Inheritance

by Nicholas Shakespeare

  Vamplew raised his eyes. 'I did suggest to him that an Attender ought to be there continuously throughout until the service's end, but he insisted that provision be made for those who might be late.'

  'He was always late,' Maral Bernhard interjected, merging for an instant with the mysterious beast whose coat she wore. 'Always!'

  Vamplew looked from her to Andy with a difficult, apologetic expression. 'It was really to cut out any tramp who might wander in.'

  He found his place and resumed.

  Andy drank his coffee - a huge improvement on Angela's - and interested himself in Vamplew's desk. This legal language, it had the effect on him of Carpe Diem's book contracts.

  'Five. Subject to the payment thereout of all my debts and funeral expenses and all taxes payable by reason of my death I give all the remainder of my real and personal property whatsoever and wheresover situate to the Attenders in equal shares absolutely - provided that if there shall be no Attenders then my Trustee shall hold my said property upon trust for The Donkey Sanctuary in Devon absolutely.'

  Vamplew looked up. 'It is surprising how much the enormously rich do leave to local animal charities. That won't be the case here, obviously.'

  What was he talking about? Andy grasped that he had said something important.

  'One last clause.'

  Vamplew raced through it.

  'My Trustee shall allow Maral Bernhard a period of up to eighteen months to remain at 11 Clarendon Crescent, she paying the outgoings thereof, before disposing of the property and its contents.' He looked at her. 'He did not know you were going to be a beneficiary, although it was his express wish that you were to be invited to the funeral.'

  Vamplew put down the will. He opened the condolence book and studied the two signatures, his formal smile replaced by a different smile, not in his control, when he read I am so sorry .

  'Well, as Christopher Leonard Madigan's sole Trustee and Executor I am able to confirm that Maral Bernhard and Andrew Larkham constitute the definition of Attenders - and in accordance with his will, his estate shall be divided equally between you both as the residuary beneficiaries.'

  There was another silence, longer this time. It was evident from her face that Maral Bernhard was no more knowledgeable about the law than was Andy. She had no sense of property whatsoever to judge from her appearance.

  Her shopping basket creaked as she bent forward.

  'You mean he and me, we own the estate?' in a crusty voice.

  'Correct.'

  'And it is worth how much, his estate?' a little less grudgingly.

  Vamplew sat back and gazed across his desk at her. In that moment, Andy saw him playing Sudoku on the train from Maidenhead, his lunches that lasted one hour, his scrupulous dealings with his Polish, Sikh, Estonian clients that formed the bulk of his business. He saw him at weekends trimming his hedge in red leather gloves, and over it discussing the barn owls in the Saxon tower and calling the General's wife by her Christian name, and eating pistachios with his Saturday night pint at the Lamb.

  He smoothed his chin. 'After lawyers' fees, funeral expenses and taxes, I estimate that you will each receive a figure in the region of seventeen million pounds.'

  Andy stared at him. The room was swaying. Vamplew was speaking, but whatever he said Andy could not hear it.

  6

  O N E ALING B ROADWAY , OUTSIDE Vamplew's office, it had stopped raining. A blue rent had appeared in the clouds and the air was warmer. Andy looked at Maral Bernhard, but she was tying on a charcoal headscarf. She picked up her basket and he could see big blood oranges through the weave. He half expected her to thrust out her hand and say ' Prost !' But she gave him another sphinctery glare and crossed the road in stiff arthritic steps.

  Andy stood on the pavement struggling to make sense of it.

  Seventeen million pounds. For turning up late. There had to be a catch. It was a test - a sort of secretly filmed reality show designed to measure moral integrity. Well, he would do the right thing and refuse it. Vamplew had insisted that the money was legally his, but he would give it to charity. Maybe not to the Donkey Sanctuary, but Save the Children. Or a cancer hospice.

  Thoughts of renunciation lightened his mood. On the train back to Hammersmith, he felt reminted, newborn. What had Vamplew called him - an Attender?

