About Last Night . . .

by Catherine Alliott

  ‘It was held here?’

  ‘Of course, why not? What a shame you couldn’t come.’ She looked at me rather suspiciously now, as I might have done had I been in her shoes. It occurred to me I’d have loved to have known this man: one who could fill a house at his wake and had clearly led a vibrant and interesting life.

  ‘Camilla, what did Cuthbert do? I mean, I imagine he was retired, but before that?’

  ‘Oh, he was only semi-retired,’ she said as she led the way out of the sitting room and into the kitchen, gathering empty glasses as she went, which had obviously been missed after the party. I seized a couple too, trying to ingratiate myself. ‘He still sat on the Arts Council Committee and was a fellow at the V&A and on the board at the ICA and various other places. Everyone wanted him. He was still frightfully busy. Well, you would be if you’d been at Christie’s all those years.’

  ‘Right. I wish I’d known him. He sounds like a delightful man.’

  ‘He was.’ She raised her chin and looked at me squarely, turning from putting glasses in the sink. ‘Everyone loved him.’

  ‘I didn’t really know of his existence,’ I said quickly. ‘Just a name. Not even a Christmas card.’

  She nodded. ‘Everyone has relatives like that: names rather than faces.’

  ‘They do, don’t they?’ I felt comforted. It also occurred to me he hadn’t rushed to introduce himself when David had died, or offered to help afterwards. Why should I be feeling guilty? Surely the onus, five years ago, had been on him to make himself known? I was about to make that excuse for myself but she was already talking.

  ‘So when does the house become yours?’ she asked casually, her back to me now as she turned on the taps and washed up the glasses. I couldn’t help noticing, as I sat down behind her at the kitchen table, that there was a breakfast plate with crumbs and a marmalade jar and butter dish, both with their tops off. Was there someone living here? Camilla turned when I didn’t reply and saw my eyes on the detritus. In a moment she’d removed the plate and washed it up with the glasses: popped the marmalade back in the cupboard without a word.

  ‘Um … I’m not sure,’ I recovered. ‘When probate’s been sorted out, I imagine.’

  ‘So you’ve come straight from the solicitor’s?’

  I blushed. ‘Yes.’

  There was a pause. I watched her back.

  ‘Well, if you want a cleaner,’ she said, with slightly forced jollity. She wiped her hands and delved in her jeans pocket, handed me a card which read: ‘The Bennett Girls: the Little Treasures’.

  ‘My sister and I run it. We also take your laundry away and have it back the next day, water your plants, feed the cat, walk dogs, anything really. I read History of Art at Edinburgh but, hey, these days so did everybody.’ She shrugged.

  I smiled. ‘Yes, I have a daughter like that. She’s got a big brain and she runs a flower shop. I know what it’s like.’

  She smiled gratefully and I felt we were making progress. She nodded at the card in my hand. ‘I even did some correspondence for Cuthbert.’

  ‘Right, thanks.’ I pocketed it. ‘I’ll, um, bear it in mind. So … you’ll be in and out for a month then?’

  ‘Well, as I say, he’s paid me.’ She gave me a steady look, as if daring me to suggest she shouldn’t be in and out of this house. And I wasn’t sure what my rights were. Who did own this house? If not me, and not Cuthbert any more, then who? I felt uncomfortable, though. As if the pair of us were constantly taking two steps forward and one back.

  ‘Right, well, I’ll be off. Thanks so much for letting me look around.’

  As I went down the hall, Camilla tailing me, I glanced upstairs.

  ‘I’d offer to let you look up there, but I haven’t got around to tidying yet,’ she said quickly as she opened the front door.

  ‘Oh no, I wouldn’t dream of it, I shouldn’t even be in here. Thank you, Camilla.’ I went down the two front steps, feeling her eyes on my back and not necessarily in a friendly way. Both of us, I knew, had been unnerved by that meeting. She shut the door.

