Simon Tolkien - The Inheritance

The sadistic curiosity in his father’s voice was too much for Stephen. Swallowing the bile that had suddenly come up into his throat, he took an involuntary step back from the window. Several twigs had blown down with the leaves from the nearby grove of elm trees earlier in the day, and one broke now with a snap under Stephen’s foot. Inside the room Ritter reacted instantly, pushing back his chair and crossing to the window. But Silas was quicker, pulling his brother down and round the corner of the house into the darkness.

Less than six feet away from where they were standing, the brothers could sense Ritter at the window peering out into the night.

“What is it?” asked Cade from inside the room.

“Nothing. Some animal,” said Ritter. “Nobody’s going to get into these grounds anymore. We’d hear the alarm if anyone tried.”

“I hope you’re right. So what are you going to do to him?” Cade repeated his question, once Ritter had come back from the window.

“I’ll deal with him.”

Just four words, but so full of meaning. Ritter would murder Carson when he found him. Stephen was sure of that. After a hearty breakfast at some local cafe, he’d go upstairs to Carson’s flat and shoot him full of holes.

“When?” Cade’s voice was soft now too.

“Soon,” said Ritter. “I’ll leave tomorrow. If there’s anything I need to know, you can send a message to the usual place. But leave it to me. I’ll take care of him. It’ll be a pleasure.”

The next day, true to his word, Ritter was gone. Stephen didn’t see him leave. He’d been up most of the night, tossing and turning in his bed until he had fallen into an uneasy sleep just as the grey light of the early dawn had started to seep into his room.

In the far corner, Stephen’s collection of children’s books was carefully arranged on wall-length shelves. Most of them were about heroes. Stephen had known for a fact that his father was a hero for as long as he could remember. It explained why he could not get close to his father, however hard he tried. Heroes lived in their own world, an English version of Mount Olympus, and they couldn’t be expected to worry too much about mundane things like children. People like Stephen’s father had their hands full making discoveries and saving the world. Cade’s coldness had just made his younger son love him even more, and his wholesale rejection of the boy following his wife’s tragic death had done nothing to change Stephen’s inmost feelings.

Stephen never really knew what he was going to do when he grew up, but it would be something that would change the world. He would follow in his father’s footsteps. Except that now he knew where those footsteps led.

Stephen felt as if he had lost his hold on everything. His father’s shame was his shame. And yet he could not stand aside and do nothing. He had to make a stand. And for that he needed Silas.

Dressing quickly, he went in search of his brother and found him eventually, crouched over a tray of developing fluid in a makeshift darkroom that Silas had created in one of the unused cellars under the west wing. And Stephen had to practically force his brother out into the sunlight. He had no intention of discussing inside the confines of the house what they had overheard.

The brightness of the day did not accord with either brother’s mood. Stephen had torn a piece of green wood from the branch of an oak tree and was using it to behead the stalks of nettle and cow parsley growing in the hedgerows beside the road, while Silas walked with his head hunched over between his shoulders, as if hiding from the sun overhead.

“I can’t believe it,” said Stephen, angrily swishing his stick from side to side through the still air. “He lied to me about everything.”

“What did you expect him to do?”

“I expected him not to have killed those people. In a bloody church too.”

“Well, I’m sorry you couldn’t keep your illusions. That’s part of growing up, I guess.”

“What? Finding out our father’s a mass murderer?”

“He’s not my father.”

“Well, he’s the nearest you’ll ever get to one.” Stephen paused, regretting his words. “Sorry, Silas,” he went on after a moment. “I know it’s not easy being adopted, but it doesn’t mean you haven’t got a responsibility.”

“For what?”

“For saving this man Carson for a start. The sergeant’s already left. But perhaps you didn’t know that.”

“Just because Ritter’s gone doesn’t mean he’s going to kill Carson,” said Silas doggedly. “I don’t recall Ritter saying he was going to do that.”

“Not in so many words. But that’s what he meant. It was clear as a pikestaff. Don’t be so bloody naive.”

Silas glanced up, and it seemed like there was a ghost of a smile playing around his thin lips.

“We’ve got to do something,” said Stephen insistently.

“What?”

“I don’t know. Warn the man. Go to the police. Do something.”

“We don’t know where he is to warn him. And you better think carefully before you go to the police.”

“Why?”

“Because of what’ll happen to Dad if you do. That’s why. Maybe you can get him to stop the sergeant.”

“You! Why not we?”

“Because I don’t want to,” said Silas, raising his voice for the first time. “It’s all so easy for you, isn’t it Stephen? Running around like a knight in shining armour dealing out justice right, left, and centre. But you don’t know what it’s like to have as little as I have. Maybe, if you did, you wouldn’t be so happy to throw it all away.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“I won’t get involved. That’s what.”

“You weren’t so reluctant when it came to dragging me round to Dad’s window last night, were you?”

But Silas would say nothing more. It was as if a wall had gone up between them, and they walked back to the house in an angry silence.

Outside the front door Stephen put his hand on his brother’s arm, determined to make one last effort to get him to change his mind.

“This is about more than you and me, can’t you see that, Silas? This is about right and wrong. You’ve got to draw the line somewhere. You’ve got to stand up and be counted.”

Stephen could feel Silas’s arm tighten under his hand. Silas hated to be touched. But Stephen didn’t let go. He needed an answer.

Finally Silas looked up into his brother’s eyes, and Stephen felt the distance between them open like a chasm.

“Count me out,” said Silas. He almost spat out the words.

And Stephen lost his temper. Letting go of Silas’s arm, he raised his open hand in one fluid movement and smacked his brother across the face. Immediately he regretted what he had done, but it was too late. Silas gave him one last look of pure hatred and ran into the house.

Sitting in his prison cell, Stephen remembered that look in Silas’s eye. Did his brother hate him still? Stephen didn’t know. The truth was that Stephen could not read Silas. He had always been the opposite of Stephen. He held everything back, while Stephen wore his heart on his sleeve. Stephen was always the favourite, and yet Silas never complained, never protested, not even about Stephen’s staying at home all the time he was away at school. There was something unknowable about Silas, and Stephen had always felt the distance between them as a reproach. He couldn’t help it that he was the natural son, the favoured child, but it still made him feel guilty. Stephen wanted to be a good person, and Silas made him feel that he wasn’t.

As he grew older, Silas had seemed to cultivate a studied politeness. He spoke slowly and carefully, as if he had thought out exactly what he was going to say before he said it, and sometimes he seemed just like a puppet master, watching events that he had set in motion but refusing to participate in any of them. It was Silas who had engineered Stephen’s estrangement from their father and had then reunited them less than a month before the old man’s murder. Why? John Swift wanted Stephen to point the gun at his brother, but Stephen wouldn’t-or couldn’t. To accuse Silas would be to betray himself. It wasn’t Silas who had shot their father in France or sent the blackmail letter. That was Carson. But Carson was dead. And if it wasn’t Carson who had shot John Cade, then who had? Who had?