2008 - The Irresistible Inheritance of Wilberforce

by Paul Torday

  Just as I brought a fistful of coins out from my pocket, one of the children looked behind me and stiffened like a hare. They were looking behind me, and in that moment of stillness before they spoke again, I could distinctly smell that odour again, the odour of mould and decay. The children exclaimed something and ran off, frightened by whatever it was that was coming down the street behind me. I watched them go. Then I looked up to the sky to see if I could still see the stars. Once, long ago, the night sky had been full of them. Now I could not see any at all. A dark and rainy sky pressed down on me.

  I could put it off no longer. I did not want to turn about, but turn I must.

  He stood not far away, beneath the illuminated sign that still scrolled the letters TNMWWTTW…TNMWWTTW…across it, as if drawing attention to this important message from his sponsors. He was, as I had glimpsed him in the hospital and a thousand times in my dreams, dressed as he always had been, in a cardigan out at the elbows, and faded corduroy trousers and a check shirt. His hair was brushed back from his face, but it was no longer silver and black as I remembered it, but clung to his skull like wispy strands of cotton. He was so thin—so dreadfully thin. His face was half hidden from me by shadows, but what I could see of his face was comfortless. In the blackness I fancied eyes gleamed at the back of their sockets, and fleshless lips were drawn back from his teeth, as he smiled at me. His hoarse voice whispered, “Wilberforce…” as if he were sighing with despair, for the days past, when we had been living friends, for all the wine that had turned to vinegar in the undercroft. His voice was the echo of all the saddest memories of my life, all the love I thought I had found and then lost. It was the voice I remembered so well from when Francis Black spoke to me as he lay dying on his bed, a voice familiar to me, a voice that had murmured in my ear many times as I lay asleep.

  One bony hand was half extended towards me, beckoning. Then I knew that, after all, it was not Francis who was following me. I was following him. I was seeking him out in death as I had sought him when he was alive. Whether he put his arms around me and took me to my grave tonight, or whether it would be the next night, or the night after, I could not say. It would be soon, and that was all that mattered. I could see my destiny very clearly now, as Francis stood beneath the flickering illuminated sign. He held out his arms towards me. It was an image that recalled how he had stood long ago, in the undercroft, spreading his arms wide, as if to encompass the treasure store of wine around him that he was offering me. It was a beguiling gesture, promising much, offering nothing. He would put his arms around me very soon now.

  2004

  ONE

  Catherine gave me a photograph of herself, just before we were married. “This was taken when I still had my looks,” she told me. She was smiling as she said it, her eyes dancing, inviting a compliment.

  She looked a thousand times more beautiful than in the photograph. I told her so.

  “You really do love me, don’t you?” she said breathlessly, for I had folded her into a tight embrace.

  “Of course I do.”

  “It’s hard to tell, because you never talk much.”

  I let go of her and said, “I’ve just been all work and no play for so many years, I’ve forgotten how.”

  Catherine picked the photograph up from the table where I had put it down and studied it. “It’s funny,” she said: “when that was taken all I was thinking about was parties, and you were already sitting behind a computer writing programs. You’ve never really had any fun in your life at all, have you?”

  “No, but that’s about to change.”

  “Yes, it will be a relief to be finally married, won’t it? Then people will stop making such a fuss about Ed, and we can just get on with our lives.”

  There had been a great deal of ill feeling when Catherine had told Ed Simmonds that she wasn’t going to marry him after all. I was glad I had not been present when the conversation took place, at Hartlepool Hall. Catherine had stood up to the combined forces of her parents and Ed with a great deal of courage and determination. I admired her for it.

  Her parents weren’t on speaking terms with me any longer, and neither was Ed. The general view was that I had gone behind Ed’s back and betrayed the trust of a friend. I didn’t look at it like that at all. It was just something that had happened. After all, Ed wasn’t perfect himself. I knew for a fact he’d spoken unkind words about me behind my back in the past.

