Wild Horses Part 4

'The d.a.m.ned man was rude rude to me,' Paul complained. 'He should be struck off. He said Valentine should have been in hospital and he would be here at seven, not before.' to me,' Paul complained. 'He should be struck off. He said Valentine should have been in hospital and he would be here at seven, not before.'

'He couldn't do do anything by coming,' Dorothea said miserably. 'Dying here was what Valentine wanted. It was anything by coming,' Dorothea said miserably. 'Dying here was what Valentine wanted. It was all right all right.'

Paul mulishly repeated his contrary opinions. Deeply bored with him, I asked Dorothea if I could pay my respects to Valentine.

'Just go in, dear,' she said, nodding. 'He's very peaceful.'

I left her listening dutifully to her offspring and went into Valentine's bedroom which was brightly and brutally lit by a centre bulb hanging from the ceiling in an inadequate lampshade. A kinder lamp stood unlit on a bedside table, and I crossed to it and switched it on.

Valentine's old face was pale and smoothed by death, his forehead already cooler to the touch than in life. The laboured breathing had given way to eternal silence. His eyes were fully closed. His mouth, half open, had been covered, by Dorothea, I supposed, with a flap of sheet. He did indeed look remarkably at peace.

I crossed to the doorway and switched off the cold overhead light. Dorothea was coming towards me from the kitchen, entering Valentine's room past me to look down fondly at her dead brother.

'He died in the dark,' she said, distressed.

'He wouldn't mind that.'

'No... but... I switched off his bedside light so that people wouldn't see in, and I was sitting in that chair looking out of the window waiting for Paul to come, listening to Valentine breathing, and I went to sleep. I just drifted off.' Tears filled her eyes. 'I didn't know... I mean, I couldn't help it.'

'You've been very tired.'

'Yes, but when I woke up it was so dark... and absolutely quiet, and I realised... it was awful awful, dear. I realised Valentine had stopped breathing... and he'd died while I was asleep asleep, and I hadn't been there beside him to hold his hand or anything...' Her voice wavered into a sob and she wiped her eyes with her fist.

I put an arm round her shoulders as we stood beside Valentine's bed. I thought it lucky on the whole that she hadn't seen the jolt of her brother's heart stopping, nor heard the last rattle of his breath. I'd watched my own mother die, and would never forget it.

'What time did your son get here?'

'Oh, it must have been getting on for three. He lives in Surrey, you see, dear. It's quite a long drive, and he'd been ready for bed, he said. I told him not to come... I only wanted someone to talk to, really, when I rang him, but he insisted on coming... very good of him, dear, really.'

'Yes,' I said.

'He closed the curtains, of course, and switched on all the lights. He was quite cross with me for sitting in the dark, and for not getting Robbie Gill out. I mean, Robbie could only say officially that Valentine was dead. Paul didn't understand that I wanted wanted just to be in the dark with Valentine. It was a sort of just to be in the dark with Valentine. It was a sort of comfort comfort, you see, dear. A sort of goodbye. Just the two of us, like when we were children.'

'Yes,' I said.

'Paul means well,' she insisted, 'but I do find him tiring. I'm sorry to wake you up so early. But Paul was so cross with me... so I phoned you when he went to the bathroom because he might have stopped me, otherwise. I'm not myself somehow, I feel so weak.'

'I'm happy to be here,' I a.s.sured her. 'What you need is to go to bed.'

'Oh, I couldn't. I'll have to be awake for Robbie. I'm so afraid Paul will be rude to him.'

A certainty, I thought.

The great Paul himself came into the room, switching on the overhead light again.

'What are you two doing in here?' he demanded. 'Mother, do come away and stop distressing yourself. The old man's had a merciful release, as we all know. What we've got to talk about now is your future, and I've got plans made for that.'

Dorothea's frame stiffened under my embracing arm. I let it fall away from her shoulders and went with her out of Valentine's room and back to the kitchen, flicking the harsh light off again as I went and looking back to the quiet old face in its semi-shadow. Permanent timeless shadow.

'Of course course, you must leave here,' Paul was saying to his mother in the kitchen. 'You're almost eighty. I can't look after you properly when you live so far away from me. I've already arranged with a retirement home that when Valentine died you would rent a room there. I'll tell them you'll be coming within a week. It's less than a mile from my house so Janet will be able to drop in every day.'

