He got up, frowning, and began to walk around the office. “Look,” he said at last, “we haven’t gone into the French end of it in any great detail, yet—”

    “No: you were checking out the English end first. Australians can never see that the French are as real to the French as the English-speaking world is to us.”

    George Morpeth gulped, but rallied to say: “Was that one of your grandmother’s?”

    “Well, yes!” admitted Linnet, laughing a bit. “It sounded more forceful when she said it, though.”

    “I bet,” he said, grinning. “Look, Linnet,” he said, coming back to his chair: “even if we have to come to some arrangement with these damn De Bellecourt people, it won’t just be thousands, you know. It’ll be millions. For each of you.”

    “Millions of French francs?” she said cautiously.

    “No, Australian dollars.”

    Linnet licked her lips, looking at him uncertainly.

    “The De Bellecourt family between them still own sixty-five percent of ULR—it’s a public company but they’ve always been the major shareholders—and even if we have to, well, agree to strike a balance between what the firm was worth when they went public and what the De Bellecourt holdings are worth now—which in terms of the tontine, if I’m reading it correctly, we shouldn’t have to,” he said, frowning—“well, even so, you’ll be four very rich young people!”

    “Then I definitely can’t decide without talking to Jimmy.”

    “Yes. Um—he’s nineteen now, isn’t he?” he said uneasily.

    “Yes. Last May.”

    “Ye-es...”

    “He’s quite sensible, if that’s what you mean,” said Linnet drily. “I won’t be able to talk him into something that he doesn’t want to do. But in any case I’m not sure that I want to talk him into anything. I’m not sure that I know myself what I want. –Could I have the tontine back?” she added.

    Mr Morpeth stuttered that that would be most unwise and that such a crucial document would be much safer in the hands of—

    “Weil, do you think I could have a copy of it? Of the original, I mean, not the translation. Have you got a photocopier?”

    Feebly he agreed that Morpeth, Swale had a photocopier, it would be no problem.

    “Even if the Bellecourts have done their best to swindle us—well, swindle the heirs to the tontine, not us personally—I think we have to bear in mind that it was them that built the factories up from nothing,” said Linnet thoughtfully.

    George Morpeth was unable to suppress a wince. “Don’t start thinking like that,” he said feebly.

    “I don’t want to be greedy about it,” said Linnet; “I think we ought to try to be fair.”

    “Linnet, they’ll have the best lawyers in Europe lined up against us! They’re a hugely wealthy family! For heaven’s sake, be reasonable!” he said urgently.

    “Wouldn’t we have more chance of getting something out of them if we were fair about it, though?”

    “Possibly. It depends on whether they’re prepared to see reason,” he said grimly.

    “Yes. How would you go about it?” asked Linnet curiously. “Would you just take them to court or—or what?”

    The deceived George Morpeth, believing his client was starting to see sense at last, and quite missing the point that it was purely intellectual curiosity on Linnet’s part, proceeded to explain the long-drawn-out and complex sequence of initial notification, negotiation, offer, counteroffer, etcetera, that he would naturally envisage taking place before they even thought of getting to court!—Jolly laugh.—He’d certainly persuaded himself.

    He hadn’t persuaded Linnet, though. “I get it: ‘in Chancery’,” she said thoughtfully.

    “Whuh-what?” he stuttered.

    “‘In Chancery’. I’ve been reading Uncle Jim’s books. That’s Dickens. He’s got lots of Dickens. It’s about some people who think they’re coming into a fortune, and how the expectation of it ruins them—most of them—in one way or another, and the only people who get rich out of it are—”

    “The lawyers: yes,” he said weakly.

    “Have you read Bleak House?” asked Linnet, looking at him for the first time in the entire interview with something approaching interest.

    “Uh—no. Only it’s a familiar scenario, isn’t it?”

    “Exactly. Well, I’m not saying you’d do it on purpose. Only the longer the negotiations go on, the more you get out of it.”

    “For God’s sake! You must have someone to represent you in a matter this serious!”

    “What about the client’s instructions?” said Linnet with narrowed eyes.

    The high-coloured George Morpeth was now very red indeed. “Of course,” he said stiffly. “Any instructions you and your brother and sister wish to give us— But it’s also my professional duty to advise you as I think fit. Um, look, to speak frankly, the firm handles millions of our clients’ money every day, Linnet. We’re really not out to—to defraud you and your brother and sisters!”

    “You really haven’t read Bleak House, have you?” discovered Linnet. “That wasn’t the point. The point was that it was the nature of court cases to gradually use up all the money until—”

    “We’re not out to rook you, Goddammit!” he shouted.

    Linnet swallowed. “No. I’m sorry, Mr Morpeth, I didn’t mean to be rude. It’s just that I think it might be pointless to try and fight a big rich company like ULR.”

    “Yes,” he said, passing his hand across his forehead. “But it wouldn’t be the company itself, of course, it would be the De Bellecourts.”

    “That sounds just about as bad,” said Linnet frankly.

    “Look, we’ll get out some figures for you. The worth of the De Bellecourt holdings, and so forth. I think when you see it in black and white you’ll—you’ll be able to see more clearly the extent of the property involved and—and the feasibility of putting up a fight for at least a proportion of what’s legally yours.” A thought occurred to him: he looked at her more kindly. “It is legally yours, you know, Linnet.”

    “Mm... Legal and moral aren’t always the same, are they? Those six men in France couldn’t have known that two of them would be dead in a few years and that one of them would live to be ninety-four.”

    “No,” he said, sighing.

    “Uncle Jim was a very nice person,” said Linnet, frowning.

    “Er—old James Frazer? Yes, I’m sure he was,” he said limply.

    “You must have met him, surely?”

    “Yes. Well, it was nearly twenty years ago: my father handled the matter for him. But I did meet him, yes. He was a—a very clear-minded old gentleman. Well, Dad said he was as sharp as a tack!” he revealed, laughing a little.

    “Yes, he was. He wasn’t interested in ordinary things—well, not when I knew him—so people thought he was barmy,” said Linnet. “Like wearing underpants,” she clarified.

    Poor George Morpeth gulped. “I get it.”

    “He used to think a lot,” she said.

    “Mm.”

    Linnet smiled at him. “I’m sorry: am I driving you mad? Mémé used to say I was very like Uncle Jim. –When she was hopping mad with me, usually!” she admitted, laughing.

    George Morpeth smiled weakly. “What was the connection, Linnet?

    “What? Oh: between Mémé and Uncle Jim? And the fact that she came from Touques Le Minard? –Near the Bellecourts’ house,” she explained. “Well—”

    She purveyed her theory as to why the cunning Mémé had come out to Australia and married James Frazer’s closest available relative. George Morpeth failed to look  shocked, and shook helplessly for some time.

    “She was like that,” finished Linnet, grinning at him.

    “Yeah. Um—well, look: will you promise to talk it over with Jimmy straight away? And with your other sister, of course.”

    “She’s very depressed. Only I’ll tell her.”

    Mr Morpeth looked at her very kindly. “I see. I gather from your brother’s letter that you’re all living together, is that right?”

    “Yes. Well, not Buffy, she’s over here at model school. But the rest of us are living in Rose’s house. She cried when Jimmy said it might be a good idea to sell it. So we thought we’d better carry on there for as long as we could.”

    “Mm... Look, I can’t get away, I’ve got a court case coming up. Would it be all right with you,” said George Morpeth, not realizing he was asking his young client, not telling her, “if Peter came down to Adelaide and talked to your brother?”

    “That’s a good idea. I might forget some of the things,” said Linnet simply.

    The lawyer sagged in his chair. “Good. Well, I’ll send him on down— Let’s see... I think we can manage next Monday.”

    “Ye-es... We haven’t got a spare room,” said Linnet, going pink. “It is a four-bedroomed house, only there’s four of us, with Fergie—that’s Rose’s little girl. Would he mind sharing with Jimmy?”

    “No—Uh— We’ll put him up in a hotel, of course.”

    “Not on our money, you won’t,” said Linnet grimly. “If we don’t get anything out of the Bellecourts there’ll only be the shares amongst the four of us, plus what the farm brings.”

