Authors: Henry Williamson

A Test to Destruction (57 page)

BOOK: A Test to Destruction

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“Why should he have?” exclaimed Elizabeth. “Miss Cole has only been here a short time.”

The housekeeper, a small demure spinster, invariably dressed in 30-year-old clothes, with dyed hair so thin that the amplifying ginger pads lying flat on her skull showed through, had been sitting quietly in the kitchen since her return from the funeral, wondering about her future.

Phillip, bringing in the tea-tray, heard his mother saying—“Perhaps after all we should add ten pounds to a year’s wages, making it up to fifty pounds for Miss Cole?”

“Oh, when are we going to hear about the Will?” complained Elizabeth.

“All in good time, niece,” replied Joseph, his lips black with charcoal biscuit as he sipped sherry. “There’s a point I think ought to be raised, Sis, first. I propose, with your concurrence as co-Trustee, I need not add, to ask Leppett to agree to name a
lump sum for his professional services in winding up our dear Father’s estate. Some attorneys, as no doubt you know from reading your Dickens, hang on and on just to feather their own nests.”

“Very well, Joe, I will leave that to you to discuss with Mr. Leppitt.”

Tea-cups were passed round, while Phillip helped himself from the decanter.

“Has Gramps left you anything, Mum, beside the £500 and this house?” asked Elizabeth.

“I’ll try to tell you, niece, if you will give me half a chance,” said Joseph, as he finished his second charcoal biscuit, taken to absorb wind and other impurities in the stomach. “My dear Father has provided for all of us.” He rinsed his mouth with tea, and wiping his lips on the red handkerchief, took up the Will once more.

“To begin at the beginning. My dear Father was primarily blessed with five children, two daughters and three sons. One son is no more, I am sorry to say. That leaves four children to be accounted for——”

“Three, because Aunt Dorrie is dead as well as Uncle Hugh,” Elizabeth reminded him.

“Quite so. I am coming to that. The law presumes nothing, may I remind any who do not know that fact? Very well. My dear Father, when he made his Will, knew that Hugh, our poor unfortunate brother, had of course predeceased him. And, in the interim of the Will being signed and witnessed, our dear sister Dorrie also passed away, last June, eight months before our dear Father’s own death——”

“We all know that!” whispered Elizabeth to Doris. “When is he going to come to the point?”

“—according to the Will, Dorrie was to have enjoyed an income from the Trust fund,
pro
rata.
It is now my duty to explain that, having predeceased our dear Father, Dome’s income is no longer to be paid from the Trust, if you follow my meaning. I hope that is clear to all?”

“Then, Uncle Joseph, since Aunt Dorrie is dead, Maudie’s share of the capital will be paid to her in a lump sum out of the Trust, I take it?”

“Exactly, Phillip. You took the very words out of my mouth. I was just about to say so. I’ll repeat——”

“Oh no!” said Elizabeth, and she laughed throatily to herself.

“Quite so,” said the huffy voice. “Quite so. Our dear sister Dorrie having gone to join her very dear parents in heaven, the capital sum due to provide her with an income for life will be paid over, in due course, after the Will is proved, to Dorrie’s surviving children, that is to say, to Dorrie,
in
toto,
because——”

“You mean Maudie, Uncle Joe?”

“Quite so, Phillip. Maudie, who is here with us today. Ralph, Dorrie’s second son, was cut out of my dear Father’s Will after he became a Mormon.”

“What, Gramps a Mormon?” laughed Elizabeth. “Well, that’s what it sounded like, you know. Didn’t it, Mother?”

“Uncle is referring to your cousin Ralph, Elizabeth——”

“Quite so, Hetty. Maudie, who is with us today, as I said, come from her duties at the Hospital, will in due course, as I have already indicated, receive one quarter of the value of the Trust fund—roughly eight thousand pounds.”

“Aren’t you lucky!” cried Elizabeth to her cousin, who continued to sit with downheld eyes. “Well, why don’t you say something?”

