A Rather Lovely Inheritance

by C. A. Belmond

  Jeremy had been watching me for my reaction.“Well, don’t cry for Rollo. He’ll get about as much in bank assets. Nobody expected old Aunt Pen to have hoarded that much. Guess they wanted that money right away, so they didn’t peep about the English will.”

  “Maybe they want the cash to pay for those lawyers to help them contest the French will,” I said. “What a pack of coyotes. Are they as expensive as they look?”

  “Super-expensive,” he said darkly. “It’ll be a good fight, but we’ll win it, hands down.”

  “Is the French property worth a lot?” I asked. “What about that villa? Did I hear that right? It’s yours, isn’t it?” His face lighted up with enthusiasm and appreciation.

  “Apparently so! Haven’t seen it yet. Heard it’s a bit tumbledown and needs repair, but the value is in the land. Severine’s handling that end of things. I don’t know why Aunt Pen left it to me,” he said wonderingly. “By the time she asked me to help her, she didn’t go down there much anymore, until that last week when she went back. She was sharp as a tack, but she would keep asking about my life instead of her own legal issues. She told me straight out that she thought Rollo Jr. was a fool, but she felt sorry for him, for being so ‘stunted.’ Said the kids picked on him at school. He’s quite fond of antiques, she said, so I’m not surprised that she left him all the French furnishings and whatnot.”

  I was picturing Jeremy patiently listening to Aunt Penelope rambling on, peppering him with questions about his life, which he’d rather not have discussed.

  “Why is Rollo going to contest the French will? It’s pretty obvious that Aunt Penelope definitely wanted you to get the villa,” I said.

  Jeremy shook his head. “I don’t know. French inheritance law can sometimes be more complicated, and perhaps Dorothy and Rollo are hoping it’s easier to fuddle with.”

  When he fell silent I asked tentatively, “Any idea what’s in the garage?”

  “A car, I should think,” he said, looking intrigued. He became brisk and businesslike again. “You and I had better get over there and have a look.We can catch a plane”—he glanced at his watch—“Damn, we could go right away, but Mum insists I bring you round for tea. I’ll tell her we can only do a quick stop now, just to say hello. So we’ll see Mum, fly down to Cap d’Antibes, maybe have dinner in Nice. I know a good place. Okeh?”

  Chapter Seven

  AUNT SHEILA LIVED IN A PRETTY APARTMENT BUILDING IN CHELSEA, with the speediest elevator I’d ever been in, which shot us up to her floor in total silence.

  “Are you sure she won’t mind us just popping in on her like this?” I quavered as I followed him down the hallway, absolutely certain that his mother would blame me for this instead of her adorable son.

  “Of course it’s all right. She was fine on the telephone,” he said, leading me to her door. He had a key and we went right in.

  Aunt Sheila was seated on a pale green sofa in her drawing room when we arrived; she’d been glancing at a newspaper in an effortless way, as if nothing the world did could surprise or upset her. Her hand was cool, soft and smooth, and she gave it to me for a brief but sincere moment of welcome.

  She looked exactly as she had all those years ago, which would seem impossible but was nonetheless true. Same blonde hair cut into the same chic bob with bangs, same slender figure, only perhaps a bit stiffer. She wore a sleek, expensive cream-colored suit cut perfectly for her; and her pretty legs did not require high heels to look good, so she wore buttery-soft-looking delicate leather flats. She had green eyes, a perfect little nose and chin, and a slightly pouty mouth. Despite her reserve, there was something sexy about her. She wore gold jewelry—a slim wristwatch, small thick hoop earrings, a short necklace that looked like a golden twisted rope, a few subtle rings that twinkled when she held out her hand, and a bangle bracelet with elegant stones.

  “So this is Penny,” Aunt Sheila said, glancing back at Jeremy in amusement. “She looks just like her mother. Doesn’t she, Jeremy?” Jeremy looked a little embarrassed.“Penny, dear,” Aunt Sheila said in a quieter tone, “do let me say that I was most sorry to hear about your great-aunt. Penelope was always kind to me.”

  “Thank you,” I said, not quite knowing how to respond.