    “It is free of encumbrances,” said the lawyer weakly.

    “You haven’t seen it!” she retorted with feeling.

    “N— Well, surely it’s excellent arable land?”

    “It is the years they get a decent amount of rain at the proper time, yeah,” said Linnet fairly. “And even if we end up with a hundred thousand each, it’s like your nephew said, that doesn’t go far, these days.”

    “No. Well, Peter can pop over and back in the same day, no worries.”

    “As long as Jimmy hasn’t got lectures all day...”

    “Oh. Um—well, will you get him to ring me? I’ll give you my home number.” He got out a card.

    “No, we’ve stopped making interstate calls,” said Linnet flatly.

    There was a short silence.

    “Last week we ate cabbage soup and porridge, with the odd bit of toast for light relief, all week,” she said.

    He swallowed. “You’d better reverse the charges, then. –I’m really sorry: I had no idea!”

    “No,” said Linnet very drily indeed, looking at his suit. “I can see that.”

    Surprisingly enough, George Morpeth did not at that moment press the point that if they were that broke there was all the more reason to try to squeeze something out of the De Bellecourts. This was partly because he rather thought that, if the brother had been living off cabbage soup for a week, he might well be prepared to see reason! He was tempted to bundle Peter off with her back to Adelaide right away, but didn’t: he had a fair idea that Dr Linnet Muller might see that as manipulation. He just made sure that the cheque would be enough for the time being, promised to send her those figures, reiterated his plea to have all of James Frazer’s papers, even if they didn’t seem relevant, and begged her to think it over very carefully-

    Linnet at this point remembered about Buffy’s contract and thrust it at him. George Morpeth agreed they would certainly look into it. Linnet told him that they didn’t want to alienate Jocelyn, or Buffy’s career would never get off the ground, but the terms didn’t seem fair to her. They’d sort it out, he said soothingly. And now, perhaps they’d better find her sister?

    Grinning, Linnet said: “Yes, if we hurry we may just save your nephew’s sanity!”

    George Morpeth laughed and agreed, though reflecting wryly that it was his that needed saving.

    He found Buffy, handed the pair of them over to Bethel to get the document photocopied, bade them farewell and retired to his office with his nephew, to the sounds of Linnet’s shyly asking Bethel if it would be all right if they used the Ladies’, and could she show them where it was, please?

    “Whew!” he said ruefully. “Talk about pig-headed!”

    “Ya mighta been warned, Uncle George, after they bowled up to the reception desk and informed Sonya it was ‘Dr’ Muller, not ‘Miss,’” replied Peter, grinning all over his face.

    “Better than ‘Ms’,” he noted by the by. “No, well, she’s stubborn, all right, but rather sweet, isn’t she? Such an odd mixture of... of naïveté, I suppose, and shrewdness.”

    “Not shrewdness: it’s the kid that’s the shrewd one,” said Peter, with another grin. “No, I’d call it intelligence. She struck me as very bright.”

    “Yeah. Well, I suppose she must be, if she’s ‘Dr’. What would it be, Ph.D.?”

    “Yeah, it is: I asked the kid. Plant genetics. Uni of Adelaide.”

    “Plant genetics? Uh, well, a farming family, I suppose...”

    “Hang on,” said Peter. “Could play up the Semences ULR connection?”

    “What?”

    “ULR’s big subsidiary. They’re into developing disease-resistant seeds. Well, don’t look at me, that’s what Hugo’s dug up.”

    “Play it up how?”

    “Well, what if she fancies herself as their research director, or something? Or chairperson of the board?” he said blandly.

    George Morpeth winced, but forbore to point out, for once, that that wasn’t English. “Yeah, well, bear it in mind. –I’m sending you over there on Monday. You can stay overnight at the Hyatt if you like, but see it doesn’t get put it on their bill.”

    “Eh?”

    Frowning, his uncle told him about the cabbage soup.

    “Was that for real?” he said cautiously.

    “YES!” he shouted. “For Christ’s sake, are you blind as well as thick? She’s as honest as the day is long: it’s—it’s written all over her!”

    “I’da said something a lot more interesting than that was written all over her,” he murmured.

    His uncle glared.

    “No, you’re right: she is sweet. And transparent,” he admitted.

    “Yeah.” He frowned. “Look, Peter, do us a favour: get after the pair of them—you should catch them downstairs, if they’re not still in the ladies’ bog titivating—and—uh—well, see she gets her plane safely and so forth, will ya? And get a square meal into her, if you can. Steak or something.”

    “On the firm?”

    “YES! –Entertaining clients, all right?”

    “Okey-doke,” he said, grinning. “Can’t say I mind!” He winked, clapped his uncle familiarly on the back, and went out, grinning.

    “Young oaf,” muttered George Morpeth irritably. He went over to his window and peered down, but as the huge building in George Street which rented out per square metre at the sort of sum that Linnet Muller had obviously never heard of in her life was completely vertical and the windows were hermetically sealed, he couldn’t see much of the pavement, even by squashing one cheek against the glass. He sighed, and went back to his desk. There he buzzed Bethel for another coffee. And the agreement of tontine. When she brought them he sipped the coffee slowly, reading through the official translation that Morpeth, Swale had had done, comparing it laboriously with the original, and muttering to himself. When he’d finished he looked up, and stared into space for a while. Then he said to himself: “Yeah,” and buzzed for Bethel again.

    “Make a note for me, would you: the James Frazer estate: we have to find out exactly what year Gilles de Bellecourt died and get hold of a copy of his will. Some time between 1918 and 1925 or –26, I think. Note that, anyway.”

    “Ye-es... That’s a while back, George,” she warned.

    “Yeah. Well, get Hugo onto it—um—first thing Monday, it had better be.”

    “Okay!” She went out.

    The lawyer stared in front of him. “Yeah,” he said to himself. “There’s a chance the bugger made the same sort of will that James Frazer did. Appointing trustees of the tontine investment, and so forth... Well, it’s worth investigating. And by Christ, if he did, we’re home and dry!” he said loudly. He got up and strode round the room, eyes shining with excitement.

    George Morpeth hadn’t been lying when he’d said his firm handled millions every day: of course they did. And although several millions would be involved in the Frazer inheritance, this wasn’t directly what was causing his excitement. No: it was the challenge of the thing: fighting a big European firm and a rich French family on their home ground, and beating them! Not to say dealing with a tontine: he’d never thought he’d actually have to wind one up!

    Downstairs, Peter was in the lobby when the sisters emerged from the lifts. Cheerily he urged them to come for a drink and perhaps a meal if they had time before Linnet had to go. Cheerily he overrode all Linnet’s objections, which ranged from having to take the clothes back to the model school, through Buffy’s not being allowed to drink in a hotel, to Mrs O’Donaldson’s being bound to have tea ready. Ably seconded by Buffy. He then shot out into the traffic snarl of George Street in the rush hour yelling: “Oy! TAXI!”, grabbed one competently, popped both girls into it—Buffy automatically, if gracefully, getting in first—popped himself in next to Linnet and, after a pause during which the taxi driver pointed out they better go somewhere, mate, it’d start to move in a minute, decided on the Wentworth. –This was in preference to anything newer and flashier or any of his usual haunts, which ranged from large pubs where he talked football, to small bars where he talked law gossip, to flashy pubs where he took his strings of female admirers. None of them would have done for Linnet.

    At the Wentworth they sat down in the lounge bar. Or a lounge bar: very probably it had more than one. Linnet’s only experience of hotels was gained from a quick glimpse from the pavement at the public bars as she skirted the hoarse shouting, the hoarse roars of laughter and the smell of beer proceeding therefrom at lunchtimes and after work in downtown Adelaide, so she looked around at the well-appointed, quiet luxury of the Wentworth in a dazed silence.

    “This all right?” said Peter with a twinkle in his eye.

    “Yes, it’s lovely,” said Linnet faintly. “What a lot of sofas.”

    Trying not to laugh, Peter Morpeth agreed there were a lot of sofas. What would they like to drink?

