The Inheritance of Solomon Farthing

by Mary Paulson-Ellis

  ‘They’re free. You might as well take them,’ said Andrew. ‘The shop’s getting cleared.’

  That was what happened when old men died, thought Hawes. Everything else got scattered. But he shook his head.

  ‘Got to pay, son. Not right otherwise.’

  Andrew shrugged and Hawes foraged in his trouser pocket, found a sixpence, tossed it down. The boy laughed.

  ‘Not legal tender anymore.’

  ‘Still is for now,’ Hawes said. ‘It got a reprieve, didn’t you hear? Or you can put it in your shoe, keep it till you get married.’

  The boy blushed. ‘Not sure I’ll be getting married.’

  Andrew’s hair touched his shoulders. Hawes’s hair touched his shoulders, too. They could have been related if Hawes had ever had a son. The old man smiled. Unlike him Hawes knew that this boy was born to be a lucky man if he wanted, hadn’t arrived in the world until both the wars were done. He ran his hand across the front of his suit. Then he slid the jacket from his shoulders and laid it over the baize.

  ‘What will you take for this?’ he said. ‘It’s my lucky suit. But I won’t be needing it anymore.’

  Andrew touched the suit’s lapels, its mix of wool woven with silk, blue as a starling’s egg, the fabric fragile now. ‘I don’t know. I don’t really wear suits.’

  ‘But the old man will need one soon.’

  The boy glanced towards the room at the back where Solomon Farthing was sitting with his grandfather. Hawes turned the flap of the jacket to reveal a dark lining.

  ‘Perfect burial gown.’

  Andrew shifted as though embarrassed by the thought of death.

  ‘But what about the trousers?’ he asked.

  ‘You can have them too.’

  ‘What will you wear?’

  Hawes laughed, a rough growl. ‘There must be another pair here I can have, don’t you think.’ He indicated the young man’s coat. ‘And I’ll give you a pound for that.’

  Andrew grinned then. ‘Done.’

  He turned to a flip-top box on the counter, opened it and removed a card, edges sharp and clean.

  ‘What’s the name?’ he said.

  ‘Hawes, James.’

  And the boy wrote it out. Hawes, J. One suit, blue, three buttons. He offered Hawes a numbered slip in return, like any good pawnshop, should the old man ever wish to redeem the suit again. Hawes stared at the small square of paper in the boy’s hand. Then he shook his head.

  ‘No need for that, son. I won’t be coming back.’

  Hawes left as he had arrived, three notes on the bell sounding his departure.

  Ding

  Ding

  Ding.

  Like the three medals pinned across his chest now. A Star. A War medal. And one for Victory, too. He took away a coat that hung to his ankles, khaki wool heavy on his shoulders like a blanket after the storm. The art of the deal, that was what Hawes was all about. Come in as one thing, leave as something new. He left behind a blue suit hanging on a rail. And a prayer card slipped onto a dead man’s bedside table.

  Our Father who art in heaven . . . forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.

  Also a book, its pages worn away to almost nothing, the red woven cover stained with seawater, amongst other things. The book was by Walter Scott.

  Old Mortality.

  Battle pages ripped out at the end.

  PART THREE

  The Bet

  2016

  One

  Solomon Farthing drove south as though on a last adventure, fleeing the dark streets of Edinburgh towards the truth about Thomas Methven (deceased). He was heading for a Borders town, one of those places full of people with slippery ancestors, never pledged to any nation other than their kin.

  Solomon had rescued the Mini stolen from his aunt from its state of abandon outside his favourite local cemetery – a great expanse that stretched from the leafiness of an Inverleith suburb, to the dark covered walkways of the Water of Leith. He’d squeezed in behind the steering wheel, knees almost to his chin, cast Mr Michaels’s folder of information onto the passenger seat beside him, and a small thank you heavenwards as the engine started first time. The floor of the Mini was dotted with holes, the bonnet tied together with string, but still it went along, rather like him, an ancient chariot with rust for wings.

  The car had coughed its way to the city bypass, then on to the open road. Now the dog was riding the back seat like it was a roller-coaster, small ears flapping in the breeze. It raised its nose to the air and yowled as they clattered along the B-roads, Solomon singing, too:

  ‘It’s a long way to Tipperary . . .’

