Three months after Thomas’s death, his will was read. No impersonal executor’s letters for Thomas. He had asked for the community of his legatees to gather, to inspect each other, to recognize the presence of his mind and estate at work after the passage of his body.
Katherine and Natalie were summoned to a midtown office which smelled of old leather and pipe tobacco. Amidst the small group already gathered, most of whom she didn’t know, Katherine spied Susannah Holmes, wrapped in a lavish mink.
Katherine managed a nod, before averting her eyes and taking Natalie to a window seat in the far corner of the room. As they waited for Thomas’s lawyer who was also his executor to read the will, she told Natalie the story of the towering spires they could see in magnificent detail from the window.
But her thoughts were on Susannah. She had forgotten about Susannah. Forgotten how much she despised the woman. Despised the way she had taken charge of the funeral proceedings as if she were Thomas’s wife. Despised the curt way she had rung the Gallery on the day the opening exhibition was over to order the return of Thomas’s pictures. Susannah constituted the only part of Thomas’s life that Katherine found it difficult to allow.
The Executor called them to order. He read, his voice a decisive monotone, gathering phrases in its stride, neutralising, equalising. Buried somewhere in his bland delivery, there was Thomas’s own playful tone, his tastes, his wishes, the forms in which he wanted to be remembered. Katherine held Natalie’s hand tightly, wondering what she made of it all. There was a substantial legacy, greater than she had somehow ever imagined. There were bequests to a score of charities, to Harvard for the establishment of a Chair, to PEN, to the Academy of Letters for the institution of a prize to translators of German fiction.
She started as her own name rolled off the Executor’s thin lips.
‘To Katherine Jardine, who has for many years been like a daughter to me, I leave my house with all its contents and my collection of works of art,(bar two) for which she shared my love.’
Katherine started to cry. With half an ear she heard that Susannah and a variety of other individuals had received substantial legacies. And then Natalie was named. Natalie Jardine Negri della Buonaterra, ‘to my youngest friend whose life is all to be made, I leave the two villages by Lionel Feininger and the remainder of my estate to be kept in trust for her until her twenty-first birthday.’
‘What does it mean, mommy? What estate? Where is it?’ Natalie whispered when the voice had stopped. ‘Isn’t Thomas kind? My favourite villages. Can I put them in my room?’
At Natalie’s voice, the man in front of them turned and smiled at her. ‘What it means, young lady, is that you are a very lucky girl.’
Katherine, trying to control her tears, whisked Natalie away. She could feel all the eyes in the room turned on her daughter, the murmurs, the hum of voices, already speculating, wondering whether Natalie might be Thomas’s child. She must take her out of here before Natalie was poisoned by the tongues.
Near the door she all but collided with Susannah Holmes. ‘Bitch. Scheming bitch,’ the woman’s words slapped her. ‘Think you got what you wanted? Well don’t be too sure.’
Katherine looked at her as if she were mad. She all but dragged Natalie to the elevator.
‘Don’t let her upset you, mommy,’ Natalie said in the maternal tones, she had increasingly taken on of late. ‘She’s just silly, that Susannah.’
‘You’re right, hon,’ Katherine smiled at her daughter’s seriousness. ‘I’ll tell you what. Let’s go to The Russian Tea Rooms where we always went with Thomas and eat as many of his favourite cakes as we can.’
Ensconced at a table in the Tea Rooms, Katherine explained to Natalie what Thomas’s will meant.
‘But that’s amazing, mommy,’ Natalie played with a millefeuille, her face unusually solemn.
‘Yes, it is,’ Katherine murmured.
‘I’m really happy about the villages,’ she suddenly looked as if she were about to burst into tears.
‘Me too, I love them too,’ she forced a smile. ‘Thomas has been very good to us. Too good. And do you know what we’re going to do?’ Suddenly Katherine’s smile became real. ‘We’re going to turn his house into a public museum.’ The idea had just come to her and as she spoke it, she knew that it was right. Something for Thomas. A visible memorial to his life and taste. She grew excited, communicated her excitement to Natalie. ‘The Thomas Sachs Collection, like the Frith. My favourite kind of museum. A home that has been lived in, loved. A home with all its pictures for everyone to share. Won’t that be grand?’
