“My God,” whispered Elizabeth.
“To begin with!” I said.
“He also left you his flat in London, along with all its contents … and his yacht … and a whole list of smaller personal effects—and close on ninety-three thousand pounds. It was more than half his fortune.”
“Darling! Darling!” exclaimed Elizabeth.
I said nothing.
“So you see, Mr Wilmot, even when death duties have been taken into account, it’s still a sizeable estate we’re speaking of.”
I remained silent. Elizabeth leaned over and clutched my hand.
“Sweetie, shouldn’t we be going wild or something: hanging from the window and shouting out the good news?”
Mr Blackmore smiled indulgently. “I understand exactly how you feel, Mrs Wilmot.”
But I could neither respond as she desired nor even be bothered to pretend.
“When,” I asked, “was the will made?”
“Finalized in February. To be precise—on the twentieth of February.”
“The day before the Lakes.”
“Excuse me?”
“Nothing.” We had spent nearly a week in Grasmere, walking and climbing during the days (but not very high) and in the evenings sitting by a large fire, either reading or writing or playing Scrabble. It had been an almost perfect holiday. Oliver had said we should return there later in the year so that I could see the place in summer. “Tell me, Mr Blackmore: what chance do his relatives have of winning?”
The solicitor unscrewed the cap of his fountain pen; then screwed it back on. “It’s hard to say. Naturally I don’t know all the circumstances. Yet, even so, I’d think their chances small.”
That answered a further question: obviously Robertson and Keyes weren’t acting for the family.
“You would?” confirmed Elizabeth.
“The trouble is, proceedings of this sort are invariably time-consuming and unpleasant. It’s a truism, of course, yet wrangles over money unfailingly bring out the worst in people. Most people.” He gave a grave but gallant smile in the direction of Elizabeth. “And forgive me but in this instance one gets the impression of—how can I put it?—not so much concern over the actual money or even over the property—as—as…” He sought for the right way to express it.
We waited.
“A feeling, perhaps, of vendetta?”
“Oh, no, that couldn’t be,” exclaimed Elizabeth. “That would be ridiculous.”
“I’m sorry. Maybe I shouldn’t have said it. Strictly off the record. But all I mean is—I’m afraid it won’t be pleasant.”
I didn’t think it ridiculous at all; and was well aware that Mr Blackmore had known I wouldn’t. More … I recognized his statement as being in the nature of a warning and wondered how usual it was, or even ethical, for a solicitor to pass on such impressions: impressions which could only have been gleaned from the confidences of opposite numbers. Nevertheless, I felt a grudging gratitude.
“Tell me,” I said. “It’s slightly off the point but did Oliver—Mr Cambourne—leave anything to his manservant?”
“Oh, yes. He made Mr Furness a most generous legacy.”
I nodded.
He went on: “I didn’t know Mr Cambourne well, but what little I did know of him … this would certainly have led me to expect he would take care of everyone.”
“Yes … I put the question badly.”
“And, in fact, I can tell you that not a single member of the staff at Merriot Park has been overlooked.”
“Like you, I didn’t know him well,” said Elizabeth, “even though we were distantly related. But he struck me, too, as a very sweet person. A very gentle man.”
“Yes.”
There was a further silence.
“Well, now, there are a couple of other points I should be bringing to your attention…”
Mr Blackmore went on to talk of procedure: chiefly how long the litigation might take and about the possibility of an out-of-court settlement. When he had finished and we had run out of questions (though it was mainly Elizabeth who’d been asking those) he said: “I think, then, we might leave it there? I don’t want to take up more of your time than necessary. Naturally, Mr Wilmot, I shall be putting it in writing.”
He asked for the name of my solicitor and made a note of the firm in Baker Street which—about ten months ago—had drawn up my tenancy agreement.
“Or perhaps, honey, Mr Blackmore would be willing to represent you?” suggested Elizabeth.