  Boy, I really did need a drink now, I thought, as I hurried back up the cobbled mews. The sun was high in the sky and I wished I’d thought to bring sunglasses. I wished, too, that I hadn’t gone in that house. I felt as if I’d compromised myself in some way. Put myself on the back foot. I bit my lip. London was looking at its most ravishing, though, all bright and white and beautiful, the gleam of the huge houses that surrounded the mews tall and striking against the blue sky. The blossom on the plane trees fluttered in the breeze and I raised my head defiantly, swung my bag and strode on towards the pub across the road, bound for the tables with umbrellas outside. Thinking this was the first time I’d drunk alone in public for years – obviously I’d done plenty in private – but that the situation demanded it, and a ciggy too, in the sunshine, with time to think, I went inside and ordered a gin and tonic at the bar.

  As I took it outside, a group of people clustered under a parasol, heads lowered over their drinks, looked horribly familiar. I stopped in my tracks. Stared.

  ‘What the …’

  Lucy, Minna and Nico emerged from sun hats, caps and dark glasses and regarded me sheepishly as they sat up.

  ‘What the bloody hell are you doing here?’ I blustered, nearly dropping my gin.

  ‘Having a drink?’ Minna ventured, pulling up an empty chair.

  I gaped. ‘Oh. Right. At the very pub where I just happen to be having a drink too? How did you know I was here?’

  ‘We followed you,’ Nico said candidly. ‘Bloody stupid to take a cab, though, Mum. We managed to nip after that on foot.’

  ‘You followed me! What – from home?’

  ‘Well, obviously we got the next train up, not yours. But we knew the solicitor’s you were going to and what time, and we do live in London.’

  ‘You don’t,’ I reminded Nico, sitting down. ‘You live with me. So does Minna.’

  ‘No, but I fully intend to be up here next year and so does Min. So come on, give. What’s the bottom line?’

  ‘The bottom line!’ I echoed incredulously, thinking I’d like him to go to university next year. But then, actually, I couldn’t control my excitement. I leaned forward. ‘Well, my chickadees, the bottom line is …’ And I told them. About the bank account and the row of noughts, and then the shares, but how these would be cancelled out because of the house, which I’d just been to see. About how much it was worth. There were gasps of astonishment. Mouths fell open. Silence. Then whoops of glee.

  ‘Bloody hell.’

  ‘Fuck.’

  ‘You are kidding, Mum.’ Nico was out of his seat.

  ‘No, I’m not kidding,’ I assured them as he sat again, loving their shining eyes. I hadn’t seen that for a while. We’d had a lot of sad eyes, a lot of worried eyes, a lot of brave eyes, but not eyes like these.

  ‘It’s like a lottery win,’ said Minna slowly, gazing into space. ‘Isn’t it? It’s like – like someone’s waved a wand and gone – ta-da! Your life is going to change.’ She turned to me, dazed.

  ‘Oh Mum, you so needed this,’ breathed Lucy beside me. She leaned across and hugged me, her eyes damp.

  ‘We so needed this,’ I reminded her, thinking it was ages since she’d hugged me. I couldn’t remember when. ‘All of us,’ I said as we drew apart. ‘It belongs to all of us. It goes to me because everything of Dad’s goes to me, but it’s all of ours.’

  We sipped our drinks thoughtfully and I felt the ice and tonic sparkle on my tongue.

  ‘We could go on a posh holiday,’ said Nico suddenly. ‘Go to Corfu, like all my mates. Hire a villa.’

  ‘Sod Corfu, let’s hire a yacht! Go to the Caribbean!’ Minna squeaked.

  ‘Well, no, I don’t think we’ll do that. But what we can do,’ I told them, ‘is pay off the mortgage.’

  ‘Oh. Yes.’ They agreed soberly, thinking, no, the Caribbean.

  ‘But I also think we should celebrate,’ I told them, ‘w
hen it comes through.’

  ‘God, definitely,’ they chorused, perking up.

  Then I told them about the house I’d just seen, and what I knew of their late great-uncle.

  Minna whistled. ‘God, who would have thought. Our only relative left on Dad’s side – and we thought sweet FA – and he’d been sitting there, all those years.’

  ‘We could have stayed with him …’ Nico realized, his eyes wide.

  ‘Oh yeah …’ Minna turned to him, imagining the London scene some of their friends had experienced courtesy of relatives as they’d stood jealously by.

