A Rather Lovely Inheritance

by C. A. Belmond

  “So—what happened to Jeremy’s real father, then?” I asked.

  “Tony got drafted into the Vietnam War, you see...the year that Jeremy was born...” She had started so confidently, but then her voice trailed off as if she couldn’t trust herself to say another word. I felt a stab of sympathy, watching her struggle not to let her voice reveal what was already evident in her eyes.

  “Did he die?” I asked, after a moment of dread.

  “First he was—wounded,” she said. Her voice was small. She looked away from me now, so all I could stare at was her profile, elegant as Helen of Troy. She gazed at the end of her cigarette, then continued, “Sent to a veterans’ hospital, which was beastly for him.When he was released he came back to London with me. But he was weakened by the whole thing. Pneumonia was what finally killed him, but it was the war, all right. It broke his heart. He hated to do—cruel things, pointless things. He was such a gentle, sweet man. Innocent.”

  I sat back, flabbergasted. Then I thought of Jeremy. “For heaven’s sake,Aunt Sheila,” I said, exasperated. “Why didn’t you ever tell Jeremy who his real father was? Especially after Uncle Peter died? People do tell their kids such things, when they’re old enough to handle it. Don’t you think he had a right to know?”

  She paused, flicking ash from her cigarette into the ashtray.

  “I always meant to,” she said mildly. “There never seemed to be a good time.”

  “Oh, geez!” I said. “You’ve got to be kidding!”

  Her mouth dropped open slightly, wonderingly. She’d never really seen me behave this aggressively; to her I’d always been her meek, slightly awed American niece.

  And that was another thing.“Jeremy’s part American!” I said somewhat accusingly. After all, she’d taught him to be a snob, against, as it turned out, his own roots.

  She smiled at me tolerantly. And now I observed tiny age lines at the corners of her eyes and mouth that I hadn’t noticed at the luncheon meeting, when she seemed so dazzling and youthful to me. But perhaps I was always prepared to be dazzled by her. Maybe I needed to have a slightly snobby aunt whose approval, so elusive to get, was a way of setting goals to make myself more chic, more worldly, more grown up.

  “Yes,” she said gently, “Jeremy is American, too. But thanks to Peter, he grew up as any other Englishman. Peter never made Jeremy feel adopted, but always part of his family. And you see, I’m rather the black sheep of my family, so Jeremy didn’t get to know them very well. It really meant a lot to him to be part of your family. He identified with Peter much more than you’d think, in spite of all their fighting. He was very fond of your Grandmother Beryl. And he got to know your Aunt Penelope a bit, at the end of her life, when she put him in charge of her estate. Don’t you see how much this family means to him?”

  I couldn’t argue with that. I knew that it was all a big part of Jeremy’s identity. “How come you didn’t have any children with Uncle Peter?” I said cautiously. I knew I shouldn’t ask. But she was in a mood to tell.

  “I had to have a hysterectomy,” she said simply.“And Peter, I want you to know, was wonderful during that time. And he was wonderful about adopting Jeremy. It was his idea. He said he never wanted the boy to ‘get caught short in the world.’ He wasn’t just talking about money. Upbringing, he said. He wanted Jeremy to have what he called ‘a good foundation’ in life. They really were like father and son. Why should I take that away from either one of them? They worked out their differences, which they might not have done, if I’d given Jeremy an excuse not to take Peter seriously as a father.”

  “Did you love Uncle Peter?” I asked bluntly.That really wasn’t fair. She gave me a look that might have been followed by a “tsk-tsk” but wasn’t.

  “Yes,” she said. “But in a calmer way. I loved his whole family, because they were so much more tolerant than my own. And keen for Peter to marry me. Perhaps they thought he’d end up a solitary old bachelor. I was fond of them all. But Tony was—he was—”

  Well, she didn’t have to finish that one. She returned to her cigarette. And then I realized that I’d never seen her smoke before. Not in the past, and not at lunch the other day.Yet here she was, in her silk caftan and her cute little velvet slippers, with her hair perfectly done, looking so self-possessed—but she was probably a nervous wreck inside.

  “Have you talked to Jeremy at all?” I asked, more sympathetically now.

