Anything For a Quiet Life

by Michael Gilbert

  Jonas looked at the paper on the desk. It was an old woman’s writing, spidery, but absolutely clear.

  “She’s copied the legal wording from the last one I made for her. And it’s been properly witnessed and dated. My brother and I are executors. We wouldn’t anticipate any difficulty in getting probate.”

  “Then,” said Jonas, “what’s the trouble?” He knew that something was worrying Sykes. He had heard it on the telephone and he heard it again now.

  “Well, you see, it’s a big estate. There’s property in London and the Home Counties. She couldn’t dispose of that. It’s entailed and goes to a cousin. What she’s left the rector is her free estate: money and shares.”

  “Yes, I follow that.” He picked up the will and studied it. A notion of what was upsetting his colleague crossed his mind. “It’s the last five words, I suppose.”

  “If I had drafted the will I certainly shouldn’t have put them in.”

  To my old friend Tobias Harmer D.D., Rector of St Michael’s Church Shackleton I bequeath all my unentailed property as I explained to him.

  The difficulty was becoming clearer.

  “You mean,” said Jonas, “that without those last five words it would be a gift to the rector personally. With them, there’s a trust tacked on.”

  “There’s certainly a suggestion that she told him what she expected him to do with the money.”

  “So it could have been meant as a gift to the church and not to him.”

  The two lawyers looked at each other. The cat was out of the bag now, claws and all.

  Jonas said, “What is the rate of tax?”

  “As I told you, it’s a very large estate. It might be as high as seventy-five per cent.”

  “Which would be avoided if this was a gift to the church.”

  “Exactly.”

  “But payable if it was a personal gift to the rector.”

  “Yes.”

  “In that case,” said Jonas, “the vital question is, what did she say to the rector after morning service two weeks ago?”

  With a layman it would have taken Jonas three times as long to explain the point. The rector’s theologically trained brain grasped the implications at once.

  He said, “I see. Yes. So what is it you want me to do?”

  “I want you to remember, if you can, the exact words Miss Semple used when she promised you this legacy.”

  “Why is what she said important? I thought it was only what the will said that mattered.”

  “Correct. But there’s one exception. If a will is worded so that it can mean two different things, outside evidence is allowed, to show which was meant. Particularly in the case of home-made wills, which tend to be vague.”

  “How much money is involved?”

  “Sykes could only give me a rough estimate. Certainly not less than a hundred thousand pounds. More likely a hundred and fifty thousand.”

  The rector thought about this for some time. His face was expressionless, but his fingers were opening and closing on the arms of the chair. Finally he said, “Very well, I can tell you what Miss Semple said. Not perhaps the precise words, but the sense of them. She said, ‘You will understand that this money is for the church.’”

  “Splendid,” said Jonas. “That seems quite clear. I will draw up a statutory declaration.”

  “Explain, please.”

  “Oh, it’s a solemn declaration which you swear to in front of another solicitor. I’m sure Ronald Sykes will be happy to oblige us. As soon as I’ve drafted it we’ll go round and see him.”

  “And if I am prepared to make this declaration, the whole of the money comes to the church. If I am unable to make it, three-quarters of it may go to the government.”

  “In a nutshell,” said Jonas.

  “Just a formality really,” said Sykes, with professional cheerfulness. “Initial the first page. That’s right. Then sign the document at the foot of page two. Excellent. Now you take the Testament in your right hand and we’ll both stand up. Ready?”

  It was a copy of the New Testament bound in black buckram and limp with much handling. His clients normally grabbed the book and gabbled the required words. The rector was the first person he had known to handle it with proper reverence.

  Sykes said, “Please repeat after me, ‘I solemnly and sincerely declare that this is my name and handwriting.’”

  The rector repeated the words.

  “‘And that the contents of this my declaration are true.’”

  Jonas, who had come with the rector, had a sudden urge to interrupt. To shout out ‘stop’. He knew this was irrational and absurd. He had administered the oath to hundreds of his clients without he or them giving it another thought. The difference here, he realised, was that the rector understood the meaning and implication of what he was doing. He was pledging his word to his God that he was telling the truth.

  After a pause, which seemed to go on for ever, but may only have lasted a few seconds, the rector repeated, “And that the contents of this my declaration are true.”

  “That will cost you one pound,” said Sykes.

  Jonas had the fee ready and passed it across the table. They left the office and walked away down the street together. They had nothing to say to each other. Back in the office Jonas found Claire waiting for him. She said, “You’re looking very serious.”

  Jonas said, “Am I?” with unusual brusqueness and disappeared into his own room, leaving Claire staring after him.

  Three days later, towards the end of the afternoon, Mrs Baxter arrived unannounced at the office. Claire could see that she was badly upset about something. Maybe it was the same thing that was worrying Jonas. He had been in a very odd mood lately. She said, “I’m afraid Mr Pickett’s out. If we’d known you were coming—”

  “I’m glad. I’ll find it easier to explain to you. Mr Sykes and Mr Pickett have done something terrible to my brother.”

  Claire didn’t pretend not to understand her. She said, “You mean that statutory declaration?”

