Inheritance Read online

  This was Stuart Furnivall. He had taught for the past thirty years in schools all over Europe and, his French wife having died, had retired to Shaftesbury in order to finish a book. He had settled down to write when the school approached him with a plea to help out.

  Furnivall was not one of those teachers who moved about with a blackboard attached to their heads. He knew what mattered, what was mysterious to know, and had a talent for making people lean towards him. He was a keen fly-fisherman and rugby player, and within a year was running the cricket first eleven in which Andy played; although in what he really wanted to do he was unfulfilled. He really wanted to be a French scholar.

  It was Furnivall who helped Andy back on his feet in the marrowless days following his father's heart attack.

  Furnivall's instruction to Andy went beyond teaching him how to twist a ball through the air and what to read. Almost what Andy liked most about him was that he did not preach or give advice, but by his passion and engagement set off fires in his students; each of his thoughts cast out like his trout line, without effort, and landing at the right distance above your head to make you want to rise up and understand it.

  Long after Andy left school, Furnivall's firm example was a drum that resonated to his thoughts. What would Furnivall make of this? How would Furnivall behave in a similar situation? Would Furnivall approve? Although they had not been in touch for months, his death shocked Andy.

  Rain was still bucketing down when the taxi pulled up outside the crematorium. Andy thrust Angela's twenty-pound note into the driver's hand and, not waiting for change, ran off between the puddles.

  The chapel he sought had a number 8 on a white tile over the door, and was situated in an alley of such chapels. He burst in to find the service well under way.

  The excruciating sense of being late yet again.

  He stood dripping, his eyes adjusting to the interior. A coffin on a stand. A crucifix above a pleated oatmeal curtain. And empty - but for two people seated in the front pew on the left. A man whose dark grey head from the back seemed of one piece with his suit: fiftyish, with round bi-focal spectacles, who turned and fixed Andy with a what-the-hell-are-you-doing-here look in his eye. And a worn-faced woman in a brown fur coat, who stared straight ahead at the coffin and who - when with a gasp she also turned and looked at him - bore no resemblance to the diminutive Miss Carron, and definitely none to Miss Lightfoot.

  The only other person was a short, stout chaplain with a wide florid face and pointed chin who stood beside the coffin, delivering his tribute. That was all.

  '. . . It is at moments like this that we pause awhile and reflect and maybe ask ourselves the age-old question - "What is it all about?"'

  Andy took off his sopping coat and sat down in the back pew. He checked his watch - twenty past three. Another ten minutes before Furnivall's service ended and the next one commenced. Where was everybody? It could not be the weather. People surely turned up in the rain for funerals.

  '. . . The only reasonable answer I can come up with is that the purpose of life lies in the quality of our relationships. How did I get on with my family? How did I get on with my colleagues? How did I get on with my fellow-beings? And if I have faith - how did I get on with my God?'

  The chaplain cast a grateful gaze across the empty pews at Andy, who wiped the dirty London rain from his forehead and shifted uneasily in his seat. He realised with a pang that he had no clear picture of his God. The only image bizarrely to break surface was not the long-bearded figure from the Sistine Chapel roof; much less the multi-armed divinity on the wall of his local Indian restaurant. Instead, there came to Andy through the fog of a distant wintry afternoon the outline of a silver-haired man gesticulating from the touchline and calling in a stern voice: 'Your shorts, Larkham. How can you expect to run with them round your knees?'

  '. . . If this makes sense, then his life had great purpose, because love, affection and genuine concern undergirded all these relationships.'

  That described Stuart Furnivall. But the couple in front? Andy took a harder look. His teacher had once mentioned a bossy sister, with whom he had survived the Blitz in Wimbledon. Perhaps that was her. As for the bespectacled man in the suit, his expression was not mournful.

  The chaplain's eyes were anchored on Andy.

  '. . . Everyone here today is here because one way or another we have been touched and influenced by this gentle and special man.'

