Martin, on his crutches, also watched until the cart had gone from sight. The pain in his leg was bad again now. His ankle, most especially, felt as though it was still being crushed; and in his foot, which he kept off the ground, there was a hot, liquid sensation, as though flesh and bone and muscle together were melting painfully away. A little groan escaped him, and immediately Nan was at his side. She helped him to hobble back indoors and there he stretched himself thankfully on his bed again; and after a while, as the pain receded, he fell into a deep sleep that seemed deliciously sweet and cool.
Early the next morning Nan walked down into Chardwell, to Lotto Smith’s livery yard, and returned with a pony and gadabout. In this small vehicle, chosen because it was low to the ground and easy for Martin to step into, they went together into the town to deal with those matters of business that fall to the recently bereaved. They went first to Mr Hickson, the vicar of St Luke’s at Old Church End; next to Mr Jessop, the undertaker; and then, with the funeral arrangements settled, which was something of a relief to them both, they drove to Arch House, in Sage Street, where, after a brief wait, they were shown into the presence of Mr Sampson Godwin, solicitor, who rose from his seat behind his desk and came round to shake hands with them. A grey-haired man in his early fifties, fatherly and courteous, he saw them both into chairs and returned to his own, regarding them both with close interest as Martin explained the reason for their visit.
‘Your father was an old and valued client,’ he said. ‘I knew him for nearly thirty years. His death comes as a great surprise. He was always such a vigorous man.’ He offered his condolences and then spoke in a general way, referring to their father’s early life, when, as a young man of twenty, he had first settled in the district and rented the quarry on Rutland Hill. ‘I arranged that transaction for him and have the deed in my possession, together with other documents relating to other aspects of his business, and, of course, his last will and testament.’
Mr Godwin rose and turned to a tall cupboard behind him. He took out a black metal box, one of many that filled the shelves, and brought it to the desk. It bore the name, R. Cox, painted on it in white letters, and Martin and Nan, seeing this, looked at each other in surprise. They watched as Mr Godwin unlocked it and took out a handful of documents.
‘The essence of the will you already know. You, Martin, are your father’s heir. But as to the nature of the estate, I long ago formed the impression that your father kept his business affairs very strictly to himself.’
‘Yes, we know nothing,’ Martin said.
‘Well, now, let me see.’ Mr Godwin consulted one of the papers taken from the box. ‘Your father has funds on deposit at Coulson’s bank amounting to five hundred pounds.’ He passed the paper across to Martin. ‘It earns interest of roughly two per cent.’
Martin frowned at the sheet of paper. Mention of the sum, five hundred pounds, had made his heart beat fast. He could scarcely believe it. But there it was, in black and white.
‘Yes, well,’ he said huskily. ‘We thought there might be a tidy sum put by somewhere.’
Mr Godwin smiled gently. He took up two more documents. ‘There is also a matter of seven hundred pounds at present out on loan to two gentlemen of this town, namely Mr King of Unity Mill and Mr Bennett of The Bridge Street Brewery. Mr King has borrowed four hundred pounds, repayable two years from now, and Mr Bennett has borrowed three hundred pounds, repayable next December. At present they pay only the interest, which is seven per cent. These are the mortgage deeds.’
He passed the documents across. Each was folded narrowly and tied with green ribbon, and each had a summary of its contents written on the outer fold. Martin now understood the entries for Bennett and King in his father’s work-books and the explanation came as a shock.
‘My father was a money-lender, then, and much better off than we ever thought.’ He passed the documents to Nan, who looked at them with incredulous eyes. ‘He has left twelve hundred pounds in all.’
‘No, Mr Cox, there is more than that.’ Another two documents were passed across the desk. ‘One thousand pounds invested in The Sharveston and Craye Railway Company and five hundred pounds invested in The Ricknell and Fordover Turnpike Trust. The capital value of your father’s estate is therefore some two thousand, seven hundred pounds, but in fact the railway shares, if sold, would be worth a good deal more now than when he bought them eight years ago.’
‘How much more?’
