Authors: Diane Johnson
Maybe she and Kip would go to the château at Fontainebleau some Saturday and look at what color the curtains were. Poor Kip had been rather ruthlessly installed in the Ecole Bilingue de Versailles, a day school with a small number of boarders, which had consented to take him for a few weeks while his fate was decided or the term ended. Though she had informed herself about all this, Amy had no further hand in making decisions about Kip’s future; but she spoke to him often, almost every night, and knew he was hoping to go back to his regular school in California. Amy admired Kip, he was a brave boy to have done his job by little Harry and now to find himself in a strange land in a strange language – she tried to remember what she herself had been like at age fourteen, and couldn’t remember at all, except to be sure she had been restless and unhappy, and determined to get out of Ukiah.
What happened to Kip next term depended on Kerry’s fate – how the unforeseen death of her husband had left her fixed, whether she could afford his school fees in America, or even whether it might not be better to send him to England, where there were more boarding schools and he would be closer by. Then there were the Swiss schools, though these tended to be depositories for the attention-deficit children of American corporate employees abroad, divorced Eurotrash, or the generally wayward who had gone through all the American schools who would have them.
It was on Amy’s mind that she still had not been to see Kerry. Her ostensible reason had been Kerry’s reserve on the train, giving the strong impression Kerry didn’t want
to see her, and perhaps anyone, but she knew this was only a weak excuse. Maybe she was afraid Kerry would realize she had seen Amy on that slope.
She had had more than a few moments of wondering if she should have come to Paris at all. It was going to be a little difficult, unlike at the Hôtel Croix St Bernard, which had been easy, with pleasant people, food and amusement to hand. Here she was on her own alone, despite the charm of her apartment that this pack of nice women had organized in a miraculous period of time, and the list of phone numbers – friends of Géraldine, friends of friends, Tammy, Kerry’s clinic, her doctor, the French teacher, the Etoile Cooking School that everyone said was great, and in English besides. In truth she was a little forlorn. Yet inner resource was a goal in itself; solitude led to it. She reminded herself she had not experienced solitude since – well, she had never experienced solitude, until now, and she didn’t like it. For the first time, and this was her main worry, she felt that her enterprise of self-improvement might fail.
33
Posy had uneasily been able to tell that something was wrong when they first got back to London and Mr Osworthy still hemmed and hawed about the legal situation in England. Finally, Posy and Rupert had been convened to the offices of Osworthy, Park, and George, a straightforward legal firm in Mayfair, to hear about the legacy that Father had left her as his final expression of her value and place in his heart.
Mr Osworthy began by saying, ‘It would seem that England takes the position that the last will and testament of its citizen the late Adrian Venn is in order, leaving everything to his wife, this to include his property in France, a small painting by the artist Bonnard, a house in Randolph Avenue – this latter perhaps the object of some litigation, as it had not been properly rerecorded after his divorce from Mrs Pamela Venn, to whom it had been legally awarded – and a portfolio of shares. If England had its way, Mrs Kerry Venn could expect to have, at the end of the day, more than a million pounds, assuming that the nation of France would allow the death duties on property in France, which was, alas, the main part of Venn’s estate, to be paid in England.’ There would be negotiations; there were tax treaties.
Kerry was getting everything, as expected. Posy had been prepared for this. Rahni boutique, Rahni boutique,
forever. Obviously, her and Rupert’s prospects here were dim. All the way back from France she had been telling herself that, and was used to the idea of getting little or nothing, telling herself that her suffering for Father must be a disinterested, even ennobling sort of suffering, a harmonizing emotion with no end but some sort of spiritual idea of being at peace with herself and with her idea of Father, and for him, too, if he could at some level hear her.
But Mr Osworthy had much more to tell them, his jowly face long with concern. Much was to do with the France/England situation, but finally he got to the delicate subject of Posy’s inheritance.
‘Of course he has mentioned you both in his will, as I had told you. Rupert will have ten thousand pounds. Posy – I’m afraid here you have not fared so well.’
‘Just tell me, Mr Osworthy,’ said Posy, with foreboding despite herself.
