A Brief History of Montmaray by Michelle Cooper Page B

worry about that, ’ said Veronica airily, closing her book and standing up. Of course, this is the same person who ignored my quarantine to read aloud to me when I complained in my letters about being bored – and she didn’t get much more than a few spots and a runny nose, either, despite the grown-ups’ dire predictions. Normal rules don’t apply to Veronica. I watched with great affection and not a little awe as she piled her hair on her head with a couple of pins and wandered off, saying something over her shoulder about having a chat to George before dinner.
    I don’t think she’ll go to England. I don’t think I can make her, I don’t think anyone can make her. And I can’t stand up to Aunt Charlotte by myself. And I do want to go to England, I do, except the very idea of leaving Veronica and Henry and Carlos and everything else at Montmaray fills me with such a sense of panic – how will I possibly cope in a strange place, all alone?
    I must say, it’s a very good thing that I have this journal as an outlet for all my moaning and whingeing.
    After all the angst of the afternoon, it was a profound relief to have a pleasant evening. Veronica and Simon had a brief but polite conversation about the French government over dinner, and I managed not to spill anything or otherwise embarrass myself. Rebecca was unusually talkative, as well. She got out her darning while Veronica and I washed the dishes and delivered her version of a bedtime story, which consisted largely of warnings to Simon – that he ought to make sure his barber burned any hair he cut off, lest birds fly away with it and weave it into their nests and cause Simon to suffer horrendous headaches; that if (God forbid, touch wood, spit thrice), Simon were to grow a wart, he should rub meat into it and bury the meat until it rotted away, whereupon his wart would disappear; and that Simon must take care to block his ears with sealing wax when sailing back past Land’s End, because to hear the bells of wrecked ships was terrible luck.
    When Rebecca is in such a mood, Henry can occasionally nudge her into other, more entertaining tales, of Piskies and Spriggans and Knockers. Not tonight, though. So Henry had to make do with my version of one of her favourites, the story of Bolster the Giant, whose doomed love for Saint Agnes led to his gory death at Chapel Porth, where the sea still boils blood-red.
    Then Veronica was prodded into recounting the slightly more factual tale of Queen Matilda’s brave stand against the Moroccan pirates in 1631. When she heard they were approaching Montmaray, she strapped Benedict to her waist and led the castle battalion down to the village, where she waited on the edge of the wharf, her ebony hair streaming behind her in the sea breeze, her noble chin held high. (Veronica didn’t mention the bits about the hair and the chin, of course, they are my own invention. I always picture Queen Matilda as a cross between Joan of Arc and Veronica, and wonder how such a woman could have produced a descendant as faint-hearted as me.) Queen Matilda triumphed, of course. A storm blew up and the pirate ship ran into the rocks and sank, which was attributed to a combination of Queen Matilda’s determination and Benedict’s mystical powers.
    Then Henry wanted to hear more from Veronica, about how King John the First had fired upon the Spanish Armada and how King John the Fifth used the very same cannon to threaten Napoleon, but Veronica said someone else should have a turn and everyone looked at Simon. Simon said he didn’t have any thrilling tales of old to relate, but went on to do some wickedly funny impersonations of his landlady, the British Prime Minister and a very rude London bus driver he’d once encountered. Veronica was laughing by the end; even Rebecca was smiling. Oh, I do love it when everyone gets along in this family!
    Although I will probably have dreadful nightmares tonight. Those Nazi photographs seem burnt into my