Acacia - Secrets of an African Painting

by Paul Bondsfield

CHAPTER SIX – INHERITANCE

  Two weeks after the funeral, myself along with the rest of the family gathered again, this time at the offices of Smith, Harrison, Johns & Tempole, Solicitors, to hear what Nellie had decided about the disposal of her assets. The offices were like something from a Dickensian period drama on the BBC. Dark panelling covered nearly every wall and the weak glow from the ornate lighting seemed to peter out before it reached the corners of the rooms. There were huge and heavy looking curtains at the high windows, deep in colour and draped onto the floor in a puddle beneath each sill. As we walked into the rooms, our feet sunk slightly into the deep pile of the dark green carpet. The desks were all antique with inlaid leather pads and gold stencils around the edges. The handles were ornate brass that matched the personal lamps standing at the corner of each desktop.

  However, despite the outward appearance of opulence and richness, there was an air of neglect about the place. There were patches on the carpet, worn by the passing of many thousands of feet over many years. The silk of the curtains looked just slightly dusty and faded and the desks were showing signs of wear. The wood was scratched and dented and the leather had lost any pretence of shine. There was one surprising item on the wall of the office in which we all congregated however. Behind the main desk was a painting of an African scene; a watercolour of a vast plain dotted with kopjes, the Afrikaner word for a hill, but usually the unique steep-sided rocky hills that seem to have been pushed up from their flat surroundings. The kopjes seemed to be arranged almost in a pattern, at least there was something very symmetrical about them. In the background, a herd of elephant seemed to wander through the view and closer to the painter was a single figure, just standing and looking out over the plains.

  I was peering at the painting, thinking that there was something strangely familiar about it when an elderly, but obviously fit and strong gentleman entered the room from a side door. We were all seated in a semi circle in front of the main desk and he headed for the large leather chair behind it. He saw me staring at the painting and turned to look at it himself.

  ‘I see you have recognised my piece of art’ he said directly to me.

  ‘Well, it does look familiar somehow and there’s something about it which I can’t quite put my finger on.’ I continued to look at it wondering what it was that had captured my attention.

  ‘Perhaps the figure is someone you might recognise’ he smiled at me as it was suddenly clear to me exactly who it was.

  ‘My god it’s Nellie!’ I exclaimed. All of a sudden I recognised the upright posture, the intelligent look on her face interlaced with humour and wonder.

  ‘But how do you come to have a picture of Nellie on your wall?’ I asked him, as the rest of the family peered at the picture, all of a sudden realising what I had seen.

  ‘Just how long have you been representing Nellie Mr…?’ asked Tara, sitting in the front row between Mum and me.

  ‘Ah, my apologies, I have neglected to introduce myself to you all. I am Henry Tempole, senior partner. I have been proud to have been associated with your aunt ever since I joined the firm. However, the painting behind me was a gift from her to my father from whom I took over more years ago than I care to remember.’ He said this with a smile and a look in his eyes that was unmistakeably one of love and absolute respect, and which I was unsure in this case if was directed at Nellie or Mr. Tempole senior.

  I asked, ‘Do you know who painted it?’

  ‘No, I have no idea actually. I was hoping that somebody here may be able to throw some light on the matter.’

  Mum chirped up ‘It does look very similar to the ones at “Acacia” doesn’t it. However, there is something not quite right about it; or at least maybe not quite the same anyway.’

  ‘Yes, you’re right Susan, the way the artist has dealt with the light is a little more refined. It’s hard to say without seeing them side by side.’ This was Tara’s uncle Peter who fancied himself as a bit of an artist so was probably the most qualified in the room to comment on such things.

  I ventured, ‘Maybe it’s the same artist later in life, once he or she had got some more experience.’

  ‘James don’t be daft.’ Tara was never one to pull her punches no matter what the situation. ‘The paintings at Acacia are of scenes from the mid to late 1800’s whereas this is obviously from the late 1920’s or early 30’s when Nellie was already a grown woman.’

  ‘Ah, yes, good point.’ I blathered. ‘I hoped someone might be able to spot that deliberate mistake.’

  Peter pitched in for me at this point. ‘Well it could still have been the same artist I suppose if they started painting at an early age and were still doing so well into their dotage. But the style, while very similar, is still obviously that of another person.’

