by Peter Corris
"Of whom there must be quite a few," Jerry said.
"Right. Sure you won't try some of this?" Montague pushed the ice cream across the table.
"Come on, Dad," Ben said. "You've got us in. Get on with it."
Montague finished the dessert quickly and wiped his mouth. "Lots of Gullivers around. All hate each other's insides and they all made the same mistake when the lawyers approached them."
"I bet I know," Ben said. "They all claim descent from old John."
"Right." Montague smiled. "They all produced ironclad evidence of their direct descent from John Gulliver, MP etc. Tom the Gypsy? Never heard of him."
Ben's interests at university had been military and social history. Montague Cromwell was distantly related to the Great Protector and Ben had been fascinated by genealogy and its application to history—'the rise of the Gentry', analyses of the interests of the members of the Long Parliament, Sir Lewis Namier's work on the eighteenth-century parliamentary families. His aborted doctoral thesis had been a study of the interconnection between military and sporting families. Still acutely disappointed because of his rejection by the army, he'd been in no state to tackle the project and the mechanics of detailed research soon wearied him but he retained the interest. "What about John II," he said. "The son of Tom. What happened to him?"
"No one knows," Montague said.
Jerry finished her wine. "The missing heir."
"Heirs by now, probably," Ben said. "Well, it's hard to say. There could be none or a hundred. It's been a while. Does the will leave the picture to John II and his issue?"
Montague nodded. "Legitimate issue, from memory. John Gulliver apparently was somewhat straitlaced. I have a fancy he took to religion in his declining years."
"Interesting," Ben said.
"I hoped you'd think so."
What's your involvement, Montague?" Jerry said.
"I can be the agent for the sale of the painting if I can locate an heir to authorise a sale. Lawyer chap I knew fixed it up for me. I've got the inside track."
"Your favourite position." Ben licked the edge of his glass. "What if there's ten of them?"
"I think that's unlikely."
Ben recognised the note in his father's voice. It had been there when Montague had told him about the divorce and when he'd lectured him about his small infringements—Ben's adolescent pilfering of money and cigarettes, for example. Montague's message had always been the same—do what you want to do, but don't get caught. He knew that his father was presenting a version of the story for Jerry's benefit, using her as a sounding board, testing the story for credibility. The reality would come later and would be very different.
"Yes," Jerry persisted. "But what if?"
Montague rested his soft chin, threatening to double, on the heel of his hand. His elbow was on the table. "Turner's painting, 'Landscape at Folkestone', sold for more than seven million pounds," he said softly. Jerry had to lean forward to catch the words. "This one's better and there's inflation to consider. If there's ten descendants of John Gulliver the Younger, they're all millionaires, without a shadow of a doubt."
London, June 1986
Ben and Jerry lay in, on and wrapped around by the sheets. It was a warm night; they were sweaty, still perhaps a little drunk, happy and satisfied. Jerry pushed aside the two pillows she'd used to lift her to the angle she liked for intercourse.
"It's very generous of your father," she said drowsily. "Don't you think?"
"I'll say." Ben's right arm was around Jerry's shoulders; he eased it clear and stared up at a damp patch on the ceiling. He liked Jerry and had a vague sense that their relationship kept him somehow honest. But that was an attitude he was finding increasingly difficult to value. "You mustn't expect too much of him, love. Generosity isn't on the fake coat of arms he cooked up for himself."
Jerry giggled. "What is?"
Ben swallowed with a dry throat. "I forget. It should be 'Seize the main chance'."
"I wish someone'd offer me a hundred quid a day and expenses," Jerry said. She worked in a bookshop in Regent Street, where she read more books than she sold. Jerry had a passionate love of American literature and sent a stream of her own short stories across the Atlantic to American magazines, which rejected them. She dreamed of living in Massachusetts, lunching in Manhattan and contributing to the New Yorker.
"It's a short-term contract," Ben said. "The solicitors've only given Dad a few months to sew up the deal, remember."
"Why?"
