Marcel Theroux - The Paperchase

‘I love mine,’ I said smugly. ‘Dad, Vivian said he doesn’t like his sweatshirt.’

My father had given Patrick a miner’s helmet with a Davey lamp attached to it. Patrick put it on and mugged at Lydia, mocking the gift.

‘Dad, Uncle Patrick doesn’t like the hat!’ Vivian was thrilled.

‘Give it back, then,’ said my father. ‘You asshole!’ He was smiling. It was the first time I had ever heard him swear. They pretended to wrestle over the hat.

‘Dad, you said —’

‘Come on, give it a rest, Damien,’ my father said. ‘Lighten up.’

I think my lip must have trembled. I was being a tiresome goody-goody, but I was too close to my last fit of tears for me to take the comment in good spirit, and Patrick could see this.

‘Damien’s right,’ he said. ‘A gentleman should never swear or fart.’

‘I stand corrected,’ my father said.

‘Look at the parrot!’ screeched Patrick’s parrot.

Later on, Patrick showed off his toys to us. The board games, some of which he had designed himself, were too grown-up to arouse our interest. But I was captivated by a clockwork train and somehow got it into my head that Patrick had given it to me. My father quickly disabused me of this idea. He pointed out that I didn’t have room in my suitcase. I said I would leave my clothes behind.

‘It’s Patrick’s train,’ my father insisted. ‘And it will remain Patrick’s train.’ Patrick was sheepishly silent. Something he had said had sparked off the whole scene.

I threw a tantrum and was exiled to the summer kitchen until it was time to leave.

The rental car wouldn’t start, so Patrick drove us back to Westwich in his car — a white Triumph convertible with an eight-track tape player and an exhaust loud enough to announce the Last Judgement. He played Latin American pipe music at the highest possible volume to compete with the borborygmus of the engine.

I don’t remember much else about the trip. I was mortified not to keep the train, but in its place I had the inkling of something else: the distinct feeling that I was Patrick’s favourite; a feeling that was as small and steady as a pilot light — a feeling that I had begun to recall since I got the news of his death.

MR DIAZ, PATRICK’S LAWYER, stopped by at about eight o’clock. Seeing him, I almost did a double take — he was boss-eyed: exactly as Mr Ricketts was in Patrick’s fragmentary story. In every other way, however, he couldn’t have been more different from a desiccated imperial administrator. He was a courteous man of around forty with olive skin. His jet-black hair was greying at the temples. The distinctive long vowels of his Boston accent sat oddly, I thought, with his suavely Mediterranean appearance. He refused my offer of a cup of Postum with humour. ‘Promised my wife I wouldn’t touch that stuff. I’ll take a glass of water, though.’

He apologised again for the mix-up over the key. ‘I sent one of my paralegals,’ he said. ‘It was the first time she’d been out to the house.’

I told him it wasn’t his fault.

‘I brought you these,’ he said, handing me the keys to Patrick’s car. ‘We brought it back from the high school and disconnected the battery. You shouldn’t have a problem getting it started. If you do, try scraping out the inside of the leads.’

He sipped his water slowly and looked out over the lawn towards the ocean with his one good eye. ‘Nice spot. How long are you planning to stay out here?’

‘At least the summer, possibly longer.’ It was the answer I’d been giving for months, but after one night and breakfast in my new home, it seemed like foolishness. Practical and well dressed, Mr Diaz was a physical reproach to the vagueness of my plans. I missed all the familiar indignities of work and life in London.

‘Mind if I look around?’ said Mr Diaz.

‘By all means.’ I opened the door for him.

As any visitor would be, he was struck by the mechanical banks arrayed on the shelf around the wall of the kitchen. ‘So these are the famous banks.’

‘Famous?’

‘Your uncle itemised them in the inventory. He gave each one a name.’

There must have been fifty of the little machines. Several were in dubious taste: there was a ginger-haired Irishman who snuffled coins off the snout of a pig; a dicky-bowed black waiter who swallowed his penny off his own pink palm and rolled his eyes gratefully.

‘I guess he just wanted to be thorough.’ Mr Diaz seemed to smile to himself. ‘He was quite a character.’

Quite a character. It made Patrick sound endearingly strange, as though he was odd by choice, instead of the victim of his own compulsions. Among the vitamins in the bathroom was a whole pharmacy of antidepressants. Paranoid, lonely, chronically depressed: he was quite a character all right.

I gave Mr Diaz a quick tour. The house charmed him, as it charmed everyone, even though it was becoming obvious to me that living in it was going to be difficult. I was beginning to feel odd about my whole project, and to think that the principal intention behind my uncle’s will had been to found a museum in memory of him and make me its curator. And with Platon in my flat for at least six months, I couldn’t just get back on the plane and go home. Bolder than Mandingo, indeed.

Mr Diaz’s asymmetrical gaze was scanning the spines of the books in the library. It reminded me again of Mr Ricketts and I asked him if he knew what had happened to the files that had been on Patrick’s desk.

‘Box files,’ he said thoughtfully, rounding out the vowels in a jocular imitation of my accent. ‘I’ll have to ask at the office. Weren’t they on the inventory I sent you?’

I told him I had seen nothing since I had heard the news from my father.

‘I sent one to your address in London. I’ll get you another.’ He said I would have to come into his office in Westwich anyway to sign some of the paperwork relating to the will.

‘I meant to ask you something about that,’ I said. ‘Under the terms of the will, I understand I’m supposed to maintain the house as it was during Patrick’s lifetime. Now, I get that in principle. But in practice, can I alter things to make it more habitable? For instance, it needs a new fridge …’

‘Well, I’m afraid this is one of those “How long is a piece of string?” questions,’ said Mr Diaz. ‘I don’t see getting a new refrigerator as problematical, or moving a painting from one wall to another. Let’s say, for the sake of argument, that you wanted to put in a new bathroom. You’d have to persuade the trustees that it doesn’t conflict with the letter or the spirit of your uncle’s directions. Any alterations to the fabric of the house would have to be approved by the trustees.’

‘What if I want to sell the house?’ I said, trying to make it sound as hypothetical as possible.

‘Out of the question. But in the example of the bathroom … I mean, we have a certain latitude in the way we interpret the document. I would have no objections, nor do I think would Rosie Queenan, the trustee appointed by the bank. The only trustee who might object is Mr Blair, the guy from the churchmen’s fund, but I doubt it.’

I wanted to ridicule his careful, legalistic replies. Did the prohibition against altering things mean that I couldn’t throw away the jars of vitamin pills that cluttered the bathroom floor? What about the spider in the water jug, was it protected by the will?

I must have looked anxious, because Mr Diaz felt he had to reassure me. ‘I wouldn’t worry too much about it. I’m here to advise you. Let me do the worrying. You enjoy your break,’ he said.

He meant to be encouraging, but I was disheartened by the implicit assumption that no one would come to the house for longer than a holiday.