  At this point, a babble of discussion ensued during which everyone present tried to put across their own views on who the artist might be. In case you think this strange, it was always a subject of some confusion as to who had painted Nellie’s pictures as she never let on and they were all unsigned. It was assumed that they were the work of some old love who, for reasons of her own, Nellie wished to keep secret from the rest of the family. As I sat there listening to the argument raging around me, it occurred to me that there were many secrets to be uncovered within this family, many of which had been around so long that they had just blended into the background, much like an old worn carpet that looks perfectly fine to those living with it, but which to a visitor would seem remarkably shabby.

  At some length, Mr. Tempole raised his hands and pleaded for order to be restored. No mean feat to quieten a roomful of Braughtons engaged in a healthy discussion.

  ‘I am sorry to interrupt so lively a debate, especially since I was the one who started it, but we do have business to conduct here today and as you know, in this game, time is very much the source of all money.’ He said with a twinkle in his eye so that no one was offended.

  He then proceeded to open a thick file on his desk and spread its contents so as to be able to see everything clearly. There appeared to be legal documents of all size and shape, some were obviously decades old and some much newer.

  ‘Now then, Nellie, as I am sure you are all aware, was a woman of some complexity and whose final wishes also follow that trait. To that end, I would ask that you allow me the floor for the next thirty minutes or so while I run through the main points of these documents.’ At this point, Mr. Tempole stopped to collect his thoughts before continuing.

  ‘I think we should pursue this in chronological order, as although there have been many amendments over the years as newer members of the family have arrived and older ones, sadly, have passed on, there are still some things not changed since Nellie first had these papers drawn up by my father back in the years before the war.’

  This was surprising as we were not aware of any member of the family living now who would have been around at that time, so we all subconsciously leant forward on our chairs while Mr. Tempole started his narrative, interested to learn of Nellie’s wishes from all those years ago.

  The next surprise was when we learnt of the extent of Nellie’s fortune, as it turned out she was a surprisingly wealthy individual. Each person in the room was to inherit a large sum of cash, providing that each person swore to use at least some of that money towards a trip to Africa. It seemed that Nellie wanted to make sure that each and every person close to her in that family had the chance to experience the land of her birth firsthand and perhaps come to understand the love of the continent that never left her.

  Then came instructions for the disposal of Nellie’s possessions. She had, it appeared, allocated each and every item she owned to someone within the family. Nothing was left out and nor was anybody left without something they had loved to remind them of her.

  I was left some carvings that I had always loved playing with when I was younger and also she had left me the watercolour I had always thought of as the epitome of the spirit of Africa
. The picture of the old man, the young girl, and the acacia tree; the ancient land represented by the tree, the wisdom of the people by the old man, and the energy and vitality of youth and things to come by the young girl.

  Tara was left the beautiful wooden dressing table that had stood in Nellie’s bedroom for as long as I could remember and at which Tara had spent many hours as a girl, trying on make-up and pretending to be the beautiful young woman she would later grow up to be.

  The will took over three quarters of an hour to read and by the time Mr. Tempole had finished, he looked worn out. He too had benefited from the will, to the tune of a small wooden carving of a leopard on a kopje, to remind him of the painting that had adorned his office wall for so many years, she had written. There was a long silence in the room when the last paper had been read before Mr. Tempole asked if there were any questions or queries.

  ‘Just one actually’ said Uncle Robert, Tara’s dad, ‘there has been no mention of “Acacia”. What will happen to the house?’

  ‘Ah, good question,’ he shuffled through the papers again, ‘I don’t seem to have any record of her wishes with regards that matter. I can’t believe she would have omitted to make arrangements in that regard, but now as I come to think of it, there was nothing mentioned recently by Nellie to me. I had always assumed that she had made that arrangement with my father long ago.’

  ‘Did she own it out-right, or was it mortgaged?’ I asked.

  ‘No, I am sure she owned it, I do remember my father telling me of the deeds some years ago and there was definitely no mention of outstanding loans against the property. ‘This is a total mystery to me.’ He looked flustered as he once again rifled through the papers in front of him trying to find some mention of the largest of all Nellie’s assets.

  ‘The money we have all inherited today, could it possibly have come from the premature sale of the house?’ Peter asked.

  ‘No, no, there was always a large fortune at Nellie’s disposal,’ Tempole confirmed. ‘She was always a wealthy woman; although she did stress that no knowledge of her wealth should ever be known outside these walls. I remember my father telling me that she had arrived in England with a good deal of money and he had helped her manage it right from the start.’

  This was all news to us all in the room, as although Nellie had never wanted for anything, she had never been ostentatious, had not spent large sums on anything very much and led a fairly frugal lifestyle. The mysteries of the Braughton family just seemed to get deeper the more one looked.

