Harry Bingham - The Money Makers

Earle shivered.

‘Gradley Plant Hire and your father’s other assets are now held in trust, and they will be looked after for you by a group of very able trustees. Should any of you meet your father’s conditions, you will find everything in very good order in three years’ time. The will goes into all these matters in greater detail, and you may of course read it at your leisure. You may also wish to consult your own legal advisers, but I regret to say that in my opinion there should be no difficulty in enforcing the terms of the will. I’m really very sorry.’

Helen Gradley had lost the key to her own front door. Standing on the step outside, she rummaged uselessly through the rubbish in her handbag and began to cry.

‘Don’t worry, Mum,’ said Josephine. ‘I’ve got it.’

On the long drive home Helen’s shock had dissolved repeatedly into tears, but the hard centre of her pain had, if anything, grown. Since the divorce, she had never quite brought herself to believe in the permanence of her poverty. Though she had been in work, she was a poor housekeeper, prone to surges of extravagance she could ill afford. A few years back, she was diagnosed as suffering from repetitive stress injury caused by poor typing posture, and she had invalided herself from the workforce with a speed and decisiveness none of her kids had been able to overcome. On hearing the news of her ex-husband’s death, she had been openly delighted. ‘At least his money will be of some use now,’ she’d said. The will devastated her. Her worn carpets, her threadbare curtains, her hopeless dreams of a better life were all here to stay. The cavalry wasn’t coming. Rescue was impossible.

Josephine unlocked the door, took her mum upstairs to bed, and left her there with a hot-water bottle and a promise to look in soon. The kids needed to speak openly with each other and weren’t able to do so in their mother’s grief-stricken presence.

By the time Josephine emerged, her three brothers were sitting at the kitchen table round a pot of tea. Zachary, named after his grandfather, but always known simply as Zack, had arrived that morning with a bottle of champagne, expecting to celebrate later, but nobody felt like it now. With their mother quiet, they could turn at last to the thing on all their minds.

‘Poor Mum,’ said Josie. ‘It’s awful for her. She’d so relied on the will to make everything better.’

‘Don’t be silly, Josie. It’s awful for all of us. The old bastard’s probably laughing himself sick,’ said Matthew. He had sympathy for his mother, but his sympathy for himself was very much greater. Matthew’s broad, good-looking face was puckered up into a boyish scowl. His cupid’s-bow mouth pouted in an eight-year-old’s sulk.

‘He’s not an old bastard. He’s our dead father,’ said Josephine.

‘Of course he’s our father,’ said Matthew. ‘None of us wished him dead and all of us would bring him back if we could. But we all know that he was a bastard when alive, and he certainly acted the bastard in his death. And face it. He’s succeeded. He’s screwed up my life. He’s screwed up your life. He’s screwed things up for all of us, not just Mum.’

‘You mean we’ll all have to earn a living like every other person in the world.’ Josephine’s voice was high and tense. She knew Matthew spoke the truth, yet she thought it wrong to speak ill of their dead father only days after laying him in his grave. And, despite everything, in his own infuriating way, he had loved them.

‘Oh come on, Josie,’ said Matthew, unable to keep his voice from whining. ‘It’s like being imprisoned. None of us has ever really expected to earn our livings, and now we’re going to be locked up like everyone else in tedious jobs, suits, mortgages, pension plans, and all the rest of it. It’s a life sentence.’

‘You’ve got a job with that American investment bank, Madison, haven’t you? That’s not so bad.’

‘It’s not a proper job, just a summer job. I need to finish my economics degree before I look for anything permanent. And Madison won’t have me back. I only took the job because Dad made me, and I haven’t done a stroke of work since arriving.’

‘You’re talented enough –’

‘Of course I’ll find something eventually, but that’s not what I expected, or any of us. It’s a life sentence, Josie, and it’s what that bastard wanted.’

Tears rose to Matthew’s eyes as he spoke. He had a vision of his future as it should have been – leisured, pleasured and easy – and of his future as it now was: leaden, penniless and hard. He’d toil away for forty years and his reward would be this: that he’d have enough cash to avoid cold and hunger in his old age. George saw Matthew’s tears and moved the conversation forwards, giving his brother the opportunity to wipe his eyes with the back of his hand.

‘You’re right,’ grunted George. ‘But I’m worse off. I’ve got seven lousy O-Levels. I was chucked out of school. I’ve never done a day’s work in my life. I’ve got a couple of thousand quid in my current account, I’ve got my car, and that’s it. My flat’s rented. If I look for a job, I’ll be lucky to get something stacking shelves.’

He wasn’t exaggerating. George had been expelled from Sedbergh for holding a champagne party for a dozen friends, mostly female, in his housemaster’s sitting room. His housemaster had arrived back early from a weekend away to find the music blaring, the lights blazing, and champagne ringmarks all over the fine antiques it had been his life’s passion to collect. George’s education had finished that very night and, without regrets, he’d plunged straight into the life of the international playboy. He mixed with the young, rich and idle from Europe and the States, rotating between the ski slopes of Gstaad, the yacht clubs of the Riviera, the grouse moors of Scotland, and the glittering parties of London, Paris and New York. The one talent that George had developed to the full was getting money out of his father. For some reason, Bernard Gradley paid up for George’s extravagances with a freedom none of the others enjoyed. The others put it down to their physical similarity: the same heavy build, the same ginger hair and piggy eyes. George himself didn’t bother to question his father’s generosity. He just took the money, endured the criticism, and took off for the next party.

‘Can’t we get the will overturned or something?’ he added. ‘I mean there must be a law against this kind of thing.’

‘Oh grow up,’ snapped Zack. ‘Of course there isn’t a law against it. It was Dad’s money and he’s allowed to give it to whoever he wants. We can get a lawyer to look at the will, but it’s bound to be watertight. Dad wouldn’t screw up something like that. He was a bastard, but he was a competent bastard.’

Zack scowled, dark and intense, silencing the room. Brilliant, abrasive and arrogant, he had always been the boys’ natural leader, despite George’s three year advantage in age, and Zack’s assessment carried complete authority.

‘At least you’ve got a proper job,’ sulked Matthew.

This was true up to a point. Zack had gone to Oxford to study law, but had grown quickly bored and switched to philosophy. The move had enraged his father. ‘You show me somebody who’s made any money studying the meaning of life and I’ll sell him my business for a tenner,’ he roared, and obstructed Zack at every turn. But Zack could be as stubborn as his father and, having completed his degree with flying colours, went on to pursue a doctorate in a particularly obscure area of philosophy. Unfortunately, just as he was close to finishing his thesis, some new work published in the United States seemed to overturn the conclusion he was trying to prove, and he abandoned his work in a fit of annoyance.