Authors: Diane Johnson
‘Unfortunately there were revisions, and one was that a child conceived in adultery should not quite get an equal share because he has done an injury to his siblings – that is you, Madame Abboud. Your father was apparently married to Madame Pamela Venn at the time of your conception.’
Posy and Rupert contemplated this new evidence of Father’s infidelity and unreliability, but without surprise. Victoire rustled with indignation.
‘You are saying that if neither of my parents had been married, I would get an equal share, but as Papa was married, I thus must pay them for the injury of my birth?’
As if they had not injured me, said her expression, alarming Posy. Why was Victoire being so distant? Had Emile confessed or confided? Apart from this worry, the news was overwhelmingly wonderful to Posy. Relief and happiness sang in her ears. Even the hugeness of the tax owed came as something of a relief, in that there was no way on earth Rupert could get that much money together, either to buy her out, or even to pay his share of the taxes. He would therefore have to see the sense of a sale; it wouldn’t all be her fault for demanding one.
But this was not the solution Rupert had by now set his heart on: ‘We sell the vineyard, a profitable business involving land, it should fetch quite a bit, and use the money to pay the taxes. Thus we save both the château and Icarus Press. I would run it, with my sister – sisters – as investors. And Harry of course has a share, and Harry could go on living there with his mother. We would all live there.’ Farewell England, rainy gloom, the bond market.
‘Why would I agree to that?’ asked Posy.
‘You’d have a part of the château, an apartment in it or something like that, and be a partner in the press.’
‘Mr de Persand just said the press is a losing business. Father’s vanity press.’
‘That scheme seems sound to me,’ said Victoire. ‘I could live there too, it would be lovely for the girls. Of course I’ve never seen it, but I’m sure it must be wonderful, and also for Madame Venn and the baby.’ She was impulsively drawn to the idea of living in Provence, far from Emile, where she would organize anglophone play groups along the lines she had done in Paris, and play the flute, and the children would have fresh air, away from the lead-laden air of Paris, and perhaps her parents would help a bit with support. Also, she would not wish to agree in anything with the detested Posy.
‘The press is hardly successful enough to support seven people, if I am counting correctly. It does usually run at a loss,’ said Mr Osworthy. They all contemplated a romantic future of poverty and cooperative toil in a cold, leaky, rustic mansion, and it was not a vision that appealed, except to Victoire and Rupert. Osworthy had his own notions of a suitable future for the widow and her baby, but it involved her share suitably invested and a small but cosy flat in an affordable suburb of London, somewhere like Purley, and her taking a job as soon as Harry went to school. Three hundred fifty or so thousand invested didn’t yield a living wage, or barely.
‘I hope you will not sell,’ said Monsieur Delamer. ‘It was a labor of love for Adrian, he had poured so much money and energy into it, and it is doing rather
well, much better than at the beginning, and in time –’
‘I’m sorry, but I’ll take the money,’ said Posy. ‘If that means selling, too bad. I just don’t see there’s any other way.’ She recognized that she was frustrating the others, but she could not believe they were so impractical as to really want to bunk in together in a drafty château – father’s widow, an infant half-brother, Father’s ghost hanging about the place, three ill-assorted siblings, and Emile’s dusky sprogs. Eight personalities, counting Father’s ghost, living in what was hardly a crenellated medieval castle but only a poorly maintained seventeenth-century structure sitting on flat ground in the middle of a vineyard, boasting only one tower and a couple of crumbling outbuildings, exactly the kind of hopeless place starry-eyed Englishmen usually did buy in the south of France. She told herself that Rupert would be much better off without these encumbrances, that he had no turn for publishing, that it was her duty to save him.
‘The press is just turning the corner – I think that is the expression?’ Delamer was insisting. ‘If only for the sake of Adrian’s memory, you ought to try…’
Antoine de Persand didn’t comment on any of this. He remarked that though he was not a tax specialist, except in aspects of national fiscal policy, it was well known that in such cases of disagreement among heirs, a sale was always called for. The only way to avoid a sale was for the remaining heirs – Harry, Rupert, and Victoire – to buy out Posy’s share, and pay the taxes somehow; but that was up to them. The matter should be put into the hands of Monsieur Lepage, the
notaire,
as soon as possible.
