A Rather Lovely Inheritance (4 page)

“I sincerely doubt it,” I said calmly, poking with a fork at my rather anemic salad Nicoise. “I never got the feeling that my elderly English relatives had piles of money to burn,” I explained. “Besides, there are other relatives I’ve never met who’ll be there. I’m terrified.”

“It’ll be fun! You must memorize everything they say and come back and tell Papa,” Erik instructed. “Why, you should have seen my Aunt Agnes when she didn’t get her mother’s fur coat. My dear, she tore the sleeve off it rather than let her sister-in-law have it.” He tossed the remains of his sandwich to the side and said briskly, “All right, Penny dear.Tell us what you’ve found out about those wild and wonderful Borgias.”

We gossiped about Lucrezia, exchanging what we’d heard, as if she were a living, contemporary movie star. I opened my portfolio and spread out all the sketches I’d made, and the notes on jewels and furniture and clothes and hair.

“Of course, these are just preliminary,” I said.

“Gor-
jay
-ous!”Timothy exclaimed at the sample swatches of velvet and gold braid I brought them. These are my happiest moments, when all my solitary work is presented to people who genuinely appreciate the details I’ve assembled. Tim, who builds all the props, will pass my notes on to the costumer and the wigmaker as well. He and Erik will scour a few Italian and Spanish flea markets before they return home. Then they’ll set to work in their shop, a warehouse in Brooklyn, with a fleet of carpenters sawing, glueing and hammering the set pieces. Fake authenticity is what we call it.

On the Napoleon set, my real job was art forgery. I made copies of portraits and paintings that Napoleon and Josephine commissioned. Erik says this is good insurance for the future; I can always turn to crime for a living if we stop making these movies.

“Nice work, Penny!” Erik said admiringly, studying a replica I’d sketched from a photograph of a fifteenth-century portrait engraving of Lucrezia Borgia.

“I’ll try to get a look at an actual portrait or engraving. It’s hard to visualize her accurately when you’re working from photocopies and reproductions,” I told them.“I can’t always be sure which portraits are really her. And some are considered copies of lost originals.”

“We’re nearly finished with
Josephine
, so don’t bother coming back to the set when you’re done in London,” Erik said. “Take some time off, then just focus on the Borgia stuff.”

“What will you wear for the reading of the will?” Tim asked encouragingly.

“My black silk suit. But I haven’t even packed my bags yet,” I admitted.

They both tsk-tsked, shaking their heads, and Erik warned,“Don’t count on Sheri to get you to Nice in time for your flight. Go, baby, go.”

E
VERY NOW AND THEN LIFE GOES OUT OF ITS WAY TO REMIND ME why I have fallen out of love with the real world and stubbornly try to exist on my Parallel Planet. Mass transportation is an excellent example. The plane was full tonight, with seats crammed closer than humanly tolerable, and the moment we were airborne, the guy in front of me tipped his seat-back into my lap. I tried not to think about those blood clots you can get from travelling in such tight spots, the ones that later kill you. The lady in the window-seat next to me had hogged up the overhead compartment with tons of “carry-on” parcels that she tossed up there, crushing my raincoat in the process. At her feet she plunked down a blue canvas bag with airholes and outer pockets that held blankets and bottles. When she unzipped the bag, a monkey popped his head out, looking patient and resigned. Then he saw me. I mistook his bared teeth for a smile, so I was unprepared when he hissed and spat on my arm. His mistress smiled at me with fake benignity.

“Look! He likes you,” she assured me. I wondered why this animal wasn’t in steerage, drugged into a stupor, or making himself useful by stomping on suitcases to test their strength. Later, when the Monkey Lady was dozing, I asked the bright, brittle blonde flight attendant, who just shook her head, saying, “That’s a legitimate ‘service animal.’ For people who need physical or emotional support.”

By then everyone else was nodding off, too. Except the monkey. Unlike the adage, he saw but he did not do. Under the circumstances, I thought it unwise to take out the snack I’d grabbed from the fruit bowl in the hotel and shoved into my raincoat. It was probably smashed, and although this flight didn’t serve a meal, who in her right mind would pull out a banana in front of Curious George? I decided to focus on London, and Great-Aunt Penelope’s will.

I busied myself with my little pen and pad of paper, diagramming the family tree. I’d have to meet some of these people in London.This is what I got:

I sat back, trying to recall what little I knew about the actual personalities of my English elders from that brief visit to Cornwall so many years ago. Mom’s father, Grandfather Nigel, was still alive back then, and I remember him as a kindly old man who usually disappeared right after breakfast to potter around in the garden. Grandmother Beryl, who normally wore tweeds and a wool alpine hat with a feather in it, donned an old-fashioned wool bathing suit on this occasion and insisted that we all go down to the sea for a
plonge
. As a child I didn’t see the point of my grandmother’s cheerful hardiness; she seemed so proud of proving how durable she was by doing uncomfortable, difficult things.

But Grandmother’s sister, Aunt Penelope—she insisted we call her “Aunt” and not “Great-Aunt” because she said the “great” made her feel like a moose head on the wall—well, she was what the ladies of her day called “a live wire,” who simply crackled with energy. She lived in London but spent that summer with Grandmother Beryl. They were both what I considered old ladies, but Aunt Penelope was always slightly subversive. I remember being instantly grateful when she whispered conspiratorially that I didn’t have to
plonger
into the ice-cold water any deeper than my knees—my lips were already turning purple. She scandalized the adults with whispered gossip from London, about everything from famous English lords, ladies and politicians who were obscure to me, to the fates of her own past beaus. She was frank and theatrical while telling stories, and Grandmother Beryl ate it all up but then disapproved in a provincial way.