  The carriage swayed like Vamplew's room. He stared out of the window at the tunnel going by. On the platforms there were people, no longer dead-looking. Their faces and clothes, the bright colours of the material - all had a vitality, a freshness. He smelled pine. The distress of the past week receded. Perhaps he would watch Sophie come back to him, won over by his selflessness - or, at the very least, in awe of it. Although the scenario required a liberal amount of imaginative tweaking. Most likely, she would think it stupid. His sister was right. Money mattered a lot to Sophie Sobko. Which is why, perhaps, he might be better off without her. They were made of different stuff.

  By the time Andy returned to his office, he was in an excellent mood.

  7

  A NDY ' S BEST FRIEND D AVID was six-foot two, twinkling-eyed and bald, with a pepper-and-salt beard and a ski-slope nose. He wore his shirt as often as not inside out and walked around with his bootlaces undone until he discovered Crocs. He was popular, high-spirited and something of an obsessive. He owned the tapes of every film made by Eisenstein, Vertov, Tarkovsky and Waters, and a collection of beer cans that occupied four narrow display shelves. His car was a 1953 Riley Pathfinder and he had a permanent girlfriend, Julie, who worked as an occupational therapist.

  Andy's arrangement to meet David this evening had been made before his dinner with Sophie; they had not spoken since.

  Outside the Knopwood, a man was yelling at the night sky: 'Okay, I get the point! Give me a break!'

  Andy walked past him.

  It took a moment for the relaxed, shambolic figure in the corner who looked up from his newspaper to recognise him. 'It's quite unlike you to be so early.'

  'Yes,' Andy nodded, able to acknowledge the truth of this statement. 'What are you drinking?'

  David went on gazing at him. 'Or to stand me a drink.'

  'You are absolutely right.' Ever since he had started going out with Sophie, all his money went on her.

  David checked his watch. He had to leave in an hour - to interview Robert Altman - but he had time for a pint of Tisbury pale ale, he said.

  The bar was noisy. Men in coats. Girls laughing. On a stage a ponytailed man wearing a black leather waistcoat plugged in a guitar.

  When Andy came back, David took his glass and held it up to the light and scrutinised it. 'I shall enjoy this.' He clinked Andy's glass and drank. 'Mmm. Mud to a pig: delicious.' Then he sat back and frowned at him. 'So, Andy, how are you?'

  'Up and down.'

  'Is that papal code for down?'

  'I need to tell you something.'

  David rested his hand on Andy's forearm. 'I heard.'

  'You've heard?'

  'Well, actually, yes, I have.'

  What surprised Andy was how little pain he was feeling about Sophie. A few hours ago he would not have believed it. She was the person he had come here to discuss, but she hadn't crossed his mind.

  The pain surged back as he told David the details. Until David, after listening and nodding in the appropriate places, said: 'Be a big boy. Forget her. She loves someone else.'

  With a hurt that he wished he could shed, Andy said: 'I was going to ask you to be my best man.'

  David stretched an arm around his shoulder. 'And I can still be your best man.'

  Andy listened with only half an ear.

  David was talking. 'I can say this now, but I never imagined you two together.'

  'Why not?'

  David placed his glass down on the table. 'All the time you were together did she once read anything that was not a fashion magazine?'

  'Yes. I mean . . . Well, no.'

  He remembered her asking: 'What's that?'

&
nbsp; 'A novel, Sophie. A very good one. Like to read it?'

  Her rolled eyes: 'I should live so long.'

  David glanced at him. 'Andy, enter the palace of truth . . . Did you see yourself growing old with Sophie Sobko in a Zimmer frame and slippers?'

  'David, if you don't mind, I'd rather talk about something else.'

  'I quite understand. Let's talk about something else. But I thought you wanted to talk about her.'

  'Not any more.'

  He thought of a line from Furnivall's manuscript: When true friends freely criticise you what they are doing is giving you a remarkable proof of their friendship .

  'David -'

  'The thing about you, Andy, is that you're too trusting, too open. You didn't have to be so honourable. You just had to have fun. Anyway, she's over. We can now reclaim you. What are you doing on Sunday? Julie has to work, but why don't I treat you to lunch at the Ship's Lantern. Another?'