Natalie was infected by Katherine’s delight. She began to smile. ‘You mean nothing will be taken away. It’ll be just as it was.’
‘Well, almost,’ Katherine dreamt, schemed layouts in her mind’s eye. ‘We’ll have to move some of the furniture, arrange the pictures and sculpture a little differently. But all the work will be kept together, everything that he loved in one place, his place. Undispersed. Okay Nat?
‘Okay,’ Natalie jabbed a piece of cake and began to chew. ‘Sounds good to me.’
Three days later, all Katherine’s dreams evaporated into a foul heap. A special delivery letter in a long legal envelope arrived for her at the Gallery. As she read its contents, her eyes grew wide in disbelief, her face ashen.
‘What’s up, Kat?’ Joe, one of her gallery assistants, was at her side. He brought her a glass of water.
She drank. Didn’t answer. Read the letter again. She couldn’t believe its contents. Susannah Holmes was contesting Thomas’s will, suing the Estate, claiming that Thomas had promised to marry her, claiming the house, the pictures, the largest portion of Natalie’s legacy.
Susannah. Thomas’s wife. His concubine. The word fell into Katherine’s mind and stretched its wings covering everything. She started to shiver. She felt dirty, sullied. Susannah swathed in her furs. Without her Southern drawl. Without her mask. A squalid woman, sullying Thomas’s memory. Casting her vulgar shadow backwards through time, dirtying Thomas, cheapening everything. Wanting money. Everything for gain.
Thomas’s woman. His wife. He had chosen her. Lived with her. Thomas profaned. Her friend. Natalie’s friend.
She sat still for a very long time.
‘Shall I cancel your next appointment,’ Joe’s voice seemed to come from a great distance.
Katherine nodded. ‘Cancel all of them for the rest of the day,’ she murmured.
She looked at the letter again. She had always suspected, of course. Known about Susannah. Known she was more than a housekeeper. She forced herself to think about it. To focus on the Thomas she hadn’t been privy to, had preferred latterly not to know. It was not the kind of relationship they had had at the end. Never really had, except for a brief moment when she was too young. Yet he had never been secretive about his sexual needs. Had never hidden their existence. He had merely been tactful about specificities, about the women themselves. Which was as it should be. As she had been for different reasons.
It was she who was prudish. Who didn’t like to acknowledge the existence of that other Thomas. He disturbed her, this Thomas of sexual games. This Thomas who was Susannah’s. Why had he chosen her? That horrible woman. Why not Katherine?
No, that was not the way to think. She stilled herself. Recalled Thomas’s voice. He would chide her for thinking that way. She could almost hear him answering the question she had put. ‘There are many different ways of loving people, Schätzchen. And sometimes, with some of us, time does us a disservice. It keeps us out of step. We never meet in the sexual dance. But there are other dances. Other forms of music, equally resonant. Sometimes more resonant.’
Hearing his voice calmed her. Thomas was not serious about sex. He did not cloak it in the robes of religion. He was not a Lawrentian romantic. Far from it.
Suddenly she remembered other names in the will. Other women had been left substantial sums too. She hadn’t been paying careful enough attention, but she though
t Susannah had been given the largest amount. Thomas was a fair man. A generous man.
Katherine rescued his image from the murky colours she had overlain it with. Susannah’s colours.
He had, she reflected, written his will with all his faculties intact. He had known what he wanted. It was his ‘will’. She mustn’t allow herself to sink passively to Susannah’s volition, simply because of the force of the woman’s greed. That’s all it was. Nothing more. Not a feeling for Thomas. Not a plea for justice where wrong had been done. She and Natalie had dreamt a museum for Thomas together. She wouldn’t let her daughter down. And Thomas would have liked the idea.
Katherine picked up the telephone and dialled the executor’s number. She would help the estate fight Susannah’s claim. Fight it to the bitter end.
The legal battle took her over with an intensity she would not have found imaginable. It coloured her days and nights, her working hours as well as her dreams. She woke with a bitter taste in her mouth, her mind full of arguments which she rehearsed over and over in the course of the day. Arguments against Susannah, arguments which increasingly became a vindication of Thomas’s honour, his good sense. Her Thomas.