Dorothea looked almost frightened. 'I'm not going, Paul,' she contradicted. 'I'm staying here.'

Ignoring her, Paul said, 'You may as well start packing your things at once. Why waste time? I'll put this house on the market tomorrow and I'll move you immediately after the funeral.'

'No,' Dorothea said.

'I'll help you while I'm here,' her son said grandly. 'All Valentine's things will need sorting and disposing of, of course. In fact, I may as well clear some of the books away at once. I brought two or three empty boxes.'

'Not the books,' I said positively. 'He left his books to me.'

'What?' Paul's mouth unattractively dropped open. 'He can't have done,' he said fiercely. 'He left everything to Mother. We all know that.'

'Everything to your mother except his books.'

Dorothea nodded. 'Valentine added a codicil to his will about two months ago, leaving his books to Thomas.'

'The old man was ga-ga. I'll contest it.'

'You can't contest it,' I pointed out reasonably. 'Valentine left everything but the books to your mother, not to you.'

'Then Mother will contest it!'

'No, I won't, dear,' Dorothea said gently. 'When Valentine asked me what I thought about him leaving his books and papers to Thomas, I told him it was a very nice idea. I would never read them or ever look at them much, and Valentine knew Thomas would treasure them, so he got a solicitor to draw up the codicil, and Betty, a friend of mine, and Robbie Gill, our doctor, witnessed his signature with the solicitor watching. He signed it here in his own sitting-room, and there was no question of Valentine being ga-ga, which both the solicitor and the doctor will agree on. And I can't see what you're so bothered about, there's just a lot of old form-books and sc.r.a.p-books and books about racing.'

Paul was, it seemed to me, a great deal more disconcerted than seemed natural. He seemed also to become aware of my surprise, because he groped and produced a specious explanation, hating me while he delivered it.

'Valentine once told me there might be some value in his collection,' he said. 'I intend to get them valued and sold... for Mother's benefit, naturally.'

'The books are for Thomas,' Dorothea repeated doughtily, 'and I never heard Valentine suggest they were valuable. He wanted Thomas to have them for old times' sake, and for being so kind, coming to read to him.'

'Ah-hah!' Paul almost shouted in triumph. 'Valentine's codicil will be invalid because he couldn't see couldn't see what he was signing!' what he was signing!'

Dorothea protested, 'But he knew knew what he was signing.' what he was signing.'

'How did he know? Tell me that.' did he know? Tell me that.'

'Excuse me,' I said, halting the brewing bad temper. 'If Valentine's codicil is judged invalid, which I think unlikely if his solicitor drew it up and witnessed its signing, then the books belong to Dorothea, who alone can decide what to do with them.'

'Oh, thank you thank you, dear,' she said, her expression relaxing, 'then if they are mine, I will give them to you, Thomas, because I know that's what Valentine intended.'

Paul looked aghast. 'But you can't can't.'

'Why not, dear?'

'They... they may be valuable valuable.'

'I'll get them valued,' I said, 'and if they really are worth an appreciable amount, I'll give that much to Dorothea.'

'No, dear,' she vehemently shook her head.

'Hush,' I said to her. 'Let it lie for now.'

Paul paced up and down the kitchen in a fury and came to a halt on the far side of the table from where I sat with Dorothea beside me, demanding forcefully, 'Just who are you, anyway, apart from ingratiating yourself with a helpless, dying old man? I mean, it's criminal criminal.'

I saw no need to explain myself to him, but Dorothea wearily informed him, 'Thomas's grandfather trained horses that Valentine shod. Valentine's known Thomas for more than twenty years, and he's always liked him, he told me so.'

As if unable to stop himself, Paul marched his bulk away from this unwelcome news, abruptly leaving the kitchen and disappearing down the hall. One might have written him off as a pompous a.s.s were it not for the fugitive impression of an underlying, heavy, half-glimpsed predator in the undergrowth. I wouldn't want to be at a disadvantage with him, I thought.

