A Rather Lovely Inheritance (5 page)

Those snapshots ended a few years ago with Jeremy’s wedding photo—and my lack of one—but then he was divorced within a year, with no real explanation. In the photo his wife was looking off-camera, so all I could see was a good profile and blonde hair, not much more.

Was he, too, one of the walking wounded when it came to love? The grown-up cousin Jeremy in the photos looked like a smooth-faced, elegant English businessman, yet in the eyes I could still see the slightly rebellious boy from the beach at Cornwall that summer.

He’d been stiff and starchy at first, as we sat primly with the adults over tea and cakes served in the kind of china that Americans use only when somebody dies or gets married. It was all I could do to balance my plate and teacup, for I felt my cousin’s watchful eyes and, worse, his mother’s. But one afternoon, when we raced each other through my grandmother’s walled-in garden with its path leading to the sea, I was able to joke with him and get him to drop his cool, snotty attitude.

He even confided in me that he certainly was not going to be just another Englishman in a suit in another “bloody boring” job, like his banker father. He was going to travel on safari, he said, kicking pebbles in the path; or explore ancient ruins, or start a rock band. I was flattered that he was confiding in me, even though he called me “child.” But this important conversation was interrupted by a very buzzy bee that relentlessly chased me halfway down the path until Jeremy commanded me to stop shrieking and “Freeze!” Something made me trust him, so I halted. As the bee circled me to come in for the kill, Jeremy valiantly gave his beach towel one sharp, quick
snap!
and the bee fell down dead at my feet. I was highly impressed.

Our mothers were already ensconced with chairs and umbrellas, waiting for us.The sand where we laid out our blanket was warm, and Jeremy dared me to race him into the water.The waves were crashing and filling the air with a wonderful bracing salty flavor. But the ocean was breathtakingly cold. After the first toe in I hesitated, and that was when Grandmother Beryl splashed past me and dove in, hale and hearty, shouting back for me to join her. Jeremy rolled his eyes at my hesitancy and plunged on ahead. Standing on the shoreline, Great-Aunt Penelope assured me that I didn’t have to, but finally I flung myself in, gasping, my hypersensitive skin turning bright red. I swam a bit, but the water never felt any warmer, as it did back home on our side of the Atlantic.

Afterwards I ran out of the chilly sea and dashed, blue-lipped, teeth chattering, back to the blanket on the sand, peering wistfully at a fairly cloudy sky that made the wind feel colder. Jeremy’s mother, Aunt Sheila, saw me emerge, and she told Jeremy to run and get more towels and dry me off before I caught pneumonia. He was always an obedient kid on the surface, with blameless manners, yet subversive the moment the adults’ backs were turned.

In this case he promptly ran off to get the towels, but when he saw that the grown-ups had lost interest and were deep into their boring gossip, he flung the towel around me in a fairly vigorous rubdown, and when I protested, he told me that I was being a weak, “whingeing” Secret Agent who’d just parachuted into an Arctic river and must avoid hypothermia.

Then as we sat there I taught him how to play poker, although he declared that I was totally unable to keep a “poker face.” He taught me Morse code. This took awhile, but once I caught on, it came in rather handy when we returned to the house and sat down to dinner. Uncle Peter had put on some droning, fusty old music from his “era,” and Jeremy found it so excruciatingly unbearable that he began to tap out a message to me on the table leg.

Crummy music
, he tapped. Startled, I stared at him, but he just gave me our Secret Agent look. He was teasing me for my frequent use of the word “crummy.”

B-l-o-o-d-y b-o-r-i-n-g
, I agreed, tapping back with his favorite phrase. Individually we were both pretty well-behaved kids, but we seemed to bring out the mischief in each other.

“What’s that noise?” my mother said, looking up from across the table. I glanced away innocently. Jeremy cleared his throat. Uncle Peter shot him a suspicious look. I held my breath. We ate more, and the adults resumed their conversation.

Jeremy waited until the music swelled louder, then tapped again.
I hate peas.

I couldn’t believe his audacity. I lowered my head so that the sight of his smirk wouldn’t make me snort with laughter. Before I could tap out a reply, however, Jeremy’s mother cocked her head.

