by Sarah Till
Poor Henry. Unaware of the unpleasantness at the funeral, he struggled to negotiate the tension in the air and remain neutral.
“You have no legal obligation to do so, Jinny, but I expect Mr Baxter would like to know where he stands.”
Henry stared at me. I felt myself blush, as if they could all see that my intention was to sell the cottage immediately and make off with my inheritance as far away from each and every one of them as quickly as I could. A curtain of doom descended over me and I realised that, with every decision I made, I was making my children hate me more.
No one could have predicted this scenario. We had all benefited from the will but no one, except me was satisfied. What would I do? Allow John to live in the cottage forever? Just let him have the bloody lot? Or do the right thing and sell it? I scanned my conscience and tried my usual tack: put the shoe on the other foot. I tried to imagine what would happen if it was the other way around and my mind’s eye pictured John Baxter running off into the distance with the money. Would he have let me stay in the cottage if it was the other way around? I seriously doubted it. I looked round the room at the greedy, already money-laden faces.
“I’m going to sell it. I want you out in a week.”
I stood up to leave as John Baxter appealed to Henry.
“Can she do that?”
Henry looked over the top of his horn-rimmed glasses.
“Of course. The cottage belongs to Jinny now. She can dispose of it how she pleases.”
Jupiter, quiet until now, spoke up.
“But it’s part of the farm. It’s the farmhouse. What good is the farm to Dad without the farm house?”
Shiralee nodded.
“She’s doing it for spite.” My attention turned to her as she brushed back her hair from the black beret she had neatly balanced upon her head. I caught the sparkle of my mother’s rings already adorning her hands. “She’s doing it to get at Dad. Still bitter and twisted.”
I decided to ignore her comments about the house, but focused on her greedy little fingers, heavied by the weight of a dead woman.
“Couldn’t wait, could you, Shiralee? Couldn’t wait to get hold of her jewellery. I bet you prised them off her cold dead fingers. And wearing them all at once. Very classy. But in keeping with your father’s side of the family.”
Swiss Steve’s fingers went to the hefty gold chain around his neck. The chains had became thicker the more his criminal ego had swollen from his illegal self-importance. John Baxter saw that I was winning the war on fashionable taste and intervened.
“OK, Jinny. You win. Come up to the cottage tomorrow and get your mother’s effects.”
I smiled widely at him.
“Oh, thanks for permission to come up to my cottage to get my things. They’re mine now.”
His face hardened and his jaw set.
“I hope you’ll be careful to find an appropriate vendor for the cottage, Jinny. Someone who is God-fearing and who can further the work we are doing in the church and on the farm. We don’t want anyone, well, anyone who isn’t British in the village, if you get my drift. None of your tube friends, or the people you are contracted to work for. None of them. Just good god-fearing souls.
He folded his hands ceremoniously across his stomach and raised his eyebrows into what I now was beginning to recognise as his holy expression. Jupiter bowed his head.
“Amen. Amen to that.”
I gasped loudly.
“Jupiter! I didn’t bring you up like that. You’re no racist. I taught you to be open-minded and fair. I hope you never forget that. The way I brought you up.”
Shiralee moved her head from side to side in an action I was certain she had refined during hundreds of repeat viewings of the Oprah Winfrey show.
“Dragged up, mother, dragged. You were hardly there really, and when you were, you were too busy telling us what we could do and couldn’t have. Well, now Granny’s come up trumps and left us the lot! You should be grateful to her that she left you anything after how you treated her.”
Swiss Steve put his arm around her shoulder. I stared at him and shrugged.
“No wonder you put the time in, Steve, no wonder. Shagging your way to an inheritance. That’s a new one, even for you. I was going to say that I didn’t think you could stoop so low, but actually I know you are capable of a lot lower things.”
Henry jumped up and removed his glasses.
“Virginia! Really!”
Steve was drawn in hook, line and sinker.
