by Dick Francis
‘She’s upstairs with Monsieur de Brescou.’
He said, ‘Ah,’ and the line clicked off. He appeared in a short time, bearing a small silver tray with tea and lemon but no milk, no sugar and no biscuits.
‘Did we have a successful afternoon, sir?’ he asked, setting down his burden.
‘A win and a third.’
He gave me a small smile, a man nearing sixty, unextended and happy in his work. ‘Very gratifying, sir.’
‘Yes.’
He nodded and went away, and I poured out and drank the tea and tried not to think of buttered toast. During the February freeze, I had somehow gained three pounds and was in consequence having a worse than usual battle against weight.
The sitting room was comfortable with flowered fabrics, rugs and pools of warm lamplight, altogether friendlier than the satins and gilt of the very French drawing room next door. I switched on the television to watch the news, and switched it off after, and wandered around looking for something to read. I also wondered fleetingly why the princess had wanted me to wait, and exactly what help it was that she might find too much to ask.
Reading materials seemed to be a straight choice between a glossy magazine about architecture in French and a worldwide airline timetable, and I was opting for the second when on a side table I came across a folded leaflet which announced ‘Master Classes in a Distinguished Setting’, and found myself face to face with Danielle’s weekend.
I sat in an armchair and read the booklet from front to back. The hotel, with illustrating photographs, was described as a country house refurbished in the grand manner, with soul-shaking views over fells and lakes and blazing log fires to warm the heart indoors.
The entertainments would begin with a reception on the Friday evening at six o’clock (which meant it was in progress as I read), followed by dinner, followed by Chopin sonatas performed in the gold drawing room.
On Saturday would come the lectures on ‘The Masters of the Italian Renaissance’, given by the illustrious Keeper of Italian paintings in the Louvre. In the morning, ‘Botticelli, Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael: Masterworks in the Louvre’, and in the afternoon, ‘Giorgione’s Concert Champêtre and Titian’s Laura Dianti: The Cinquecento in Venice’, all to be accompanied by slides illuminating points of brushwork and technique. These lectures, the leaflet said, represented a rare privilege seldom granted outside France by probably the world’s greatest expert in Italian Renaissance art.
On Saturday evening there would be a grand Florentine banquet especially created by a master chef from Rome, and on Sunday visits would be arranged to the Lakeland houses of Wordsworth, Ruskin and (if desired) Beatrix Potter. Finally, afternoon tea would be served round the fire in the Great Hall, and everyone would disperse.
I seldom felt unsure either of myself or of my chosen way of life, but I put down the leaflet feeling helplessly inadequate.
I knew practically nothing of the Italian Renaissance and I couldn’t reliably have dated da Vinci within a hundred years. I knew he painted the Mona Lisa and drew helicopters and submarines, and that was about all. Of Botticelli, Giorgione and Raphael I knew just as little. If Danielle’s interests deeply lay with the Arts, would she ever come back to a man whose work was physical, philistine and insecure? To a man who’d liked biology and chemistry in his teens and not wanted to go to college. To someone who would positively have avoided going where she had gone with excitement.
I shivered. I couldn’t bear to lose her, not to long-dead painters, nor to a live prince.
Time passed. I read the world-wide air timetables and found there were many places I’d never heard of, with people busily flying in and out of them every day. There were far too many things I didn’t know.
Eventually, shortly after eight, the unruffled Dawson reappeared and invited me upstairs, and I followed him to the unfamiliar door of M. de Brescou’s private sitting room.
‘Mr Fielding, sir,’ Dawson said, announcing me, and I walked in to a room with gold swagged curtains, dark green walls and dark red leather armchairs.
Roland de Brescou sat as usual in his wheelchair, and it was clear at once that he was suffering from the same severe shock that had affected the princess. Always weak-looking, he seemed more than ever to be on the point of expiring, his pale yellow-grey skin stretched over his cheekbones and the eyes gaunt and staring. He had been, I supposed, a good looking man long ago, and he still retained a noble head of white hair and a naturally aristocratic manner. He wore, as ever, a dark suit and tie, making no concessions to illness. Old and frail he might be, but still his own master, unimpaired in his brain. Since my engagement to Danielle, I had met him a few times, but although unfailingly courteous he was reclusive always, and as reticent as the princess herself.