  'No, let me.'

  'Whoa! Steady, boy . . . Two beers in five minutes?' David picked at his beard that he had grown after going bald. 'Can you afford it?'

  Andy stood up.

  'Hey, Andy, I was talking.'

  Andy took their glasses and went to the bar before David could think of anything more idiotic to say. He had known David since they sat side by side on a blue plastic mat in Semley Nursery School.

  David worked as the film critic of a national newspaper. He had tried, unsuccessfully, to write screenplays, but his journalistic instinct helped him to be a critic of distinction. Aside from his knack of knowing what was going on and the fact that he rubbed along well with everyone, he always needed to have his teeth clamped into something - and never let go. It used to infuriate Andy, whether football cards as a four-year-old or films as an undergraduate or - his latest - beer cans as an adult. He would not rest until he had hunted down the grail of beer-can collectors: a Sydney to Hobart commemorative can released by the Cascade brewery in Launceston the summer that the ferro-cement yacht Helsal set a race record that stood for another thirty years. Once you understood this about David, you knew how the filing system in his mind worked.

  Andy came back from the bar with two more beers. He sat down and said: 'What's your position on taking gifts from strangers?'

  'Why?' David peered into his glass. 'Is that what this is?'

  'I heard something at the office today.'

  'What?'

  Instantly, Andy regretted his impulse. 'Oh, long dumb story, don't worry about it.'

  'I don't mind long dumb stories. That's why I can still be your friend. Come on, Andy - share,' and winked.

  'Sod off. It's a true story.'

  David drew up his chair. 'Better and better.'

  'You might find it hard to believe, but it's as true as I sit here.'

  'Get on with it.'

  Andy pretended that he had heard it from Angela. She knew someone who knew someone. Who knew this vagrant in Reykjavik, who had stumbled into an empty church to get out of the rain and sat in the back and was given a service sheet.

  'This is what she said to me. But . . .' Andy stopped. 'I'm not telling it very well.'

  'No, I like the way you're telling it,' David said.

  'Well, it doesn't sound logical - but this rich Icelander left everything he had, the whole lot, to anyone who turned up at his funeral. Seventeen million krona . . . something like that.'

  The only difference: in the story Andy was telling David, the tramp had taken the money.

  David nodded, meditating on his Tisbury pale ale. 'Of course.'

  Andy shook his head. 'Still. To think that some lowlife who just walked in off the street would accept it.'

  'That's not lowlife. That's fair and square. Life's a lottery. A lot of things I could do with seventeen million anything . . . Iraqi dinars, for Christ's sake. It wouldn't change the way I lived, but I might buy a car that starts without me having to ring the AA every frigging time.' David's Riley was parked outside the Knopwood.

  'So you'd take the money?' But it was too late. By telling David, he had planted his seed of doubt.

  'I'm not certain that I totally follow,' David said slowly. 'Wouldn't you?'

  'I don't know.'

  'Listen to him!'

  'No, tell me. Why would I?'

  'Andy?'

  'What?'

  'About this Icelandic tramp . . .' David said. Then looked at him sharply. 'Oh, my gosh.'

  'Oh, my gosh is right.'

  A blue jersey spanned David's chest. Andy lowered his eyes to examine its weave and told him everything.

  To David, it was a story from the age of fable.

  'Seventeen million quid! For turning up at someone's funeral. Let the twelve thousand virgins of Santiago de Compostella get up from their knees and hosannah you, Andy. When do you see the money?'

  'In six months, the lawyer said.'

  'All you've got to do is wait?'

  'That's it - unless someone contests the will.'

  'Any disgruntled family members?'

  'Not as far as I know.'

  David pulled his chair further forward, excited. 'You know what you've got to do?' He put a hand on Andy's shoulder and stared at him full square. 'Embrace it, Andy. Take the money.'

  Then he laughed through white-flecked lips and raised his glass to a future that Andy wished he believed in.

  8

  O UTSIDE THE K NOPWOOD FORTY minutes later, a yellow van with lights flashing parked beside David's car.

