A Rather Lovely Inheritance (8 page)

The dining room was flooded with light that came from a wall of big windows looking out on the Thames, at picture-postcard views of the city. Little boats were gliding along quietly below us, past fairy-tale church spires and venerable old bridges. It made me catch my breath with delight. Jeremy smiled at me as he noted my reaction. Then I saw that the table, laid with white linen, pale yellow napkins, and gold-rimmed plates and glasses, was set with a buffet platter of little sandwiches, salads, and a plate of cookies, all flanked by two vases of yellow roses and violet-colored sweet peas, and a bowl of fruit. I looked at Jeremy reproachfully.

“Oh, all right, a quick nibble,” he said.

“Boy, that’s big of you,” I said, and Aunt Sheila laughed.

We sat down and ate. Jeremy must have told her on the telephone about how things went at the reading of the will, because Aunt Sheila never asked, never mentioned it, and seemed more interested in “catching up” on my little life so far.“Re-e-eally?” she drawled when I told her, for instance, about the wife-of-Napoleon picture we’d been shooting in Cannes.

“I think history is most fascinating when you can actually watch it being made,” she said. “I was in Paris in the summer of 1968,” she added, almost boasting. “During the general strike. We hitchhiked to Saint-Tropez,” she added, casting a daring, almost challenging look at Jeremy.

“Jeremy doesn’t like me to talk about my hippie days,” she said.

“Mother, really,” he said, mildly reprovingly. “You never qualified as a hippie.”

“True,” she allowed, “but I was reasonably hip. Jeremy looks just like Peter when he puts that face on,” she told me.

It was the one and only time she mentioned her husband, and the effect on Jeremy was to make him raise his eyebrows, ever so slightly. When Jeremy’s mobile phone shrilled, he seemed glad to excuse himself and slip out to a back room to take the call.That left Aunt Sheila and me alone, but before I could get scared she turned to me conspiratorially and said, “He’s a pain in the arse, but he’s awfully good-looking, isn’t he?”

“He does look good,” I admitted.

“His wife was a positive beast to him,” she confided in a low voice. “Made him miserable. She was a nervous type, really, the kind that has to be doing something constantly to distract herself. Club-hopping every night. Endless chatter. You want to pet them and make them calm down, that type, but they won’t let you. It makes them nervous to be calm. Anyway, she thought my poor lad was dull when he occasionally wanted to sit home at night in his robe and slippers before the fire in the winter. She never realized how hard he works, how tired he gets after all that travel. In the end, she ran off with his best friend.”

This was more than my mother had ever told me. In fact, I was sure Mom didn’t know this.

“Do keep that under your hat,” Aunt Sheila said in a low voice, her glance darting toward the hallway, anticipating Jeremy’s return. “He’d kill me if he knew I’d told you. But sometimes you have to tell people. It’s not good to suffer in silence.” She sighed. “Look out for him, will you?” she asked. “He won’t let me. He’ll listen to you. He trusts you. I’m glad, because sometimes life can make you mistrust the opposite sex.” She said this in the tones of someone who liked the opposite sex.

Then she leaned forward as if she were working herself up to saying something more, and even opened her mouth to do so, but we both heard Jeremy’s brisk footsteps coming toward us. Aunt Sheila straightened up and smiled brightly. She rose, glanced at her slim gold-and-diamond watch, said she had an appointment, kissed me lightly and told me to give my parents her “love,” which surprised me a little. Jeremy opened the door for her and summoned the lift, and let her go without us because I’d asked hesitatingly if I might use the powder room.

“You show her, will you, Jeremy, and lock up for me?”Aunt Sheila said as she flitted out the door, waving away my thanks for the nice lunch.

“Where’s she off to?” I asked when I returned from the spotless pale blue bathroom.

“She goes to visit a veterans’ center once a week,” Jeremy said dryly. “On Tuesdays. On Wednesdays and Fridays she shops and takes exercise. On Mondays she’s got her land mines and women’s shelter. Not exactly the hippie lifestyle she’d have you believe, is it?”

“Oh, leave her alone.Your mother,” I said, “is younger than you.”