  In those days Catherine and I were very happy together, making plans, then changing them and, as Catherine had wanted, having fun. She had said there hadn’t been much fun in my life; I’m not sure she had known much fun either since she had become engaged to Ed Simmonds.

  We went on holiday not long after Catherine told her parents she wasn’t going to marry Ed, just to give everyone time to get used to the idea, and to take ourselves out of the way for a while. We went to India for three weeks. It was all arranged by Catherine. I wouldn’t have had any idea where to go, or how to get there. I was happy just to write the cheques and leave the organisation to Catherine.

  “It will be a sort of practice honeymoon,” she told me.

  But people didn’t get used to the idea of her broken engagement with Ed. Catherine’s parents told her they would disinherit her if she married me; they certainly had no intention of coming to the wedding.

  To my surprise, my foster-mother Mary showed some resistance to the idea as well: “She sounds very nice dear,” she said, when I told her that Catherine and I were to be married. “But I don’t think I can come to the wedding. It really isn’t fair to the poor young man she was engaged to.”

  “But you didn’t know the poor young man,” I said to her in exasperation. “What does it matter? Catherine’s going to marry me. She hasn’t run away from him; she never married him; she’s just changed her mind.”

  “Well, I don’t really think people should change their mind,” said Mary. I gave up. Why should I care what my foster-mother thought? I couldn’t recall her ever showing much interest in my thoughts and feelings.

  The only person who didn’t throw us over was Eck Chetwode-Talbot, Francis’s godson. Eck had left the army quite a few years ago, but he still carried himself as if he was on parade: very upright and brisk in his movements. He came to Caerlyon for a drink soon after the news broke. Catherine was upstairs in Francis’s flat and I was in what had been the shop, which I now used as an office.

  “Where’s Catherine?” he asked, as he settled into a chair. I opened a bottle of white wine, handed him a glass and said, “She’s upstairs, getting changed. We’ve been moving my furniture in from my flat.”

  “And you’re both well? No sign of Simmonds sending around a death squad? How are the Plenders taking it all?”

  “We’re not on speaking terms, I’m afraid. I’m glad you’re still speaking to us. You’re about the only one who is.”

  Eck laughed. “I think the whole thing’s absolutely marvellous. There was a distinct shortage of gossip until Catherine ran off with you. Now everybody has something to talk about. In fact, they won’t talk about anything else. And if the Plenders won’t speak to you, it’s a win double. You get the daughter without having to take the mother-in-law on board as well. You don’t know how lucky you are.”

  I shook my head. I disliked the idea that ‘they’ were all talking about Catherine and me. “Eck,” I asked, “are you going to drop us as well?”

  “Not at all. Why should I? I was very fond of old Francis and I know for a fact that he longed for you and Catherine to get together. A sort of paternal thing with him, I think. He quite liked Ed for his father’s sake. He used to see a bit of Simon Hartlepool when Simon still saw people. But he adored Catherine. All the people Francis really liked were our age. He never seemed to want to mix with his own generation. Anyway, I’m sure he never wanted Catherine to get married to Ed.”

  “I know,” I agreed; “he said that to me once or twice.”

  “That’s the trouble with bei
ng a bachelor,” Eck went on: “you develop an excess of unsatisfied paternal instinct. You adopt the young. Then you start to want to rearrange their lives. In Francis’s case, he adopted Catherine first, and then you, for quite different reasons, I should think.”

  “Did he adopt you?” I asked.

  “God, no. Francis saw through me from day one. He never minded having me around, but one complete waster can always spot another.”

  Just then Catherine came into the shop, looking fresh and pretty. Eck stood up and kissed her and then asked, “So when’s the great day?”

  “Next month. There’s no reason to wait any longer,” Catherine told him.

  “I quite agree,” said Eck. “The sooner you get married the sooner everyone will get used to the idea and stop making such a fuss.”

  “Are they making a fuss?” asked Catherine. “I know my parents are. I haven’t talked to anyone else for a while.”

