Summer school at labasti.., p.30
Summer School at Labastide, page 30
"Go on," Steven said to Calli and he was smiling."....all he wants is a son he's sure is his......after that I expect he'll find someone more sexy and so can you. You won't have to see much of him. It's the best chance you'll ever have. In fact it's the only chance you'll ever have. You only have this one asset. Don't for God's sake throw it away. He's rolling and in a very few years’ time you'll probably be a wealthy widow......" Calli broke off and threw down the paper. "How did that bitch, Melly, get hold of it? Did she steal it?"
Jane shook her head.
"It's still in the outside pocket of my suitcase," she said. "She's copied it."
"Can't get her for theft then," Calli muttered viciously.
"When did she write it?" Steven asked.
"There was a bit of a row when I got back that night. Larri had telephoned and told them. I think he'd ordered them to make me change my mind. I stole money out of Patch's bag, got a taxi and went to Jermyn's flat."
"Your one asset’d be safe enough there," Greg said with a grin.
"He was wonderful," Jane told him. "He mopped me up, told me what I was going to do. First he phoned you. Then he sent for a friend of his and got him to cut off my hair. Next day I found myself in Gatwick waiting for the Toulouse flight. He arrived just before it was ready to board and brought a case with some clothes and things and some more money. He said that awful Eric and Patch and Larriby had been in the gallery all morning. He told them that I had said I was going to go into a nunnery, a Buddhist nunnery, in Katmandu....."
She began to laugh.
"And he got his boyfriend to dress up in my old mac and a dress and a wig and go off in a taxi to Heathrow."
"Hotly pursued by awful Eric?"
She nodded.
"But before that Patch had given him a letter and asked him to give it to me. So he did, I read it in the departure lounge and then stuck it in the outside pocket of my case. I didn't want even to think about it."
"As I understand it," Graham said, "your stepmother has allowed your inheritance to be stolen. Surely she should be prosecuted?"
"The lawyer didn't seem very keen," Jane said. "He just shrugged and said the money was gone for good and what was the point?"
"He meant," Calli explained, "that there was nothing left to pay his fee. Typical. Hey, you know the story about lawyers?"
"No ?" Jim asked, bright eyed.
"Product researchers announced that they now meant to test products on lawyers instead of white rats," Calli explained. "The reasons were, one, there were too many of them, two, the animal rights lobby wouldn't complain, nor was there any likelihood of bonding with the lab assistants and....." she paused with her finger raised, "lawyers would do things that even rats wouldn't do."
The tension dissolved into laughter but Graham looked slightly stuffy.
"Aren’t all rogues. Suzie's brother is in the law," he mentioned.
"And he makes unhelpfulness a religion," said Suzie with unexpected venom. "Always knows what you can't do."
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Adoptions and Solutions
Jane emptied the spaghetti into boiling water while Lucie laid down a pile of mats, napkins and cutlery at one end of the table. Everyone set their own place.
"What about Cilla?" asked Jane.
"If she's hungry, she can get a meal at the café," said Greg. "I don't feel like running after her and I won't ask anyone else to do it."
"Unless Sam wants to go?" Calli suggested maliciously.
"Actually," Sam got to his feet, "I should have said earlier. I'm to have lunch over there....that's if...."
He turned to Martel.
"Is there anything you want to add?" suggested Martel.
"Actually," Sam said and went scarlet in the wholehearted fashion of the very fair. "There is. When I got back I was mad as a whole nest of hornets and went along to have it out with Vernon......the boots were the last bloody straw."
"Well ?" Martel prompted.
"He wasn't there of course. But his room was perfectly tidy. Smelled a bit stuffy but it wasn't the sort of rat’s nest Graham said. That's all."
There was short silence.
"Off with you, proud papa," Martel jerked his head at the door.
Sam went. Some of the men who had been in the café the night before were round the well waiting for their turn with the bucket and they greeted him boisterously.
"The sun's come oot," Jim remarked as he closed the door. "It mak's things seem no that bad when the sun's oot."
"Mesdames, messieurs," Lucie announced with a dishtowel over her arm, "vous êtes servis."
"Did youse yins find anything over at the Presbytery?" asked Jim through a mouthful of spaghetti.
"This and that," Steven said vaguely.
Martel added nothing. Jim looked from one to the other and shrugged.
The plates were being cleaned with bread and second helpings being handed out when Steven got suddenly to his feet and demanded,
"What's the time?"
"Three or near enough," Greg returned.
Steven removed the pot from Jane's hands.
