The Inheritance of Solomon Farthing

by Mary Paulson-Ellis

  ‘What’s this?’ said the Book Fetcher.

  ‘Mr Methven’s legacy,’ said Solomon.

  Pawn ticket no.125. The relic of a long and cheerful life.

  Mr Michaels wiped both hands on his T-shirt as though he knew he was about to handle treasure, picked up the little slip of blue paper and held it to the light. They both saw it then – two tiny pinholes, each with a thin rime of rust, as though the ticket had been attached to something once, long since removed. Mr Michaels turned the ticket over, then over again.

  ‘Quite old,’ he said. ‘Pre-war, if I had to guess.’

  ‘Thomas Methven was in the war,’ said Solomon. ‘On the Arctic convoys.’

  Ice on the lanyards. Chickens in the hold.

  But Mr Michaels shook his head. ‘First, I mean, not second.’

  ‘Oh.’

  Solomon felt his feet suddenly hot in his fuchsia socks at the thought of his grandfather as a young man, shiny leather strap and brass buttons, blowing a whistle so that his men might go over the top. Both of them looked again at the slip of paper.

  ‘I wonder what it might redeem?’ said Mr Michaels.

  ‘Now,’ said Solomon, discarding his empty crisp packet on the book trolley next to him. ‘That’s where it gets interesting.’

  He pulled another slip of paper from his pocket. A cutting from a newspaper this time. WANTED: Home for a baby boy, 6 months old. Mr Michaels took the clipping with delicate but eager fingers.

  ‘The Scotsman used to be covered in these,’ he said. ‘Adverts. Hundreds of them. All over the front page.’

  New Goods. Young Bachelors. Articles for Sale.

  ‘Not babies, though, surely,’ said Solomon.

  ‘Read once about a baby given away in return for a gramophone. That was in Dundee though. Different rules apply.’

  ‘Is this from The Scotsman, then?’ asked Solomon.

  Mr Michaels turned the scrap of newsprint over one way, then back. It took him less than thirty seconds to decide.

  ‘No. Wrong typeface. And paper quality.’

  ‘Where do you think it does come from if it isn’t The Scotsman?’

  ‘Now that’s something I can help you with.’ Mr Michaels’s eyes shone for a moment as he pointed to a PO Box number written on the bottom of the advertisement. ‘Borders. My speciality. If I had to guess.’

  There was the sudden tip tap of small claws on lino getting nearer. Solomon and Mr Michaels looked at the dog as it reappeared, began to lick the evidence of their misbehaviour in the food department from the floor. Not only camouflage, Solomon thought, but a way to keep the scene of the crime clean.

  Mr Michaels slid the small blue pawn ticket and the newspaper cutting into the folder of paperwork containing Thomas Methven’s known history, such as it was, handed the lot to Solomon. Then he led the Heir Hunter back through the Void to the National Library’s emergency exit, the dog trotting behind. Both men stopped in the darkness when they got to the door, to say their goodbyes, nothing but the smell of damp and brick dust all around, the scent of Edinburgh’s deep past. The Book Fetcher bent to give the dog a quick fondle about the ears.

  ‘By the way,’ he said, ‘Dunlop was asking if I’d seen you.’

  Solomon felt heat rise again beneath his jacket. ‘What did you say?’

  ‘Nothing, like you asked.’

  Solomon looked at the dog, standing quite still now to receive the adoration that it seemed to think was its due. Then he slipped a hand into his jacket pocket, pulled out treasure of a different sort and offered it to Mr Michaels because he felt the Book Fetcher was due something, too.

  ‘This is for you,’ said Solomon. ‘As a thank you. It’s a decent edition, I think.’

  A book with a red woven cover, rather stained now. Mr Michaels took the book like a man who was used to handling paper worth a thousand pounds a page, cradled it in his fingertips, before turning to the spine.

  Old Mortality.

  Stamped in gold.

  ‘Where did you get it?’ he asked.

  ‘It was my grandfather’s,’ said Solomon. ‘Bit missing from the end, I’m afraid. But I thought you would probably know that by heart.’

  Mr Michaels grinned. ‘You always did appreciate my interests.’

  Solomon smiled, too. There was something very satisfying about passing on one’s inheritance to someone who would appreciate it more.