“I know, Jinny, I know. And thanks for announcing it at the funeral. Thanks for reopening old wounds and probably old cases. Are you on self-destruct or something, woman? Don’t you know that you’ll go down with the sinking ship?”
I remembered Ellis’ words and regrouped.
“Obviously, I’m going to explain it as a metaphor I was expressing for our dead love, that you killed me with your lack of feelings and attention.” I snorted the words sarcastically. “Anyway, they can’t prove anything.”
Swiss Steve moved forward until we were almost touching.
“They’d better not or else...”
“What, Steve? What? What will you do?” Swiss Steve backed away slightly and clenched his fist. Henry looked at him. “You heard that, Henry? If anything happens to me you know where to look first, don’t you? At Jack the Fucking Ripper, here, the one who got away with murder, literally.”
Steve stormed out of the walnut-clad room and we could hear him storm along the corridor.
Shiralee chased after him, hurrying as fast as her Jimmy Choo originals could carry her. John Baxter stood and Jupiter followed him out of the room. I felt a pang of maternal love.
“Jupe. Jupiter. It’s for the best.”
Jupiter turned around and his hostile face was forced into my personal space.
“Fuck off. Just fuck off, Mum. You’ve no idea what this is about or what you’re doing to us. Fuck off.”
He left and slammed the door behind him. Henry looked flabbergasted as the tension palpably eased. I cringed and faced him.
“Sorry, Henry. Sorry.”
He sat down heavily in his leather high backed chair. I estimated that he was about as old as my father would be now, seventy-two. His face looked heavy and drawn, but he managed a smile.
“Don’t worry, Jinny. Readings are always difficult. Believe me, that’s not the worst I have ever seen. Not the best either. Sad really, because your parents were good people. Sally was very astute, hence the large amount of money she amassed.”
I clicked my tongue hard.
“Shame about her morals though.”
Henry looked surprised but agreed.
“Hmm. Perhaps not the best judge of male character. But perhaps she just wanted to be loved. She certainly made an impression. So much so, that Marjorie banned her from coming to ours for dinner.” He laughed loudly. “Your mother had a way with her, for sure. She always liked to back her odds both ways, in business and pleasure. Anyway Jinny. Back to our business. What will you do with the house?”
I stood my ground, even though I could see that Henry was looking for a last-minute reprieve for Cherry Cottage.
“I’m selling. Will you do the conveyancing?”
He sighed and looked suddenly older.
“Of course, of course. But you do realise that you won’t get half as much for it now the farm will not be sold off? One way forward would be to sell the cottage back to John Baxter, or to Steve. Otherwise, you will lose on it.”
I thought for a moment. No. I wouldn’t. They weren’t having it. I couldn’t be sure what they planned for the farm, but I was fairly certain that the age-old cattle and sheep farming along with some grains would disappear. I didn’t want to embarrass Henry by asking him outright if he knew. I decided on a detour.
“To be honest, Henry, Ellis and I have decided that we don’t want any further connection to the village after this. My childrens’ alliance lies with their father and I understand that they h
ave all become involved in John Baxter’s initiative to revitalise the village church.”
Henry smiled.
“Yes. I did notice some collaboration. In fact, Shiralee indicated that she would be moving to the village shortly. She and her young man are selling the flat and she will move there alone. With Jupiter moving in with Steve, they do appear to be closing ranks. I’m sorry, Jinny, this must be difficult for you.”
I sucked up the information and assessed my feelings. After the past couple of days, my universe seemed to have shifted a cog or two. The crystal clarity of my ex-family’s persistence in huddling together in my mother’s wake with her strange husband dangled before me. In a speedy calculation I added up how much they were collectively worth. I inwardly gasped as I estimated that they had around a million and a half to go at. Humour hit me as I imagined them broke within a month due to their overextravagant tastes and inability to rein in their frivolous spending. Then I reminded myself that they were now under the orders of John Baxter, a man who didn’t look like he shopped at Harrods. The relatively few times I had seen him, he appeared to be wearing the same jacket, even to Mum’s funeral. I dismissed this confusion and turned my attention back to Henry.
