Héritage
A short story inspired by the photography of Tamsin Jardinier
The sky is heavy this morning. Rain-laden clouds clutch at the brattishing with the desperation of a drowning man but refuse to give up their burden. The château squats beneath them, brooding. Weeds litter the box-bordered drive, the gravel sun-bleached and weary.
In spite of the weather, daylight pours into the entrance hall through sky-high windows. It pools on the terracotta tiles: polished to a high sheen, history glossed over by a thousand eggshelled footsteps. It is many years since any of those footsteps belonged to you. There is, of course, no fire in the hearth, though it would be welcome in the chill. A small pile of leaves and twigs has spilled over from the grate onto the floor. Something feathered is rotting in the void.
A pair of three-pronged coat stands flank the windows, long-emptied, the memory of a peaked cap and peacoat so tangible you can almost smell the damp wool.
There is no furniture left in the drawing room, the floorboards hold only the scars of what had been. Hundreds of years of exquisite craftsmanship, gone. The heels of your boots send echoes to the ceiling, where hangs, miraculously, five gold- and crystal-tiers of chandelier. A cloud shifts, allowing the dusty crystal drops to cast a mute rainbow onto the peeling yellow wallpaper, only a moment and then lost to the gathering gloom. Its grandstanding is reflected in the enormous gilt mirror, topped with feathers and cherubim, the only thing in the room as obnoxious save, perhaps, the brown marble mantlepiece.
In the corner, a huge painting is propped lopsidedly against the wall. The paper above is discoloured, or maybe ‘well-coloured’ would be more apt: a rectangle of rich yolk against dirty sand. The painting’s subject is quite hideous: mottle-nosed and corpulent, enveloping the whole room in his disdain. Nobody liked him, even in your time. You remember your brothers locking you in with him once: his eyes following you round the room as you tried every door, their poorly shushed laughter audible through the heavy oak. Clearly, this ill opinion has held strong, as evidenced by his present abandonment. Why go to the trouble of lifting his huge carcass from the wall only to leave him to suffer the indignity of a floor-based eternity? Spite, perhaps? Maybe he was just too much to carry.
The library and dining room have fared little better. The entire ground floor, it seems, has been cleared of anything of value. Only your father’s beloved black leather sofa – hideous, you suspect, even in the eighties of its origin – has been left untouched. Its button-back glares out at you like a row of disappointed eyes. One of the cushions has been tipped off onto the floor and you dutifully return it to its position. The sofa’s contempt remains unchanged.
The rear passage shows some more signs of life. An octagonal table is littered with a mismatched collection of audio tapes, charging cables, a tub of linseed oil and a trayful of homeless bolts and screws. It sits in hopeless anticipation, four mismatched chairs angled in an invitation that won’t be returned. The oak cupboards have been emptied, of course, and the sideboard too. She left the curtains though, their floral optimism doing little now to cheer the gloomy space.
The door from the rear porch is locked, the dim space cluttered. More blown-in leaves, a couple of cartwheels, some broken bits of garden furniture. An old broom has fallen across the floor and a single wellington boot leans against a can of lawnmower fuel that looks like it’s been there since the 1950s.
A rustle from the fireplace in the hall stops your heart. The feathered thing, not rotting in fact? Or something else sharing the space you thought was your own? You swallow, take a tentative step toward the sound. Another rustle. A plop, then another. Rain. The clouds, exhausted, finally abandoning their load onto the château ’s expansive slate-tiled roof.
Upstairs, the raindrops drumroll on the rooflight, and memories flood your senses. Apart from the dust sheet over the bed, your mother’s room looks as though she has just stepped away. You can see her in front of the armoire in painting smock and sandals, the furrow in her brow deepened by the question of selecting a more appropriate outfit for dinner. The fresh bouquet of her perfume calls to you from beneath the mustiness and mothballs.
Another ghastly marble fireplace is softened here with her paintings and photographs. A family shot: you and your brothers pose hugging on a beach in black and white. A beautiful day, sun-warmed and salt-tanged. That night, you ate oysters with bread toasted over a campfire. It was the last time your mother made it to the beach.
The dressing table is shrouded in dust. Circles of sparser coverage belie the pill bottles in the wastepaper basket below. The drawer is tight when you try it, ungiving. After some persistent persuasion, it surrenders with a sigh. It is empty, save for the stub of a kohl pencil that rolls forward and clacks against the drawer front with the momentum of opening. It feels almost warm in your hand when you hold it, at home.