  “I know you’re both in a tearing hurry, but can’t I have Alice fix you some lunch?”

  I glanced at Jeremy as if to say, Okay, fella, you handle this.

  “Can’t do it,” Jeremy said.“Penny’s been travelling a lot, and I want to finish up this business in Nice today.” A maid in a long black dress and white apron appeared at the doorway.

  Aunt Sheila nodded to her, then turned to us and sighed. “Take a couple of sandwiches with you, then, Penny,” she said reasonably.“Just in case you get hungry on the plane. They’re in the dining room.” Jeremy stood aside for her to lead the way across the hall.

  The dining room was flooded with light that came from a wall of big windows looking out on the Thames, at picture-postcard views of the city. Little boats were gliding along quietly below us, past fairy-tale church spires and venerable old bridges. It made me catch my breath with delight. Jeremy smiled at me as he noted my reaction. Then I saw that the table, laid with white linen, pale yellow napkins, and gold-rimmed plates and glasses, was set with a buffet platter of little sandwiches, salads, and a plate of cookies, all flanked by two vases of yellow roses and violet-colored sweet peas, and a bowl of fruit. I looked at Jeremy reproachfully.

  “Oh, all right, a quick nibble,” he said.

  “Boy, that’s big of you,” I said, and Aunt Sheila laughed.

  We sat down and ate. Jeremy must have told her on the telephone about how things went at the reading of the will, because Aunt Sheila never asked, never mentioned it, and seemed more interested in “catching up” on my little life so far.“Re-e-eally?” she drawled when I told her, for instance, about the wife-of-Napoleon picture we’d been shooting in Cannes.

  “I think history is most fascinating when you can actually watch it being made,” she said. “I was in Paris in the summer of 1968,” she added, almost boasting. “During the general strike. We hitchhiked to Saint-Tropez,” she added, casting a daring, almost challenging look at Jeremy.

  “Jeremy doesn’t like me to talk about my hippie days,” she said.

  “Mother, really,” he said, mildly reprovingly. “You never qualified as a hippie.”

  “True,” she allowed, “but I was reasonably hip. Jeremy looks just like Peter when he puts that face on,” she told me.

  It was the one and only time she mentioned her husband, and the effect on Jeremy was to make him raise his eyebrows, ever so slightly. When Jeremy’s mobile phone shrilled, he seemed glad to excuse himself and slip out to a back room to take the call.That left Aunt Sheila and me alone, but before I could get scared she turned to me conspiratorially and said, “He’s a pain in the arse, but he’s awfully good-looking, isn’t he?”

  “He does look good,” I admitted.

  “His wife was a positive beast to him,” she confided in a low voice. “Made him miserable. She was a nervous type, really, the kind that has to be doing something constantly to distract herself. Club-hopping every night. Endless chatter. You want to pet them and make them calm down, that type, but they won’t let you. It makes them nervous to be calm. Anyway, she thought my poor lad was dull when he occasionally wanted to sit home at night in his robe and slippers before the fire in the winter. She never realized how hard he works, how tired he gets after all that travel. In the end, she ran off with his best friend.”

  This was more than my mother had ever told me. In fact, I was sure Mom didn’t know this.

  “Do keep that under your hat,” Aunt Sheila said in a low voice, her glance darting toward the hallway, anticipating Jeremy’s return. “He’d kill me if he knew I’d told you. But sometimes you have to tell people. It’s not good to suffer in silence.” She sighed. “Look out for him, will you?” she asked. “He won’t let me. He’ll listen to you.
He trusts you. I’m glad, because sometimes life can make you mistrust the opposite sex.” She said this in the tones of someone who liked the opposite sex.

  Then she leaned forward as if she were working herself up to saying something more, and even opened her mouth to do so, but we both heard Jeremy’s brisk footsteps coming toward us. Aunt Sheila straightened up and smiled brightly. She rose, glanced at her slim gold-and-diamond watch, said she had an appointment, kissed me lightly and told me to give my parents her “love,” which surprised me a little. Jeremy opened the door for her and summoned the lift, and let her go without us because I’d asked hesitatingly if I might use the powder room.