  The two men shook hands before Mr Michaels dragged again at the metal door with its squeal of metal on stone, released Solomon and the dog back onto the dark streets of Edinburgh. As Solomon slipped past him into the shadows of the Cowgate, the Book Fetcher touched him on the sleeve.

  ‘I’d be careful, if I were you,’ he said.

  ‘Why’s that?’ asked Solomon.

  ‘Your dead man’s legacy.’

  ‘What about it?’

  ‘If it’s business, that’s one thing,’ said Mr Michaels, sliding the emergency exit closed until there was only a slit between them. ‘But if it’s family business, that’s something else.’

  1918

  One

  It was a suicide mission. Godfrey understood that the moment he opened the envelope and read the note. Instructions from the Company Commander to take his men and cross the river, engage the enemy on the far side as best they could. They were to hold their ground whatever happened. There would be no back-up. There would be no relief. They had been designated the forlorn brigade – the first to go over and the last to return. It was the end, but not as Godfrey had hoped for, turned by the stroke of a general’s pen to dust.

  The boy waited for his orders like a good soldier, upright beneath the weight of his pack, the dog waiting too. Godfrey crumpled the note, shoved it into his pocket, become aware once more of the drip drip of raindrops from the eaves of the house. Suddenly there was water all over the yard, pools of it, rivers running around his feet. He turned from the boy back towards the farm.

  ‘Dismiss.’

  Thinking of the roses that would never bloom for them now. The least he could do was return this boy to the safety of his own unit, let him have the future he deserved. But the boy did not fall out and march away to safety. Instead he followed Godfrey to the door.

  ‘Sir.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I’ve been instructed to join you, make up the numbers.’

  The dog tight about his feet.

  Godfrey laughed, unbelieving. Eleven men to the slaughter then, not ten. As though that might somehow make a difference. Godfrey looked at the mud smeared on the new recruit’s boots, tasted the acrid stink of a gun fired too close. The certainty he had craved was upon him and it wasn’t as sweet as he had hoped.

  He dismissed the boy once more, directed him to the barn to find a place to lay his groundsheet, instructed him to ask Percy Flint about washing and George Stone about food. The boy had walked ten miles or more, he said, until he found them, everyone else far ahead now across valley and field. Godfrey and his men had been left behind in their forgotten Eden, just as Ralph had feared.

  The men in the barn were sorting the washing in silence when the new boy appeared – shirts and trousers rubbed down after their encounter with the chicken, the rest of their clothes dragged from the line in the grain store and folded into rough piles. It was the first time in months they had managed to wash their entire wardrobe, greybacks pilfered from dead men, undergarments of odd proportions, socks of every possible yarn and knit. But still the mud clogged every seam.

  ‘Who’s this, then?’ said Percy Flint, ever the first to scent fresh blood. He came to stand before the new arrival, hands in the pockets of his breeches, hair neatened with a slick of eau de cologne courtesy of a deal with Bertie Fortune – a splash in the hand in return for a sliver of fancy soap.

  ‘Alec,’ said the boy, dropping his pack to the stone floor. ‘Alec Sutherland.’

  ‘Where you from, Alec?’

  ‘Fusiliers, “A” Company.’

  From th
e borderlands, where England touched the north.

  The rest of the men left the clothes where they lay, gathered round at that. All except Hawes who hunched on his bunk, knees to chest, turning the pages of his book, a constant twitching in both hands now.

  ‘“A” Company,’ said Alfred Walker. ‘I thought they were all gone. Got blasted a few weeks back.’

  ‘They did,’ said Alec, lifting his rifle over his head and propping it against his pack. ‘I’m one of the few that’s left.’

  ‘What you doing here, then?’ said Bertie Fortune.

  ‘Brought orders.’

  ‘What orders?’

  ‘How should I know?’

  ‘You must have some idea,’ said Flint. ‘If they sent you all this way.’

  Alec just shrugged, looked around for where he might lay out his stuff.

  ‘You can put it next to ours,’ said Jackdaw. ‘In the corner.’

  ‘Though we sleep in the loft,’ said Promise. ‘There’s plenty of room for one more if you like.’