Victoire drew her scarf around her shoulders. ‘It would
be
trop triste
to let a beautiful château pass out of the family. I will sacrifice, if need be, to keep that from happening.’
‘You’ve never seen it,’ Posy reminded her.
‘
Non,
but I have respect for
patrimoine,
for history. Perhaps it could become a
relais,
a little hotel…?’ Osworthy noted for the first time that the two sisters didn’t appear to get along. He also saw, too clearly, that it would not do to discuss this issue further at this time. It was obvious that for the moment there was a complete impasse, with his own views tending to support Posy’s. He didn’t know which side Kerry Venn would come down on in Harry’s behalf, given that she was being cruelly done out of her own inheritance by the laws of France, nor did he know whether Victoire’s view should have equal weight, given the bizarre French regulation about adulterous ‘love children,’ which diminished her share slightly. The others had accepted Victoire with such docility, Mr Osworthy observed to himself – for all they knew, she could be anyone. Shouldn’t there at least be a DNA test?
‘I suppose you should talk to Madame Venn about what she wishes for her little boy,’ added Monsieur de Persand. ‘Perhaps they will return to America. I believe Americans always do return to America.’
‘On the contrary,’ observed Mr Osworthy. ‘They never seem to, once they taste expatriation. London is overrun with them.’
‘Posy and I will talk over our possibilities,’ said Rupert grimly. His rage at Posy had boiled up. What in hell was her problem? Why wouldn’t she just listen to the various
possibilities? He had been somewhat worried about her. He knew she was depressed, and this was how she got, combative and tired-looking. He wished that Pam could hear all this.
‘We won’t talk it over,’ said Posy. ‘I’m sorry, but I want to take the money. This is a great piece of luck for me, it will change everything. Anyway, I don’t see how you could bear to live there, after all that’s happened. You’d be better off with cash.’
‘Obviously you don’t mind ruining things for Father’s other children. You’ve never cared whom you hurt.’ They descended into uninhibited recriminations of this kind. Osworthy and Monsieur de Persand listened with fascinated foreboding at this confirmation of their fears, this textbook example of quarreling heirs.
‘Stop,
arrêtez,
you are all horrible,’ cried Victoire, beginning to sob violently. ‘I should never have gone to see that man.
Comme je savais. Les Anglais, “Méfiez-vous des Anglais.”
I wish I had never met any of you.’ Her distress alarmed all the men, though not Posy. Victoire, she who had always seemed so light and composed, now thrashed them away when they tried to offer tissues and consoling gestures. Mr Osworthy, his eyes burning in an eagly way behind his spectacles, stood, shook hands with Rupert and Posy, and waggled his head to indicate that they should tiptoe away, they would speak later. The two English heirs stood, Rupert kissed Victoire on both cheeks, and Posy backed toward the door.
‘Let’s go get something to eat,’ Rupert proposed to Posy as they walked along the quai.
‘I can’t, I’m doing something, I’ll see you later,’ Posy said, wishing at all costs to avoid a private discussion with Rupert.
‘We have to talk about it. Let’s go in here.’ They turned in at a little bistro and sat in the corner. Rupert ordered pâté and salad, Posy, bowing to the inevitable, an
entrecôte Béarnaise
.
‘I don’t have to talk about it,’ Posy said. ‘It’s clear. There’s no way we’ll be able to pay a million pounds of taxes.’
‘Euros. It’s not as bad.’
‘Euros. You know we have no choice, it’s just a matter of your recognizing it, we have no chance at all of finding a million euros.’
Rupert knew Posy when she was adamant and agreed that she was right, no point in discussing it. But he could not leave it alone. He burned with determination to find the means to keep the château. Even though on his recent visit to the
coffre,
he had been aghast at its shabby state, ungainly dimensions, and the menacing exigency of its hedges, it was becoming as they wrangled about it the most important thing in his life. Maybe it was because the place was so in need of him, and he of it, that filial emotion seized him now.
‘Can’t you at least try to see what it means to me?’
‘Rupert! I’m not against you, I’m realistic. Our family will owe, we
do
owe, one million pounds to the government of France. Father’s curse! Didn’t you even hear Mr Osworthy?’
‘Why do you always have to be such a bitch? Why is that your role? Why do you think Father punished you,
Posy, do you think he would have punished you if you had just acted like a normal, pleasant human being? It wasn’t any of your business who he married.’
