There. I stared in the mirror. Everything looked fine, except my eyes, which looked frightened and much too sincere. “Take it easy,” I told my reflection. “No need to get all hopped up over costume jewelry and a few nice bonds.”
The eyes that looked back at me betrayed that all I really wished to do was just not look like a fool in front of our relatives.They’d probably never see me again and I did not want to live on in family lore as a dope. Poor Penny, for instance.Wasn’t she pathetic? She didn’t know how to behave. No, no, no. I vowed to keep my dignity, no matter what happened.
Part Three
Chapter Six
WE GOT STUCK IN TRAFFIC, SO I BEGAN TO SWEAT. THEN, KNOWING that I was sweating made me panic a little, sitting there in the back of that discreet, dark, luxurious automobile from Jeremy’s law office. But the elderly driver wove his way expertly through busy, workaday London, leaving all the soot and noise behind as we went partway around a lush green park and into a quiet residential neighborhood full of discreet mews and tree-lined squares ringed by immaculate sidewalks and elegant old town houses. We pulled up to a Victorian house with white pillars, and double doors with frosted glass panes.
“Here we are, miss,” the chauffeur said encouragingly, as if talking to a shy cat that wouldn’t come out of its box right away. He was a small, wiry old man, with a calm, reassuring manner. I nodded, embarrassed that he’d seen through my attempt at poise.
I checked my wristwatch. Seven minutes to nine. Not late, but not a moment to spare. Thanks-very-much, Jeremy, for making me worry about time, I thought. I reminded myself that I was representing my mother here and I simply was not going to mess this up. So, when the driver scurried around to open the door for me, I valiantly plunked my high-heeled foot firmly on the pavement, and, although I wobbled a bit at first, I marched myself up the pretty, clean white steps of Great-Aunt Penelope’s town house.
An eager-beaver type of guy in his mid-twenties opened the front door as if awaiting my arrival. He was bright and alert, with obediently short hair, a well-cut suit that somehow made him seem even younger, and a perfectly educated accent. You would never mistake him for a doorman. He stepped aside to let me into the vestibule, where there was a door for the first-floor apartment, and to the right a staircase for the other two flats.
“Miss Nichols? I’m Rupert. I work with Jeremy.” His voice was low, as if we were in church. “Go right up to the library, second floor, please.” The staircase had a gleaming polished banister and wine-colored carpeting held with gold braces. The carpet didn’t keep the stairs from creaking a little as I stepped on them. I stopped at the small second-floor landing.
The door to Great-Aunt Penelope’s apartment was ajar, in a way that no living person would leave it unless she were just moving in or out.The inside hallway had a tulip-shaped lamp on a small table, which stood beside a sliding panelled door that was partially open. I hesitated, then slid the door farther open. It moved noiselessly in its tracks.
The library was a charming room, full of light from two sets of bay windows, each with its own window-seat. The furnishings were mostly turn-of-the-century pieces—the twentieth century, that is, Great-Aunt Penelope’s heyday. There were deep blue curtains at the windows, tied back with giant gold tassels. The opposite wall had built-in bookcases filled with gold, black, and dark green elegantly bound books protected by glass doors. All the furniture was small but pretty—a walnut roll-top desk and chair in a corner; a “swoon” sofa for delicate ladies prone to sudden fainting spells; and, by the tiny fireplace, two wing chairs with a low, round Queen Anne table.
But then, totally out of symmetry, was a cluster of chairs with high, ornately carved wooden backs and seats with maroon damask cushions. They looked as if they’d been dragged out of the dining room and awkwardly grouped in this semicircle at the center of the room. I figured that only lawyers would stomp in and do such a thing. And, indeed, there were three such likely candidates facing me right now—but none of them was Jeremy.
