Next of Kin (28 page)

‘Yes, well he may have known in a personal sense, but in an official capacity he didn't know her.'

‘Is there a difference?'

Roderick shrugged his shoulders. ‘Well, Hailsham says there is anyway.'

‘That's just semantics,' she said. ‘So what's she like anyway? Did he say?'

‘No. Altringham pushed Monckton on it but he wasn't giving anything away.'

‘I thought that she had got rid of that husband of hers two years ago when the king asked her on that cruise around Spain and Portugal?'

‘He wasn't there then, that's true,' said Roderick. ‘But apparently he was still in the picture. He has his own woman, you see, on the side. It's all perfectly amicable they say. They're just waiting for the nod so that they can divorce.'

Jane shook her head. ‘Well that's extraordinary,' she said.

‘Americans, I suppose.'

‘Still. You have to admire the way they go about it.
They
know when to call a spade a spade while we just dance around the issue.'

‘I suppose,' said Roderick. ‘But it goes without saying that it'll never come to pass.'

‘She won't divorce him?'

‘She may do that, that's neither here nor there, but there's no possibility of a marriage. It's inconceivable. A two-time divorcée for queen? It's simply out of the question.'

‘Well yes,' said Jane. ‘Yes I can see that. But it's going to be awfully hard for him to give her up when it comes to it. They do say he's terribly fond of her.'

‘He can be as fond of her as he likes but I can't see it going any further,' said Roderick, giving a brief thought to the question of whether he would sacrifice his own career for Jane and knowing that, in a heartbeat, he would. For Gareth or Jane. But the king was different surely. He was made of sterner stuff than a humble king's counsel.

‘She needs to go back home,' said Jane determinedly.

‘Yes, but then the strangest thing happened,' said Roderick. ‘Keaton, who'd been silent throughout all of this—

‘Now hang on,' interrupted Jane. ‘Lord Keaton. I don't know him, do I?'

‘I don't know if you've met him or not. He's been around for years but has never really made it into the inner circle. Terribly bitter man, I've always thought. Belongs to a very old family of Lord Chancellors who had some sort of bitter falling out with the Hanoverians sometime in the early eighteen thirties. One of his ancestors had a dust-up with some toady of William IV's and Charles Grey got him removed from office. Anyway, the Keatons have been hoping for a chancellor in the family again ever since to avenge the family honour; I think they'd already had half a dozen until then. They seem to think they have some sort of God-given right to the office, but it's quite preposterous. He's quite friendly with the Yorks, I believe, and something of a confidant of Baldwin's too. Terribly wealthy, so why he cares about ancient history like that is beyond me. I must admit that when I entered Hailsham's office I had no idea what he was doing there. He didn't seem like he had a reason to be invited but I daresay Hailsham knew what he was doing. He has an excellent legal mind, I suppose, and is a senior KC, although I would have thought Mellows or Hagan more suited to the matter at hand. Baldwin probably insisted on it.'

‘Well go on anyway. What did he say?'

‘He leaned forwards and of course everyone stared at him because he hadn't said a word in all the time that we'd been there and he said, “Just for argument's sake, gentlemen, should the king decide to marry this woman, what would happen then?”'

‘Well it's a reasonable question, I suppose.'

‘I hardly think so. Hailsham quickly told him there was no point wasting time on unrealistic scenarios. The question we were there to discuss was how much longer we could put off telling the king that he had to set the woman aside and take a wife.'

‘I can't imagine he liked that much.'

‘No, he didn't. And he insisted on an answer. “Just for argument's sake,” he repeated. “What would happen then?”'

‘And what would happen then?' asked Jane out of curiosity.

‘Well none of us knew for sure,' said Roderick with a shrug. ‘It felt like we were Oliver Cromwell's cabinet after the trial of Charles I, trying to decide what to do with the poor old bugger. No one wanted to be the first one to suggest it. And finally, Monckton did.'

‘
Monckton
did?'