‘Possibly as much as forty per cent.’
‘So, altogether, you could say that my father has left more than three thousand pounds.’
‘Yes. Less certain charges levied against the estate. The first is probate duty, charged at two and a half per cent of the whole. There are also my own charges, for professional services, set at one and a half per cent. Which still leaves a substantial sum, as I’m sure you’ll agree.’ Mr Godwin smiled. ‘Thanks to your father’s thrift and hard work, you are a very lucky young man.’
Martin sat perfectly still, looking at the documents in his hands. Yes, he was a lucky young man, but at that moment he felt no joy. His initial excitement, when the sum of five hundred pounds had been mentioned, had given way to disbelief; disbelief to a kind of disgust; until now, on learning the full value of his father’s estate, he felt only a sick, bitter rage. He was breathing heavily, his nostrils dilated, his lips compressed. Nan watched him. She understood. And Mr Godwin, a kindly man, who knew something of the life these young people had lived at Scurr, wished he had phrased his congratulations differently. After a while he spoke again.
‘The extent of your inheritance has come as a shock to you, I’m afraid. Following on your bereavement, and the injury to your leg, that is understandable. Perhaps you would prefer to postpone all further discussion until some future date.’
Martin looked up. He was very pale. His ankle was throbbing painfully and he was trying to hide the fact.
‘No, I’d sooner discuss it now. There are some questions I’d like to ask and the first one is this ‒ how long will it be before I can start spending the money?’
‘Well, strictly speaking, not until probate has been granted, which will take a few weeks. But in practice the law allows for necessary expenses to be met and paid immediately. Before I go any further, however, in answering your question, I must explain the situation that arises from the circumstance of your being a minor. It means that you cannot have control of your inheritance or hold property in your own name until your twenty-first birthday.’
‘Do you mean to tell me that although the money is now mine I can’t touch it for another four years or more? Because if so ‒’
‘Please,’ Mr Godwin said gently, ‘bear with me a while longer and I will explain more fully.
‘When your father made his will, we discussed the possibility that he might die before you came of age, and on my advice he provided against that sad event by appointing me executor of his will and trustee of his estate. In other words, I am now your guardian, which means that I have control of your affairs until you come of age. But you need not be cast down by that. It’s merely a question of my looking after your interests until such time as the law considers you to be capable of looking after them yourself. My duty as trustee is to help you in every way I can, and so long as your spending is not, in my view, ill-judged, there shouldn’t be any problems between us. But any real property you wish to acquire ‒ which is to say, any buildings or land ‒ will have to be held in my name. Don’t blame me for that, Mr Cox. Blame the law. Though I must say, for the most part, I think it a very sensible law.’
‘I want to buy somewhere decent to live. Can I do that?’
‘Certainly. But the deeds, as I say, must be in my name.’
‘What about the quarry?’ Martin asked. ‘Can I take over my father’s lease?’
‘So long as your landlord agrees, yes. But that, too, must be in my name.’
‘And what if I want to make changes there? Buy new equipment? Emp
loy a few men?’
‘So long as you can satisfy me that the changes will be all to the good, I shall not stand in your way. We’ll have to see the agent, of course, and tell him what you have in mind, but I doubt if there will be any difficulty. The more stone you cut and sell, the more you will pay in royalties, and the Nashwood estate won’t object to that.’
There was a pause. Mr Godwin smiled.
‘Are there any more questions you wish to ask?’
‘Yes. It’s a long time till I come of age. Presumably your duties as my guardian will not be carried out free of charge.’
‘My usual fee for this service is five guineas a year, though there may be additional charges if complications arise.’
‘Five guineas,’ Martin said. ‘That seems reasonable.’
‘I think I can promise you, Mr Cox, that you will find me a reasonable man in most of our dealings together. Your father put his trust in me. I hope you feel you can do the same. Now, there are still a few things to be discussed, and I think we had better begin with the matter of buying a place for you to live …’
On leaving Mr Godwin’s office, brother and sister scarcely spoke. For one thing, the street was thronged with people. For another, they were both intent on getting Martin, with his two crutches, into the little gadabout. It was not until they were out of the town, on the quiet road leading to Fordover, that Martin at last gave vent to his feelings.