‘Come in,’ he said to me, his voice, always surprisingly strong, sounding newly hoarse. ‘Good evening, Kit.’ The French echo in his English was as elusive as the princess’s own.
‘Good evening, monsieur,’ I said, making a small bow to him also, as he disliked shaking hands: his own were so thin that the squeezing of strangers hurt him.
The princess, sitting in one of the armchairs, raised tired fingers in a small greeting, and with Dawson withdrawing and closing the door behind me, she said apologetically, ‘We’ve kept you waiting so long …’
‘You did warn me.’
She nodded. ‘We want you to meet Mr Greening.’
Mr Greening, I presumed, was the person standing to one side of the room, leaning against a green wall, hands in pockets, rocking on his heels. Mr Greening, in dinner jacket and black tie, was bald, round-bellied and somewhere on the far side of fifty. He was regarding me with bright knowing eyes, assessing my age (thirty-one), height (five foot ten), clothes (grey suit, unremarkable) and possibly my income. He had the look of one used to making quick judgments and not believing what he was told.
‘The jockey,’ he said in a voice that had been to Eton. ‘Strong and brave.’
He was ironic, which I didn’t mind. I smiled faintly, went through the obvious categories and came up with a possibility.
‘The lawyer?’ I suggested. ‘Astute?’
He laughed and peeled himself off the paintwork. ‘Gerald Greening,’ he said, nodding. ‘Solicitor. Would you be kind enough to witness some signatures to documents?’
I agreed, of course, reflecting that I wouldn’t have expected the princess to ask me to wait so long just for that, but not protesting. Gerald Greening picked up a clipboard which had been lying on a coffee table, peeled a sheet of papers back over the clip and offered a pen to Roland de Brescou for him to sign the second page.
With a shaky flourish, the old man wrote his name beside a round red seal.
‘Now you, Mr Fielding.’ The pen and the clipboard came my way, and I signed where he asked, resting the board on my left forearm for support.
The whole two-page document, I noticed, was not typed, but handwritten in neat black script. Roland de Brescou’s name and mine were both in the same black ink. Gerald Greening’s address and occupation, when he added them at the bottom after his own signature, matched the handwriting of the text.
A rush job, I thought. Tomorrow could be too late.
‘There isn’t any necessity for you to know what’s in the document you signed,’ Greening said to me easily, ‘but Princess Casilia insists that I tell you.’
‘Sit down, Kit,’ the princess said, ‘it’ll take time.’
I sat in one of the leather armchairs and glanced at Roland de Brescou who was looking dubious, as if he thought telling me would be unproductive. He was no doubt right, I thought, but I was undeniably curious.
‘Put simply,’ Greening said, still on his feet, ‘the document states that notwithstanding any former arrangements to the contrary, Monsieur de Brescou may not make any business decisions without the knowledge, assent, and properly witnessed signatures of Princess Casilia, Prince Litsi’ – he gave him at least half his full name– ‘and Miss D
anielle de Brescou.’
I listened in puzzlement. If there was nothing wrong with Roland de Brescou’s competence, why the haste for him to sign away his authority?
‘This is an interim measure,’ Gerald Greening went on. ‘A sandbag affair, one might say, to keep back the waters while we build the sea-wall.’ He looked pleased with the simile, and I had an impression he’d used it before.
‘And, er,’ I said, ‘does the tidal wave consist of anything in particular?’ But it had to, of course, to have upset the princess so much.
Gerald Greening took a turn around the room, hands, complete with clipboard, clasped behind his back. A restless mind in a restless body, I thought, and listened to details about the de Brescous that neither the princess nor her husband would ever have told me themselves.
