Score!

‘You were very boring in the sack last night, Maestro, please do better this evening.’

In her forties, Miss Bussage had the look of a well-regulated musk ox, with small suspicious eyes and dark, heavy hair that flicked up, sixties-style, like two horns. Her thick body was redeemed by a splendid bosom and rather good legs. Like musk oxen, she was also able to survive the arctic climate of Rannaldini’s rages, and gave off a strong, musky scent in the rutting season.

Friendly one day, downright rude the next, which Rannaldini, used to sycophancy, thought wonderful, she had now picked up his private telephone, which none of his other staff would touch at pain of thumbscrew.

‘Marcel Dupont for you.’

Dupont was Etienne de Montigny’s lawyer. He had grown rich over the years but had had his work cut out, extricating the great man from scrapes and marriages, and preserving his vast fortune.

‘What news?’ asked Rannaldini, seizing the receiver.

‘The worst.’ Dupont’s voice trembled. ‘Etienne died an hour ago.’

Glancing up as Apollo’s clock struck one, Rannaldini crossed himself. Death must have been at noon when the fire died in the grate and Don Juan in Etienne’s painting cried out in anguish. ‘I am so sorry,’ Rannaldini’s voice dropped an octave. ‘I trust the end was peaceful?’

‘Did Etienne ever do anything peacefully?’ asked Dupont. ‘Like Hercules, he battled to the end. He wanted to see another sunset. I know how busy you are, Maestro, but…’

‘I will certainly be at the funeral.’

Then Dupont confessed it had been Etienne’s dying wish that Rannaldini should join Tristan’s three older brothers carrying the coffin.

‘But surely Tristan…’ began Rannaldini.

Dupont sighed. ‘Even in death. I can trust your discretion.’

‘Of course,’ lied Rannaldini.

French law insists that three-quarters of any estate is divided between the children of the blood, with whole shares going to legitimate children and half shares to any born out of wedlock. Tristan, therefore, would automatically inherit several million. But the law also stipulates that the fourth quarter of a man’s estate can be divided as he chooses.

‘Etienne itemized everything for children, mistresses, friends, wives and servants,’ said Dupont bleakly, ‘but he left nothing personal to Tristan, not even a pencil drawing or a paintbrush. Why did he hate the poor boy so much?’

‘Poor boy indeed.’ Rannaldini was shocked. ‘I will ring him.’

‘Please do — he’s devastated, and the end was dreadful. I hope this story doesn’t leak out. Anyway, while you’re on, Rannaldini, Etienne left you two of his greatest paintings, Abelard and Heloise and The Nymphomaniac. Both are on exhibition in New York.’

Together they were worth several million. Not such a bad day, after all, thought Rannaldini.

2

Having witnessed Etienne’s extremely harrowing death, Tristan had immediately fled back to his own flat in La Rue de Varenne, trying to blot out the horror and despair with work. He had been on the brink of making the one film his father might have rated, because it was with Rannaldini. Now it was too late.

Scrumpled-up paper lay all over the floor. His laptop was about to be swept off the extreme left-hand corner of his desk by a hurtling lava of videos, scores, a red leatherbound copy of Schiller’s Don Carlos, books on sixteenth-century France and Spain, sketches of scenes, Gauloise packets and half- drunk cups of black coffee. Photographs of the Don Carlos cast were pinned to a cork board on the rust walls. Over the fireplace hung one of Etienne’s drawings of two girls embracing, which Tristan had bought out of pride so that people wouldn’t realize his father had never given him anything.

He was now toying with a chess set and the idea of portraying his cast, Philip the king, Posa the knight, Carlos the poor doomed pawn, as chess pieces, but he kept hearing the nurse’s cosy, over-familiar voice.

‘Just going to put this nasty thing down your throat again, Etienne,’ as she hoovered up the fountains of blood bubbling up from his father’s damaged heart.

And Tristan had wanted to yell: ‘For Christ’s sake, call him Monsieur de Montigny.’

He also kept hearing Etienne muttering the words ‘father’ and ‘grandfather’, as he clutched Tristan’s sleeve, and the roars of resistance, followed by tears of abdication trickling down the wrinkles.

At the end only the extremely short scarlet skirt worn by his granddaughter Simone had rallied the old man. Tristan hadn’t been able to look at his aunt Hortense. It was as if a gargoyle had started weeping. He prayed that Etienne hadn’t seen the satisfaction on the faces of his three eldest sons that there was no hope of recovery.

There was no way Tristan could concentrate on a chessboard. Switching on the television, he felt outrage that, instead of leading on Etienne’s death, they were showing the young English winner of the Appleton, Marcus Campbell-Black, arriving pale and fragile as a wood anemone at Moscow airport, and being embraced in the snow by a wolf-coated, wildly overexcited Nemerovsky, before being swept away in a limo.

Rupert, Marcus’s father, had then been interviewed, surrounded by a lot of dogs outside his house in Gloucestershire.

‘Campbell-Blacks don’t come second,’ he was saying jubilantly.

God, what a good-looking man, thought Tristan. If he had Rupert, Marcus and Nemerovsky playing Philip, Carlos and Posa, he’d break every box-office record.

He jumped as Handel’s death march from Saul boomed out and the presenter switched to Etienne’s death: France was in mourning for her favourite son; great artist, bon viveur, patron saint of vast extended family.

‘Montigny’s compassion for life showed in all his paintings,’ said the reporter.

But not in his heart, thought Tristan bitterly. Etienne had never been to one of his premieres, or glanced at a video, or congratulated him on his Cesar, France’s equivalent of the Oscars.

‘Of all Etienne de Montigny’s sons,’ went on the reporter, as they showed some of Etienne’s cleaner paintings followed by clips from The Betrothed, ‘Tristan, his youngest son, has been the most successful, following in his father’s footsteps but painting instead with light.’

That should piss off my brothers, thought Tristan savagely, as he turned off the television. Dupont had rung him earlier and, like a starved dog grateful for even a piece of bacon rind, Tristan had finally asked if Etienne had left him anything other than his due share.

‘Nothing, I’m afraid.’ Then, after a long pause, ‘Maybe it’s a back-handed compliment, because you’ve done so well.’

Dupont had meant it kindly. But Tristan had hung up, and for the first time since Etienne had fallen ill, he broke down and wept.

Half an hour later, he splashed his face with cold water and wondered what to do with the rest of his life. He was roused by the Sunday Times, commiserating with him, then more cautiously probing a rumour that he was the only member of the family who had been left nothing personal.

‘Fuck off,’ said Tristan hanging up.

Fortunately this pulled him together. The bastard, he thought. All my life Papa noticed me less than the cobwebs festooning his studio. Looking at his mother’s photograph, he wished as always that she were alive, then jumped as the telephone rang.

‘Papa?’ he gasped, in desperate hope.

But it was Alexandre, his eldest brother, the judge.

‘We’re all worried you might be feeling out of it, Tristan. You’re so good at lighting and theatrical effects and knowing appropriate poetry and music, we felt you should organize the funeral. We want you to be involved.’

His brothers, reflected Tristan, chose to involve him when they wanted their christenings and weddings videoed. He wished he had the bottle to tell Alexandre to fuck off too.