by Paul Torday
Later, as they lay in bed, Charlie felt that he was too tired even to eat the promised watercress-and-orange salad. What he needed was a bloody good drink.
‘Darling,’ said Sylvia. ‘Do you mind if I say something?’
Charlie knew she would say it anyway, so he just grunted.
‘Do you want to borrow my nail scissors for a moment? There are two red hairs, one growing out of each of your nostrils. They are becoming rather long. Quite like tusks,’ said Sylvia, giggling.
Later on, over a glass of wine and the watercress-and-orange salad, Charlie unburdened himself to Sylvia.
‘I know the Yoruza business has potential,’ he said, ‘I just need to take the next step, somehow. It’s all about scale. It needs to be a bigger business.’
‘Darling, I’m sure it will be, one day,’ said Mrs Bently. ‘You work so hard at it. Rome wasn’t built in a day, you know. Give it time.’
Charlie could not easily explain to her that there was no more time: the demands of the credit card company, the van rental company, the owner of his lock-up and the landlord of his cottage were becoming more pressing by the day. It would not be long before he would, not for the first time in his life, be troubled by court orders, notices of repossession and other equally unpleasant documents tumbling through his letter box.
‘It’s capital,’ he said, after a moment. ‘What I need is capital.’ He described to Sylvia his ideas on how to grow his business, omitting any reference to the role Marie the secretary might play. ‘I’m just too small at the moment.’
‘Go to the bank manager?’ suggested Sylvia.
‘Banks don’t lend to you unless you’ve already got money,’ explained Charlie. ‘And I haven’t.’
There was a silence.
‘You don’t mean you’ve got no money at all?’ asked Sylvia. She seemed very surprised.
Charlie glanced around him. The room was warm and comfortable; well-polished furniture gleamed in the firelight and obscure but valuable-looking oil paintings decorated the walls.
‘I had some bad luck a few years ago,’ said Charlie. ‘I won’t go into it now - don’t want to burden you with my troubles - but it’s holding me back. A man can only do so much, but if he’s restricted by a lack of capital, he may never succeed.’
‘Poor Charlie,’ said Sylvia.
The fire crackled and Charlie gazed into it then said idly, ‘I suppose you’ve got a mortgage on this place, have you?’
‘Oh, no,’ said Sylvia, in a shocked tone of voice. ‘I inherited this from my father. It’s the one thing I can call my own.’
Charlie stood up, found the wine bottle and refilled both their glasses.
‘I suppose you could raise ten or twenty thousand against this property without even noticing it,’ he said, in a philosophical tone. ‘I mean, it must be worth the best part of three-quarters of a million in today’s market; probably quite a lot more.’
‘I wouldn’t know. I’ve no intention of selling it.’
Charlie sipped his wine.
‘Of course not: it’s a lovely home. I just meant that if I went to the bank manager and asked him for a ten-thousand-pound loan, or, let’s say, twenty thousand pounds, which is a more realistic figure for what the business needs, the first thing he’d ask me is what security I could offer. Security? Don’t make me laugh. I risked my life for ten years in Her Majesty’s armed forces, and now I can’t even raise the scratch to borrow twenty grand from the bank.’
Whenever Charlie had referred to his mythical past as a soldier before, Sylvia Bendy had exhibited signs of admiration. She did not do so on this occasion. Instead, she sat and waited for Charlie to finish what he was saying. He felt a little disconcerted, but realised he had to press on to a conclusion.
‘Whereas,’ said Charlie. He liked the sound of the word, so repeated it: ‘Whereas if you went to the bank manager, for argument’s sake, and asked for a loan of twenty thousand pounds, and offered this house as security, he’d take your hand off. Give you a cheque on the spot.’
‘But why would I borrow twenty thousand pounds?’ asked Sylvia. ‘I don’t need it. Elizabeth is off my hands, married, and quite independent from me. I have enough money to live on, what with Daddy’s share portfolio and my alimony, pitiful though it is. It even just about stretches to two, Charlie, and I don’t begrudge a penny I spend on feeding you, darling, it does me good to see you eat so well. But I’ve never been in debt, and never intend to be. My parents never had an overdraft, and I don’t see why I should want one either.’
Charlie was not beaten yet.