“Yes, well, she’s been having an affair with one of those blokes who works with her at the veterans’ home,” he said a trifle tartly.“He’s supposed to be a musician. Composes musical bits for television shows for the BBC.They’ve been an item as long as I can remember. Father knew it, and I knew it, and the whole fucking world knew it.”

I was shocked. Not that Aunt Sheila had been having an affair for years and years, or had cheated on stuffy old Uncle Peter, who, quite frankly, was disapproving enough to drive any woman bats; but that Jeremy had so uncharacteristically blurted out the information to me right here, in his mother’s apartment, as he was courteously opening the door for me.

“Really?” I asked, rather hushed in awe. I didn’t know what to say, and I wouldn’t have said it if I did, for fear he’d bite my head off. But once we got in the elevator he resumed his professional air, as if he hadn’t just said something astounding and personal.

“You ought to call your mum,” he said reflectively. “Tell her how things went, and where we’re headed. I feel certain she’d want to know.”

We went back to the hotel, and he plunked himself in front of the television set and watched the news, as if we were in any old hotel room instead of the most gorgeous pit stop on earth, while I hastily packed my duds and phoned home.

I didn’t want to be responsible for making us miss the plane, so I was very succinct with my mother. I said, “Ma, I can’t talk long because I have to catch a plane with Jeremy.You got the London apartment. It’s beautiful.Yes, I love it! But I don’t know why you’re giving it to me. Jeremy says it’s worth over seven hundred thousand pounds. And I got the garage in France and whatever’s in it.Yeah, the garage. Jeremy got the villa, but Rollo Jr. got all the furniture. I’m gonna go look at the French stuff now.Yup. I’m getting on a plane.With Jeremy. It was his idea.Yes, we ate. At Aunt Sheila’s. Sandwiches and cookies. I’ll tell you later. Oh—and she says love to you and Dad.” I lowered my voice. “Yes, she said love.”

I think that was the point at which my mother said, “Well, that’s what a couple hundred thousand pounds will do for you,” but I did not respond because although Jeremy appeared to be focusing on the TV screen, I thought he might actually be listening to what I said.

“Did the other relatives get anything?” My father’s voice popped on. Mother must have gestured to him to pick up the extension. I explained again about what Rollo Jr. got, and Dad said, “Good.Then everybody is happy, no?”

“No,” I said. “Rollo Jr. is going to contest the French will.”There was a silence, and then my mother said, “Let me speak to Jeremy, will you, darling?”

I handed him the receiver. He didn’t look at all surprised. He said some reassuring things to her, just as if he were talking to a client and an aunt simultaneously, then I heard him say, “Yes, I’m sure she does.” Then he hung up.

“Sure who does?” I asked suspiciously.

“You,” he said, gesturing to the bellhop who’d appeared, to pick up my bag.

“I do what?” I persisted.

“Need a little looking after,” he shot back. “I wonder, can she mean to protect you from unscrupulous men who chase after young heiresses? Because she didn’t elaborate.”

I was really, truly embarrassed and could not imagine what had possessed my mother to make her say such a thing. “Of course I deserve VIP treatment,” I said. “You should have noticed by now.”

By this time I didn’t care what I said. Things were moving rapidly and I knew it couldn’t last. I knew I was being Cinderella for a day, staying in five-star hotels, acting like an heiress, being invited to lunch.Tomorrow things would slink right back to normal, I felt sure. Those relatives of mine would somehow succeed in taking all the money away, no doubt—not because of any lack of skill on Jeremy’s part but simply because thieves focus all their energy on a swindle and are never distracted by useless things like love and work and great conversation.

Yes, tomorrow things would go back to normal, and I would be short of funds again, staying in crummy chain-hotels on a low-budget production if I was lucky enough to be gainfully employed, and my glamorous cousin would go back into his world of money, and we wouldn’t see each other again for another hundred years. So why not make the most of this little fairy-tale blip in time?

