The Inheritance of Solomon Farthing

by Mary Paulson-Ellis

  ‘I’ll get married when you can buy me one of them, Mr Fortune,’ his future daughter-in-law Iris had once declared.

  That’ll be never, then, he remembered thinking. Cost more than a month’s wages – if you could get your hands on one, that was. Bertie Fortune was a man who could get his hands on most things, but it had been hard enough to find an apple then, let alone a pineapple, that terrible winter of ’47. He’d almost lost it in those never-ending months, felt age pressing on his bones in a way he never had before. Annie had looked bad too, skin the colour of the tea they used to drink during the first war. Grey. Stinking of chlorine. And yet they’d drunk it all the same.

  But now the second war was over and things were looking up. A pineapple – that would make a good catch. That was what Bertie Fortune was thinking as he stepped away from his front door, tipped his hat at a neighbour, set off down the street.

  The wedding party was for Bertie’s youngest. Billy Fortune. Come back alive from the second war Bertie had lived through; what more from life could a father want?

  But now Bill was disappearing again, into the arms of this young lady, Iris. Not much more than nineteen, come down from somewhere in the north to seek her fortune in the big city now that all the bombs were gone. Bertie had only been introduced to her a few months back, possessor of a blue hat with a tweak of netting at the front, like a boat sailing on the neat roll of her hair. The hat was jaunty and so was she, wearing a skirt that swung out when she turned. Bertie thought it was extravagant, but he could see that Annie was impressed.

  ‘Did you see what she was wearing?’

  Whispering with Alice as they warmed the teapot, casting glances at the smart young lady with a typing job and a room in a hostel for women who did not have a husband yet. Where had she come from, this girl sitting at his kitchen table with her pretty legs crossed, that was what Bertie Fortune wanted to know. The daughter of a mother she never mentioned, and an airman who had crashed and burned?

  ‘Don’t ask,’ said Annie.

  Alice giggling from behind her hand.

  So Bertie had not. What use was it delving into the past, when he of all people understood that the past was often better left alone? Bertie knew he should be happy to see Bill and Iris together, a young woman who winked at him as she lifted the milk bottle from the table to top up her cup. They were part of the new society, all anyone talked about now. Pensions and a National Health Service.

  We’re all in it together.

  Whereas Bertie Fortune had made his money by keeping it to himself . . . unless he could bargain for something better, of course.

  Where would he go to find a pineapple, Bertie thought now as he wound his way towards the heart of London, dodging cabs and trams as he crossed the streets, narrow and wide. To Covent Garden, perhaps, barrows laid high with fruit and veg of all descriptions, flowers of every possible colour and shape. Or to the Lane with all its stalls – bric-a-brac and mackerel, sherbet, and sausages hung from string. It was always possible to find treasure, if you knew where to look, that was what Bertie Fortune had realized, digging into other people’s leftovers, never knew where they might lead.

  He had learned that when he was a young man, just back from the fields of France. Start with something that can win every game, then grow a business from the ground. Not French tobacco and papers that disintegrated in the damp. But scrap metal and hand-me-downs. Pots, pans and nails. A rag-and-bone man with a single cart, buying from some and selling to the rest. There wasn’t anything Bertie Fortune wouldn’t take a punt on when he’d first started out. Built it up from there.

  He was worth a fortune now, by name and in cash terms, too. Bertie’s Fortune. An old, old joke. One of the lucky ones, at least that was what everyone said, came back from disaster untouched, spent all his young life building up a cash reserve. Bertie was in his fifties now, getting towards being an old man. He wondered, sometimes, what he would do with it all. The warehouses and the trucks. The money sitting in the bank. He would have handed the business to Reg, in the natural way of things, his eldest son and heir. But Reg had gone and got himself shot, in the desert, never did make it home. Got himself buried there, too. No different from all the boys in France, Bertie supposed when they told him. But he minded more than he was prepared to admit, used to go and sit on the bench in the cemetery just so he could pretend.

