John Matthews - Ascension Day

‘Jac thought he should find his feet first,’ Langfranc cut in; the last thing Jac needed was news of problems with Durrant getting back to Beaton. ‘Get through his initial interviews with Durrant before seeing Coultaine.’

‘Well — you want to speak to Coultaine soon as you can,’ Sawyer said. ‘Except that now the hurricane season’s winding down he’s probably out on his boat fly-fishing every day. Harder to get hold of than when he was with the firm.’ Sawyer smiled meekly, but there was a faint gleam in his eye, as if he too might like to escape and fly-fish the rest of his days away. Or because he considered it pure folly, reserved only for the mad or brave, like Mike Coultaine. ‘I know that he was upset at losing the appeal. I think Durrant touched him deeper than any of us appreciated… along with a few other cases. Probably the reason that Mike retired so early. Still…’ Sawyer half-turned, distracted, as a noisy group took up seats a couple of tables away.

‘Yes… yes, it is.’ Jac exhaled heavily. ‘Haveling phoned me this morning to tell me that Marmont’s condition had worsened. The hospital give him less than twenty per cent chance of pulling through. Haveling said that the next forty-eight hours would be the most telling — but that, obviously, if Marmont died, all bets were off.’

Jac found himself on edge over the following days, fearful each time the phone rang that it would be Haveling calling to say that Marmont had died.

Late afternoon, with the help of the company’s IT man, he’d discovered more about the e-mail: signed up and sent from an internet cafe, Cybersurf on Prytania Street, and an anonymous, untraceable e-mail address: durransave4@ hotmail.com . He phoned Cybersurf — it had been paid cash and they didn’t recall who’d been on that computer then.

Just as the last people were leaving the office, Penny Vance calling out, ‘Have a nice weekend,’ Jac finally sent the reply he’d been turning over in his mind the past twenty-four hours. Equally brief, but hopefully it might draw them out and give him what he needed; if anything came back.

His phone started ringing only minutes after he got back to his apartment, his hand hovering a second before he picked up; Haveling ? But it was Jeff Coombs, his squash and tennis partner and one of the few friends he’d made in his three years in New Orleans. He begged off a squash game Jeff was trying to organize for early Saturday evening.

‘Heading out to Hammond for the weekend to see Mum and Sis.’

‘I understand. Duty calls. Maybe we’ll get in a game in the week, Wednesday or Thursday night? I’ll phone you then.’

Part of that duty now included pressure to get him married off. He tried to relax in the shower, breathing long and slow with his eyes closed as he let the water run over his body, as if at the same time it was washing away the pressures of the week and some of the sticky heat and grime still there from Libreville.

Traffic was slow heading out of the city, probably because the weekend weather promised to be fine, and everyone had the same thing in mind: escape to the beaches or bayous. His phone rang again halfway along the Lake Pontchartrain Causeway: His mother, no doubt wondering where he was. He was twenty minutes later in leaving than he’d said, and the traffic had held him up still further. He let it go into message service.

The reason for the call he was confronted with as soon as he arrived.

‘Aunt Camille has arranged dinner for us all, and you know how fastidious she is.’ His mother looked anxiously at her watch. ‘Already it looks like we’re going to be ten minutes late. She’ll give us hell.’

A twenty-minute run to the far side of Amite, they decided to all go in his car.

‘If you’d called and told me, I’d have made sure to be on time,’ Jac said as he made the turn back onto the highway.

‘She didn’t tell me until very late.’

But as he glanced across, his mother looked slightly away. Either she had been told late — probably because his aunt’s last dinner invite he’d begged off with an excuse — or his mother had decided to delay telling him, for much the same reason. Either way, his lack of enthusiasm for his aunt’s company was now out in the open. Official.

Aunt Camille’s house was a sprawling Southern mansion complete with Doric columns on its front facade, straight out of Gone With the Wind . A servant with white tails and gloves greeted them and served them dinner. Perpetuation of the plantation-era image, except that he was white. Hired from an Atlanta-based agency that specialised in English servants, because she’d heard that they were the best.

That must have caused her weeks of mental anguish, thought Jac: choosing between what was considered traditionally ‘correct’ and what was best.

To her friends and those wishing to be kind to her, Camille was a colourful eccentric, a character. To nearly everyone else, including Jac, she was an impossible snob and social aspirant.

Camille waited until the second course before broaching the subject. Everything with a purpose, but also very much in order. Arranged liaisons with the Blanquette de Veau.

‘I suppose Catherine has talked to you about Jennifer, the Bromwell’s daughter?’

‘Yes… yes.’ He caught his mother’s eye fleetingly before, slightly flushed, she brought her concentration back to her plate. ‘She mentioned that she was very nice.’

‘Yes… nice .’ Camille aired the word as if it had scant relevance in her world. ‘She also happens to be the daughter of one of the richest men in the state, Tobias Bromwell. And I have to tell you, he was more than a little intrigued when I shared with him the noble line running through our family.’

‘Ooooh… right.’ As Jac let out the words with a tired exhalation, his eyes drifted to the coat of arms on the far wall. Soon after arriving in America, Camille had traced her family history back, she claimed, all the way to Louis XV. In fact, it had only been a distant cousin of Louis XV, a grand duke with an estate in Bourges. But she’d used that relentlessly as her ticket to every society gathering she could, as well as to attract her husband, one of Louisiana’s leading property realtors, dead these past eight years. When she’d previously pressed home the importance of their royal lineage, they’d argued, Jac pointing out that the relevance of royalty to most French people, including himself, had probably been best demonstrated by what they did to Marie Antoinette. Camille, though, was hopelessly blinkered and, having gone that route herself, she no doubt saw it as the way forward for everyone else: the use of their royal lineage, however tenuous, to snag a wealthy partner; money meets respectability. But as he went to answer, he caught his mother looking across anxiously, hoping that he wouldn’t make a scene. ‘Yes… I can see how that might intrigue him.’

The sarcasm was lost on Camille. Her knife and fork hovered only a second above her plate before she continued. ‘Of course, Jac. This isn’t France, you know, where there’s fallen royalty in practically every other hamlet. Here in America, such things are a rarity. You’ve got to make best use of it where you can.’

‘Yes, I appreciate that better now.’ Again, it went at a mile above Aunt Camille’s head, or didn’t penetrate her rhino skin. But as Jac pushed a tight smile, he caught his mother suppressing a smirk at the corner of her mouth. He’d handled it the best way.

‘So… good.’ Camille placed her cutlery in line on her plate as she finished. ‘I can take it then that you’re keen to see Jennifer for a date?’

‘Well, I don’t know, I…’ He was about to comment that he didn’t want to rush into it, but caught again his mother’s anxious look.