  Promise was naked from the waist up, ribs like a ladder, had taken off his shirt still smeared with blood from his encounter with the yellow chicken not an hour before. Flint flicked hayseed from his tunic.

  ‘All the boys together,’ he muttered.

  ‘Give it a rest, Flint, can’t you,’ said Fortune. He turned back to the new arrival. ‘Bit young for war, aren’t you?’

  Alec smiled. ‘I know how to point a gun. If that’s what you’re asking.’

  ‘We all know how to point a gun, son,’ Hawes growled from his corner. ‘It’s who you point it at that counts.’

  Alec shrugged again, lifted his pack towards the quarter of the barn where Jackdaw and Promise had laid their stuff. Jackdaw stuck out his hand, wrist extending beyond the cuff of his shirt like the bone from a chicken.

  ‘I’m Jackdaw,’ he said. ‘This is Arthur Promise.’

  ‘Alec.’

  The three boys grinned, shook hands.

  ‘Eh up,’ muttered Alfred Walker from his stance by the door. ‘Here comes trouble.’

  Second Lieutenant Svenson approaching across the yard.

  In the parlour, Godfrey laid the contents of his pockets on the table. A pencil and a blank postcard. A half-walnut shell he had meant to set sail on the pond. Another still whole. Also the orders, smoothed now with the heel of his hand. With two fingers he pressed at a spot above his heart, felt the ache begin. He would tell the men about the orders later, that was what he thought. Tomorrow, perhaps. Let them have the fun of a new recruit first, someone to distract their attention with stories of where he had come from and what he had got up to. Godfrey would take a moment to consider, before it all came down.

  He went to the settle pushed back against the parlour wall and lifted its seat to reveal a wooden lockbox hidden inside. There was a real tremor in his left hand as he lifted the box out and laid it on the parlour table. Just like Hawes, he thought, as bad as it had ever been, despite the absence of the guns. In the kitchen there was the sudden clank and clatter of pans as George Stone began his preparations for their evening meal. The old sweat knew how to turn out a feast, that was something. Winter cabbages cooked to a soupy broth. Eggs, warm and speckled. A store of wizened potatoes recovered from the cellar, fried in small batches to a sort of hash. Even that first night Stone had produced a meal the likes of which none of them had seen for months. Roasted walnuts. Potatoes mashed and served with gravy. Chicken turned on a spit. The men had competed for the wishbone when the meat was done, dice tumbling over and over on the table from Ralph’s wooden cup. Bertie Fortune had won, of course. Fortune always had the luck.

  ‘Got to live up to the name,’ he’d said.

  Grinning as he swept his treasure into his hand. The men might grumble, but Godfrey knew they didn’t really mind. Bertie Fortune had a way of spreading his luck around, you only had to ask.

  The little brass key Godfrey had taken from a string around his neck rattled in the matching hole on the lockbox, refusing to turn for a moment until he heard at last that soft click as the mechanism released. The flutter in Godfrey’s fingers was still there as he lifted everything out. The men’s pay books. The pouch with the tobacco ration. His cigarette tin, all scratched and dented, ten Capstans neatly lined inside. Then there was the map with the river they were meant to be crossing marked in blue.

  Godfrey took out his service notebook, flipped open a clean page and wrote the date, 5 November, stared at the blunt tip of his pencil as he wondered what to write next. That the orders had arrived? That they were ready? Forty-eight hours till he must lead an attack across the river, one last stand. Then he laid the pencil down, left the page blank.

  At the bottom of the box lay the letters every soldier was made to write, just in case. A missive from a petty thief to his girl. From an A4 boy to his mother. From a lucky man to his wife. Beneath them were Godfrey’s own letters to his parents.

  We are all going along fine here . . .

  And underneath that, the one Archie Methven had written to his son.

  Godfrey remembered that second night at the farmhouse after the rain had stopped, a thin layer of silver running across the surface of the yard. How he’d stood in the cold outside the barn and heard them talking. Arthur Promise, the A4 boy who wanted to be a teacher. Alfred Walker, with his dreams of sailing to the promised land. Bertie Fortune, of course, who was going home to become a rag-and-bone king. And Archibald Methven, the section’s accountant, who wanted nothing more than to see his son grow up. Interrupted by a boy who would rather march them to the top of the hill to be shot, than see them all live to fight another day. Godfrey Farthing had never understood it before, the certainty that there would be life, when before there had only ever been the certainty of death. But as he’d listened to his men whispering about the future, he had felt his own heart spin at the thought that one day he too might leave all this behind and start somewhere afresh.