  “You show her, will you, Jeremy, and lock up for me?”Aunt Sheila said as she flitted out the door, waving away my thanks for the nice lunch.

  “Where’s she off to?” I asked when I returned from the spotless pale blue bathroom.

  “She goes to visit a veterans’ center once a week,” Jeremy said dryly. “On Tuesdays. On Wednesdays and Fridays she shops and takes exercise. On Mondays she’s got her land mines and women’s shelter. Not exactly the hippie lifestyle she’d have you believe, is it?”

  “Oh, leave her alone.Your mother,” I said, “is younger than you.”

  “Yes, well, she’s been having an affair with one of those blokes who works with her at the veterans’ home,” he said a trifle tartly.“He’s supposed to be a musician. Composes musical bits for television shows for the BBC.They’ve been an item as long as I can remember. Father knew it, and I knew it, and the whole fucking world knew it.”

  I was shocked. Not that Aunt Sheila had been having an affair for years and years, or had cheated on stuffy old Uncle Peter, who, quite frankly, was disapproving enough to drive any woman bats; but that Jeremy had so uncharacteristically blurted out the information to me right here, in his mother’s apartment, as he was courteously opening the door for me.

  “Really?” I asked, rather hushed in awe. I didn’t know what to say, and I wouldn’t have said it if I did, for fear he’d bite my head off. But once we got in the elevator he resumed his professional air, as if he hadn’t just said something astounding and personal.

  “You ought to call your mum,” he said reflectively. “Tell her how things went, and where we’re headed. I feel certain she’d want to know.”

  We went back to the hotel, and he plunked himself in front of the television set and watched the news, as if we were in any old hotel room instead of the most gorgeous pit stop on earth, while I hastily packed my duds and phoned home.

  I didn’t want to be responsible for making us miss the plane, so I was very succinct with my mother. I said, “Ma, I can’t talk long because I have to catch a plane with Jeremy.You got the London apartment. It’s beautiful.Yes, I love it! But I don’t know why you’re giving it to me. Jeremy says it’s worth over seven hundred thousand pounds. And I got the garage in France and whatever’s in it.Yeah, the garage. Jeremy got the villa, but Rollo Jr. got all the furniture. I’m gonna go look at the French stuff now.Yup. I’m getting on a plane.With Jeremy. It was his idea.Yes, we ate. At Aunt Sheila’s. Sandwiches and cookies. I’ll tell you later. Oh—and she says love to you and Dad.” I lowered my voice. “Yes, she said love.”

  I think that was the point at which my mother said, “Well, that’s what a couple hundred thousand pounds will do for you,” but I did not respond because although Jeremy appeared to be focusing on the TV screen, I thought he might actually be listening to what I said.

  “Did the other relatives get anything?” My father’s voice popped on. Mother must have gestured to him to pick up the extension. I explained again about what Rollo Jr. got, and Dad said, “Good.Then everybody is happy, no?”

  “No,” I said. “Rollo Jr. is going to contest the French will.”There was a silence, and then my mother said, “Let me speak to Jeremy, will you, darling?”

  I handed him the receiver. He didn’t look at all surprised. He said some reassuring things to her, just as if he were talking to a client and an aunt simultaneously, then I heard him say, “Yes, I’m sure she does.” Then he hung up.

  “Sure who does?” I asked suspiciously.

  “You,” he said, gesturing to the bellhop who’d appeared, to pick up my bag.

  “I do what?” I persisted.

  “Need a little looking after,” he shot back. “I wonder, can she mean to protect you from unscrupulous men who chase after young heiresses? Because she didn’t elaborate.”

  I was really, truly embarrassed and could not imagine what had possessed my mother to make her say such a thing. “Of course I deserve VIP treatment,” I said. “You should have noticed by now.”

  By this time I didn’t care what I said. Things were moving rapidly and I knew it couldn’t last. I knew I was being Cinderella for a day, staying in five-star hotels, acting like an heiress, being invited to lunch.Tomorrow things would slink right back to normal, I felt sure. Those relatives of mine would somehow succeed in taking all the money away, no doubt—not because of any lack of skill on Jeremy’s part but simply because thieves focus all their energy on a swindle and are never distracted by useless things like love and work and great conversation.