    Linnet reiterated her point that Buffy wasn’t allowed alcohol and Buffy reiterated her point that it and cigarettes, severally or in conjunction, ruined your skin and did nothing for your hair. Linnet didn’t care whether or not it was true: she was just so relieved that Jocelyn had had the sense to imbue the girls with the notion.

    Buffy decided in a lordly way on a mineral water with lime, scorning Peter’s suggestions of a Diet Coke or an orange juice.

    Linnet didn’t know. She thought she might just have a mineral water, too.

    “You can’t do that!” said Peter, shocked. “The waiter’ll burst into tears!”

    “Rose sometimes used to have Bundy and Coke,” recalled Buffy.

    “Yes,” said Linnet with a sigh. “She said the other day that could just fancy one. Only Aunty Mim finished off the Bundy, remember?”—Buffy nodded, scowling.— “And you drank the Coke,” added Linnet without any particular reproach in her voice.

    “Well, would you like one of those?” asked Peter.

    “No, I don’t really like Coke, thanks,” said Linnet faintly.

    “Do you like rum, though?”

    “I’ve never had it.”

    “Lin-net! You’re hopeless!” cried the supermodel. “Bundy is rum! Like Bacardi,” she noted. “Ya musta seen that ad! –It’s keen, eh?” she said to Peter.

     “Uh— which ad?” he said feebly.

    “The one about the island, of course! ‘You live on an island,’ quoted Buffy in a strange, hollow voice: ‘you drink Bacardi.’”

    “Oh,” said Linnet in a bewildered voice.

    Peter Morpeth’s shoulders shook. “Yeah, well: how about a daiquiri? That’s really nice, you’d like it.”

    “Um—well, what are you having?”

    “Whisky.”

    “Oh.”

    “You don’t like that. –She doesn’t like that,” Buffy assured him. “Dad and Kyle liked it. Red Label. –Like in those ads,” she reminded Linnet.

    “It had a funny bottle,” she recalled.

    “Lin-net!” Buffy gave a scornful, incredulous laugh. “Ignore her, she’s like that,” she said to Peter.

    Linnet was looking at them in bewilderment.

    “I really think you’d like a daiquiri,” said Peter firmly. “And if you don’t like it, you can leave it, and have something else instead.”

    Linnet nodded feebly.

    As the waiter was now hovering, Peter immediately ordered for them all. When the daiquiri came Linnet reported it was delicious. Very cold and sweet. Sort of frothy. Buffy pointed out tolerantly she was hopeless.

    Peter sipped his whisky and let Buffy chatter on and watched Linnet trying to cope with the daiquiri, which was very evidently colder and frothier than anything she’d ever been faced with in a glass before, and mentally undressed Linnet and wondered how he was going to get past that shyness and wished the supermodel at Jericho. When he did get rid of her for a moment—she had volunteered to phone Mrs O’Donaldson, assuring Linnet it would only have been fish fingers because it was Friday, and had dashed off to the public phone not appearing in any way overawed by having to negotiate all those sofas and the fair number of well-dressed drinkers now filling them—he said: “This your first visit to Sydney, then?”

    “Not exactly. I was here for a conference about two years back. No, nearly three, now.”

    “I see.”

    “That was just at the university. I didn’t have time to see anything of the city.”

    “Uh—but it can’t have gone on all night as well as all day, surely? What about the evenings?”

    “A lot of people did go out; they used to make an awful noise when they got back. I didn’t have any money to waste on things like dinners.”

    “There must be something wrong with these plant geneticists, then,” he said grimly.

    “What?” she replied blankly.

    “Don’t tell me none of them had the nous to ask you out!”

    “I didn’t know any of them. I did go to a cocktail party—that was included, so I thought I’d better get my money’s worth. There wasn’t much to eat, though, only some very small sandwiches, and cheese. There was a fat man there that came and talked to me. He was horrible. And stupid,” said Linnet dispassionately.

    “Well, the rest of them musta been blind as well as stupid!”

    “No. –All this,” said Linnet, gesturing at her dark-green jersey-knit-clad self, “was the model school people, not me. They dressed me up. And Susanna did my face. And Jocelyn did my hair like this. I don’t usually look like this.”

    Heretofore Peter’s ladies had all been the smartly-suited, stilt-heeled, large-bosomed, flashy-toothed type with the garish lipstick to match. Now he leaned forward and said urgently: “Rats! It’s not a matter of hair and clothes and make-up, it’s—it’s bone structure and—and the essential you!”

    “I don’t think you’d say that if you could see me like I usually look,” she said dubiously. And rather as if the whole thing were merely an academic discussion: but Peter Morpeth was too involved with his own emotions to register this.

    “Nonsense,” he said, smiling at her. “You’re the most elegant thing I’ve ever laid eyes on!”

    “Yes,” said the voice of the supermodel from behind him, and Peter jumped a foot.

    Buffy came round the sofa. “Jocelyn says she’s got a good body. It’s founded on an excellent bone structure. That’s why she’s got a really elegant figure.”

    Peter laughed weakly. “See?” he said.

    Buffy sat down again. “There’s a restaurant over there,” she noted in a wistful voice. “I had a bit of a look round. –Hey, Linnet, the Ladies’ is ace! You oughta see it! It’s got—”

    “Yeah; just shut up about the Ladies’, for a moment, wouldja?” said Peter firmly. “What sort of thing would you fancy for dinner?” he said to Linnet. “Thai’s very in, at the moment. And most other trendy places have gone quasi-Thai as well, far’s I can see!” he added, with a laugh. “Chilli and coconut milk with everything!”

    Linnet looked at him in horror.

    “Last month,” said Peter, the brown eyes sparkling, “I swear I had prawns in coconut milk and chilli sixteen times for dinner, and seventeen for lunch!”

    “I bet!” said Buffy scornfully.

    “No—honest! You can’t escape from it!”

    “I quite like prawns,” said Linnet weakly.

    “Aunty Mim does them with avocado: you know: avocado and prawn cocktail. It’s ace. She’s got this super dressing. Mill-yuns of calories, though,” said Buffy regretfully. “She lives in Queensland.”

    “Look, if you wanna eat at all tonight; shut up,” he said grimly. “Uncle George ordered me to feed you on steak,” he said to Linnet: “he must think you need feeding up. Well, he’s past it, of course, poor old bloke,” he said cheerfully.

    Buffy sniggered; Linnet gave a smothered giggle, nodding.

    Peter’s eyes sparkled more than ever; he said: “Well?”

    “Oh! Steak! Um—Yes. Kyle used to do steak on the barbie sometimes; that was quite nice, wasn’t it, Buffy?”

    “Yeah, it was ace. –Hey, you an’ Jimmy didn’t sell the barbie, didja?”

    “No. Jimmy worked out,” said Linnet with a twinkle in her eye, “that as soon as the weather gets warmer we can do the electricity company in the eye by having barbecued sausages every night for tea.”

    “Huh! That’s just because he likes barbies!”

    “That did dawn on me!” said Linnet with a laugh. “Um—I’m sorry, Peter. We do like steak, don’t we, Buffy?”

    Buffy nodded hard. “Lean,” she warned him. “And I don’t eat chips.”

    “Fine. We’ll go to a nice little place that does really good steaks. You’ll like it: it’s quiet. And no smoking in the restaurant, what’s more,” he told Linnet.

    “Ailsa’s mum says any restaurant that lets people smoke over their food won’t get her custom,” Buffy informed Linnet.

    “She sounds just like Mémé— Buffy!” she gasped in horror. “Is Ailsa the one that gets collected every night by a chauffeur in a Rolls Royce?”

    “Yeah. She’s okay, though.”

    “How on earth could let you let the girls lend you her coat?” croaked Linnet in horror.

    “She didn’t mind! She’ll tell her mum she—”

    “That isn’t the point! It probably cost more than we spend in a month!”

    “Not more than ya spend on paying off Kyle’s credit cards, I bet,” noted the supermodel. “Anyway, who cares?”