"You and I are due at the Mesdemoiselles Beaudéan in quarter of an hour’s time and shorts are not the correct attire. Hop and change, girl."
"But you never said a....." Jane protested.
"Forgot," Steven lied round a hastily torn-off piece of baguette. "Want your opinion of the house."
"But I don't know a thing about houses."
"You'll never be younger to learn, lass," Jim told her, "My word but ye're a grand wee cook already, so ye are!"
He grinned meaningly at Steven.
Jane who had barely touched her helping went to her room, bewildered but thankful for the respite. Steven went to the mirror by the door.
"Anyone got a comb?" he asked.
Greg produced a comb, clean trousers and a towel, Lucie a newly-ironed shirt and by the time Jane reappeared in a cotton skirt and blouse he looked more like someone bound to drink wine with those and such as those.
They went out together into the now brilliant sunshine and the lunch party exchanged knowing looks. Once they were out of sight of the school windows down the Rue Gambetta Steven slowed his steps and took Jane's hand.
"It'll be forgotten tomorrow," he comforted, " lining drawers, wrapping shoes, cleaning windows, wiping bottoms...."
"I feel," Jane said, "the way you do in dreams when you are doing something perfectly ordinary like posting a letter and you realize that you have come out in a see-through nightie or even nothing at all.....exposed, vulnerable, helpless......."
He dropped her hand put his arm round her.
"I know, I know...." he muttered.
"And once communications are re-established, who's going to be waiting out there? Patch and bloody Eric putting on the pressure."
"Why are they so keen?"
She gave him a disillusioned look.
"I can't be sure but I imagine that Larriby's promised to replace the trust money. Otherwise they could be prosecuted."
"Ah, yes."
"And he could be there as well."
Steven considered her gravely.
"Are you afraid of him?"
"Yes, yes I am," she answered honestly. "At first I thought he was just a pompous ass, tall because he was standing on his wallet. But now I know more I am frightened."
"Knowledge casteth out fear," suggested Steven.
"Perfect love casteth out fear," she corrected, "but God knows I don't love him. And he can be threatening in a way. And he's like a spider, webs everywhere. I was a fool to think I could get away from him."
Steven hugged her.
"Here," he said, "you're among friends."
They had reached the Beaudéan residence which was a maison du maître next door to the Gate House itself. The Beaudéans had once bred large families and these two large houses had sheltered not just the immediate family but the grandmothers and grandfathers, the aunts and uncles, cousins and more distant relations as well as the army of servants to care for them. Now the family had dwindled to two old ladies, their servant and some distant cousins in Toulouse. Verdun alone had claimed seven Beaudéans as the little cast-iron poilu in the Place de la Croix bore witness. The Gate House stood empty and only four rooms in the other one were in use.
The old servant answered the door in a rusty black dress covered by a worn linen apron washed so fine and thin that the hems, pockets and patches stood out plainly. She had a mass of greying black hair pinned up into a complicated basket of plaits on the top of her head. She surveyed them solemnly for a second, her black eyes going from one to the other and then the apple-wrinkles creased into a wide smile.
"M'sieu Steven," she acknowledged. "And you have brought with you the new young English. That is good. Indeed that is good. I will bring another glass. A house must have a woman in it, the old people say, or what is it but wood and stones?"
Jane looked up at Steven in alarm and some bewilderment. Sarah beckoned them into the cool stone-floored hall and bustled before them to a door at the far end.
"M'sieu Steven has come," she announced triumphantly. "And he has brought with him his friend, M'selle Jane. I will bring another glass."
She ushered them into the dim cool room. The floor was tiled and there was a vast ornate fireplace with plaster cherubs and flowers and fruit and birds rioting round a mirror which might have been new when Buonaparte was making his name in Italy. The shutters were 'espagnolés' and let in a dim sub-aqueous light. Two elderly ladies sat side by side on a cane-backed settee and a man almost as old as they, dressed in formal black clothes and gleaming black leather shoes sat on a high-backed oak chair as old as the house and rested his neatly bearded chin on his two hands clasped over the silver knob of a cane. Papers were ranged in orderly fashion on a small table at his elbow.
As Steven and Jane advanced into the room they all looked round and Maître Joseph rose, bowed and smiled benevolently. Mademoiselle Justine smiled too but her sister stared vacantly in their direction. Mademoiselle Justine said, holding out her hand,
"This an honour and a pleasure, M'sieu Steven. If you please, introduce us."
