The Forgotten Story (16 page)

‘Perry …' said Aunt Madge, opening her mouth but not her eyes.

‘Go on with the Will,' said Louisa.

‘Hrr-hm … “Unto my sister Louisa …” Yes. “Unto my sister Louisa I give and bequeath forty-six pounds ten shillings and eightpence, which is the return of a loan made to me thirty years ago plus compound interest added to the year 1905, a return for which she had persistently pestered me. To my dear sister I also bequeath such records of the family as survive, dating back to 1690, and the family Bible, which I trust she will make more use of than I have.

‘ “To my cousin Peter Veal, of Percuil, I give my piano, my edition of Chambers' Encyclopaedia, and twelve pounds, one pound for each of his twelve children. If any of his children should predecease me, let him lose proportionately. To my cousin, Polly Emma Higgins, of Mawnan Smith, I bequeath my cottage and two fields situated near that village.

‘ “To my daughter Patricia, in view of the fact that she has seen fit to marry against my express wishes and against my specific threat to disown her if she did so, I leave five hundred pounds as a free gift and no further interest in my estate. To my wife, Madge, I bequeath the residue of my property absolutely. And I appoint my said wife sole executrix of this my Will, and revoke all previous Wills – mm-mm-mm …” ' Mr Cowdray's voice descended into the depths of his beard. For some time it stirred and rustled in the undergrowth and then was still. He raised his eyes and his eyebrows as if to say, There you are; there it is; I disclaim all responsibility.'

Anthony's eyes flew unbidden from face to face. As the only person not directly concerned, he alone had the leisure to appreciate the situation. But appreciate was not the word, for he felt a burning sympathy for the girl on the sofa. While the solicitor had been speaking of her Patricia had gone so pale that it would not have been difficult to imagine her slipping to the floor in a faint.

The boy was furiously indignant with his uncle. Although he was not old enough to put the matter in an ethical frame he felt the bitter injustice of leaving such acrimonious remarks to be read after one was dead and free from query or reproach. No one had the right to make a bitter accusation, to leave a smirch where it could not be answered or removed. That was not playing the game. Especially was it unfair when the accusation was groundless. Patricia had left her husband to nurse him and had been with him to the last. There had seemed no enmity between them. To her alone he had been prepared to delegate little business items during that last fortnight in bed. She –

‘When is that Will dated?' Patricia asked.

‘April the twelfth of this year.'

‘Thank God!' the girl said.

The boy's forehead wrinkled a moment, then he remembered that in April had occurred the estrangement between Smoky Joe and his daughter, first over the court case and then over her marriage. She had –

‘I call it perfectly scandalous!' said Aunt Louisa, fiddling suddenly with the bits of fluff on the armchair. ‘ I do really. I've never heard anything like it. He goes out of his way to insult all his blood relations and then leaves everything to his – wife. 'Tisn't right. Tisn't right at all.' She looked up suddenly, her eyes like darts. ‘And I don't mind telling you I'm not at all content with it!'

‘Now Louisa, now Louisa,' said Perry. After the first brief spurt of indignation he seemed to be taking his own lack of fortune in his usual philosophical manner. Everything with Perry was easy-come, easy-go. ‘Put about. It'll do you no good bringing your head up to the wind. We've all of us suspected what Joe thought of us, and now, bigod, we know! Well, it's cleared the air, but it don't alter the Will, do it? I get my gold watch and you get your family Bible. And that's the end of it.'

‘I'm not so sure.' Louisa allowed the words to escape from between tight lips. ‘ 'Tisn't only for myself that I care, though I care for myself sure enough; but it's Patricia. Look at the way he's treated her!'

‘Don't bother about me, Aunt Louisa,' the girl said, her fine eyes dark. ‘I wouldn't touch any of his money now if I had it.'

‘But something can be done about it surely!' Miss Veal transferred her gaze, which had been fixed for so long upon Aunt Madge, to the bearded solicitor. ‘Look, Mister Cowdray. This Will you've been reading … it was made in a fit of raging bad temper when Joe, when my brother was estranged from his daughter. In another month they'd made it up again and were as friendly as you like. Can't that be taken into account? What about his earlier Wills?'

Mr Cowdray shook his beard. ‘Each Will has a clause revoking previous testaments. Unless he has made a later one this must stand, Miss Veal.'