Dressed in dark suits and ties, immaculate white shirts, and enormous, expensive-looking cuff-links, they struck me as the sort of businessmen who always hunt in packs.The three of them were huddled protectively around a narrow cherrywood table with a glass top, where they shuffled some official-looking files and glanced up at me intently as I entered. They were silver-haired men with mistrust permanently etched onto their faces, and hard, marble-blue eyes that revealed no emotion, making them look like porcelain dolls, the kind that in horror movies invariably run amok and start killing the real humans. One of them flashed the quick, charming smile of an elderly crocodile.The other two simply returned to their papers, indicating that I’d failed to impress them. But I saw that they were excruciatingly conscious of my presence, which only confirmed my significance here. I felt a trifle uneasy.
Two more people entered the room—a petite, spidery old lady in an ash-blue coat and hat that matched, and a middle-aged guy in a navy blazer and beige flannel trousers. This simply had to be Mom’s cousin, Rollo Jr., and his mother, Great-Aunt Dorothy. I nodded to them, but they pretended that they didn’t notice. The lawyers sprang into deferential action, making an elaborate big deal of getting the old lady seated in one of the chairs, then conferring with Rollo in a low, unintelligible murmur. I decided that it was time for me to stop waiting for permission to sit down. So I went to the window-seat at the bay windows that fronted onto the street. I gazed out imploringly. Where the hell was my lawyer? He was late, that’s what.
Every time I sneaked a peek at the others from under my lowered lashes, they glanced away, which meant they’d been sizing me up, too. I couldn’t help thinking that we looked like a fairly ghoulish family oil painting. First, Rollo Jr., who’d loomed so large in the family lore, sounding so vaguely diabolical and threatening that I’d expected him to be tall and shadowy, lean and mean. I was completely unprepared for a paunchy, rather dissolute-looking, somewhat pathetic aging-playboy type with overly wavy graying hair, and bags under the eyes, his stomach hanging over his belt, altogether looking a bit like, well, actually like Elvis in his later “fat” years as seen in those old record-collection commercials. He was decorously attentive to his mum. Great-Aunt Dorothy was a little birdlike lady with silver hair teased into the bubble shape that women of her generation favor. She seemed dainty but not fragile, with one of her tiny bird-claw hands clutching a silver-topped walking stick. I could see how she might indeed have been a formidable sister-in-law to Grandma and Great-Aunt Penelope. And finally there was me, little Penny Nichols, trying to appear all grown-up, but probably looking as if I was waiting to be interviewed for a job I knew I wouldn’t get.
Jeremy and his associates entered just seconds later. It felt like an eternity, but technically I suppose they were spot-on time.The atmosphere in the room changed tangibly.There was no mistaking the shift in power, revealing that Jeremy’s team was in charge of this meeting. He introduced me to Harold, the senior partner, an older gray-haired guy with confident gray eyes. Then Severine, their French legal expert, an attractive woman in a bold white silk suit and white pumps, with huge brown eyes and shiny dark hair pulled into a perfect twist; she looked to be Jeremy’s age and had the confidence that comes first from being a French female and second from having enough expertise to impress her male colleagues. Rupert, the younger guy who’d let me in, was told that he could go back to the office, once it was clear that all the necessary papers were here. He gave me a bashful smile, as if his lesser importance had suddenly been revealed to me. All in all, a good team to look after my mother’s interests, I thought.
Jeremy politely introduced me to Great-Aunt Dorothy and Rollo. Now that I was being formally presented, Rollo looked up with a blameless expression and said, “Yes, of course,” with a tolerant kind of nod. His mother, forced to acknowledge my presence at last, gave me a wide smile of exaggerated delight, as if she’d just been presented with a new parlor maid.
Subtly but forcefully, Jere
my and his team took over the glass-topped table with their papers, and put three chairs behind it, where they sat. Severine settled in with the calm attitude of one who will participate only if called upon. Grudgingly, the other lawyers withdrew to the remaining chairs in the semicircle. One was empty, which made it mine. Jeremy saw me hesitate, and gave me an infinitesimal but reassuring nod.Then Harold began to read the will aloud, starting with a preamble about where Great-Aunt Penelope resided, the date, et cetera.
