Bia's War

by Joanna Larum

  After listing all of this property, Mr Vine paused, presumably to give Victoria a little time to assimilate what he had said. He was surprised that Victoria didn’t seem overawed by the notion that she was now a woman of property, in fact, she was remarkably calm, but he gained a little insight into her attitude when she began questioning him.

  “I won’t be able to have control over any property until I’m twenty-one, will I?” she asked. “If this is to be kept from my parents, who will have that control until I come of age?”

  “That’s correct, Victoria,” Mr Vine answered. “Your grandmother has made provision for that. In fact, I and the manager of the Yorkshire Penny Bank are your trustees until you reach the age of twenty-one. When you do, sole control passes to you and you may do with the whole legacy what you will. Mrs Lymer was confident that you are sensible and intelligent enough to be able to manage your own financial affairs now, but the law demands that at least one adult must oversee them. You need have no concerns about access to any money if you are in need of it, neither I nor Mr Young (the bank manager) will refuse any reasonable request for funds at any time.”

  “I won’t need any money until I go to college.” Victoria was adamant. I don’t need to buy anything and I presume that my parents will continue to keep me as they don’t know what I have been bequeathed. I do get paid when I work in the shop and I’ve never needed any more than that. Will you and Mr Young deal with the day to day running of the shops and the houses?”

  “We will be the contacts for the lettings firm who rent out the houses you own and the two shops both have a manager in who will come to Mr Young and I if there are any problems and we should be able to sort them out. You needn’t worry that any of the businesses will fail through our incompetence until you can take over. We have both had dealings like these before and have proved ourselves reasonably capable.”

  Victoria smiled at the thought she would even dare question what her trustees were doing. She was still trying to come to terms with what Mr Vine had just told her, but one thought had sprung to mind immediately.

  “You said that other goods had been left for the six children of Granddad Sam’s two marriages. Is that money? And what about the Queen Street shop? What is going to happen to that?”

  Mr Vine smiled.

  “You needn’t worry about your parents or your aunts and uncle. Mrs Lymer sold off some of the property at the beginning of last year. That money was invested and will be shared amongst the six children equally. Part of your parents’ share includes the shop on Queen Street, so they will not be destitute or homeless. All they will have to do is to continue as they are at the moment, although they will be well within their rights to sell the shop if they so wish. It is entirely up to them. Now, I will be making an appointment for your parents and the other five beneficiaries to come and listen to the Will. It states within it that Mrs Lymer has left her jewellery to you, although it puts no value on the collection. It does not mention the other two shops or the house portfolio, so it will be left entirely up to you as to how much you tell them. Rest assured, I will not let it be known how much you are worth. That’s entirely your own business.”

  Mr Vine seemed to have come to the end of what he wanted to say and Victoria was feeling a need to be on her own, to give herself chance to assimilate the idea of being a rich woman. She would keep Nana Lymer’s council and not tell anyone about her legacy, although she couldn’t wait to see Nana’s collection of jewellery and precious stones. She took her leave from Mr Vine feeling as though her brain had been pummelled by a boxer and that she needed some space and time to assimilate the information she had received. She was walking through reception without seeing Miss Talbot until that lady placed herself in the middle of Victoria’s path to the door.

  “Got what you wanted then? Has he told you about it all? Lucky little tyke aren’t you?” Miss Talbot was whispering so that Mr Vine wouldn’t hear but the menace and poison in her voice brought Victoria to a dead stop in front of her. In a flash of insight, she realised what was wrong with the woman.

  “Envy doesn’t suit you, Miss Talbot,” she said. “And it’s a wasted emotion because nothing comes of it.”

  Miss Talbot stepped closer to Victoria until she could feel her hot angry breath on her cheek. Luckily, Mr Vine chose that moment to open his office door and Miss Talbot reacted immediately.

  “You’ll need to be wrapped up to walk home.” She said. “It’s starting to snow out there.” She stepped away from Victoria and seated herself at her desk; the only indication of her temper left showing was the red highlight on each cheek. Victoria repeated her farewells to Mr Vine and then left the office, shaking slightly with reaction to the raw emotion shown by Miss Talbot. She wondered how many people would be as jealous of her good fortune as Miss Talbot was, but decided that she would just have to learn to ignore it. She would have to grow a hard shell to protect herself from such envy, but she would also make sure that she didn’t flaunt her wealth in front of all and sundry. That was another tip that she had learnt from Nana Lymer.