‘But if you borrowed twenty thousand pounds from the bank, the house would have increased in value by that amount before the ink was even dry on the cheque. So you wouldn’t be taking any sort of risk. Then you could lend me the money, and I would invest it in Yoruza. I’d pay you back, and more, before twelve months had gone by.’
There was a long silence.
‘I’m sorry, Charlie,’ Sylvia Bendy said, ‘I don’t borrow money, and I don’t lend it. Debts prevent you from sleeping and loans lose you friends. It would come between us. This house is all I’ve got. Don’t ask me to risk it; please don’t ask me again.’
There was another long silence, broken only by the crackling of the fire. At last, Charlie stood up.
‘Well,’ he said, ‘I’ve got another early start tomorrow. I’d better be getting home. If I can’t do it the easy way, then I’ll do it the hard way. Goodnight, Sylvia. Thank you for the watercress salad.’
‘Oh, Charlie,’ said Sylvia. ‘Don’t go so soon. Couldn’t we just cuddle up by the fire for a bit? I hate talking about money. It always upsets me. I’m not upset with you, Charlie. Don’t go just yet.’
But Charlie would not be dissuaded. He felt a dignified withdrawal was the best choice open to him at that moment. As he walked across the gravel to his truck he thought: Silly old cow, it would mean nothing to her and could be the making of my business. He wondered whether he would bother to see her again. He felt she had used him for comfort, and then when he had asked her for the smallest bit of help, she had refused it. Then his irritation subsided: she had, after all, taken him into her bed, and fed and watered him for some weeks now. He really was quite fond of her and would hate to have to leave her. Leave her he must, however, if his business prospects did not improve soon.
*
It must have been around the time Charlie’s credit crisis began to loom that my aunt’s will was at last probated. Harriet and I arranged to meet again in Cirencester. She came over from France and stayed with her mother the night before. We arranged to meet at eleven o’clock the next morning, a Friday, at the offices of Mr Gilkes. I obtained leave of absence from Bilbo and drove down from London. I managed to find a parking space outside the solicitor’s office just as Harriet arrived in a taxi. My first thought as she turned to me after paying the taxi fare was how pretty she looked. She smiled at me, as I pressed the automatic locking button on my car key and all the lights of the Audi flashed obediently.
‘My God,’ she said, ‘you are doing well, Eck. I had no idea!’
I muttered something about ‘boy’s toys’ and leaned across to kiss her on the cheek. She smelled warm and fresh. We walked into the reception of Mr Gilkes’ establishment, a modest area with a threadbare carpet and a few well-thumbed copies of Country Life from the previous century scattered on a low table. An oil painting of Gilkes senior hung on the wall, the sitter presumably long since dead and buried. Young Gilkes, his son and present incumbent of the office, must have been about seventy. He came downstairs after a moment and ushered us back up to his office, a room dominated by a large partner’s desk, two upright chairs and a bookcase displaying a few rows of leather-bound volumes.
Mr Gilkes poured us some weak coffee and helped himself to a pinch of snuff, which he placed between forefinger and thumb, then inhaled. He sneezed for minutes on end into a handkerchief stained brown from previous expectorations.
&n
bsp; ‘It’s helped me to give up smoking,’ he said to me, apologetically. ‘Do have some yourself.’
I declined and caught Harriet’s eye. She was trying to suppress a laughing fit, and was not entirely successful. Mr Gilkes poked around among the file of papers on his desk.
‘Ah, yes: the late Miss Branwen’s will. I think it’s best if I read out to you the relevant clauses. Quite a lot of what we lawyers call boilerplate, I’m afraid. I’ll skip over all of that and concentrate on the essentials.’
He picked up a document and began to read it to us. It did not take long. Apart from some minor bequests to a former housekeeper, and to a charity for distressed gentlefolk, the bulk of the estate was left in equal shares to Harriet and me. There was a share portfolio, copies of which were handed to us. To my eye it looked safe and conservative: not a single stock in it would have been touched by Mountwilliam Partners, who would have sold the lot and reinvested in much racier and more exciting opportunities. The sum of money, when divided, took each of us just into six figures: a very welcome addition to one’s worldly well-being, without offering any immediate prospect of spending the rest of one’s life on a sun-kissed beach, sipping margueritas. Apart from the share portfolio, there was a deposit account at the bank with a few thousand pounds in it. The only other item was Aunt Dorothy’s house and all its contents: The Laurels, on the outskirts of Cirencester, where Aunt Dorothy had lived for nearly all of her life.