  “I don’t know what it was, but whatever they made him do it’s destroying him. I was planning to go home yesterday, but for David’s sake I had to stay. I daren’t leave him alone.”

  Claire said, “Do you think your brother’s mad?”

  The brutality of the question shook her, as Claire had intended it to do. “Mad? I don’t know. But I can tell you this. He hasn’t slept for the last two nights. His bedroom’s next to mine. Last night I could hear him pacing, backwards and forwards, hour after hour. That was bad enough, but it was worse when he stopped, quite suddenly. Absolute silence. I began to be afraid.”

  Claire said, in the same matter-of-fact voice, “You were afraid he’d killed himself?”

  “Yes, I was. And I couldn’t possibly go to sleep without knowing. So I opened the door quietly and looked in. He was on his knees by his bed. I went back to my room and managed to get a little sleep. This morning he’s hardly spoken to me. Just ‘thank you’ when I got him his breakfast. I’m scared silly, Miss Easterbrook, and I’m not ashamed to admit it. Isn’t there something we could do?”

  “What about his doctor?”

  “He hasn’t got a regular one. And—well—I know he’s got great confidence in Mr Pickett. If you could only persuade him how bad things are, I’m sure he’d think of something.”

  “I’ll try,” said Claire reluctantly. “But don’t bank on it. When his mind’s made up he’s the most obstinate man I’ve ever known.”

  As was his custom on a fine afternoon, Jonas had been for a stroll along the front and he came back refreshed and happy; a happiness which disappeared as soon as he had grasped what Claire was trying to tell him.

  “Really,” he said, in the querulous voice of someone who was arguing with himself. “All we asked him to do was to tell the truth and even if he was lying, he was doing it for the sake of his church, not for himself.”

  “Which will be a great comfort to everyone when he cuts his throa
t.”

  “If he’s decided to kill himself, there’s nothing you or I or anyone can do. Short of putting him in a straitjacket.”

  “You don’t often admit yourself beaten,” said Claire. “You can usually think of a way out.”

  This was clever of Claire. It was an appeal to Jonas’s professional pride. The result was that he stopped justifying himself and started thinking. He said, “I suppose it would help if we could take the pressure off him. I’ll have a word with Sykes. If he hasn’t put that declaration in yet, I could ask him to hold it up. Then, if the rector agrees, we could tear it up and forget about it. It will cost him a lot of money.”

  “It might save his life,” said Claire.

  “I’ll go round to the rectory as soon as I can get away tomorrow morning.”

  It was nearly eleven o’clock next morning before he could leave the office. Sam had some stuff to pick up on the Lewes road, so he took him in the car with him. When they turned in at the long laurel-shadowed drive and drew up in front of the rectory there was no sign of life. Three rows of windows stared down at them like blind eyes. No birds were singing.

  “Gloomy sort of place,” said Sam. “Wouldn’t care to live here myself.”

  “Something’s happened,” said Jonas. The silence was so overpowering that he had to stop himself from speaking in a whisper. “I wish I’d come round sooner.”

  “Better go in and find out, hadn’t you?”

  “I suppose so.” It was an effort to move.

  “Like me to come along?”

  Jonas took a grip of himself. “No,” he said. “Stay here. But turn the car round.”

  He jumped out, walked briskly up the front steps and jerked the old-fashioned bell pull. He could hear the bell jangling. But no sound of life.

  He tried the front door. It was unlocked. He opened it and stepped through into the hall. As the last echoes of the bell died away he heard something else. In the room at the far end of the passage someone was sobbing.

  David was worried. His father had been his friend and his confidant for as many years as he could remember. Now something had happened to upset him. He could observe the physical signs, but without understanding what lay behind them. The fingers which moved as though he was playing on a silent piano; the curiously distant look in the grey eyes; the livid wounds that had opened under them.

  His aunt, too, had been behaving oddly. She seemed unwilling to leave her brother alone for more than five minutes, but would come bustling in with plans and suggestions, most of them stupid in David’s opinion. At breakfast that morning, whilst she had been there, almost nothing had been said. When she left the room, animation had returned.

  His father had started to talk, entertainingly and informatively, about birds. About the cuckoo, who had just opened his spring solo; about the vanguard of the house martins who were ejecting the sparrows from the nests they had appropriated in the absence of their owners during the winter. Better still, he had proposed an expedition.

  “We’ll take sandwiches and make a day of it. I thought we might go up Scarr Down. A boy told me there was a colony of chaffinches building there.”

  “Right up to the top of the Down? You mean the Druids’ Stone?”

  “Is that what they call it?” For a moment the animation had gone and the old bleak look was back in his father’s eyes. With rare tact for a boy of eight David broke off what he had been going to say; the gruesome but exciting things other boys had told him about the Druids’ Stone. Instead he said, “Shall I cut the sandwiches?”

  “I cut them before breakfast. They’re in my knapsack.”

  “Shall I tell Aunt B what we’re going to do?”

  “No, I’ll tell her. You get your windcheater. You’ll need it up on the tops. Wait for me in the drive.”