  No wonder we have a restless world, Bertie thought as he crossed the street at Piccadilly, Eros finally returned to his perch. All those dead people trying to get home to where they belonged. A bit like Europe these last few years, refugees and prisoners-of-war, soldiers, sailors and candlestick makers all trying to get to somewhere other than the place they had ended up. Whereas all he and the rest of the lucky ones had done was get onto a boat for Southampton, came on a night crossing once the bells pealed in the village, arrived home next morning to find his father having a jar of tea at the table before his early shift. Twenty-four hours give or take, but sometimes Bertie thought it was the longest journey he’d ever taken. They hadn’t even sung to pass the time on the way back.

  It’s a long way to Tipperary . . .

  Had some intimation already that perhaps they weren’t quite so lucky as they’d thought.

  An hour later, Bertie was headed towards the east of the city, river glimpsed from between the gap sites, wondering if it really was worth visiting the Petticoat to look for treasure, or whether it would be the same as what he had found so far. Empty birdcages and bargains pulled from derelict houses, twenty-two tiny mother-of-pearl buttons laid out on a tray, to match some girl’s twenty-two-inch waist.

  He had collected the laundry already, just to make sure, got the book stamped before watching as they tied the neat paper package with string. His wife’s dress. His son’s shirt. His own lucky suit, of course. Blue as a starling’s egg, three buttons, neat lapels. Also some lilies of the valley for the men’s buttonholes. But he still didn’t have any treasure to take home for the ladies. No pineapple to balance on a special stand next to the wedding cake, all three tiers.

  The woman at the Garden had told him to try the docks.

  ‘Get down there quick and you might pick up a bargain.’

  Bananas stacked in crates. Perhaps even a coconut. All the treasures of Jamaica and the Canaries, ready to disburse. But even she had shaken her head at the idea of a pineapple still in its prickly skin. She could get him a can, she’d said. Rings or chunks. But not a fresh one. Only the very deepest pockets could get those.

  Bertie Fortune used to be the one with the deepest pockets, that’s what he thought as he set off for the ships. Walking away across the fields of France, one stuffed with walnuts, the other with an orange, only a little wrinkled despite having been buried in a box of sand in the cellar for several weeks by the time it came to him. The orange had been a treasure Bertie could not resist. The most valuable thing the farmhouse had to offer as far as he was concerned. He had used it to barter for a bed as he waited for the bells to ring in the village. A few glasses of wine in an estaminet, and somewhere to hide until the end came. George Stone had already owed him for the brandy – a squat quart bottle, contents gleaming like the best sort of amber. And when Bertie Fortune had needed it, the favour had come good, Stone equipping him with everything he’d required to barter his way to the coast. Food and drink always were the best kind of currency in war time, oranges some of the highest-value things it was possible to get.

  Now, as Bertie Fortune arrived at the docks, he found them stuffed with oranges, men shouting the odds over boxes crammed full. As he passed one of the crates, he plucked an orange from the top, tossed a shilling to the vendor in return, inhaled the glorious scent. Thick citrus peel stained his fingernails yellow, as he dug into the pith.

  Alfred Walker had liked oranges, that was what Bertie Fortune remembered. Had one in his pocket when Bertie bumped into him that time at Mulholland’s, trying to get a job. Ten years after the first war was done. Maybe more. Didn’
t even mention what had gone on.

  ‘Did you get your girl?’

  The very first thing Bertie asked the boy. And the grin on Walker’s face told Bertie that he had. Not just a wife, but a daughter too. Clementine. That was what they called her, oranges in a brown-paper bag in Walker’s pocket ready to take home for a treat. He’d told Bertie that his wife, Dorothea, was expecting again, baby due any moment. Alfred Walker was hoping for a boy.

  ‘Little Alfie,’ he said. ‘That’s what I’ll call him.’

  Walker had laughed at that, Bertie joining in, knew the hubris of naming a boy after oneself, only for him to go on and prove all sorts of dishonour.

