Manton continued being dignified for the rest of the day. He walked away from the graveside with a slow and measured tread, his hands behind his back; the Rawul walked beside him, with the same tread, and his hands also clasped behind him. Just as Grandfather and the Rawul had looked like two statesmen in high conclave, so did Manton and the Rawul. The man from Washington walked behind them, and at the gate of the cemetery they waited for him and took him with them in the front car to return to the house. I don’t know what this man’s name was, but I knew he was there from the State Department on official business, and it was fitting that he should be. People like him used to turn up on official business at Grandfather’s embassies, always with the same blandly relaxed conversation and exactly calculated schedule. They were very different from Grandfather’s own friends in government—senators, cabinet members, or other ambassadors—who had hours to spare and smoked cigars and quoted Henry Adams. I wished it could have been one of those who had been sent, but I guess they were too old now or sick or gone altogether, and only the others were left. Grandfather didn’t even know this present President, who was a very different style of man from those he had been friendly with, and I suppose we should have been grateful that anyone had been sent. The Rawul certainly felt gratified by the presence of this emissary and addressed many of his remarks to him—not really saying anything but volleying courteous conversational shots to him, which the emissary deftly returned.
The house on the Island had porches all around it, with white wicker armchairs and summery green cushions, and light and sea air and sea breezes flowed through it from end to end. The only dark room, wedged between the principal living room and the pantry, was the dining room, where the shutters were usually kept closed to keep the heat and glare out. It was here that we gathered after the funeral for what turned out to be a sort of ritual meal. This was probably due to the presence of an official emissary, a clergyman, and an attorney; and to the Rawul, who conducted himself in a solemn, ceremonial way; and to Aunt Harriet, who, in appearance very much like Grandfather, sat statuesque and stony silent. But it was Manton who put the final, ritual stamp on the occasion. He waited until we were all seated; then very slowly, very deliberately, he went to the head of the table and drew out Grandfather’s chair and, for the first time in his life, he sat there in Grandfather’s place. He looked down the length of the table and at that moment, surveying his family and guests, he took on Grandfather’s authority. Tall, florid, every inch a Wishwell, he appeared at last to be in his proper place.
Sonya sat at the other end of the table. I noticed that she hesitated before sitting down in what had been, after Grandmother’s death, her usual chair, and she gave a quick glance around as if she thought someone else with a better right was coming to claim it. When no one did, she quickly hunched herself up in it, a bowed, bundled, humbled little figure very different from the vivacious Sonya Grandfather had so loved. It was harder for her to be here than for anyone else—she only wanted to be lying on her bed, weeping; but of course everyone belonging to our family was expected to sit upright when there was a family occasion to be got through. Aunt Harriet, in the middle of the table between emissary and attorney, was the touchstone of this tradition. Tall and craggy like a male Wishwell, she sat poker stiff in the black silk she wore for summer funerals. For winter ones she wore black wool, and for the in-between weather there was her black crepe. She had attended funerals in every season, having buried her parents, her other brother and two sisters, two husbands (Uncle Greg and Uncle Rob), and her son, Cousin Tom, who had overdosed. In all the years I had known her she had changed very little, just growing more craggy and gaunt. I don’t think she could hear at all anymore, but it didn’t make any difference since she had never listened but only delivered her opinions. She was doing it now, and the attorney, Mr. Pritchett, who knew her well, was nodding respectfully, while the emissary, who didn’t, felt called upon to respond without noticing that it was superfluous. Manton, at the head of the table, continued to fulfill his function admirably, both taking up threads of conversation and starting new ones when necessary. The Rawul gave him full support, as did clergyman, attorney, and emissary. The only ones who didn’t were Sonya, Michael, and me; we didn’t want to be there, but somewhere else and on our own. As for Crishi, he played his part and contributed to the conversation when he had to; but at least twice he caught my eye and gave the smallest shrug, and then he looked up and seemed to be imploring the ceiling, “Why do we have to be here? How much longer?” I think he did the same to Michael, who must have been glad, as I was, that Crishi was there with us and knew how we felt.
Manton continued relaxed and assured for the rest of the day. Together with the Rawul, he took the emissary to his plane, and both of them warmly shook his hand and conveyed messages of respect and regard to the President who had sent him. Manton received condolence callers from the Island and put them at ease. He conducted the conversation at dinner as he had at lunch. He was respectfully considerate of Aunt Harriet, reverentially so of Sonya. Sonya too was different. Besides being stricken and tearful, she was apologetic and anxious not to displease. It was the same air and attitude she had had when Grandmother was alive, as of a poor relation or a domestic, recalling what I had heard about her earlier life, in Hong Kong or was it Singapore, where she had made herself indispensable in rich people’s houses.