  Despite this resolve, the bitter hatred emanating from Miss Talbot had unsettled Victoria and she really didn’t want to have to go straight back to the shop and have to face her mother with the knowledge that she now carried. She needed to come to terms with it and she needed peace and tranquillity to be able to do that despite the fact that it had started to snow while she had been in Mr Vine’s office. Pulling her woolly hat down onto her head, she turned left towards the docks as she exited Mr Vine’s office, instead of turning right for home. There were very few people about as most would still be at work and those who weren’t had completed their shopping and gone home before the weather turned. The snow came down more quickly as Victoria made her way to the end of Station Road and, by the time she crossed the bridge over the railway line, she was having difficulty in seeing the tracks below her.

  The storm was coming in from the sea and looking at the far side of the railway line was like watching a television screen that had lost its aerial, everything was indistinct and shapeless. Only the sheds which lined the entrance to the docks were visible due to their size, but Victoria ploughed on regardless. The wind had risen and the snowflakes were now so large that they hurt as they hit her face. She screwed up her nose and tried to settle the bottom of her chin into her coat to give herself some protection, but she still kept on striding towards the docks.

  When she reached the dockside, she stopped and stared out at the complete whiteout which was all that she could see. She had to imagine the wharves and the warehouses and, beyond everything, the sea which had brought the Hun ships to the coastline of this quiet part of the country. It crossed her mind that it must have been just such a stormy night as this when Nana Lymer and Sam had searched for Simon and William and she pitied them from the bottom of her heart. The tears she had been holding back all day welled up and poured down her face as she stared at the white shifting wall of snow in front of her and felt the cold eat through to her bones. She was painfully aware that her grandmother had probably stood on exactly the same spot where she was now standing and taken in the vision of the cruel sea as it crashed and boiled in front of her. Her grief washed over her again and she shuddered in the wind as the cold seemed to be eating at her bones.

  Suddenly, her arm was grabbed and a man spun her round away from the edge of the dock.

  “Don’t do it, lass,” he shouted over the noise of the wind. “It’s no answer and you’ll likely hurt so many other people.”

  Victoria slumped against him as the shock of his grabbing her made her go weak at the knees and she very nearly slipped over the side of the dock. The man held onto her and dragged her back across the railway line to one of the sheds. Away from the sound of the storm, he lowered his voice and tried again to persuade her against a suicide bid. Victoria lifted her hand to try and stem the verbal flow emanating from him, so that she could reassure him that suicide was definitely not on her agenda for th
at day.

  “I wasn’t going to jump.” Victoria said. “I only wanted to know what it was like to look out to sea in the middle of a snow storm and now that I’ve seen what it is like I shall go home out of the cold.”

  She left her hero sadly shaking his head as he tried to understand the vagaries of youth and turned her face towards home, more content because she had managed to release some of the difficult emotions she had been bound by that day. As she walked, she decided to write down the whole story of her grandmother’s life, before she had chance to forget any of the details and keep it to show any other member of the family who showed an interest in their ancestor in the future. Simon and Peter and even William and the pig butcher deserved to have their lives remembered although she was determined she would describe the characters of all as fairly as she could. She didn’t want to pass any judgement at all on any of the characters involved in her grandmother’s story. Equally, there would be no whitewashing to hide the truth.

  As she struggled against the stormy weather, she felt even closer to Nana Lymer and her Granddad Sam, following where they had walked as they searched the town for Bia’s little son, in weather which must have been very similar to what Victoria was experiencing that day, although it had been dark that night right back at the beginning of the century. She felt very peaceful inside, although as tired as if she had run a marathon, and wondered if it was true that people go to meet loved ones after they have died. If it was the case, she sincerely hoped that Nana was now hand-in-hand with her Sam once more and holding her son Simon, her family reunited. Hugging this thought and the secret of her inheritance close inside her, she walked through the snow towards home. It felt as though she was beginning a new life and she was excited at the prospects which had opened up in front her and all thanks to that wonderful old lady she was extremely proud to be able to call her grandmother.

  The End

  Thank you for reading my book. If you enjoyed it, would you please take a moment to leave me a review at your favourite retailer?

  Thanks!

  Joanna Larum

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