Two things suddenly occurred to Jane: to have brought her to share an occasion of this sort was, whether Steven knew it or not, as good as a declaration of intent; secondly, Steven almost certainly did not know her surname. As it chanced she was wrong on both counts. Steven knew very well what he was doing and he also knew her name. One might not go unprepared to such an encounter.
"Mademoiselle Justine may I introduce to you my friend, Jane Mauger," he said formally with a glint of a smile in Jane's direction which hinted that he knew just what she had been thinking. Jane came across to take the outstretched hand.
"It is a great pleasure," she said in her careful French, "to make your acquaintance."
Mademoiselle Justine held Jane's hand and drew her down to kiss her cheek.
"So," she said and patted the same cheek with her large soft hand, "you are M'sieu Steven's....."
"Jane," Steven interrupted hastily, "has been kind enough to offer me her assistance in making plans for the house. If I should buy it," he added hastily.
Mademoiselle Justine's eyes went from one to the other. Jane blushed. Justine chuckled.
"Good," she nodded. "Oh, very good. Better than I had hoped."
Sara, smiling broadly, brought in another glass on a tarnished silver tray and set it down beside the four already ranged in a row beside a decanter of straw-coloured wine on the ugly plastic mat which protected a superb Louis XV sofa-table.
"We will discuss our affairs," said Mademoiselle Justine stated, "then we will drink a glass of wine to celebrate and to seal the bargain and I will give you the keys."
Evidently, thought Steven wrily, she had no doubt of his buying the Gate House: this was understandable in view of the number of times he had enquired whether it were for sale. He smiled a little ruefully and sat down on the other settee with Jane beside him. He stiffened his sinews. The place would need to have thousands spent on it. He would not pay over the odds.
"My sister and I," began Justine and took her sister's limp hand in her own," have discussed this matter, have we not, Marguérite?"
Mademoiselle Marguérite looked a little confused but realized dimly that some response was required of her so she nodded and then peeked anxiously at her sister to make sure that it was the right one.
"And we have decided," Justine went on, "that we will sell."
Steven looked suitably gratified but wary.
"Moreover we will sell at a price of the most ridiculous....."
Well, thought Steven, we will see whether her sense of the ridiculous coincides with mine.
"......because I wish to make a stipulation which you may find....unexpected."
She nodded at Maître Joseph who cleared his throat, looked a little apprehensively at Steven and apologetically at Jane and produced a paper from the pile beside him.
"The good Maître thinks you may not accept my condition. It is not at all customary, he says. Me, I think it is not a serious matter."
"And what is it?" asked Steven, very much intrigued.
Maître Joseph leaned forward to hand him the paper but Mademoiselle Justine waved it aside.
"First I will explain....M'sieu Steven if you buy the house, will you live here?"
Steven frowned.
"I must go here and there for my work. But this will be my base, my home, if you will."
"This is understood. But your wife, she will be here?"
"I have no wife, Mademoiselle."
"Po, po, po," said she, "such things will arrange themselves, I do not doubt."
And she flickered a wicked glance at Jane. Steven shifted uneasily hoping very much that Jane had missed the implication. She had missed nothing but kept her face straight, wondering how Steven would get himself out of this one. She thought she knew why he had brought her; it had been an attempt to distract her from that wretched article. It would be too much if a charitable gesture should land him in an unwanted engagement.
"Doubtless, Mademoiselle. In time."
"So the Gate House will be occupied for most of the time?"
"Oh, yes. I plan to write a book."
"Then, M'sieu Steven, I would ask of you two things. You must know that we are the very last of our family. There are some cousins, very distant, but they are Toulousains and have no wish to live here. We do not correspond, not at all. They are not of our kind, you understand."
Steven could not see where this was leading but he nodded understandingly and waited.
"Me, I am old," Mademoiselle Justine said. "I have lived eighty seven years and my sister Marguérite eighty nine."
Steven and Jane made suitably incredulous noises.
"So.....so," she agreed. "But alas it is true. We both have our health but who knows when the summons may come?"
The company nodded reluctant agreement.
"And while I am the younger," she preened, "I still have my wits and so bear the burdens of the household. Thus, it is I who may depart first. Understood?"
"And should this happen," she went on, "I wish that you, M'sieu, should see that my funeral is properly conducted and the arrangements I have made for my dependents carried out. Sara's pension, for example and the house in the Rue du Castel which is hers until she no longer has need of it. And Marguérite to be cared for as is fitting."
She listed these matters and promptly giggled at Steven's open mouth.
"M'sieu Steven, you swallow flies....."
"But M'selle, surely there is someone...."
"No one."
"Maître Joseph......"