“I heard something, too,” she said. Grandmother Beryl looked around, perplexed.

But Aunt Penelope had been glancing knowingly from Jeremy to me, and now she smiled and said in a noncommittal way, “Oh, it’s probably just a pair of little mice again.”

 

Even now, years and years later, as I snuggled into my enormous bed in my hotel room, listening drowsily to the muffled sound of London’s traffic in the street below me, I found that childhood memory as vivid as if it had happened yesterday. Time is like that.Whole years whiz by into oblivion, yet certain moments seem eternal. I drifted into the first deep and decent sleep I’d had in months, and I did not move a muscle until breakfast—and Jeremy—arrived together the next morning.

B
LUE-SUITED AND CARRYING AN ATTACHÉ CASE, LOOKING VERY SERIOUS and important, Jeremy entered the sitting room ahead of the butler. I received them both regally, seated on the sofa that was pulled up to the dining table. Actually I’d scurried there in order to hide behind the table so that they couldn’t see too much of me in my silk nightgown and robe.

Jeremy strode right up to me, and, as if he were my husband coming home from a business trip, he bent to kiss my cheek, with more warmth than you’d kiss an old aunt, yet nothing to suggest more than cousinly affection. I got a quick whiff of some clean male scent, something suggesting bergamot, lemon, salty sea air, and money.

“Hallo, Penny,” he said brightly as the butler arranged the plates unobtrusively, then went out and shut the door behind him. I gestured for Jeremy to take the nice plushy chair opposite me at the table, for he could not resist glancing down at my food, and I recognized a look of hunger and fatigue on his face, beneath that smooth facade.

“You’re Penny Nichols, all right,” he said, taking time to look at me directly as he sat down, “all grown up, but I’d know you anywhere.” This made me feel like my hair was in pigtails, which it never was, so I quickly assumed a grand, sophisticated manner.

“Have some coffee and
please
, help me finish this marvelous breakfast,” I said. “They gave me two eggs and a whole basket of breads. If you behave you can have one of each.”

And after a little dance of no-thanks-oh-all-right he tucked into the food with the gusto of a boy.

“Thanks. I was in Brussels last night,” he said. “Just got in this morning.Wanted to finish up some business so I could clear the way for ours.”

While we were eating, I stole a few glances at him. God, he was really so mercilessly good-looking. He was a grown-up now, all right, quite serious and manly, so different from the gangly kid he’d been the last time I was this close to him. His dark, wavy brown hair was expensively cut to look offhandedly hip. His pale skin was smooth as the cream in my pitcher, and his high forehead was without a trace of a furrow, indicating that distinctly untroubled calm possessed only by boys raised with money and the certainty that they will never starve. There were a few wry crinkles around his mouth and eyes. Those blue eyes, framed by dark lashes, were cool and distant as the sea when he glanced at you, but if you caught his attention with something smart or amusing, a flame of deep comprehension, humor, and intelligence warmed his gaze, making it astonishingly kind and friendly, even gentle.

This must go over well with his law clients, I thought. Just the kind of man you’d turn to when you needed an advocate in a sticky-wicket situation. For despite his warmth, you had the sense of a panther lurking behind the gaze, a creature who could strike swiftly and lethally if the situation called for it. His midnight blue suit was beautifully tailored, cut narrowly enough to be urban-stylish, not fat-cat middle-aged. He wore a white shirt with thin blue stripes; a wine-colored silk tie, not too wide; good shoes that weren’t too shiny-new or old-farty; and expensive socks—aha, here is where a man illustrates any dash of rebellion, in socks patterned with a wild red thread running through otherwise sober dark blues and blacks.

“Mum thinks it’s unforgivable that I wasn’t at the airport to greet you,” he said, pouring coffee for me before he poured his own. “She wants you for tea this afternoon, if you can bear it.”

Damn, I thought to myself. First, I was supposed to ask after Aunt Sheila before he mentioned her. And second, I felt momentary panic at being submitted to Aunt Sheila’s scrutiny, which undoubtedly would make me feel as if I needed a haircut, badly. But I caught him watching me with a knowing smile, so I said as casually as I could,“Of course. And how is Aunt Sheila?”

“Mother is impossible, as always,” he replied enigmatically, stirring cream into his coffee.