I contemplated the “other side” of the family tree, who were relatives I’d never met. Great-Uncle Roland, the brother of Grandmother Beryl and Great-Aunt Penelope, had died about twenty years ago. His wife was Dorothy, “that dreadful American divorcée,” a blue blood from Philadelphia who seemed to regularly offend her sisters-in-law with her careless, offhanded insults. Dorothy had reportedly spoiled their son, Rollo Jr., especially after his father died, so Junior never did what my mother called “a day of honest work.” Instead, he gambled away most of any money he got hold of, took drugs in a big scary way, got in trouble and hit up his aunts for cash, then vanished for long periods of time until he went broke again.

The ladies must have been a little afraid of Rollo’s sudden, unannounced appearances when he was desperate for money, so his name itself was always shrouded in some dark and vaguely threatening cloud. When Grandmother Beryl died a few years ago, she’d already sold her house in Cornwall, leaving the money to Mom and Great-Aunt Penelope, who took it upon herself to rescue Rollo Jr., because he owed money, she said, “all over the world.”

As I sat there in the airplane mulling this over, I had the weird feeling that somebody else was peering at my family tree. I looked up straight into the gaze of the monkey, ensconced in his slumbering lady’s lap, silently watching my every scribble.

“Relatives of mine,” I told him. “And how’s your tree?”

 

When we landed at Heathrow, everyone made a mad dash for the taxicabs, but there was already a long line of waiting passengers from other flights.Wearily I joined the queue.

Then I spotted a uniformed driver anxiously walking up and down the line holding up a sign that said, “Penny Nichols.” I wondered if I had hallucinated it. I waved to him, and a smile of relief crossed his face. He tipped his hat and said, “This way, miss,” and led me away from the envious line as he handed me a note from Jeremy:

I fully expected to be booked into one of the dreary chain-hotels I’d just left. I did not expect to be whisked past red carpets, liveried doormen, a concierge who acted truly delighted to see me, a bellhop who got my bags up there before me, a butler waiting to usher me into a suite with a view of the park. I would have panicked, thinking it was surely a mistake, but the butler smiled at me reassuringly as he bowed and closed the door softly behind him.

T
HE COLOR OF MONEY IS NOT THE VERDANT GREEN OF DOLLARS AND pastoral real estate, nor the red and black of profit and loss, nor the silver and gold of coins of the realm, nor the purple of decadent royalty. The color of money is soft pink. It’s that rosy hue of health and well-being, of baby cheeks—no matter how old the heir apparent is—flush with fresh air from a carefree morning horseback ride, or warm and cozy when just awakening from an untroubled afternoon nap before a crackling fire. It’s the pink that’s somewhere between the pink lemonade of sunrise and the apricot-pink of the sky at sunset. The peachy-pink of the
Financial Times
, the salmon-pink of good champagne.

My room was a cornucopia of every imaginable shade of warm rose. It hung in majestic draperies above the head of my bed; and the Louis XVI chairs were upholstered in a slightly paler shade. The cushion of the chair near the kidney-shaped vanity table was a deeper hue, a bold raspberry that matched the sofa placed in front of the low mahogany dining table in the sitting room.The carpet was patterned with twining flowers in various shades of rose, and even the Italian marble in the bathroom was warm with a pink glow, especially when the soft lighting was turned on and refracted in the needle-etched mirrors. Crystal and silver vases overflowed with pale pink and even a few rogue fuchsia roses, and the entire suite was redolent with their fragrance. It was so quiet after the butler left that the only sound in the room was the slightly shifting champagne bottle as the ice melted in the bucket.

It was ten thirty when my suitcase and I entered the suite. It had been a long day. I was too tired to sweep downstairs into the hotel bar all decked out in a gold lamé evening gown and an ermine-trimmed wrap and high-heeled slippers with a feather on them—even if I owned such clothes, which I did not. But I was hungry.The hotel had a late-supper menu, so I ordered dinner in my room, and uncorked the champagne.

I ran a bath and unpacked my pretty floor-length silk nightgown and matching robe, still wrapped in tissue paper, and my little travel slippers. I’d packed this ensemble at the last minute in New York, in a sudden, stubborn burst of dreamy romanticism, just in case life gave me an opportunity to wear it instead of the long flannel T-shirt I normally wear in frigid hotel rooms.

It was just the right temperature in this suite. No chilly draft, not even after I rose like Venus out of the marble tub that I’d filled with a rosewater bubble bath. Sipping the champagne, I wrapped myself in the hotel’s soft cream-colored terry bathrobe, to dry off comfortably.

I was toweling my hair dry when the butler wheeled in my dinner on a gold-and-white trolley, and expertly laid the dining table with silver, crystal, china, and linen that was soft enough to put in your lap without its shedding the telltale lint of streamlined laundering. The tender steak was cooked just the way I’d requested—only barely pink—with asparagus, and sweet red potatoes the size of golf balls, and real French bread. Then I nibbled on a few cookies and sipped a cup of tea that made me feel warm, relaxed, and free of time zones.

While dawdling over the tea, I filled out my order for tomorrow’s breakfast of coffee, boiled egg and toast, marmalade and jam, and the day’s newspaper to be delivered with it. Then I changed into my silk nightgown and climbed into the enormous bed, which was firm but layered with soft cotton bedding, and I laid my head on the generous down pillow.

Drowsily I thanked my cousin Jeremy for arranging for me to have a good night’s rest. The boy I’d known was now an important, grown-up London businessman. I wondered how he felt about suddenly being in charge of the family affairs. His father, my Uncle Peter, who was Mom’s brother, had died when Jeremy was just twenty-five; and his mother, Aunt Sheila, who is
veddy
veddy English and whose family was wealthier than everybody on my side totalled up, still lives in London. I recalled the annual Christmas cards that she and my mother exchange, enclosing brief but polite letters and the occasional embarrassing snapshot of me and Jeremy.