He smiled. “Yes, of course. We’d be happy to do that, Mrs Wilmot.”
“Fine,” I said. “Thank you.” We shook hands at the door of his office.
29
A minute later we were in the street.
“Well, darling,” said Elizabeth. “Well!” She took my arm and gave it an excited squeeze. “Good old Oliver!”
Outwardly, I could smile.
Inwardly, I was feeling sick all over again, much as I had felt during the last days of March, and all through April, and still to some degree in May and June.
Even now in July a wave of remembrance swept over me at times: Oliver is dead.
Even now in July I woke up most mornings and lay there contentedly for a second or two before receiving the blow afresh: Oliver is dead.
Quite frequently I had thought at various points in the day: That will be something to tell Oliver. Some silly joke I’d heard; some trivial incident I’d seen.
Or:
I must ask Oliver about that.
And standing now in Curzon Street, with Elizabeth holding my arm and gazing up at me excitedly, it was almost second nature by this time to be able to return her smile, listen to her comments—and yet, essentially, to be somewhere else.
He was prepared to do all that for me. What, in return, did I do for him?
What did I do to him?
“Such a marvellous, marvellous thing!” she said.
I know what I did to him. I knocked him so off-balance he forgot to phone his solicitor before jumping in the river. That’s what I did to him.
“Honey, I need a glass of tea. A nice cool glass of tea. With mint in it.”
Or so off-balance he couldn’t be bothered. Had he reached such a point of apathy that even retaliation became a matter of indifference?
“Tea?” I said. “I need something a lot stronger!”
For he could scarcely have guessed, could he—even complex, unpredictable Oliver—scarcely have guessed that he had stumbled on the one quite perfect form of retaliation?
“Stronger than tea?” laughed Elizabeth. “At three-thirty on a Wednesday afternoon in England! Fat chance! But come on, darling, there’s a nice place over there. We can go and dance on all their tables, the more they have the better!”
Yet how in heaven’s name could he ever have been that naive?
I put the question direct. How could you? Did you really think…?
Oliver—oh, come on!—you’d had plenty of lovers. You must have known! You can’t have changed your will each time you fell in love.
Or—this time—did you really think—really think—this time it was going to be for keeps?
Oh, for God’s sake, man!
You were twenty years older than me. How could you have thought such a stupid thing? How could you have done such a stupid thing? Your mother was just so right when she said—when she told me—
I remembered an incident in San Sebastian. We had eaten our lunch there: just plain fish fried in a light batter but the freshest, most delicious fish I had ever tasted. We sat on a long wooden bench in a crowded tavern, shoulder-to-shoulder with rowdy, gesticulating office-workers; and Oliver had said that, on account of my blond hair, quite unusual in Spain, the custom of the country demanded I should kiss any redhead who sat near me on a tavern bench.
“Oh, don’t you ever learn?” I had cried.
And he had immediately, of course, been obliged to shoot out a restraining hand to prevent my leaping up to obey
the custom of the country.
“Johnny, do you realize?”
It was odd to find that, somehow, we were now seated. At a table by the window.
“This ought to make such a world of difference to my father!”
I stared at her, blankly. “I’m sorry?”
“Because—don’t you see? I’ve married a rich man, after all.”
“Oh, Angel Face.”
“Yes, darling?” She laughed and laid her hand upon my sleeve. “Don’t look at me like that. I can’t help it if I prefer a rich husband to a poor one. It isn’t so unforgivable, is it?”
I shook my head and smiled.
“And surely it is preferable? For one thing, people won’t be so quick to say you married me for my money.”
“Who cares what people say?”
“I do, on the whole. But there’s something else. Now, you’ll never need to feel financially dependent. You’ll never need to grow resentful. Oh, yes, Johnny, that could have happened! But Oliver has saved us from it—and therefore I, for one, think it’s a lovely inheritance!”
