He wished his mother, who had been only two years younger than Tab when she died, was alive to celebrate with him. Idly he switched on his machine.
‘Dearest boy.’ It was Rannaldini at his most silken. ‘However late you get in, pop down to my watch-tower. We must talk.’
Bloody hell, thought Tristan, as he pulled on a pair of jeans. He hoped Rannaldini wasn’t going to be insanely jealous.
33
The moon, pale and sinister as Rannaldini, kept vanishing behind fluffy sable cloud. A witch’s trail soared straight through Hercules. A chill breeze ruffled the leaves as Tristan walked through Hangman’s Wood. The stench of decaying wild garlic was stronger than ever.
Rannaldini, waiting in the watch-tower doorway, was wearing a black crew-necked sweater that gave him a vaguely ecclesiastical air.
‘How’s Tab?’ he asked, as he led the way to the glowing red sitting room on the first floor.
‘Very shaken.’
As Tristan collapsed on a pale-grey sofa, his tummy rumbled. The last thing he’d eaten had been one of Rozzy’s croissants at breakfast, and he didn’t remember finishing it. The vast Armagnac Rannaldini handed him would go straight to his head. ‘She’s OK,’ he went on, ‘but we must tell the police. It can’t have been an accident, and about Flora’s fox being cut up. Tab was so brave,’ then, unable to help himself, ‘and so adorable.’
Rannaldini had gone very quiet, frowning as he paced up and down, trampling on the red roses that patterned the faded Aubusson carpet.
‘I have been sad recently that you and I have so often come to blows,’ he said gently, ‘but we only fight because we so passionately want Carlos to work.’
‘Of course.’
‘But I never stop loving you, Tristan. You are still my little godson.’
Rannaldini’s voice was so hypnotic. Perhaps he should do those introductions after all, thought Tristan.
‘And I love you,’ he stammered. He felt very happy that everything was falling so wonderfully into place. But Rannaldini went on pacing.
‘There is…’ he began. ‘No, I cannot.’
‘Go on,’ urged Tristan.
‘There is secret I prayed I would never have to tell you, but as very close friend of your father…’ He paused.
Tristan went cold.
‘Have you never wondered why Étienne neglected you and never loved you?’
Tristan winced.
‘All the time,’ he said wearily. ‘Laurent died, I suppose. I lived. Laurent was my father’s favourite son, then Maman committed suicide. Maybe it deranged him. On his deathbed, he was rambling on that my father was my grandfather. I didn’t know what he was talking about.’ He shuddered, remembering Étienne in the huge bed, with the determinedly cheerful nurse siphoning off the fountains of blood.
The moon, like a Beardsley rakehell, was leering in through a high window covered in a black lacing of clematis, whose quivering shadows in turn cast an illusion of mobility on Rannaldini’s cold, impassive face.
‘Your mother was most stunning woman I ever meet. Turn round. I don’t think you ever see painting your father did.’
Tristan leapt to his feet. Behind him on the scarlet wall was a small oil of a young girl, her naked body as white as Tab’s but far more softly curved and passive. She leant against a dark green sofa. The young Rannaldini, black-haired, black eyes glittering with lust and power, was stripped to the waist in tight breeches and boots. He had a hunting whip in his hand, and had coiled the long lash round the girl’s neck. There was an expression of terror and wild excitement on her face.
‘Maman,’ stammered Tristan, finding himself blushing in horror and sick, shaming excitement at what was clearly one of his father’s masterpieces.
‘It is called The Snake Charmer,’ purred Rannaldini. ‘The texture of her body is quite extraordinary. I shall miss her dreadfully.’
‘What d’you mean?’
‘The Tate and the Louvre are planning a huge Montigny retrospective. Your beautiful mother will tour the world and take her place in the pantheon of women who inspired great artists.’
‘Non!’ cried Tristan, in outrage. ‘For God’s sake, Rannaldini.’
He wanted to throw his shirt round Delphine’s naked body. Dragging his eyes away, he collapsed, trembling, on the sofa, fumbling for a cigarette.
‘She certainly inspired your father,’ began Rannaldinisoftly. ‘What Étienne did not know was that her father, Maxim, your grandfather, was a thug, brutish, utterly unstable, his sole passion his daughter. He was obsessed with her. Delphine only went out with me,’ idly, Rannaldini flicked a speck of dust from a bronze of Wagner, ‘to escape him. For the same reason, she marry your father. Maxim, her father, was so crazed with jealousy he wait till she and Étienne return from honeymoon — which had not been a success, the marriage hardly consummated. Étienne fly to Australia for two months to fulfil commission.’
Rannaldini paused, his face full of compassion.
‘My conscience torture me. Should I tell you this?’
‘Go on, for fuck’s sake.’
‘A week later, Maxim roll up at empty house and rape her.’
Breath swamped Tristan’s chest, his heart had no room to beat.
‘By horrible luck, she became pregnant.’ Rannaldini admired his expression of genuine concern in a big gilt mirror. ‘But she was too terrified to tell Étienne so she passed the baby off as his.’
‘I don’t believe you,’ croaked Tristan, his legs shaking with a violent life of their own. ‘Why didn’t she have an abortion?’
‘She was so young, a strict Catholic, and terrified of it coming out that her father was clinically insane, that people might commit her because she was insane too, that Étienne might kick her out, back to Maxim.’
‘You could have helped her,’ spat Tristan.
‘My poor boy, I was in Berlin. I knew nothing. After you were born, Delphine sink into depression and reject you. Your father was too devastated by Laurent’s death to give her any support. Then he do sums. You are large, healthy boy, not premature. He furiously cross-question your mother. She collapse from guilt and weakness and tell him everything, then take her own life. That was the dreadful irony.’ Rannaldini’s eyes were velvety dark as pansies with sympathy. ‘That Laurent, the flower of the Montignys, was dead… and you…’
‘A little incestuously conceived bastard,’ said Tristan, with a dry laugh horribly reminiscent of Étienne’s death rattle, ‘was alive.’
‘I am so very sorry,’ murmured Rannaldini. ‘Étienne was never able to speak of Laurent again.’
‘What happened to my…’ Tristan couldn’t say father ‘… to Maxim?’
‘He go off his head with grief when Delphine die. He was committed and die shortly of ’eartbreak in the asylum.’
‘It’s not possible.’ Tristan winced as he put his head in his sore hands, but it was nothing to the pain in his heart. ‘My grandfather was my father. Oh, Christ.’
Rannaldini put a caressing hand on the boy’s rigid, shuddering shoulders. ‘My poor child. Knowing all this, I deliberately take interest in you, hoping to give you back some of the love that deserted you.’
The wind had risen, frenziedly shaking the trees. Rose stems scraped at the windows, lacerating each other with their thorns. Rannaldini was trampling over the Aubusson roses again.
‘But, when cheeps are down, Tabitha is my daughter.’ He sighed. ‘I see the longing in your eyes, but she is better off married to Isa, even if he is Rupert’s deadly enemy. She needs babies. Marcus is homosexual. There is little likelihood of you fathering healthy kids. You are three-quarters Maxim, remember.’ Rannaldini watched the boy shove his fists in his ears, trying to shut out the horrors. ‘One day, Tabitha will be reunited with Rupert. He would not be ’appy with some unstable, misshapen offspring.’