‘Oh, for God’s sake! I never commented on his pathetic vagaries, I never did, it was his own guilt, projected on me. Why am I always the scapegoat? Why am I in a family that hates me?’ Their voices were rising, their faces flaming. ‘You always were a silly ass,’ ‘Spare me your dramatics.’ The waiter bent over them.
‘One of the patrons has asked that you perhaps continue this conversation outside?’ A couple at an adjacent table studied them to see how this message was being received.
‘There’s no need to continue it,’ said Posy rising. ‘Rupert, you’re the rich brother, you pay the bill.’ She grabbed her coat from the wall hook and stalked out, fighting with the sleeves as she thrust through the revolving door.
At about seven, Amy’s telephone rang. It was Sigrid, in California, who said, ‘Jesus Christ, Amy, I’m coming over there tomorrow afternoon. My tomorrow, your today, I’ll be there your Tuesday morning.’
‘Why? What’s the matter?’ There was no mistaking the urgency in Sigrid’s voice.
‘You tell me! What’s going on? You haven’t warned me of any of this.’
‘You tell me what you’re talking about.’
‘This lawsuit. Your insurance called me this afternoon, to say it’s way outside the umbrella. Have you been served there?’
‘What? No. Suing me? Why?’
‘Karen Adelaide Venn suing you for battery on her husband, I haven’t seen the papers, I don’t know – they said for thirty million dollars!’
This seemed so outrageous that Amy couldn’t take it seriously, but her stomach constricted a little anyway. ‘She thinks I was Joan of Arc?’
‘It’s to do with moving her husband to England.’
Amy thought a minute, then displayed her legendary corporate coolness under stress, as Sigrid would later tell the story. ‘I don’t think I owed Venn a duty of care, I’ve never seen the man – I doubt that a suit like that will fly, even here. Mr Osworthy ought to worry, though, and the hospital in Moutiers.’
‘Yes, but, Amy, deep pockets. You have the deep pockets.’
Oh, bother, thought Amy. Bother, bother. She had planned her day: the Musée Marmottan, then to lunch with someone who had invited her yesterday, Mademoiselle Fouquet, a docent there; and she wanted to think about Emile and other things, and now she had to think about this. Bother, bother, bother, and injustice too.
‘Sigrid, don’t come here yet. Let me look into it first. Was it filed? Where?’ Not yet filed, no one yet served, the venue was being chosen.
‘Oh, bother,’ said Amy. ‘I’ll call you later.’
She had the telephone number of Mr Osworthy’s hotel. Obviously it was this development to which he had referred yesterday, this which made Kip so uncomfortable. His sister was suing his benefactor. It was only nine o’clock, and Osworthy was still at his hotel,
in the breakfast room. The desk clerk went to find him.
‘Yes, true, I’m afraid,’ Osworthy said. ‘No good deed goes unpunished, as the saying goes. I suppose we shouldn’t be surprised. We should have remembered, the litigious Americans. Oh, sorry, not you, of course. I don’t have details because I’m here. Suit was evidently filed in London on the grounds that the harm was there because Venn died there. How she has been able to move so fast I can’t imagine.’
‘The poor woman is upset, it’s not surprising that she had to strike out. She wants someone to blame. Still, what a bitch,’ said Amy, only now beginning to feel outraged. They agreed she had to go see Kerry, discover who her lawyers were, and take the thing seriously. Amy repeated her opinion that she herself was not liable, but the fact hung between them that Osworthy probably was, along with the doctors, and maybe the rescue people too. At least Kerry had a good case against someone. And this was France; who knew what weird laws might obtain? Amy had an uneasy feeling – no, it was more than that; she had a powerful wish to go home. She also had again the fleeting thought that maybe it was going to be too hard to be rich, that the complications in how one had to approach life were going to be too much for her. But it was only a fleeting fear. She would be equal to it. She knew she should go see Kerry, immediately, but somehow she put it off again.
36
Géraldine Chastine was friendly, even sisterly, to Pamela Venn, and arranged several pleasant occasions for the two of them. She confessed that it was a relief to get out of her apartment, which seemed very full, what with Victoire, Nike, and Salome all there, and poor Eric, after these years of middle-aged respite, had by no means adapted to the constant presence of small children.