“I remember your parents having elegant cocktails before supper that summer, with Herb Alpert playing on the stereo.” I kept my face straight, but he winced.

“Yeah, that was Dad’s music. Mom was Beatles and Stones, like your folks.”

“Was she a mod or a rocker?” I asked, lapsing into our old teasing mode.

“A dilettante,” he said, a shade more darkly than I expected.

“I think she once told me she kissed Paul McCartney,” I offered. Jeremy glanced up at me sharply, then looked slightly embarrassed about his mother.

“She
will
keep telling people that,” he murmured, and took a bite of his croissant.

“Why shouldn’t she?” I said. “It’s a moment in history.”

There was something so familiar about his ironic tone and good manners that it made me think,
Actually, I do remember this fellow.
And after all these years, his mother was still a thorn in his side somehow. I’d forgotten that. I never knew what it was, exactly, that bothered him about his parents. As a kid I’d automatically chalked it up to how impossible adults were. Nobody needed to explain why, back then.

“How are Aunt Nancy and Uncle Georges?” he asked, eager to change the subject from his mother, which, after all, he’d introduced. “Does your father still make those incredible roasted meals? Lamb and pheasant and all those marvelous potatoes, and those brown sauces?”

“Did he cook for you? How can you possibly remember that?” I asked curiously.

“How could anyone forget?” he replied.“I sulked for a week after we left, when we went back to our cook’s dull boiled food.You and your parents were like characters in a storybook. I always secretly believed that you really
were
Penny Nichols, Girl Detective.”

His tone had just a slight mocking edge to it, but I looked up from my plate in time to catch him glancing at my neckline and my silk negligee ensemble in a way that men simply can’t seem to stop themselves from doing when they first meet a woman. He hastily shifted his gaze to the sugar bowl and busied himself with his coffee. I tried through sheer force of will not to blush, by glancing at the day’s headlines in the newspaper lying beside my plate. This is how I have learned to control my blushing somewhat, but not entirely, by putting my thoughts somewhere neutral and safe—like on wars, murders, political scandals. Anything that I don’t have to personally be embarrassed by. Yet I suddenly felt doubtful that I could pull off this casual grown-up act. But I would certainly go down trying.

“And are you that same kid who rescued me from a very aggressive bee in Cornwall by zapping him dead with one shot from a beach towel?” I asked him.

A light blush rose under his pale skin and then faded quickly. Well, well, I noted. He’s a blusher, too. He said,“Ah! Yes, well, I had to do something.You very nearly got us both stung to death.” Then he gulped his coffee and cleared his throat briskly.

“I must go over to the office and collect some paperwork for the reading,” he said.“But I didn’t want you to have to face down the ‘vultures’ without knowing a few things.There are two wills: one English, the other French, because Great-Aunt Penelope owned property in both countries. The English will is quite simple and straightforward. The French one is newer, because it replaced an earlier French will from the 1950s which originally divided the French assets between her brother—that’s Great-Uncle Roland—and her sister, Grandmother Beryl, who were both alive then. But since she outlived them, Great-Aunt Penelope remade the French will to include ‘the youngsters’—that’s you, me, and Rollo Jr., you see. She made me the executor of the will just before she died. Her solicitor in France had retired, and she didn’t like his partners. So she left everything to the care of my firm.”

“How did she die?” I asked gently. He looked genuinely regretful.

“In her bed, quietly,” he answered.“At night, in her sleep, the doctor thought. Heart gave way, but he said it wouldn’t have been painful . . .” He stopped. “She tried to telephone me that day. I was in Japan. Couldn’t get back to her in time. I rather liked her,” he said reflectively. “One of the few older people with an open mind, who’d lived an eventful enough life to actually like the younger generation. Of course, I didn’t know her long. Just when she summoned me to lunch in her London flat, to tell me about the will. She never talked about herself, just asked about me and my life. So I didn’t know that she was ailing.”

“She was alone when she died, then?” I asked. He nodded. I thought of an old Roman proverb: Live your own life, for you will die your own death. I reminded myself of my new resolution to live in the present.

“Who are the vultures?” I ventured, having already guessed.

“Rollo Jr. and his mum, of course.” He looked at me quizzically.