  If David had shut the front door, as his father had intended, he would have heard nothing. He rather wished he had shut it, because what he did hear was unusual and upsetting. First it was the talk in the kitchen. It seemed to go on for a long time. Then, something he had never heard before, his father was shouting. Loudly and angrily. Between the shouts he could hear his aunt’s high-pitched protests. Then a door slammed and his father came striding back down the hall. He had his knapsack over one shoulder and a stick in his hand.

  David said, “What was Aunt B going on about?”

  “She thought the climb to Scarr Down would be too much for you.”

  “That’s nonsense. I’ve been twice as far as that.”

  “So I told her, Davy. Come on, then.”

  As they went David slipped his small hand into the large one swinging beside him and father and son went down the drive hand in hand.

  When Jonas reached the kitchen and looked inside he realised that Mrs Baxter was on the verge of a hysterical breakdown. As soon as she saw him she started talking, but nothing that came out made much sense.

  He heard what sounded like ‘atonement’, then something about the Druids’ Stone, which was a monument he had once visited. Then, suddenly, out of the froth and jumble of words came two names that did mean something to him, ‘Abraham’ and ‘Isaac’. When he heard them, all alarm bells started ringing together. He stepped forward, swung his arm and smacked Mrs Baxter’s face with his open hand.

  The sobs were cut off and she looked up as though she was seeing him for the first time.

  “Are you telling me,” said Jonas, “that your brother has taken David up to Scarr Down?”

  “Yes.”

  “How long ago?”

  “About half an hour.”

  He said, “And you let them go? After he’d as good as told you what he meant to do?”

  Mrs Baxter raised a tear-streaked face. “How could I stop him? He’s insane—”

  But Jonas was no longer there.

  Sam had turned the car and when he saw Jonas come running down the steps he started to move over. Jonas said, “Stay where you are. You’re a better driver than me. We shall have to move fast.”

  “Where to, skipper?”

  “Scarr Down. Head for the golf club. There’s a side road just before you get there.”

  By this time they were in the road that circled the industrial estate. A van pulled out ahead of them. Jonas said, “Pass it.”

  “Ho!” said Sam. “Necks for sale, is it?” He squeezed past the van, swinging in with inches to spare in front of an indignant car coming the other way. “If there’s one thing I don’t like it’s drivers what sound their horns at you just because they’re scared.”

  “Concentrate on driving,” said Jonas. He was studying the map. “The turning’s about two hundred yards ahead. Just past that white cottage. Got it? Right. Don’t dawdle.”

  It was a country lane, clearly too narrow for cars to pass at speed. If they met anything head on they would both go to glory. Sam uttered a short prayer.

  “Next turning to the right.”

  This was a track, deeply rutted in places by the farm carts which had used it. The car bounced and juddered. Jonas realised that he could never have controlled it. His foot would have been on and off the accelerator and they would have been stalling and starting. As the track started to climb there was a quagmire left by the recent rain. If they had not been going at a fair speed they would have been helplessly bogged. As it was they had just enough momentum to reach the firm ground beyond and skidded out, sideways. Sam wrenched the car back on to the track. For a stretch, though the track was going steeply uphill, it offered no obstacles.

  Sam found a moment to grab a handkerchief out of his pocket and wipe away some of the sweat that was pouring down his forehead.

  They could see the top of the Down now and the single stone standing up against the sky.

  The footpath to the Druids’ Stone ran, straight and uncompromising, up the shoulder of the Down. The man and the boy tackled it steadily, pausing from time to time to look back. As they climbed, their line of sight cleared the trees and houses and the sea came into view, lea
d and silver under the April sky. They seemed to have the world to themselves.

  Rabbits thumped on the turf and bolted back to their burrows as they approached. Above them a hawk swung in the sky. He was not interested in the two humans toiling up the path. He was watching the rabbits.

  “Nearly there,” said the rector.

  Neither of them had spoken much. David was saving his breath for the climb. His father’s thoughts were far away; beyond the hills, across the sea, in a country of his own making.

  In an open circle of turf at the top were two stones, one flat, the other upright at the end of it. David said, “The boy who told you chaffinches built in a place like this must have been crazy.”

  The rector sat on the edge of the flat stone, slipping the knapsack off his shoulders and putting it down carefully beside him. He said, “I brought you here to tell you something, Davy. Come and sit here.”

  David came over and squatted beside him.

  “You know how much I love you. You know that you are more precious to me than anything in the whole world.”

  Most boys would have been embarrassed. David had lived alone with his father so long that nothing he said or did had the power to surprise or worry him. Instead he turned his attention to the important question of what his father had brought for their picnic. He fiddled open the clasp of the knapsack and looked inside.

  The rector had put out a hand to stop him, but realising that it was too late he sat quite still.

  David started to laugh. “Silly Daddy,” he said. “Do you know what you’ve done? You’ve brought the knife and forgotten the bread.” He loved knives. This was a beauty, with a black handle, a copper tang and a shining blade. His father took it from him gently and laid it down on the stone beside him.

  “What were you going to tell me?” said David.

  “We’re going on a journey.”

  “You and me?”