    “Not you, obviously. Anybody fancy another drink?” said Peter. Neither of them did. Linnet informed him, smiling, that the daiquiri had made her feel all warm and swimmy.

    Peter didn’t fancy another drink, either. What he did fancy was getting very close to Linnet in a nice, intimate little restaurant and accidentally letting his knee touch hers. He got up. “Well, shall we go?”

    Linnet got up slowly, wondering how she could work up the courage to tell him she needed go to the Ladies’; but fortunately Buffy announced she’d better, and towed her off there.

    In the Ladies, after Linnet had been, Buffy competently repaired the make-up. The hair, thanks to the giant spray bomb that had been detonated over it, didn’t need adjusting at the back, but she combed back a few wisps from the forehead and said: “You’ll do.”

    “You sound just like Mum,” said Linnet shakily.

    Buffy smiled cheerfully, said: “I wish she hadn’t died. Come on. And if he asks you if ya like wine, say yes, or he’ll think you’re a nong;” and towed her off.

    The quiet little restaurant which did excellent steaks was one that Peter’s mother liked. He didn’t immediately reveal this. He did, however, respond to Buffy’s artless enquiry as to whether his wife was expecting him home for tea with: “Not for the last four years, no. We’re divorced. And don’t they teach you at model school not to ask personal questions?”

    “Not yet,” she said cheerfully.

    Peter went into a dreadful sniggering fit. “Obviously!” he gasped, wiping his eyes.

    “You were rude,” said Linnet anxiously. “I think you should apologize, Buffy.”

    “No. Dorinda’s sister says they’ll all give you a line, you can’t trust men as far as you can throw them.”

    “Disillusioned lady, this Dorinda’s sister must be,” murmured Peter.

    “Yeah. She’s been divorced three times and she’s only thirty.” Buffy looked at him hard.

    “Thirty-three,” he said resignedly. “Divorced once.”

    Buffy appeared satisfied and buried herself in her menu.

    Linnet had thought he was a lot younger than that. Thirty-three was quite old. She looked at him warily.

    Both girls made good meals, though Peter Morpeth was a little surprized to see the supermodel tucking in so heartily to hers. Though she avoided the potatoes entirely. Linnet, however, had chips with her filet mignon as well as the snow-peas, the carrots and the broccoli, confiding to Peter that she liked broccoli but they hadn’t had it for ages. Buffy chose fruit salad for dessert but Linnet let Peter talk her into the black-bottom pie. It was too rich for her: she couldn’t get through it and apologized meekly to him. Buffy refused coffee, with a short speech on caffeine, stress levels, and beauty sleep, and took herself off to the Ladies’. Nobody was afraid it was bulimia: it was clearly the three huge mineral waters she’d consumed.

    “She certainly seems to stick to her diet, doesn’t she?” he said.

    “Yes. She’s taking this model business terribly seriously.”

    “Mm. Well, not the intellectual brain of the century, is she?”

    “No. She failed everything at school,” said Linnet, looking at him in some surprize. Mum and Dad had done their nuts over Buffy’s rotten school reports, but no-one in the family had ever taken precisely that sort of attitude to the matter. Sort of... tolerantly patronising?

    “Yeah, well,” he said, shrugging, “she could be getting up to a lot of other things that’d do her a lot more harm, ya know. This Jocelyn female seem to be keeping them all in order!”

    “Yes: she’s absolutely terrifying,” confided Linnet. “But Buffy seems to take her in her stride.”

    “She would!” he said, laughing.

    “Yes.”

    Peter lapsed into silence, frowning. Linnet was afraid he was going to bring up the subject of the Bellecourts again: she looked at him nervously.

    “Look, I am divorced, you know,” he said, looking up suddenly.

    “Yes. –I wouldn’t have thought you were thirty-three,” she said simply. “You seem younger.”

    “Is that good or bad?” he said feebly.

    Linnet thought it over. “Neither. It just is.”

    Peter wrinkled his nose in the way several female admirers had told him was really cute and said: “Help!” with a little laugh. Linnet didn’t respond, just looked at him seriously.

    “Look—uh—well, we’ll probably need to see a bit of each other over the business of the estate,” he said, “and, um— Well, what I was going to say was,” he said with a nervous glance in the direction of the Ladies’, “could we try to—well, see a bit of each other? I mean,” he said, pulling at his tie as she just stared at him, “go out on a few dates, and so forth.”

    “No. I haven’t got any clothes,” said Linnet flatly.

    “But— Well, for Pete’s sake! I mean— Well, Jesus! Come out for a drive with me, or something! Look, have you been to the Barossa? I mean, round the vineyards and so forth? We could do that: that’s a nice trip!” he said eagerly.

    “All right,” said Linnet in a tiny voice. “If you want to.”

    Peter replied limply: “Yes. Of course.”

    There was a short silence.

    “The meal was lovely: thank you very much,” said Linnet politely.

    “I’m glad you liked it. Their food’s not too fancy. Mum likes this place, they often come here,” he added.

    Linnet smiled, and asked him about his mother and father. Peter would have thought that any resident of Australia over the age of about fifteen must have heard of Gordon Morpeth, if not because he owned a nationwide construction firm, then certainly because one of his horses had just won three prominent races in a row and was being tipped as the likely winner of this year’s Melbourne Cup. Limply he explained. Linnet was a lot more interested in the horses than she was in his father’s business. Then she asked him about Morpeth, Swale and why his father hadn’t decided to go in for law, and the deluded Peter, not realising that it was only intellectual curiosity, told her a lot about the workings of a big family law firm and began to feel very pleased with himself.

    By the time Peter put Linnet on the plane for Adelaide he was feeling even more pleased with himself. Especially as she’d been overcome by being presented at the airport with a bunch of, really, very ordinary apricot rosebuds. He would have been considerably less pleased had he realised that it was her natural timidity combined with the fuzzy feeling induced by two unaccustomed glasses of a Coonawarra red on top of an unaccustomed daiquiri that had prevented Linnet’s telling him that though she quite liked him she really didn’t want to go out on any sort of a date with him.

    The supermodel earbashed him continuously all the way back to her landlady’s place from the airport but Peter didn’t take in a word.

    “What a nice young man!” said Mrs O’Donaldson pleasedly as Buffy closed the door on Peter and his taxi.

    “Ye-ah… I wouldn’t call him young, exactly. He’s thirty-three. And he’s divorced.”

    “Well, that’s all right, dear!” she beamed.

    “I suppose he is quite nice. He’s a good dresser.”

    Mrs O’D. agreed to this and, since she’d asked him if he was a relation when they collected Linnet’s things, was able to tell Buffy a lot about Peter Morpeth’s father.

    “Good, then he won’t just be after Linnet for Uncle Jim’s money.”

    “Good gracious, dear! Of course not! The Morpeths are worth far more than your old uncle could have left!”

    Buffy didn’t point out it could well be very much more than her landlady imagined: Peter had earnestly warned both girls in the taxi to the Wentworth not to tell anyone about their expectations. He’d to explain precisely why, which had been pretty embarrassing, but when he’d done so the supermodel had said: “I get it.”

    “Yeah,” she said mildly. “He’s all right. She won’t have the sense to like him, though, ya can bet ya boots,” she added glumly.

    “Oh—surely, dear!”

    “Nah. Well, she said she’d go for a drive with him, but she’ll chicken out of it. It’ll be like that time Logan Farnworth asked her to go out with him after he got his divorce. He was a friend of Kyle’s.”

    “But Mr Morpeth’s a very nice young man, dear! Very smart, and—and sophisticated! And very attractive,” said Mrs O’Donaldson, rather wishing her charge was old enough to be told Peter Morpeth had loads of charm and bags of S.A, and was altogether very much of a dish.

    “Yeah. She won’t, though.”

    Mrs O’Donaldson laughed tolerantly and shepherded her upstairs to bed.

    On the plane Linnet dozed most of the way. At one point she woke to the realization that that suit of Mr Morpeth's must have been pin-striped. When she woke up again they were nearly there. The little girl next to her, who was about eleven, expressed wistful admiration of her flowers.

