The Inheritance of Solomon Farthing

by Mary Paulson-Ellis

  ‘He was old style,’ said Nico. ‘A gentleman. Made sure the debts were paid.’

  The women nodded as Nico puffed out a cloud of dewberry smoke, the memory of Mr Methven suddenly shiny in their eyes. Solomon wondered if he could fake a soldier’s career so that these people might take care of him, too, at the end. He hadn’t been to war, of course, one of the lucky generation who never had been called to serve. But there was always his grandfather’s legacy to lean on, Captain Godfrey Farthing, an officer whose job it had been to blow the whistle and send all those young men to their deaths. Up and out. Trench to trench. Look the other man in the eye as you stab him in the gut with your shiny bayonet. That might do, Solomon thought, if he had to make something up.

  ‘He was sweet,’ said Pawel. ‘Mr Methven. He liked to tell stories.’

  ‘What sort of stories?’ asked Solomon.

  ‘War stories mostly. Aren’t they the best?’

  Estelle, it seemed, had a thirst for blood.

  ‘He was in the navy, wasn’t he?’ said Kassia. ‘Arctic convoys. He talked about shooting the chickens when they didn’t have anything left to eat.’

  ‘Do they have chickens in the navy?’ said Pawel.

  Only in tins, Solomon thought.

  ‘He preferred Oxtail,’ said Nico.

  ‘Oxtail?’

  ‘Soup. The only thing he could manage in the end.’

  ‘He liked the navy,’ said Pawel. ‘All the boys together.’

  ‘Just like Mr R.,’ Estelle smiled.

  The four care assistants laughed. Solomon remembered the old sailor with the slippers who had accosted him when he first arrived, eyes the colour of the Aegean like a glorious boy from Solomon’s youth. Kassia took a reel of cotton from her pocket, held it out for Solomon to see.

  ‘He used to sew their buttonholes for them,’ she said. ‘That was what he told me. This was in his room when he died.’

  ‘I didn’t know boys could sew,’ said Estelle.

  ‘Boys can do anything,’ said Pawel, taking the spool of thread from Kassia to look at before slipping it into his pocket. ‘If you give them a chance.’

  Solomon was disappointed to see the reel of cotton disappear. It might have come in useful, given the current state of his attire. He pulled at his jacket sleeve to hide the flap of one loose cuff.

  ‘Did he talk much about his past?’ he asked.

  ‘He always mentioned the cold,’ said Nico. ‘The ice. How it got to him.’

  ‘He had a coat made of fur,’ said Estelle.

  ‘I thought that was a hat?’ said Kassia.

  Perhaps both, they agreed.

  The huddle of care workers were silent for a moment as they contemplated the soldiering required of a previous generation, turned their faces to the sun.

  ‘Do you know what happened to the rest of Mr Methven’s things?’ Solomon asked.

  The care workers all frowned, sucked on their cigarettes, shrugged. Thomas Methven had been old when he died, almost a hundred. By the time one got to that age, there was almost nothing left. Solomon rummaged in his pocket, brought out all that remained of the family silver. Pawn ticket, no.125. That small square of blue.

  ‘Do any of you recognize this?’

  The care assistants peered at the slip of paper, shook their heads. Except Pawel.

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Well, he showed it to me once. Said it belonged to his father.’

  ‘Did he ever talk about his father?’ asked Solomon. ‘Where he came from?’

  Pawel shrugged again, lids low over lovely brown eyes. ‘Not that I remember.’

  ‘He never had any children, did he,’ said Estelle, quick jut of her lower jaw as she released a perfect smoke ring.

  ‘Said he wished he had done,’ replied Nico. ‘What’s a man without a boy? That was what he used to say.’

  ‘He never said that to me,’ Kassia said.

  ‘You’re a girl.’

  ‘What’s a man without a girl,’ said Estelle, tossing her cigarette into a bush. Kassia put out her cigarette too, pinched off the coal, popped the tab back into the box.

  ‘All he had at the end was that suit they dressed him in for his funeral,’ she said.

  ‘What was it like?’ asked Solomon.

  ‘Old-fashioned,’ said Nico.

  ‘Gorgeous,’ said Estelle.

  ‘Blue,’ said Kassia.

  A proper burial gown.

