Simon Tolkien - The Inheritance

The sight had enraged John Cade. He had pulled himself free of the policemen’s hands, crossed to the van, and seized the bicycle. Then, holding it half above his head, Cade had gone almost at a run up the steps of his house, into the drawing room where Stephen was lying on the floor by the fire reading a book. The Christmas tree was big and full of lights behind him. Clara and her younger son had spent the day before decorating it with coloured globes and swans and silver trumpets until it was perfect, and now Stephen wanted to be near it all the time. His childhood was almost over, and the tree’s magic kept its end suspended for a little while longer.

Cade stood in the doorway watching his son for a moment, and then, using all his strength, he threw the bicycle at the tree. Silas, standing behind his father in the hall, watched the Christmas decorations crash to the floor all around his brother, shattering into thousands of tiny pieces, meaningless shards of brightly coloured glass.

Two weeks after the funeral, Stephen was sent away to join Silas at his boarding school in the west of England, and Sergeant Ritter and his silent wife came to live at the manor house. There was no turning back the clock.

Silas never saw his father display such energy again after the day he threw the bicycle. He became watchful and reclusive, spending his days analysing complex chess problems in his study or gazing at the old hand-painted manuscripts that he kept catalogued and ordered in the long gallery at the top of the stairs. Watching him, Silas often thought of the silent, solitary monks who had copied and painted the sacred texts a thousand years before. Such a contrast to his father, with his love of sweet food and wine and his constant preoccupation with his failing health. Much good that it did him. Silas looked across to the east wing and remembered his father dead in his leather armchair. Silas had taken photographs. Of the dead man. Of the room. In the evenings he took them out and ran his index finger along the outlines of the body. He didn’t know why. Perhaps he was seeking a closeness with his father that had eluded him in life.

Now the front door of the house opened, and Sasha came out. Silas stiffened as he stepped back, almost involuntarily, from the window of his room. It was second nature to him to seek concealment, to watch without being seen.

Sasha was wearing a sun hat that Silas had never seen before. Its wide brim concealed her face from Silas as he looked down on her from above and felt the usual agitation that she aroused in him. Sasha’s movements were erratic. She would spend days poring over manuscripts in the long gallery or in the professor’s study, and then would disappear without warning into Oxford. Silas had watched her, focusing his telephoto lens through the different windows, and it hadn’t taken him long to see that she was searching for something specific, something that she hadn’t yet found. Silas guessed at what it might be, but he hadn’t so far had the courage to talk to her about it. She was supposedly staying at the manor house to finish cataloguing the manuscripts, but that task must now be long done. Silas feared that any discussion of her reasons for remaining would force Sasha into an early departure, and that was something that he could not bear to contemplate.

Acting on impulse, he pushed up the lower part of the sash window and called down.

“Where are you going, Sasha?”

Sasha jumped at the sudden noise breaking the stillness of the morning and put her hand on the crown of her head, as if to prevent her hat from falling off. It was the old preoccupation: Her elaborately structured brown hair and high collars were there to hide the livid red burn that disfigured her neck and shoulders. But the burn was too high, and she could never fully conceal it. Men were drawn to her brown eyes and full lips and the clear soft complexion of her face, but the contrast with the ravaged flesh below only increased their repulsion when they got closer to her. All except Silas, who seemed to follow her all the time. With his eyes. In person. Recently he’d seemed almost omnipresent. It was as if he was attracted by her disfigurement. She dreaded that one day he might ask her about it.

“I’m going into Oxford. I need to do some things,” she said, filling her voice with all the discouragement that she could muster.

But Silas was undeterred. Sasha’s upturned face and his position in the window above her gave him a sense of power.

“Let me give you a lift. I can have the car out in a moment.”

It was his father’s car. The Rolls-Royce was the first concrete proof of his inheritance. He wanted Sasha inside it, the sense of her body resting against the soft grey leather of the seat beside him, so that he could take his hand off the steering wheel and caress that place at the nape of her neck where her perfect skin met its burnt counterpart.

Silas turned away from the window without waiting for Sasha to protest any further and ran down the stairs. Five minutes later he had his wish, and they were passing through the sleepy village of Moreton. In the valley below, the city of Oxford was spread out before them: rivers and parks and old stone buildings surrounded by high walls. The sun glinted on the silver and gold domes of the city’s churches, and Silas pressed his foot down on the accelerator and allowed the car to gather speed as it went down the hill and up again, past the scene of his mother’s death.

“That policeman was here today,” he said, making conversation.

“Which policeman?”

“Trave. The one in charge of the case.”

“What did he want?”

“I don’t know. Just poking around, asking stupid questions.”

“About what?”

“What I felt about my father. Things like that.”

“What did you feel about him?”

“I don’t know. He was selfish-I mean really selfish. But you know that. It was like he didn’t feel anything. And yet he was clever. He knew a lot, more than I’ll ever know.”

“You admired him?”

“In a way. He was my father.”

“I know that.” It sounded like an accusation.

They lapsed into an uneasy silence and Silas found it almost painful not to reach out and touch Sasha, who sat with her head turned away, willing herself toward her destination.

“Have you seen the Ritters today?” Silas asked, not because he was interested, but in order to get some reaction out of his companion.

“Him, but not her. He said she was sick again.”

“He probably hit her. Didn’t you hear the shouting two nights ago?”

“Yes, he’s disgusting. Like an animal.” Sasha spoke with sudden passion, and at the same time, two bright red patches appeared in the centre of her normally pale cheeks.

“I’ll ask him to leave if you like.” The idea had often crossed Silas’s mind since his father’s death, but he had never quite had the courage to go through with it.

“That’s up to you. It’s your house. Perhaps you don’t want me there anymore either.”

“No, I do. Really I do.”

Silas cursed himself for raising the possibility of Sasha’s departure, and he turned round toward her to add emphasis to his words, taking his eye off the road as he did so.

“Look out,” Sasha shouted, and Silas was only just in time to slam his foot down on the brake and bring the car to a shuddering halt, inches away from an old woman crossing the road in front of them. His arm shot out across Sasha to prevent her being thrown forward, and he felt her breast against his hand for a moment, before she pushed him away.

“You’re an idiot, Silas,” she said angrily. “You could have killed that old woman, and us too.”

Silas said nothing. Instead he bent down to help Sasha, who was busy picking up the papers and books that had fallen out of her bag onto the floor. There was one yellowed document that caught his attention. It was covered with a spidery handwriting that Silas didn’t recognize. He noticed the date 1936 in the top corner and a name, John of Rome. It seemed to be a translation of some kind, but Silas had no chance to read any more before Sasha snatched the paper out of his hand.