The Inheritance (6 page)

‘You need a challenge, too,’ chipped in her sister May, already Dr Bingley and now studying for a second PhD in Medieval History in London. ‘Mum would hate to see you wasting away like this. You’re still young.’

‘I’m not young, darling,’ Max smiled, ‘but thank you for saying so.’

‘Well you’re not old,’ said Rosie. ‘More to the point, you’re a wonderful teacher. You have so much more to give professionally. And Fittlescombe’s a lovely village. I went there once for a wedding.’

‘I’m sure it is …’

‘We should at least go and take a look.’

All Max’s objections – he’d never taught in a state school, the pay was awful, he was a rotten administrator – were swatted aside by his daughters like so many pesky, insignificant flies.

‘You should have made head years ago, but you never pushed for it. And where better to make a difference than in a state school? Why should the wealthy kids get all the good teachers? Anyway, St Hilda’s is a charter school so there won’t be that much admin. The governors run it, and they obviously like you and your methods. You’ll have free rein.’

Little by little, Max had been worn down. Then he’d come to Fittlescombe, and walked into the cottage that May and Rosie had already found for him online. Half the size of his present house, Willow Cottage was utterly charming with its flagstone floors, open fires and enchanting sloping garden leading down to the river.

‘Private fishing rights, dad,’ May said with a wink. ‘And you wouldn’t need a mortgage.’

So Max took the job of headmaster at St Hilda’s, more because he lacked the energy to fight than for any positive reason. Now, nearly five months later, things were very different.
He
was very different. Revived and energized professionally in a way he wouldn’t have believed possible a year ago, he’d already had a profound impact at the school. Not everybody loved his old-fashioned methods – desks in rows, teacher at the front, blackboards and chalk and weekly tests on everything from spelling to times tables to French verbs. But the OFSTED report in March had given the school a glowing review, and if the current Year Six performed as well in their SATs as they had in the Easter mock exams, St Hilda’s had every chance of topping the West Sussex league tables. Quite an achievement for a four-room village primary school with a tiny budget and over thirty children to a class.

But it wasn’t only the school that had transformed Max Bingley. Day by day, week by week, the village of Fittlescombe had worked its magic on him, drawing him in and making him one of their own. The community was friendly, but it went far beyond that. It was the place itself, the solid stone walls of Willow Cottage, the church with its yew hedges and ancient tombs, the houses and shops squeezed together along the high street, like the last line of resistance against all that was ugly and vulgar and painful in this modern world. And then, of course, there were the Downs, surrounding Fittlescombe like protective giants, as vivid green as wet seaweed and as softly undulating as feather pillows. Max walked, and fished, and drank in the beauty of his new home like a humming bird gorging on nectar. And although his daughters despaired over the state of his cottage, and his utter lack of interest in painting a wall or hanging a picture, or even curtains, the truth was that the move to Fittlescombe had brought Max Bingley back to life.

At the end of the High Street he turned left, along the lane that led to the bottom of Furlings’ drive. Everybody in the village knew that a family of rich Australians had moved into the big house, the first non Flint-Hamiltons to live there in three centuries. Max Bingley had been surprised but delighted to learn that the new owners intended to send their daughter to the village school. Typically families with that sort of money sent their little darlings off to prestigious prep schools, like the one where Max had spent most of his career. Then again, Australians were supposed to be more down to earth and egalitarian by nature, weren’t they? Perhaps the Cranleys were champagne socialists? Either way, Max wasn’t above buttering up St Hilda’s new, mega-rich parents in the hope of a future donation to the school. He’d only been there a term and a half himself, but he already had a wish list for St Hilda’s as long as both his arms. More teaching assistants would be a start. And a central heating system that stood at least a fighting chance of seeing them through the next winter.

Straightening his tweed jacket, he headed purposefully up the long, bumpy drive.

‘Jason? Have you seen those cushions? They were in the big box. The one from the General Trading Company. Jason!’