‘Yes, surprising isn't it? He said in a very clear voice that the point of this committee was to discuss all possible scenarios and their constitutional implications and if the king insisted on having his way then our point of view would be put to the prime minister who would in turn consult his ministers but ultimately take our advice and pass that advice on to the king. And then Hailsham said that if that ever happened they would say absolutely not, sir. And then Monckton said he wasn't sure what the king would do in a situation like that but he'd known him all his life and he wasn't a man to be trifled with.'

‘He wouldn't…?' began Jane, not knowing whether to say the words or not.

‘He might.'

‘For a woman? For an
American
woman?'

‘I'm sure that's all a long way off,' said Roderick quickly. ‘Hardly worth discussing now anyway. In the end Hailsham thanked us all for coming and said he'd get back to us if we needed to talk again. Monckton made a break for it, Altringham wasn't to be seen for dust, and I ended up drifting back here with Keaton in tow. And just as we left each other and shook hands he said the most extraordinary thing.'

‘Yes?'

‘He looked me directly in the eye and said, “He's a fine fellow, you know. A damned fine fellow.” And I said, “The king? I'm sure he is. We've only spoken once, at a garden party.”'

‘Which we have to make sure we get tickets to next year,' interrupted Jane.

‘“The king, certainly,” said Keaton, “but I was talking about the Duke of York. He's a damned fine fellow.” And of course I didn't know what to say to that and just stood there with my mouth open and then the impudent scoundrel gave me a wink and walked away. What do you make of that?'

Jane frowned. It all sounded very salacious and grist to a gossip monger's mill but that last part felt faintly disturbing.

‘I'm not sure,' she said. ‘But you'll have to keep your ear to the ground.'

‘At first I didn't want any part of the thing,' said Bentley. ‘But now I'm not so sure. Now I think I had better do exactly that. I mean when it comes down to it, if he wants to marry the woman, who does it hurt exactly?'

5

THE PROCESS OF CONSTRUCTING
a picture frame is not a difficult one but it takes a certain amount of skill and expertise to get it right; it also takes patience. First, having checked the dimensions of the picture to be encased within, the correct amount of wood to surround it has to be measured out and divided into four pieces, each of which should equal the length of the side plus twice the width of the wood, the extra being in place for the mitred corners. The end of each piece needs to be cut to a forty-five-degree angle and then all four may be laid out with wood glue and corner clamps attached to join the corner sections of the frame. Turning the frame over, two nails should be applied along each glued corner seam with a hammer, with one nail pointed towards the inside of the frame and one nail aimed towards the outside. The midpoint of the nail rests on the seam and the open portion points towards the inside edge. At this point the clamps may be removed and the frame should be left to dry overnight. Varnishing may be completed the following day.

Owen Montignac and Gareth Bentley were novices at the art of frame-making but, working together and with the aid of a good manual, they succeeded in constructing three by the end of the first day. They would have managed more were it not for the fact that their first two efforts fell apart quickly and when Gareth was hammering the nails in on a third, he placed one too close to the centre of the wood and it split. This was work that Montignac normally contracted out to a local firm when it came to paintings at the Threadbare Gallery but this was a specialist operation and could not involve any outsiders.

Gareth arrived in the early evening and joined Montignac upstairs in one of the small storerooms where they had laid out their materials; he had already told his assistant, Jason, that he was not to be disturbed and that he should lock up as usual and leave at the normal time.

‘You want me to let you know when I'm off then?' asked Jason, poking his head around the door to see what was going on without him, unhappy by the presence of the new colleague in the storeroom who might be after his job; his nose was already out of joint over Gareth's apparent closeness to his employer.

‘No, that's all right, Jason. Just go at six and I'll see you in the morning.'

‘But what happens if—'

Montignac closed the door in the assistant's face and the boy went back downstairs to the gallery, distinctly unhappy.

‘Do you really think this is going to work?' asked Gareth as they came to the end of their third successful frame for the evening.