“Difficult. Yes. But there’s only so much I can take. Could you arrange for a valuation of the Cottage as soon as possible? Put it on the market. I expect that if one of them wanted to buy it I shall have to allow it. But don’t offer it to them first. Sorry to involve you, Henry. Sorry.”
He stood and walked towards me, ushering me out of the door.
“That’s all right, Jinny, It’s my job. I’ll make sure you have all the documentation for today in due course. I hope you make it up with your family. Life’s too short, you know.”
I smiled and took his outstretched hand.
“Bye, Henry.”
He nodded and closed the door.
I walked home and found that Ellis had gone out. A note by the cooker told me not to expect him for dinner and all of a sudden, I felt exposed. So much of my thinking time had been taken up by me seething over Swiss Steve’s affair with my mother and the battle for the property, and of course creepy John Baxter, that I had forgotten about the murder investigation. I pulled back the curtain with a swish and peered out into the street. There was a man standing at the corner of the railings reading a newspaper. Several people were waiting for the red tourist bus that stopped at the beginning of our terrace. Four or five students lurked in the gardens opposite. Nothing very unusual. I zipped through the house and checked that all the windows and doors were locked. Then I sat down in the squidgy brown easy chair in the lounge. I always felt like a little girl again when I sat in this chair as my feet wouldn’t reach the ground. I rested my hands on the brown course material of the arms and leaned my head back.
I still hadn’t cried. Even at the funeral, I had been so angry about John Baxter’s outburst and the fact that they cremated my mother that I had forgotten to feel sad. Again, today, with the difficult situation at the solicitors, I had felt rebellious and excluded. A minority who had to stand up for themselves.
I thought about the boy and girl on the train. I knew deep in my heart that I had never been a racist. Of course I saw that other people were different to me, but I had never judged them. I had, at times, tried to understand why my mother was so against immigrants at first and, with age, anyone who wasn’t white and middle class. My awareness had been increased in recent years by Ellis, who often joked about levels of political correctness, but always observed it to the letter. He was scared to death of offending anyone. I, however, wasn’t so versatile. Whilst I never discriminated on appearance, I did discriminate collectively through politics. I always reviewed the statements of people around me, which ranged from “They should go back home, where they came from” or “they’re taking all our jobs”. I worked diligently to find the appropriate statistics to produce at a moment like this. I had a full defence of job statistics at my disposal, a full explanation of why people left their countries of origin though war and deprivation. I also had a full presentation-style speech about the commonwealth that went down particularly badly with older bigots who could not warm to the concept that we created our own open gateway by claiming other countries as our own. They just couldn't accept this odd oxymoron of reason. Privately, I wondered where it would all end. If Britannia would eventually sink under the hordes of people washing up her tributaries every day. When I travelled by train, I gazed out at the green and pleasant land and marvelled at the open space, yawningly reassuring me that there is still room for all. Back in London, I watched as every small piece of land is claimed for new-build flats and houses and offices until we can no longer park our groaning oversized cars in the city. The latent objector in me would occasionally spill over and make her feelings known on immigration.
The glaring fact, even brighter than the sun to me now, and hovering in my mental outreaches, was that before today, it had never really affected me directly. Bigotry and racism had only ever been an angry satellite of minor interest buzzing around my head, one which would occasionally whisper in my ear. It had never buzzed up my nose or down my throat, to choke and throttle me with injustice and dogmatism. I supposed that it was my white middle-class status, that supposition itself a form of classism, that prevented me from an authentic experience of discrimination. Although it was true that as a woman I had suffered a fair amount of injustice. None of this had been forced upon me. On the contrary, I had learned by example. My mother’s inability to speak up and fight for her marriage, resorting to Machiavellian tactics to prise my father out of his mistress’s arms. My father’s disregard and disrespect for my mother in running a second wife, and the fact that this was almost an expectation: the resignation to polygamy for men, monogamy for women. I was sailing dangerously close to forgiving my mother in this argument, where I was approaching the finish line of “what’s good for the goose is good for the gander” when I was tripped by the sad apparition of my own ill-fated marriage. If my father was not guilty and my mother less guilty due to equality, then Swiss Steve must also be innocent. Where did that leave me? As usual, in tatters on my floor, still facilitating their sordid lives by offering myself up as a sexless sacrifice, signified by my designated roles and not by the adult passions or their end games.
