“I have no interest in that place,” Ezra said. He glanced over his shoulder as they came up to a blind bend, hugging the curve of the road. “I only came back to see my mother buried. I am telling you this, Harriet, so that you understand there’s no hard feelings on my part about my mother’s will. Understand? My only wish in all this is to leave this place now and for good. You can do what you like with it, as far as I’m concerned. Sell it. Tear it down. I really don’t care.”
“I understand,” Hal said quietly. There was a silence in the car, while she searched for something to say, something to forestall the questions that would come if she let the silence stretch out too long. Control the conversation, she heard her mother’s voice in her ear. Make sure you are in the driving seat, not the client. She felt a sudden overwhelming rush of longing to know about her mother’s past, about her connection to this place. What had it been like, coming here as an orphan cousin? Had her mother felt the same oppression that Ezra had described, that Hal herself had felt? How long had she stayed? A week? A month? A year?
If only she could ask Ezra. He must have known her. The photograph, warm in Hal’s back pocket, was evidence of that—evidence that they had met, spoken.
“Your—your car,” Hal said at last, struggling for a remark. “It’s a left-hand drive, I’ve just realized. Do you live abroad?”
“I do,” Ezra said. For a minute he seemed disinclined to say more, but then he added, “I live in the south of France, near Nice. I own a small photographic gallery down there.”
“How lovely,” Hal said, and the envy in her voice was no fabrication. “I went to Nice once, on a school trip. It was beautiful.”
“It’s a nice place, yes,” Ezra said shortly.
“Have you lived there long?” Hal asked.
“Twenty years or so,” Ezra said. Hal did the maths in her head as he stepped on the accelerator to pass a parked car. He could not be more than forty, which meant he must have left England almost as soon as he left school. London had not been far enough for him.
“You live in Brighton, don’t you?” he asked, glancing across at her. Hal nodded.
“Yes. It’s nice too, the beach isn’t as spectacular as Nice, but . . . I don’t know. I can’t imagine living far from the sea.”
“Me either.”
They continued in silence for a while. It was only when they reached the outskirts of Penzance that something occurred to Hal and she broke the quiet in the car.
“Un—” The phrase felt strange and false on her tongue, but she forced it out. “Uncle Ezra, do you—do you speak French?”
He glanced across from the road, his expression a little quizzical, with an element of some skepticism Hal couldn’t quite pin down.
“I do. Why do you ask?”
“I wondered . . . I heard a phrase . . . après moi, le déluge. What does it mean? It’s something about a flood, isn’t it?”
“Literally, yes.” Ezra shot her a look, and then indicated a turn in front of a lorry. After they had completed the turn, he spoke again. “But it’s a famous saying in France. It’s usually attributed to Louis Quinze, who was the last king before the Revolution came and destroyed his son. The literal meaning is, as you say, ‘after me comes the flood’—but the real meaning is something more profound and ambiguous. . . . It means either, ‘after I go, everything will collapse into chaos, because I have been the only person holding up the dam,’ or else something even darker.”
“Even darker?” Hal said. She gave a small laugh. “That’s pretty dark already.”
“It depends how you take it, though. Does it mean, ‘I am dying, I have done all I can to prevent this, but now it must take its course,’ or does it mean . . .” He paused, waiting for a gap in the traffic, and Hal realized she understood what he was saying.
“I suppose there’s a sense of . . . not just knowing what may come, but willing it to happen,” she said. “Acknowledging your part in precipitating it. Is that what you’re saying?”
“Exactly.”
Hal could not quite work out what to say in reply to this. The thought came to her again: an old woman, knowing the end was coming near, rubbing her hands as she drew up the will that was to set her nearest and dearest at each other’s throats. Had it really been as calculatingly vicious as that?
There was no love lost between Harding and Ezra, you didn’t have to be a cold reader to work that out. But what was her own part in all this?
They drove the last mile or so in silence, Hal lost in her own thoughts, until at last Ezra drew into a car park and stopped the car, pulling up the hand brake with a crunch and killing the engine.
“Well, here we are. There’s just one hitch.”
“What’s that?”
“It’s twelve twenty. I think we’ve missed the appointment.”
“Oh.” Hal said. She glanced at the clock on the dashboard, and felt a sudden sickening mix of emotions wash over her—a queasy relief at not having to face Mr. Treswick today, and trepidation at the thought of Harding’s reaction, and at the knowledge that she had only postponed the encounter. “Fuck.” It was out before she had considered it, and she bit her lip. The word was not in keeping with the image she was trying to present to the Westaways—meek, unassuming little Harriet, butter wouldn’t melt. Swearing wasn’t part of the deal, and she felt as cross with herself as if she’d sworn at a client. The pink on her cheeks was real, though it was a flush of annoyance at her own unguardedness, rather than shame. “Sorry, that was—”
“Oh, for God’s sake, you’re an adult. I’m not your keeper. And while we’re at it, can we stop with the Uncle Ezra business? I’m not your uncle.”
Hal flinched in spite of herself, and perhaps Ezra noticed, for he rephrased.
“I didn’t mean that as coldly as it sounded. But we’ve never met. Uncle implies a relationship that we don’t have—and as I said before, Harding has the monopoly on hypocrisy in this family. I’m done with all that.”
“Okay. . . .” Hal said slowly. “So . . . what should I call you?”
“Ezra will do fine,” he said. He opened his car door.
“Wait,” Hal said impetuously. She put out a hand towards the gear stick, not quite touching his. “If—if we’re swapping names . . .”
“Yes?”
“Everyone here calls me Harriet, but that’s not what my—” She stopped. She had been about to say, that’s not what my mother called me, but somehow the word stuck in her throat. “That’s not what my friends call me,” she finished.
Ezra raised one eyebrow, interrogatively. “And that is . . . ?” he prompted.
“Hal,” Hal said. Her heart was beating, as though she had given away a great piece of herself. There was no logic to it—these people knew her real name, who she was, even where she lived, thanks to Mr. Treswick. Compared to what she had done already, there was nothing identifying or risky about sharing a nickname; yet it felt like a leap of faith in a way that nothing else had. “They call me Hal.”
“Hal,” Ezra said. He said it slowly, as if rolling the word around his mouth, tasting it. “Hal.” Then his tanned face broke into a broad grin—generous, beguiling, quite different from his usual, rather sardonic expression. “I like it. Well, shall we go and report in for a telling off?”
“Yes,” Hal said. She drew a deep breath, and opened the door of the car. The tin of tarot cards felt hard in her back pocket, and she thought of the page, and of the storm clouds roiling behind him, and the rough waves at his feet, the rising waters. Après moi, le déluge. . . .
“Yes. Let’s go.”
CHAPTER 22
* * *
“Marvelous.” Harding’s voice was sarcastic. “You do realize what you’ve just ensured, don’t you, Harriet?”
“Me?” Hal felt a wave of annoyance at the injustice of his remark wash over her, and swallowed it back, remembering her role as a meek, biddable niece. She was arranging her face in an expression of contrition when Ezra broke in, sounding bored.
“Harding, if anyone is at fault here, it’s me. Or rather those fucking magpies.”
“Magpies be damned. Today is Friday, in case you haven’t noticed. The solicitors’ offices are closed tomorrow and Sunday. Your tardiness has just ensured that we will all have to hang around until Monday to continue the discussions.”