Bia's War (37 page)

BOOK: Bia's War

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After listing all of this
property, Mr Vine paused, presumably to give Victoria a little time
to assimilate what he had said. He was surprised that Victoria
didn’t seem overawed by the notion that she was now a woman of
property, in fact, she was remarkably calm, but he gained a little
insight into her attitude when she began questioning him.

“I won’t be able to have control
over any property until I’m twenty-one, will I?” she asked. “If
this is to be kept from my parents, who will have that control
until I come of age?”

“That’s correct, Victoria,” Mr
Vine answered. “Your grandmother has made provision for that. In
fact, I and the manager of the Yorkshire Penny Bank are your
trustees until you reach the age of twenty-one. When you do, sole
control passes to you and you may do with the whole legacy what you
will. Mrs Lymer was confident that you are sensible and intelligent
enough to be able to manage your own financial affairs now, but the
law demands that at least one adult must oversee them. You need
have no concerns about access to any money if you are in need of
it, neither I nor Mr Young (the bank manager) will refuse any
reasonable request for funds at any time.”

“I won’t need any money until I
go to college.” Victoria was adamant. I don’t need to buy anything
and I presume that my parents will continue to keep me as they
don’t know what I have been bequeathed. I do get paid when I work
in the shop and I’ve never needed any more than that. Will you and
Mr Young deal with the day to day running of the shops and the
houses?”

“We will be the contacts for the
lettings firm who rent out the houses you own and the two shops
both have a manager in who will come to Mr Young and I if there are
any problems and we should be able to sort them out. You needn’t
worry that any of the businesses will fail through our incompetence
until you can take over. We have both had dealings like these
before and have proved ourselves reasonably capable.”

Victoria smiled at the thought
she would even dare question what her trustees were doing. She was
still trying to come to terms with what Mr Vine had just told her,
but one thought had sprung to mind immediately.

“You said that other goods had
been left for the six children of Granddad Sam’s two marriages. Is
that money? And what about the Queen Street shop? What is going to
happen to that?”

Mr Vine smiled.

“You needn’t worry about your
parents or your aunts and uncle. Mrs Lymer sold off some of the
property at the beginning of last year. That money was invested and
will be shared amongst the six children equally. Part of your
parents’ share includes the shop on Queen Street, so they will not
be destitute or homeless. All they will have to do is to continue
as they are at the moment, although they will be well within their
rights to sell the shop if they so wish. It is entirely up to them.
Now, I will be making an appointment for your parents and the other
five beneficiaries to come and listen to the Will. It states within
it that Mrs Lymer has left her jewellery to you, although it puts
no value on the collection. It does not mention the other two shops
or the house portfolio, so it will be left entirely up to you as to
how much you tell them. Rest assured, I will not let it be known
how much you are worth. That’s entirely your own business.”

Mr Vine seemed to have come to
the end of what he wanted to say and Victoria was feeling a need to
be on her own, to give herself chance to assimilate the idea of
being a rich woman. She would keep Nana Lymer’s council and not
tell anyone about her legacy, although she couldn’t wait to see
Nana’s collection of jewellery and precious stones. She took her
leave from Mr Vine feeling as though her brain had been pummelled
by a boxer and that she needed some space and time to assimilate
the information she had received. She was walking through reception
without seeing Miss Talbot until that lady placed herself in the
middle of Victoria’s path to the door.

“Got what you wanted then? Has
he told you about it all? Lucky little tyke aren’t you?” Miss
Talbot was whispering so that Mr Vine wouldn’t hear but the menace
and poison in her voice brought Victoria to a dead stop in front of
her. In a flash of insight, she realised what was wrong with the
woman.

“Envy doesn’t suit you, Miss
Talbot,” she said. “And it’s a wasted emotion because nothing comes
of it.”

Miss Talbot stepped closer to
Victoria until she could feel her hot angry breath on her cheek.
Luckily, Mr Vine chose that moment to open his office door and Miss
Talbot reacted immediately.

“You’ll need to be wrapped up to
walk home.” She said. “It’s starting to snow out there.” She
stepped away from Victoria and seated herself at her desk; the only
indication of her temper left showing was the red highlight on each
cheek. Victoria repeated her farewells to Mr Vine and then left the
office, shaking slightly with reaction to the raw emotion shown by
Miss Talbot. She wondered how many people would be as jealous of
her good fortune as Miss Talbot was, but decided that she would
just have to learn to ignore it. She would have to grow a hard
shell to protect herself from such envy, but she would also make
sure that she didn’t flaunt her wealth in front of all and sundry.
That was another tip that she had learnt from Nana Lymer.