‘Of course it will,' said Montignac, who would suffer no doubters on the subject.

‘They won't check the boxes before they're shipped again?'

Montignac shook his head. ‘You have no idea how painful the process of shipping paintings is,' he said. ‘They have to be carefully swaddled individually in tight wrapping, which is all taped up, and then inserted into the wooden casings which are stapled shut. It takes an age to do. Trust me, once they've completed it no one will be opening them again until they reach Scotland.'

The first stop of the Cézanne paintings was the Royal Museum in Edinburgh, from where they were to make bi-weekly trips down the country from Edinburgh to Newcastle, Leeds, Liverpool, Birmingham and Cardiff before coming to a final rest for a month at the Tate Gallery in London. There were over eighty already on their way to Scotland with the last dozen, the ones being restored at the Clarion, set to join them shortly.

‘And by then,' said Montignac, ‘they will be gone forever.'

Gareth nodded; the plan seemed like a sensible one and he was enjoying the excitement of being involved in something illicit. Enjoying even more the promise of the thousand pounds which Montignac had promised him if everything went off without a hitch, not knowing that Montignac himself had negotiated a fee of fifteen times that amount for himself. He checked his watch; it was six fifteen. All going well they should finish half the frames that evening and the other half by the end of the following one, which would mean they could undertake the operation at the only possible moment, on the evening of the last day.

He stood up and stretched out—his back felt sore from being crouched over for so long—and he looked at the just completed frame, which was designed to house a painting of ninety-eight inches by eighty-two, the exact dimensions of Cézanne's
Les Grandes Baigneuses
. He quite enjoyed the work and began to wonder whether he'd missed his calling as a carpenter but thought better of it immediately, knowing what his father would say if he suggested such a thing.

‘I'm just running to the bathroom,' he told Montignac as he began measuring out the wood for the fourth frame. ‘And then I'm going to make a cup of tea. Would you like one?'

Montignac nodded and pulled out his measuring tape as Gareth left the room. He was deeply immersed in his work and didn't hear the sound of Jason Parsons leaving the gallery a few minutes later, or the conversation he had with the young woman outside, who he allowed to enter before he left, locking the door behind him. And he didn't hear her footsteps as she climbed to the mezzanine level and made her way up the side stairs to the small room where he was working. Given another moment he may well have recognized the scent of her familiar perfume as she stood in the doorway behind him but before that could happen he was startled by her voice and jumped, dropping the tape and wood on the floor in surprise.

‘Surely the canvases should have already been painted before they're framed?' she asked, standing there and looking half in amusement and half in confusion at the three large frames standing by the door, their entirely white canvases standing out in contrast to their elaborate frames. ‘Haven't you rather put the cart before the horse?'

‘Stella,' he said, standing up and feeling his face begin to redden a little, as if he had been discovered while committing an illicit act. ‘I didn't notice you there. How did you get in?'

‘Your assistant let me in as he was leaving,' she said, looking past him as he tried to block her view. ‘He knew I was your cousin and—'

‘Did he indeed?' said Montignac, making a mental note to tell Jason exactly what he thought of him the next day.

‘Well it's not a problem, is it?' she asked. ‘You're still here after all.'

‘Indeed I am,' he said, taking her by the arm and leading her out. ‘Come on, let's go downstairs.'

‘Why? What's wrong with talking here?'

‘Staff only,' he said with what he hoped was a charming smile but only made her raise her eyebrows in surprise.

‘Owen, it's only me for heaven's sake and there's no one else here.'

‘Still, I'd prefer it,' he said, taking her by the arm and leading her towards the stairs. ‘Come on, let's go.'

‘All right, all right,' she said irritably. ‘You don't have to drag me.' She turned around just as they went down the stairs and for the briefest of moments caught a glimpse of another young man going back into the storeroom carrying what looked like two cups of tea. ‘Was that someone else?' she asked, but he had already disappeared inside. ‘Is there someone else up there?'