‘Like the vrai Carlos,’ whispered Tristan bitterly.
Picasso’s one-eyed girl over the fireplace had the same Greek nose as Tab.
‘Tonight I find her.’ Tristan’s voice broke. ‘I love her, Rannaldini.’
‘There is only a couple of weeks left of filming. Everyone fall in love on location. Chloe and Oscar, Alpheus and Chloe, Baby and Flora, Sexton,’ Rannaldini gave a wry shrug, ‘and ’Ermione, Sylvestre et tout le monde. ’Ave you also not notice the way your niece Simone gaze at my Wolfgang?’
Tristan was too shocked to take in any of these pearls, gleaned from Rannaldini’s monitors.
‘You will soon forget her.’
‘Never.’ Tristan’s mind was reeling.
Not only was he not a Montigny, but his identification with Don Carlos, because the Inquisition had murdered his Montigny ancestor, was a sham.
‘No wonder my father — Christ, I mean Étienne — sneered at my obsession with the family. No wonder his lip curl when kind people say I inherit his talent and paint with light. Not one drop of Montigny blood — oh, Christ.’
Then another devastating hammer-blow struck him. ‘If I am not Montigny, I have no claim to any of Papa/Étienne’s money. I have handed eet over to production. I am a thief.’
His voice rose, his eyes rolled crazily. As he jumped to his feet, he caught sight of Étienne’s painting. For a second Rannaldini was alarmed he was going to tug it from the wall and smash it.
‘Calm down. No-one has discovered secret in twenty-eight years. Why should it come out now?’
‘But I will be living a hideous lie.’ Tristan turned, pleading, back to Rannaldini. ‘How can I be sure? Everyone says I am all Montigny.’
‘Adopted children pick up parents’ mannerisms.’
Tristan slumped on the sofa. ‘Why did Étienne keep me?’
‘Guilt that he’d pushed Delphine over the edge, and after all his boasting to his friends that he fathered beautiful son in his sixties he was too proud to admit you weren’t his. But you should be proud of yourself,’ continued Rannaldini warmly, ‘knowing ’ow much you’ve achieved from such unpropitious beginning. But I beg you, never have cheeldren. Have a vasectomy at once. Perhaps, one day, like Rupert, you can adopt. Maybe a geneticist would say you could produce normal children. But you must not risk it with my Tabitha. She was so devastated to lose that baby.’
Tristan gave a groan that was almost a howl. ‘“The knell of all our hopes has sounded,”’ he mumbled. ‘“The dream that has faded was so fair.”’
‘“Oh, dreadful cruel fate.”’ Continuing the quote, Rannaldini stroked Tristan’s hair.
‘Oh, Rannaldini, are you quite sure?’
‘My dear boy, if only I weren’t.’
From his desk he took a dark red Bible, and from between its gleaming gold pages drew out a yellowing letter. Everything was familiar, the beautiful black script, the thick paper with the serrated edges, the Montigny crest of the chained snake, the little drawing of the entwined lovers in the top right-hand corner, that he’d so often seen on letters sent to his brothers but never to himself. Étienne had written,
My dear Rannaldini,
Thank you for all your understanding and kindness. Without these, I doubt if I would have survived. I cannot imagine a crueller betrayal, but I must accept that Tristan is the product of this obscene incestuous union. Delphine took the easy way out, so I am forced to bring up the boy, although it will be a constant reminder of the foul nightmare of his conception. I can never bring myself to love him.
Unable to read more, Tristan thrust the letter at Rannaldini and stumbled out into the woods. Cannoning off trees like a drunkard, longing to uproot them and build his own funeral pyre like Hercules, he reached the park where he wandered, sobbing, ‘Oh, dreadful cruel fate,’ over and over again.
At dawn he chucked his signet ring into the lake. Would that it could have been himself but the water had almost dried up in the drought. Beautiful, pale, like a sadistic marquis, totally untroubled and unmarked by his night of vice, the moon on its side lay over Rannaldini’s woods.
The rising sun was already gilding the little wood that formed a halo round Magpie Cottage. His halo had gone. Tristan longed to level with Tab, but the truth was too hideous and he couldn’t bear to read the sickened distaste in her eyes, or to listen to her lame excuses as she backed off. She needed perfect children to carry on the beauty of her family. She deserved only the best.
Tab had waited up all night. When he told her he wasn’t coming back, her howled ‘Oh, no!’ were the most agonizing words he’d ever heard.
‘It’s not anything you’ve done, my darling. It’s my fault. You’re married. Try and make a go of it with Isa. I’m no good to you. One day I’ll explain.’ Then, when there was total silence, ‘Tabitha?’
‘I’ve just lost another father,’ whispered Tab, and hung up.
Lucy didn’t want people to hear her crying, so as soon as shooting had finished the night before she retreated to her caravan. James, who was upset by tears, curled himself into the tiniest russet ball on one of the window-seats, letting out occasional deep sighs to rival Rannaldini’s.
At first when Tristan hammered on her door, she thought he was drunk: his shirt and jeans were ripped, his face was covered in scratches, his eyes rolled wildly. He was shaking so violently that she wrapped him in her duvet. As he sobbed his heart out, gabbling in French, often quoting Don Carlos and occasionally laughing inanely, he was difficult to understand, but gradually she pieced together what Rannaldini had told him.
Lucy was furious.
‘The bastard.’ She handed Tristan a cup of black coffee into which she’d poured a miniature Drambuie. ‘He knows you’re bats about Tab, and Tab is bats about you.’
Oh, why was she cutting her own throat?
‘He’s jealous you saved Tab’s life and she was so frantic for you to take her home. You’re a Montigny, sure as oeufs is oeufs. I can tell by your bone structure and your mouth and the height of your eyes in your face. Why don’t you nip back to France and ask Auntie Hortense?’
‘Non, non, non.’ Tristan shook his head back and forth. ‘It’s all in the letter. I am very fashionable, incest is hot, as Sexton keeps saying.’ His wild laughter turned into sobs.
Sitting down beside him on the bench seat, Lucy gathered him up, stroking his hair, trying to still his desperate shuddering.
‘I love Tab so much, Lucy. Last night she was Holy Grail in my arms.’
‘I know, I know.’
Even a worried James leapt down, and nudged him with his long nose.
‘Dear James.’ Avoiding his sore palms, Tristan smoothed the shaggy head with the side of his hand. ‘I can’t stop thinking of that monster raping my mother. She had no-one to turn to. If only she’d had an abortion.’
‘No!’ shouted Lucy, clutching him even tighter. ‘That would have deprived the world of a fantastic director.’ She gave a sob. ‘People forget you’re only twenty-eight, and you’ve kept this bloody great show on the road. You’re exactly the same person today as you were before Rannaldini told you all that junk. It’s what you are that matters.’
‘But what can I do about the money I put into Carlos?’
‘Nothing. Your fat-cat brothers aren’t exactly skint. Carlos is going to be such a smash hit you’ll easily be able to pay them back afterwards.’