“Well, you see Mavis, I have not got a mother,” replied Maudie quietly.

“But you will have all that money!” persisted Elizabeth. “Just think what you can do with eight thousand pounds!”

“Hush, dear,” whispered Hetty.

“Why should I hush? Gramps wanted her to have it, didn’t he?”

“Maudie won’t be able to have her share until the Will is proved, I need hardly say,” went on Joseph. “Nor will my brother Charley’s daughter Petal and her young brother. For this reason. My dear Father’s wish was that my brother Charley’s share of the capital should be paid direct to Petal and to her youngest brother, I forget his name.”

“Charley,” prompted Hetty.

“Oh yes, young Charley. Thank you for reminding me, Sis. The two children will benefit by about four thousand pounds each in due course. Until young Charley is twenty-one, the interest of his share will go towards his education.” He sipped his tea.

“Will you sell this house, Mother?”

“I shall have to see, Elizabeth. This is hardly the time to talk about such matters, dear. Hush, your Uncle has not finished yet.”

“Two fourths of the capital of the Trust fund will remain on trust to provide an income in equal shares between Hetty and myself, during our respective lifetimes. After we are gone, the capital is to be shared among our children.” He cleared his throat again. “There is one more legacy I must mention, while I am about it. To Phillip, my dear Father left his steel engraving, after the portrait of David Garrick by Gainsborough, now at Stratford-on-Avon, his gold cuff-links, and his volumes of Shakespeare. That is all.” He sat down.

“Nothing for any of the other grandchildren?” asked Elizabeth.

“You can have the engraving, the cuff-links,
and
the books, if you like,” said Phillip.

“Is the engraving a rare and valuable one, Mother? Didn’t Gramps say once that the steel plate broke after only a few were done?”

“That is so,” said Joseph Turney. “I understood from my dear Father that only a dozen or so proofs had been pulled when the plate broke. Now may our dear Father and Mother rest in peace until the Judgment Day.”

Phillip saw tears in his kind grey eyes. Mother was crying, too, sitting quietly beside Aunt Liz, and holding hands with her cousin and friend of more than half a century.

“Joey, how very careless of me! I quite forgot to ask Hemming to come back with us! Papa would have expected it, I am sure. Oh, what must Mr. Hemming be thinking?”

Mr. Hemming was the Managing Director of the Firm.

“It’s just as well you didn’t, Sis,” said Joseph. “I consider that his letter, which I received this morning, was out of order on two counts. He should have waited until our dear Father was buried before writing to offer his congratulations to me, on my appointment to the Board in my dear Father’s place. He only did it because he knows that you and I have a large block of voting shares, of course. Then again, the letter should have come from Stringer, the Secretary. I shall not reply to it.”

Phillip moved over to his uncle, and said quietly, “Surely Mr. Hemming is only acting on a decision of the Board? And as Managing Director, I think he is paying you a compliment, as the late Chairman’s son, by writing a personal letter.”

“That may be as it may be, Phillip, but I shall not reply to Hemming.”

Phillip was persistent. “But surely it is a matter of courtesy to reply?”

“Possibly. But I prefer not to discuss the matter.”

“Yes, I am wrong in interfering, Uncle Joe. I’ve just remembered that I never answered the letters from the Manager of the Moon Fire Office, about my going back to my job. Please forgive my interference.”

“I thank you for your kind thought, Phillip.”

Phillip went with his young cousin Arthur to the Gartenfeste and put on the record of the prelude to
Tristan
und
Isolde,
with a loud needle, leaving the door open in the hope that all would respond to the music. But only his mother came down, to say that perhaps it would be best not to play the gramophone so soon after Gran’pa’s death, for the sake of the others.

“But it is beautiful spiritual music, Mother, with the theme of deathless love.”

“I am sure it is, dear, but the others may not understand that.”

“Then ask them down, and I’ll explain it. People say
Tristan
is sensual music; it isn’t! Listen to the yearning of Isolde, faithful unto death!”