  Andy had lost contact with Stuart Furnivall once he went to university. The school had been sold. The games field, the ugly Victorian clock tower, the 'san' where Miss Lightfoot dispensed her repellent cough medicine, formed part of an industrial park. All that survived of Barton School was contained in a sporadic newsletter which Miss Lightfoot circulated to alumni. It was she who had supplied Furnivall's address in Cornwall, to which Andy had written two and a half years before, after Angela requested a character reference. Furnivall had replied by return and renewed his invitation for Andy to visit. Ever since learning of Furnivall's death, Andy had beaten himself up for not having taken a day out of his life to drive down to St Buryan. He owed Furnivall a huge amount - not least his job. It was Furnivall who had planted the seed of publishing.

  The chaplain burbled on, but Andy was ten years back in the centre of Shaftesbury. A surburban Edwardian stucco with a monkey puzzle outside and a smell of piss that assaulted him as he entered for the last time to say goodbye. The old ladies watching telly on the ground floor were leaky, but Furnivall did not have that trouble. He lived upstairs, a room to himself, with a metal bed and a marble-topped table on which there lay a single volume, spine up, on the riffling hitch. There was a shelf for his CDs and art books; a row of hooks on which to hang his fishing gear, and on the wall a studio photograph of his wife Christine and, beside it, a reproduction of a charcoal sketch by the Delft painter Leonhard Bramer to which Andy's attention inevitably drifted during their tutorials: of a man and a woman lying on a raft, floating on an open sea. He looked at that sketch a lot.

  The black silk gown shimmered in the subdued light.

  Andy remembered his teacher saying that when Stendhal had died in Rome only three people had come to his funeral.

  'And now let us pray and give thanks for the life of . . .'

  He groped for a hassock and kneeled. The curtain opened, and there was a humming noise and the coffin began to glide on unseen rollers through the cavity. The sound of the recorded hymn made Andy want to raise his finger and press PAUSE .

  '. . . of our brother . . .' consulting the service sheet.

  Andy closed his eyes. He would never see Furnivall again unless he closed his eyes. And into his mind, as he tried to find somewhere to rest his elbows, flashed the memory of their first encounter on the river bank below Sutton Mill -

  '. . . Christopher Madigan.'

  Christopher Madigan? opening his eyes and sitting up.

  Andy grabbed his coat, made to go - then realised that even if he did manage to locate the right chapel, it was too late.

  He remained seated, considering his options. He didn't want to draw attention to himself. And it was rude, sacrilegious even, to sneak out of a funeral the moment it was drawing to a close. Also, he could tell that Christopher Madigan, whoever he was, needed all the mourners he could get.

  The curtain closed and there was another prayer. 'We brought nothing into the world and it is certain we can carry nothing out.'

  The chaplain was saying 'Amen' when the grey-haired man stood up and advanced in quick steps past Andy, towards a table against the brick wall near the exit, on which he lay down what looked to be a condolence book, opening it.

  Andy was all set to leave, but the woman in the brown fur coat was progressing down the aisle. Shorter than he first thought, with protruding eyes and a deeply grooved, pale face, rather thin. She shot him a stiff look as she went by.

  The man stopped her at the door and said something. She shook her head and Andy heard her talking in a lowered vo
ice. Her coat came down to her ankles. She appeared very loose inside that fur. 'He didn't have on his yellow cardigan,' sounding foreign and upset.

  The other, while offering comfort, unscrewed a fountain pen and motioned for her to sign the book.

  She hovered over it before writing. Then handed back the pen, pushed open the door and, after turning to give Andy another glare, hobbled out.

  Andy made to follow, but found his way barred.

  'Can I ask you to fill in your name and address?'

  'Why?'

  'Because I have been asked to keep a record of all who attended the service.'

  Andy was on the point of explaining that he did not know the deceased when it struck him how embarrassing this would sound. Besides, what harm resulted from signing one's name in a condolence book? He had never set eyes on Madigan, but he had sat through part of his funeral and that in a sort of way bound them.