My mind limped through the way Jupiter and Shiralee had sneered disapprovingly at me. Their outburst had verged on hatred as they’d huddled up to their father for protection from my, my... what? I had been a good mother. I had cared for them, God knows I had loved them so much that I put their happiness above my own every time. Even when their father was at his most destructive, I had stayed. The moments when Shiralee had gazed adoringly at him or Jupiter had marvelled at the solar system through a telescope with him had provided an excuse to tell myself it had all been worthwhile. I knew really that, overall, he had been a damaging influence on all of us. Yet, by the invisible cord of genetics I was forever bound to him through them and through my love of them. So, why was he trying to protect them from me? What was there to protect them from? It was this that eluded me.
In the growing darkness of my lounge on that Friday evening, I searched for the essence of myself that made my children and my ex-husband hate me so much. Swiss Steve had surprised me with his mention of my father’s antics. No doubt he has been fully conditioned by my mother’s acid tongue over the years. Could it be that I had sided with the wrong person, that in actual fact my father was the one who had been wrong? I acknowledged that he had definitely had an affair, and that my mother, as his wife, had been hurt and cheated on. But hadn’t he stopped it? I had seen the grief on his face when he realised that his life would be forever tied to the cottage and my mother. He had stood in my room and cried that day when he faced the fact that his ‘work’ could not go on. Hadn’t he done the right thing?
On the other hand, hadn’t Swiss Steve also done the right thing, if this was the case? True, he had an affair with my mother - and
goodness knows who else - but didn’t he say that he had stopped it when he knew Shiralee had guessed? My mind focussed now on John Baxter and the way his lips curled around the word ‘forgiveness’. He had stepped in and claimed that, in short, we had all done good things and now all we had to do was repent and we would all be forgiven. He implied that to do that you would have to be part of his church, the church in the village where I had been raised, gone to harvest festivals, brownies and guides, confirmation, the church that he had now taken command of. The church he had turned into an all-singing, all-dancing arena of fun. Rocking out with the young people, ‘recruiting’ from schools. This was the man my mother was married to. Someone who had intimated that he wouldn’t want anyone who wasn’t a white, religious zealot moving into the village.
I considered my plight. On one hand, I had John Baxter and my ex-family doing a convincing impression of a rather Anglican version of the Partridge Family. On the other side, I had been targeted by a terrorist organisation because my mother, former head of the Partridge family, sent some xenophobic letters to the Times. I wished for Kevin Jakowski. He would have revelled in this scenario. He would have relished the irony of me, Jinny Munro, being in the middle of the xenophobic tug of war, and all the time holding my hands up and professing my neutrality.
As if to break my nightmarish waking dream, my mobile phone rang loudly. A number I didn’t recognise flashed on the screen and I was once again filled with fear in case the terrorists were trying to contact me by phone. What if they were seeing if I was home before they came for me? I shook myself out of my paranoia and pressed the green button. My tiny little-girl voice ventured forth.
“Hello?”
A deep brown voice boomed in my ear.
“Virginia, you sound different on the phone.”
Lynus’ laugh identified him fully and I felt a huge sense of relief. My words gushed out in an open expression of self-assuagement.
“Thank goodness it’s you, Lynus.” I surprised myself by addressing him like an old friend. “I thought it was some kind of, well, no it doesn’t matter. What can I do for you?”