"A very conservative firm, apparently. Sticklers for propriety. They want all the heirs traced. But they really want to get shot of the matter. Not their sort of thing at all."
"How many months, then?"
"He didn't say."
"You're going to do it, aren't you?"
"Yes. Sure."
"I'll help. It'll be fun—working in the archives and all that. I might get some material for a story."
Ben laughed. The sound, coming suddenly in the darkness, seemed almost cruel to Jerry and she drew away from him a little.
"What?"
"You don't think I'm going to do all the hack work myself, do you? London's crawling with people who'll do that sort of thing for a few pounds a day. I'll hunt up a good one and we can have a good time on the difference. Go to Spain maybe."
"Ben, that's not fair to Montague."
Ben wanted a drink and almost felt like getting up to have one. "What's fair in this bloody world?" he said bitterly. "Is what happened to me fair?"
"No," Jerry said, "it isn't. But . . ."
"Dad's too bloody smug sometimes. Okay, he caught me out about lost paintings. I should've had the wit to see that. But he doesn't know how thick on the ground historical researchers are. Now that the academic game's closed up, they're all over the place. He'll get value for money so it's all right."
"I suppose."
Ben groaned. "I'd better get up and do a bloody sugar test. Won't be a tick." He walked naked from the bedroom to where his overnight bag lay on the living room floor. He took out his glucometer, testing strips and finger pricker, went to the kitchen and set the machine up. It was about the size of a small transistor radio and when a reagent strip smeared with blood was inserted it gave a blood sugar reading. Ben pricked his finger, smeared the strip, pressed a button and waited for the reading. He had sixty seconds, which counted down on a small screen, to wait before the result. Plenty of time to open the fridge and pour a glass of cold white wine.
Jerry could smell the wine on his breath when he got back to bed. "How was the test?"
"Five. That's okay." He was lying; the test result was a reading of 9—not so okay. Pasta is tricky, Ben thought. No more pasta with bread. He felt Jerry snuggle close to him, and the approach of sleep. He belched softly.
"Your stomach's rumbling," Jerry said.
"Yours," Ben said.
"It's hard to tell." Jerry felt Ben twitch, then relax. "What?"
"I should've asked Dad for some money up front. I was so surprised to see him paying the bill that I forgot."
Montague Cromwell lay in bed. Despite the wine and brandy he'd drunk, he was sleepless. He had the house to himself, something he hadn't been able to rely on for some time since Ben had become an erratic semi-boarder. Ordinarily he'd have been holding a series of small dinner parties for this agent, that collector, this American buyer, that Arab investor. But with Ben likely to stumble in and insult the prospects, his style had been cramped.
He couldn't understand why Ben didn't spend every night with Jerry. Lucky young devil, he thought and quickly cancelled the assessment. There was no such thing as luck, and corruption was relative. Brains and guts were what counted. In his fifty-plus years Montague had seen plenty of people who'd missed the bus—some did it at seventeen, some at ten-year intervals all the way to their dotage. Montague knew the signs. To his mind it was mainly a matter of trying the wrong things and then giving up. Giving up inside. He hoped Ben wouldn't join the ranks of th
e givers-up.
He rolled over in bed, trying to find comfort. It was hot even under one sheet. Montague liked to sleep next to warm, breathing flesh at least a couple of times a month. It was expensive, but nowhere near as expensive as a divorce. He shuddered to think what a divorce could cost him now. He had this house on a very small mortgage, a good lease on the gallery in Old Brompton Road, fees, clients, consultancies, the cottage in Dorset, the Jaguar. The settlement with Monique had been bad enough. Now it would be unthinkable.
Montague thought about the commission he could get on the sale of the Turner. The provenance is good, unimpeachable. It depended on whether it went to an American or an Arab. Prestige was another matter. If he could contrive for the painting to stay in Britain . . . Unlikely. And what if he couldn't find an heir? Well, there were other ways to swing a deal. He'd have to talk to Ben about that, make sure he understood. Almost asleep, Montague thought: Legitimately is always the best way, and the lawyers are discreet, uninterested in publicity, co-operative. But they're also impatient—people don't understand that these things take time.
