L'Affaire (16 page)

‘I don’t think she’s his lawyer, but I don’t know anything about it, Mr Osworthy,’ said Posy in as docile a voice as possible. ‘How would I?’

‘American lawyers are notorious ambulance-chasers, probably she got wind of it,’ said Rupert.

‘I mean, why is it my bloody fault?’ Posy went on in a stronger voice.

‘I will advise her that she should move her client to a more up-to-date facility if they are not satisfied with her progress in Moutiers. But I had understood they expect Mrs Venn to wake up soon,’ went on Mr Osworthy in a tone that suggested he felt a deep sense of injury at Amy’s involvement.

‘It seems to me Kerry is
your
client,’ Posy pointed out. ‘I’ve never heard that the American is a lawyer.’

‘Time will tell,’ said Mr Osworthy.

18

In her room before dressing for Osworthy’s meeting and dinner, Amy did her CD-ROM French lesson, called her financial person, Sigrid, then turned on the radio and lay in the bathtub listening to music punctuated with announcements in the unfamiliar language. After the stormy morning, the afternoon had started out with a wintry glint of sun, and she’d gone out, but hadn’t worn a sweater under her ski jumpsuit
(combinaison)
, so that when the skies clouded over again at the end of the day she had got cold but had been too far from the hotel to go in. Now, as she was chilled to the bone, the hot water felt wonderful. It’s nice being cold, then warm, being tired, being exhilarated, she thought. She had made progress under the eyes of Paul-Louis, the delightful French ski instructor who drove her up and down pistes that she had thought were too hard for her in a language she could not understand.

It’s sort of nice not understanding what people on the radio were saying – something about Haydn, she thought. Any familiar word leapt out at her. It was soothing not to understand the rest and not be asked to understand. The mind seeks blankness from time to time, the way you have to run down the battery of your computer from time to time. An emptiness to fill with a headier, more
concentrated program of new ingredients. Haydn, French literature, antiques correctly patinated, geopolitics. Once you’ve decided to jettison the old knowledge – both the baby and the bathwater – the possibilities are ripe for a new soup of limitless savor.

Kip was getting help from Miss Walther, so he could go skiing and spend some time, without Harry, at Kerry’s bedside – he was conscientious about this. Yet he had Harry with him an awful lot, it seemed to him, especially all night. He found that if he kept Harry up watching TV he slept later. It was remarkable that a baby could watch TV. Kip remembered seeing on television an account of a school where girls in his same grade, though in another school, had to carry ten pound sacks of flour around all the time to make them conscious of what it would be like to have a baby. He wasn’t even a girl and he was conscious of it for sure. He had bought some blocks and other stuff at a shop in the village and had charged it on Adrian’s credit card. That made him feel sort of criminal though he knew it was all right. He thought as he went to Mr Osworthy’s room that he should explain this to Mr Osworthy.

Osworthy, finding himself in a distant Alpine village with a decent allocation for expenses, had ordered several
plateaux
of oysters from room service and two bottles of champagne, to soothe his clients’ spirits and, not incidentally, since he found himself in a fine hotel, to sample its amenities himself. Though French, therefore transported here God knew in what conditions, the oysters should be
all right, it being winter. The waitress had spread towels on the bureau to protect it, and arranged along it the platters of heaped crushed ice and the opened creatures on their icy beds. The two bottles in buckets on teetery stands were placed at the end with five glasses poised to be filled. Did it look too festive in view of the circumstances? He hoped not. Six dozen oysters divided among five people, five into seventy-two… maybe the American boy wouldn’t eat any, or Posy. Women often didn’t like oysters.

He took this assembly most seriously. Having set his staff, in prospect, to looking into some of Adrian’s affairs, he had been surprised to find them in solid, even astounding, affluence. Even his vineyard, from a brief review of his French tax returns, appeared to have made money. His press, for years a losing self-indulgence, had recently sometimes made money, his investments, in the long boom of the eighties, had boomed. Osworthy was gratified but challenged. He would of course have given the humblest tinker all his advice and expertise if the fellow was his client, but the aura of money suddenly haloing the raffish Venn lent a certain sacred importance to the trust Venn had placed in him, and lent a certain bracing interest to the whole thing too.

