Inheritance

by Nicholas Shakespeare

  One of the first difficulties you have to negotiate with wealth is what do you do with someone who has become a close friend. Popular at school, Andy had always placed importance on friends. His friends were his brothers. But now they disappointed him. They appeared unable to handle his success. It was not clear to Andy what to do about this. Ivo was too busy appreciating the girl he had met at Andy's party to show gratitude for the cheque that Andy had written him, while David wrote one lousy e-mail to thank Andy for the Toyota. Montaigne had it spot on. 'Benefactions are welcome so long as we feel we are able to return them. But if they pass far beyond that point, we requite them with hatred, not thanks.'

  Especially, Andy began to see less and less of David. It was cumulative, but what upset Andy most was that all the time he was renovating his new flat, David did not come over. And why should David care? Because he was Andy's best friend, that's why. Of course, Andy did not mention it. David would have said: 'Oh stop it, Andy, you're being paranoid.' Andy did once say to him: 'Well, you haven't asked, but I'm very well, and my flat's almost ready. Since you didn't ask.' David had stared at him with a strange expression that Andy remembered from Semley Nursery. 'Are you all right?'

  David's strained and vacant look made Andy feel that he did not want David around after all. It was the same with Ivo, who took one glance at the fireplace, gave Andy advice that he did not need, and remarked that he was extremely fortunate to have found such a good designer.

  'Wait a sec. I picked the colours, the fabrics, the limestone. She didn't want to use Onondaga limestone' - because Andy had discovered not only an interest in design, but some talent. India told him that he had excellent instincts for materials. It hurt to realise that the people he cared about should be almost hostile in their indifference. He received no credit from anyone. The only credit he received was if he went with friends to a restaurant. Then when the bill arrived, he was the one they looked to. Andy did not begrudge them. Not at all. At least, not at first. But the occasional gesture - even a half-hearted one - might have been nice. Someone reaching for a wallet. Although to his credit David always e-mailed him the next day.

  All this, Andy saw, was why the rich hang out with the rich. It was a tribal thing. When you wanted to have shared experiences and could afford the best, it was more comfortable to be with people of similar means. Who paid for what was immaterial; it would balance out. Nor did you have to downplay the fact that you had shelled out five times your previous salary on the car of your dreams.

  But he found wealth an isolating experience.

  Not long after his party, Andy took off. Only to his mother, when she pressed him, did he attempt an explanation of where he was going and why. He had a desire to see Montaigne's castle in the south of France and to read his teacher's book, he said. Had it not been for Furnivall, he would never have come into this money; and he considered it his duty, he told his mother - now that he had the leisure to give Missing Montaigne the attention it merited - to find some way to honour what amounted to Furnivall's last will and testament, before the grass grew over his name.

  He did not think she believed him.

  'Have you rung your sister?'

  And when he did?

  'What am I? Chopped liver?'

  'I have been extraordinarily busy.'

  'You're so anthropocentric.'

  'How's Goodman?'

  In an unfamiliar voice: 'He's right here. Do you want to speak to him?'

  'Goodman?' Andy started laughing, but no sound came out. He composed himself. 'Not right now. I've got to catch a ferry.'

  2

  F ROM S EPTEMBER TO A UGUST , Andy was a boy playing truant from school. He woke with his heart soaring at the prospect of the whole day to himself to do as he wished, although he was aware that he might grow frivolous if he did not get a plan in order. Which was why, wherever he stayed during those first days abroad, he made certain that there was a desk. The manuscript in a neat pile next to his laptop, his pencils and sharpeners in an RAF mug that had belonged to his father. But his one idea - to lose himself in Missing Montaigne - never happened. Each time he settled down with an intention to read it, some new distraction took over. There was lunch. Then dinner. The casino. The attractive - and available - women. There was bed. How else to explain that in nine months he did not get beyond page thirty-five? Often he would read a page and realise that he had read it before, and not just once. He began to feel like the man who works through the night to compose a single sentence that he erases at daybreak.

