The Tuscan Child(10)

“Oh, Daddy,” I whispered. “I’m so sorry.”

I found myself swallowing back tears. All my life I’d wanted him to love me. I think he did, in his own way, but not like my mum did. I don’t remember him ever hugging me. When I was little he had taken me on his knee and read books to me, but that was the extent of our closeness. I don’t think he knew how to be a loving parent. Like all upper-class boys he was sent off to boarding school at seven and had learned to lock away his feelings.

“Daddy,” I whispered again, as if he could hear me. “I did love you. If only . . .” I let the rest of the sentence hang in the air. Mechanically I picked up the remains of his breakfast, threw the eggshell and toast into the bin, and set about washing up the plate and cup as if keeping busy would hold the feelings at bay. Then I put the toaster away and wiped down the table. When I had finished, the kitchen looked clean and neat, the way it had always been when my mother had been alive. But in those days it had been warm and friendly, with clean curtains fluttering at an open window and always the good smells of her cooking in the air: freshly baked scones and steak and kidney pie and sausage rolls and Victoria sponge . . . my mouth watered now at the thought of them. My mother loved to cook. She adored taking care of my father and me. I blinked back those tears, ashamed of myself and my weakness. After my mother died I had never allowed myself to cry. Whatever mean things those girls did to me at school, however horrible Miss Honeywell was, I had always stared back at them with a look of defiance and contempt. It was only since . . . only recently that I had become so soft and fragile.

The memory of my mother’s cooking made me realise I was hungry. I’d had no lunch, and a couple of nibbles of a custard cream biscuit were not exactly filling. I went to the pantry and was horrified at the lack of supplies. A dried-out piece of cheese, some withered potatoes, a few tins of baked beans and soup. It occurred to me that during term time he had taken his main meals with the rest of the staff at school. During the holidays he was literally starving himself. I cut a slice of bread and made myself a grilled cheese sandwich. As I ate I looked around the kitchen. How bleak it looked. No wonder he had sunk into depression.

Feeling a little better with food inside me, I got up and inspected the rest of the house. Apart from the kitchen there was a living room downstairs and a tiny study that was strictly my father’s private domain. Upstairs were two little bedrooms and a bathroom. As I walked around, it occurred to me that these things were presumably mine now. I was the only child. I doubted that he had left a will—after all, he had nothing to leave but these few possessions. The title would die with him, unless a third or fourth cousin was lurking somewhere. Not that anyone would want to inherit a title that came with no property, no land, and no money.

It didn’t take me long to walk through the rooms. The one thing that struck me more than any other was that there was nothing personal in any of them. If you’d been brought to this house you’d never have been able to guess what kind of person lived there. In my mother’s day there had been cut flowers and women’s magazines and open recipe books lying on tables. There were photos of me as a baby. A sweater she was knitting lying on the sofa. But now there was not a single photograph or invitation or card. The place might as well have been inhabited by a ghost.

I went through into what had been my bedroom. Again, nothing of me remained. I had taken my few possessions when I moved out. I sank on to the bed, feeling suddenly weary. This room had been my sanctuary. Before my mother died she used to tuck me in every night. After she died I would curl up into a tight ball in this bed with the covers over my head, shutting out the world and the mean girls and the lack of love and the knowledge that nobody would ever tuck me in again.

I looked around the room. Was there anything here I wanted? I didn’t think so. And in the rest of the house? I did another quick tour. I could see that my father had rescued a couple of good pieces from Langley Hall: the satinwood bureau in his study with the inlaid marquetry and tiny drawers with their carved bone handles. I’d always admired that. And the grandfather clock that was supposedly over three hundred years old. Certainly not the sagging sofa or well-worn leather armchair he always sat in to watch television. Upstairs there was an elegant bow-fronted chest of drawers in the main bedroom and a gentleman’s armoire with drawers down one side and racks for hanging shirts and trousers on the other. It was a fine mahogany piece, but again I was struck by the contrast of the elegant furniture and the pitifully few garments hanging in it. Apart from that, a couple of paintings on the walls: a hunting scene and a framed print of Langley Hall in the eighteenth century with elegant Jane Austen figures strolling in the grounds. If I’d been born in another century, I might have been making a good match with Mr. Bingley, I thought, and had to smile.

I supposed that some of these might fetch some money at auction. I certainly had nowhere to put any furniture, and I didn’t particularly like the paintings. I’d have to find out when they would become legally mine. I knew a little bit about probate through my own work. If the person left no property or shares or other tangible assets, then probate was not necessary. But I’d need to obtain a death certificate and would have to wait until the coroner released the body. I wondered if he had a solicitor who could direct me. Presumably some law firm had been in charge of the sale of Langley Hall and the payment of death duties. I should go through his desk or, failing that, see if he had a safe-deposit box at the bank—which they wouldn’t let me open until I had the death certificate. It all seemed overwhelming and complicated, and I don’t think I had ever felt more alone. To realise that one has nobody in the world—that is a sobering thought. I knew that my mother had been an orphan, my father the only son of an only son. I might have had distant cousins somewhere, but I had certainly never met them.