‘Well, your father was an old-style Englishman, he evidently believed in leaving things to the oldest son, but he did remember you, to the sum of ten pounds, which is a testamentary way of acknowledging you and your position as his daughter… He doesn’t have a large fortune in England, just some shares, things like that…’
‘He left me ten pounds?’
Posy could see that Rupert and Mr Osworthy were watching her for signs of tantrum or breakdown. Though she wanted to say Sod Father and Sod you, Mr Osworthy, she thanked him in a dignified way. She didn’t just then feel how crushing the blow was, maybe had expected it. The capricious unfairness of life in general had been
weighing on her so much that this was only confirmation of it. She felt unbodied, a person without weight or power in the world, like a feeble breeze, to have had no effect or such a negative one on her own father, on Emile, no effect on anyone anywhere, as if she had never been born. So she was beyond being wounded by his ten pound legacy, though bitterness was a harder feeling to control. She would have to struggle against bitterness, as she knew it was a soul-destroying emotion, let loose in her like cancer. Such was Father’s wicked power from beyond the grave that he had managed to tarnish all of them with distrust and exasperation.
Rupert for his part was tarnished in his own eyes because he had reacted badly, or felt that he had, to a proposal put to him earlier by his mother, who had by now been forewarned by Mr Osworthy about the unequal treatment Posy and Rupert would receive. He blamed the soulless boredom of bond trading, an activity his colleagues seemed to find wildly exciting, for having affected his character. Before Posy found out about Father’s will, Pamela had floated the idea to him, behind Posy’s back, of splitting his own legacy, the ten thousand pounds, with Posy, without telling her what Father’s will really said, thereby sparing her the sadness of knowing what Father had intended.
She explained her reasoning. ‘We would just say he left you each five thousand. She wouldn’t have to know what the will actually said. I’d pay you back the five thousand, over time – I don’t have the money now, I’m afraid, Rupe. In the long run, you’d come out the same. Could you do
this? I’m afraid for Posy. She’ll mind so much.’ She saw Rupert’s startled and disappointed expression.
Rupert was ashamed of himself for hesitating and at the same time felt resentment of his mother for making this request. He couldn’t help thinking that Posy should have anticipated some sort of effect before she pissed Father off. Of course, no one expected Father to die.
‘I could sell the house,’ said Pam. ‘It’s too big anyhow.’
‘God, Pam, can’t you think of something else to make me feel really like a shit?’ But even with his mother’s promise to pay him back, he couldn’t bring himself to split the money with Posy. He thought he might need it right away to get the publishing business. He dithered and temporized, and finally refused.
After the meeting with Mr Osworthy, over tea, Rupert had told Posy about their mother’s handsome concern, and of his own moral failure. He left dangling there for Posy a sort of half offer to loan her the money if she ever needed it. Anyway, it would be months before they actually saw any cash, whether ten or ten thousand, and in the meantime, Rupert was plainly troubled by the feeling that he’d behaved badly, and so had Pam, in putting him in the position of doing so. Pam, for her part, felt that both of the children blamed her for some unstated failing, perhaps in the bedroom, or as a cook, to account for their father’s leaving them in the first place, eventually to find Kerry and perish.
Inheriting part of a château in France went some way to cheer Posy, enough that she’d behaved well to Rupert about the English legacy. ‘I’d rather die than take the bloody money anyway.’
‘Well, five thousand, I don’t know what you’d plan to do with it, but ... if you want it, I ...’
But the château, too, portended problems, just as the suave Monsieur de Persand had predicted. If she was ever to have any money for her own plans (antiquities store, shop dealing in Cashmere shawls, little house in Chelsea…) she would need to sell her share. A piece of crumbling real estate was no use to her. Rupert, on the other hand, was hoping to keep the château and direct Father’s publishing business, the perfect escape from Bondage, as he’d come to call his job in the City. He assumed that their stepmother, Kerry, would welcome some effort like that, though no one had yet discussed it with her. He therefore would prefer to use his English ten thousand pounds toward the death duties owed in France so they would not have to sell the château, a view directly opposed to Posy’s.