  “Oh, God,” she groaned.“That French girl he works with put him on a private plane that made three stops before he landed in London. So naturally he was fit to be tied. He came roaring in here, firing off questions. I’m nearly prostrate with answering questions.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said, momentarily reverting to my apologetic self.

  “Oh, I don’t mean you, dear,” she said in amusement. “Yours are a relief compared to the way he behaved. I thought he was going to wring my neck. He’d barely let me answer a question before he’d fire off another. He really didn’t want to listen, I think, beyond just obtaining his lawyerly facts. I tried to tell him how dreadfully sorry I am that it came out like this, but of course...” Her voice trailed off again, but this time she stubbed out her cigarette briskly and leaned forward, looking into my face searchingly.

  “Maybe you could tell him what I’ve told you,” she said urgently. “He listens to you. But then you two were always a little sweet on each other, I think.”

  A sudden hot flush engulfed me. Any time an older woman tells you that she’s noticed you being dopey about her son, it’s bound to make you feel like the world’s biggest fool.

  “You haven’t really told me everything,” I said hurriedly. “Was Tony in London when Jeremy was born?”

  “No,Tony was already in Vietnam,” she said. “We’d been living in a little house with the drummer from the band and his girlfriend. Jeremy was born there. Later, I had it converted into a home for veterans. It’s still a soldiers’ home today.” She sighed. “Unfortunately there are still war veterans in this day and age.They seem to me to get younger with every war. I help raise money to keep it going, and I still look in to see if the volunteers need anything.”

  “Were you and—the drummer—romantically involved, later on?” I asked.

  Aunt Sheila looked truly shocked. “Of course not,” she said. “He got married and had a family of his own. He took a job composing music for TV, and he still helps me raise money for the home and look after it, that’s all. Good heavens, wherever did you get such an idea?”

  So, I realized, Aunt Sheila’s weekly “tryst,” as Jeremy had bitterly described it, was in reality a charity visit, the very “good works” he ridiculed.

  “From Jeremy,” I said.“He knows that you went there every week. If you’d only told him why...”

  “One thing about you Americans,” Aunt Sheila drawled, “you do have a tiresome habit of telling people that they should discuss their feelings more.Why is that? Is it all the therapy you go in for? Or is anything less than a happy ending such an unbearable failure to you?”

  “Your American son is up a creek without a paddle,” I said a bit tartly. “He could even lose his inheritance now. If you keep being secretive, you’re only helping Rollo. So will you please give me Jeremy’s address and telephone number? I’d like to help him, if I can.”

  I was tired and cranky now, and she responded by quickly giving me the information I asked for. I wrote it down, and then something occurred to me.

  “Aunt Sheila,” I asked, “did Jeremy’s father ever—see—Jeremy? You say he returned...”

  She looked up sharply. Then, without a word, she rose from the sofa and disappeared briefly. She came back with an old-fashioned photo, slightly crinkled, with scalloped white edges, the way they used to develop film in the 1960s.

  “Keep it for him, will you? Show it to him when you think he’s in a receptive mood. But please don’t lose it,” she said in a heartfelt tone I’d never heard from her before. “And don’t let Jeremy tear
it up in a fit of pique. But if you can calm him down, he may want to see it.”

  It was a black-and-white photo of a slim man, about nineteen years old, with longish dark hair worn shaggy, like a rock star. He was wearing bell-bottom blue jeans and a white shirt with embroidery on it, and was sitting at a dinky but clean kitchen table. Despite his shaggy style, he was one of those clean-looking, open-faced, cheerful American males; but he also looked a little thin and pale, his eyes a bit sunken and weary, as if he had indeed been ill. Still, he seemed happy. He was balancing an infant on the tabletop, holding him in a standing position, and they gazed at each other, profile to profile, in mutual fascination.

  “This baby is Jeremy?” I asked in delight, after peering at the infant. Then I glanced up quickly at Aunt Sheila. Her eyes were unmistakably misty, but her voice was steady.

  “With Tony,” she said.“He was absolutely smitten with Jeremy. He died two weeks after that picture was taken. Jeremy was only a year old.”