  Four days after crossing the Channel, outside a hotel in Cluny, next to the monastery, Andy was showing off his new iPhone to a girl called Lenka, who had stopped to admire his car, when it vibrated.

  Thanks for the party. Where did you & Sophie get to . . . ?

  PS Your mysterious benefactor - I've discovered an Australian connection. In Oxford last week I popped into Ducker's & met his cobbler. Apparently, Madigan needed special shoes after prospecting in the Australian outback. Did he make his fortune there?

  Andy was grateful when David had offered to discover all he could about Christopher Madigan. But following Jeanine's failure to pursue him in the courts, Andy had asked David to lay off his investigations. The subject was better left buried.

  Lenka looked on, smiling - a lovely smile, it really was - as he texted back: Don't worry, I've brought closure to it. What do I owe you for your trouble so far? Just send me the invoice.

  'My best friend,' he said, and showed her a photo of David in his Crocs, which did not impress. Then he took one of Lenka - in close-up - and showed it to her, which she enjoyed.

  Their affair did not last long. From the initial vitality to the exit point of exhaustion: two weeks. But his experience with Lenka, a showstopper when it came to tantrums, set the tempo for the next eleven months. He was a stand-in for someone else who should have been there, not him. As David kept on reminding.

  Sod you, Andy. I'm not doing this to be paid for it. I'm doing this because you were a friend and I thought it mattered to you. Problem is, now it matters to me. I'd like to know who this SOB was who's made you into such a SOB. Love, D.

  Andy had left England with the idea that the whole of his life was a fresh canvas.

  He gambled. In the past, he had dabbled with David and Ivo at blackjack and craps, which give the best odds. But his gambling instinct changed now that he had money. He preferred roulette, where the odds were stacked against him.

  He travelled to Venice, which was crowded, and to the Alentejo, which was not, and to Havana (for a cigar convention) and to Switzerland (for a Bugatti rally). On previous trips, he had never tipped - and certainly never treated himself to that freshly squeezed orange juice in the morning. Every day in Portugal with Sophie he had thought to himself: Can I make it? Now, he could order what he liked, whenever and wherever he liked, and he wanted to do it.

  Only with women did money get in the way, impede any progress beyond the surface gestures and games. Waiting for love to strike started to feel like trying to create a bird out of a bird-bath. He had fun, but nothing lasting. He met nobody he wanted to spend time with.

  In Venice, he saw a woman having a drink by herself in a cafe. There was something familiar about her expression. Something nearly forgotten that he recognised as having to do with him, and yet which he had not encountered before, like facing his own bowling at cricket. He pushed it aside, but as he walked down the dimly lit street back to his hotel he felt a throttling sadness.

  Every few days, Andy received another e-mail from David.

  In Paris: No Madigan is listed as owning any Australian mine. We need his Armenian name.

  In Munich: Spoke to his wine merchant at Berry Bros. Madigan liked Tuscan red & Petrus; & owned a small vineyard nr Lisbon.

  In the Casino di Campione on Lake Lugano : Spoke to a jockey at Epsom who rode for Madigan. M's father loved horses - his family bred them in Turkey.

  Christopher Madigan had become a replacement for
David's beer-can collection.

  To none of these e-mails did Andy respond. He had been interested at the time, but he had moved on. Surely, David had better things to do than sleuth around in a dead man's past. Andy did. As he ambled down to play roulette.

  But still the e-mails kept coming.

  C. Madigan was principal benefactor of the Cicada Foundation & involved in philanthropic activities. Also a Cheryl Madigan on the board. Jeanine's mother? I'm seeing the files tomorrow.

  Until, feeling exposed, a slightly sick feeling, he stopped reading them. He created a new file: 'David's Unreadables'.

  He drifted south. From Switzerland to Vienna. Cafes, piano music, warm puddings. Capri, Rome - a city of statues, as he wrote in postcards to his mother and sister. In Naples, he let himself be carried away. His nights warmed in the arms and legs of compliant young women with names like bootleg vodkas.