  'Pegasus won't budge?' said the AA man. He eyed the rust patches like worn fur and recommended a Toyota. 'We never get called out for them.'

  Andy watched him jump-start the Riley and David drive off to interview Robert Altman.

  Feeling hungry for the first time that week, he went into a Spud-U-Like and ordered a baked potato with an egg filling. His mind strayed back to Sophie and Richard. Something else Andy had noticed since his Saint Valentine's dinner: his most unpleasant thoughts came to him when he ate.

  Abandoning his potato, he made his way home.

  His friend's voice reverberated in his head: You've earned it, you need it, it came at the right time, it's yours .

  David had a point . . . Andy had attended Madigan's funeral out of fundamental decency, but when faced with the fundamental decency of seventeen million pounds, how decent was he? In his bloated state, Andy began to perceive merit in re-examining his impulsive decision to donate the money to abandoned street children.

  This is freedom you're being offered.

  David's words made even more sense when Andy discovered a brown envelope glaring up at him from the doormat with the venomous words 'British Telecom'. He looked at the envelope and was reminded of how difficult it was to kill a rat. As he struggled to close the front door and wiggle his key loose from its iron teeth, a new ferment took hold.

  Andy , David had said very firmly, you were late for a reason.

  He went into the living room and tossed the final demand onto the mantelpiece, between a letter from the town hall, promising to look further into the particulars of his dyslexia, and a bank statement reminding him that he owed PS11,832 at 6.25 per cent interest. At the sight of other envelopes, like autumn leaves everywhere, the thought recurred that he could in one swoop pay off these bills, buy a mansion in Holland Park and live off the interest for the remainder of his days.

  He went over to the window. In the street below, a black man walked by inexplicably wrapped in plastic.

  Yes, there were a lot of things he could do with seventeen million pounds. He stood thinking about how he might spend it, before drawing the curtain.

  It was not yet nine o'clock. In his satchel in the hallway was the manuscript that he had brought home to work on. Despite his promise to Angela, he had not finished copy-editing The Valentino Alfresco Sex Guide . He ferreted it out and sat down to do battle with chapter six. He was tipsy and tired, but he was not ready for bed.

  His eyes dragged over the type, but the lines on the
page disappeared and other words took their place.

  Different voices started up inside him, back and forth.

  'How can you refuse Fortune after she hands you this piece of luck when you most need it? It's an answer to your prayers.'

  'Of course I can refuse her. I've never put money top of my list.'

  'You've done nothing wrong. It's above board. Can't a man dispose of his wealth as he thinks fit?'

  But who was this man? And why had he done this?

  Sick with himself, sickened by his own excitement, he put down the manuscript.

  A voice that he decided was Enid Tansley's insinuated itself: 'Don't worry about Madigan - whoever he was. Seize the moment!' A refrain that was taken up by Ruth Challis and Gladys Peak. Until all three were beating the sides of his chair with their carrots and knotty roots of ginger. 'Seize the moment, seize the moment, seize the moment . . . BE A SELFISH SLUT!'

  He switched on the television and sat back. On screen: the latest cabriolet from Mercedes-Benz. Silver. Cutting through a green alpine scenery that dissolved into a red, horizonless desert that dissolved into a blinding polar ice cap. A creepily good-looking man at the wheel, a smirk on his tanned, unshaven face that said: 'Rain? Frost? British Telecom? Sorry, folks, never heard of 'em.' And why would he? He was driving forever in perpetual sunshine and stopping in Tuscany to pick up a beautiful woman beside a Renaissance church.

  'That could be me,' Andy slurred aloud.

  The clouds tore open. The sun poured down. He sat up, no longer bloated but light-headed. The weighted medicine ball inside him a helium balloon.

  The television acted on him as a portal. Through it he passed - out of this cold pigsty of a flat, his ridiculous job, rain-sodden England - into an imaginary landscape of the kind that he used to invent for himself, aged ten, in Shaftesbury. The feeling that had tormented him, of life's cruelty and deceit, was fading; the world was bright and honest again. Had he ever lived a moment other than this one? He had thought that his life was over, but it was not.