The Emerald Valley (23 page)

It was an attempt at dusty-dry humour, but Amy was fired up now by outrage. Oh, it hadn't taken long, had it, for the vultures to move in? First Ralph Porter, then Eddie – even Arthur Clarence in a way, hoping to profit from the fact that she was a woman alone. Well, if they thought they were going to walk roughshod over her, they were very much mistaken.

Amy stood up.

‘Run the business myself? Do you know, Mr Clarence, I might do that. Yes – I think I just might!'

When she emerged from the glass-panelled door at the foot of the stairs and saw Eddie smirking at her from the driver's seat of the Model T Ford, Amy experienced an urge to kick both him and the car. How dare he try to worm his way in like this?

She marched around and got into the passenger seat.

‘Don't start the engine for a moment, Eddie,' she ordered.

‘Why? What's wrong?' He was still smirking.

‘Mr Clarence had the idea that you would be taking over the business. I don't know where he got it from, but I assured him he is quite mistaken.'

As she spoke she saw Eddie's face change. Guilt was written all over it and a dark flush was spreading upwards from his neck.

‘I'm sure I don't know what you're getting at, Amy,' he protested.

‘Don't you? I think you do,' Amy said. ‘And I want to put you straight about my intentions. The business was Llew's baby, Eddie. You know what he put into it as well as I do – and in the end it cost him his life. Well, it's mine now – or it will be when all the legal stuff has been attended to. And I intend to do my best to keep it running – my way – the way Llew would have wanted. Is that clear?'

The dark flush had receded in Eddie's face now and he had turned very pale. For a moment he sat very still, saying nothing. Then his mouth hardened.

‘Supposing it isn't all yours?'

‘What do you mean?'

‘All the business really consists of is a rented yard, a certain amount of goodwill and two lorries. Now if one of those lorries or even part of it was mine …'

‘Don't be absurd!' Amy snapped.

‘Llew died without leaving a will,' Eddie said. ‘His estate will have to be divided up amongst his family.'

Amy was going cold with horror. ‘I don't believe you! I'm his wife!'

‘And I'm his brother.' The smirk was back on Eddie's face. ‘Parents, brothers, sisters, they all get a mention. It's the law.'

‘I don't believe you!' Amy said again. ‘I'm going back to see Mr Clarence!'

Eddie looked at his watch. ‘I can't wait, Amy. If you want a lift home …'

‘I don't, thank you! I wouldn't ride in your car now if it meant I had to walk to Bath and back!' She opened the door, flouncing herself out. ‘I'll fight it, Eddie. Don't worry about that!'

But as she flew up the stairs again she was almost weeping with anxiety. Supposing it was true and all Llew's family were entitled to a share? There were so many of them – brothers and sisters, mother, father …

Dear God in Heaven, there'll be nothing left for me and the children! Amy thought in panic.

At the top of the stairs she was intercepted by Josiah Horler, the aged clerk.

‘Can I see Mr Clarence again, please?' she asked.

‘I'm sorry. Mr Clarence has another client with him.'

‘When they've finished, then?'

‘Mr Clarence has a lunch appointment …'

‘But I wouldn't keep him a moment!' Amy pleaded.

Josiah Horler regarded her disapprovingly. Flighty young girls in the office – what were things coming to?

‘You can wait if you wish, but I can make no promises.'

‘Oh, I'll wait!' Amy assured him. ‘I'll wait if it takes all day!'

The next hour, it seemed to her, was the longest of her life. One client left, another was ushered in and still Amy sat on the hardbacked chair, shaking with horror as the enormity of the situation if there was anything in what Eddie said came home to her.

What will I do? Whatever will I do? Oh, they wouldn't take it, surely – not from his children even, if they'd take it from me? But Eddie would, he's just out for his own ends. And the others? I don't know. They're a funny lot … Oh, whatever would I
do
?

At last she could bear it no longer. Mr Clarence's door was still firmly closed, but she could see Josiah Horler bent over his ledgers and she went up to him.