But next day everything changed. In the morning, we—that is, the family—gathered in Grandfather’s study to hear Mr. Pritchett read the will. Mr. Pritchett was behind the desk at which Grandfather had worked on his book. Grandfather’s papers and the volumes he consulted were still piled up on tables next to it. We had our backs to the windows, but whenever Mr. Pritchett looked up he saw the view—that is, the ocean—Grandfather had seen whenever he looked up from his papers. Feeling closed in, I turned to glance out at the stretch of beach and the unending ocean with flecks of sailboats on it and of gulls above it. What thoughts had passed through Grandfather’s mind as he looked over this view with his eyes the same color as the sea, and some would say, as cold? Aunt Harriet, wearing her hearing aid, was listening keenly to Mr. Pritchett’s reading, and sometimes she interrupted him with “Could we have that again, Mr. Pritchett?” And he went back and repeated it in the slow, impartial, careful voice this careful will deserved. Grandfather must have drafted it very meticulously, weighing personal as well as larger considerations, making sure that, apart from some small, fair bequests, nothing went out of the family; that Sonya was financially secure for the rest of her life, and in the place where she felt most comfortable—that is, the house in the city, which was to be hers during her lifetime and Michael’s and mine afterward. He didn’t leave her this place on the Island because he knew that, without him, she would never come here; he left it to Michael and me, along with the rest of his estate. At that time, to save inheritance tax, people did sometimes pass over their children in favor of their grandchildren, but I don’t know if that had been Grandfather’s intention. He made no mention of Manton at all. I imagined how, as he wrote these words that Mr. Pritchett was reading, Grandfather had filled himself with the sight of the waves—advancing, breaking, and receding in impartial motion—before writing slowly and what he must have considered impartially: “In passing on to my grandchildren, Michael Samuel Manton Wishwell and Harriet Margaret Maria Wishwell, what has been entrusted to me by my forebears and theirs, I repose my confidence in them that they will act with the discretion, duty, and responsibility their family heritage both demands and deserves.”
By the time we left the library, Manton’s face was more flushed than usual, but he kept up his dignified behavior. Still the courteous host, he saw off Aunt Harriet and Mr. Pritchett to the ferry; and when Aunt Harriet said to him in her brusque way, “Well, Manton, we don’t know what was in his mind, but he must have had good reason,” Manton did not say anything, simply held her coat for her to get into, advising her that it might be chilly on the ferry. In saying
good-bye to me, Aunt Harriet enfolded me in a hard embrace and in her smell of lozenges, cologne, and the earth she was forever digging in her garden. She pressed me more affectionately than she had ever done before, but I was not surprised. I had already learned from the reading of a previous will—Lindsay’s father’s, where she and Michael and I got everything—that people’s attitude changes both toward the inheritors and the disinherited. That evening, when those of us who remained sat down to dinner, Manton again pulled out Grandfather’s chair at the table: Then he hesitated and looked toward Michael, who had already sat down next to Crishi. For a moment it seemed that Manton was offering the place at the head of the table to Michael, as to the person who now had the right to it. But of course Michael had no idea what he meant. So then Manton sat down at the head of the table again, but it was for the last time.
Next day Manton’s dignity was shattered. He didn’t come down for breakfast, and when I went to look for him, I found him with Sonya in her bedroom. She was sitting up in bed, in her little bed jacket and a hairnet, and she was trying to comfort Manton, who was on his knees by the side of her bed, his head on her eiderdown. She clasped his head and murmured to him, and at the same time tears fell from her own eyes as they must have been falling all night, for her face was stained and swollen with them. She looked like an old, old grieving woman, which of course she was. And Manton, sobbing in her arms, was like a grieving son. “Look, here’s darling Harriet,” Sonya tried to rally him when I came in, but he kept his face buried, while putting out one hand for me to grasp. I did that, and got up on Sonya’s bed and she embraced both of us. It was comforting to be there with her, leaning on her soft warm bosom half-naked under her bed jacket. Yesterday she had had that air of being a dependent, but today it was gone as completely as Manton’s calm dignity. But in her case I don’t think it was due to the reading of the will but to the strength of her feelings—for Grandfather, and for Manton, and me. She was as truly Grandfather’s widow as she had been his wife, and no person and no will could alter that.
It wasn’t the fact of the will but its spirit that had laid Manton low. “He didn’t love me,” he said. “He didn’t trust me. And he was right. No he was,” he insisted, though we hadn’t contradicted him. “He was so different from you, darling,” Sonya said. “It happens often with father and son, it’s a well-known fact in psychology, there is even a name for it—” She broke off: “But he was so wonderful! Such a wonderful man!” “He was! I’m not saying he wasn’t!” Manton shouted; and continued in a deflated voice: “It’s me who’s not wonderful. Not at all wonderful”; and after a gloomy silence, “Look what I’m doing with Mother’s money. I’m again overdrawn, I’m ashamed to say, though how or why I couldn’t tell you. I thought when I came into Mother’s money everything would change, that I’d be able to manage for the first time in my life, but it’s even worse. I guess that means I’m worse. Father was right. Absolutely right.” Again he buried his face in Sonya’s bedcover, again she did what she could to comfort him.
After a while she wiped her eyes but not successfully, for new tears kept coming. “It’s wrong,” she said. “I should be laughing and singing with happiness and joy—to have known such a man! And that he should have stooped down to someone so small like myself. Darling Manton, dearest child, if you cry anymore I can’t bear it.”