    “They are pretty. I don’t all that much like the man that gave them to me. Well, he was nice, I suppose. Would you like them?” said Linnet, suddenly making up her mind.

    The little girl’s mother leaned forward from her other side. “Kirsty, you can’t take the lady’s flowers!”

    “No, honest, I’d like her to have them. And I think if I take them home they might remind my sister of her husband’s funeral,” admitted Linnet, suddenly struck by this awful thought.

    Kirsty got the bouquet.

    Even sans bouquet, Linnet caused her brother’s jaw to drop when he finally recognized her in the milling Friday-night crowd off the Sydney flight.

    “What are you got up as?” he said numbly.

    Linnet sighed. “The model school did it. It’s called a make-over. Buffy reckons Jocelyn said I could keep these things. I suppose I’ll have to write and ask her if it’s true. And the handbag’s full of makeup, she reckons that’s for me to keep, too.”

    “Cripes,” he said, grinning. “Made-over’s right! –Here, Fergie, look at yer Aunty Linnet!” he said to her, grinning. “Doesn’t she look smart?”

    Fergie eyed Linnet askance and shrank against Jimmy’s shoulder.

    “Smart?” said Linnet numbly.

    “Yeah, ’course ya do, ya nong. –Gidday, Shane, what on earth are you doing here?” he added in surprize to the large young man who had had just come up to his elbow, grinning.

    The large young man eyed Linnet hungrily and said: “Came to meet Aunty Sue. That’s her over there with the mob,” he added, nodding towards one of the yattering family groups that surrounded them. “Here, you been keeping this dark, Jimbo? Got a secret life?”

    “Uh—no, ya clown!” said Jimmy, as Shane glanced from Fergie to Linnet with raised eyebrows. “She’s— Come on, aren’tcha gonna go to Aunty Linnet? Ya can’t have forgotten her in one day!” he said despairingly to Fergie. “Dumber than Rose is!” he said to his sister. “—No, ya clown, this is my niece, and Linnet’s my sister,” he informed the grinning Shane. “And lay off, we need her to do our housework!” he added with a laugh.

    “K’ala coat!” wailed Fergie suddenly. “Don’ like it!”

    “What? Oh, for Pete’s sake, it’s not ruddy Mrs Green! –She thinks you’re Mrs Green: take the coat off!” he said to Linnet.

    “Fergie, it’s me, you silly,” said Linnet, taking the coat off. Shane hastened forward and helped her. Very clumsily, not in the least like George Morpeth. “Thanks,” said Linnet weakly.

    “I’m Shane Marriott; this clown isn’t ever gonna introduce us. You’re Linnet, I gather?” he said.

    “Oh—yes. Hullo, Shane. You’re the one whose father’s an architect in town, aren’t you?”

    “That’s it,” he said easily, grinning.

    Fergie now condescended to recognize her aunt.

    “It’s not a k’ala coat, silly,” said Linnet, after she’d picked her up and hugged her. “It’s—”

    “Dead cats,” suggested Shane, strolling along with them in the direction of the baggage claim.

    “Platypus,” returned Jimmy. “Mangey platypus.”

    The two wits went into paroxysms.

    “Silly boys; ignore them,” said Linnet into Fergie’s neck. “It’s a lovely silky bunny-rabbit coat! –Mm, you smell lovely, Fergie! I’ve missed you!”

    “Went a bit overboard with the baby powder,” admitted Jimmy, grinning sheepishly.

    “Oh, Jimmy! Didn’t Rose even want to give her her bath?” said Linnet sadly.

    He made a face. “Nope.”

    “Well, what about during the day?”

    “I took her over to Monica’s before my nine o’clock lecture. When I got home—round four, ya know?—she was still there. –Ya went to the shops with Monica and Jenny in the car-car, didn’tcha, Fergie?” he said.

    “Wenna shops. Inna car-car,” said Fergie, yawning.

    Linnet kissed her. “That’s nice, darling.”

    “Monica looked in on Rose around lunchtime but she was lying down and she reckoned she didn’t want any lunch,” he reported.

    “Mummy have a lie-down,” said Fergie.

    “Mm,” agreed Linnet glumly. “Did she have any tea, Jimmy?”

    “Yeah! ’Course!” he said indignantly. “Ya had a nice big googgy-egg, didn’tcha, Fergie?”

    “Big googgy-egg,” she agreed. “I ate it ALL up!”

    “Oh, good,” said Linnet feebly. “Um—not her, Jimmy: Rose.”

    “Oh! Uh—well, yeah. Got some of that lentil stew muck into her. –Ya know what it is, don’tcha?”

    “Yes. Chicken shit. Don’t tell us again.”

    “No! –Well, it is. Don’t care if it is full of protein. –No, what I mean is, Rose. I’ve worked it out. She’ll only eat if one of us is there to see she does.”

    “I think so, too,” said Linnet in distress.

    “It’s better than not eating at all,” he offered.

    “Mm,” she agreed, sniffing.

    Jimmy sighed. “Come on.”

    When they were in the car—Shane had insisted on carrying Linnet’s case, assuring them his family wouldn’t be leaving him behind: he had his own car—Linnet said: “Isn’t he the one that’s, um—”

    “Thick as two short planks—yeah,” Jimmy agreed cheerfully. “Think they only pass him at uni because his father’s Noël Marriott. The family want him to go into the firm—dunno why, should think he’ll send ’em broke in under two years.”

    “A bit more, maybe. As long as it takes for one of his buildings to fall down,” said Linnet in a strangled voice.

    “Yeah!” he choked,

    They went into giggling fits, but Jimmy concluded, heading for the gate: “Lucky bugger. –Well, come on, give!”

    “What? Oh!” Linnet had forgotten that Jimmy must be dying for the news.

    … “I get it,” he said thoughtfully at the conclusion of her narrative.

    “McDonald’s!” suddenly screamed a voice from the back seat.

    Jimmy jumped violently. “No. –NO!” he shouted over the screeching. “We’re not going to McDonald’s, Fergie, it’s bedtime! Dark, see?”

    “Where on earth did she pick that up from?” said Linnet weakly, when the wails had more or less died down and they were well past McDonald’s.

    “Flaming Monica. Took them there for a treat for lunch.”

    “Well, that was very nice of her. –Help, I wouldn’t have thought she’d even recognize… Well, it can’t have been that one, surely?”

    “What? Oh! No, woulda been the one near us. No, it’s that ruddy great yellow thing of theirs—unmistakeable.”

    “It must be,” she said in a shaken voice.

    “Not as dumb as her mum, after all,” he said comfortably.

    “No... Do you really think so?”

    “What: Rose? Yeah! Thick as two short planks! –Her and Buffy both,” he noted. “How was the supermodel, anyway, or don’t I dare ask?”

    “Mm...?” Linnet was ruminating on the discovery that Jimmy’s attitude to their two sisters was not unlike Peter Morpeth’s reaction to Buffy. “Oh! Fine.” She gave him a full report.

    “That lets us out, then,” he said with relief after Linnet had explained that Mrs O’D. and Buffy between them had Buffy’s career moves all planned out.

    “Ye-es... We can’t just dump her, Jimmy.”

    “Why not? Well, not entirely, no. But she’s nearly seventeen, she’ll be legally an adult in just over a year.”

    Linnet looked at him in distress.

    “Linnet, she’s as tough as they come, she doesn’t need us! Type that’ll always fall on her feet.”

    “Ye-es... Jimmy, what do you think about the tontine?”

    “I’ll have to think it over.”

    “Yes. Um—well, think it over by Monday, Peter Morpeth’s coming to see you!” she said on a mad note.

    “What?”

    Gulping, Linnet explained, also describing the drinks and dinner with Peter Morpeth.

    “Cripes, falling like flies, aren’t they?”

    “What?”

    “Well, what with ole Shane—struck all of a heap, he was: I swear ’is eyes were actually on stalks—and now this lawyer type?”

    “Jimmy, that’s—that’s not true,” said Linnet in a high, wobbly voice.

    “Bullshit!” said Jimmy, laughing.

    Linnet gulped. In the dark her ears glowed. “How awful,” she said in a low voice.