‘You must understand,’ Greening said, impressing it upon me, ‘that Monsieur de Brescou is of the ancient regime, from before the revolution. His is a patrician family, even though he himself bears no title. It’s essential to understand that for him personal and family honour is of supreme importance.’
‘Yes,’ I said, ‘I understand that.’
‘Kit’s own family,’ the princess said mildly, ‘stretches back through centuries of tradition.’
Gerald Greening looked slightly startled, and I thought in amusement that the Fielding tradition of pride and hate wasn’t exactly what he had in mind. He adjusted my status in his eyes to include ancestors, however, and went on with the story.
‘In the mid-nineteenth century,’ he said, ‘Monsieur de Brescou’s great grandfather was offered an opportunity to contribute to the building of bridges and canals and, in consequence, without quite meaning to, he founded one of France’s great construction companies. He never worked in it himself – he was a landowner – but the business prospered hugely and with unusual resilience changed to fit the times. At the beginning of the twentieth century, Monsieur de Brescou’s grandfather agreed to merge the family business with another construction company whose chief interest was roads, not canals. The great canal building era was ending, and cars, just appearing, needed better roads. Monsieur de Brescou’s grandfather retained fifty per cent of the new company, an arrangement which gave neither partner outright control.’
Gerald Greening’s eyes gleamed with disapproval as he paced slowly round behind the chairs.
‘Monsieur de Brescou’s father was killed in the Second World War without inheriting the business. Monsieur de Brescou himself inherited it when his grandfather died, aged ninety, after the Second World War. Are you with me so far?’
‘Yes,’ I said.
‘Good.’ He went on pacing, setting out his story lucidly, almost as if laying facts before a fairly dim jury. ‘The firm which had merged with that of Monsieur de Brescou’s grandfather was headed by a man called Henri Nanterre, who was also of aristocratic descent and high morals. The two men liked and trusted each other and agreed that their joint business should adhere to the highest principles. They installed managers of good reputation and sat back and … er … increased their fortunes.’
‘Mm,’ I said.
‘Before and during the Second World War, the firm went into recession, shrinking to a quarter of its former size, but it was still healthy enough to revive well in the nineteen fifties, despite the deaths of the original managing friends. Monsieur de Brescou remained on good terms with the inheriting Nanterre – Louis – and the tradition of employing top managers went on. And that brings us to three years ago, when Louis Nanterre died and left his fifty per cent share to his only son, Henri. Henri Nanterre is thirty-seven, an able entrepreneur, full of vigour, good at business. The profits of the company are annually increasing.’
Both the princess and her husband listened gloomily to this long recital, which seemed to me to have been a success story of major proportions.
‘Henri Nanterre,’ Greening explained carefully, ‘is of the modern world. That is to say, the old values mean little to him.’
‘He has no honour,’ Roland de Brescou said with distaste. ‘He disgraces his name.’
I said slowly, to the princess, ‘What does he look like?’
‘You saw him,’ she said simply. ‘In my box.’
THREE
There was a brief silence, then the princess said to Greening, ‘Please go on, Gerald. Tell Kit what that … that wretched man wants, and what he said to me.’
Roland de Brescou interrupted before he could speak and, turning his wheelchair to face me directly, said, ‘I will tell him. I will tell you. I didn’t think you should be involved in our affairs, but my wife wishes it …’ He made a faint gesture with a thin hand, acknowledging his affection for her. ‘… and as you are to marry Danielle, well then, perhaps … But I will tell you myself.’ His voice was slow but stronger, the shock receding in him too, with perhaps anger taking its place.
‘As you know,’ he said, ‘I have been for a long time …’ He gestured down his body, not spelling it out. ‘We have lived also a long time in London. Far away from the business, you understand?’
I nodded.
‘Louis Nanterre, he used to go there quite often to consult the managers. We would talk often on the telephone and he would tell me everything that was happening … We would decide together if it looked sensible to go in new directions. He and I, for instance, developed a factory to make things out of plastic, not metal, nor concrete. Things like heavy drain pipes which would not crack under roads, nor corrode. You understand? We developed new plastics, very tough.’