“It’s not the money,” Manton wept from her bedcover.
“I know it’s not the money! As if you would have one moment’s thought about that as long as I’m here and have a crust of bread to eat.” Both knew she was speaking very metaphorically: Grandfather had left her more than a crust, and Manton needed more than that. “But you see, children,” she said, and she gathered both of us to her little warm bosom, “what he wanted was that we should look after Manton; that we should keep everything in trust for you, darling, so that you wouldn’t spend it all at once with your generous nature. Don’t you think so, Harriet dearest? Yes I’m sure that’s why he did it like that: for us to take care of it all for Manton.”
He raised his face from her bed: He looked not unhopeful. But next moment he shook his head—“That’s not what Michael and Harriet want.”
“Yes we do,” I said quickly, though I must admit I hadn’t thought of it that way.
“No. You want to give it away. Like Propinquity.”
Well, I hadn’t thought of that either, but now that he said it, I couldn’t contradict him. And even if I did on my own account, I couldn’t speak for Michael.
“I’m not blaming you,” Manton said when there had been too long a silence. “It’s something you believe in and I admire you for it. And good Lord, I can hardly ask you to believe in me, the way I’ve carried on. And now there’s Barbara,” he added gloomily.
“Barbara!” Sonya exclaimed. “We love Barbara!”
“You do? Of course, so do I, but she is awfully young and a bit—she hasn’t had that much education, and I don’t think she could have taken it if she had—I mean, let’s face it, she just isn’t bright.”
Here I began to protest, and as I defended her, saying every nice thing I could about her, Manton cheered up considerably. He said “Hm. Well. Yes. She is a good girl. And quite sensible really. You can’t say she hasn’t got her head screwed on right.”
“You certainly can’t,” I said.
“Or her heart in the right place. Which is more than you can say about some people. Barbara wanted to come—she wanted to be here with us at my father’s funeral—whereas your mother,” he told me, “his own daughter-in-law, couldn’t get her ass over here. Sorry, Sonya. Sorry, Baby H. But I do feel strongly about that.” He looked self-righteous, the way he always did when he pointed out Lindsay’s shortcomings. “I wish Father could have met Barbara. He’d have liked her, don’t you think? Perhaps if he had met her he’d have trusted my judgment more. He’d have known I was no longer the jerk who married Lindsay.”
He sighed, and so did Sonya. “When we’re young, we think we know it all,” she said. “And will we listen to anyone older and wiser? No.”
“No,” Manton agreed.
“If we like something, at once we have to have it: even if it’s poison. And it often is poison.”
“Absolutely,” Manton said.
“It’s a dangerous age. Youth is a dangerous age.” But in spite of her tear-swollen face—was it my imagination, or was there just the flicker of a smile, a shadow of remembered happiness? And the same with Manton, while trying to look sage as he agreed with her again.
Suddenly Sonya exclaimed: “Thank God this child is so sensible and wise!” Manton echoed: “Thank God!” It took me a moment to realize they meant me. I was surprised, even laughed a bit. Sensible and wise! When I couldn’t make up my mind about anything—like whether to go back to school or not; whether to give away the house or not; even how I felt about people, whether I liked them or not. But there was Manton saying “I don’t worry about you at all, Baby H.; anyone unsuitable getting hold of you or anything like that.” And Sonya said “Oh no no no—when the time comes, she’ll choose someone so beautiful and wonderful—and we’ll all be so proud of her and we’ll make such a wedding, such a wedding: If only he could be here to see,” she said and wept and wept and wept again, although it wasn’t only the way people cry at funerals but as they do at weddings too.
Manton and Sonya left for the city next day. Michael and I were ready to leave too, but we were made to feel it would be irresponsible just to walk away from the house that was now ours. It was the Rawul who made us feel that way: not by reproaching us but only asking, in a fatherly manner, what we proposed to do about the house; and when we didn’t propose anything, making some suggestions of his own. He seemed very taken with the place and kept walking around it with approval. I guess it was the perfect summer house by the sea—which was what it had been for Grandfather, though never for Michael and me. It had several big living rooms downstairs, surrounded by porches, some of them glassed in to form sun parl
ors. There were large bedrooms with verandas on the second floor, and another floor with a whole warren of small bedrooms, and an attic divided up into even more and even smaller bedrooms. It was comfortably furnished with worn old family pieces, which had been there since the house was built; some of them had in the meantime become valuable, and there were Grandfather’s library and a few collectors’ items he kept on his desk, such as Talleyrand’s inkstand. It was because of these probably that the Rawul and Crishi felt we couldn’t just leave everything and walk away, although that was what had always been done, with a family from the Island, the Macleods, acting as caretakers. The Rawul, seeing that Michael and I didn’t know what to do, discreetly took charge. He himself had to get back to Propinquity, but he arranged for Crishi and the followers to stay behind to look after the place for us and make some necessary repairs. I also heard them discuss some structural changes, such as fixing up the top floor, uninhabited since Grandfather’s father’s time, when a full domestic force had lived up there. Crishi didn’t trouble Michael and me with these plans but gave his orders to the followers, who took over in their usual efficient way.
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