  And yet . . .

  ‘They’re the future, now,’ Walker had declared. Before telling Bertie that they were all off to America soon. The promised land. ‘Can’t wait. You can do anything there.’

  After he shook Alfred Walker’s hand, said goodbye, Bertie had gone to the pub on the corner, drunk three dark pints, smoked to inhale. Perhaps he should consider America himself, he had thought then. Ship them all over. Annie, Bill, Reg and Alice. He’d even agree to Annie’s mum going, too, if that was what she wanted. Got as far as checking on the price of tickets, wrote a letter off in speculation to some sort of distant cousin settled in a place called Nova Scotia. It had seemed like the right way to go in the lean years, when business had become all sorts of struggle. Never did get a reply.

  But ever since he’d got his feet back in the dirt of England Bertie Fortune had been reluctant to dig them out again. Alfred Walker was a dreamer, always had been. It was his natural state to want to wander. But Bertie was more solid than that. An entrepreneur and a businessman, knew to hold on to where it all started, in case it all fell apart. A little strip of a yard. A horse and a cart. Something other people wanted. Alfred Walker chased dreams, but Bertie Fortune chased money. It had come out good so far.

  Now Bertie dodged and weaved amongst the clamour of the docks, searching here and there for that elusive pineapple, something more special than what was to hand. He had tried all the usual suspects, the afternoon winding on towards tea, before he realized he might have to go to a spiv in the end. One of those men who did their business down the back of the alleyways rather than at the top.

  Bertie supposed he was a spiv himself, really. The world was full of favours to be done, after all. Things to be swapped. Or bartered. Brandy for an orange. An orange for a bed. He had pawned the captain’s wristwatch for the suit he was carrying now. Did it that same week he arrived home on the overnight sailing to Southampton. Took the watch to the pawnshop and bought the suit with the cash. Blue. Three buttons. Turn-ups. All the rage then, still doing him well now. He’d had Fortune stitched into the collar, wore it every Sunday when he first started out. A gentleman riding a rag-and-bone man’s cart, only ever going to ascend.

  Bertie had redeemed the wristwatch after his first three or four cartloads, never needed to pawn it again. He’d been keeping it for Reg, some kind of memento. Until Reg was killed, of course, no use for telling the time now. Perhaps he should give the watch to Bill, Bertie thought as he pushed his way through the mass of dockworkers and vendors. Let him count down the minutes and the seconds like young men do. Bertie didn’t need to count the hours himself anymore, knew already that he was out of step with the future. Just as he had been when he came home in ’18, discovered no one really wanted to know what he had been doing those past three years. All of Bertie’s youth gone in an instant.

  What was it Captain Farthing had called it once?

  A great lacuna of time.

  A fancy way of putting it. But that was how Bertie saw it now, too, the first war. Like some great death machine still operating somewhere in the never-never, churning up and spewing out and churning up and spewing out over and over, while somewhere else the next generation got on with what the next generation always did. Dancing. And drinking. And dazzling each other with the swing of their skirts. Whereas Bertie would only ever be that man walking away across the fields knowing that freedom was stuffed into his pockets if he dared.

  Besides, Bertie had no use for trinkets anymore. Not wristwatches. Or even silver cap badges, small lions raising their paws. It had bothered Bertie then and it bothered him still now. How the second lieutenant had tossed that little badge into the ring as though it was nothing but a gewgaw, rather than the remains of a man. Ralph Svenson never did have any idea where the badge had come from. But Bertie Fortune knew. Always had thought it ought to have been sent back to where it belonged. Or added to the pot along with all the other things, right from the start – let the rest of the men have a square go. Or perhaps what Bertie Fortune really minded was that he had been expected to take part.

