The Serpent in the Glass (The Tale of Thomas Farrell)

by D. M. Andrews

  ‘Good. Say goodbye to your friends,’ he said, as he turned back to Mr Bartholomew. ‘My wife will see to them. She’s very good with children.’ The two men walked back into the office.

  Thomas looked at Jessica and she shrugged. What would anyone want with him? Was he in trouble? ‘A party with no music?’ Thomas heard one girl say to another just as he slipped out, leaving Jessica and Mrs Westhrop to say goodbye and see them on their way.

  Mr Westhrop already sat at his desk when Thomas walked into the office, and Mr Bartholomew opposite. A briefcase stood on the floor beside the latter’s well-shod feet.

  Once the door was shut, Mr Westhrop continued, the forced smile still upon his face. ‘Mr Bartholomew’s a solicitor, Thomas. He works for Bartholomew & Runfast.’

  Thomas nodded awkwardly. What did this have to do with him?

  ‘Bartholomew & Runfast dealt with your placement in the orphanage under the direction of your father, Mr Farrell,’ Mr Westhrop explained.

  Thomas suddenly felt very strange. Did this Mr Bartholomew know something about his father? Yet despite the mounting questions, and an increasing heart rate, he stood there silent.

  A look of distress came over Mr Westhrop’s face, as if he’d suddenly remembered something very important. ‘I’m sorry Mr Bartholomew, I forgot to ask if you’d like a drink or something to eat?’

  ‘Thank you, I wouldn’t say no to a cold drink.’ The Scottish solicitor smiled as Mr Westhrop got up and left the room. Mr Bartholomew turned to study the aquarium. ‘You’ve a nice home here, Thomas.’

  This was Thomas’s chance. ‘Did you know my father, sir?’

  Mr Bartholomew looked a little taken aback. ‘Mr Runfast dealt with Mr Farrell. I’m afraid your father never returned after leaving you with us. We don’t even have his first name or address. He must have been well off though. He paid in gold, you know.’

  ‘Gold?’ Thomas wondered if Mr Westhrop knew that.

  Mr Bartholomew nodded. ‘Yes, and very generously too, according to Mr Runfast’s record of the transaction.’

  Thomas took a step closer. ‘Maybe Mr Runfast could tell me more? What he looked like. That sort of thing?’

  Mr Bartholomew gave Thomas a thoughtful look as he stood up. ‘Mr Runfast unfortunately died a couple of years ago — run over by a bus, a tragic and most ironic death.’

  Thomas nodded. ‘And my mother? I know she died, but —’

  Mr Bartholomew put a hand on Thomas’s shoulder. ‘Sorry, lad. She passed away before you were brought to us. That’s all we know. Perhaps some answers may lie in my briefcase.’

  Just then Mr Westhrop came back with drinks. He eyed Thomas suspiciously. Mr Bartholomew thanked him, sipped his orange juice, and resumed his seat. There were ice cubes in his glass. The Westhrops had pulled out all the stops. Thomas wondered why. But more than that he wondered what Mr Bartholomew had in his briefcase.

  Mr Westhrop took his position behind the desk again. ‘My wife will be but a moment. Perhaps you might like to see my Egyptian Mouthbreeder —’

  ‘Ah, Mrs Westhrop,’ Mr Bartholomew said, standing up as she entered the room. Mr Westhrop frowned hard, abandoning his own advice to never do so.

  Mrs Westhrop smiled, shook hands with Mr Bartholomew, and sat down next to a rather large Yucca plant. Mr Westhrop looked at her and then at the plant and, erasing the look of concern that had spread across his face, turned back to the solicitor. ‘Yes, anyway, perhaps you should proceed, Mr Bartholomew?’

  ‘Yes, yes of course,’ the solicitor said.

  The front door closed and Jessica’s footsteps came to a stop outside the office door. Thomas looked around. No one else seemed to have heard the eavesdropper.

  ‘Well,’ Mr Bartholomew began in his rich Scottish voice, ‘this is something that all three of you will be interested in I’m sure.’

  Four, Thomas thought, as he glanced at the door.

  ‘Thomas, on the day your father brought you to us he left a certain item in our care.’ Mr Bartholomew pulled his red leather briefcase up onto his lap. It opened with a couple of clicks and the solicitor pulled out a white envelope. ‘He left instructions that this should be placed into your hands on your eleventh birthday.’