    “Eh? Well, poor old Shane’s pretty awful, I’ll give ya that. Well, a good enough bloke. And if ya latch onto him, you’d never have to eat another meal of lentil stew, let alone that bloody cabbage soup, that’s for sure: even if he never earns a red cent for himself, the family can afford to support him in luxury for the rest of his natural, ya know! –Anyway, what was this lawyer type like?”

    “Um... I suppose you’d have to say he was handsome and bright and—and charming.”

    “Don’t tell me what I’d have to say,” responded Jimmy on a very dry note. “Tell me what you thought.”

    Linnet thought it over. Finally she said: “I thought he was a bit pathetic. Actually, they both were. Him and his uncle.”

    Jimmy nodded resignedly. This was Linnet’s usual reaction to members of the male sex. When she wasn’t just plain shit-scared of them, of course. All the blokes at the Department had been labelled pathetic, except for that fat freak, the old joker, that she was terrified of. “And in particular?” he said heavily.

    “In particular? Um... Boring,” decided Linnet.

   Jimmy sighed. That was It, then: I,T. This Peter Morpeth had had ’is chips, that was for sure. Pathetic and boring? Ouch.

    Peter Morpeth duly turned up on the Monday, all merry and bright and, Jimmy had to concede, handsome, intelligent, and charming. Nothing wrong with the bloke, of course. Unfortunately for him, Linnet had come down with a terrible cold. Jimmy didn’t go quite so far as to believe that it was psychosomatic. Very likely it had been brought on by the stress of the trip, plus the stress of facing up to, Morpeth Senior, plus the air conditioning of the flaming Ansett piece of junk she’d come back on—she’d said it was very cold on the plane.

    Jimmy himself got on very well with Morpeth and they talked over the whole thing and agreed that Linnet was bats and they needed to go for it: make these Bellecourts a reasonable sort of suggestion and they’d jump at the chance of settling out of court—and Jimmy would talk Linnet round. And Rose’d agree to anything.

    Peter stayed on an extra day but Linnet’s cold was even worse, so he didn’t see her at all, not even red-eyed and red-nosed and huddled in an a large red fuzzy dressing-gown. (Marion’s: it still had plenty of wear in it.) He went sadly back to Sydney.

    For the next week he kept ringing her up on flimsy excuses and sending her flowers. When a bunch each for her and Rose from his uncle had arrived on the Saturday morning Rose, far from being reminded of Kyle’s funeral, had become almost animated, so Linnet gave Peter’s flowers to her.

    Rose got out all the vases—wedding presents, paid for, or still on the Meyercard—and happily arranged flowers. After that she came down with Linnet’s cold and retired to bed, but still, it had been a really promising sign.

    Linnet found it relatively easy to block Peter on the phone. Mainly by just letting him talk, which he was more than willing to do. It didn’t dawn on her that being allowed to talk, to most male minds, constituted encouragement. Peter thought he might pop over next week. He could talk it all through with her, help her come to a decision! Linnet didn’t point out that anything he’d said so far, she’d already thought of for herself, in some cases eight months since. She just reiterated that she’d have to think about it some more. Peter decided that he would come down. Linnet just murmured: ‘‘Yes.” Peter rang off, all happy and excited.

    “You must agree, Linnet!” urged Jimmy. ‘‘It’s the only sensible thing to do!”

    “Ye-es... We haven’t proved that the tontine money went into Usines La Rance.”

    “Well, no. But it musta done!”

    “Moral certainty isn’t proof,” said Linnet, very dry.

    “Uh—no. But Jesus, Linnet, if we don’t give the Morpeths the green light to look for the evidence, we’ll never prove it!”

    “No, l want to think about it a bit more. I couldn’t think when my cold was bad—my head was too hot.”

    “Yeah,” he said limply. “Okay, then. Think about it. But think about it fast, I can feel the ruddy Bellecourts lining up a whole army of flaming French lawyers!” he warned, shuddering.

    “All right.”

    “And ya will talk to Peter next week?”

    “All right.”

    “That’s something, at least,” he muttered.

    But before Peter Morpeth got over to Adelaide again, Linnet received another letter.

    “Lotsa bills!” panted Fergie proudly, staggering into the kitchen on the Friday morning.

    “What? Oh, you’ve brought the post in!” said Linnet with a laugh. “Clever girl!”

    “Lotsa bills,” she repeated. “I seen the postie. On a bike.”

    “A bike? Not a motor-scooter?” said Linnet cautiously.

    “No! On a REAL BIKE!” she shouted crossly.

    “Hush, I’m not arguing with you, I just wondered whether it was the girl or the man.”—The man had a motor-scooter but the girl always used a push-bike.—“So it was the girl, was it?”

    The sex of posties was a matter of indifference to Fergie: the exciting thing about them was that they were posties. “On a bike,” she repeated uncertainly.

    “Mm, it must have been the girl, then. So she brought lots of bills, did she?” said Linnet, swallowing a sigh.

    “’Es! Mey’card!” she said on a proud note, thrusting one at her.

    Linnet took it, wincing. “Is it? Oh, no, not this time, thank God. It’s a letter from Aunty Mim, Fergie; I think we’ll leave it till later.”

    “No-o! Open it!” she cried agonizedly.

    Obligingly Linnet opened it and handed her the envelope. Fergie drew the contents out eagerly. Half of them. The rest of them fell to the floor.

    “More Polaroids,” said Linnet dully. “I reckon she spends more on blimmin’ Polaroids than we do on food!”

    “Pol’roys,” agreed Fergie vaguely. “Bill!” She held out Aunty Mim’s letter.

    “Well, this one is a real letter, actually,” said Linnet dully, taking it, “but the others are bound to be bills. I’ll read it later.” She put it on the bench. “Can I have another?”

    Fergie held out another. “Mey’card.”

    “Not this one,” said Linnet in a hollow voice. “Mastercard. I think maybe Mr Morpeth’s right and we ought to let him settle everything.”

    “Open it!” she wailed.

    “Yeah.” Wincing, Linnet opened it.

    “Bill!” ascertained Fergie happily. Possibly prompted by the look on her aunt’s face.

    “Yes. Well, most of that five thousand had better go on this. Unless— What else have you got there, Fergie?”

    “Mey’card.”

    Linnet shut her eyes for a moment. It was.

    “MEY’CARD!” she roared.

    “Yes, that’s right, clever girl!” They always came in virtually plain envelopes. It didn’t say “Meyer” or anything like that on them. They were instantly recognizable, however. Linnet slit the envelope open.

    “MEE-EE!” she wailed.

    “Yes, here you are, Fergie, you open Mummy’s Meyercard bill,” said Linnet kindly.

    Fergie dropped all the other letters and operated eagerly. “Mey’card!” she panted.

    “Yes. Let Aunty Linnet see, Fergie. ...Gosh, doesn’t not buying anything help? It’s actually gone down infinitesimally since last month,” said Linnet in a nasty voice.

    “Mey’card,” said Fergie, looking up at her anxiously.

    Linnet looked down at the little round, pink face that, in spite of the red curls that topped it, was really very like Rose’s, and smiled. “Yes, darling, this is the Meyercard! Aren’t you a clever girl! –Would you like to choose another one?”

    Fergie chose another one. “Pink!”

    “Junk mail. You wanna keep it?”

    Fergie nodded eagerly.

    Linnet’s days usually proceeded at this pace, so she didn’t try to hurry Fergie up, or anything like that, but let her savour her triumph at having brought the bills in to the full, handing them to her aunt laboriously one by one—she was pretty chubby, and grunted each time she bent over to retrieve one from the kitchen floor—and then having the great treat of extracting the contents. It hadn’t yet dawned on Fergie that she might also open the envelopes—to Linnet’s relief, because of course her little fat hands didn’t have much coordination. And it would never do to rip the ruddy Meyercard account in two!