  Like his grandfather might have once sung, marching his men to their deaths down those long flat roads in France.

  Solomon’s destination was a village not far from the invisible line that divided the north from the south. On arrival, he clambered from his aunt’s Mini into the sweet scent of clematis and spring roses, an unexpected delight. But Solomon Farthing had not come to smell the blossoms. He had come in search of the Borders Observatory – the area’s local rag.

  The office for the Borders Observatory was an anonymous-looking shopfront halfway along the small high street, with a door that announced Solomon’s arrival just like the bell at Godfrey Farthing’s pawnshop used to welcome his customers.

  Ding

  Ding

  Ding.

  The bell was followed by a voice, disembodied:

  ‘No junk mail, circulars or fliers. Any news, just leave it on the counter. If you’re a hawker, I don’t have cash of any sort.’

  A counter ran the width of the shop, a Formica-covered bulwark against the daily intrusion of people come to dish the dirt on their neighbours or advertise for a cow. Beyond it Solomon could hear the sound of old-fashioned typewriter keys being hammered by the two-finger dance. He smiled. Here was a fellow traveller, someone for whom the word ‘computer’ was probably synonymous with ‘death’.

  He looked around for some other way to rouse the furious typist, found a small dome of brass on the counter, stared at it for a moment, then down at the dog. The dog stared back, impassive. The typewriter keys clattered. Solomon knew he ought not, but he couldn’t resist.

  Ting, ting.

  Then the explosion.

  ‘Bloody hell, what did I say!’

  The journalist, proprietor, editor and sole shareholder of the Borders Observatory was in his seventies, hair a-fly upon the top of his head. He appeared on the far side of the counter as though World War Three had just broken out.

  ‘Are you deaf?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You are, then.’

  Solomon decided deflection was the best course.

  ‘Solomon Farthing,’ he said, tucking his folder beneath one arm and holding out his hand. The man glowered at it. Solomon withdrew. Men here obviously didn’t shake hands with strangers. He must remember he was not in Edinburgh now.

  ‘What d’you want?’ the man said. ‘I’m busy.’

  A typical Borders greeting, prepare a getaway before the terms of business have even been agreed. Solomon held an ace though.

  ‘I’m interested in your archive.’

  The man’s eyes gleamed then, if only for a second.

  ‘The archive, you say?’

  ‘I’m trying to track down the story behind this.’

  Solomon placed the newspaper clipping retrieved from his grandfather’s pawnshop on the counter. A scrap of a thing, yellowed with age as any surviving offspring would be, too.

  WANTED: Home for a baby boy, 6 months old. Total surrender.

  The man frowned at the clipping like one might at a museum exhibit. Then he lifted the Formica barrier with a slow grin, held out his arm.

  ‘I think you’d better come in, sir. Come in. You’re most welcome.’

  To a place of treasure trove or lost property, a hoarder’s paradise full to the brim with newsprint, the repository for a million differ
ent stories of a million different lives.

  The room behind the shopfront of the Borders Observatory must once have been for living in, if living meant coming second to the printed word. Everything was covered in piles of newspapers and magazines, books, journals, pamphlets and reading material of all distinctions. This man must be a roaming encyclopaedia, Solomon thought as he stepped gingerly across the threshold, if he had spent his life immersed in this stuff.

  It was clear that the room had functioned as head (and probably only) office of the Borders Observatory for some time. Coal dust marked every corner. Animal hair of some description clung to every surface, though there was no suggestion now of any office pet. Solomon had achieved the inner sanctum, but every potential movement carried the threat of a tsunami of the printed word. He looked across the crowded room to a crowded mantelpiece, discovered the dog had woven its way through the mayhem to stand in front of it, too. On the mantelpiece was a case displaying three greenfinches, feet curled in a way that suggested rigor mortis.

  Father. Son. And Holy Ghost.

  ‘I enjoy birdwatching,’ the man called, as though he had known Solomon would be studying the wildlife. ‘Best thing in the world, birds, the way they flit about.’

  Not these ones, thought Solomon, staring mournfully at the finches.

  ‘Bought them in Edinburgh.’ The man reappeared at Solomon’s side, holding out a mug in which slopped some brown-looking liquid. ‘Do you know it?’

