Last Respects by Catherine Aird Page B

obstinately, ‘you’ll be on to me. You see.’
    â€˜I won’t,’ undertook Frank Mundill.
    â€˜And there won’t be anything I can do then,’ said the man, as if he hadn’t spoken.
    â€˜I shan’t want you to do anything.’
    â€˜It’ll be too late then,’ said the man obdurately. ‘Mark my words.’
    â€˜My wife was born over there, remember.’ Frank Mundill had waved a hand in the direction of Collerton House. He introduced a firmer tone into his voice. ‘She loved this river.’
    His gesture had reminded Elizabeth Busby of something and she had taken herself off at that point to have a look at her grandparents’ grave. That was over by the church—not far from the west door. And next to it was the polished marble monument to her great-grandparents. Gordon Camming—he who had invented the Camming valve—had made it clear that he intended to found a dynasty too. He’d bought half a dozen plots around his own tomb: the sexton hadn’t hesitated to remind Frank Mundill of this.
    The word ‘dynasty’ had started up another unhappy train of thought in her mind at the time not unconnected with Peter Hinton and she had drifted back to the river’s edge where the exchange between Frank Mundill and the sexton was drawing to a close. By the time she had reached the two men the site of the plot for the grave of her aunt had been agreed and the sexton, if still not happy about it, at least mollified.
    â€˜She’ll be content here,’ she heard Celia Mundill’s widower insisting as she drew closer.
    Elizabeth hoped then and hoped now as she tended the flowers on the grave that this was true. It was still summertime, of course, and flooding was a long way from her mind as she took away the last of the dead flowers from her previous visit. She sat back on her heels while she carefully picked out the best rose for the centre position. Her aunt had known she would never see this year’s Fantin-Latour roses on the bush—she’d told Elizabeth so in spite of all Dr Tebot had said—but there was no reason, she told herself fiercely, why she shouldn’t have them on her grave.
    As she placed each succeeding stem of the double blush-pink clusters of flowers in the grave’s special frost-proof vase she began to see why it was that this particular rose had been such a favourite—and not only of Celia Mundill but of Henri Fantin-Latour and the old Dutch flower-painters—of real artists, in fact.
    Involuntarily her lips tightened into a smile.
    There was a family joke about the word ‘artist’. Grandfather Camming had called himself an artist and filled canvas upon canvas to prove it. The family had tacitly agreed therefore that he must be known as an artist. Other artists—those who did improve as time went by, those whose pictures were fought over by art galleries—even those whose paintings were bought with an eye to the future—deserved to be distinguished from Richard Camming and his amateur efforts. They had been known—in the family and out of earshot of Richard Camming—as real artists.
    Poor Grandfather! she thought. Time and money weren’t what made a painter. Nor, she added fairly in her mind, was application. Grandfather Camming had certainly applied himself. She gave a little, silent giggle to herself. Richard Camming had cheerfully applied paint to every canvas in sight.
    As Elizabeth placed the roses in the vase she was conscious of how the lively shell-pink of the centre of the flower made a fine splash of colour against the newly-turned earth. She would have liked to have had that bare earth covered in stone or even grass but the sexton said it had to stay the way it was until it had settled. Frank Mundill didn’t seem worried about the bare earth either. When she had mentioned it to him later he had said he was still thinking about the right