The Hardie Inheritance (45 page)

‘I don't know how you can talk like this.' Trish was in tears.

‘I'm glad, after all, that you've come to give me the chance. I wrote you a letter, not posted yet. To say how lucky I've been to have you, and all that. And to tell you what's going to happen to everything afterwards. Wouldn't want you to be disappointed in your inheritance. Let's go for a walk.'

‘Are you strong enough?'

‘Mercy bullies me into a stroll every day. Wait for me outside
the front door, will you, while she wraps me up. I feel the cold more these days.'

Trish dried her eyes and did as she was told. As she let herself out of the studio, she heard the tinkle of a hand bell. When Grace came out to join her she was carrying a walking stick in one hand but not appearing to rely on it. Instead, she took Trish's arm and they began to walk slowly down the drive, following its zig-zag bends instead of taking the customary short cuts.

‘Would you like to stop and rest?' Trish asked after they had covered a third of the descent.

‘In a moment. Andy has put a seat for me just a little lower. At a viewpoint I specially like. I remember – it's the first clear memory of my life, when I must have been about three years old. My father put a blindfold round my eyes and carried me up the hill, piggyback. Then he stopped and took it off – and there was Greystones, brand new. “A palace for a princess,” he said, and I was to be the princess.'

This speech, taken slowly, a sentence at a time, brought them to the seat which Grace had mentioned. Trish helped her to sit down, and herself turned to face the house.

‘That's right,' said Grace. ‘Take a good look. I don't suppose you'll be invited back very often once David moves in.'

Grace expected a violent reaction to her mischievous remark; and she was not disappointed.

‘David? Grace, you're not going to give the house to
David!
'

‘Aren't I? Sit down, Trish. I asked you before whether you wanted it yourself. Perhaps you didn't take the question seriously – or thought it would be tactless even to envisage a time when I might not be here myself. So I asked Terry as well.'

‘He didn't tell me.'

‘He didn't need to. Mainly what he said was that it was none of his business what I chose to do, and that whatever you'd already told me was likely to be what you honestly felt. But what came out of the conversation strongly was that he sees it as his responsibility to provide you with the sort of home that you deserve. I think he'd feel he'd failed, in a way, if he merely moved into the house where you grew up. It would be different, he said, if you had a great sentimental tie to the place, as Rupert has to Castlemere; but you haven't, have you?'

‘All the same!' Trish's astonishment was still on the boil. ‘If I'd known that the choice was between me having it and David having it, I might not have been so honest. Grace, you don't even
like
him.'

‘That's not the point.' Grace shivered a little and pulled her coat more closely round her. ‘I shan't be here when he takes over, so my likes and dislikes hardly matter. The only important thing is that you don't want the house and he most certainly does. I'm a great believer in the need for ruling passions to be indulged. And I'm not in fact making him a gift of the house.'

‘But you said –'

‘I couldn't resist teasing you. Let's talk it out. No need for any polite hypocrisies any more. I've had to give proper thought to making a will, and I don't see any point in using legacies to pay off old scores. If I try to imagine the future at all, I want to see it as a time in which everyone's happy. And a house is always a special case when it comes to inheritances. I could have forced it on you, I suppose, as a token of affection, but then I'd have had to live with the thought of you selling it to strangers. That was the reason why I'm not leaving it to Rupert either.'

‘Rupert!' For a second time Trish's voice expressed astonishment, but on this occasion the element of disapproval was absent. No doubt she merely thought it extraordinary that there could have been any idea of bequeathing Greystones to someone who had such a grand home of his own already.

‘He's terribly short of money, poor fellow. And all because of Castlemere. If he sold it, he could become a rich man overnight. Buy a house in Mayfair, make a political career for himself in the House of Lords, live in style. Castlemere is his millstone. Another case of a ruling passion.'

‘Which for that reason you think should be indulged?'

Grace did not answer the question directly.