  ‘I have some familiarity.’

  Solomon did not want to admit to being a resident of the Athens of the North until he had ascertained this Border man’s inclinations.

  ‘I do.’ The man edged towards the safety of an armchair, plopped into its cocoon of cushions. ‘Den of Satan.’

  ‘Ah.’

  ‘Only joking.’ He wheezed in a way that made Solomon realize he must be laughing. ‘That’s Glasgow, of course.’

  Walter Pringle was a man who had seen it all.

  ‘I cover everything,’ he said.

  Fetes. Car crashes. Agricultural affairs.

  ‘Even murder, if we’re lucky enough.’ Pringle grinned. ‘Usually shootings. All those farmers with their guns.’

  Solomon blinked, remembering that pucker of skin over an old man’s heart, a bullet wound first glimpsed the night he arrived in Edinburgh, perched on the draining board in the scullery watching as his newly discovered grandfather washed in the sink. Godfrey Farthing’s body had been as pale as a grub dug from the earth, scar glistening in the light cast from the thirty-watt bulb, tiny blue ghost shifting beneath. Solomon had wanted to touch the scar then, just like later he wanted to touch the ladies’ gun with the pearl inlay on the handle. But instead he’d sat in silence, shivering in short trousers, waited for his turn to take off his shirt.

  Walter Pringle gestured towards his typewriter.

  ‘Been at it since I was a boy,’ he said. ‘Used to do the deliveries and line up the slugs. Hot fingers on cold metal. Of course it was an empire then. Adverts for all sorts.’

  Martins for quality bread. The Pavilion for variety. Coal deliveries and spring goods.

  ‘Nothing but a village news-sheet now.’ Pringle poked a finger at the scrap of newsprint lying on the arm of his chair. ‘But this pre-dates even me. 1920. Maybe 1919.’

  Solomon was amazed. ‘How can you be so precise?’

  Pringle sat back in his armchair and took a slurp of his coffee. ‘There’s an art to it. Reading the classifieds. When was the last time you ordered flannels?’

  ‘Flannels?’

  Solomon’s grandfather used to wear an ancient pair of flannels, trousers shiny about the bottom and baggy about the knees. Despite being surrounded by other people’s clothing, Godfrey Farthing never had been a man to let go of his own. Pringle was pointing at something printed on the cutting. Not an advert for the disposal of a child, but an offer for home-sewn flannel trousers, followed by a short text bordered in black.

  I.M. Horace Chicken. Aged 20. Much loved.

  ‘Used to get them a lot,’ he said. ‘When my father was a boy. Memorial ads. It’s the combination of flannels and died of his wounds, that tells you.’

  1919 or 1920, perhaps. An advert from a time when Thomas Methven (deceased) was only just beginning. And Solomon’s grandfather, Godfrey Farthing, was still a young man. A soldier returned from war dressed in khaki like all the rest, looking for a new pair of trousers, perhaps, with which to rejoin the world. But Solomon felt certain that flannels were not the reason this particular scrap of newsprint had been kept for all these years.

  ‘It is one of yours, though?’ he said.

  ‘Oh, aye,’ Pringle replied. ‘It’s one of ours all right. Can tell from the PO Box number.’

  ‘I don’t suppose you have a record of who placed it, do you?’

  ‘Might do.’ Walter Pringle smiled then, as though at last Solomon had asked the right question. ‘But you’ll have to come outside for that.’

  Out back the Borders’ Fourth Estate owned a whole series of sheds, each one more dilapidated than the next. Solomon could just imagine what Walter Pringle’s neighbours must make of this shambles – an eyesore amongst their blossoms. Then again, it was an eyesore that contained all their history. And all their secrets, too.

  ‘I did a follow-up story on them once,’ Pringle was saying as he led Solomon and the dog along a crooked garden path. ‘The classifieds. Fifty years on, what happened next.’

  Trumpet for Sale. French lessons. Feathers for a hat.

  ‘Tried to track down people who’d answered the ads. Never did do any good, of course. Vanished like robins in summer.’

  Pringle tilted his face to the sweet air for a moment as though considering where robins flew in summer, before pushing further along the ever-narrowing track.