  “I was telling Wilberforce: no one talks of anything else, wherever I go.”

  Catherine shuddered and said, “How awful: I hate the idea of being talked about. Eck, there’s something we want to ask you.”

  Eck smiled. I suspect he knew what was coming.

  After a glance at me, Catherine said, “Will you come to our wedding? Before you say yes, I should warn you: you’ll be the only guest.”

  “Of course I will,” said Eck. “I’d give you away, except you’re not mine to give, so I’d better be Wilberforce’s best man.”

  “You are sweet to agree,” said Catherine, and hugged Eck. Eck looked pleased, and as we all raised our glasses in a toast, I knew that he was also thinking what a good story it would make, and how many lunches and dinners he would be asked to, so that people could hear him make a joke of Catherine and me getting married, with Eck casting himself in the roles of father of the bride, best man, and witness.

  §

  After our wedding, we decided to go and live in London. There was too much history for us in the North: Catherine hardly dared go out for fear of meeting someone she knew, and being snubbed. Now I had sold the business and separated myself from Andy and all the others I had once worked with, there was nothing to keep me there either. A fresh beginning seemed like a good idea, to both of us.

  We found a flat in Half Moon Street, in Mayfair. It cost an enormous amount of money, but I didn’t mind. It was ideal: two bedrooms, a kitchen, a small sitting room and, best of all, a basement that could be adapted to store some wine. Catherine was appalled when I told her how much it would cost to buy it and do it up, but I told her that the money from the sale of my business had to be put into something: why not property? I sold my flat in Newcastle and we moved south a month or two after we were married. It was a happy time. We settled into the new flat and started to do it up. It was just off Piccadilly and near almost everywhere we wanted to be near to.

  We went to the theatre and the cinema, or a concert, or the opera, as Catherine loved music. We ate in a restaurant almost every other night. Catherine took up singing again, going one night a week to choir practice. I went to an evening class in wine-tasting once a week.

  In the daytime I sat in my office making plans for the new software consultancy I was going to set up, and Catherine busied herself buying things for the flat, having chairs and sofas covered and arranging for curtains to be made. She had already decided the spare bedroom was going to be a nursery when the time came.

  We had lunches—sometimes quite long lunches. I would open a bottle of wine or two, and we would sit and talk, and sip the wine, although Catherine never really drank her share, and then either I would go back to my desk, or we would go into Green Park if it was a sunny day, or walk down to Knightsbridge to look at the shops; or sometimes we would just go upstairs and go to bed together.

  One morning I went out to the bank to arrange some money transfer or other, and came back to find Catherine sitting in the kitchen, crying. I went up to her and put my arms around her and asked, “What’s the matter?”

  “I rang my mother up, to see how she was.”

  “And how was she?”

  Catherine wiped the tears from her cheeks with an angry gesture. “When she knew it was me, she put the phone down.”

  It was only the occasional shadow such as that that interrupted our happiness. We made new friends to replace those that had separated themselves from us since our marriage. I bumped into an old university friend, Colin Holman, who had become a successful doctor in private practice. Catherine rediscovered a few married ex-school friends who had settled in London, and we began to go out to dinner from time to time, or have the occasional dinner party in our new flat. Our life was busy enough, our new-found friends, if they had heard about Catherine’s broken engagement with Ed Sim-monds, cared nothing about that, and our past lives became, at least for me, a dim memory.

  One morning, after dining at the flat of one of our new friends, Catherine said to me, as we sat drinking tea in the kitchen at breakfast, “Darling, I think you were quite tight at dinner last night. You talked a great deal about wine. I’m not sure everyone’s quite as interested in the subject as you are, darling.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I didn’t think I’d had too much to drink, because I didn’t really like what they were serving. It was far too young, absolutely stiff with tannin.”

  Catherine stirred her tea and said, “Yes, darling, I’m sure you’re right. But don’t you think you’re drinking just a little too often at the moment?”