‘All that money! ‒ A fortune!’ he said, clenching his fists in his lap. ‘Three thousand pounds! Just think of it! And Father talking all these years of “trying to put a little by”.’
‘Yes, I know,’ Nan said. ‘I can scarcely believe it even now.’
‘All that meanness over the years! The penny-pinching! The going without! Forcing you to work in the quarry till your hands were so sore that you cried with them. Forcing us ‒ and Mother too ‒ to live scarcely better than rats in a hole. Mother was ill for six months and all Father ever did was make the same old promises. “One of these days, Annie. ‒ One of these days!” Mother died of his promises. And all the time there was all that money, lying there, year after year, doing nothing but fatten itself!’ Martin’s bitterness went deep. His young voice was choked with it. ‘Oh, Nan, I hate him for that! I shall never forgive him. Never!’ he said.
‘Hush, you mustn’t say such things. You don’t really mean it, I know.’
‘Oh, but I do! I mean every word!’
‘Father thought the world of you. Everything he did was for your sake. Even yesterday, when he died, it was because of lifting that stone to save your foot from being crushed.’
‘I know that! But I didn’t ask him to kill himself! And if he hadn’t been so miserly, refusing to spend a few pence sending our tackle to be repaired, it would never have happened at all. He would not have died as he did and I should not have had to bear this damnable pain in my leg and foot!’
Nan said no more but took him straight home. She made him lie down on his bed and saw that his leg was comfortably propped on its pillows. She then drove out to Meer, to call on the Methodist Minister and explain why work had stopped on the new chapel at Rowell Cross. When she returned, Martin was asleep, and it was some hours before he awoke. By then the worst of his rage had passed, but a core of bitter resentment remained, and everything he said now had an unrepentant hardness in it.
‘Do you realize that with three thousand pounds invested like that, we could live on the interest it earns, without ever having to work?’
‘And is that what you intend to do?’ Nan asked in astonishment.
‘No. It is not. I was just trying to show you how we’ve been cheated all these years, because you don’t seem to understand what a great lot of money Father’s left.’
‘I do understand. I’m not a fool.’
‘Then why aren’t you angry?’ Martin asked.
‘Because,’ she said, in her gentle way, ‘you are angry enough for both of us.’ Then, after a pause, she asked, ‘Will you still work as a mason, then, when your leg is sound again?’
‘Oh, I shall work, most certainly. And if I’m allowed to take over the lease, I shall still work here at Scurr. But it’s all going to be a whole lot different from how it’s always been in the past. Oh, yes, I promise you that! Father always had faith in our stone because it’s some of the very best in all this part of the Cotswolds. He always said the day would come when it would be in demand again and he talked about being prepared for it. But I intend to prepare for that day in a way that Father never imagined even in his wildest dreams. I’m going to put some of that money back where it’ll do the most good ‒ back into the quarry itself ‒ because I have faith in our stone, too. ‒ Ten times the faith Father had. ‒ And I’m going to put that faith to the test just as soon as I possibly can.’
Nan was silent. He looked at her.
‘But it’s not just the quarry that’s going to be changed. It’s the whole of our lives. And the first most important thing is to find a decent place to live. A cottage somewhere down in the town, where you’ll have neighbours to talk to, just as you’ve always longed for. Not a rented cottage, mind, but a place of our own, which we’ll buy outright. We’ll have proper furniture to go in it ‒ oak or mahogany ‒ you shall choose. And you shall have a stove to cook on ‒ one of these iron kitcheners, with an oven at the side, and bits of shiny brass on it. And of course you’ll have new clothes to wear, made for you by a dressmaker, and the very latest thing in bonnets.’
Nan smiled. She was both touched and amused by what he intended to do for her, but at the same time there was a hint of wistfulness in her smile, and Martin perceived it.
