“Is she French?” Bruno asked.
“No, originally Russian, I think, but she hasn’t lived there for years. Jamie says she’s got a European passport, from Cyprus, I think.”
She helped him carry in the three jars of gazpacho, the box of croutons and the kilo-sized box of aillou he’d bought at Stéphane’s stall. Gazpacho was never complete, Bruno believed, without a spoonful of the blend of crème fraîche and fromage blanc, herbs and garlic that his friend made fresh each day. In the kitchen they found Meghan grappling with a mountain of peeled potatoes, carrots and zucchini and worrying whether she should leave the cheese out or put it back in the fridge.
“Oh, Bruno, so good to see you,” she said frantically. “Tell me, should I put the vegetables in the oven now, do you think?” Her hands half raised as though she was not quite sure what to do with them. Her face was red and her hair was hanging in tendrils. “Oh dear, I’ve got to go and shower and change yet. Thank heavens you’re here, Bruno. And with the gazpacho, bless you.”
“Oh, Mum, the others are still on the way. There’s lots of time,” said Kirsty, a daughter who looked fully grown but was still young enough that she’d not learned to hide her exasperation with her elders.
“I imagine the first thing they’ll want when they get here is a bathroom, or several bathrooms,” said Bruno. “I’ll put the gazpacho away and catch up with Kirsty while you go and change. I’m sure Kirsty’s right—you’ve got lots of time. And if they do turn up early, I’ll look after the vegetables while Kirsty gets them all a drink. Then you can make your big entrance as the lady of the château.”
Bruno grinned at her and made an extravagant bow to make Meghan laugh. She’d barely gone upstairs, still smiling, when Rod came in through the kitchen door, mobile phone in hand. Jamie had just called him to say the minivan was passing Niversac, which meant they were about thirty minutes from arriving. There would be six people arriving, not four as expected.
“Jamie says they’re a bit tight packed in the van,” said Rod, helping himself to wine. “They have the guitar and cello cases up on the roof rack with the suitcases.”
“You mean it’s a sextet?” Bruno asked.
“Basically it’s a string trio of a cello played by one of Jamie’s pals at the Royal College and a violin and a viola from the Paris Conservatoire. Jamie plays guitar, and he can also play piano, and then there’s his girlfriend who plays the flute. The sixth guy is some out-of-work distant cousin of hers, so he’s coming as the driver, roadie and bag carrier. It will be good to have a houseful of young people.”
There was a lot of contact between the musical schools of Paris and London, Rod explained. Jamie had told him that the pupils and teachers encouraged them to spend a term or two in the other capital, and the summer music festivals in each country offered a way to make some pocket money and improve their performance skills.
“What about you?” Bruno asked. “Are you going to be performing? I really liked your new songs and that duet you played with Jamie. I’d love to see you doing your new songs at one of our riverside evenings in St. Denis. And there’s a young jazz singer, a friend of mine, who liked ‘Watching You Sleep’ so much she made a backing track for it. Have a listen.” Bruno pulled out his phone.
“I wasn’t planning to share that stuff just yet. That was for your ears only.”
“Sorry, you didn’t say so, and I was so enthusiastic about it…”
“That’s okay. Let’s hear what she’s done with it.”
Bruno pressed PLAY, and even through the tiny phone speakers the voices of Rod and Amélie blended well together. She sang along with him on the chorus lines, but in the separate verses she just let her voice croon discreetly, almost as a separate instrument.
“She’s good,” said Rod, nodding. “I like it. E-mail it to me and I’ll play it through my own speakers in the studio, get a better idea of how it works. She’s got a great voice. Where’s she from?”
“Guadeloupe, but she sang in clubs in Canada when she was putting herself through university there, and she’s living in Paris now. She’ll be here for a week, singing at our evening concerts and also doing a special show of Josephine Baker songs at Château des Milandes. They’re planning to make a recording, and the whole concert is going to be televised. I can get you tickets, if you want.”
“I’d like to see that, thanks.”
Behind her father, Kirsty was trying to send some kind of discreet signal to Bruno, putting her finger to her lips in a universal code for silence. He assumed that she did not want him to raise her decision to abandon the law for the profession of wine. He nodded briefly, then asked, “What is Meghan planning to do with these heaps of vegetables?”