    Rose came into the kitchen before they’d finished, looking very flushed, and reported that she’d drunk all her water. Linnet and Jimmy had long since cancelled Rose’s spring water order. True, it was much more palatable than the truly awful Adelaide tap water, but then on the other hand it wasn’t necessary to sustain life. Jimmy had discovered that if you filled up a big plastic bottle with tap water and chilled it well in the fridge overnight it more or less killed the taste. And the chlorine evaporated. He thought. So they did that. Neither of them was too sure if Rose knew it wasn’t spring water she was drinking, any more. Linnet took the empty jug off her and filled it up from the bottle. Rose then said wistfully she’d love some Lucozade, if Linnet was thinking of going to the shops today.

    It was the first time, apart from the vague desire for a Bundy and Coke a while back, that she’d actually expressed a preference for any sort of nourishment. Nevertheless Linnet bit her lip. “Rose, it’s awfully dear,” she faltered.

    “I don’t really fancy anything else to drink,” she said sadly.

    “Bena!” cried Fergie helpfully. “Bena, Mummy!”

    “Yes: would you like some of Fergie’s Ribena?” asked Linnet hopefully. It was awfully dear, too, but Fergie loved it, and she had it very weak.

    Rose thought it was too sweet, said “Never mind, then,” and drifted back to bed.

    Linnet swallowed. “We’ll get her some Lucozade,” she said grimly to Fergie. “And if Uncle Jimmy asks what’s happened to his sausages, tell him Mummy drank them!”

    “Bena,” she said in a puzzled voice. “—C’n I’ve a bikkie?”

    “Oh, all right, then.” Linnet gave her a “bikkie”. Actually it was a home-made rusk. No-one in the family liked the crusts at the ends of the sliced loaves and the only time Linnet had tried the microwave book’s recipe for bread-and-butter pudding it had been a disaster. She’d got the idea of the rusks from Monica’s mother. Monica didn’t bother, but her mother made rusks for Jenny: you cut the bread into strips and baked them in a very slow oven for some time. After you’d done the roast was a good time, it used the stored heat. Linnet and Jimmy had, of course, flogged the stove, but Linnet hadn’t revealed this to Monica’s mother: she’d just gone home and quietly experimented with the microwave. After quite a lot of failures she’d figured out how to reduce the strips of crust to an appropriately bone-dry, rock-hard consistency. To turn them into bikkies you spread them very thinly with honey before putting them in the microwave. It took Fergie ages to get through one, but this was probably just as well: certainly the slow gnawing was good for her teeth, but besides that each loaf had, of course, only the two ends.

    Fergie gnawed on her rusk and handed Linnet another bill. Once opened it proved not to be a bill but a circular letter from the boat suppliers, thanking them for their custom and offering them a special bargain of a cabin-cruiser at only—

    “Mad,” decided Linnet, crumpling it up and throwing it at the rubbish bin.

    “‘Nother bill!” urged Fergie. “Mey’card.”

    “No, we’ve already opened that, Fergie— Help,” said Linnet in a doomed voice.

    It was a pale blue envelope. You would have said it was an airmail envelope, only it didn’t have “Airmail” on it, it had “Par Avion”. It was addressed in black, foreign writing. Linnet turned it over.

    She read out numbly: “‘Expéditeur: M. G. de Bellecourt, Château de La Rance, près de Touques le—’ Oh, help.”

    “Bill,” said Fergie helpfully through her rusk.

    “Yeah—um... I think Aunty Linnet had better read this one, Fergie.”

    “Open it!” ordered Fergie, frowning.

    “Mm.” Linnet picked up the bread and butter knife with which she had been opening the others and slit the envelope carefully.

    “ME-EE!”

    Linnet let Fergie extract Monsieur G. de Bellecourt’s letter with her hot, sticky, rusky little paws.

    “Fergie, Aunty Linnet has to read this one.”

    “More bi-ills!” she cried anxiously.

    “Yes. Well, just let me have a look at them. No: this one’s for Uncle Jimmy, Fergie, we mustn’t open it. Not a bill,” she said firmly.

    “Not a bill.”

    “No. Um... more junk mail. Blue junk mail, Fergie: you wanna keep it?”

    Fergie wasn’t too good at blue. She was shit-hot on pink, though. “Blue,” she repeated obediently.

    “Yes. Can I have that last one?” said Linnet with a sigh. “If this is the ruddy water bill, I’m gonna cut my— Ugh. Why do they all come at ONCE?” she shouted.

    “Are you cross, Aunty Linnet?” said the little anxious voice.

    “No,” said Linnet, gulping, and trying to smile at her, “I’m not cross, Fergie. You brought the bills in very nicely! Here, you take out this bill, we might as well know the worst. –I tell ya what, Mummy’s blimmin’ lawn can croak this summer,” she warned.

    Laboriously Fergie extracted the actual bill. “Big bill!” she said proudly as Linnet read it, screwing up her face.

    “Mm. Fergie, Aunty Linnet has to read this letter, so you can come and watch TV!”

    “Play School!” she cried, leading the way.

    “Uh—no. Not in the morning. –Why the Hell they have to have it in the afternoons!” muttered Linnet grimly. “Um—it’ll be— Well, we’ll find something.”

    They got some sort of talk show on 7, some sort of talk show or it might possibly have been a cookery show on 9, and some sort of talk show on 10. SBS was only screening in a foreign language—possibly news. Linnet sighed, and tried the ABC. “I suppose that’s a children’s programme,” she murmured dubiously, after staring blankly at it for some time.

    Fergie settled down happily in her usual position on the carpet three feet from the giant TV. Not the Meyercard: Brash’s, on the Visa card. Kyle had taken their previous set to Cash Converters. Given that it had only been a year old he should possibly have got more for it.

    Since Fergie normally sat so close Linnet had developed a sneaky habit of turning the sound down really low while she watched her horrible programmes. At first, true, she’d done her best to sit with her. But she had almost instantly made the discovery that Play School was unwatchable by anyone over the age of four and with an IQ above the moron level. Special talking-to-the-kiddies voices. Sesame Street was watchable, only very clearly it was designed for latch-key American kids or just underprivileged American kids, whose mothers didn’t have the time or the inclination to watch it. Added to which Linnet found the Americanness hard to take.

    She went over to the chair that she’d positioned by the picture window, where the sun came in nicely at this time of year and the TV was almost inaudible, and sat down with a sigh.

    “Fozzie Bear,” said Fergie in a puzzled voice.

    “Mm... Um, no, I think it’s a real bear, Fergie.” It was awfully fuzzy, that was true. However, the set was very carefully tuned in, Jimmy had taken charge of its mechanical aspects, leaving Linnet to handle the managerial decisions on what was watched on it and when by their mutual niece.

    Glumly Linnet unfolded the letter. Not airmail paper and not the thin, squared paper that some of Mémé’s relations had used, but large sheets of very thick, cream paper with... With a very small crest daintily printed at the top, plus the address of the château! Tiny squarish gold lettering, quite elegant, really, if you could manage to be unprejudiced about the matter, which Linnet at the moment frankly couldn’t. It was in English. Well, probably this M. G. de Bellecourt had thought that she wouldn’t be able to read French. Linnet sighed.

My dear Miss Lynette Müller,

    After much thought I have taken the decision to write to you in person about the agreement of tontine signed by your late relative Mr James Frazer and my great-uncle Gilles de Bellecourt, inter alia, in 1918.

    At this point Linnet, having muttered crossly: “Not ‘Lynette’, you oaf;” and: “‘Müller’? Bah—mais on n’est pas en Europe, tu sais!”, turned over to the signature, muttering crossly: “Well, who are you, when you’re at home? –‘Gilles de Bellecourt.’ Very enlightening,” she said grimly. “And what does he mean by ‘in person’? To me in person, or is his gracious self writing in person instead of getting a lawyer to do his dirty work for him?” She glanced at the gold heading on the notepaper again. “Or a slave,” she conceded.

    Please allow me, at this point, to express my profound sympathies on the sad deaths not only of Mr Frazer but also of your parents and grandmother.

    “You hypocrite!” said Linnet fiercely between her teeth.