‘Mr Horler, do you know anything about the rules for when someone dies without making a will?'

He sighed at the interruption, but she saw him swell a little with pride all the same.

‘Well, of course I do. I've been here for the past forty years, Mrs Roberts. What is it you want to know?'

‘How is the estate' – the word stuck in her throat – ‘how is the estate divided up when there's no will? Amongst the family, I mean?'

Josiah's thin lips curved with a smile.

‘The surviving spouse is entitled to the first thousand pounds free of duty, and to a life interest in one half of the remainder. The second half of the remainder is shared by the issue – the children of the deceased – immediately, and the first half of the remainder on the death of their mother. If one of the children pre-deceases the parent …'

‘No – no. I don't want to know about that,' Amy said impatiently. ‘What about the rest of the family? Are they entitled to a share?'

It seemed to her another hour before he answered, but there had never been a more welcome sound than the precise crackling of his voice.

‘Oh no. Not where there is issue …'

She could have kissed him.

‘Oh thank you, Mr Horler – thank you!'

She ran down the stairs and into the sunlight. But as the relief faded into the commonplace, Amy realised just how angry she still was that Eddie should put her through this on top of everything else.

I never liked him, she thought, though I couldn't really be sure why. Now I know. Because beneath that plausible, hail-fellow-well-met is a selfish schemer. He doesn't care who he treads on to get his own way. Well, if he thinks he's going to get the better of me, he's got another thing coming!

Before going home, Amy went to the little flower shop in South Hill and bought a bunch of flowers. Then she walked along the street to the churchyard.

Amongst the others, Llew's grave still looked fresh and new. Amy took the dead flowers out of the small pot she had placed there and refilled it with clean water and the fresh flowers. Then she sat back on her heels.

‘Your Eddie's a rare one,' she said silently, as if holding an unspoken conversation with Llew. ‘But don't worry, he won't get a penny of your money. And he's certainly not going to poke his nose into the business. I won't let him.'

And the voice came back, loud and clear as if he was standing right behind her: ‘That's right. Mind you don't.'

A smile curved Amy's lips and she closed her eyes, feeling for a moment his presence all around her.

When she opened them again she remembered how she had looked back at the grave the day they had buried him. He had seemed to be standing there that day watching her go and pleading with her to do something – at the time she had not known what it was.

Now, suddenly, she was totally sure.

When she had told Arthur Clarence she would run the business herself it had been an automatic angry reaction – a way of hitting out. But it should have been more than that. Keeping on his business was what Llew wanted her to do. How she would do it, heaven alone knew. But at least she was going to try. And doing so would help to fill the empty place that he had left in her life.

Straightening up she blew a kiss at the grave, turned her back and set out for home.

During the next weeks Amy found herself almost too busy to grieve. She had fewer offers of help now – the novelty was beginning to wear off a little – and she found herself rushing madly to look after the children and get all the household chores done each day so that she could return to the task of sorting Llew's papers for anything that had to go to Arthur Clarence. At home, at the bottom of his shirt drawer, she found the papers relating to the house, together with the details of an insurance policy he had taken out on his life; in the shed at the yard that served as an office were copies of contracts, bills, invoices and all the documents relating to the lorries.

‘Everything all right, Mrs Roberts?' Herbie asked when he looked in to see her absolutely swimming in it and she had sighed, running fingers stained with blue paper through her hair.

‘Oh, I don't know, Herbie – it's all double-dutch to me.'

‘Well, ah – I'm sure it would be to me too,' Herbie agreed blandly.

‘If only he had let me help more, I'd understand it better,' she complained.

But Llew hadn't. He had wanted to do it all himself.