Despite this resolve, the bitter
hatred emanating from Miss Talbot had unsettled Victoria and she
really didn’t want to have to go straight back to the shop and have
to face her mother with the knowledge that she now carried. She
needed to come to terms with it and she needed peace and
tranquillity to be able to do that despite the fact that it had
started to snow while she had been in Mr Vine’s office. Pulling her
woolly hat down onto her head, she turned left towards the docks as
she exited Mr Vine’s office, instead of turning right for home.
There were very few people about as most would still be at work and
those who weren’t had completed their shopping and gone home before
the weather turned. The snow came down more quickly as Victoria
made her way to the end of Station Road and, by the time she
crossed the bridge over the railway line, she was having difficulty
in seeing the tracks below her.

The storm was coming in from the
sea and looking at the far side of the railway line was like
watching a television screen that had lost its aerial, everything
was indistinct and shapeless. Only the sheds which lined the
entrance to the docks were visible due to their size, but Victoria
ploughed on regardless. The wind had risen and the snowflakes were
now so large that they hurt as they hit her face. She screwed up
her nose and tried to settle the bottom of her chin into her coat
to give herself some protection, but she still kept on striding
towards the docks.

When she reached the dockside,
she stopped and stared out at the complete whiteout which was all
that she could see. She had to imagine the wharves and the
warehouses and, beyond everything, the sea which had brought the
Hun ships to the coastline of this quiet part of the country. It
crossed her mind that it must have been just such a stormy night as
this when Nana Lymer and Sam had searched for Simon and William and
she pitied them from the bottom of her heart. The tears she had
been holding back all day welled up and poured down her face as she
stared at the white shifting wall of snow in front of her and felt
the cold eat through to her bones. She was painfully aware that her
grandmother had probably stood on exactly the same spot where she
was now standing and taken in the vision of the cruel sea as it
crashed and boiled in front of her. Her grief washed over her again
and she shuddered in the wind as the cold seemed to be eating at
her bones.

Suddenly, her arm was grabbed
and a man spun her round away from the edge of the dock.

“Don’t do it, lass,” he shouted
over the noise of the wind. “It’s no answer and you’ll likely hurt
so many other people.”

Victoria slumped against him as
the shock of his grabbing her made her go weak at the knees and she
very nearly slipped over the side of the dock. The man held onto
her and dragged her back across the railway line to one of the
sheds. Away from the sound of the storm, he lowered his voice and
tried again to persuade her against a suicide bid. Victoria lifted
her hand to try and stem the verbal flow emanating from him, so
that she could reassure him that suicide was definitely not on her
agenda for that day.

“I wasn’t going to jump.”
Victoria said. “I only wanted to know what it was like to look out
to sea in the middle of a snow storm and now that I’ve seen what it
is like I shall go home out of the cold.”

She left her hero sadly shaking
his head as he tried to understand the vagaries of youth and turned
her face towards home, more content because she had managed to
release some of the difficult emotions she had been bound by that
day. As she walked, she decided to write down the whole story of
her grandmother’s life, before she had chance to forget any of the
details and keep it to show any other member of the family who
showed an interest in their ancestor in the future. Simon and Peter
and even William and the pig butcher deserved to have their lives
remembered although she was determined she would describe the
characters of all as fairly as she could. She didn’t want to pass
any judgement at all on any of the characters involved in her
grandmother’s story. Equally, there would be no whitewashing to
hide the truth.

As she struggled against the
stormy weather, she felt even closer to Nana Lymer and her Granddad
Sam, following where they had walked as they searched the town for
Bia’s little son, in weather which must have been very similar to
what Victoria was experiencing that day, although it had been dark
that night right back at the beginning of the century. She felt
very peaceful inside, although as tired as if she had run a
marathon, and wondered if it was true that people go to meet loved
ones after they have died. If it was the case, she sincerely hoped
that Nana was now hand-in-hand with her Sam once more and holding
her son Simon, her family reunited. Hugging this thought and the
secret of her inheritance close inside her, she walked through the
snow towards home. It felt as though she was beginning a new life
and she was excited at the prospects which had opened up in front
her and all thanks to that wonderful old lady she was extremely
proud to be able to call her grandmother.