  There was a sudden skiff skaff at the front entrance as Ralph returned from wherever he had been. Tossing the dice, no doubt, making fools of the men. Godfrey listened, hand hovering over the open lockbox, as his young lieutenant scraped his boots on the metal stub by the door, then creaked up the wooden stairs to the attic to lie on his bed. Godfrey could smell the bones of the latest chicken stewing in the kitchen, yellow feathers drifting on the flagstones. Ralph would be delighted with the orders, he thought as he returned his service notebook to the wooden box, followed by the map and his tobacco tin, the pouch with the ration, locked it all down. A chance at last to demonstrate his prowess with his revolver. And not just on a bird that could not fight back.

  But Godfrey had been in a forlorn brigade before, every man from the unit killed except for three who were wounded beyond repair. And him, of course, walking through it all, then walking back, returned whole-skinned to the right side of the wire as though he’d been out for nothing more than a country stroll. It seemed like another lifetime now, a time when Beach was still alive and they had lived like rats in a sewer. Godfrey had not expected to survive that, yet here he was waiting once again for another disaster to unfold.

  In the barn, the remains of Godfrey’s unit stood in silence, a semi-circle of men grown thin and ragged with the never-ending war. Flint and Fortune, Alfred Walker and Jackdaw, the darker of the two A4 boys, Archie Methven the accountant, who kept them all straight. Hawes, the temporary sergeant, stayed in his corner turning the pages of his book, refused to look anyone in the eye. Arthur Promise was crouched amongst the chiff chaff, husks and sawdust all about his feet. He was scrubbing and scrubbing at another shirt, now, Second Lieutenant Svenson’s second-best khaki, chicken blood all along the collar. Promise’s knuckles were raw with the cold of it, fair hair flopped across his brow so that none of the rest could see his face.

  ‘Best thing to do is forget it.’

  Bertie Fortune with his wise counsel pulling at the corner of his neat moustache as he stood at the centre of
the group.

  ‘Why should he?’

  Jackdaw, with his chitter chatter, was all jerks and nerves.

  ‘Because he’s an officer, you idiot.’

  Flint had his shirt sleeves rolled tight on his forearms.

  ‘He owes Promise.’ Jackdaw insisted, wouldn’t leave it alone. ‘The rest of us have to pay, don’t we. Why shouldn’t he?’

  ‘He’s a fucking officer.’ Flint came to stand right in front of Jackdaw, small vein throbbing in his forehead just beneath the parting. ‘Don’t you get it? They never have to pay if they don’t want to.’

  ‘Back off, Flint,’ said Bertie Fortune. ‘It’s not the boy’s fault.’

  ‘What the fuck was that with the knife, then?’ Flint said.

  They all shifted to look at Promise hunched over his bucket. Alfred Walker giggled suddenly at the memory of Second Lieutenant Svenson with blood across his cheek. The rest of the men were silent.

  ‘What did he want, anyway?’ said Archie Methven, a man used to calculating the odds.

  ‘He wants to know that Promise won’t make a fuss.’ Jackdaw’s eyes shot black in the gloom. ‘Why else did he come in here.’

  ‘To flash his badge, of course,’ said Flint. ‘Get you all worked up.’

  That little silver pin with a lion at its centre:

  Strike Sure.

  ‘Where did he get it anyway?’ said Walker, rubbing a hand across his hair. ‘It’s not his mob, is it? The London Scottish.’

  ‘Must have won it from someone,’ said Methven, touching the pocket where he kept his notebook, all the Ins and Outs. ‘He likes to toss the dice, hadn’t you noticed?’

  ‘Never should have let him play in the first place.’

  The men all turned to where James Hawes sat propped against his gasbag, that book with the woven red cover open in his lap.

  ‘What would you know, Hawes.’ Flint spat onto the stone floor. ‘You’re the one who started it with that bloody tanner. Should have offered a better prize and then maybe he’d have let the badge go.’

  Hawes turned a single page of his book, let it fall.