  ‘I really am dreadfully sorry about this.’ Tempole was distraught that he had overlooked such a large item. ‘I don’t quite know what to say to you except that I shall investigate and let you know my findings as soon as is practicable.’

  ‘Is it possible that she never made any provision for the disposal of “Acacia”’? Mum asked.

  ‘Well yes, of course, there is nothing in law that says that she should have, it’s just so unlike her that’s all.’ He was clearly as perplexed by the matter as we all were. ‘Is there anything that anyone here can remember that may shed some light on this?’ he asked us all.

  There was a general shaking of heads and confused looks in the room as we all looked at each other for some hint of knowledge. It was obvious though that everyone was confused by the turn of events and that no answers were going to be found today. So with that, we all thanked Mr. Tempole and began making our way out of his office, gathering up hats, coats, and scarves as we did so from his assistant in the outer office.

  Just as I was about to follow everyone else out, Mr. Tempole called me back, quietly so as not to alert the rest.

  ‘There is one more thing that I have to do before you leave.’ He said quietly, as he ushered me back towards his office.

  ‘’There was one more provision in the Will that Nellie asked me to make known to you alone.’

  I was intrigued to say the least by Tempole’s surreptitious manner, and waited for him to tell me more.

  ‘Nellie asked that you should receive this.’ He handed me a leather-bound and padlocked book, obviously old and worn, with no wording on the outside to give any clue as to its contents. The padlock and wide leather strapping gave no chance of seeing the pages without unlocking the clasp.

  ‘Is there a key to go with this?’ I asked, I thought not unreasonably.

  ‘No, there is nothing else. She gave it into my keeping two years ago and asked that you receive it upon her death, but that no one else should know unless you thought fit to tell them afterwards.’

  I frowned, not quite sure how to respond to this strange request. I didn’t feel that Tempole would be able to help further though, so I thanked him for his time and made my way from the offices into the street outside.

  Most of the family had disappeared by the time I got outside but Mum, Tara, and Peter were waiting for me. Tara’s parents had to get away as they were off to North Africa again looking for proof that civilisation had existed well into the area we now know as the Sahara Desert. It would be hot, dusty, and tedious work, but they had been itching to get away and behaving like a couple of kids at the prospect.

  ‘So, what’s your take on the mystery of “Acacia” then James?’ Mum linked her arm in mine and we started to walk towards the car park with Tara and Peter following on behind.

  ‘I am baffled by the whole thing to be honest. She never said anything to me and I don’t believe there was anyone else in that office just now, who had any inkling about what was going on either. Do you?’

  ‘And what about Nellie’s money, where on earth did that come from?’ Tara piped up from behind.

  We were coming up on a nice looking pub and as if pre-arranged we all trooped in and made ourselves comfortable for the afternoon. Well, it was lunchtime and the weather wasn’t that pleasant outside. It must be a Braughton instinct or something.

  Once we were all ensconced in a cosy snug near the fire, with large dishes of homemade stew in front of us, we set about trying to understand what had gone on today.

  Mum started. ‘There is obviously some mistake here. Mr. Tempole, or his father, has obviously made some kind of slip-up about the house. After all, it is a major part of Nellie’s estate. You wouldn’t imagine that experienced solicitors would have simply missed it would you.’

  ‘Well no, but he did seem very surprised when the subject was brought up, didn’t he? Perhaps he did think his father had dealt with that long ago. For all he knows, the house may have been signed over already to someone else.’ Peter was trying to rationalise the solicitor’s actions, but it didn’t add up to me. As I glanced at Tara, I could see she thought the same. There was something more here than a simple misunderstanding.

  ‘What if Nellie herself just couldn’t decide who would get the house, or maybe she couldn’t face the thought of it being sold out of the family after she died.’ Mum tried again to make some sense of things.

  ‘Mum, when did Nellie ever have any problem with making a decision?’ I asked. ‘She was probably the most decisive person I have ever met, so I can’t believe that all of a sudden she failed to act on such an important issue.’ I was convinced that Nellie had planned this for some reason, but couldn’t fathom what that reason could be. However, Mum and Peter had obviously decided that the failure to act had been borne out of Nellie’s love of “Acacia” and she had simply not managed to get round to doing the paperwork before she died.

  ‘I agree with your Mum actually James.’ Peter chipped in. ‘She was getting on and it would have been a very tough decision to make for anyone, let alone someone who had lived in the house for so many years. It must have held a lot of memories for her.’ He sounded convinced anyway and despite the debate going on for another half hour or so, by the time Mum and he were ready to leave, we had decided nothing more.