Dorothea said despairingly, 'I don't want want to live near Paul. I couldn't bear to have Janet coming to see me every day. I don't get on with her, dear. She bosses me about.' to live near Paul. I couldn't bear to have Janet coming to see me every day. I don't get on with her, dear. She bosses me about.'

'You don't have to go,' I said. 'Paul can't put this house up for sale, because it isn't his. But, dearest Dorothea...' I paused, hesitating.

'But what, dear?'

'Well, don't sign sign anything.' anything.'

'How do you mean?'

'I mean, don't sign anything anything. Ask your solicitor friend first.'

She gazed at me earnestly. 'I may have have to sign things, now Valentine's gone.' to sign things, now Valentine's gone.'

'Yes, but... don't sign any paper just because Paul wants you to.'

'All right,' she said doubtfully.

I asked her, 'Do you know what a power of attorney is?'

'Doesn't it give people permission to do things on your behalf?'

I nodded.

She thought briefly and said, 'You're telling me not to sign a paper giving Paul permission to sell this house. Is that it?'

'It sure is.'

She patted my hand. 'Thank you, Thomas. I promise not to sign anything like that. I'll read everything carefully. I hate to say it, but Paul does try too hard sometimes to get his own way.'

Paul, to my mind, had been quiet for a suspiciously long time. I stood up and left the kitchen, going in search of him, and I found him in Valentine's sitting-room taking books off the shelves and setting them in stacks on the floor.

'What are you doing?' I asked. 'Please leave those alone.'

Paul said, 'I'm looking for a book I loaned Valentine. I want it back.'

'What's it called?'

Paul's spur-of-the-occasion lie hadn't got as far as a t.i.tle. 'I'll know it when I see it,' he said.

'If any book has your name in it,' I said politely, 'I'll make sure that you get it back.'

'That's not good enough.'

Dorothea appeared in the doorway, saw the books piled on the floor and looked aghast and annoyed at the same time.

'Paul! Stop that! Those books are Thomas's. If you take them you'll be stealing stealing.'

Paul showed no sign of caring about such a minor accusation.

'He won't take them,' I told her rea.s.suringly.

Paul curled his lip at me, shouldered his way past and opened the front door.

'What is he doing, dear?' Dorothea asked, perplexed, watching her son's back go purposefully down the path.

'It seems,' I said, 'that he's fetching one of his boxes to pack the books in.' I closed the front door and shot its bolts, top and bottom. Then I hurried through into the kitchen and secured its outside door in the same way, and made a quick trip through all the rooms, and both bathrooms, to make sure the windows were shut and locked.

'But Paul's my son,' Dorothea protested.

'And he's trying to steal Valentine's books.'

'Oh, dear dear.'

Paul began hammering on the front door. 'Mother, let me in at once at once.'

'Perhaps I should should,' Dorothea worried.

'He'll come to no harm out there. It's nowhere near freezing and he can sit in his car. Or go home, of course.'

'Sometimes Paul isn't likeable likeable,' Dorothea said sadly.

I put the stacks of books back on Valentine's shelves. The ones that Paul had chosen to steal first were those with the glossiest covers, the recently published racing biographies, which were, in commercial resale terms, almost worthless. I guessed that chiefly it was Paul's vanity that was reacting against being thwarted by his mother and by me.

I had never underestimated the virulence of outraged vanity since directing a disturbing film about a real-life fanatical bodybuilder who'd killed his girl-friend because she'd left him for a wimp. I'd had to understand him, to crawl into his mind, and I'd hated it.

Paul's heavy hand banged repeatedly on the door and he pressed unremittingly on the doorbell. This last resulted not in a shrill nerve-shredding single note, but in a less insupportable non-stop quiet ding-dong; quiet because Dorothea had turned down the volume to avoid disturbing Valentine as he'd grown weaker.

I looked at my watch: five minutes to six. Perhaps an hour before we could expect the doctor but only thirty minutes before I should start my own workday.

'Oh, dear,' Dorothea said for about the tenth time, 'I do wish he'd stop.'

'Tell him you'll let him in if he promises to leave the books alone.'

'Do you think he'll agree?' she asked dubiously.

'A good chance,' I said.

He wouldn't want to lose too much face with the awakening neighbours, I reckoned: only a fool would allow himself to be seen to be shut out like a naughty boy by his aged mother.