Two days after the dinner in Soho, Ben Cromwell met Jamie Martin in a Charing Cross Road pub. Through contacts at London University, Ben had been put in touch with Jamie, who had handed in his PhD dissertation on time, to the right length and with all other conditions satisfied. There was no doubt, Ben had been told, that Jamie's thesis on the Game Laws—the ancient statutes that preserved millions of pheasants for the guns of the aristocracy and sent hundreds of poachers to gaol and the convict transports—would be accepted. Whether Martin would land an academic job on the strength of it was more problematical. He was applying frantically, and he was desperately short of money.
Ben bought the drinks, flush from cashing his father's cheque for seven hundred pounds, and outlined the project to Jamie. He passed across several documents—photocopies of the DNB entry on John Gulliver, a disparaging mention of 'fighting John's painter brother Tom the Gypsy' in Bell's Sporting Life, and a parish registry entry of the birth of John Patrick to Thomas Gulliver and Mary née Donovan, 10 October 1863.
Jamie sucked on his half pint, the first he'd had since celebrating his thesis submission some weeks before. "Doesn't sound too hard—unusual name, second half of the century when the records are pretty good, south of England. I'll be surprised if I can't turn something up, Mr Cromwell."
"Ben." Ben Cromwell felt vaguely ill at ease employing someone of his own age who had succeeded at something he had failed at. "Right you are. The sticky thing could be distinguishing descendants of John Gulliver I from John Gulliver II, the nephew. Follow me?"
"Yes." Jamie Martin was a compact man, muscular under his shabby clothes. If he'd had money to spend on his hair and teeth he could have looked like one of the pushy, well-groomed professors one saw being expert on television. He knew he could think clearly and talk well. Now he was sitting opposite a lean, dark idler who drank whisky and let the change from twenty quid sit in the slops on the table. Mr Cromwell looked to him like a mercenary without a war to go to. Well, he was at war every day himself, trying to get an interview, an article accepted, a reference. "It could be tricky, though."
"It's a piece of piss," Ben said, "if you're as good as they say you are. Want the other half?"
Over the second drink they came to terms. Ben agreed to twenty-five pounds a day and travelling and copying expenses. He gave Jamie the telephone number at Jerry's flat, where he was more or less living now that he had money to pay his way. When he was broke he tried to stay in Chelsea as much as possible where there was always the possibility of putting the bite on Montague or one of his friends. If the deal his father had outlined to him came off, all that penny-pinching would be over.
Ben paid Jamie for a day's work in advance. "When will you have something?"
"Two days," Jamie said. "No, make it three."
Ben nodded and handed over another twenty-five pounds. Jamie Martin couldn't remember the last time he'd had fifty pounds in his pocket.
Three days later Jamie rang Ben at Jerry's to request a three-day extension. When they met, Ben hardly recognised Jamie. He'd had his hair cut and it was thick and glossy, freshly shampooed. He wore clean, freshly pressed slacks and a new shirt. He was sitting at the same table looking through the contents of a manila folder; he was smoking a Gaulois and had a glass of red wine in front of him.
Ben got a whisky from the bar and sat down at the table. "Hullo. How'd you get on?"
Jamie took a drag on his cigarette and squashed it out. "Pretty good, I think." He passed several sheets of paper across the table. "Marriage, birth of children, police report . . ."
Ben nodded. "This is John Gulliver II?"
"Yep. Bit of a lad it seems. He took after his uncle in some ways. Big chap. He did some boxing and was all right at it apparently, but he'd lie down if the money was right. That sort of thing got him into trouble." He handed across a photocopy of a page of newsprint. "Bit of a drinker, kept bad company, as the paper says. He stole a boat for some reason and did a couple of years in Norwich prison for it."
Ben finished his whisky and gestured to Jamie to drink up. He went to the bar for refills. "Thanks," Jamie said. "He got married in 1895 to one Catherine Riebe, German girl. She was a good deal younger than he. I . . . haven't got much about her."