  I kept looking at the photo in the cab as I rode to Aunt Penelope’s apartment. Aunt Sheila was a little concerned when she heard I was spending the night there. She said she thought all the utilities were left on, but if I discovered that anything had been disconnected, I should not hesitate to call her.

  The house was dark when the cab pulled up.The keys that Rupert had given me slid into the locks perfectly and turned without a struggle. I pushed open first the main mahogany door, then the inside one, and fumbled in the dark inside the flat, until I found a light switch on the wall that caused a wall sconce to cast a soft glow. I went from room to room, snapping on more lights.

  I saw that, in her old age, Great-Aunt Penelope had been neat and well-organized.There were clean sheets and towels in the linen closet, and her dishes were stacked in orderly rows in their cupboards.There was a modern coffeemaker, a new bottle of white wine, a pantry with unopened packages of tea, sugar, crackers, tinned ham, marmalade and jam.

  I’d thought I would feel faintly ghoulish, pussyfooting around there, but instead I felt as if I were being looked after by my aunt, and given shelter at night in a strange city. I made tea and crackers with jam, more as comfort food than from hunger. I ate it all gratefully at the little kitchen table. Then I tidied up, using the clean white dish towels with their stitched design of blue trim and red cherries. By the time I was done, it was midnight, and I was so tired that after making up Aunt Penelope’s big canopied bed with new sheets, I tumbled into it and fell deeply asleep, not waking once in the night.

  Chapter Fourteen

  AT NINE THIRTY THE NEXT MORNING I DISCOVERED THAT THE TELEPHONE worked, because it shrilled from its odd place on the dressing table. I stumbled across the room to pick up the alabaster-colored receiver, and I heard Harold’s voice in my ear.

  “Jeremy’s partner,” he said. “You remember.”

  I recalled the silver-haired gentleman who’d read the will. “Just to let you know that I’m sending you some papers to sign,” he said briskly. “A formality, regarding the English estate, because your mother wants you to have the apartment. I e-mailed your father’s lawyer in the States, and your parents have signed off on this. Rupert will bring the papers by, along with his preliminary assessment, which you can use to evaluate what’s in the apartment. Okeh?” he concluded, with a note of finality, as if he were eager to ring off. I stopped him.

  “Where’s Jeremy?” I demanded. “I need to talk to him.”

  There was a pause.“Ah.Well. Jeremy won’t be coming into the office today. Feeling a bit under the weather.You understand. He thinks it’s better for all concerned if I handle this matter from now on.”

  “Harold,” I said quickly, fearing he’d hang up too soon, “what’s going on with the French will? Is it true that Jeremy can somehow lose his inheritance?”

  Harold said carefully,“The whole thing’s absurd, of course. People update and change their wills all the time, especially the elderly, when they outlive the people they’d originally left the estate to. But there are many ways to make trouble among heirs. French law is very complicated and a bit archaic, especially, for instance, in divorce cases. A second wife, for example, could be challenged by the first wife’s children, and end up with practically nothing.”

  “Yes, well, there are no wives here,” I said rather crisply. He was generalizing, as lawyers and doctors do when they think you’re getting too curious, as if too much knowledge is bad for you. “What’s Rollo up to? Is he trying to take the villa from Jeremy? Can he do that?”

  “They’re trying everything,” Harold said. “Including saying that Jeremy ingratiated himself with your great-aunt at the end of her life when she was vulnerable, and talked her into leaving the bulk of the French estate to him.”

  My mind was working on it, turning it over and over like a dog, trying to get a grip on it. “Does it matter that Jeremy’s real father—isn’t—” I asked haltingly.

  Harold said, “It shouldn’t—but it doesn’t help, either. People contest wills for all kinds of ridiculous reasons, and even if it doesn’t stick, it can be a damned nuisance and delay what could have been a very smooth process. Look, it’s all very complicated, and nothing’s been decided yet, and I certainly will keep your parents up on every development as it occurs—”

  “Correct me if I’m wrong,” I said,“but my parents have nothing to do with the French estate. I’m the only other heir in this fracas, other than Rollo. Right?”

  “Yes,” said Harold, “unless your mother wants to sue for a share.”

  “Ho, ho,” I said. “Look, I’m just trying to help Jeremy hold on to what’s his.”