  Bertie shoved his way through the ever-increasing crowds on the dockside, found himself caught in a flow of people all trying to see something going on by the quay. Another old man like he was, offering bargains to the world. The man was standing on an orange box, great hull of a ship looming behind, shouting some sort of scripture as he pulled things from beneath his filthy coat. A scrubbing brush. A cheap gold chain. Preaching about the fire that would come from heaven to burn them all if they did not confess. The man’s neck was thick with dirty freckles, his clothes barely held together by a stitch or two of thread, standing there with holes in his boots shouting and shouting about forgiveness:

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

  Until he produced the prize. A fruit, all prickled on its outside, all golden inside, summoned from amongst the folds of his long coat as though it was some kind of rabbit held aloft for all the world to see. Bertie could hear the murmur ripple through the crowd as they realized what the man was showing off, felt himself press forward along with the rest. He tried to fight his way to the front, grappling with the younger men, got pushed back instead. But even from three or four deep Bertie Fortune suddenly knew who the man was, the stink of him like a carcass hung too long before it was cut. The ex-meat man. The man who used to work in an abattoir but couldn’t stand the sight of blood. James Hawes, shouting like the day of reckoning was upon them, staring at Bertie Fortune from across the heads of the crowd.

  Bertie Fortune came home with treasure. In the front door and straight through to the kitchen, handed Iris the pineapple, all prickled skin and spiky top. Oh, how her face lit up, just like those fountains on VE Day.

  ‘Why, Mr F. You really are a treasure.’

  Twirling round right there about the table so they could all get a look at her legs. How they’d laughed then, the women, passing the pineapple from one to the other as though a new dawn was upon them, kept touching it in amazement before whirling off to make the tea. It made for quite a celebration in the end, not the wedding, but the night before. Ale out. Sherry out. Even a bottle of French champagne Bertie had been saving for when Reg might say, I do.

  Annie was furious when he told her later what he’d swapped the pineapple for.

  ‘But that was your lucky suit!’

  All cleaned and ready for a wedding. Blue as a starling’s egg. Lining dark as midnight. Three buttons, turn-ups, neat lapels. Given away to an old comrade who couldn’t even pay a ha’penny. Got a pineapple in return. Annie’s face had been stricken where she lay upon the counterpane, as though now that the suit was gone all their luck would run out, too.

  But Bertie had felt lighter after, as though he was young again, ready for it all, wandering back through the highways and byways of London with a conscience clean as that first glass of water he had drunk the day he walked away. Standing at the water fountain in the middle of a village, orange on the edge of the stone, waiting to see what he might be offered in return. He had known he was safe then, after everything that had happened. Nothing left to do but find a bed for the night, put his feet up and his head upon a proper pillow, listen to the birds sing as he waited for the bells.

  Bertie could still hear them singin
g now. Sitting in the kitchen of an evening while through the wall the women chitter chattered like starlings gathered on a chimney pot, all those young men’s voices between his ears, too.

  It’s a long way to Tipperary . . .

  Singing like his own son must have sung as he rode a tank into the desert until he met that German bullet, fell into the sand. Or perhaps they had come up with new songs, for a new war, their own kind of comfort, each generation making way for the next.

  Either way it was a long way to Tipperary, that was what Bertie Fortune thought now, somewhere he had never been. No time left for that. He was here in this house for the duration now. Nothing left for him to do but stay at home and get old, read the rest of that poem he had started. Eliot.

  The moment of the rose and the moment of the yew.

  Might try the other one, too, if there was enough time left. What was it they called it?

  The Waste Land.

  Not a bad description of his life.

  PART FIVE

  The Reckoning

  2016

  One

  He came home in another man’s car, Solomon Farthing driving through the night once again until Auld Reekie appeared out of the dawn. The air was warm as he slipped into Edinburgh, its castle and spires rising from the haze, a city waking to all its glory, drawing a grateful resident to its dusty, scented heart.

  The news from Kew had been just as Solomon expected – bad mixed with good. The good news was – they had an address for him. The bad news – it was in Edinburgh. Only Solomon Farthing knew how to turn bad news into gold.