That old insidious argument. For a minute or so, while we sat in silence, her hand still on my sleeve, I thought about being rich. Rich in my own right. Something I’d probably always hankered for since I had first been exposed to all those bright romantic comedies, all those bright glossy musicals, in which life was endlessly civilized and full of exciting opportunity: a far cry from Folkestone High Street in the rain after the four o’clock performance. During the short walk home I hadn’t invariably been at my nicest.
A rich man. A man of property.
And what a property! Paradise. If that was a word which had occurred to me at the beginning of November when I’d had no more idea of the place ever being mine than I might have had of becoming king—less, as it happened, because I’d sometimes had fantasies of marrying Princess Anne—if it had seemed to me then very nearly a paradise, how would it appear in full summer, with the rose gardens ablaze, the lily pond sparkling in the sunshine, the doors of the summerhouse thrown open … the freshly mown lawns, the fruit orchards, the swimming pool…?
But put aside all that. Merriot Park was the home in which Oliver had grown up; where he must have been familiar with every corner of the house and garden—played on the tennis court, slid down the banisters, explored the clock tower, placed his hand on every doorknob. If I were to own Merriot Park—oh my God, if I were to own Merriot Park!—only imagine the sense of sharing; the sense of connection. The sense of continuity
And yet … And yet…
And yet it was during this minute of silence, with Elizabeth’s hand still resting on my sleeve, that I was finally able—no, not to make up my mind (for I was sure I had done that already)—but to find the courage, the resolution, to put my decision into words.
I said: “I can’t accept it.”
“Can’t accept what, honey?” (Such a quantity of good luck? Such unforeseen benevolence on the part of providence?)
“I can’t accept the legacy. Either the money or the house.”
After a moment, she removed her hand, slowly.
“But Johnny—why ever not?”
“I just can’t, that’s all.”
“You mean … because of the family? All the nastiness there’ll be?”
“Partly.”
“But Oliver wanted you to have that money. The money and the house. You, not them. He left those things to you, Johnny.”
“No, Elizabeth. You don’t understand. And in any case…”
“What?”
“We already have enough money.”
“Forget the money, then. The house.”
“No.”
“Why not?”
I shrugged.
She said, coolly: “Merriot Park is the kind of house I’ve always dreamed of. And now it’s being offered to us as a gift—as a gift, mind! But when I ask why we can’t accept it, all you do is shrug and turn away. Well, I’m not satisfied with that. I happen to be thinking not only of our own futures but those of our children. Have you thought yet what an incredible place it’d be to bring up children?”
“Yes, but have you thought yet that Mrs Cambourne could easily live for another ten years? Twenty years? Our children might grow a bit long in the tooth while waiting to be brought up there.”
“I doubt she’ll live for another twenty years.”
“Then will you be hoping for her to die?”
“No, but … honey, couldn’t we maybe move in with her? Perhaps she’d be glad of the company. Our oldest son: we’d call him Oliver! Young Oliver! Wouldn’t it be like—practically be like—having her own grandchild running all about the place?”
Had she but known it, she had picked on the most seductive argument she could possibly have found.
“And supposing we don’t have a son?”
“Why, we’d call our first daughter Sarah. But, anyway, we shall have a son.”
“You might change your mind and want to call him Theodore?”
“No. I promise you.”
“Not even if by then he’s come around, is playing the devoted dad again?”
“Don’t you trust me? I’ve given you my word.”
There followed another long silence.
“Sometimes,” I said, “I feel that you view life in very simple terms.”
“Sometimes I feel the same about you.”
“But I’m not the one who said it would be just like having her own grandchild running about. Why would it?”
“Because she’s a lonely old woman—and probably all mothers want to be grandmothers.”
It was hardly worth discussing.
“Yet listen, Angel Face. If you’ve truly set your heart on Merriot Park—you know what?—possibly we could buy it one of these days? I’d like that. I really would.”
The idea began to excite me—in a way that nothing else had excited me for months—although to her it must have appeared crazy.