  He took the pen and scribbled his name in a firm neat hand.

  The man looked at him without expression.

  'And your address. We need that.'

  Andy complied. For some reason, he added as an afterthought: 'I am so sorry.'

  He was about to walk out when the door opened and a gust of cold air swept through the chapel. A young woman, collapsing an umbrella and wearing a soft ochre raincoat with its collar up, looked around. White face, shoulder-length black hair and the brownest eyes, Andy thought, that he had ever seen.

  She raised a hand to brush the rain from her head and the light caught on a silver bracelet. Her agitated dark eyes pincered him in their gaze. She could have been the age of his sister; a year or two older than him.

  'Have I missed it?'

  'I'm afraid so,' the grey-haired man said.

  She took in the fact and closed her eyes, biting her lip the way one does to stop tears. She shook her head and walked over to sign the condolence book.

  The man sprang forward and interposed himself between her and the book, slamming it shut before she could write anything. 'I'm sorry, madam. The service is over.'

  Silence.

  She gave him a smudged, blurred look, as though the man had been at her face with a rubber. Her chin went from smooth to choppy. 'I need to enter my name.'

  But the man stood his ground, pressing the book against his chest. 'I'm sorry, you're too late,' in a rock-firm voice.

  She gathered herself and stared at him again. And turned on her heel and marched out.

  The rain had eased when Andy stepped outside into a low buzz of conversation. People waiting for the next service assembled in dark-suited clumps beneath dripping umbrellas, none of their faces familiar.

  A large lady, her shoulders draped in a black Persian-lamb stole, peered with smallish, impatient eyes above his head: 'Here we are. Chapel 8.'

  Andy was still holding the card printed with Furnivall's funeral details. A raindrop had distorted the number. It was Chapel 3 he had wanted, not 8.

  The door opened, releasing the sound of a taped organ voluntary, and a pinkish grey face peeped out. 'All right,' the chaplain said, compressing his lips at the cold, 'you can come in now.'

  On either side mourners streamed past Andy into the chapel. Until two people remained sheltering under the overhanging roof, studying the rain that ripped from the clouds.

  The woman in the fur coat had become less imposing outside. Something about the way she held herself caused Andy to think that she knew the younger woman, who looked more irritated with herself than with the weather or with the incident that he had witnessed inside. They continued, all three of them, staring up at the sky, the colour of scattered ashes, until the worn-faced woman cleared her throat and said in a surprisingly tentative, kind voice to the younger: 'I have something I need to tell you.'

  'There's nothing I wish to hear.'

  The sharpness of the reply made Andy turn.

  The older woman looked defenceless. Her wrinkled face reflected an indescribable sadness. In that moment, Andy saw an openness in her that he warmed to.

  Before she could say another word, the man in the grey suit emerged and stood behind them, still tightly clutching his condolence book. The young woman stepped forward at his appearance. Cold wet marble grated beneath her heels.

  A bottle-green Volkswagen Beetle was parked on the grass. She shook open her umbrella and walked towards it.

  Andy looked at his watch. 3.35 p.m. He considered searching for Chapel 3. But chapels spread out to the north and south of him, one chapel identical to the next. Even if he did find the right one, chances were that another service was getting under way.

  Further, he had no idea how he was going to get back into London. He had spent all he had on the cab fare.

  She had reached her car and was opening the driver's door.

  Before he knew it, he was calling out: 'Where are you heading?'

  She turned and two dark eyes stared back at him beneath her umbrella from which the rain flashed up like silver filings flying off a drill.

  'Holland Park any good for you?'

  She did not introduce herself and nor did he.

  They had passed Shepherd's Bush roundabout when Andy felt that he ought to say something.

  'That was my second funeral.'

  'I'm surprised he bothered to have a funeral.'

  'It's important to have some sort of ritual.'

  'The only ritual he liked was torture,' she said.

  'You don't sound as though you were very fond of him,' unable to work out her connection to Christopher Madigan.

