by James Philip
Junior had pulled up a chair behind his brother and his sister-in-law and done his best to be invisible as every eye in the room settled on him.
Gretchen sat up straight and glared defiance.
“I married my best friend’s brother,” she announced, her eyes blazing for a moment. “I need Junior here today.”
This disconcerted Junior more than a little, although strangely, not his younger brother and it was probably this which stopped further comment and discouraged further overtly transparently suspicious looks.
Gretchen’s mother, Harriet, a woman with coldly calculating gunfighter’s eyes, had frowned.
“Always the drama queen,” she sighed.
Nobody could decide whether this was meant disparagingly, or as an oblique compliment.
Gretchen scowled at her mother; when, infrequently – she had not deigned to attend her wedding to Dan - they met she always did. Scowl, that was.
Although she had no memory of it, Gretchen had always assumed the milk from that woman’s teat must have been very, very bitter!
Junior meanwhile, winced.
Gretchen had made no secret that she was quite happy to remain totally estranged from her mother. In fact, she tended to fondly refer to Junior’s Ma as ‘mother’ or ‘mom’, and never actually mention her own ‘Ma’.
‘I never met Tabatha, obviously; but I’m sure that with Jo as her Ma she was a really nice person. Heck, if I’d been your sister, I’d have been a nicer person, too!’
Junior had told her she was a ‘good person’ but she had shrugged that off. He only saw her when she was on her best behaviour and besides, Dan was nice enough for both of them in their marriage!
Gretchen had briefed Junior about her family; he was a career naval officer; and he was used to being filled in on all the relevant intelligence.
Now, he cautiously scanned the faces around the table.
Emily, the bereaved wife was an October War widow, the daughter of a former Sallis and Betancourt associate, whose, seemingly philandering husband, had been with his latest conquest in Quincy on the night of the war. The old man had married her a few months later, adopting her two boys, nine-year-old Wayne and seven-year-old Michael. Marrying a woman half his age had scandalised the other wives.
Gretchen thought that was why he had done it.
Nobody, it seemed, had mourned Magdalena’s death, her body ‘pre-pickled’ aged sixty-seven, in 1965. According to Gretchen neither Jay, Roger, or Stanford had inherited their mother’s innate meanness but they were, to degrees, unimaginatively ambitious, greedy and needy, with the unreasoning sense of ‘entitlement’ that went with the syndrome.
‘Stan practically lives in the Pentagon,’ Gretchen had remarked dismissively. ‘Political soldier. No need to be loyal to anybody because he has daddy’s money.’
Apparently, he was married to the daughter of an old Virginian family and had very ‘South of the Mason-Dixon Line political views’ about ‘keeping people in their rightful place’ which were broadly consistent with those of Governor George Wallace.
Gretchen and Rachel had never been that close. There was the near five-year difference in their ages but it was more than that. Thirty-three now, Rachel was an East Coast socialite married to a handsome, air-headed man who had never been able to keep her in the style to which she felt she deserved. She was childless – apparently by design - had always treated Gretchen as a naughty little girl and had recently returned from a two-month ‘holiday’ at a sanitorium in upper New York State where their father had sent her, for the second or third time in as many years, to dry out. She was willowy, raven-haired like their mother had been in her prime before having babies had ruined her figure, and being married to Gretchen’s father had, allegedly, driven her to the bottle.
Like mother, like daughter which was probably why Gretchen had been assiduously teetotal all her adult life.
Gretchen was very protective of her younger siblings, particularly May Rose. May Rose was a younger incarnation of her big sister, eighteen now yet still a little angular, gawky and uncomfortable in her skin. She was clever, inquisitive, and if it was possible, unaware it seemed of the wealth and influence of the dynasty into which she had been born. Gretchen remained astonished that her mother had not succeeded – as she must have tried – in poisoning May Rose against the rest of them.
Gretchen had had very little to do with Henry and Amelia, aged respectively thirteen and eleven, Celeste’s children. Celeste and Harriet were only ever on hissing and spitting terms; the former having always tenaciously guarded her offspring, her meal tickets for life, jealously from the rest of the family, probably explaining their absence today.
‘All families are unhappy in their own way,’ Gretchen had quipped to Junior.
Bill Sallis had extracted two sheets of paper from a Manila folder, unhurriedly untying the ribbon holding it shut.
He looked around the table.
“Usually, the way this works is that I read the last will and testament, get up and leave you to fight it out behind locked doors. My old friend Claude wanted to avoid that. So, if anybody challenges the Will they will be automatically excluded from its provisions and their share of the estate will be immediately redistributed among the other beneficiaries.”
This prompted a dead silence.
“If,” Bill Sallis went on, gruffly, “anybody has got a problem with that I suggest you leave the room now.”
Nobody got up.
Nobody moved a muscle.
“Claude’s last will and testament runs to about thirty thousand words; I do not plan to read it all out this afternoon. Copies will be made available to your attorney’s tomorrow morning. What I propose to do is communicate the headlines. Which, I am sure you will all be pleased to hear, are short and sweet.”
Most of the people around the table were having to remind themselves to breathe; it was a miracle nobody had turned blue yet.