The heirs – he thought of them as the heirs though Adrian was not dead – arrived, a little somber. The American youth, still in ski clothes and après-ski boots, came in exuding a brisk boyish fragrance of outdoors and cold. He had brought with him the woman who had been sitting with him at lunch, the attractive Californian who was, or wasn’t, his lawyer. This person, Miss Hawkins,
was dressed for dinner in a simple black dress, as though in mourning already. She was pretty, in his opinion, with a polished simplicity that made poor Posy seem all the more blowsy. Osworthy had noticed that Posy’s clothes were always quite inappropriate – rather low necked and tight. Some women couldn’t help looking like tarts no matter what they wore, and poor Posy was evidently one of them, though she had a good Cambridge degree. Doubtless, too, styles had changed. Both Miss Hawkins and the boy declined oysters, and took on panicked expressions when these were offered a second time.
Tant mieux,
as they say here, thought Osworthy, the more for the rest of us.

He explained that he hadn’t made much progress that afternoon in organizing the transport of the patient, doubly difficult over the objections of the French doctors and with the absolute nonexistence of a vehicle of any kind capable of transporting a patient on life support. Fortunately, Adrian was holding his own, had not got worse, so there was still tomorrow. ‘I’ve been on the telephone the whole afternoon. I expect my efforts to bear fruit by tomorrow, but we may have underestimated the difficulties here. Mind you, I find the French doctors absurdly territorial. It wounds their vanity to imply they haven’t been doing all that can be done. It would help if they would cooperate. We must, we must, get him home,’ said Osworthy fervently.

Osworthy wondered if the American boy understood the importance of transporting Venn. Of course, the boy’s interests were directly counter to those of Rupert and Posy, in that his sister would get virtually nothing
if Adrian died here in France, with its Napoleonic prejudices against wives, and everything if (when?) he died in London, with things left according to his will. Was that why he had brought the American lawyer? He looked a young boy for such calculation, so it must be the woman who had thought it through. Osworthy asked if there were any questions, in part to learn what they did understand. He tried to clarify further.

‘I asked you all here, because I think everyone should understand the situation. There is no mystery, and I want no one to harbor false expectations. In the case of his death, Mr Venn’s will leaves his estate to his wife, Kerry Canby, with a small sum for his children Rupert and Posy, a few thousand pounds apiece as I remember. Young Harry is not mentioned in particular, but I think, without doubt, that the law would hold him to be included, because he was not excluded. There is no comma after the word
children
, and I don’t doubt that will be a matter of dispute, but –’

‘Can we talk about expenses for one minute,’ interrupted the American, Miss Hawkins, and her demure, appealing face had suddenly a rather set expression. ‘Kip and Harry are dependent on Mr Venn, or his estate, to defray their current living expenses, and I have some concerns about Harry’s future, both the expenses and custody.’

‘Harry’s mother is expected to recover,’ said Osworthy severely.

‘A. Will she be liable for her husband’s medical expenses if in French law she doesn’t inherit? B. For the hotel bill?’ said Amy, looking at her notes.

‘Ah, Miss Hawkins, that is my point,’ said Mr Osworthy, seeing a way to enlist her support, for they were, after all, on the same side as to where poor Venn should die. ‘That’s why, whatever happens, it’s essential it happen in England, where Kerry Venn has the natural widow’s rights and obligations according to Mr Venn’s clear intentions. Here – I’m not clear, but it appears to be otherwise. I cannot speak for France, and I cannot off the top of my head resolve the question of which national law would prevail in the case of an Englishman dying in France or vice versa. God alone knows who the French would think should pay the hotel bill.’

‘Kip is in no position to take care of financial matters himself,’ Amy said. ‘Mr Venn has been supporting him and paying his school fees.’

‘Unfortunately, no one dies without effect. We cannot help what we cannot help,’ sighed Osworthy.

‘But the French doctors think he’s certain to die no matter where,’ Posy said in her quarrelsome way. ‘If that’s true, I don’t know that I want Father to die in England. Why would I? From what I’m hearing, if he dies in England, Rupert and I get two beans, and if he dies here, we get our full share of his money.’

‘It’s hardly a time to privilege your personal motives, Posy,’ Osworthy said, deeply shocked. ‘There may be a chance of saving him. Surely you want that?’