“Drizzle them with olive oil and bake them in the oven,” said Kirsty. “It’s not fancy, but it will do the job.”
“In that case we’d better start slicing the potatoes and carrots. They’ll take longer than the zucchini.”
Bruno and Kirsty set to work as Rod lounged against the sink, watching them. Kirsty suggested he might help by setting the big table on the terrace. Dinner plate, side plate, soup bowl, knife and fork and two spoons each, Kirsty suggested.
“And don’t take them out one and two at a time. Put them all on a tray, Dad,” she said, with a hint of barely controlled impatience in her voice. It reminded Bruno that much as he longed to be a father, there were aspects of the parent-child relationship that he found unsettling. But then Rod was old enough to be Kirsty’s grandfather, he thought, and caught himself. He wasn’t much younger than Rod had been when Jamie was born.
Chapter 9
Barely had they all finished their tasks when there came the toot-toot of a car horn from the drive. Meghan descended the stairs looking every inch the lady of the château. She was wearing a magnificent caftan of heavy silk and had her hair piled up high. She flung open the double doors and stood waiting on the terrace for her son to bound up and hug her. Only then did Jamie introduce his companions.
“Ah, Balzac, great to see you,” Jamie said as the basset hound jumped up to greet him, Balzac’s habit with old friends. Even after all this time Bruno had been unable to train him out of it.
“Bertie you met in London, maman. Hippo, Pia and Galina are brilliant musicians and friends from Paris. And Sasha, who’s getting down the cello from the roof, is Galina’s cousin. We’re all dying for a pee and a shower, and we’re all starving. Hi, Sis,” he added, embracing Kirsty and then hugging his father.
“Bruno, grand to see you as well,” Jamie said, embracing him. “I knew you must be here when I had to fend off Balzac’s assault.”
Rod was shaking hands with each of the guests and asked the plump Frenchman with the curly hair, “Is your name really Hippo?”
“It stands for ‘Hippolyte,’ ” the young man replied in excellent English. “I was named for Hippolyte Taine, the historian and a distant relative of my mother. And thank you for inviting us to stay here. It’s very kind of you.”
“This place is magnificent,” Pia, the young Frenchwoman, said to Meghan. She was the BCBG type, bon chic bon genre, good style and good class, instantly recognizable from the dress, accent and hairstyle of the wellborn and fashionable young parisienne. Hippolyte was the male version. Bertie was different. He was big, athletic and with muscles that suggested regular visits to the gym. But nobody had ever taught him how to dress. He was wearing nylon tracksuit pants that stopped at his impressive calves. On his feet were gaudy sneakers, and he wore a cheap-looking white polo shirt with red, white and blue stripes on the collar. He carried his mobile phone in a pouch on his belt, rather than the way Pia carried hers, casually stuck into the hip pocket of very tight designer jeans.
Bertie was the only one who joined Bruno to help Sasha unload the van. Sasha was lean and tough looking. Despite the heat of the day he was wearing a long-sleeved denim shirt that d
id not quite conceal the tattoos on his forearms when he reached up to take the cello case from Bertie. Sasha was a good decade older than the others. There were calluses on the sides of his hands that suggested he did a lot of karate. His dark hair was cut very short and his sneakers looked new and very expensive, as did his Rolex Oyster watch. He may have been out of work, but his last employment had clearly been lucrative. Unlike Bertie, he ignored Balzac’s friendly approach, and his face remained expressionless throughout the introductions and unloading.
Galina had shaken hands with Kirsty, Meghan, Rod and Bruno, in that order, had murmured a few polite words to each one and then bent down, hiding her face behind a fall of fine blond hair, to concentrate on Balzac. Bruno, who noted that she was wearing a Cartier Tank watch, wasn’t sure whether she genuinely liked the dog or was doing so to avoid human contact. Balzac, of course, was entranced; he always liked women.