He paused, more it seemed through lack of breath than of things to say. The princess, Greening and I waited until he was ready to go on.
‘Louis,’ he said eventually, ‘used to come to London to this house twice a year, with auditors and lawyers – Gerald would be here – and we would discuss what had been done, and read the reports and suggestions from the boards of managers, and make plans.’ He sighed heavily. ‘Then Louis died, and I asked Henri to come over for the meetings, and he refused.’
‘Refused?’ I repeated.
‘Absolutely. Then suddenly I don’t know any longer what is happening, and I sent Gerald over, and wrote to the auditors …’
‘Henri had sacked the auditors,’ Gerald Greening said succinctly into the pause, ‘and engaged others of his own choice. He had sacked half the managers and was taking charge directly himself, and had branched out into directions which Monsieur de Brescou knew nothing about.’
‘It’s intolerable,’ Roland de Brescou said.
‘And today?’ I asked him tentatively. ‘What did he say at Newbury today?’
‘To go to my wife!’ He was quivering with fury. ‘To threaten her. It’s … disgraceful.’ There weren’t words, it seemed, strong enough for his feelings.
‘He told Princess Casilia,’ Gerald Greening said with precision, ‘that he needed her husband’s signature on a document, that Monsieur de Brescou did not want to sign, and that she was to make sure that he did.’
‘What document?’ I asked flatly.
None of them, it seemed, was in a hurry to say, and it was Gerald Greening, finally, who shrugged heavily and said, ‘A French government form for a preliminary application for a licence to manufacture and export guns.’
‘Guns?’ I said, surprised. ‘What sort of guns?’
‘Firearms for killing people. Small arms made of plastic’
‘He told me,’ the princess said, looking hollow-eyed, ‘that it would be simple to use the strong plastics for guns. Many modern pistols and machine-guns can be made of plastic, he said. It is cheaper and lighter, he said. Production would be easy and profitable, once he had the licence. And he said he would definitely be granted a licence, he had done all the groundwork. He had had little difficulty because the de Brescou et Nanterre company is so reputable and respected, and all he needed was my husband’s agreement.’
She stopped in a distress that was echoed by her husband.
‘Guns,’ he said.
‘I will never sign. It is dishonourable, do you understand, to trade nowadays in weapons of war. It is unthinkable. In Europe these days, it is not a business of good repute. Especially guns made of plastic, which were invented so they could be carried through airports without being found. Of course, I know our plastics would be suitable, but never, never shall it happen that my name is used to sell guns that may find their way to terrorists. It is absolutely inconceivable.’
I saw indeed that it was.
‘One of our older managers telephoned me a month ago to ask if I truly meant to make guns,’ he said, outraged. ‘I had heard nothing of it. Nothing. Then Henri Nanterre sent a lawyer’s letter, formally asking my assent. I replied that I would never give it, and I expected the matter to end there. There is no question of the company manufacturing guns without my consent. But to threaten my wife!’
‘What sort of threats?’ I asked.
‘Henri Nanterre said to me,’ the princess said faintly, ‘that he was sure I would persuade my husband to sign, because I wouldn’t want any accidents to happen to anyone I liked … or employed.’
No wonder she had been devastated, I thought. Guns, threats of violence, a vista of dishonour; all a long way from her sheltered, secure and respected existence. Henri Nanterre, with his strong face and domineering voice, must have been battering at her for at least an hour before I arrived in her box.
‘What happened to your friends at Newbury?’ I asked her. ‘The ones in your box.’
‘He told them to go,’ she said tiredly. ‘He said he needed to talk urgently, and they were not to come back.’
‘And they went.’
‘Yes.’
Well… I’d gone myself.
‘I didn’t know who he was,’ the princess said. ‘I was bewildered by him. He came bursting in and turned them out, and drowned my questions and protestations. I have not …’ she shuddered, ‘I have never had to face anyone like that.’
Henri Nanterre sounded pretty much a terrorist himself, I thought. Terrorist behaviour, anyway: loud voice, hustle, threats.