Across the landing, a room that was never truly yours still looks out onto the courtyard. Ivy feathers the window frame, imprisoning the robin’s-egg shutters. In the yard below, a toppled barrow missing its wheel is propped up against a second, filling with rain. You watch as the water level rises. It creeps up and up, slowly towards the rim, where it pauses for a moment, bracing itself. You hold your breath as it bursts over the side, rushing to join the rest of the rainfall snaking its way around the cobblestones towards the drain at the centre of the courtyard.
The quilt on the wrought iron bedframe rips at your gut. Its Beatrix Potter patches are as familiar to you as family: Jemima, Peter, Jeremy, Mrs. Tiggywinkle. You perch on the edge of the bed and pick at the quilt’s seam, your fingers quickly finding the loose stitches in the bottom corner and, tucked inside the feathery wadding, a little wooden token, its perished elastic cords crumbling at your touch. You stroke the carved pattern as you turn it over in your hands: on one side a bird in flight, on the other an empty cage.
You can’t bring yourself to enter your father’s room. You can see from the doorway that little more than the bedframe and a bitter aura remain. She will have made certain to leave nothing of his behind.
Next door, his study is a different story. The floor-to-ceiling bookcases are unrecognisable. Books stacked sideways in jumbled piles, mounds of envelopes and stationery, a rummage sale of printer toners in every colour and brand. A far cry from the regimented order your father always insisted upon. In the centre of the room huddle a dozen computer monitors and towers with hard drives forcibly removed. The filing cabinet is empty, its yawning drawers housing only a couple of discarded card files and some paperclips. Every identifiable document, any tie to the man he was, has been indiscriminately expunged. You reflect that this level of diligence hints at more forethought than you’d generally give her credit for.
Your mother’s studio, like her bedroom, is undisturbed. Paint-covered tumblers hold brushes and palette knives of every size and shape. The tribal rug on the floor is threadbare, fraying at the edges. On top, a three-legged stool is so caked in paint that its original wood finish is long lost. Crowding the felt-topped card table: a stack of sketchbooks, old coffee tins full of pencils, dark bottles of turpentine. A tray of chalk pastels and squeezed-out oil paints balances precariously close to the edge. Underneath, a wicker crate holds a stash of unused canvases, still wrapped.
The wardrobe in the corner was specially adapted to house her supplies. You remember your father out in the courtyard, cutting the shelves by hand, the sawdust clouding around him and settling into the gaps between the stones. The original bar across the top is still visible behind the baskets and tins, but it’s not the contents of the wardrobe that you’re interested in. You pull the stool over and, awkwardly centring your balance from hands to knees to feet, climb up to grope around in the thick pool of dust on its top. Cool metal brushes your fingertips and you lift down your treasure. The forbidden tin.
The pattern has been further eroded since you saw it last, but there are still flashes of bright kingfisher blue and the faded outline of the children dancing across its lid. The hinges are so bent out of shape, you are just beginning to wonder if you will ever be able to open it when it gives, catching the edge of your thumb in the process. A raised red ridge curves around your knuckle but no blood has been drawn. Inevitably, the tin’s cache is long gone, save a few loose rolling papers and a matchbook from the Chat Noir café in town. You drop in the eyeliner and the wooden thaumatrope and carefully close the lid.
All around you, your mother’s paintings burst with colour and life. Each wall presents a different vista. Bright, fantastic landscapes seen through unburdened, curious eyes. An unfinished piece rests on the easel by the window: vivid swirls of blue and silver churning against a background of Mars Black. The spindly carcass of a tipule hangs from a web on its corner.
This, then, is your inheritance, or what’s left of it. Too personal to be taken with the rest of the valuables: each painting a fragment of the woman she worked so ardently to forget. You gather them up, every piece, bundle them carefully in the Beatrix Potter quilt along with the photograph from the beach. There is nothing else of value for you here now, you are quite certain.
The rain has stopped, though you didn’t notice it leaving. Damp sunlight struggles through the roof lantern and trickles down the sweeping staircase.
…
On your way out, you look defiantly ahead as you haul the heavy door closed behind you. Swinging the quilt bundle over your shoulder, you tuck the kingfisher tin safely under the other and begin to pick your way down the slippery steps. Muddy gravel clutches at your boots as you trudge down the drive, but the sun is beginning to wrap its warmth around your shoulders.
When you reach the iron gates at the road, you turn to take in the château one last time. The sun is properly breaking through the clouds now, sending shafts of light between the château ’s chimney pots.
The flames have reached the first floor. You watch them dance behind the windows in your father’s study before the glass is blown out by the force of the printer toners igniting.
The gates are cold and slippery as you secure them with the heavy chain and padlock, but the key offers little resistance as you turn it.
You turn back to the road and, hurling the key back over the wall behind you, begin your descent into the village below.
The photos that inspired this story