  In Sorrento, he saw someone come towards him and involuntarily heard himself say 'Jeanine?'

  His mother had dug a square hole before she planted her coastal beard-heath - 'or else the roots will spiral round and round in a circle and not go down.' That part of himself which was above ground was growing heavier and heavier.

  3

  T HE END OF SUMMER saw him driving towards Florence with a girl called Gabriella.

  Their romance was a fortnight old. 'Andee', she liked to call him. Never had she 'adored' anyone so much.

  It was a late afternoon in August. They were hurtling through the Tuscan landscape at 140 kph, and he was telling her all the ways in which this car was an improvement on the previous model, but he could see her face in the driver's mirror. Of greater fascination than his spiel about the Formula One-derived traction control system was the odometer: it registered 99999 and she kept glancing at it with girlish expectation, fingering the garnet necklace he had bought her, waiting for all the digits to go round.

  Andy had a sense of deja vu. Hadn't he been here before? And then it came to him: he was the figure in the television commercial watched in Hortense Avenue a century before, only more unshaven and tanned, with an inflexible scowl beneath his shades.

  Next to him, Gabriella stirred.

  'Oh, look!'

  It was Gabriella's habit, which in the first week he had found enchanting, of enthusing about whatever caught her deep-set eye. A fortnight ago, it had been him. With an immobile face he turned to her and saw that he had been supplanted in her admiration by a hilltop church.

  Indulging her, he pulled over onto the shoulder and now he knew where he was.

  In the gathering dusk, they mounted the steep steps and entered the interior of San Miniato al Monte: dark and cool, with the echo of subdued voices, and in the valley outside a chaffinch yelling.

  Inside, the smoothness of certain coloured marbles. And an ottery smell.

  He looked around. The last time he had stood in a church or chapel was in Richmond. He put a finger to his shades and lifted them.

  A thickset man, late sixties, in a linen blazer was speaking in English to a group of elderly tourists. Chiselled, calculating face; intense blue eyes; flat grey hair slicked down with lubricant. A guide from the hour of his birth, Andy thought.

  Blinking in the direction of the pointed finger, Andy saw - high up on a darkened wall - a painted figure in a scarlet robe, gold crown, holding a javelin and lily.

  The guide continued in an Australian accent: 'The church of San Miniato al Monte is dedicated to the first Christian martyr in Florence . . .' Noticing Andy, he smiled. His eyes absorbed the light in a disarming way, lending them a strange tint.

  Andy caught the drift. Young soldier in the Roman army. Becomes a hermit. Arrested on orders of Emperor Decius and thrown to the lions - who refuse to devour him. Cast in boiling cauldron, suspended from gallows, stoned and beheaded. Whereupon he picks up his head, replaces it on his shoulders and walks back across the River Arno to his hermit's cave on Monte alle Croci, site of present church. And then the interesting bit. 'He was an Armenian Prince.'

  Giddy, as if spun around too fast, Andy stepped outside - the darkness that had fallen, the lights of Florence below - and took a deep breath. The mention of an Armenian had tugged him up a different hill. Christopher Madigan flashed through his mind. Something shifted when he said the name to himself; the pressure of a great postponement. He did not look up, and then he did and saw a round silver moon that reinforced his thought.

  The thought did not go away as he waited for Gabriella. She ran up and slipped her arm through his - she had been chatting to the guide - and they walked back down the steps. The strong moonlight fell across her collar.

  All that medieval brightness in the sky, in which everything beneath presented itself with ruthless and dramatic clarity - Andy saw it so well:

  Madigan's will was no different to one of those three-card tricks that he used to see played outside Ladbroke Grove Tube. What he imagined would give him an unfair advantage had been a device for his own deception.

  It was suddenly cool. Gabriella pressed closer, her chatter swishing the whys and whatifs. But in the moonlight one thing stood out clear. Unearned happiness was not happiness at all.

  He would have liked his sister to be there. He heard her saying: 'When are you going to stop being a Selfish Slut?'

