Instead, Jacques had chosen to go prattling to their grandfather.
“Bastien,” Monsieur Ménard warned.
“Oh, come on, I was merely jesting.” With a brisk whistle, Jekyll and Hyde obeyed, drawing away from Jacques and leaping down the stairs. A maid’s shriek echoed beyond the hallway, but Bastien sheepishly bit down on his lip to keep from chuckling. His Dalmatians might be chaotic at best, but they wouldn’t hurt a fly anymore than bite a chunk off of someone. Be that Jacques or anyone else.
“It’s your own fault for that foul smell,” Bastien muttered under his breath, pinching his nose when Jacques shot him a murderous look.
“ThePrix de l'Arc de Triompherace is in a few weeks,” he replied coldly, taking a seat on the leather armchair, opposite Bastien. “You know I’ve been training all week.”
“And renouncing baths is a new part of your pre-race rituals?”
Anaïs sauntered in a second later with a little hop in her gait, her riding boots tracking mud all over the carpet. “Pépé said it was urgent,” she chimed in, rushing behind their grandfather’s desk to give him a kiss. “We didn’t have time to clean up.”
She, at least, smelled better.
“Join your brothers, my flower,” Monsieur Ménard said. “This is a family meeting.”
Anaïs perched on the arm of Bastien’s chair. The strings of pearls she had wrapped about herself jingled annoyingly in his ear.
They all knew that when Grandfather said family meeting that meant—
“Someone’s in trouble,” she whispered in a singsong voice.
Bastien whipped his head around, giving her a menacing look. “Are you sure it’s not you, Mademoiselle Late-Night-Frolicking-With-My-Secret-Lover?”
“She’s not my lover,” Anaïs hissed, “so shush!” She jammed her elbow into his ribs for good measure, then focused all of her attention on their grandfather. “Why did you gather all of us, pépé? Is something the matter?”
“Seven thousand francs spent on frivolities! That’s the matter!” Monsieur Ménard shouted, shutting the account book with such force that the pages resounded a loud slap across his office.
Bastien flinched, but only momentarily. He knew the admonishments by heart and therefore he knew the outcome of his grandfather’s temporary outbursts.
That’s it,he would say.You will be cut off.
But the promise would hardly last two weeks before Bastien’s accounts would reopen and his inheritance money would flow out unrestrainedly once more.
Only this time, something felt off. There was a strange premonition permeating the air that Bastien couldn’t pinpoint, but it made his stomach twist with unease.
“And we are here to be yelled at on our brother’s behalf because…”
“You all need a lesson, Jacques. The three of you are unimaginably profligate.” He pointed a finger at Bastien. “Not to mention hedonistic.”
It wasn’t anything new. Bastien had always preferred going through life unbothered. So what if rumours circulated about him? They would continue to, whether Bastien did something to feed them or not. So what if Grandfather didn’t like the way he acted? He had never liked it even when Bastien was a child either, it wasn’t bound to change if Bastien suddenly turned into a saint. Besides, Bastien found the gossip highly entertaining, especially when it bordered on crazy. He liked it when the girls he had talked to once bent all sorts of ways just to catch a glimpse of him again; he liked it even more when he was dragged into dark corridors or empty coat rooms by the same girls, only to come out decorated with several lipstick marks all over him.
“You wanted me to be a socialite,” Bastien sulked, picking at a speck of invisible lint on his sand-coloured suit to make a grander show of caprice. “I am only carrying forth the order.”
“I do not order my grandchildren around, Bastien.”
“Right, my mistake.” He rolled his eyes. “You steamroll them.”
The old man let out a long sigh. “Be that as it may, or asyouwish to look at it, but it is only for your own good. You need to learn how…”
Bastien tuned him out. He had heard the speech dozens of times. He knew every pause his grandfather made, even the gesticulations he included for emphasis, so he shifted his gaze towards the portrait-lined walls, and noticed that Jacques was doing the same.
It was strange how alike they acted sometimes; so much so that the differences in their appearance dissolved from their persons. But the pictures in the office portrayed a different story. There was always a distinct space of one meter between them whenever they were placed in close proximity to each other. Eventually the space had been occupied by Anaïs’s cheerful self when neither their grandfather nor the photographer had been able to convince Jacques and Bastien to move closer. The second distinction was the way they posed: Jacques (willingly) like a polished porcelain figurine, while Bastien (unwillingly) like he was being held at gunpoint.
He averted his eyes from the portraits and turned to his grandfather when Monsieur Ménard’s speech started rolling to a brief pause—his way to check if his grandsons were paying attention.
“Look,” Bastien started, trying to see if he could weasel his way out with a few excuses. “All I wanted was to have a little fun. Maybe it was a little excessive, but no one was harmed, so I don’t see how—”