‘When I think how happy my mother was at Castlemere as a child,' she said, ‘– and when I remember how she was expelled from the family for marrying a Hardie – it amuses me to think that a Hardie might help to keep the Beverleys afloat. He and I talked about it a few days ago.'

‘He told me. The conversation seems to have jerked him into action. As though he'd be ashamed to take your money without doing something positive at last to make Castlemere pay its own way.'

‘He's going to have the residue of my estate; the cash. And all the sculptures still in my possession, except for the ones in the serpentine garden; they ought to stay. I suggested he might start an open-air sculpture park around the moat at Castlemere,
so that the house would act as a background without necessarily having to be open to the public. If he wanted to go commercial, he could sell other people's work from there. But certainly he could sell out the editions of my bronzes. That should bring him in quite a bit. Greystones would be no use to him, though, except to raise more cash by putting it on the market. So as far as the house was concerned, I had to sit down and think who might wish actually to live in it.'

‘You don't have to tell me now.'

‘I'd like to. I don't want there to be any unpleasant surprises. David will be surprised – pleasantly – but that's all. And as I just said, I'm not giving the house directly to him. He's to have a life interest, so he can move in and give himself the airs of an owner. But after he dies or whenever he renounces it, it will go to Max.'

‘Max.' This time Trish's comment was neither amazed nor disapproving.

‘Max loves the house. In a very peculiar manner, I must say. He wanders all round it when he's here, in the same way that I used to as a child. Letting the atmosphere soak in. He adored showing it off to all his friends in the ballet company. He seems to see it in terms of music. I confidently expect that in twenty or thirty years' time there will be a Greystones ballet choreographed by Max Hardie. But there's no point in saddling him with it straightaway. He couldn't afford to maintain it and while he still has his stage career he wouldn't be free to live in it anyway. But he'll be glad to know that he has a home waiting for later in his life – and one in which he can live in some style, if he chooses.'

She stood up, staggering slightly. It was always at such moments that she felt weakest, and she was grateful for Trish's grip on her arm as well as the nods of assent which indicated approval of her decision.

‘I wouldn't want you to think that it was the house or nothing for you, and that you're not getting anything,' Grace continued, steadying her balance before setting off again.

‘I don't –'

‘I know you don't. But I do. Let's go on down.' They began to walk very slowly. ‘Andy will get the lodge and the freehold of the land that he's leasing at present. As for your father, he won't be mentioned in my will, Trish, but he knows why. He got himself into a scrape years ago, and I had to make a rather peculiar bargain to get him out of it. So he's not going to make a fuss or be hurt by being ignored. Now then, stop here a moment.'

They had reached the near edge of the wood. Grace looked round for something on which she could sit and found the stump of a tree.

‘I don't feel quite up to stepping over brambles,' she said, ‘but if you carry on down the side of the wood a little way you should come across a red pole, and then a T-shaped marker further on.'

Trish explored as instructed, returning to report success.

‘I told you about the plan for the road, didn't I?' asked Grace. ‘I made the council surveyor mark out the area they're asking for. The red pole is one of my own markers. Andy put in a dozen of them for me, along the boundaries of the land I'm giving to you. Not as a legacy. The deed of gift has been signed already. There'll be getting on for thirty acres to do what you like with after you've lost whatever they take for the road. It would be too complicated for Max to be faced with all the negotiations with the council. Much better for you to take possession straightaway and fight your own corner.'

‘You think I'm just the person to cope with that kind of complication, do you?' Trish's voice was teasing, but Grace could tell that beneath it she was close to tears again. She kept her own voice businesslike.

‘I'm confident that Terry can. When are you going to marry him, Trish?'

‘Well –'

‘I know you're a great one for throwing things away, but you oughtn't to leave a man who loves you wondering whether
you'll discard
him
one day. It's not very kind to leave him in purgatory. Not that I'm a good one to preach about marriage, but what I'd really like is for this to be a wedding present. A kind of dowry. Let me spell out just what it is that I'm making over.'