Angela Cranley ran an exhausted hand through her hair. Brett was coming home tonight, for the first time.
Home.
It was funny how quickly Angela had come to think of Furlings in those terms. But nothing, nothing, was ready. The twin Knole sofas she’d ordered from Peter Jones had been the wrong colour and had had to go back. Her and Brett’s bed, shipped over from Sydney at Brett’s insistence because it was the most comfortable bed in the world, had been damaged in transit and now sat in the master suite with a huge crack in its antique mahogany headboard. The food order from Ocado
had
arrived, but the bloody people in Lewes had made a bunch of substitutions, including swapping out the seabass Angela had planned for Brett’s welcome-home supper with cod. Brett hated cod. And now the cushions – four large, down-stuffed squares of hand-embroidered Belgian lace, designed to cover the dreaded headboard crack – appeared to have gone missing in action.

To top it all off, Mrs Worsley had been called away to a family emergency, something to do with her sister and a boiler (Angela had only been half listening), and was not due back until tea time, only a few hours before Brett walked through the door. Which left Jason, who’d been in a world of his own these past few days, as Angela’s sole helper. (Unless you counted Logan who, last time Angela had seen her, had been painting her toenails in rainbow stripes with a packet of felt tip pens on the kitchen floor.) Now Jason, too, was gone.

Perhaps my son and four Belgian lace cushions are together somewhere, knocking back sour apple martinis and enjoying themselves while I lose my mind?
Angela thought hysterically. She’d been pacing the library like a madwoman for the last five minutes, as if a two-by-three-foot crate from the General Trading Company were going to magically materialize before her eyes, simply because she remembered leaving it there yesterday.

The ringing doorbell did nothing to calm her jarred nerves.

‘Coming!’

Running into the hall, she collided with Jason, still in his pyjamas and looking as if he hadn’t slept a wink. Insomnia was one of the worst parts of depression, but Angela was too frazzled to offer much sympathy this morning.

‘Where have you been?’ she wailed. ‘I need you.’

‘In bed. Sorry.’

‘Have you seen the new cushions? They were in that big box …’

‘They’re in your dressing room. Mrs Worsley carried them up last night, remember?’

Clearly, Angela didn’t remember. She hadn’t felt this stressed since the day that horrendous Tricia woman showed up at the house in Sydney and announced, cool as a cucumber, that she and Brett were ‘madly in love’. The doorbell rang again.

‘Yes, yes! I’m coming. Give me a chance, for God’s sake.’

She pulled open the door, unaware of quite how deeply she was frowning, or how far her voice had carried.

‘I’m s-so sorry,’ the man on the doorstep stammered. ‘I do apologize. I’ve come at a bad time.’

The man was older, maybe a decade older than Brett, with a fan of wrinkles around each eye, but he wasn’t unattractive. Tall, and still only partially grey, with a slightly military bearing and a kind, intelligent face, he looked quintessentially English in his tweed jacket and bottle-green corduroy trousers. Angela could see at once that she’d embarrassed him by being so unwelcoming.

‘Not at all. God, please.
I’m
sorry. What must you think of me? I’m not normally so rude. Or so scruffy.’ She looked down at her crumpled jeans, stained at the knees with wood polish, and at the chipped nail enamel on her bare feet, and blushed what she knew to be a perfectly hideous tomato-red. ‘How can I help?’

She’s not at all what I expected
,
thought Max Bingley. He’d imagined diamonds and perfectly coiffed hair and a fleet of servants answering the door, not a harassed housewife with bags under her eyes dressed like a charwoman. Perhaps the Cranleys were not as well off as local gossip suggested?

‘Max Bingley.’ He proffered his hand. ‘I’m the new headmaster at St Hilda’s, the primary school in the village. I understand your daughter will be joining us next term?’

‘You’re Logan’s headmaster? Oh, crap.’ The words were out of her mouth before she knew she’d said them. Angela’s colour deepened. ‘I can’t believe I just said that out loud! I am soooo sorry.’

Max laughed. Her discomfiture clearly amused him.

‘That’s quite all right, Mrs Cranley. I promise I won’t be sending you to my office. Or your daughter. Not yet, anyway. What did you say her name was?’

‘Logan,’ said Angela, smoothing down her dishevelled hair.

Max resisted the urge to say ‘like the berry?’ and merely smiled politely.

‘We have a son too. Jason. But he’s twenty so I doubt you’re going to want him in your classroom, ha ha ha ha!’

What’s wrong with me?
thought Angela.
Why am I babbling away like a lunatic?