  When they had gone, I turned to Tara. ‘You were very quiet during that.’ I was surprised as she was usually the first person in for a good debate.

  ‘I
was thinking along the same lines as you and trying to figure out what reason she could have had for leaving the situation so open.’ She spoke slowly as if she was still thinking hard. ‘What about the fortune she has obviously had since she arrived from Africa? I am wondering if the tales of her being upset when she arrived have anything to do with that or vice versa of course.’

  ‘Of course yes, I’d forgotten about that aspect of it. Where would she have got so much money at her age? She must have done a brilliant job of keeping it hidden all these years if no one apart from her solicitors knew about it.’

  The whole thing was getting very convoluted now and in order to help the cogs of our brains run smoothly, I got up and ordered another couple of pints from the bar. As I turned from the barman with the two pints in my hands, a loud shriek split the air, which had the immediate dual effect of transferring half the contents of each pint glass down my front and stopping every other conversation in the pub. Tara called out an apology to the other customers as I returned to the bar for a refill. By the time I got back to the snug again, she was nearly bursting with whatever had caused her outburst.

  ‘I’ve got it. I actually think I have cracked it.’ She was obviously onto something!

  ‘What have you got? And would you please calm down. People are staring at us.

  ‘Oh to hell with them,’ she said, clasping my arm in her excitement, ‘I think I know where the fortune came from. It’s obvious isn’t it, she found the family treasure and that’s why she came to England when she did. She had to get out of Africa before anyone there discovered what she had found and tried to take it from her. Maybe she had been in danger before she left and that’s why she was so upset when she arrived. She bought “Acacia” with the proceeds, well some of the proceeds anyway, which is why she couldn’t make her mind up about who to pass it on to.’

  I must have looked perplexed at that point. She rolled her eyes as if it was all plain and simple if only you were as intelligent as she obviously thought herself to be.

  ‘Because the fortune belonged to the whole family, she couldn’t pass it to just one person. Her moral code wouldn’t have allowed it. She was just too fair. Your Mum was right, she did love it so much that the thought of selling it would have been just too great for her to contemplate.’

  When Tara had made up her mind, she was notoriously difficult to dissuade from her point of view but in fairness to her I felt I should try as I could see great holes in her theory which may make her look foolish if she spouted this nonsense to anyone else.

  ‘Okay, let’s take this one step at a time shall we.’ I tried to talk slowly and calmly so as not to excite her again as she could possibly steamroller me before I had even started. ‘Firstly, the family treasure is probably just a myth. There is no proof that anyone has ever produced to show otherwise.’

  ‘Yes but….’ She tried to get in, but I held my ground.

  ‘No hang on let me finish, this is important.’ She sagged a little, deflated but not beaten yet. ‘If there had been a treasure as the myth suggests, it would have been in the form of tons of gold or thousands of diamonds, buried somewhere in the bush, we presume, of what is now Zimbabwe, but what was then wild, untamed lands full of warlike natives. Nellie was a young girl at the time and it would have been inconceivable for her to have found, dug up, transported and transferred to cash the sort of pile we are talking about, much less survive in the environment.’ I stopped a second to test the waters with Tara, but she offered no real resistance, just a raised finger and a sort of slight grunt as if she wanted to speak for the sake of it but had absolutely nothing to say. I carried on. ‘Next, if by some miracle she had managed to do all of those things, the act of transferring that sort of cash to England would have raised many eyebrows and would have been difficult for an experienced banker never mind a young girl. And if by miracle of miracles she had managed all of those things, and escaped whoever you assume she had pissed off in Africa, got to England with her haul, bought “Acacia” and lived her life to its full extent, don’t you think that someone would have caught up to her at some point. The people from Africa for instance?’ I really had her on the ropes now. She had sagged back into the snug and had folded her arms across her chest in defeat. I decided to go for the jugular all the same. After all, who knew when I might next be in this position of power?

  ‘And to cap it all, I come back to my original point, that Nellie made decisions about anything and everything all her life and never, ever shirked a responsibility when it was required of her. It would have been totally against her nature, nay her entire life’s code of conduct to shirk at the last.’ I sounded distinctly like a young Winston Churchill by the end of my little speech, which made us both laugh, although I felt Tara overdid the jollity a little, probably to mask her defeat at my hands. When the laughter stopped she delivered a telling blow however.

  ‘Ok smart-arse. How do you explain it then?’

  I couldn’t think of a thing to say!

  THE PAST