  Thomas tried to read what it said on the envelope, but before he had a chance the solicitor whipped out a piece of paper.

  ‘I’ll need this signed by Thomas and by one guardian. It’s just to say I’ve delivered the item.’ Mr Bartholomew placed the paper on the desk.

  Mr Westhrop read it carefully, signed it, and then pushed it toward Thomas. ‘Well, your turn.’ Mr Westhrop held out his gold Swivet, Stibbard & Waverly pen.

  Thomas signed it as best he could. He hadn’t perfected his signature yet. Each time he wrote it out it looked different. Thomas handed the piece of paper back to Mr Bartholomew, and would have given him the pen too if it had not been deftly intercepted by Mr Westhrop.

  Mr Bartholomew placed the envelope into Thomas’s hand. Thomas lifted it up and saw that Mr and Mrs Westhrop were eyeing it every bit as keenly as him, especially Mr Westhrop. Upon it in black flowing ink were written the words:

  Master Thomas Farrell

  Was this his father’s handwriting? Thomas looked upon it in awe. ‘Well, Thomas,’ Mr Westhrop said. ‘Mr Bartholomew doesn’t have all day. Open it!’

  Thomas opened the envelope cautiously and tipped the contents into his hand. There in his palm lay a card and a gold key. Thomas checked the envelope to make sure he hadn’t missed anything. It was empty. Thomas turned the card over in his palm. Upon it an address had been written:

  Bay Barch Bank, Selkirk, TD7

  ‘Ah, yes I know that bank. Selkirk’s where we have our office. Looks like you’ve a key to one of its deposit boxes,’ Mr Bartholomew said. ‘Your father must have left something there for you before he —’ the solicitor paused ‘— before he went away. Perhaps some more of that gold, eh?’ He winked at Thomas.

  ‘Bank? Gold?’ Mr Westhrop said, his eyebrows raised. ‘Deposit box you say?’

  ‘Yes, it’s the oldest bank in town. Driven past it plenty of times.’ Mr Bartholomew stood, briefcase in hand, and straightened his already-straight tie. ‘Well, I must be off. It’s a long journey. Thank you for the drink.’

  ‘Mr Bartholomew?’ Mr Westhrop asked. ‘I wonder if, before you go, you might give me directions to this bank?’

  ‘Certainly, Mr Westhrop. I’d be delighted. Do you have some paper?’

  ‘Of course,’ Mr Westhrop said, grabbing a pad of paper from a shelf by his aquarium and almost knocking the fish food into the water.

  Thomas held the envelope tightly in his hand as he stood in the doorway and watched the solicitor drive away. Mr Westhrop stood next to him, the map Mr Bartholomew had drawn clutched equally as tightly in his own hand. Somehow Thomas regretted the goodbye, as if a link between him and his father had just been severed. He gripped the envelope a little tighter. There was just the key now. All rested on that. It was his gift from his father, his birthday key. Once that box was opened perhaps he’d know who his parents were and why his father had placed him in an orphanage. Perhaps he’d know, for the first time in his life, who he really was; and that filled him with a strange mix of excitement and anxiety, like a hundred Christmas Eves at once, but with no certainty that, come morning, there would be any presents under the tree.

  ‘Well, we shall go to this bank just as soon as possible,’ Mr Westhrop said as he closed the door, but Thomas had the impression that Mr Westhrop didn’t even know he was standing next to him.

  — CHAPTER TWO —

  An Heirloom and an Invitation

  Outside, the overcast sky drizzled down its rain all over Mr Westhrop’s small pallid-green, and recently washed, Morris Minor. It was no storm, just one of those token showers Mother Nature teased people with, perhaps in the hope of catching as many as possible by surprise when the real cloudburst struck. The humid, sticky air remained much as it had since
last Saturday.

  Thomas sat in the back of the car with Jessica, while Mrs Westhrop made a final check around the house to ensure all the windows were closed, doors locked, electrical equipment unplugged, and the oven turned off. She always double-checked everything before she left the house. Mr Westhrop bore this quietly as he sat in the Morris Minor tapping his fingers on the steering wheel. They’d been waiting for ten minutes and there was still no sign of her. She sometimes took twenty minutes to give the house a good check, and once — in Thomas’s memory at least — Mrs Westhrop had entirely forgotten they were all waiting for her and Mr Westhrop had returned to the house to find her making banana bread. That was unlikely to happen this time; Mr Westhrop had repeatedly told his wife over the last seven days about the journey and the importance of it.