  An hour of search and counter search and Solomon came out of New Register House to find the dog lying waiting for him beneath the security guard’s desk. Next to it was an empty Macdonald’s carton, a strong smell of burger lingering in the air. The guard looked up as Solomon approached.

  ‘Get what you needed?’

  ‘Sort of.’ Solomon pulled a face, patting at the inside pocket of his jacket containing a crumpled piece of paper with the beginnings of the Methven family tree. ‘You?’

  They both looked at the dog.

  ‘Aye, no bother.’

  The security man handed over the piece of string and Solomon felt lighter somehow, like a child carrying a birthday balloon. He glanced left, then right, to make sure none of Freddy Dodds’s men had followed him, set off down the steps of New Register House towards the anonymity of Princes Street. He almost made it before he saw him. Colin Dunlop of Dunlop, Dunlop & Dunlop People Search lounging by the gate.

  Colin Dunlop was the modern face of the industry now, an Heir Hunter who looked as though he belonged in the Edinburgh club. Suit, check. Striped shirt, check. Silk tie, check. Even polished shoes. Despite knowing all the tricks in the Heir Hunter bible, Colin Dunlop had joined the ranks of Edinburgh’s finest. Solicitors and Surveyors. Estate Agents and Accountants. Edinburgh Men who talked up the price over a pint after the rugby, then shook hands all round so that they could keep it in the club. But Solomon knew that Colin Dunlop had started out scrapping on the same doorsteps as he had, understood how to sniff out a punt.

  Solomon wiped sweat from his palms down the sides of his jacket, attempted to straighten the tweed. The last thing he needed was a competitor getting in on the act. Four days the DCI had given him. More like twenty-four hours, if Colin Dunlop was on his tail. But despite his clammy hands, Solomon knew that he would have to stop and speak. It was what this city demanded, an ability to pass the time of day without descending into a fight.

  Colin Dunlop was smoking a cigarette – a sure sign that he was not a true Edinburgh Man at heart.

  ‘Hello, Solomon,’ he said, smoke dribbling from his mouth. ‘Nice to see you.’

  Typical of this city, Solomon thought. Start the conversation with something that was probably an untruth. Still, he played along, as any Edinburgh Man must.

  ‘Dunlop,’ he said, ‘lovely to see you, too.’

  Shook the hand that his competitor held out. After which they got down to the real business.

  ‘You on a case, then?’ Colin Dunlop sucked on his tab.

  Yes, no, maybe, Solomon thought, decided obfuscation was best.

  ‘Favour . . . for a friend. Bit of family history.’

  Colin Dunlop flicked ash towards the ground that lay between them, landed a sprinkle on the toe of Solomon’s shoe.

  ‘Heard the DCI requested a visit.’

  Christ! What was it with Edinburgh that all of one’s secrets leaked? But in an unusual display of camaraderie, or perhaps just because he enjoyed slow torture, Solomon’s competitor didn’t press his hand.

  ‘Asked you to look after her dog, did she?’

  Solomon hadn’t even known DCI Franklin had a dog. But camouflage was camouflage, whatever shape it took.

  ‘Er, yes. Something like that,’ he said.

  They both looked down at the dog, which uttered a small whine and sidled behind Solomon’s left leg. Colin Dunlop took another drag of his cigarette, till the tip glowed red.

  ‘Your aunt wants to see you, by the way. Said it was urgent.’

  Solomon felt sweat gather between
his shoulder blades at this reminder that he had ‘borrowed’ his aunt’s Mini without asking some time ago and not returned it yet.

  ‘You her messenger boy now?’

  Colin Dunlop just laughed. ‘A favour. For a friend.’

  Of course, thought Solomon.

  You scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours.

  He wondered for a moment what exactly his aunt who wasn’t really his aunt needed from Colin Dunlop. Decided it was probably best not to find out. He tugged at the string in the hope that the dog was ready to leave now, attempted to move past. But Colin Dunlop wasn’t finished yet.

  ‘I’m on a case myself,’ he said. ‘Something bigger than usual.’

  The typical Heir Hunter’s boast.

  ‘Oh yes?’

  ‘You might find it interesting.’

  ‘Bit tied up at the moment.’