Kirsty and her mother showed them to their various rooms, and Rod and Bruno began opening wine bottles and placing them on the side table on the terrace. With a view down to the pool and tennis court, it was a sheltered and pleasantly warm spot in the sun that was still a couple of hours from setting. Bruno went into the kitchen, put the vegetables into the oven and started boiling water for the asparagus. He poured one of his jars of gazpacho into a tureen and took it out to the table. Rod, wineglass in hand, was staring down at a view he must have known by heart.
“I’ll really miss this place,” he said. His wineglass was empty, and as if he’d just realized it, he stretched out an arm for a bottle and poured himself a refill. “I’ll miss Meghan, too. Christ only knows where I’ll end up.”
“I’m no expert, but with those new songs of yours I don’t think you have to worry about your future,” Bruno said. “You must know they’re good, different from what you used to do, but I think they’re better, more real, a lot of life behind them. Maybe you should do a comeback tour. I’d stand in line to be a paying customer.”
“Thanks, Bruno.” Rod gave a hollow laugh. “I believe you. Thousands wouldn’t. What did you think of our houseguests?”
“A polite and well-brought-up bunch of young people, but the older guy, Galina’s cousin, seemed kind of out of place in that company.”
Rod nodded. “That’s what I thought. Not the kind of guy I’d hire as a roadie.” And then, very softly, as if for Bruno’s ears alone, he added, “I’d be a bit wary of meeting him alone in a dark alley.”
Footsteps and loud young voices heralded the arrival of the guests, and the terrace became crowded as glasses chinked and bowls of nuts and olives were passed around. Meghan was being chatty and cheerful, evidently enjoying being the hostess, so Bruno went into the kitchen, Kirsty joining him.
“Where are those chickens?” he asked. She opened the fridge and pulled them out, still wrapped in tinfoil, as they had come from Raoul.
“Oh God, they haven’t been carved,” she said.
“Get me a sharp knife and I’ll do it,” said Bruno. He tested the knife she passed him, a Solingen. It sliced the chicken breasts perfectly. Kirsty went to a drawer and pulled out a dozen white linen napkins, murmuring, “Dad always forgets the napkins.” She took them to the table and announced that dinner was about to be served.
Since nobody else seemed to think of it, Bruno put the aillou into a bowl with a teaspoon, dropped the asparagus into the boiling water and checked his watch. He took a rectangle of butter from the fridge and cut cubes into a saucepan, which he put onto the oven top beside the asparagus pot so they would warm rather than melt. Then he went out to the table. Rod was sitting at the head, and the other end was empty. So Bruno sat there with Kirsty and Galina on either side of him and Sasha beside Galina; they were talking in low tones, almost whispering, in a language Bruno thought must be Russian.
With the food and wine vanishing fast, Bruno thought the gathering must, to an outsider, have looked enviably convivial. But at the table he felt the atmosphere was brittle and strained. He knew Kirsty was worried about telling her father her plans, that Rod was unhappy about the divorce and the loss of this place he loved. But the good spirits and energy he’d expected from the young musicians seemed forced. He’d assumed that Hippo and Pia were a couple, but Pia seemed to be cooling on Hippo and being more than friendly to Bertie. Perhaps it was because Hippo was paying more attention to Kirsty than Pia appreciated. Above all, Sasha seemed to cast a gloom over Galina, and her withdrawal behind that screen of long hair created a corner of stiff silence at Bruno’s end of the table.
Bruno excused himself to go to the bathroom but instead went to the rental van to check the documents. They were made out to Alexander Kozak, age thirty-five, with a Maltese passport and driving permit. That had to be Sasha. He returned to the terrace. At once Meghan rose, asked Kirsty to help gather the soup bowls and announced that fresh asparagus was coming. Bertie was the only guest who began to help stack bowls and take them into the kitchen. Bruno headed to the kitchen to check on the asparagus. He blanched it with cold water and slid the saucepan with the softened butter onto the flame.
“You know what you’re doing,” said Bertie, standing by the stove to watch.
“Practice,” said Bruno. “Is ‘Bertie’ short for ‘Albert’?”
“No, it’s because I’m from Alberta, in Canada.” Bertie bent down to open the dishwasher door and started to fill it. “Nobody can pronounce my first name, so they call me Bertie. I don’t mind.”