  Yes, tomorrow things would go back to normal, and I would be short of funds again, staying in crummy chain-hotels on a low-budget production if I was lucky enough to be gainfully employed, and my glamorous cousin would go back into his world of money, and we wouldn’t see each other again for another hundred years. So why not make the most of this little fairy-tale blip in time?

  Chapter Eight

  AT LEAST THERE WERE NO MONKEYS ON THE CORPORATE JET. THERE were, however, some guys in suits—English lawyers and their male clients who were very jocular, particularly after they availed themselves of the scotch and other stuff in the bar.The jet was outfitted with an array of crystal glasses in every conceivable cocktail shape, anchored to the padded bar in some mysterious way so that they wouldn’t go flying about like missiles in the event of turbulence. A strip of colored light above the bar kept changing colors and bursting into star patterns against the black background, for no other reason than entertainment value. And it worked; for about the first five minutes, anyway, when the guys made bets on how long it would take for the galactic light show to run the gamut of colors and return to its original blue.While clattering ice and munching nuts, the guys shot a few more covert, curious glances at me, the only woman aboard.They acted like rowdy schoolboys who felt compelled to behave at least minimally well but occasionally guffawed at their own presumably bawdy little jokes.

  Jeremy eyed the other men in that silent way a guy with a girl sort of warns the other fellows to bugger off.We sat on two of the few seats that were facing forward, like the pilot. They were wide and leathery, with ample leg room, but, as Jeremy noted wryly, amazingly not that comfortable nonetheless.The other seats, which could hold eight people apiece, were more like two extremely long black sofas, facing their counterparts across the aisle.The plane was long and narrow, like a limousine, with ebony-colored draperies, carpeting, padded walls. It was apparently designed on the assumption that its passengers would be in groups, like an entire marketing department or a football team, who would earn the privilege of flying privately by discussing how best to kick ass. And indeed, that’s what the other guys seemed to be doing.

  I told Jeremy that it was awfully nice of him to get hold of the plane for this trip, thereby sparing us the crowds, noise, and toilet lines of commercial flights.“It was luck,” he insisted modestly.“The jet just happened to be available. It somehow never is.”

  Then he settled back and soon fell asleep, in that way you do when you’re totally wiped out, where your head is flung back and your mouth drops wide open. Having him asleep made it possible for me to study him a little more closely—the left hand without its wedding band, the elegant understated wristwatch with several time zones. He had honest hands, wide and capable. The corners of his mouth were turned down a little; perhaps t
his had to do with seeing his mother today. I wondered how often he visited her, and where he lived. I recalled what she said about his wife being mean to him. People look so innocent when they sleep, and Jeremy looked, for once, rather vulnerable.

  He woke later, with a guilty, apologetic start.“Sorry. Conked right out on you, didn’t I?” he asked sheepishly. I grinned. “Fell down on the job,” he said in self-mockery, “right after promising your mum I’d look after you.” He glanced at the men, who’d gotten a little louder, then at me.“Seriously,” he said, as if our conversation was never interrupted by sleep, “how’s your love life?” His tone was protective, not leering, like a vigilant big brother asking a kid sister.

  “I’ve had my moments,” I said thoughtfully, “and some pretty bad ones at that—you know, the obsessive relationship—but I can’t honestly say I’ve been really, truly, desperately in love.” I meant it. Because if what I had with Paul was all there was to love, I’d shoot myself.

  “Desperately,” he repeated. “Trust me, you wouldn’t want to be.”

  “Does that mean you were?” I asked automatically, idiotically forgetting for the moment what Aunt Sheila had told me.Then I caught my breath, which made it worse, because it was a natural enough question to ask, but by gasping at myself I betrayed that I’d heard something. Mercifully he assumed it was from my mother. He just laughed ruefully.

  “Oh, you can tell your mum that I’ve recovered from the divorce with at least a modicum of self-respect,” he said lightly,“some females here and there, but no steady girlfriend as yet. Which frankly is fine with me. I’m not ready to take the plunge again.”