A Rather Lovely Inheritance (38 page)

“You?”
he repeated falteringly. “Then . . . who’s the girl sitting upstairs in his flat?”

I felt as if I’d just been dropped to earth without a parachute. I said, “There must be a mistake. I’m the one Jeremy told you to let in.” He came out from behind his doorman’s station and irritably pressed the button to call the elevator.The door opened.

“We’ll ’ave to go up and see about this,” he said. “You come with me, young lady.”

On the ride up he muttered to nobody in particular, “People comin’, people goin’, all the time.” I could hardly stand it. Finally we stopped at Jeremy’s floor.

I sailed down the corridor like the
Queen Mary,
with the muttering doorman in my wake. Impatiently I waited as he knocked first, then put his key in the lock. As the door swung open, a woman called out.

“Hello, darling,” she said in the most delighted of tones.When we didn’t answer, she floated into view. She was a slim blonde, wearing a very low-cut dress of black and red chiffon. When she saw us she stopped dead in her tracks and looked at us sharply.

“You have the wrong flat,” she said in annoyance to the doorman.

“This young lady says
she’s
the one Mr. Jeremy Laidley wants—and
you’re
a mistake,” the doorman said with stupendous tact. “Name o’ . . .” he paused. “What’s your name, dearie?”

“Penny Nichols,” I said, then asked the woman, “Who are you?”

“I am
Mrs.
Jeremy Laidley,” she said with supreme confidence.

When she turned to look at the doorman again, I realized, with a sinking heart, that I recognized that pretty profile. From the photos in Aunt Sheila’s Christmas cards.

And then I began to understand what Jeremy and I might now be up against. The money again. Already this inheritance was wreaking havoc, with all our nearest and dearest showing up from here and yon, all ready to stake their claims. Whatever had made me think that this future life was going to be easy?

She was staring at me rather coolly when she said, “I’m afraid you’ll just have to go.”

Well, I figured it was time to start acting like an heiress. I had no idea where to begin. So I stepped into the apartment, tossed my coat and bag on the sofa, and said, “I believe you mean you’re the
ex
-Mrs. Jeremy Laidley. True enough?”

 

My mother had this ancient board game from the 1960s that she found in the attic of our house, which she occasionally hauled down for me to play with when I was a little girl and home sick in bed, or when my friends came over and it was raining and we were bored. It was positively quaint, and called Barbie, Queen of the Prom. To win, you had to do three things—become president of a school club, have a formal gown to wear, and have a steady boyfriend to escort you. You didn’t have to be smart, pretty, rich, or well-connected. Just lucky. You rolled the dice and moved around and around the squares on the board, drawing cards until you managed to get all three.

So okay, I never really wanted to be president of anything.And Jeremy, I can see, is going to be nothing but trouble. I do, however, have a beautiful vintage wardrobe, a great London flat, a fantastic antique car that’s being restored, and even a bank account.

I mean, hell, it’s a start. Isn’t it?

Special thanks to my husband Ray, for his spirited wit, unfailing support and insightful advice. To Margaret Atwood for her generous, continued encouragement.To the intrepid Jennifer Unter, whose confidence and good cheer steered us through in fine style; and thanks to everyone at RLR Literary. I wish to express my gratitude to the terrific publishing team at Penguin, particularly Rachel Kahan, Kara Welsh, and especially to my thoughtful, perceptive editor, Kara Cesare. I would also like to thank Elizabeth Corradino of Moses & Singer, for her advice and amiable humor. Thanks to family and friends; and finally, to all those who love to read novels, in a quiet celebration of the time we have together here on this beautiful earth.

Q.
This novel has a first-person narrator with characters who seem very quirky and real. Is the story based on your own life?