“Yes, I know Phillip, but——”

“You
don’t
know,” he said, and lifted the tone-arm.

When Hetty had gone back, his cousin said, “I don’t think you should have spoken to Aunt like that, you know, Phillip.”

“I thought you were musical?”

“So I am, but I also try to consider other people’s feelings.”

“Such as my feelings now? But who am I to talk? I try to improve your father’s manners, while my own remain imperfect, and you do the same to me.”

“Well, I don’t think it is at all the same thing, Phillip.”

“Perhaps you’re right, Arthur. How’s the Firm going?”

“In my opinion, it wants modernising. Everyone is going on in the same way as when Grandfather started it, forty years ago. All our customers are old men. We ought to go out for new business, and install new machinery.”

“You must do that, Arthur.”

“I intend to.”

“Good for you. ‘The tools are for him who can use them,’ as Napoleon said.

“I thought Napoleon said, ‘Not tonight, Josephine,’” sniggered Arthur, to which Phillip made no reply. He had hoped to make a real friend of his young cousin.

The diamond ring left to Charles Turney of Cape Town could not be found. It was neither in the steel safe beside the desk in the dead man’s bedroom, nor in the desk itself. It had not been deposited with the Bank.

“Perhaps it will turn up,” said Hetty, adding, “I must pray to Saint Anthony.”

The ring, with its large pink diamond worth several hundred pounds, was never found; and its loss, together with the fact that ‘Wespaelar’ had been promised to Charley in a letter from his father when Charley’s son Tommy had died of wounds in April 1918 was the cause of much heart-burning, leading to final estrangement between Hetty and Joseph on the one hand, and Charley on the other. Later, Phillip attempted to resolve this deadlock; but in vain.

Meanwhile, in one corner of the front room a conversation of sorts was being carried on between the two cousins, Elizabeth and Maude.

“I suppose you’ll be giving up nursing, now that you have more than enough to live on, Maudie?”

“I don’t think so, Mavis.”

“But why not? And please call me Elizabeth. I hate ‘Mavis’!”

“Sorry. Well, it’s my job, and I like it.”

“What, in Whitechapel? Among all those common people?”

“I don’t think of people like that, Elizabeth. They are in my care, you see. In fact, when one knows them, they are rather wonderful people. Well, I must be getting back now, I’m on duty at six o’clock. Goodbye, Aunt Hetty, thank you for all you have done for me. Goodbye, Aunt Liz. How long are you staying?”

“Just for a couple of days, Maudie, to be with Hetty. It is so nice seeing you, dear. You must come and stay with us at Brickhill when you can spare the time, won’t you? Just send a card saying when you can come, you will be very welcome.”

“Thank you, Aunt Liz.” The women kissed; Joseph embraced his niece. Phillip said he would walk down with Maudie to the station.

“I agree with what you said to Mavis, you know,” he said. “I had the good luck to know many East Enders at Ypres, in 1914. They were wonderfully kind and steadfast. ‘The slums died in Flanders,’ as my great friend West said to me. One day I shall write a book about them, and him.”

Mrs. Neville, sitting at her window, her little dog beside her, waved to them as they passed.

“You should come up and see my ward, Phillip. You’d find a lot to write about there. Lots of ‘copy.’”

“Well, thanks for suggesting it, but it’s already in my head, Maudie. I feel so much of the old life that has passed away, particularly when I am alone in Gran’pa’s house at night. Ah well, friends meet but to part, I suppose,” he said, as the train came in. “Keep your heart high, cousin! One day I shall bring back the old faces and the old places we knew, which may seem to have been destroyed, but their spirit is still in the sunlight. Cheerio!”

The train went under the bridge, and he turned back, feeling a sense of power with which to face the future, because now he understood what had not always been clear in the past. No man could be destroyed, once he had discovered poetry, the spirit of life.

November
1958
—
March
1960

Devon