In the weeks since then, Posy had languished, less boisterous and combative than Rupert had ever seen her. He spoke of it to Pam. At first they had been thinking that Posy was overreacting to Father’s death, as if she were the sole bereaved. Hadn’t Rupert, too, lost his father? As everyone must eventually lose his father – she wasn’t singled out. Still, she seemed to mourn Father as if his loss was meant to symbolize all the disasters of her life – even though, from what Rupert could see, her life had been relatively disaster free: she was good looking, had a responsible job, a Cambridge degree. Once he was moved to lean across the table and put his arm around her; from the stiffness of her body he came to think that she
was worried about more than just Father. Perhaps she was sick, or nearing a breakdown.
Maybe she was, she herself thought. In limbo in England, going every day to the Rahni Boutique on the Kings Road, to an airless little room on the second floor where the accounting was done, sometimes taking a turn at the shop level, where the clientele reacted quizzically to her Oxbridge accent. The power over her imagination of the château money grew, came more and more to symbolize freedom – a freedom never to be hers without money. She knew she should be happy as part owner of a château and of the things found in Father’s safe-deposit box, but even this change in fortune could not dislodge the dull despair, the leaden pall, events had cast over her life.
The more she came to see that death and disappointment were life’s realities, the more important to her future did the money seem, and the more rightfully hers it came to seem. Paradoxically, at the same time, the possibility of some money, even the designated ten pounds, forced her to confront the real conditions of her life, presently pointed toward this dull job and no love life to speak of except what she’d have to work too hard at lining up, and just a general depressing flatness as she plodded on to middle age. Self-pity overcame her whenever she began to think like this, and hardened her resolve to get her share of the money and with it take her life in charge, even though this meant thwarting Rupert.
Today Posy was taking the underground from her apartment off the Portobello Road to the Eurostar terminal at Waterloo Station, struggling to carry her rolling suitcase
up the stairs at the connection in the Picadilly Station. She had called her mother to be sure Pam had not changed her mind about her making this journey, had no regrets that it was she making this sacred (word used with irony) trip to France with Father’s ashes. It was Posy carrying the ashes today because Rupert couldn’t get any more time off work, and they all thought it would be inappropriate for Pam to be the one to deliver them to Father’s widow. Posy had sensed in Pam and Rupert a little mistrust, as if she might intend to desecrate Father’s ashes – flush them, maybe.
She bought
Vogue
and a
Pariscope
in the Eurostar waiting room, and began to feel mildly excited, apart from her difficult errand, by the idea of Paris. She’d be away from the Rahni Boutique, revelling in adventure, French food, absence from England, perhaps a glimpse of Emile. The train was called. As she rolled her case toward the escalators, she saw in front of her a familiar-looking back – tall, thin shoulders and neck, white hair with a curious pinkishness, rumpled coat – unquestionably Robin Crumley the poet, headed like her for Paris, with the
Financial Times
under his arm.
‘Hullo, there,’ she said, rolling up abreast of him. ‘I guess they can’t keep us away from those croissants and snails.’
‘Hullo! How nice! Miss Venn! Posy!’ he replied, with extreme cordiality, reassuring her that she was not intruding, he would be delighted if they sat together – she had acted diffidently for what did she know about poets on train journeys – would they be gregarious or deep in thought?
On the way, she told him about the things she hoped to do in Paris, not mentioning her grisly parcel. He said he was spending the weekend with the Desmarais, some delightful French people he sometimes visited in the summer in the Dordogne. Now they were all going to attend the performances of some Pinter plays in French in Paris. He also hoped while in Paris to see the American, Amy Hawkins, whom they had all met in Valméri – did Posy remember her? He and Posy reminisced about their lunch at Saint-Jean-de-Belleville and its aftermath of snowdrifts and rescue – to think it was so short a time ago, yet seemed so long when you had gone back to England, where everything was so unlike. They bought some small bottles of red wine, Badoît, and sandwiches from the bar car, and chatted over lunch.
‘What do you think of Wordsworth?’ she asked, and other such things. ‘Does a celebrated poet of today owe him anything? I seem to hear Wordworthian echoes in some of your work, though it’s very much in your own voice of course.’