‘I expect you’re familiar with the property?’ asked Mr Gilkes. I shook my head. Aunt Dorothy had visited my parents’ home when I was a child; but we had never visited her.
‘I used to go and stay there sometimes when I was little,’ Harriet said.
Mr Gilkes replied, ‘A well-respected lady, Miss Branwen, and a long-standing client, but I don’t believe she ever had many visitors. I have had valuations prepared of the house and its contents, but I suggest it would make more sense if you took them with you and examined everything in situ. Of course, I would be more than happy to accompany you. I have the house keys here, and Mrs Graham, the housekeeper, has drawn all the curtains and turned on the heating so that you will be comfortable while you look over the place.’
We declined Mr Gilkes’ offer to accompany us, and instead look directions from him, the valuations and the set of house keys. After thanking him, we went downstairs and got into my car.
‘I think you take the second left,’ said Harriet, ‘then straight on for a mile. I so nearly got the giggles in there.’
‘I’ve never heard anyone sneeze so much,’ I added. ‘It must be terribly good for you.’
‘Please don’t let me ever catch you taking snuff,’ Harriet warned.
We drove on, and after a few minutes entered a very gloomy road of late Victorian and early Edwardian villas, all detached, and surrounded by gardens thick with mournful growths of laurel and rhododendron. At the end of this cul-de-sac, the road became even more potholed and the pavements were cracked and uneven. In harmony with this air of neglect, a pair of wooden gates that had once been painted green marked the entrance to Aunt Dorothy’s property. One of the gates had been dragged open slightly and was lodged in the gravel. I parked the car in the road, and we walked up the short path to the house. The grass in the garden had recently been strimmed, but the vegetation, mostly shrubbery of one sort or another, looked dank and overgrown. It seemed that Aunt Dorothy had not, at least in her later years, shown much interest in her garden.
The house itself was of a sooty red brick, with two bays on either side of the entrance and sash windows. It was not large. A path wound around the side of the house to some sheds at the back. The keys had been thoughtfully labelled by someone, so I had no difficulties opening the front door. Inside was a small, dark hallway, with a side table as the only furnishing. Someone - presumably the cleaner - had removed a pile of post from the doormat and placed it on the table. I flipped through one or two envelopes: most of it looked like junk mail.
‘You know the place,’ I said to Harriet, ‘you conduct the tour, and I’ll follow.’
Harriet looked doubtful and said, ‘It’s years since I was last here. But how hard can it be? We aren’t likely to get lost.’
Together we inspected the ground floor: a dining room, filled with a mahogany table and chairs, and a vast brown sideboard on which were propped a few family photographs. I noticed among them a picture of my parents, taken on a day’s racing. Although the house was warm, the dining room had the chill of somewhere rarely visited or used. Harriet shut the door, and we inspected the drawing room: two armchairs and a sofa, with a few faded watercolours hanging on the wall. There was also a glass-fronted bookcase. I inspected the contents: a row of Reader’s Digest potted novels, and not much else. We moved on.
The kitchen was more cheerful. A wooden table with a well-scrubbed top occupied the centre of the room and an electric oven, a kettle, a toaster and an ancient fridge completed the scene. Everything looked as if it had been bought circa 1950, and probably had been. The floor was lino, in a pattern that might once have been a tartan. This was indeed the house of someone who had been careful to live within their means.
‘God,’ said Harriet. ‘This doesn’t look as if it’s been touched for fifty years.’
Opposite the kitchen was a small sitting room. This was where Aunt Dorothy must have spent most of her time, as it showed more signs of occupation. An old armchair with all its springs gone was where she must have sat; a small television set with an aerial on top stood across the room on a table. There was a gas fire, a small glass display cabinet with a few items of china in it, and some knitting laid on a stool in front of the armchair, never to be picked up again. We gazed at it all in silence. Harriet looked less cheerful than when we had arrived, and I too was feeling rather oppressed by these surroundings. The house radiated a sense of loneliness, as if that one aspect of Aunt Dorothy’s character had survived even when the rest of her personality had been disaggregated by death.