  ‘How come we didn’t know him?’ Nico demanded.

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said truthfully. ‘I mean, he came to our wedding, apparently, I found the list the other day and checked, but I simply don’t remember him. Also I think he worked in America for a while.’ That much I’d gleaned from Mr Hamilton. ‘He was at Christie’s in New York. He and Dad must have simply lost touch. I mean, he wasn’t my relative.’

  ‘And yet he’s left his entire estate to you,’ said Lucy.

  ‘Well no, he didn’t, did he? He just didn’t make a will. And the thing is,’ I hesitated, ‘well, I think there’s someone living there, in his house.’

  I told them about the breakfast things and not being allowed upstairs.

  ‘Did you ask her? This Camilla?’

  ‘No, I didn’t. Because I felt she was being a bit … evasive. A bit mysterious.’

  Lucy stared at me. ‘Well, whatever or whoever it is, is no concern of yours, Mum,’ she said firmly. ‘If Cuthbert let a friend stay there before he died, let’s suppose, they’ll know the score by now. Know they have to get out when it passes to you.’

  ‘Exactly,’ agreed Minna. ‘Which is when?’

  ‘I’m not sure,’ I said vaguely, remembering how heartbroken I’d been when David had died: wondering if this person, perhaps quite close to this colourful, delightful man, was feeling the same pain.

  ‘I’m not sure you should have gone in there,’ said Lucy, frowning as she cradled her drink. ‘It sort of … compromises you. Puts you on the back foot.’

  ‘Oh no, I disagree,’ I said, colouring.

  She sent me a level gaze. ‘Just hold on before you do anything else. Let me check it with Robin.’ Robin was her solicitor boyfriend.

  ‘OK,’ I said meekly, sinking into my gin. Luckily her phone beeped.

  ‘Mum,’ said Nico softly and urgently as Lucy read her text. ‘Derek and I have got this idea, right? For a business.’ Derek was one of his mates: a gnomic individual who smoked a lot of weed and as far as I knew had never had an idea, beyond rolling another joint, in his life.

  ‘It’s an app you use at festivals, right, to find out where your mates are.’

  ‘It’s been done,’ interjected Minna, executing a perfect roll-up and running her tongue down the paper.

  ‘No, it hasn’t, not the way we’d do it. But we do need a bit of a cash injection, like any start-up company, to get it off the ground. Set up a database, that type of thing.’

  ‘It has been done,’ agreed Lucy, pocketing her phone. ‘And anyway, Mum will be far more likely to back an established business like mine.’ She turned to me, looking important. ‘The lease has come up for sale, Mum, on the shop, and obviously it’s horrendously expensive. I couldn’t possibly do it on my own, I’d have to get a loan from the bank. But I was thinking. This windfall couldn’t have come at a better time, because if you could just lend me the deposit—’

  ‘Lend?’ interrupted Nico. ‘Half an hour ago you were talking about us being the rightful recipients, seeing as how we’re the actual blood relatives and Mum’s only a niece-in-law, you said.’

  ‘Nico!’ Lucy coloured.

  ‘You did,’ the other two chorused.

  ‘Mum, ignore him, I absolutely did not. I mean, sure, I pointed out the bloodline but I wasn’t trying to – you know – jump the queue or anything. I was just saying that we need to act as a family on this one, since a lease for sale on a shop in a desirable area of Islington is worth snapping up, as far as all of us are concerned.’

  ‘You’ve already got a business!’ Minna said angrily. ‘I’m the one that needs to invest in something, in this field for the polytunnels, Mum, to grow the flowers. We agreed, so she doesn’t have to buy from suppliers!’

  ‘Yes, that would be good,’ Lucy conceded. ‘So long as the flowers are top quality.’

  ‘So forget buying the lease on the shop, let’s start with the tunnels. We could even do it on our own land now that we can afford to get it cultivated – and also we don’t have to keep sheep any more which make bugger all at market – become proper market gardeners. Get the bulbs in this autumn and then have rows and rows of gorgeous Dutch tulips coming up in the spring. What d’you think, Mum? Mum?’