  I was surprised by her remark. “Am I? Don’t confuse tasting with drinking, darling. It is one of my great interests in life. That’s why I agreed to buy Caerlyon and the wine from Francis.”

  “I know that, darling. Don’t be grumpy. I was only saying.”

  I thought it was an odd remark for her to make, and after a moment I drank my cup of tea and said, “I’m going next door; I’ve got bills to pay.”

  At lunch that day we opened two bottles of wine, a good white burgundy with the small starter Catherine had prepared, and then a bottle of Bordeaux with the poached eggs and salad. Catherine matched me glass for glass, as if to apologise for her remark at breakfast and show me that she had not meant it; afterwards we stepped out into the bright sunshine, went to Hatchards and bought a pile of great, glossy recipe books for the new kitchen and Robert Parker’s definitive work on the wines of Bordeaux, for me.

  It was about six months after we were married that we had our first real row.

  Catherine had gone out to have lunch with a girlfriend, and I sat at home and decided it would be interesting to compare a 1989 and a 1990 Château Talbot. I opened both bottles and let them breathe for an hour and come up to room temperature, and then poured out a little of each into two glasses. For me, the 1990 was almost thin, whilst the 1989, if not a great wine, had far more power and finish. It was a fascinating contrast of tastes, similar and yet dissimilar.

  When Catherine arrived home, I was scribbling some tasting notes in my book. “Nice lunch, darling?” I asked her.

  “Yes,” she replied, and bent to kiss me. Then she said, “Darling, you do rather reek of wine.” She looked at the two empty bottles, which I had placed on the sink, and said, “Have you drunk all that yourself? Now, today?”

  “Tasting, darling, not drinking,” I reminded her. She said nothing, but looked at me, and then looked at the two empty bottles, and then back at me. She bit her lip for a second, and then left the kitchen and went upstairs.

  I said nothing. I wasn’t going to be lectured about drinking wine. It was the great enthusiasm of my life: I was learning something new every time I opened a bottle. I finished writing up my tasting notes and then went next door to the sitting room, and sat down at the desk I kept my papers in. When Catherine came downstairs, I pretended to be engrossed in the business plan I was writing for my new software consultancy. As a matter of fact, I had been writing the plan for some months now.

  “How’s your new business idea coming on?” said Ca
therine, sitting down next to me.

  “It’s coming on,” I said.

  “You never seem to go and see anybody about it. I thought that’s how you got business—by going and seeing people.”

  “I’m not quite at that stage,” I told her. “I’m still working on the basic concept.”

  Catherine was silent for a moment, and I marked a page with my pen. Then she said, “It would be good for you if you went back to work, in a way.”

  “That’s the idea,” I told her, “but there’s no rush. When you’ve worked non-stop for most of your life, a few months off is no bad thing.”

  “But don’t you get out of touch, darling? I mean, if you don’t go and see people, how can you know what’s going on, or what sort of things they might need? Aren’t people simply going to forget all about you?”

  I said, “I think my reputation as one of the best software developers in the country might last more than six months.” I was starting to get angry, because there was truth in what Catherine was saying. People would forget me; most people forgot all about me five minutes after meeting me. They remembered Andy; they remembered the name of the company, except that now it wasn’t called Wilberforce Software Solutions any more, but Bayleaf UK, after the giant American software business that had bought it.

  “Well, even so, aren’t you getting bored just sitting around the house all day? I mean, most men of your age do something. It can’t be good just sitting around drinking all the time.”

  I turned and looked at Catherine. “Are you getting bored with me? Is that what you’re saying?” I asked her.

  She looked shocked, and said defensively, “No, darling. But I don’t like it when you drink so much. You need something else in your life.”

  I could feel real anger running through me now, like a virus multiplying itself at raging speed. Where had it come from? I felt that if Catherine said another word about my drinking too much, I would hit her. Instead I jumped up, and the pages of my business plan went flying all over the room. Catherine started, and put her hand to her mouth in alarm.