  Mr Westhrop had attended to the planning of the trip with an eagerness that had surprised Thomas. Jonathan Westhrop seemed as keen as Thomas to get to Bay Barch Bank. Soon after Mr Bartholomew’s departure, Mr Westhrop had asked for the key Thomas had received. Just in case Thomas ‘misplaced’ it, he’d said. Thomas had reluctantly agreed and hadn’t so much as seen the key since. He still had the envelope though. It now lay in his ‘treasure box’ along with the slip of paper summing up all he knew about himself and his adoption. He’d spent many hours that week staring at the writing on that envelope. His father’s writing. To know that, to see it, to possess it, made Thomas feel he at last had something, however small, that linked him with his parents.

  The past week at school hadn’t been easy, and seemed to have dragged on for at least a fortnight. Thomas’s class, and indeed the whole Year, was buzzing with talk about which secondary school each pupil would be going to in September. Jessica had told Thomas on Wednesday that Mr Westhrop had wanted to get them both into St Prudence-in-the-fields, but Thomas didn’t have much interest in the matter after Saturday’s events, though he did briefly wonder how the school received its name. Thomas had spent most of his lesson time daydreaming, even more than he normally did. He’d dreamed of going to the bank and opening a large box filled with photographs of his parents. He’d dreamed of finding a large chart displaying his family history clear back to the Norman Conquest. He’d dreamed of finding a note telling him that his father was still alive, living in a small cottage on the outskirts of Holten Layme, and that he was invited over for tea. He’d wondered what seemed like every moment of every day what might lay in that deposit box. Today he would find out.

  Jessica sat quietly in the backseat, but she didn’t fool Thomas. He could tell from her eyes that she was bubbling with excitement. Neither of them had been to Scotland before. Why Mr Westhrop had arranged the trip with just a week’s notice, Thomas didn’t know, but he was glad they were going so soon. Well, if Mrs Westhrop ever finished checking the house that is.

  As if summoned by Thomas’s thought, Mrs Westhrop appeared from behind the burgeoning mass of wisteria that clambered up the side of the house. Thomas heard Mr Westhrop give a sigh of relief as his wife got into the car, a look of satisfaction upon her thin face. Jonathan adjusted the rear-view mirror and started up the engine. After Mrs Westhrop had asked Jessica if she had her seat belt on, and asked Jessica to ask Thomas the same thing, they were pulling out of the drive of six Birch Tree Close and Thomas’s heart was beginning to race with the thought of what might await them at the end of their journey.

  Thomas opened his eyes and rubbed an aching nose that had spent the last hour squashed against the arm of the door. He must have nodded off. Thomas had never known such a long car journey. His belly rumbled. They’d stopped off twice at the motorway services, but Mr Westhrop had only allowed them a small amount to eat each time because of what he said were ‘exorbitant prices’. Thomas wasn’t quite sure what ‘exorbitant’ meant, but he thought it might mean that Mr Westhrop didn’t like how much everything cost.

  Jessica had a brochure in her hand. Poking from her bag were several others, all packed to sate her curiosity on the journey. The one she now had her face in had something to do with the history of Scotland. She’d grabbed it, along with the others, from the bookcase in the living room that — apart from various unread books on gardening, well-read books on tropical fish, and read-so-many-times-they-were-falling-apart books on frugal living — contained a vast array of Tourist Information booklets, leaflets, maps and brochures. The Westhrops had discovered early on in their married life that this literature was free. Over the years they’d built up several shelves of material detailing places to visit in Britain, from John o’ Groats to Land’s End.

  Thomas looked out the window and squinted. The rain clouds had gone and the sun now rode high above. They were in the slow lane, which meant Mrs Westhrop must’ve been driving. She wasn’t a very good driver by her own admission, but Mr Westhrop needed a rest from being at the wheel, and stopping the car was out of the question. Time was money, after all. Mrs Westhrop made the odd sortie into the middle lane when she encountered a slower driver than herself, but farm vehicles were, fortunately, rarely encountered. In front of them at this precise moment, and for some time, loomed a large blue lorry, its back doors graphically announcing its cargo: frozen peas. Frozen garden peas. Thomas had a horrible image in his mind of what might happen if the lorry had to brake hard. He’d never liked peas, especially mushy ones. On his list of worst foods they were way up (or was that down?) there with Brussel sprouts and radishes. Mrs Westhrop drove very close behind other vehicles, a unique situation in that it was the only time her nerves were fine whilst Mr Westhrop’s were not; which is why the latter chose to close his eyes for as long as possible while his wife was at the wheel and then claim he’d been sleeping.