Bill Sallis had perched reading glasses on the end of his nose.
“My estate will honour all existing contracts and legally notarised fiscal agreements and understandings without exception.”
The veteran attorney looked up.
“All these arrangements henceforth to be executed by Sallis,” he nodded at Gretchen, “Betancourt, and Brenckmann,” another nod to his old friend, Walter, “attorneys at law…”
“What about all the other arrangements?” Celeste demanded; her voice tremulous.
“There are no other arrangements, Celeste,” Bill Sallis said tersely.
Gretchen’s knew her brow was knitting with frustration.
The old man attempted to clarify at least one issue.
“It was Claude’s wish that Gretchen become a full partner in our firm upon attaining the age of thirty-five years, or upon his death, whichever came first.”
But that was not what was bugging Gretchen.
This, the man she had called ‘Uncle Bill’ as a girl and still thought of as her favourite uncle, not her boss at ‘the firm’ understood. He grimaced apologetically.
“Those legal obligations apart, Claude bequeathed one-half of his remaining estate to a trust in the name of a single beneficiary; and the other one-half to the Betancourt Foundation.”
At the far end of the table Jay Betancourt vented a huge sigh of existential relief and grinned what looked suspiciously like gloating triumph towards his frowning siblings.
Traditionally, the Betancourts had always passed on everything to the first son. That was what the family had done back in France, and ever since its scion, who had fled the European revolutions of the mid-nineteenth century, the head of the family had carried on doing in the New World. It was a little irritating that he was only going to get half the cake but then, the old man had always been fixated on philanthropic good works; and anyway, as head of the family, he was going to be President of the Trustees of the Foundation so, it was not as if he had lost control of that other half of the treasure!
Bill Sallis looked at the younger man over the rim of his spectacles. He had never been more inscrutable and yet, afterwards, people talked about how disappointed and…mildly amused, he had seemed as he had viewed his old friend’s eldest son gearing himself up for his victory lap.
“Consequent upon this,” he went on, giving a barely perceptible shake of the head, “all persons currently living in grace and favour accommodation, or benefitting from familial charity, will be required to vacate the same properties, cease to use the said checking accounts and credit lines, and in lieu of the payment of appropriate rents, and the settlement of outstanding debts, to support themselves henceforth.”
Dan patted his wife’s hand beneath the table and the couple gave each other baffled looks; around them jaws were dropping with such violence that it was astonishing they did not bounce off the table top.
“This is a joke, Uncle Bill, right?” This from Rachel, who was suddenly looking at her younger sister. “Or is this something you and the old man cooked up with…her?
Practically all eyes were turned onto Gretchen.
“This,” Bill Sallis observed gently, “is where I get to remind everybody that if they elect to challenge the will in any way, existing remunerations, allowances included, will be terminated.”
Jay Betancourt chuckled and shook his head.
Rachel swung around and glared daggers at him.
“Careful, sis,” the putative newly crowned head of the family cautioned complacently. “Loose talk costs money, now.”
Bill Sallis coughed, clearing his throat to get everybody’s undivided attention.
“Hereby appointed to the Board of Trustees of the Claude Betancourt Memorial Trust, and to the Board of Trustees of the Betancourt Foundation Trust, are the following: Joanne Abigail Brenckmann, Captain Walter Brenckmann, USN (Reserve), Daniel Brenckmann, attorney at law, and Lieutenant Commander Walter Brenckmann junior, USN.”
“Uncle Bill?” Jay Betancourt gasped, momentarily too stunned to speak. “What’s going on? The old man can’t appoint trustees from beyond the grave!”
“No,” Bill Sallis agreed. “But knowing his wishes he naturally trusted that the person he named as the single beneficiary of the Claude Betancourt Memorial Trust, and his Foundation would respect his recommendations. I strongly suspect that knowing this, and the character of the single beneficiary specified in his last will and testament, he was confident that his wishes, and his ambitions for the two trusts would, in time, be fully realised. However, he was wise enough to recognise that that person would need all the help and support that she could get.”
Gretchen was blinking.
She tried to focus on Bill Sallis.
“I don’t…” She began, then decided that whatever she said was going to be wrong, so she shut her mouth.
The old man was talking.
She heard what he said; it was just that none of it made any sense. It was as if he was speaking a foreign language and her brain could not translate.
Bill Sallis was reading, his voice a steady, almost stentorian monotone that nailed every word, hammer-like, as he uttered it. Notwithstanding, deep down, underlying his impeccable patina of impartiality, everybody knew he was laughing.
“It is my irrevocable decision that my daughter, Gretchen Louisa Betancourt, is the sole beneficiary of the Claude Betancourt Memorial Trust, and in my stead, is hereby installed as the next life President of the Betancourt Foundation…”
Chapter 48
Friday 12th July, 1968
Verdala Palace, Malta
The Governor of Malta, sixty-one-year-old Field Marshal Lord Hull imagined he understood what Humpty Dumpty must have felt like just before his fall, as he and his wife, Lady Antoinette, greeted the leaders of the two delegations.