  They both looked at the string in Solomon’s hand. Then Colin Dunlop shrugged, tossed the cigarette into the street in front of them.

  ‘Have it your own way.’ Reached to crush the still-smoking butt with the toe of his polished brogue. ‘I had a dog once. Got rid of it. Bit the hand that fed.’

  As Colin Dunlop disappeared into New Register House, laughing as he leapt up the steps two, by two, by two, Solomon Farthing knew that the hand which normally fed him had delivered something of a similar result. Thomas Methven (deceased), a charlatan of a different kind. A ninety-something old man, died in a nursing home of natural causes, nothing suspicious. Just another ordinary case of someone with no immediate next of kin.

  And yet . . .

  However hard Solomon searched, there had been no birth certificate to match the d.o.b. given on the death certificate. No children of the right name anywhere in the records to match the relevant dates. In fact, there had been no sign of how his new client had begun at all. Solomon had no idea why, but just as he had surmised at the nursing home, Thomas Methven wasn’t really Thomas Methven. He was someone else instead.

  Two

  Godfrey Farthing’s shop hadn’t changed in the forty years since Solomon had last been there. Down a close off the tail end of the Royal Mile, barely the toss of a fag butt from the city’s mortuary, all those indigents lying in its fridges, waiting to be claimed. Solomon approached the shop as though by stealth, hoping to avoid the attentions of his creditors. It always had been a race to the finish line in his industry, and he had not crossed first for some time now. But as he made his way along the narrow street, Solomon knew that he had one advantage. A pawn ticket belonging to a dead man tucked into his top pocket – the only clue to the truth.

  The door to his grandfather’s shop was shuttered, window covered by a griddle of metal, thick layer of dirt coating every inch of the glass. The padlock was rusted, an orange stain on the ground where it had bled out from the rain. Solomon lifted it to see, let it fall back with a clatter. It didn’t matter that he no longer had a key with which to gain entry. He wasn’t planning on going in the front.

  He left the dog tied to the grating in the hope that it might bark should any suspicious-looking men come along. Temptation Lane. That was what his aunt used to call this place, an ancient passageway that once had a playhouse at the head and a brothel at the foot. The playhouse was long gone, but the brothel still existed, windows covered, door permanently ajar. It was called a sauna now – a classic Edinburgh sleight of hand. Scratch the glitter of the city’s tourist industry and it quickly gave way to dirt.

  Solomon glanced over his shoulder to check that he was alone as he wove his way further along the close, tall buildings looming on both sides. He emerged into a tiny courtyard where his aunt who wasn’t really his aunt had once lived in a tenement flat on the far side. She had been fifteen when Solomon first arrived in the city, and always ordered to look out for him when she’d rather have been somewhere else instead.

  Solomon made for an anonymous entrance in the opposite corner, all dead leaves and rubbish blown in, somewhere he had stayed for little more than a decade but still the only place he had ever called home. A panic of woodlice scattered as he forced the flimsy back door. One kick, then another, a shove with his shoulder and he was in. At once the damp took hold, that familiar chill which ran to the centre of his bones. Welcome home, Solomon thought, staring into the dark.

  Solomon had first come to Edinburgh when he was seven years old, mother gone, father gone, too. A boy with nothing but a borrowed suitcase and a lucky silver charm in his pocket.

  Strike Sure.

  He’d arrived to the swirl of steam and bustle that was Waverley station, never been to Scotland before. It had been raining, a steady fall splashing over the sets and running through the open gutters as he hurried through a mishmash of Edinburgh streets after the grandfather he had only just met. The whole city had shimmered like some sort of dark mirror, each street lamp a halo in amongst the murk. His grandfather had led Solomon through the dark wynds and passageways, striding forwards, forwards, always forwards, until they arrived in the same narrow close Solomon had walked down now.

  He remembered holding the silver cap badge tight in his pocket as he tilted his head to search for the moon high above in a patch of dark sky. Caught the glint of three golden balls hanging from a sign instead. Like three golden eggs, he had thought then, the promise of treasure. The mark of a pawnshop, he knew now, somewhere much more concerned with the ordinary stuff of life.

  For a moment Solomon was a boy of seven years old again, rather than a man not far from ten times that. Then he stepped through the back doorway into shadow, the stink of eggs boiling and the burn of a single-bar fire catching in his throat.