The entire roomful of people seemed collectively to be holding their breath. I dutifully listened closely to the legalese and, for my mother’s sake, tried to figure out exactly what was going on, and to be a good representative of her interests.Yet I couldn’t help it—what fascinated me about Great-Aunt Penelope’s will was the same thing that fascinates me about history in my job: that in following one human being’s life, you can pick up embedded clues about eternal truths, about what endures and what vanishes, what’s important and what isn’t.
Harold read on, in a dignified murmur that had an insistent quality like a drumbeat, and his voice took on a momentum, in the tone of a high priest murmuring incantations: “I, Penelope Laidley, being of sound mind and body...”
I focused on decoding the formalities as he announced that Great-Aunt Penelope had left this apartment that we were sitting in and all its contents to my mother, and some hefty English bank assets to Rollo. He and his mother appeared satisfied with this. They did not contest the English will, and everything seemed hunky-dory, perfunctorily dispensed with—but there was nothing for Jeremy, which bewildered me...at first.
When it got round to the French will, however, all five of their party raised their heads in alertness and sat closer to the edges of their chairs expectantly. It signalled to me that the French assets were perhaps the more valuable, and this was what the fight was all about.
“My villa in France, including the house and all the property, I leave to Jeremy Laidley.The contents of the house, that is, all remaining furniture, I leave to my nephew Roland Laidley, Junior.The garage and its entire contents I leave solely to my great-niece and namesake, Penelope Nichols.”
After the briefest of pauses, everybody started talking all at once. The earlier high-priest incantations were replaced with overlapping spell-casting, and voodoo cursing as Dorothy and Rollo’s lawyers objected to the French will, and Jeremy and his team retaliated with polite warnings of time limits to contest it and procedure and other calm but fierce words. Then suddenly it all came to a stop. It was over—at least for now. Like a round in a boxing match.
Harold neatly arranged the papers of the will in their leather folder. A butler hired for the occasion arrived with a tray of coffee and china cups, cream pitcher and sugar bowl, which he put on the round table near the fireplace.This seemed to be a signal, for Jeremy and Severine went over to fill and pass the cups around. But Rollo’s lawyers, after murmuring to Dorothy, got up as one and stalked out the door. Dorothy rose majestically and contemptuously. Rollo cast a regretful look at the coffee, but helped his mother across the room.
I was still puzzling out why Aunt Penelope had mentioned me in such a whimsical way. Hmm, I thought. For some strange reason she thought of me as a garage person.
Before I had a chance to mull this over much, I was distracted by the tense figure of Great-Aunt Dorothy, passing by me on her way out. I could feel her pent-up fury, even before I looked up and saw it in the rigid way she was carrying herself. Although her face had a blank, stony expression, her breath gave her away, coming out in sharp little gasps. She paused at the lawyers’ table, and as if unable to contain herself a moment longer, she poked her walking stick at Harold’s leather folder, knocking it off the table and scattering the pages of Great-Aunt Penelope’s will all over the floor.
“We’ll just see!” she spat out with a look of triumphant glee, as if somehow by messing up the actual pages she had dispensed with their contents as well. I was horrified and embarrassed for her, as if she’d suddenly and publicly lost her mind. “We’ll just see!” she repeated to Jeremy, who had instinctively come to my side. Rollo hastily took hold of her arm to steer her out of the room.
Nobody else seemed the least bit surprised—except me. Harold sighed, and they all merely picked up the papers and reassembled them, then went right on about their business.
As they sorted it out, Severine began a rapid conversation sotto voce with Jeremy. She called him “Zheremy” in her lilting French accent, acting very correct the whole time, impeccable, efficient, and not inclined to dawdle.They both nodded vigorously, and then, when they were done with the papers, she raised her eyebrows to Harold, indicating that she was impatient to leave.
Harold shook hands with me rather more warmly than before, which gave me the first inkling that perhaps Mother and I had made out rather well. Severine, who’d earlier given me only the briefest and most professional of nods, now turned her laser-gaze on me more intently as she shook my hand, and then out of the corner of her mouth she murmured to Jeremy, in a wry, slightly patronizing tone, “Ah, la petite cousine américaine! Elle est charmante.”