“So what’s your real name?” Bruno asked, glancing down and seeing a small tattoo on Bertie’s upper arm as he reached into the dishwasher. It seemed to be a trident, or perhaps a yellow hand with three fingers raised on a blue background.
“Matviyiko—it’s Ukrainian,” Bertie replied. “My ancestors came to Canada before the First World War. There are well over a million of us Ukrainians in Canada.” He seemed to notice Bruno’s interest in the tattoo and said, “It’s the Ukrainian emblem.”
“I have a friend who’s writing a book about Ukraine, the Maidan revolution,” said Bruno. “He was there as a journalist for Paris Match when the shooting broke out, says it was the scariest story he’d ever covered. He’s been back a couple of times, to Kiev and Crimea, researching.”
“Really?” said Bertie, eagerly. “I’d like to meet him, see what he thinks about what really happened. I knew someone who died there, but so much disinformation has been pumped out that a kind of mythology has grown up around the Heavenly Hundred, the people who got killed at the Maidan.”
“I’ll see if he can meet us for coffee,” said Bruno, and they exchanged phone numbers. Then Bruno put the asparagus into a big bowl, its bright green hue set off by the lemons that he’d cut into quarters and placed around the rim of the dish.
After the chicken and the vegetables had been devoured, the cheese board kept the conversation rolling as the others told the vegans what they were missing in Stéphane’s Tomme d’Audrix, a Trappe d’Échourgnac from a local abbey and one fresh and one demi-sec goat cheese. The vegans countered that the quality of the lettuce from the garden could not be appreciated by the cheese-eating barbarians, and everyone fell with delight on the strawberries. By this time, the ten of them at the table had drunk as many bottles between them, although Bruno had been holding back, since he had to drive home. When Kirsty began serving coffee, Bruno thought it might be time to go, but Rod and Jamie brought out their guitars and Galina produced a flute.
“Mum and Dad and Kirsty haven’t heard this before,” said Jamie. “In Paris, Galina and I have been working on a version of Schubert’s ‘Ständchen’ for flute and guitar. It’s usually done as a song with piano, but it’s such an adaptable and lovely piece that we thought we’d try it.”
Bruno didn’t know the music, but the gentle guitar seemed to him to match the sharper tone of the flute. It was a flute as he had never heard it before, the notes less soft than usual, almost
piercing. Bruno was so intent on Jamie and Galina that it took him a moment to realize that Rod had picked up a guitar and started playing a soft bass line to run beneath the main theme.
When the piece ended, the table applauded and Galina gave a brief curtsy. She stood and tossed her head, her blond hair flying back to reveal a face that in the candlelight took on a classic, cool beauty, until she transformed it with a smile that became brilliant as the applause went on and she exchanged proud glances with Jamie.
“We’ll do one more Schubert, the famous opus one hundred, which is usually performed by strings with a piano,” Jamie said. “You’ll see from the very different tone of this piece why I think that Galina is the best flautist I’ve ever heard. Some of you might know this Schubert piece from the Stanley Kubrick film Barry Lyndon.”
Jamie bent to his guitar and then glanced up at the girl, an almost worshipful look on his face. “I learned that from Galina, who knows almost as much about movies as she does about music.”
Bruno saw both Kirsty and her mother shift their gazes sharply to Galina, as if Jamie had revealed more perhaps than he had intended of his feelings for the young woman. Jamie had already turned his eyes back to his guitar and started playing what seemed a military march, a steady beat, while the flute broke in, keeping the same rhythm but then breaking away as though in search of freedom, or possibly of leadership. This was not music as Bruno had ever known or even thought of it before, utterly intimate, the players within touching distance of him and having just shared a glance whose intensity Bruno could still feel.
What an extraordinary difference, Bruno thought, between the music he listened to on the radio or on his CD player, music he appreciated and enjoyed and sometimes felt transported by, and this far more powerful and personal closeness and human connection between the musicians. Music for him had been a pleasant backdrop, sometimes an exciting addition to his life. But suddenly he became aware how for talents such as these it could become all-consuming, a passion. Bruno found himself on his feet as they ended, applauding until his hands were sore. He had tears in his eyes and a lump in his heart.
The Shooting at Chateau Rock Page 8