    The existence of the agreement of tontine was drawn to my attention only very recently, when my family’s solicitors became aware of the sad death of Mr Frazer. Had I been apprised of its existence earlier, I can assure you that, as head of the Bellecourt family, I would have contacted Mr Frazer immediately about the matter. I can only express my sincere regrets that the circumstances prevented my being able to act before this.

    “Who does he think he’s kidding?” she gasped. “‘Circumstances’! Only just heard of it? Only been hiding it in your bloody family vaults for the last eighty years: yeah!”

    I think you cannot fail to be aware, given your family’s connections with the district of Touques le Minard through your late grandmother, that my family’s income derives largely from our holdings in the company ULR, S.A., founded in early 1919 as Usines La Rance by my late grandfather and his brother, the Gilles de Bellecourt who was a signatory to the agreement of tontine. As yet I have been unable to locate any documentary proof that the sum which founded Usines La Rance was largely my great-uncle’s share of the tontine moneys.

    Linnet had gone very white: he knew all about Mémé, and it was pretty clear he knew an awful lot about the Mullers. When she got to the bit about documentary proof she choked speechlessly.

    Rest assured that the moment I acquire any such proof, I will immediately apprise your family of the fact.

Linnet made a rude noise.

    I am, of course, fully aware of the claim you and your brother and sisters have on the tontine investment under the terms of the original agreement. My lawyers have documentary proof of the deaths of all but one of the other signatories. It is a virtual certainty that Mr Joseph Sneed, the one signatory whose fate we have so far been unable to trace, must have perished during the Second World War. I find it unlikely that, were he still living at the age of ninety-nine, his representatives would not have made an effort to contact me.

    “You and ya locked château gates: yeah,” she snarled, not pausing to wonder about the real significance of Gilles de Bellecourt’s imparting this information. She was aware, both from what Peter Morpeth had said in his uncle’s office and from the fact that the man had referred to himself as the head of his family, that he must be the Comte, but was refusing to admit as much to herself.

    My family and advisors have put forward various suggestions as to how we might reach an amicable settlement of the matter. Dear Miss Müller, it does not seem to me that there are any two ways about it.

    Linnet was puzzled by this sudden descent into the vernacular: no two ways about it? What exactly did he mean? She was also considerably irritated to notice his continual use of the umlaut that the Mullers had dropped generations back.

    She was, of course, unaware that Gilles de Bellecourt, writhing with embarrassment at having to speak not only of the long deception practised by his family and their legal advisors, but also of the depth to which his close relatives were willing to sink, had been unable to bring himself to spell out in so many words the fact that he himself, alone of his family, intended to take the honourable course and give James Frazer’s heirs the eighty percent of the tontine investment’s yield that was their due.

    And writing to some little farmer’s daughter on the other side of the world that one’s family honour was dead was not a pleasant task: the style was formal and cold enough, but the man had not by any means written the letter coolly. The Comte did not realize that his intention was unclear: he thought that what he had written would convey to the reader the fact that for a Bellecourt there could be no other course but that of honour: that he would not dispute the Muller children’s claim. The fact that he was writing in a foreign language in which he was proficient, but which he disliked and for which he had no feeling, probably had not helped.

    Therefore, should you or any of your family receive any communication from my late father’s cousin, M. Bertrand de Bellecourt, from his grandson, M. Guy de Bellecourt, from their representatives, or from any person purporting to represent the Bellecourt family but myself, I should be very glad if you would disregard it and apprise me of the fact immediately.

    “OH!” shouted Linnet furiously. “I get it, you bastard! You’re afraid they might give us our eighty percent of your rotten family property behind your back! While you’re plotting and scheming to see how little we’ll settle for! Right! We’ll see about that, Mister Gilles de Bellecourt, flaming family crest and all!”

    At this point Fergie announced happily: “Ba’nas in jamas,” but Linnet didn’t hear her.

    The letter continued:

    My feeling is that we should meet and talk over the details of the business at our leisure. My mother asks me to assure you that you, your sisters and your brother will be most welcome at our home. Dear Miss Müller—

    He’d done it again: Linnet ground her teeth. And added: “Your home? You’d unlock the flaming gates in order to swindle us at your convenience, I suppose? Oh, very big of you. And your mother!”

—Dear Miss Müller, I hope you will agree with me that the whole matter may be settled quietly between us. Any assistance I or my man of business could render you and your family when it comes to handling the actual details of the property transfer will, I assure you most sincerely, be at your disposal. As will our advice should you wish the investments to remain in France.

    May I hope to hear from you very soon about these points? My mother will, of course, write to you herself should you agree that it would be best to meet face-to-face and talk the business over quietly between us at La Rance.

I remain, yours, most sincerely,

Gilles de Bellecourt.

    Linnet’s impulse on finishing this epistle was to crumple it up furiously and hurl it across the room. She contented herself, however, with clutching it very tightly and saying: “GRR!” between her teeth.

    It was a great pity, take it for all in all, not only that Gilles de Bellecourt had assumed that the little farmer’s daughter wouldn’t be able to read his own language, and that he’d therefore written his awful, stiff, misleading letter in hers, but also that he hadn’t asked his mother to vet both the style and the content of the said horrible effort.

    At one point Linnet had felt very frightened: the Bellecourts must know that James Frazer’s heirs had a copy of the tontine, they’d found out Rose’s address, they knew all about the car accident and Mémé’s death, not to say about Mémé’s relatives in France, and—well, the man was obviously threatening them both overtly and covertly, with his wealth and power and his family crest and so forth.

    Now she was too angry to feel scared any more.

    Inviting them to his flaming château in order to intimidate them with his wealth and position, was he? Of all the bloody... cheek! Yes, that was what it was, bloody cheek! Coming the Lord High and Mighty over a pack of Australian nobodies, that was what he was doing: him and his bloody blue-blooded crooks of ancestors!

    And as for assuming the Mullers were out to take their rotten money off them!

    “He thinks we’re as bad as he is, does he? All right, Monsieur le Comte de Bellecourt, just you WAIT!”

    “Ba’nas in jamas,” said Fergie again.

    Linnet jumped a foot. “Oh, help, what are you watching?” she said numbly. “What’s the ti— Ugh.”

    According to her watch it was now well past noon. Anything that might have been supposed to have been a children’s programme would be over. Linnet hurried over to the TV.

    It was very, very, very blurry. But according to the voice-over it was some sort of fighting somewhere that Linnet had never heard of. Well, not the actual fighting: fuzzy puffs of smoke and fuzzy—oh, dear, mangled bodies. Hurriedly Linnet switched it off.

    “Ba’nas in JAMAS!” cried Fergie in anguish.

    “No, Fergie, I know Bananas in Pyjamas comes after Sesame Street, but that wasn’t Sesame Street, before,” said Linnet firmly.

    “Ba’nas in JA-AMAS!” she wailed.

    “No, Fergie, it’s NOT Bananas in Pyjamas, it’s the NEWS!” cried Linnet. “Some sort of news thing, anyway,” she added uncertainly.

    “Wanna watch TEE-EE-VEE-EE!” she wailed.

    “All right— All RIGHT, Fergie! Ssh!” Hurriedly Linnet chose Channel 10 at random. Highly coloured plastic Americans. Probably a soapie. Oh, well, most of it would be pretty harmless, judging by the teeth and the plastic hairdoes, and if any of it wasn’t, it would only be plastic bodies rolling around in bed and Fergie didn’t know enough to think she ought to be shocked, let alone understand what was supposed to be going on. Linnet left it on.

    “We’ll have lunch as soon as Aunty Linnet’s written a letter to a naughty man, Fergie,” she said grimly.

    “Watch TV,” replied Fergie contentedly. “Ba’nas in jamas.”

    “Pretty lady,” corrected Linnet firmly.

    Fergie didn’t reply, she was glued to it.

    Leaving her three-year-old niece glued to Santa Barbara, Linnet sat down at the writing desk.

    “All right, Monsieur Gilles de Bellecourt: you’re in for the shock of your bloody stuck-up aristo’s life,” she said through her teeth.

Next chapter:

https://frazerinheritance1-adelaidesdaughters.blogspot.com/2024/06/linnets-letter.html