‘Well, what of a later one? What about that? Has any search been made for one? Has the house been searched? Or he may have deposited it with some other solicitor. I refuse to accept this until a full search has been made.'

‘I've looked,' said Aunt Madge, speaking for the first time. She closed her eyes again. ‘Everywhere …'

‘That may well be, but –'

‘Aunt Louisa,' Pat said quietly. ‘If you're saying this for my sake, don't bother. No doubt Dad gave me what he thought I deserved. Well, if he thought that, I am quite content to accept it.'

‘Are you indeed!' said Miss Veal, her nose going pale with excitement. ‘Well, I'm not. You should be ashamed of yourself, Pat! I thought you had more spirit. Why Joe – your father – must have been worth fifteen or sixteen thousand pounds if he was worth a farthing. It may be much more. That's no right to go out of the family. That's Veal money and should stay Veal money –'

‘Mrs Veal,' said Mr Cowdray sombrely, ‘happens to be his wife, you know.'

‘His wife! Who two years ago was his cook! That's no true wife. His true wife is dead and buried, Patricia's mother. You don't make a wife of your servant. Besides, where did she come from? Nobody knew her in Falmouth till she came as his cook. She's no Veal –'

‘
Houd vast
,' said Perry, patting her arm. ‘You're working up for a squall, sister. It'll do you no manner of good to spill a lot of bad blood. The law's the law and that's an end of it. Learn to face your disappointments with a smile like me. I can't pretend that I'm pleased with my share but there's nothing to do about it. We're both in the same boat and it's no manner of good standing up and whistling for the wind –'

Aunt Louisa withdrew her arm impatiently. ‘Your concerns are your own, Perry. You make your own peace with your conscience and I'll make mine.'

‘That's what I'm telling you, sister. Leave Patricia to mend her own affairs. I'm sure she'll not lack for a home, will she, Madge? There, I knew not. And besides, she's married to a rich and handsome young man who'll see that she's well taken care of. Now if I were you –'

‘The black sheep,' said Miss Veal distantly. ‘ You've always been the black sheep, haven't you, Perry? If you must know, I'd trust
you
no further than I could see you. I'm not here to cast insinuations, but maybe you think you'll not come off so badly after all –'

Aunt Madge's eyeglasses wobbled at last.

‘Hi've tried,' she said. ‘Politeness. Manners. How long am I to stand this? My own house …'

‘Your own house, indeed! It's Patricia's house by every manner of right, and Joe's no licence to disown her. I'll warrant there's a later will than this – if it can be found.'

‘Insinuating …'

‘My dear Miss Veal – hrrr, hm – I beg you to calm yourself. It is not at all unnatural for a man –'

‘And what have you to say to this, Peter; and you, Emma? Joe was not in his right senses when he made this Will. Will you help me to contest it?'

Peter pulled at the end of his moustache. ‘Well, can't say that I'm altogether satisfied. But if we get mixed up in the law all the money'll go to the lawyers. It was like that when I went to law over that cow. It isn't what they get for you, it's what they take from you …'

‘We don't want that to happen,' said Polly Emma hastily. ‘We certainly don't want that, for sure. As for me, I can't say as I expected much more than I've got. I've seen little of dear Joe for these pretty many years, and husband was saying only last month that I did ought to call. But when he's that ill, I said, it looks like asking. It looks like begging, I said, going round and calling special on my dear cousin after all these years, when he's that ill, I said.'

‘Insinuating,' said Aunt Madge, towering over Aunt Louisa. ‘Don't like. Own home …'

‘Nothing but a cook,' said Aunt Louisa, bantam-like. ‘A cook from nowhere, to wheedle into his good books. Where
did
you come from? I'll see it doesn't end here!'

‘By rights,' said Peter, ‘ he should have left a little something for my eldest. Eldest was his godson. He'll be eighteen in January month, and a little something might have set him up in something. Never a present has he sent in all these years, though Christine remembered it now and then. A little –'

‘Well, I'm sure we never bothered him,' said Polly Emma, ‘except that husband would pass the time of day if he saw him in the street. I think well-to-do folk don't like to be bothered. But Albert is that way, you know; proud as proud, and not liking to go licking people's boots.'