  Inside it was as though the past forty years had come and gone with nothing in between. Solomon moved along the passageway of his old home, the tips of his fingers touching now and then at cold plaster that crumbled as he passed. To his left there was a room which once housed an open fire and a grandfather clock that ticked in the gloom. Off that was the box room in which he had slept, light seeping from the casement to cast shadows onto the distempered walls. Opposite was his grandfather’s bedroom, nothing but a crucifix on the wall and a narrow bed, no books but the Bible and one with the red-woven cover which appeared after Godfrey Farthing died.

  Solomon had no idea what they had done with his grandfather once he coughed his last. Buried or cremated? Scattered, or left beneath some patch of overgrown grass? He could barely recall his grandfather’s funeral, other than digging through a box of shoes in the back of the shop in the hope of finding a matching pair. Just like Solomon’s father, Godfrey Farthing had got lost somewhere along the way. Not even two generations, and already the family remains were dispersed, north, south, east and west.

  To Solomon’s right an archway indicated the entrance to the scullery where he and his grandfather had washed that first night, Solomon sitting on the draining board, legs dangling, as he waited his turn to take off his shirt. Solomon felt for the light switch, flicked it back and forth in the hope of catching the glitter of the taps. But when he looked towards the ceiling he saw that all the bulbs had been removed.

  He moved further along the passage, feeling his way until he came to the room that had always been full of odd things too big, or too ordinary, for the front of the shop. Piles of clothes. Blankets folded and stacked. Baskets of shoes tied into pairs with string. He remembered the fizz of the old light bulb as it warmed, waiting for his eyes to adjust when he was sent in to dig. When he was young, Solomon’s heart used to beat quick in his tight little chest at the thought of what could be hidden there, and what might be revealed. The cold shiver of a fur coat. A row of Sunday gabardine. Once even a stuffed otter in a glass case, high on a shelf, watching him from inside its painted landscape. All disappeared into the coffers of his aunt once his grandfather breathed his last. Solomon stretched a hand to push at the door, but he didn’t need a light to see. Inside the room would be empty, his own past robbed from him, just as he had spent a lifetime robbing others of
theirs.

  The main body of the pawnshop was just as Solomon had last seen it more than forty years ago. There was the sign on the back of the door saying Open, even though it wasn’t. The wooden counter inset with baize. The bell that once called for attention.

  Ding

  Ding

  Ding

  The glass cabinet where once his grandfather had laid out all his most valuable goods still stood at the far end of the counter, though it was empty now, too. No more wristwatches or silver cigarette cases, rings embedded with gemstones that scattered the shop with sparkles when Solomon turned them to the light. Blood spatter for the rubies. The rainbow of opal. Emeralds like a river full of weed. There had even been a pistol once, with pearl inlay on its handle. A ladies’ gun, that was what his grandfather called it. All these years later Solomon could still feel the gun’s cool imprint on his palm.

  It was all gone now, of course, the currency of Solomon’s childhood swept away with the rise of bank loans and credit, nobody needing to barter stuff for cash once they could borrow it instead. There had been a hundred or more pawnshops in the city when his grandfather started. Down to one or two by the time he’d met his end. Solomon’s aunt who wasn’t really his aunt had taken over the shop in return for a settling of the old man’s debts, everything valuable that was left sold off or melted down:

  A shirt without a collar;

  A fur coat made of squirrel;

  A brass cornet, dented at the end.

  All that had remained of Solomon Farthing’s inheritance, such as it was.

  Solomon had been looking for a new life himself back then, so he’d let his aunt take the lot. Departed soon after with a boy just like him riding pillion. Andrew, his eyes the colour of the Aegean, clasping Solomon around the waist as they roared and bumped over the sets on the High Street to a place where sun sliced through their eyelids of a morning as they drank tea from patterned glass. They had spent a happy few years ducking and diving through the backstreets of every city they came to, before it all went wrong. Solomon had abandoned Andrew eventually, just like all the rest. Crawled home thirty years later, middle-aged, with his pockets empty, to camp out in that basement flat in the crescent, rackety and full of draughts. Solomon looked after the flat for a man who let him stay because then he could pretend that he stayed there too.