The Executor put the case in the hands of one of his junior partners, a woman of about Katherine’s own age whom he claimed had a great deal of experience in this field.
On the occasion of her second meeting with Julia Katz, the woman looked at her forthrightly and said, ‘I have to tell you, Ms Jardine, that I’m usually on the other side in these cases. I believe, I believe very strongly, that women who live with men should have the same rights as those legally bound to them in marriage. Men cannot be allowed to use women as mere playthings, as sexual objects, and consider themselves unattached. Have no responsibility for their continuing welfare.’
Katherine stared at her for a moment, saw a dark woman with fiery eyes and quick gestures, a woman of purpose, a woman she had thought she might like. She closed her notebook firmly and rose, ‘Well then, Ms Katz, there is really no reason for you to be burdened with this case,’ Katherine’s voice was cold. ‘I’m surprised the estate has chosen you to defend the integrity of Mr. Sach’s will. It, and my daughter and I as its principal beneficiaries should be seeking advice elsewhere.’
‘On the contrary,’ Julia Katz grinned engagingly. ‘The Executor feels that if the Estate’s defence convinces me, then the hearing will be a push over.’ She looked a little rueful, ‘I was simply making myself plain to you. Sit down, Ms Jardine.’
Katherine hesitated, then slowly, warily, she sat down again. She hadn’t paused to consider the larger implications of the case at all. She suddenly heard Portia’s voice in her ear, ‘It’s the principle of the thing, Kat. A woman standing up for her rights, the rights of women, against men, against exploitation. Anyhow. It’s not as if you or Natalie need the money.’ Portia’s voice clarified things for her.
‘Ms Katz,’ she met the young lawyer’s eyes, ‘We are not dealing with a divorce case here or even a case of a man chucking a woman he has grown tired of out of a home which is rightfully hers. We are dealing with a dead man’s will, his wishes for his legacy. Susannah Holmes was amply, more than amply I imagine knowing Thomas, paid for her services as a housekeeper for three years. If she performed other services,’ Katherine’s face twisted in distaste, ‘then I can only imagine the sum left to her, the substantial sum of $250,000, should be more than sufficient recompense.’ Katherine paused, then murmured with repugnance, ‘She’s just a scheming fortune hunter.’
Julia Katz chuckled, ‘That’s what she says about you, of course.’
‘About me?’ Katherine’s confusion was evident in her face.
‘Why yes,’ Julia was amused. ‘Haven’t you thought about it? She sees herself as the rightful wife. You’re the other woman, seducing Mr. Sachs away from her, scheming for your own ends.’
Katherine spluttered, ‘Ridiculous. That’s ridiculous. That’s how that greedy woman would think. The…’ She controlled herself. ‘Ms Katz. Thomas Sachs was my dearest friend since I was thirteen. I knew him for far longer than that…that woman.’
Julia Katz’s eyes glimmered with irony, ‘Well, we’ve now established that you don’t like her. And I imagine she doesn’t exactly love you. Fortunately, the law doesn’t function according to individual’s tastes. So let’s see what kind of case we’ve got here. Ms Holmes is claiming that Mr Sachs intended to marry her, that she only stayed with him because of that promise, an oral agreement which he would have kept if his death had not intervened. She is arguing that she therefore has a right to the house and its contents and to a larger proportion of the estate, that he would have changed his will but death took him by surprise.’
‘When were the last changes made to the will?’ Katherine interrupted her.
‘A year before his death.’
‘But he would have known what he wanted by then. Susannah had already been with him for some time. It was then that we began to talk about the Gallery.’ Katherine was emphatic. She told Julia Katz about Thomas’s involvement in the Gallery, their joint plans, his silent partnership, though in the end she had refused any financial investment from him. ‘I’m not interested in Thomas’s money,’ she finished with a plea in her voice, ‘I do want the collection and the house to be kept intact. To make a museum of it. I’m prepared to use my own funds for that, raise more from other sources.’
‘Okay,’ Julia looked at her curiously. ‘I think we’ve got the makings of a case. But it won’t be straightforward. There may be nastiness.’