She felt in her pocket for a piece of paper on which she had already sketched a plan.

‘We're here,' she said, pointing, as Trish came to stand behind her and look over her shoulder. ‘This nearest strip of woodland would stay with the house, to screen off the traffic and act as a sound baffle. The next strip would be yours, running alongside what's going to be the ring road. You might be able to build on it one of these days, but there's no permission for that at the moment. Then there's the strip which the council needs.'

‘It seems very wide, just for a road.'

‘They're talking about having two lanes for each direction, divided by a wide area of grass and with more grass on either side of the road. My lawyer has been negotiating a sale. He's got all the papers; everything's pretty well settled, except that the council doesn't want to pay until it's got all the land along the route tied up and is ready to start work. In return for our co-operation, we've got a declaration that the meadows on the far side of the road can be developed – because of course they'll be completely cut off from the house. That's where you're going to make your fortune.'

She tried to raise a hand to feel in her pocket again and found that she lacked the necessary strength. ‘Fish out the city map for me, will you?'

Trish opened it and found the section which showed Shot-over, Headington and Cowley.

‘Now then, just look at this. There's this huge area of the car factories: Morris Motors and Pressed Steel. They keep expanding and they want more workers. There's this other area which has been filled in by houses for the factory hands. But there's no more room there, and not enough homes. Put a new
housing estate on the meadows and you'd be doing other people a service, as well as yourself.'

‘But I don't know anything about housing.'

‘Terry does – or could soon learn. Anyway, you could always sell it straight on to a speculative builder. Land with building permission is a gold mine. But if you do that, I suggest you keep a site in the centre and build one of these big new shops that Terry's always talking about.'

‘A self-service one, you mean?'

‘That's right.' Grace circled the area with a finger. ‘All the people who live here already are miles from any decent shops and there'd be a captive market in the new community. Another public service.'

‘You've really been thinking about this, haven't you, Grace?'

‘I have to do something to pass the time, and it's a challenge. Even when you know that you haven't got long, thinking about what will happen when you're not here is a bit of an effort. Satisfying when it works, though.'

With a different sort of effort Grace stood up, exhausted.

‘You stay here,' Trish ordered. ‘I'll bring the car down the drive to take you back. You mustn't try to walk up the hill.'

‘In a moment. There's something I want to look at first, while I'm here. In case it's the last time I manage to get down.' She took Trish's arm for support again and leaned on the walking stick too as she indicated that she wished after all to plunge into the wood. ‘Stupid to be so wobbly, isn't it? Something to do with these pills I have to take, I suppose. It should be somewhere about here.'

‘What should?'

‘Two pieces of slate.' Grace pointed to an area beneath a large beech tree where the ground was covered with leaves and brambles. ‘Have a look round there for me, would you? They're pointed, the shape of a cat's ears, stuck into the ground.'

Trish picked up a fallen branch and used it to lift the brambles and probe the area beneath. ‘Got them!' she called at last. ‘Shall I bring them over to you?'

‘No. Leave them where they are,' Grace made her way slowly across the rough ground until she was able to look down at the two black triangles – much smaller than she had remembered them. ‘They were put there as a headstone. The dearest friend of my childhood is buried there. My cat.' She had to search her memory for a moment before coming up with the name. ‘Pepper, he was called, because his fur made me sneeze. David shot him with a bow and arrow.'

‘Is that why you've never got on with David? Did it begin that day?'

‘Yes. It was the day I discovered how to hate and how to mourn. A six-year-old body bursting with misery and fury.' With her stick she touched each of the two slates in turn. ‘And yet I ought to be grateful to David, I suppose, because something began for me that day. That was when I first found out that shapes could be used to express emotions – the biggest discovery of my life, though it was a good many years before I realized it.' Her expression suddenly lightened. ‘So perhaps it's fair after all that David should be rewarded with Greystones. If it hadn't been for him, I might never have found my vocation.'