  But I was miles away. Or not so far, as it happened. About two hundred metres. Because from where I was sitting, opposite the arched entrance in the wall, I could see right down the cobbled mews. And my eyes had followed a tall, fair-haired man in jeans, a mint-green shirt, no socks, moccasins, brown ankles, all the way down it: past the drop-top Alfa Romeo, past the bay trees and the griffins, past the pastel yellow and blue houses, to stop at the one I’d so recently visited. He took a key out of his back pocket, fitted it in the lock, looked to left and right, and went inside.

  5

  A few moments later, indeed almost simultaneously, Camilla emerged. She went across to a black Mini Cooper, slid the roof down electronically, reversed down the mews and into the road, and then turned left in the direction of Knightsbridge.

  ‘Mum?’

  I turned back to my family. ‘Hm?’

  ‘We said, what are your plans? What do you intend to do with the money?’

  They looked rather contrite. Faces a bit pink. Ashamed of their bickering. I drained my drink.

  ‘I don’t know. I’m going to think about it. Come on, let’s go.’ I cast another look back towards the house.

  ‘Where? Christ, not all the way back home, surely? I’ve just got here.’ This came from Nico.

  ‘You can all stay at mine, Sophia’s away,’ said Lucy charitably, no doubt still chastened by her niece-in-law remark. ‘You too, Mum.’

  ‘Really?’ I’d never been to Lucy’s. Not that she’d been there long. But I’d never been invited. She met my eye.

  ‘Of course. Why not?’

  It was cosy, to say the least, in Lucy’s tiny, lower ground-floor flat in Earls Court. Once she’d allocated the bedrooms – I got Sophia’s, Minna would sleep with Lucy in her double bed and Nico on the sofa – we shared a huge dish of pasta which she cooked in the minute galley kitchen, pans clattering, radio blaring, steam billowing. I’d wanted to help but hadn’t liked to: something about her purposeful demeanour had said it was her domain. I did lay the coffee table, though, and pulled the sofa and two chairs up either side – not far to pull, it was a small room – and as we ate, we commented on the footwear of the people passing by in the top of the window, the only available light space, which was a favourite game with Sophia, Lucy told us, passing round the Parmesan. She could have rented in Holloway, I thought – Finsbury Park even, much nearer to the shop – and had much more light and space, but Lucy was all about location. All her friends were round here, she said. What was the point of going out to dinner in Chelsea, and heading back to Holloway night after night? Well, quite. The only direction Lucy was travelling was back to what she considered to be her rightful roots. Where she’d come from and where she considered she should still be now. I quietly forked up my pasta.

  It was a dreary little place, though, I thought, glancing around at the magnolia woodchip walls, even though I’d enthused about it when I’d walked in – straight into the sitting room, no hall, so junk mail constantly clattered through the letter box – and even though the two girls had done their best with huge mirrors, pictures, throws over the cheap sofa. And it no doubt cost a fortune too, so … could I
afford to buy all the children a flat? And still have some left to do up the farm? Just how expensive was London? I mustn’t forget the farm was mortgaged now. I’d had to do that after the death duties. Perhaps I shouldn’t make promises about flats – or businesses – I couldn’t keep; just wait until it all dropped in my lap?

  The children, however, had no such restraints. Mouths full of tagliatelle and pesto, and getting thoroughly overexcited on the bottles of red wine we’d bought at the off-licence en route, they decided that obviously all the bills had to be paid and the mortgage and all the boring things I’d outlined, but after that …

  ‘After that,’ said Nico, looking at me, ‘you’ll be living in a tarted-up farmhouse with pristine fences and healthy, well-fed sheep and you’ll never have to sell a dodgy mare or wrap a bar of soap again.’

  ‘Exactly,’ I said happily.

  ‘In the middle of nowhere,’ he added. ‘With someone doing your cleaning, leaving you in an immaculate, empty house when they’ve gone.’

  ‘Quite.’ I looked at him doubtfully now.

  ‘No friends,’ added Minna, ‘because all your real friends are in London, and you’re too busy – and sad – to socialize.’

  We all went quiet.