A
T LEAST THERE WERE NO MONKEYS ON THE CORPORATE JET. THERE were, however, some guys in suits—English lawyers and their male clients who were very jocular, particularly after they availed themselves of the scotch and other stuff in the bar.The jet was outfitted with an array of crystal glasses in every conceivable cocktail shape, anchored to the padded bar in some mysterious way so that they wouldn’t go flying about like missiles in the event of turbulence. A strip of colored light above the bar kept changing colors and bursting into star patterns against the black background, for no other reason than entertainment value. And it worked; for about the first five minutes, anyway, when the guys made bets on how long it would take for the galactic light show to run the gamut of colors and return to its original blue.While clattering ice and munching nuts, the guys shot a few more covert, curious glances at me, the only woman aboard.They acted like rowdy schoolboys who felt compelled to behave at least minimally well but occasionally guffawed at their own presumably bawdy little jokes.

Jeremy eyed the other men in that silent way a guy with a girl sort of warns the other fellows to bugger off.We sat on two of the few seats that were facing forward, like the pilot. They were wide and leathery, with ample leg room, but, as Jeremy noted wryly, amazingly not that comfortable nonetheless.The other seats, which could hold eight people apiece, were more like two extremely long black sofas, facing their counterparts across the aisle.The plane was long and narrow, like a limousine, with ebony-colored draperies, carpeting, padded walls. It was apparently designed on the assumption that its passengers would be in groups, like an entire marketing department or a football team, who would earn the privilege of flying privately by discussing how best to kick ass. And indeed, that’s what the other guys seemed to be doing.

I told Jeremy that it was awfully nice of him to get hold of the plane for this trip, thereby sparing us the crowds, noise, and toilet lines of commercial flights.“It was luck,” he insisted modestly.“The jet just happened to be available. It somehow never is.”

Then he settled back and soon fell asleep, in that way you do when you’re totally wiped out, where your head is flung back and your mouth drops wide open. Having him asleep made it possible for me to study him a little more closely—the left hand without its wedding band, the elegant understated wristwatch with several time zones. He had honest hands, wide and capable. The corners of his mouth were turned down a little; perhaps this had to do with seeing his mother today. I wondered how often he visited her, and where he lived. I recalled what she said about his wife being mean to him. People look so innocent when they sleep, and Jeremy looked, for once, rather vulnerable.

He woke later, with a guilty, apologetic start.“Sorry. Conked right out on you, didn’t I?” he asked sheepishly. I grinned. “Fell down on the job,” he said in self-mockery, “right after promising your mum I’d look after you.” He glanced at the men, who’d gotten a little louder, then at me.“Seriously,” he said, as if our conversation was never interrupted by sleep, “how’s your love life?” His tone was protective, not leering, like a vigilant big brother asking a kid sister.

“I’ve had my moments,” I said thoughtfully, “and some pretty bad ones at that—you know, the obsessive relationship—but I can’t honestly say I’ve been really, truly, desperately in love.” I meant it. Because if what I had with Paul was all there was to love, I’d shoot myself.

“Desperately,” he repeated. “Trust me, you wouldn’t want to be.”

“Does that mean you were?” I asked automatically, idiotically forgetting for the moment what Aunt Sheila had told me.Then I caught my breath, which made it worse, because it was a natural enough question to ask, but by gasping at myself I betrayed that I’d heard something. Mercifully he assumed it was from my mother. He just laughed ruefully.

“Oh, you can tell your mum that I’ve recovered from the divorce with at least a modicum of self-respect,” he said lightly,“some females here and there, but no steady girlfriend as yet. Which frankly is fine with me. I’m not ready to take the plunge again.”

“Are you still in love with your ex-wife?” I dared to ask. He looked utterly horrified.

“God, no!” he said, shocked.

“Okay, okay, take it easy,” I said in an equally cousinly tone.“What was she like?”

“Beautiful, neurotic. Elusive. Accused me of giving up on us first. Not sure of that. She said I didn’t make enough effort to change, which is true. I’m to blame for getting testy in the end,” he said, glancing away momentarily.“Lost my sense of humor, which is deadly. She was surprisingly harsh, once she made up her mind that we were through,” he admitted.“Best way to break it off, I suppose, but it left a bad taste. I would have preferred kinder memories.”

He’d seemed offhanded enough when he started talking, but looked faintly horrified again toward the end, as if he’d revealed more than he intended and somehow couldn’t stop once he got started. Hastily he added, “But you’re dodging the question yourself, putting it back on me. Have you got a boyfriend? Should I look him over and see if he’s fit for an heiress?” He put on a mock stern expression, but there was something genuine in his inquiry. I shook my head.