"Doesn't matter," Ben said, "Go on."
"Gulliver seems to have settled down after his marriage. Four children—John born 1895, Carl born the next year, Susannah in 1898 and Edward in 1900."
Ben saw in his mind's eye a spreading family tree with numerous collateral branches. He wasn't sure how many descendants would be best for his father's purposes. Not too many, he fancied. Still, there was always the Great War to carry off a few.
Jamie sipped his wine. Around them men and women were perched on stools or leaning forward across tables. Newspapers were rustled and folded and the volume of noise went up as the drink flowed. Jamie hadn't been in such a convivial atmosphere since his undergraduate days. He was nervous about some of the news he had to deliver, but he was enjoying himself. "Your John Gulliver eventually got a stall at Leadenhall market. Did quite well."
Ben's mind was running on the influenza epidemic of . . . when was it? 1918? That might have helped clear the decks. The whisky and the good time he'd been having with Jerry made him feel benign. He was impatient for Jamie to get on, but the man was obviously enjoying the telling so much that Ben hadn't the heart to push him. "What'd he sell at the market?" he said idly.
"Everything from books to buttons. Regular jumble sale, but it looks as if the stall was a sort of front."
"For what?"
Jamie smiled. He'd been to the dentist and had his teeth cleaned so he smiled now as often as he could. "He was a pornographer. He and a bloke named Christopher Smale had a stable of hacks churning the stuff out and a printing shop where they ran off the books. They sold some at the stall, under the counter as it were, and had a whole chain of other outlets. Big operation."
Ben was impressed. "Where did you get all this?"
"It made a stink at the time, around 1908 it was. The papers lapped it up."
"I bet. Nothing's changed." No wonder the other Gullivers weren't too keen to connect themselves with Tom the Gypsy's offspring, Ben thought. "So he got collared?"
"Not exactly. An outraged wife of one of the well-connected customers found the stuff under the marital bed. She informed and the police closed the whole show down. Gulliver and Smale must've greased a hell of a lot of palms to get the charges against them dropped."
"I see. Well, that's all bloody interesting."
"I've enjoyed it."
"Right. Let's press on, Jamie. They weren't wrong when they said you were good. I want to track down these kids and their descendants. Can you do it?"
"I suppose." Jamie drank some wine and lit another cigarette. Ben refused the offered packet impatiently.
"What's wrong?"
"Gulliver dropped
out of sight after 1908. I had a hell of a job finding anything else. That's why I needed the extra time. It just came to me all of a sudden. Sometimes I love research."
Ben understood what Jamie was saying. He knew that the best historical researchers had flair and luck—they made imaginative leaps at the right time and in the right direction. He tapped the papers he'd been given into a neat stack and reached forward for Jamie's manila folder. Jamie hung onto it; he suddenly realised that he wanted to go on with this job, and not just for the money.
"Jamie," said Ben, "what's the problem?"
"I don't want you to think I'm stringing the job out."
"I won't. Hang on, I'll get us another drink."
Jamie sighed as he expelled smoke. He recalled his trip out to the Public Records Office in Kew—the train ride at vast expense to the antiseptic document repository that had replaced the old PRO in Chancery Lane. Older academics had told Jamie about Chancery Lane with its oak panelling, musty carpets and arcane procedures. None of that at Kew. It was more like Murdoch's fortress at Wapping, all departure lounge decor, metal detectors and security checks. Still, it was efficient enough.
"Cheers." Ben had returned with the drinks.
Jamie sipped automatically. "I had to go to the PRO," he said, continuing his train of thought.
"Oh, yeah? Still making everyone use pencils, are they?"
Jamie smiled. "Right. But there's a place for people using laptop word processors and dictaphones. How do you know about the pencils?"
Ben shrugged. "Heard about it. Well?"
"It's slow going. The annual influx of Yanks is starting. You wouldn't believe the amount of stuff they order up. It can take two hours before your documents come."
Ben was getting impatient. "Come on, Jamie. Cut to the chase. What's the problem?"