The next moment, however, there was a waitress standing beside us. The suggestion disappeared. I wasn’t sure if this was the right time to revive it.
“Sorry to keep you waiting. We’re that busy! What would you both like?”
Merriot Park, please.
“Just tea,” I answered, absently.
“Pot of tea for two? Cakes?”
“No, thank you.”
The girl moved off. Elizabeth said quietly, “Honey, simple my view of life most likely is—but, even so, I wasn’t born yesterday! I know why Oliver left you Merriot Park. I don’t mind. Honestly I don’t. It doesn’t make me love you one jot the less. Nor him, either.”
“Oh, come off it, Elizabeth—you didn’t love him at all. You simply thought he was sweet … very sweet. Very gentle. Have I quoted you correctly?”
“Johnny. Don’t fight me. This is much too important to get swallowed up in some fight.”
I cupped my chin and stared out of the window.
“Honey…”
“How long have you known?”
“Oh, for ages—just ages! But let’s make a pact. If I don’t find it traumatic, you mustn’t, either. Deal?”
I turned back to face her. Knowing she had guessed didn’t seem to have affected me.
“Okay,” I said. “Deal.”
The waitress brought cakes. When she had left, I offered the plate to Elizabeth. She smiled at it, too … and accepted a brandy snap.
“But only if you do—there’s one for you, as well.”
“You didn’t get your iced tea.”
“Sweetie. Going back to what we were saying.” She handed me my cup.
“Must we?”
“Oliver wanted you to have that house. Obviously he did.”
I felt a chill run through me; gave a shudder. “Yes, I’m sure he did. While he was making out his will.”
She looked at me, bewilderedly.
“Darling, do I really need to spell it out?”
“Spell what out?”
&nb
sp; But in her tone I caught the glimmers of awareness.
I said it nonetheless. I felt a certain release in saying it—saying it out loud for the first time. Heaven help me, perhaps I felt a certain pride.
“It was because of me he killed himself.”
She continued to gaze at me.
“But you said…” Her voice was practically a whisper. “You said that…”
“His death was accidental?”
She nodded.
“Well, naturally I did! What else would you have expected me to say?”
I added—and with a distinct touch of cruelty which I probably intended:
“Does that throw a different light on things?” (Have another cake, Elizabeth.)
“Of course it does.” And after a moment: “Yes, of course it does!”
For a long time we stayed immersed in our thoughts. Now it was she, principally, who gazed through the window.
“Well, then, that’s it,” she said, turning back at last. “That’s it, isn’t it? At least it made a nice dream. While it lasted.”
“Yes.”
I paused.
“There was another reason we couldn’t have accepted it, though.”
“Was there?” She sounded indifferent.
“If the will were contested, imagine the muckraking that would follow. The media would have a field day.”
“They didn’t have much of a field day over his suicide.”
“How do we know? Apart from those few lines in the Stop Press we didn’t even see the papers. We didn’t listen to the radio. Didn’t watch TV.”
I picked up a fragment of brandy snap, transferred it to my mouth.
“And, anyway, we’d never want to run the risk—surely? Bearing in mind what damage it could do to Oliver’s reputation.”
“Not to mention yours.”
“No … but, oddly enough, I wasn’t thinking of that.”
“I know you weren’t. But I suppose you can’t blame me for doing so?” The warmth had started to edge back into her voice; she seldom stayed cross for long. “In any case, Johnny … how do you know that Oliver’s mother isn’t bluffing? Wouldn’t she be the very last to want to cause damage to his reputation?”
“Well, I’m not so sure,” I said, after I had briefly mulled this over. “I can imagine Sarah Cambourne forgetting everything in her desire to get even.” (No, she could never get even; the Furies themselves wouldn’t have been able to find the eye or the tooth matching those which she had lost.) “Right from the start she gave me to understand she was ruthless. Pitiless in the protection of her young.”
The Man on the Bridge Page 18