As Amy worked, Herbie hung around dutifully until eventually, in exasperation, she told him to go. He was a nice old stick, totally reliable, but she just couldn't work with him looking over her shoulder. Since she had told him she intended keeping the business on and asked him if he would continue to work for her, he seemed to think that part of his duty included mounting a permanent guard at her elbow. She would have to discuss it all with him in time, of course – how they were going to manage, whether they needed to take on another driver or mate, all the questions that Herbie, who had worked with Llew, would be much better qualified to answer than she was. But for the moment the most important thing was getting everything up together so that the grant of administration could be applied for.

The annoying thing was that every time she thought she was getting through it, another batch would arrive. Bills fell merrily through the letter box to lie on the mat alongside letters of condolence. And one day there was a letter addressed to Llew amongst them that struck her as being vaguely familiar. She stared at it for a moment, wondering why it was striking chords in her memory. The pale, creamy-yellow envelope addressed in a rounded, childish hand; the postmark, thick black and smudged but decipherable as Glamorgan … yes, of course, that was it! This was identical to the letter she had picked up from the bedroom floor on the morning of the accident – the letter he had snapped at her over: ‘That's mine!'

She sighed. It was a bill, she supposed – someone else to whom Llew had owed money. That was why he had been so anxious to take the other letter away from her no doubt – he had not wanted her to know just how much money he owed.

But somehow the writing did not look very businesslike – and neither did the envelope, if it came to that …

‘Mammy! Mammy! Maureen's spilled her milk!' The cry from the kitchen was loud and urgent and Amy ran to answer it.

Maureen certainly had spilled her milk – it was everywhere … in the butter, swimming on the bread plate, soaking her dress, her high-chair and the mat. So it was going to be one of those days!

Amy put the letter down on the window sill above the sink and set about clearing up the mess. The washing-up water had gone cold and she boiled the kettle to warm it up again. Then, when she had mopped up the worst of the milk she took Maureen upstairs to change her. When she came back to put the dress to soak before the milk turned sour and began to smell, she found that the letter had blown out of the window sill into the bowl of washing-up water below. Cursing, she pulled it out, but it was completely waterlogged and the ink had blurred into one massive smudge. Whatever it had said was no longer readable. Oh well, if it was a bill, whoever had sent it would just have to do so again, thought Amy. And if it wasn't a bill well, that was too bad. She had no time to worry about it. This morning she had another appointment with Arthur Clarence and if she didn't get a move on she would be late.

Somehow, however – mostly by managing to do two things at the same time – she got there on time, running up the steep stairs to the solicitor's office just as the town clock was striking the hour.

‘Ah – Mrs Roberts!' Josiah Horler had been noticeably nicer to her since she had asked his advice about the intestacy rules. ‘Mr Clarence is expecting you, isn't he?'

‘Yes,' said Amy, a little out of breath, and a few minutes later she was installed in the client's chair facing Arthur Clarence across the big, untidy desk.

‘I think we can safely say everything's tied up now,' he told her with a satisfied smile. ‘And you will be glad to hear that things have balanced out relatively well. If you would care to have a look at this statement …'

He pushed a sheet of paper towards her across the desk and Amy looked at it attentively while he explained in great detail every item listed on it.

The gist of it, she thought, was fairly straightforward, if Arthur Clarence had been able to make anything straight-forward instead of wrapping it up in legal jargon.

The mortgage on the house had been paid off automatically on Llew's death and an insurance he had taken out on his life had covered the cost of the funeral and the outstanding payments on the lorry with a little to spare. By the time all the bills and expenses had been paid, the accounts more or less balanced. But to expect there to be a cash residue was over-optimistic.

‘I hope there are no more bills outstanding,' Arthur Clarence said gravely. ‘The margin is very narrow. Though of course there are assets that could be sold should the need arise.'

He meant the lorries, Amy assumed with a falling of her spirits. And there could be other bills to meet – the letter that had fallen into the washing-up water being one example. And there was still Ralph Porter to pay; she hadn't mentioned him to Arthur Clarence. Pride had prevented her, besides which she didn't consider that debt to be Llew's. It was hers, incurred by her own foolishness, and she had made up her mind she would pay him herself out of whatever money came to her.