‘No. Quite so.’ Max shifted awkwardly from foot to foot. This was the moment when he’d expected her to invite him inside for a cup of tea, or at least to ask a few polite questions about the school. Instead she just stood in the doorway looking flustered.
I shouldn’t have come. I should have waited to meet her at school like everybody else.
‘Well, I won’t keep you. I just wanted to say welcome and I look forward to meeting … Logan.’

He turned the word over in his mouth as if it were some strange fruit he’d never tasted before. There weren’t too many Logans to the pound in Fittlescombe. Or in England, come to that.

‘Right, well. I look forward to seeing you both at school,’ Max finished awkwardly. ‘Goodbye!’

He smiled and gave a cheery wave, but it had clearly been an embarrassing encounter for both of them.

Angela walked back into the hall, closing the front door behind her. ‘I just made a total dick of myself in front of the village headmaster,’ she told Jason.

‘I’m sure you didn’t,’ said Jason, not looking up from the box of books he was unpacking.

‘I did. I said “crap”.’

Jason smiled. ‘I reckon he’ll recover, Mum. Crap’s not that bad. It’s not even a real swear word.’

‘It fucking well is,’ said Angela. They both giggled.

‘You need to chill out, you know,’ said Jason. ‘It’s only Dad coming home. It’s not the pope.’

‘I know,’ Angela sighed. ‘But I promised him the house would be ready and it’s a bloody disaster.’

Jason hugged his mother. He hated to hear the fear in her voice. But the truth was, Angela was afraid of Brett. They all were. Not physically afraid. But afraid of his disapproval, his censure, his disappointment. Brett Cranley was a bully.

So what if you promised him?
Jason wanted to scream.
What about all the promises he made to you, and didn’t keep? Anyone would think you were the one who’d been unfaithful, not him.
But he knew it would do no good.

‘The house is not a disaster. It’s beautiful. Dad’s gonna love it, you’ll see. Now go and have a bath and get changed.’

‘A bath? I can’t. The cushions …’

‘I’ll do the damn cushions. And I’ll unpack the rest of these boxes too,’ said Jason. ‘Please, go and take a chill pill before you hurt yourself. You’re no use to anyone in this state.’

Once she’d gone, reluctantly and only after leaving a barrage of instructions about what needed to be done in the next hour, Jason returned to unpacking. The few books the family had had shipped from Australia looked ridiculous in Furlings’ enormous library. Rory Flint-Hamilton had bequeathed his vast collection of Victorian first editions to Sussex University, so the endless shelves in the grand mahogany-panelled room were bare.
Like the mouth of an old man who’s lost all his teeth
, thought Jason. He couldn’t imagine how they were ever going to fill them.

Perhaps he could persuade his parents to turn it into a music room? The acoustics would be perfect for a Steinway grand piano. Jason’s father had never encouraged his music, partly because he considered it to be a useless attribute in a man, and partly because, as he told Jason brutally, ‘You’re not good enough, mate.’

In this latter observation, however, Brett was correct. Jason was a good, solid pianist, but he lacked the talent and flair to make it professionally, at concert-level. The idea that a person might want to play the piano for pleasure, without making any money from it, was anathema to Brett Cranley.

‘Why don’t you do something useful? Something you can make a living at?’ Brett would ask his son. Jason had long ago given up trying to reason with his dad. It would be like an eagle trying to communicate with a gorilla. Utterly futile.

The doorbell rang again. People were seriously social in this village. Jason hesitated – he was still in his pyjamas – but he knew if he didn’t get it, Angela would heave herself out of the bath like something out of
The Kraken Wakes
and run dripping down the stairs. She’d probably open the door stark naked, she was in such a bloody state about Dad and the house.

Skidding back into the hallway, sliding along in his socks like Tom Cruise in
Risky Business
, he opened the door.

‘Oh my goodness. Hello.’

The most beautiful woman Jason Cranley had ever seen stood before him, looking him up and down, curling her upper lip with a combination of amusement and disdain.

‘Do you know who I am?’

No
,
thought Jason.
But suddenly, I want to.
The girl was tall and slim, with a cascade of honey-blonde waves falling onto her shoulders and down her back. She was wearing tight jeans tucked into riding boots, a dark green cashmere sweater that clung unashamedly to her large, pert breasts, and aviator sunglasses that hid her eyes but could not conceal the chiselled beauty of her features. Her cheekbones looked as if they could cut through glass.