‘What is the matter? Are you not pleased to think that soon you will have all those things you’ve wanted and longed for all these years?’
‘Yes. Oh, yes, I am pleased, of course. It’s just that I wish you would remember, when you are talking of these things, that we have Father to thank for them all.’
‘Oh, I remember it well enough! But I also remember what it’s been like, all through our lives, up until now. How we’ve always gone without the common decencies of life when all the time there was money enough to buy them over and over again. And you mean to tell me that you see nothing wrong in that?’
‘All I am trying to say is, that Father did what he thought was best.’
‘Well, my ideas are different from his, and from now on I am the one who will decide what’s best. And tomorrow, when we go into town again, we’ll call in at the auction rooms, to see what there is in the way of cottages for sale.’
‘I think we should wait a while. It hardly seems decent to do that when Father’s been dead scarcely thirty-six hours.’
‘When will it be decent?’ Martin asked.
‘I think we should at least wait until after the funeral,’ Nan said.
Two days later they stood in the churchyard of St Luke’s and watched their father’s coffin being lowered into the grave where their mother’s coffin already lay. They were the only mourners and when the undertaker’s men had gone, the vicar, Mr Hickson, walked with them out to the green, there to shake hands with them and to help Martin, still on his crutches, into the back of the gadabout.
It was a fine, sunny day with a hint of spring in the air, and rooks were noisily at work repairing their nests in the churchyard elms. On the two acres of green a tethered nanny-goat and her kid were grazing, together with a few geese, while three ducks were having a bath in the stone trough under the pump. On the far side of the green stood a row of six cottages, each with its own strip of garden in front, enclosed by a low stone wall. These were the cottages that Nan had so much admired whenever she had come to the churchyard to tend her mother’s grave. And now, as she drove in a circle round the green, rather than turn on the narrow track, she saw that the gate of one of these cottages had a white board attached to it, on which, in bold block letters, were the words ‘For Sale By Auction’, with the auctioneer’s name underneath. It was the cot
tage at the other end of the row ‒ beyond it were the fields and meadows sloping down to the Chickle Brook ‒ and Nan, scarcely believing her eyes, drew up outside the gate.
‘Martin, look.’
‘Well, I’m blessed!’
‘Do you think ‒?’
‘It’s up to you.’
The cottage was empty; they could see that; the windows were curtainless, upstairs and down. The sale would be held on March the tenth and viewing permission could be obtained from Messrs Thompson and Hargreaves of Crocker’s Yard. After a brief discussion, therefore, Martin got down from the gadabout and Nan drove off by herself to see about obtaining the key.
Awkwardly, because of his crutches, he opened the gate and walked in. On his left, quite close to the path, a low stone wall divided the garden from the one next door. On his right, but further away, a similar wall divided it from the open field. Under both walls, in the well-kept borders, most of the shrubs were still bare, the roses and quinces neatly pruned, the currant bushes and cherry tree showing as yet no more than their buds. But among them were a few evergreens: laurustine and Jerusalem sage; holly, box, and sweet bay; and below, in their shelter, daffodil spikes stood erect among clumps of primrose and violets.
Because it was the endmost cottage, its garden was wider than the rest, and from the main path, running straight to the door, another path went off to the right, leading round past the gable end, into the garden at the back. Here there were fruit trees, apple and plum; a small area of grass sloping down to a hedge of lilacs, and, on the other side of the hedge, a kitchen garden, winter-dug, with a row of raspberry canes in it, and a few wizened broccoli stumps. When Martin went close to the boundary wall, he could see down over the fields and meadows to the brook, which ran shallowly at this stretch, rippling over its bed of stones. Two or three hundred yards further down, the brook ran into the Leame, and another hundred yards further still, beyond the two weirs, stood one of the valley’s many mills, known as Jervers. Martin could not see the mill because of the trees along the bank but he could hear the clatter and swish of its two big water-wheels, and the heavy thump-thump-thump of its fulling-stocks pounding the wet cloth in the troughs.
The Old House at Railes: A heartwarming rags to riches Victorian family saga Page 13