  They reached the road and walked along it to where he had parked. He opened the passenger door for Gabriella and a line came and went from Furnivall's manuscript: Luxury is more terrible in its ravages than war .

  Gabriella turned in her seat and the smell of the car upholstery lodged in his throat.

  'I'm putting the roof up,' he told her.

  He took off his shades and folded them into the glove-box and drove away in silence. If he could ask San Miniato one thing: why did Christopher Madigan make such a will? The question he had stopped asking himself, intentionally had put away, but which David had been constantly nagging him about all year.

  His thoughts pierced by Gabriella's cry.

  'Oh, we've missed it!' staring in a heartrending way at the dashboard, which registered 100001.

  Behind them, a siren wailed. An ambulance raced up and overtook.

  Andy drove on, breathing in the herby Mediterranean night. Rolling hills with the fragrance of cypress and the full moon reflecting on the ponds; and the boundlessness of the evening sky. They passed the edge of a reservoir. Caught in the headlights, a thick white vapour lay suspended above the water, coiling over the road.

  He slowed.

  The mist engulfed them and then thinned, and then covered them again.

  From somewhere, a harsh cry.

  'Is that a duck?' Gabriella said.

  'Sounds more like a pheasant.'

  She listened to the cry rising and falling. 'I never heard a noise like that before.'

  Then they were out of the mist and he changed gear and sped on.

  A while later they came to a village. There was a commotion in the main square. A carabiniere in a fluorescent yellow jacket stood flashing a torch, diverting traffic up a side street.

  In quick succession, Andy saw a mangled black Vespa; a crowd peering from behind a tape; and the ambulance parked up on the pavement - rear doors open and lights blazing.

  He glimpsed two bodies on stretchers - younger than him and slimmer, with a sapling quality. A boy and a girl. And then the doors were pulled shut.

  Andy was absorbing the tentacles of grief that extended from the ambulance out into the square towards parents, friends, relatives, and failed to see the carabiniere waving him down. A loud rap on the bonnet brought him back. He was so disoriented that he accelerated before stamping his foot on the brakes.

  The carabiniere gestured for him to wind down his window.

  'Where have you come from?' with a sharpness in his voice.

  A sick, nervous feeling spread through Andy, delaying his response.

  Gabriella took over, answering in Italian. They had been at San Miniato al Monte. Sightseeing. There was a guid
e who could vouch for them. Yes, they were tourists.

  The carabiniere listened absent-mindedly, flashing his torch up and down the sides of the car, the bumpers. Not finding what he was after, he spoke across Andy to Gabriella.

  'He wants you to open the back,' she said.

  Andy climbed out. The crowd had turned in his direction. Even as he inserted the key, he felt the dread that comes from having committed a terrible crime. He raised the boot expecting to find a body curled up inside.

  The carabiniere poked the two suitcases without opening them. He thrust a hand into the holdall and flicked through the pages. Then indicated for Andy to close the boot. Gabriella had joined them and he talked to her in an angry way, too fast for Andy to follow, now and then gesticulating towards the crowd with a distressed expression.

  He waved them on, but Andy did not feel pardoned.

  'What was he saying to you?' he said to Gabriella.

  'He was saying the other car didn't stop.'

  An old couple sitting on a bench had witnessed it. The lovers on their scooter. A silver cabriolet going much too fast - foreign number plate, male face at the wheel - and then nothing more, gone.

  'He ploughed into them and didn't stop.' She shook her head, nestled closer. 'What a prick.'

  He went on driving.

  The full moon rising was Madigan's single gimlet eyeball.

  'Are you all right?' she said after a long while. 'You've done nothing wrong, Andee,' and patted his knee. 'You're a good man.'

  'No,' he said, 'I'm not that good.'

  'We all arrive in the end at the same inn,' the vicar had said at his father's funeral. That night Andy and Gabriella checked into a pensione in Ponte all'Asse. Its restaurant was closed for repairs and the manager sketched out directions to a bistro on a paper napkin.