  'Fond of him?' she snorted. 'No one was fond of him, except possibly you.' Her eyes flashed. There was something derisive in them.

  'Me? Yes. Well - you can drop me here.' They were approaching the bottom of Ladbroke Grove.

  He could tell that she was tempted to halt the car right there, outside Lidgate's butcher. But good manners must have kicked in.

  'Where do you live?' glancing at him sideways.

  Seen from a different angle, her face was more striking than before. Not beautiful, like Sophie. But definitely she had a magnetism.

  'Hortense Avenue.'

  'I'll drive you.'

  'Really, you don't have to,' feeling her eyes on his father's faded blue suit.

  'I know.'

  She showed no further interest in him and said nothing for the rest of the journey. When he climbed out and looked back at her through the passenger window, she was yawning.

  'Thanks for the lift,' he said.

  'No trouble.'

  And that was that. When he raised his hand, she looked straight through him as if he did not exist.

  'Bye, then.'

  Her car drove away. Until it was just a motionless speck among the other specks of rush-hour traffic on a rainy London afternoon in February. It had begun to rain again.

  2

  T HE RAIN HAD STOPPED by the time Andy opened the front door to his building, shortly after seven o'clock, on his way to pick up Sophie. He was taking her to the Portuguese restaurant on Portobello Road where they had eaten the night they first met.

  It was his best friend David who had introduced them at Ivo's Christmas party.

  'Andy, meet Sophie Sobko.'

  She stood there, shy and heaven-sent. She might have been the only female in the Polish Club that night.

  The dryness that spread over his lips.

  She had the whole room's attention. Green eyes, wavy hair the colour of wood shavings, a bearing that said I am probably the best-looking woman you have ever seen .

  She was wearing a tight-fitting, blue-black dress. Andy asked her a question and she did not answer. He asked her another question. This time her eyes jarred with interest.

  'Grand Forks,' in a broad North American accent. 'You wouldn't know it.'

  'Grand Forks?' he repeated, and felt sad. And saw his father at the airport, his face against a thick window pane, his ointment leaving a mark on the glass, calling to a glamorous woman who did not hear, then racing a
round the barrier to embrace her while Andy stood there, waiting for the luggage. If he had never suspected before, he understood in that moment.

  'I think I went to Grand Forks once on my holidays,' his voice slightly breathless as his father's had been.

  Her eyes came alive, transforming her nervous, haughty face.

  'No way! You are kidding me.' It was a sign for her to forget - instantly - everyone in the room but Andy.

  David said: 'Come and meet Ivo.'

  But Sophie was not listening. Not to him.

  'Did you ever eat Easter brunch at the Westward Ho?'

  'The Westward Ho?' The only Westward Ho! Andy knew was a novel by Charles Kingsley.

  'You know, the hotel with the pool shaped like a cowboy boot,' and he could hear it in her voice, light and airy like pine. A homesickness for a shared memory.

  'The pool shaped like a cowboy boot . . .'

  'Noo! Don't tell me. You do remember!'

  What he remembered was a gridded town of bungalows exactly the same, the streets like open cuts into the sunset, where the other boys, all shovel-chinned and baseball-shaped, made fun of his voice and the way he skated.

  'Know what?' she said, biting a cushiony bottom lip. 'They tore it down.'

  'They didn't! Bastards,' this time with emotion.

  Something about his response must have appealed to her. She held her lips open a little. Above her smile, two huge green eyes were staring.

  Since her arrival in London four months previously, Sophie Sobko had not met a soul who had been to Grand Forks. Let alone one who knew the Westward Ho. As it turned out, Andy had not been to Grand Forks. 'No, that was Grand Falls,' sighed his mother. By then, it was too late, he and Sophie were unofficially engaged, and Andy had to beg his mother not to tell Sophie the truth, which was that he had mistaken her birthplace for a remote village in Newfoundland, where his father had taken him on their last holiday, that is to say in another country altogether - not even close.