‘Let’s go upstairs,’ I said. We went up and opened doors: a bathroom, a linen press, and then a spacious bedroom looking out over the garden. There was a large bed, two mahogany wardrobes and a dressing table. The bed was covered in a dustsheet.
‘She died here,’ said Harriet, ‘quite on her own.’
She walked across to the bay window, but the view was uninspiring.
‘I suppose she was happy enough,’ I said, ‘otherwise, why would she have stayed here?’
‘I don’t think she knew what else to do,’ said Harriet. ‘Something happened to her a long time ago. I don’t know what it was - a man, probably - but whatever it was, she withdrew from the world. The older she got, the less anyone saw of her.’
‘Perhaps it was a broken engagement, like Miss Haver-sham’s,’ I suggested.
‘Quite possibly,’ said Harriet. Something in her voice made me look at her. She was standing sideways on, still looking out of the window, and had turned quite pale. A tear trickled down the side of her cheek. I turned away, pretending not to have noticed.
‘She was eighty when she died,’ said Harriet. ‘She spent almost fifty years entirely on her own.’
I thought of Harriet, living in self-imposed exile in her rented house in France; of myself, shuttling between a bleak little flat in West Hampstead and a farmhouse in Teesdale that stood empty for weeks on end.
‘Our family seem to have a talent for shutting themselves away,’ I said, without thinking. Harriet turned and looked at me. She bit her lip.
‘Oh, Eck, what a cruel thing to say.’
Then she burst into tears. I didn’t know what to do, so I stepped forward and put my arms around her, and she stood and sobbed into my shoulder for a moment.
‘I’m so sorry, Harriet,’ I said. ‘I didn’t mean to be hurtful. I simply wasn’t thinking.’
She lifted her head from my shoulder and said, ‘You just said what was in your head, didn’t you? And it’s perfectly true.’
She went an
d sat at Aunt Dorothy’s dressing table, dabbing at her face with her handkerchief as she brought herself back under control. Then she stood up and said, ‘Come on, let’s finish our tour of inspection.’
She took my hand and we went and inspected the next room, a spare bedroom. This was south-facing, and a gleam of sunlight lit the room as we stood in the doorway. The bed had a faded yellow bedspread, and there were cheerful watercolours that looked like Beatrix Potter reproductions on the wall.
‘This is where I used to sleep, when I came to stay with Aunt Dorothy,’ said Harriet. ‘I don’t believe it’s changed a bit since then.’
She sat on the edge of the bed and gazed up at me. Her eyes were still shiny from the tears she had shed, and had a bruised look about them. Her lips were parted, as if she were catching her breath. She patted the bed beside her, inviting me to sit next to her.
‘Come on, Eck,’ she said. ‘This is what you want, isn’t it?’
For a moment I had difficulty in grasping her meaning.
‘What do I want?’ I asked foolishly, but even if I could not quite believe what was happening, at last I began to understand. Harriet swung her legs off the floor, kicking off her shoes. She lay back on the bed and regarded me, not smiling, but waiting for me to say, or do, something. I must have stood there with my mouth open for a while. Harriet raised herself slightly on the bed and unbuttoned her skirt, pushing it on to the floor. Then she began to unbutton her blouse.
‘I’m what you want,’ said Harriet, ‘and now you can have me.’
My mobile phone began to ring.
Nine
When I attempt to recapture the amazing moments in that bedroom in Aunt Dorothy’s house, it is all a confusion of memories. I try to turn off the mobile phone. Instead I hit a button that switches on the loudspeaker and broadcasts Bilbo’s voicemail message, squawking at me from the landing where I have thrown the handset in frustration. The phone then rings despondently at intervals as it lies unanswered. I can see Harriet’s calm expression, as she draws me down towards her on the bed, the only words she has spoken burning in my consciousness: ‘I’m what you want - and now you can have me’. I remember my own desperate fumbling, carried along on a sudden torrent of emotions quite unknown to me. Raising my eyes for a moment from Harriet’s face, her eyes closed, I see that a picture of Peter Rabbit hangs above the bed, and is looking down at me in encouragement.