 

A. No, although I have some similarities in my background; my husband’s family is English on his father’s side, and we both have personal and professional connections to Europe. But this story and the characters are entirely fictional. The French author Colette described the writing of a novel as following one fundamental command,
“Regarde!”
or “Look!” She was talking about a kind of looking that involves all of the senses, where you collect powerful impressions of how people, and animals, and the earth itself react to events.These impressions go into a free and unfettered part of your being, and when you’ve stored up so many of them, you’re like a cup that’s overflowing. It’s this overflow that compels you to create a story, a poem, a picture or a song. It’s almost as if you’ve stopped time, and captured a slice of life, so that others can also respond to it and explore it at their own pace. That’s why I disagree when people say,“Fiction is a lie.” Not so! Fiction is a made-up story compared to, say, the daily report of journalism. But a novel can distill the dailiness of life into a private, meditative, sensory realm where we might experience the deeper, eternal truths that run underneath us like a hidden stream.

 

 

Q.
But what about the heroine’s voice and the plot of the story? How do you find and shape these things? Where do you get your ideas?

 

A. In the bathtub, or swimming. For some reason water does it for me. Maybe I’m part fish, and maybe that’s why the Mediterranean has such a hold on me. I just find that a good splash gives me clarity and insight. With this novel, I knew that I wanted to write about an American abroad, since I’ve studied and worked in the places where Penny bounces around. Geography is definitely a factor—there’s just something about the Riviera that implies the possibility of a high-spirited caper, a stylish romp, replete with surprise twists and red herrings. And throughout Europe I find that the existence of modern life cheek by jowl with ancient buildings, narrow streets, sculptures, landmarks and other mementos of a bittersweet legacy, makes you appreciate how quickly life can go from madly hilarious to truly awful to heartbreakingly beautiful. I could imagine an idealistic heroine there, thrust into funny, exciting, sometimes alarming circumstances. Penny’s wry voice came naturally out of all this—slightly aggrieved yet ever hopeful.There are many ways to tell a tale, but it evolves from the character, who usually leads you along; she’ll let you know if your choice doesn’t suit her, like a dress that doesn’t fit. I envisioned her as a redhead because she has such a peppery personality, and because I saw Severine as a brunette and Jeremy’s ex-wife as a blonde. I mused about what kind of redhead my heroine would be—not a carrot-top red, she’d be something copper-colored, copper like a penny.Yes! Penny and Great-Aunt Penelope. When it fits, you know it. Then you follow the trail of cookie crumbs, wherever they lead.

 

 

Q.
What about all that history, those details of long-gone time periods? What makes you pick one time period over another?

 

A. History, I think, is one big inheritance story . . . with lots of pages torn, smudged or missing. Again, you’re gathering the bits and pieces, like a detective, an archaeologist, or a rag-bag lady collecting ribbons here and scraps of leather there.Travelling makes you want to know more about who’s been here before you.You’re standing on a beach and then you find out, quite casually, that Napoleon landed there when he was trying to make a comeback.You discover, beyond the cave murals, the footprints of a prehistoric man who was running like mad from some animal who’s now extinct.You eat in a local restaurant where, years ago, starving artists couldn’t afford to pay for lunch, so the owner accepted a painting as payment instead—and now those paintings are worth a small fortune. You can’t help asking, where did they all come from, and where have they disappeared to? Yet they never really vanish completely, and that’s what makes it so intriguing. Boats that sank in the Mediterranean Sea in the days of the ancient Greeks still turn up today when divers stumble over them. They were there all along, just waiting to be found.

 

In this novel, it was necessary to invent the history of an entire family. I devised a family tree for my characters that was far more complicated than the one that Penny eventually makes. I worked out birth dates, deaths, and the years of the important events in their lives, and how old they were at each turn. Well, once you have those dates, you know that, for instance, Great-Aunt Penelope and her friends were barely recovering from one world war when they were plunged into another. They saw their pals die young, so they weren’t pretending that death doesn’t happen, or that it can be outfoxed, as we tend to do today. People are very much shaped by the politics and social restrictions of their time, although some ideas and feelings, of course, transcend time completely. History bequeaths to us the treasures and the debris of those who came before us. The trick is to be able to distinguish which is which.