Jeremy looked a trifle embarrassed. As well he should, I thought indignantly. I wasn’t six years old, for Pete’s sake. Why should she call me a “little” charming American cousin? But before I could really size her up, she departed with Harold. I listened as their footsteps died away and the heavy door downstairs closed behind them, leaving me alone with Jeremy.
Jeremy let out his breath as if he’d just played a rigorous soccer game. For the first time it dawned on me that he took his role as family protector very seriously and even, perhaps, wanted to impress his American relatives so they would think well of him.
“So now you’ve met Rollo and Dorothy,” he said wickedly.“What do you think?”
“Geez, nobody looked like I expected,” I admitted. “She’s so tiny, but for a minute there I was sure that she might clonk us both on the head with that stick of hers. And Rollo! After all I’d heard about him, I thought he’d resemble Jack the Ripper.” Jeremy rolled his eyes.
“A case unsolved—therefore nobody knows what he looked like,” he pointed out.
“You know what I mean. In the movies,” I said.“I certainly didn’t expect an aging lounge-lizard with mother problems.”
“Well, he’s a bit more complicated than that,” Jeremy warned, but he didn’t elaborate. He turned to me with a professionally bright air. “So, Penny Nichols,” he said, “how does it feel to be an heiress?”
“Very funny,” I said. “All I heard was something about a garage.”
He grinned. “That’s not all,” he announced. “Your mother told me that whatever property she got, I should hand over to you. Once the will has been officially processed. So you won’t have any trouble inheriting it when your mother—erm—when she’s gone.You can let me know if you want to keep it or sell it.Any idea what a flat like this, in this neighborhood, goes for? It’s worth seven hundred fifty thousand pounds. And people would kill just to get hold of one, because you have to be an insider even to know when one is available. Want to have a quick look around before we lock up? We’ve got a lot to do in very little time.”
Of course I should look around.To report back to my astonishing mother. Honestly, I was going to have to get my mind off romantic history, and learn a little about the greed thing.
My head was swimming, however, as I took in the apartment.The library was the biggest room, then a dark, narrow formal dining room, and a tiny pink-and-white kitchen in the back overlooking a sweet walled-in garden with patio; a small cherry-red second bedroom, which Aunt Penelope had used as a sewing room; a little bathroom with claw-foot tub and gold seahorse-shaped soap dishes; and, around in front again, a big, dramatic main bedroom with white-and-gold furniture. On a raised area near a window was a satin-skirted mirrored dressing table and matching satin-tufted chair.Tucked in another corner was a huge canopied bed.
Jeremy opened a big closet, wh
ich was full of sensible old-lady clothes. Peering into it made me feel as if I were trespassing on someone’s grave. I was glad when he closed it again.
“Jeremy,” I said, suddenly horrified as I stared at the big canopied four-poster bed,“she didn’t—die—right here—in this bed—did she?”
“No,” he said. “She died at the villa in France.” I exhaled loudly in relief. Jeremy went on speaking briskly as we went back down the creaky staircase.“Aunt Penelope’s had this flat since the 1920s, and the French villa since sometime in the 1930s,” he was saying.“Your father says you’re an expert at historical furnishings and art.Think you could make an assessment of the value of her possessions? We must be accurate when we declare their value for the taxes.”
“Sure,” I said. I’d already been admiring the pre-war moldings, trim, light fixtures, beautiful wood floors and doors.The furniture was good, mostly Victorian, but not spectacular, and although I’d dutifully concluded that I didn’t see any fancy objets d’art to report back to my mother, I knew that the flat itself was a rare find. It was perfectly situated but quiet and private; it had good light from those pretty windows, and was elegant and charming but still cozy enough to feel like home.The window-seats in the library made you want to curl up with one of the nicely bound books, reading and drowsing until the gold carriage-clock on the mantel chimed the dinner hour. “I can’t believe she gave this to us,” I said softly.
A Rather Lovely Inheritance Page 5