Katherine shrugged. ‘It’s worth Thomas’s memory to me.’ She shook Julia’s hand. ‘He was a good man, you know. He deserves better than the likes of Susannah Holmes squandering his beloved pictures on furs and diamonds.’
But Katherine didn’t like the nastiness. She didn’t like the prying steps the lawyers were taking to amass their evidence; their questions to all of Thomas’s colleagues and former mistresses about his relations with Susannah, with her, about his intentions.
She liked even less Susannah’s sudden appearance one rainy Spring day in the Gallery.
Katherine, on the stairs, heard the woman’s voice, hard, callous, brooking no response, telling Joe that she wanted to see Katherine Jardine now.
She met Joe half-way up the stairs.
‘There’s a woman who…,’
‘I know, Joe,’ Katherine comforted him. ‘Give me a moment and then send her up.’
Katherine positioned herself behind the glass slab which was her desk and pretended to write.
‘So this is the Katherine Jardine Gallery,’ Susannah flounced in, drawled, did nothing to hide her venom.
Katherine saw a Susannah with gilded hair, a bright red couture suit. She didn’t speak, waited.
‘Must have cost old Tom a good few grand this dump.’
‘I beg your pardon,’ Katherine was astounded by the implication.
‘I beg your pardon,’ Susannah mimicked her. ‘Beg away, Miss hoity toity. You must be good at begging to have gotten all you did from old Tom. Oh, don’t pretend you don’t know what I’m talking about. Seducing the old codger with your hoity toity words and your hoity toity manner, beguiling him with that little brat. Too good for me, he thought. This dump was too good for me. Couldn’t take me here. How much did the place cost him then?’
‘This is my Gallery, Ms Holmes,’ Katherine’s tone was icy. ‘I paid for it. Please leave. Now.’
‘I’m not going anywhere,’ Susannah sat down on the chair in front of the desk to give emphasis to her words. ‘Not until you agree to my claim. I’ve had it with waiting for these lawyers. Agree now, or…’
‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ Katherine hissed, looked at her as she might look at a bevy of vermin. ‘It has nothing to do with me.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ Susannah aped her. ‘So high and mighty, aren’t we? But he couldn’t get it up with you, eh? Your royal highness was too good for sex. Too good to spread y
our legs. Had to have it with me. With the servants, eh? Bet your royal highness wouldn’t dress up in little ruffled maid’s skirts. Without panties, of course. No panties for old Tom, just seamed silk stockings. That made him hard as a ram.’ She laughed, her mouth a red slash.
‘Don’t be vulgar,’ Katherine’s hands were trembling. She clenched them in her lap.
‘Vulgar, am I? Not good enough. You’re the one who made him think I wasn’t good enough for marrying. Hoity toity bitch. He would have married me if it hadn’t been for you. He liked my ass. Liked my teats. He’d put his cock just there,’ she flaunted her ample breasts ‘and get me to suck away.’
‘Get out,’ Katherine hissed.
She laughed again. ‘Upsets you, does it? Well it’s going to upset you a whole lot more if you don’t give me what I want. ‘Cause I’m going to tell the world, tell the court, tell your little brat, every little bit of what old Tom did to me.’
Katherine rose, ‘If you don’t go now, I’m going to phone the police.’ She picked up the telephone receiver.
Susannah stood, taking her time. ‘And one more thing, I might just put it about that your little brat is his. That wouldn’t make you happy, would it? It would distress the darling.’ Her voice reeked malice. ‘So you know where to send your agreement.’
Katherine watched her, as if in slow motion. It seemed to take an eternity for her to turn, for the stiletto heels to reach the door. And then suddenly Katherine’s mind snapped back into gear. She called after her, her voice controlled, ‘If my brat, as you choose to call her, is indeed Thomas’s daughter, then I think you’ll see that you have no case at all, Ms Holmes.’
The woman swung round and gave her a poisonous stare before proceeding down the stairs.
Alone Katherine found herself shaking. She paced, looked out the window at passing cars, at two strollers in flowered dresses. She tried to collect herself. Perhaps she ought to ring Julia Katz right now and give up the whole thing. Let that disgusting woman have what she wanted. Let the whole thing be over and done with.
Memory and Desire Page 61