‘You state the position admirably. That’s exactly how we are situated—you and I both.’
‘I?’ she said, drawing back slightly into her crystalline, black-and-white reserve, and becoming in a breath notably more French. ‘I realise that I come into the picture as a relative, and I do feel natural interest and concern for my great-uncle. But I can’t feel that I have any more positive standing than that in the matter.’
‘You have a very positive standing, my dear young lady,’ said Mr Stanforth patiently, and perhaps a little patronisingly, too, for this was where money entered into the reckoning, and very young concert artists and music teachers with a living to make must surely react to the alluring image. ‘Let us suppose, just for one moment, that we are being over-optimistic, and that Doctor Morris will not reappear, as, of course, we hope and believe he will. If this situation goes on unchanged, then it may become necessary eventually, for legal reasons, to take steps to presume his death. That need not jeopardise his position if he should subsequently emerge from his limbo. But it would, meanwhile, regularise his affairs and ensure proper continuity, proper attention to investments, and so on. In short, Miss Rossignol, I’ve reached the point where I must have your approval and consent for whatever steps I take in protection of his financial affairs. Since your mother’s death you are his only remaining relative, apart from some distant cousins in Canada, several times removed. And Doctor Morris—a remarkable quirk in his otherwise orderly character, I may say—has always stubbornly refused to make a will. There are people,’ said the Norse troll, burning into sudden antagonistic fervour across his cavern-desk, ‘who hypnotise themselves into believing that they are going to live for ever.’ His client’s optimism and appetites, with equal suddenness, burned clear in opposition, and Charlotte had a vision of two principles in headlong collision, and chose to ally herself with her own kinsman, by intuition and once for all. ‘If we do not see him again—for we must take that possibility into account—you are his next of kin and his sole heiress. That is why I need to consult with you over anything I do, from now on, in his name.’
Charlotte had never in her life felt obliged to examine her relationships with anyone. Her mother, once rid of the armour-plated respectability of Maître Henri and his phalanx of parents, brothers and sisters, all devoted to the law, had married a happy-go-lucky literary exile from Leeds, as nearly as possible his opposite, and the half-English, half-French child had been absorbed into their slapdash household with the greatest enthusiasm and affection, and never given time to doubt or worry, surrounded as she was by joyous evidence of her own importance and value. There had never been too much money, but never less than enough. She had no vision of money as an independent power, or a formidable opponent. It was there to be used, insofar as you had it; and when you were short, you worked a little harder, and made good the deficiency. And foreseeing that necessity, you made sure that you knew something which could earn you money at need. It was as simple as that. She did not even know what it meant to adapt oneself to another person’s requirements for the sake of self-interest. All she had, to enable her to visualise Mr Stanforth’s view of her position, was a vivid imagination and a very acute intelligence. They helped her to understand him, and even, regretfully, to sympathise with him.
‘If you’re asking me,’ she said carefully,‘ to come into consultation and share responsibility for whatever decisions we have to make about Great-Uncle Alan’s affairs, of course I will, though I don’t claim to know anything about business and I probably shan’t be much help to you. I can’t even claim to know what he would want done, because I know almost nothing about him. But I don’t at all mind saying what I think I should want done in the circumstances. I don’t think, for instance, that I should want my death assumed and my property disposed of too soon, so we won’t go into that part of the affair just now, if you don’t mind. He’ll probably live to be a hundred, and make a will leaving whatever he’s got to his old college, and I shan’t mind at all. But I quite see that you need someone to come in on a practical issue like what to do about his tenants. I think you should extend the tenancy for another full year, if that’s what they would like. It would ensure the house being taken care of, and the staff maintained, since you say they’re good tenants. And even if Uncle Alan turns up within a month or two, he can hardly complain. It’s his own fault. And the inconvenience will be only slight, he can always take up residence at his college again until their time’s up.’
She made it sound very simple, as young people do; and she hadn’t yet considered the implications for herself, Mr Stanforth reflected cynically, or she would not so blithely dismiss the matter of the inheritance. It was not a fortune, but it was a respectable competence, thanks to royalties, which would continue for years yet, whether the doctor reappeared or remained in limbo. ‘I’m gratified,’ said Mr Stanforth, with only the mildest irony,‘ that your judgement agrees with mine. That is indeed what I had intended suggesting to you, and it disposes of the immediate problem.’
‘If you want me to keep in touch, and be available for consultation, of course I will.’
‘Thank you, that will ease my position considerably. And as you say, all we can do is wait, and continue to expect Doctor Morris to turn up in his own good time. May I ask what your own plans are? Do you intend to stay some time in England?’
‘I’m making my home here,’ she said. ‘I’m taking a teaching job in a new comprehensive school, but that won’t begin until the September term. That’s why I’m trying to fill up the gap with a few concerts, but of course I’m not good enough for the big dates, it will be mostly provincial engagements. I’ll let you have word of all my movements.’
‘That would be most kind and helpful.’
The interview seemed to have reached its natural conclusion. She picked up her handbag, and he rose from behind his desk to take a relieved and ceremonious farewell. But before they had reached the doorway she hesitated and halted.
‘You know what I would like? Could you let me have a list of all the books Uncle Alan’s written? If I’m going to be a stand-in for him, even temporarily, like this, I really need to know more about him, and that seems as good a way as any. They must surely convey something about him.’
Strange, he thought resignedly, she’s not at all interested in how much her kinsman’s worth, only, rather suddenly and rather late, in what he’s like. And at this stage, isn’t that rather an academic consideration? But he said politely: ‘Yes, of course. If you’ll allow me, I’ll have a few of his titles sent round to your hotel. This last one, the text he sent from Istanbul—the publishers took care of the proof-reading, of course—that one I believe I’ve got here. Take it with you, if you’d care to. Though it’s hardly the most riveting of his works. He found Aurae Phiala, it seems, rather an over-rated site in revisiting it.’
There was a large bookcase in the corner of his office, stocked mainly with leather-bound volumes; but the end of the lowest shelf was brightened by the clear colours of a number of paperbacks. He plucked one of them from its place and brought it to her. ‘The Roman Britain Library’, the jacket told her, and in larger print: ‘AURAE PHIALA’, and Alan Morris’s name, with a comet’s-tail of letters after it.