  “As we all are,” said Harold. “We won’t let it go without a fight, I assure you. And your own inheritance in France, too, of course.” I caught the irony in his tone. He was making fun of my rusty little car and snake-infested garage.

  “Rollo must think that car’s worth something, if he tried to steal it,” I said stoutly.

  “We think he was trying to remove it before anyone else knew it was there and could list it as the ‘contents’ that you’re entitled to. He’s fond of antiques, I’m told. Believe me, Severine has the whole thing under control,” Harold said in his best leave-the-driving-to-the-professionals tone.“Jeremy trusts her eminently, and has left the matter in our hands. Of course, if you wish to hire your own solicitor—”

  That’s another thing lawyers and doctors do. Threaten to quit on you if you question their methods. “I would be remiss if I didn’t ask these questions,” I said calmly.

  “Oh, of course, of course,” Harold said smoothly. “In the meanwhile, the best advice I can give you is to get back to business-as-usual in your own life. All too often, people make a mistake of dropping everything they normally do, to devote their entire time and energy to the legal aspects of the estate settlement. But you don’t want to neglect your other personal and business affairs. Best not to over-focus on this.” I’d listened patiently but concluded that yes, he was patronizing me for being young and inquisitive.

  “As for Jeremy,” I persisted, “I still want to speak to him. It’s personal,” I added.

  “I shall convey that to his secretary, who will certainly see that he gets your message,” Harold said in a slightly reproving but polite tone, and we hung up.

  I was already fumbling around in my handbag for Jeremy’s home number. I dialed it right away, and his answering machine picked up on the third ring.Very unceremoniously it said in Jeremy’s recorded voice, “Leave a message at the tone, please. I’ll get back to you.”

  At the beep I said, “Jeremy. It’s Penny.” I stopped short. I had the most uncanny idea that he was there, listening. I tried to brush it off, but it was a powerful impression, based on absolutely nothing except a feeling.

  “Jeremy,” I said again, “are you there? Harold says you’re not feeling well. So where else would you be?” I waited. Honestly, I could feel him listening. I said, “Look, Jeremy, I’ve got some information you n
eed, about a lot of things. And I need to hear from you. Please call me at Aunt Penelope’s.” I left the number and my mobile phone number and e-mail address, even though I knew he had it all. I hung up, feeling unsatisfied.

  Chapter Fifteen

  SOMETHING STUPENDOUS OCCURRED TO ME IN AUNT PENELOPE’S OLD-FASHIONED bathtub, after I’d been experimenting with the water taps. The tub was huge, took forever to fill, and did not have a metal shower overhead, but instead had some archaic rubber-showerheadwith-tube contraption, attachable to the spout of the tub, which you had to use by hand like a garden hose and which kept popping off just when you thought you were up and running. I cursed a great deal because I got shampoo in my eyes. Finally I calmed down and lay back meditatively. And then it hit me, genius that I am.

  “Jesus Christ,” I said. “Jeremy’s not my cousin.”

  I sat bolt upright, and sloshed water all over the floor.Very rapidly, I flashed through every memory I had of him, as if I were flipping a deck of cards that formed a moving-picture show. I felt several stabs of acute embarrassment along the way, blushing deeper and deeper with hot waves of mortification.

  First of all, those childhood games of Secret Agents, which had lulled me into a false sense of security with him. He’d seen me at my most gangly, dopey self. However, this was mild compared to the utter anguish that swept over me at the recollection of recent conversations we’d had, about my love life, my track record with guys, the breakup with Paul, etc. These were harmless enough conversations to have with a cousin; like strangers on a train, you could confide and be sure that everything you said would not be used against you in a future romantic situation. But they were not the kinds of things you told a guy, a regular man, for heaven’s sake.

  “Ah, nuts,” I said aloud each time I remembered things I’d said about my love life.“Ah, nuts,” I’d repeat. For it wasn’t so much what I’d said as how I’d said it.The tone, the gestures. “Loserville,” I said aloud, and my tone of agony reverberated in Aunt Penelope’s elegant hallway. Hearing the echo, I straightened up, wrapped a towel around me, and padded into the bedroom, damp and miserable.