  To Thomas and Jessica’s delight the slow lane, and the frozen peas, were left behind as Mr Westhrop — who remarkably awoke just at the right point — instructed his wife to turn off the motorway and onto an A road.

  ‘Thomas?’ Mr Westhrop called to the back of the car.

  Thomas sat up. ‘Yes, Mr Westhrop?’

  ‘That sign up ahead, what does it say?’

  Thomas looked up the road about four hundred yards to a blue sign with white lettering. ‘Welcome to Scotland.’

  ‘Good, good. Then we should be in Selkirk soon.’ Mr Westhrop turned up the radio slightly. It was a classical piece. Thomas had heard it many times at home on Mr Westhrop’s surround-sound audio system.

  Jessica looked up from her brochure and glanced out the window. ‘Oh, it looks the same as England.’

  Thomas looked around, half expecting to see a haggis shop or a bagpiper, but all that met his eyes were hills, grass and a few scattered trees. He briefly thought of haggis and frozen peas before Jessica spoke loudly in his ear.

  ‘We’re in the Cheviot Hills right now. They lie on the border of England and Scotland, you know.’

  ‘I do now,’ Thomas replied, yawning before breaking into a smile that Jessica returned. The hills were pretty though. He liked hills. Halten Layme could’ve done with more of them.

  ‘So what will you do if your dad has left you lots of money?’ Jessica suddenly asked.

  Thomas frowned and then raised his eyebrows. Jessica had asked this question several times since Mr Bartholomew’s visit, but Thomas just said he didn’t know. He looked at Mr and Mrs Westhrop. The music was playing too loudly for them to hear. ‘Well, I think if there’s any money your dad wouldn’t let me spend it, at least not until I’m older.’

  ‘But if there was, and you could spend it?’ Jessica persisted.

  Thomas thought hard. ‘I would buy myself a giant bag of marbles filled with every size and variety I could imagine. And I’d buy you some shoes and a giant bar of chocolate. I might even buy a new garden gnome for Mrs Westhrop!’

  ‘Oh Thomas, that’s so sweet!’ Jessica said. ‘But I think it would be fairer on the gnome if you let someone else buy it.’ Jessica made this last comment quite seriously before she reached into her bag and plucked out a new brochure entitled Discover
ing the Scottish Borders.

  Thomas thought there might be money. It was a bank after all. But money wouldn’t answer his questions. It wouldn’t tell him who he was or who his parents were. Had his father just abandoned him after his mum had died? Did he have no grandparents or extended family anywhere? Was he alone in the world?

  They drove into Selkirk not much later. It was a little more built up than Thomas had imagined. After finding a free car park, conveniently situated outside a supermarket, Mr Westhrop led the way quickly to Bay Barch Bank, guided by Mr Bartholomew’s map. Getting somewhere fast was an important life skill to Mr Westhrop; he’d little interest in stopping to smell the roses of life, so to speak. Needless to say, he’d become an excellent map reader, unlike Thomas whose map-reading skills were little better than his sense of direction. Thomas had managed to get lost no less than three times on the way home in his first two weeks of junior school.

  ‘Well, here we are,’ Mr Westhrop said with some pride at having found it so quickly.

  There on the corner, stood an old-looking building with the words Bay Barch Bank engraved in stone over the door. Thomas thought it looked like a small mansion. They walked up the steps to the heavy, but thankfully open, metal-embossed doors. They were greeted by a very clean room with a polished marble floor and a smart wooden counter that ran the entire length of the room. Behind the glass of the counter many computer screens flickered. Most of the positions had big notices saying Closed. Only two other customers graced Bay Barch Bank that afternoon. One, an old man in a dark-grey raincoat, and the other, a ginger-bearded man deep in discussion with a bank clerk. The latter spoke fast in a thick Scottish accent. Thomas understood only the odd word or two.

  Mr Westhrop led them over to a part of the counter behind which a young man sat. He seemed to be trying to find something in a drawer. Mr Westhrop coughed.

  ‘Uh, hello. How can I help you?’ he said in a less-thick accent than the ones Thomas had just heard. He shoved the drawer closed as if he never wanted to open it again.