Posy’s defiant outburst could not prevail against such a reproach. ‘Of course,’ she said meekly. ‘But our other sister may not be so compliant.’

‘For God’s sake, what other sister?’ Osworthy snapped.

‘You mean nobody’s told you?’ said Posy with great
enjoyment at seeing the stunned expression that momentarily froze Osworthy’s jowly face.

Posy and Rupert, having thanked Mr Osworthy for his efforts in behalf of their father, said they would see him at dinner and took themselves off to the bar for something stronger than champagne.

‘I’m going skiing tomorrow,’ Rupert announced, somewhat defiantly. ‘I’ll look in at the hospital early and come in again at the end of the day.’

He had been cheered at the addition to the gloomy conference orchestrated by Osworthy of the unexpected American lawyer, or whatever she was, who had seemed both lovely and reasonable, and not as if she would make trouble. She was here to take cooking lessons and skiing lessons, she had said, and had invited him to join a skiing party with them in the morning – the boy Kip, some other people she’d met, and Robin Crumley, the famous poet, not that he had read much poetry since leaving school, but Crumley was often on the telly, writing about country life, the roses blowing in the hedges and so on, and then a thorn. There was always a thorn, or a worm. ‘I
thought
that was Robin Crumley,’ he had said to Posy. Crumley didn’t ski but would come by car to meet them at lunch in some village their monitor would take them to. He stole a glance at Posy to see if she would utterly resent his defection, and saw from her scowl that she would.

‘You could come in the car with Robin Crumley,’ he said, and she brightened. ‘I’ll see to it.’

‘Do you secretly think Father’s wife is going to die too?’ said Posy, who had evidently been thinking about this.

‘Supposedly not.’

‘I would hope they would tell us the truth, because if they’re both going to die, it would be better if she died first,’ Posy said. Rupert, to his chagrin, instantly saw what she meant. If Father died first, his money went to his wife, and then when she died the baby would get it all; but if she died first, they were directly in line. That’s if they were both going to die.

‘That’s just in England,’ he said.

‘I cannot believe we’re saying these things, but anyway, it’s plain that Father must die in France. It’s going to turn out that way anyhow,’ Posy said. ‘We aren’t causing it by saying it. Mr Osworthy will never find an airplane willing to transport him.’

They made their way to where Emile was sitting. They all nodded cordially and Rupert and Posy slid in next to him.

‘I looked in at the hospital at about five,’ he told them. ‘They were quite encouraged about something to do with Madame Venn’s condition. No change in that of your father.’

‘Could we speak frankly?’ Posy asked, fooling with a cigarette to master the confusion that seized her whenever she met this man. ‘Have you heard that Father’s lawyer wants to move him to England, in hopes he can be saved there? That would be marvelous, but who can believe he can be saved? Not the doctor, that’s clear. We think it’s more that Mr Osworthy wants Father to die under the British flag because it makes a difference to what happens to – well, everything, his château and money.’

Emile considered this. ‘I suppose it would. The laws of succession are probably very different in the two countries, though I don’t know what they are. England, I’m sure, is very capricious.’

‘Why capricious?’ They bridled alertly.

‘The English indulge the caprices of the dying, I gather. France disregards them for good reason, to avoid the stupid or inappropriate things people do at the last minute to seal themselves to life.’

‘You don’t think people should be able to do what they want with their money?’

‘Certainly not,’ said Emile.

Rupert intervened smoothly. ‘The point is that you – that is, your wife – and Posy and I are sort of on the same side in this. It’s better for us all, if Father were to die, that he did it in France. It was you who told me that in France you can’t disinherit your children.’

‘Which has been held by many to be a great pity,’ said Emile.

Emile was a natural troublemaker in part because he was intelligent, and delighted in the complications a moment of obstinancy or a noncompliant gesture or impulsive action could bring on. He had always enjoyed observing these complications, and submitted to the deepening cynicism they inspired in him with a sense of his own perfectability. In time he could become a perfect cynic. But first he would have to master his own inclinations to give in to joy, love, and the like, emotions that got in the way of calculation. Now he wavered between having a laugh with these attractive but apparently perfidious English people, whose interests were the
same as Victoire’s, and suggesting that they just pull the plug on their father, who was effectively dead anyhow, as no one seemed able to admit.