It had been in the balance whether President Nixon and Chairman Shelepin would actually hang around long enough, for them to append their personal imprimaturs on the colloquially described ‘Valletta Accords’, right up to about an hour ago. Presently, everybody was tiptoeing on diplomatic thin ice, terrified that a single slip or misstep might result in the whole, convoluted process breaking into so many pieces that nobody would know where to even start to put it all back together again.
Never had the Governor of Malta, an old soldier who had been the last pre-October 1962 British Chief of the Imperial General Staff, been happier to just host the protagonists, free of responsibility for the success or failure of what he personally, regarded as a somewhat dubious enterprise. Given recent events in the South China Sea and the Tsushima Strait, he was probably not alone in wondering if the ‘accords’ – from what he could gather they certainly did not amount to a meaningful treaty at this time – had an awful lot of relevance to the world as it was, rather than as to how the parties wished it to be. That said, Her Majesty’s Government had tacitly accepted the concept of the Continental Central European De-Militarised Zone (CCEDMZ) and if push came to shove, the movers and shakers in Oxford were far more preoccupied with peace in Europe than they were about a war in the Far East which thankfully, British and Commonwealth arms had watched from the safety of the side-lines.
Neither of the leaders had travelled to the Mediterranean with their spouses and away from the conference room, there had been little by way of man-to-man confidence-building initiatives at the highest level. It was almost as if neither side could be bothered to hide the fact that they were both holding their noses, and doing only what they believed had to be done. Reconciliation would have to wait, probably for a long, long time.
The Foreign and Commonwealth Office was represented at the Verdala Palace, the Governor’s official residence on the western side of the main island by Anthony Kershaw, Lord Harding-Grayson’s increasingly long-suffering deputy who was, to put it mildly, ‘uncomfortable’ with the wholesale re-drawing of the map of Europe by two ‘foreign’ powers who had no business doing such a thing!
Now that Kershaw had heard all the arguments, and had an opportunity to peruse the final text of the Valletta Accords, he was even less enthusiastic about what both the parties agreed to be the basis for the post-war settlement. The Prime Minister was going to be incandescent when she discovered that the capital of a British colony had given its name to such a dog’s breakfast of a treaty. But then Europeans, not Americans were going to have to live with the consequences of it; so, from Washington’s perspective, if peace could be bought cheaply at the expense of the dead of its ill-starred war with the USSR, that was fine and dandy!
He believed this and derided the motives of the two countries he held almost wholly responsible for the madness of October 1962 not because he was under any illusion the British way, the Pax Britannica had actually been the result of high-minded, moral policy but because it appalled him that nobody seemed to have learned any of the lessons of history.
It seemed to him that the CCEDMZ – God in Heaven, that was a ridiculous acronym; could they not have thought up something less starkly functional? – was creating a future vacuum of power in Central Europe that sooner or later, somebody was going to covet and at some stage fight over and because it was where it was, that could only draw in the ‘great powers’.
It was a recipe for future war; perhaps, not for the current generation but for the children and grandchildren of those living today, it was bound to become a ticking time bomb nobody could defuse short of conflict.
Anthony Kershaw had already heard a number of disquieting things about the way the negotiations had been conducted. It shocked him that President Nixon had not consulted Margaret Thatcher, or her Government, other than to report on the progress of talks in cursory, somewhat vague terms earlier in the year after his visit to Sverdlovsk. Since then, the State Department had been diplomatically uncommunicative. Presumably, because officials were ashamed by the way the few surviving Germans, Austrians, Poles and others in the now to be forfeit lands, were being summarily disenfranchised, their lands reduced to the status of bargaining chips on the superpower
chess board.
And the Americans have the nerve to call us Imperialists!
The Pax Americana was here to stay, it seemed.
As Tony Kershaw understood it, the Soviets had originally wanted the Rhine to be the western extremity of the CCEDMZ and the Alps its southern demarcation line; which had sparked an unseemly discussion about which Alps; the Swiss or the Bernese, etcetera, before possible alternative lines of latitude were cavalierly discussed: the 43rd, or perhaps the 44th, 45th, the 46th or the 47th. Of course, the Sverdlovsk Kremlin’s men had always understood that the Rhine was never going to be the Western boundary of the ‘great DMZ’ any more than the Moskva River was going to be its eastern counterpart.
Contrary to their coolness in Malta, which many people suspected had a lot to do with so many American service men having being recently killed and wounded by Soviet-supplied weaponry by the Chinese in the Far East, much to the President’s embarrassment at home, the background chatter said that Richard Nixon and Alexander Shelepin – Tricky Dicky and the dark prince of the USSR – had apparently, got on famously in Sverdlovsk that spring.
This lent authority to the accounts that the boundaries of the DMZ had been settled over freely-flowing Vodka. That at least explained why the US President had not demanded that a large slice of the Ukraine and as much of White Russia as possible should be included in the territory to be de-militarised. In any event, the two leaders, presumably poring over schoolboy atlases, had agreed in principle that the River Oder and the Eastern Niesse to west, and the Vistula to the east should be significant riverine boundaries. Moreover, in the north the Baltic coast should be the upper limit of the zone, and after apparently, a relatively short knockabout conversation, Latitude 46 degrees north was proposed as the southern ‘end’ of the zone.