  ‘How did you know where the replies came from?’ Solomon asked, stumbling on what looked like a molehill, mud on the hem of his trousers once again.

  ‘Used the office as the PO Box,’ said Pringle over his shoulder. ‘My job to open all the requests. And file the responses. Never know when a juicy story might present itself.’

  He turned to grin at Solomon, a sudden glimpse of crowded teeth.

  ‘I like dipping into the personal ads. All of life in there.’

  Solomon understood. He used to like dipping into the personal ads, too. London in the seventies. Married men. Make-a-million. Boys available for rent. A whole world of skin and sweat and dirty smells as far from the grey of Edinburgh as it was possible to be. Andrew never did find out, as far as Solomon knew. He’d enjoyed it for a time, ten years or more, before all the men like him began to fall. Black scabs blooming across their shoulders. Those sudden onsets of pneumonia. Then the drop into an early grave. Young men like Andrew brought down by the joys of liberation. Drink. And drugs. Sex. Love, too. Just the normal stuff of life. Solomon’s generation living as though there would always be a tomorrow, only to discover that sometimes when you wanted it most, tomorrow didn’t necessarily arrive.

  Solomon put his sleeve to his nose as they pushed past a huge and sprawling buddleia, sticky scent and a thousand tiny purple flowers clinging to his tweed. When he came out the other side, he discovered that finally they had reached the very last shed in the row. The shed was a ramshackle thing, door all rippled with the damp, the interior chilly after the balmy air outside. The dog shivered as it followed the men inside. But Solomon felt it immediately once he stepped across the threshold – nostalgia colouring his bones.

  The shed was filled to the brim with ledgers, row after row, from the warped wooden floor, to the ancient felt roof. Rather like the great books stored beneath the dome at New Register House: Red for Birth, Green for Marriage, Black for Death, of course. Solomon closed his eyes for a moment, breathed in animal hide and the scent of ancient paper spores. He could tell that he was getting closer to the centre of things now that a ledger was involved.

  It was Walter Pringle who did the heavy
lifting, balanced on an ancient wooden chair that looked as though it belonged in a French cafe rather than an archive, pulling one old book from the shelves after the next. The ledgers were heavy, pages glued together with damp. Mr Michaels the Book Fetcher would have had conniptions. But the Borders’ Fourth Estate was in his element, reliving the glory days of the newspaper before automation came along.

  They found the information in the fourth ledger they tried, working their way into the year from January, coming upon it in spring. There, along a neat horizontal line in blue, Walter Pringle’s father had written out the words that whoever placed the ad wished to be printed:

  WANTED: Home for a baby boy, 6 months old. Total surrender.

  Followed by a date:

  May 1919.

  Pringle grinned as he pointed at the latter. ‘Told you so.’

  Solomon laid the newspaper clipping alongside to see the match. Proof, he thought. But of what, he couldn’t be certain, only that Thomas Methven’s pawn ticket had led him here.

  ‘Do we know who placed it?’ he asked.

  Pringle was already shaking his head as he studied the entry.

  ‘Father usually took a name and phone number, but not everybody wanted to leave one. There is this, though.’

  He indicated a figure at the far edge of the page, contained within a column demarcated by two vertical lines in red. 6d. Someone had paid sixpence. A tanner for the inconvenience of giving up a son. Solomon dipped a hand into his jacket pocket, felt for the little tarnished coin he had retrieved from the safe in his grandfather’s pawnshop, nestled next to pawn ticket no.125. Why was it always the recording of money, he thought, that meant all the other things survived? Next to Solomon the dog leaned in against his leg, a sudden patch of warmth.

  Walter Pringle peered closer at the ledger, nose almost touching the page.

  ‘Here’s something,’ he said, indicating the faintest of pencil marks made long ago. ‘Initials. G. F. Mean anything to you?’

  ‘What!’

  Solomon’s heart danced a sudden one two jig at the thought of what he might be about to uncover. Was this how his grandfather and his father had become estranged? The latter adopted out by the former before they’d had the chance to get to know each other first? Godfrey Farthing had been an old man when Solomon first met him, never did reveal anything about his past other than the fact that he was once a soldier. A hero, Solomon had always supposed, like they all were. Someone who had been through it all and survived.