‘Any action,' said Aunt Madge, quivering. ‘Any action you think fit …'

‘Well, there are other solicitors in the town besides Mr Cowdray, and I don't mind telling you I intend to consult one. I should consider it a sheer neglect of my duty if I did not. And I may tell you that not only me but all the town will be of the same opinion, that – that undue pressure –'

‘My dear madam – hrrr, hm – you may take any action you think fit. You are legally within your rights to do so. But I may inform you that your brother has made himself
persona non grata
with every one of my colleagues in this district, and is unlikely to have deposited a Will with them. I may also say –'

‘Maybe we're not so partic'lar about these things, Emmie Higgins,' said Peter, ‘but when we asked Joe to be Billy's godfather, 'twas intended as a mark of respect, not anything more. Lizzie and me don't go round licking of people's boots – neither his nor yours, see?'

‘Oh, dear me, I'm sure I beg your pardon, cousin,' said Polly Emma; ‘it was a figure of speech that was intended. It's not for the like of me to criticise other people. But, of course, what I say and what Albert always says is, if the cap fits, wear it, you know. That's what Albert always says. And it seems to me that when people are too quick to take offence –'

‘Everybody in this town will feel just the same as I do. Public opinion is something you
can't
ignore –'

‘Vain loud voices,' Aunt Madge was heard to say. ‘ House of mourning … Not yet cold …'

‘If takin' offence is to be mentioned, what about when your Albert was in St Mawes soon after Lizzie had been ill with pneumonia …'

Anthony, still withdrawn, again the only spectator, suddenly realised in a flash of inspiration what was missing at this gathering today. It was the presence of Tom Harris.

One might say or feel hard things about Tom, but he would at least have kept the meeting in some sort of order. He would never have allowed himself to be dragged into the arena, to be pulled into the thick of the quarrel, as Mr Cowdray had done. His presence alone would have prevented this awful squabble. Give him his due, Anthony thought; give him his due, Pat, he's a cut above all these. Well might she sit there with her brown eyes down and a pulse beating in the white curve of her neck.

Strangely enough, it was the boy himself who provided the first effective check to the wranglers. In boredom he got up from his prickly stool and walked to the window and stood looking out. Something in his attitude there by the window, his hunched shoulders, his hands in his pockets, seemed to be an unspoken commentary upon the unseemly arguments going on behind him. One by one the quarrellers fell silent, stood about in sudden self-consciousness and constraint.

Miss Veal picked up her bag, felt for a handkerchief and blew her nose loudly.

‘Well, you know my views. I was brought up to be blunt and I've been blunt all my life. I believe in honest dealing. That's more than some people do. What I've said to your face I'll say behind your back. You know what action I'm going to take. So there's nothing more to be said. I'll bid you good afternoon. Are you coming down the street, Peter?'

The thin man looked from one to another of his relatives and hesitated.

‘Yes, I reckon so,' he said at last.

‘And you, Polly Emma?'

‘Thanks, dear, I think I'll wait for the trap. Albert is calling for me in the trap.'

Aunt Louisa went across and kissed Patricia on the forehead.

‘Don't worry, dear. Don't worry at all,' she said firmly. ‘ She won't if you don't,' said Perry.

But his sister ignored the remark and walked with dignity from the room.

There were still two hours of daylight left, and Anthony presently escaped from the house and ran down to the derelict wooden jetty which led out into the harbour from the wall of the quay. This jetty was submerged when the tide was in, and was one of Anthony's favourite haunts. He could sit here and watch the water lapping up through the cracks, covering one slippery black board after another, and he could imagine himself stranded on a desert island – or trapped in a cellar under the Thames while the river rose.

Fancy was a pleasant companion after the grim and dusty happenings in the house, and his mind turned to his imaginings as a parched man to water. To be free of the chains of reality, to slip them off and wander at will, to be independent of time or space or hunger or heat, to make life up as you went along, to fashion life as you
wanted
it, romantic and exciting and bright with the obvious colours, no second thoughts, no reservations, no avarice, no frustrations, no hidden complex motives, no adult deceits: a world of good and evil where each was plainly marked for what it was, in which good always triumphed and the ill-fortunes that you suffered, however tragic and toilsome they might be, were edged about with the silver thought that you could change them at will.