 

 

Q.
The relationship between the hero and heroine is what really drives the story. How did that come about?

 

A. I have a real fondness for the clever yet wistful songs, movies and theatre of the 1920s and 1930s. I love the rapid-fire, sassy bantering; it was the era of the wisecrack, because people were disillusioned, wary of being lied to in the wake of the First World War and the Great Depression.The tension is relieved with the snappy comeback, the underlying
Oh, yeah, says who?
Then you add the sexual and romantic element, and it’s great fun. This is not to be confused with today’s concept of the so-called “battle of the sexes,” where, I fear, we’ve come to expect a nastier edge to arguments, and a doomed incompatibility. But Penny and Jeremy genuinely like each other and are willing to communicate it all the time, even when they’re bickering.There isn’t any real hostility in their banter, they’re just prodding and teasing and trying to break through.

 

And yes, Penny and Jeremy’s back-and-forth certainly “drives” the story, which may be why they spend so much time in a car together.When you’re jaunting around for long hours at a stretch, pretty soon you’re confiding, reflecting, ruminating in ways that are more free, perhaps because you’re defying gravity and time and all the things that pin you down. For Penny and Jeremy, their “chase” is more than just a treasure hunt, because while they are sifting through the family’s past, they are actually being released from their own pasts. The chase lifts them into a special zone of eternal present-time, where they can really find each other before coming back down to earth to deal with the demands of everyday life and the future.

 

 

Q.
What about the other characters? What’s to become of everybody?

 

A. I love all these characters. I don’t see anybody as “good” or “bad.”They are people in certain circumstances, reacting well or badly or wearily or foolishly or generously or greedily. And as in life, a friend can sometimes screw you up, and someone you thought of as a foe can unexpectedly, perhaps accidentally, point you in the right direction. So I see a rich and fascinating future for Penny and Jeremy, Aunt Sheila and their family and friends and even good old Rollo.These characters are so alive to me that even when I’m not consciously watching over them, when I come back to them I find that they’ve been up to all sorts of mischief and have plenty of new stories to tell.

1. The theme of the innocent American abroad is a recurring one in Western literature.The heroine often finds herself in uncharted waters that she must navigate with her intelligence, wit, and instinct. Yet when it comes to social conventions, she’s bound to make some missteps. Often the heroine arrives hoping that a fresh start might be possible. What are some other expectations of such a character? Are they realistic? Are they in some sense self-fulfilling, or do they rely on unpredictable events, other characters, circumstances and setting?

2. The heroine is seemingly full of contradictions; Penny loves her work, but doesn’t care for office politics. She appreciates beautiful clothes and fine things, but doesn’t particularly like shopping. She’s slightly world-weary, yet she deliberately refuses to become jaded and cynical. Penny herself says that she’s “incurably” hopeful, a not-quite-thwarted idealist. She persists in believing that she might find a soul mate in life. In short, she’s gambling that she can succeed on her own terms. Does the path she’s chosen in life make her journey simpler? More difficult? What will it require of her? Is there a point of no return, where she has no choice but to go full-speed ahead?

3. The hero is also a man of complexity. Jeremy is self-assured, worldly-wise, yet as Penny noted, there has always been an undercurrent of rebellion in his nature. Then he is thrown into an unexpected crisis that leads him to question not only his comfortable assumptions about life, but his actual identity. How does he handle it initially? Does he change tactics at any point? How do the other characters influence his responses?

4. It’s Penny’s job to be able to tell what’s authentic and what’s fake, as well as to find out how time and history influence people. Is she able to do this in her daily life? What are the turning points in the story that shed light on the circumstances, and what leads her to these moments? Are they random, or do they occur as a result of her own endeavors? She also believes that history can serve as a “map” or guide to finding out what’s important in life. What do you think of that? The heroine also concludes that, historically speaking, “life is awfully short.” How would such a revelation alter the way a person conducts her life? Does it influence the choices that Penny makes?