Jemma’s Version
It feels as if I’ve been sitting on this sofa for hours, surrounded by the silence of this waiting room. The coffee table is covered with financial newspapers and old issues of the Law Society Gazette which are of no interest whatsoever – not for me, at least.
They squeezed my appointment in between 1 and 2 p.m., even though I explained I would need to be at the theatre in time for the matinee, but there was no alternative in Derek Wharton’s appointment book.
In all honesty, I have no idea what I’m doing here or why they called me in, and the secretary – or assistant, as she specified – refused to explain.
I hope that my mum and dad haven’t been charged by the Border Force officers for those ‘culinary herbs’ they ordered from India.
At last, with a dull click of the handle, the massive doors open and Derek comes out.
“Jemma, please come in,” he welcomes me warmly.
Derek has always looked older than his age and, since he took over from his father, this feature has been even more noticeable: he’s polite, kind and always smiling, but he looks like a forty year old. And his classic cut suits and regimental shirts don’t help matters much.
“I really wish I had time to chat and ask you about yourself and so forth, but the actors will be on stage in less than an hour and I still have to do their make-up. Adriana will sack me if I’m late again, so let’s just do this,” I say, cutting things short.
In addition to having very little time, I’m also quite nervous, so I try to get straight to the point. I want to know why I’m here, given that – thank God – I’ve never needed a solicitor in twenty-five years.
“Of course, you must be curious. In short, I called you in for something regarding your grandmother, Catriona.”
“Derek, I’m not sure if you know, but she died a month ago.”
“I do know. That’s precisely what this is all about. Some time ago, she appointed my father as executor of her will. In the meantime, I took over and acquired all his clients.” He stops to make sure I’m listening. “Your grandmother made a will.”
“I had no idea.” I didn’t see much of her for years and, on the few occasions I did, she left such issues out of our conversations.
“These matters are quite private and often the beneficiaries are not even informed.”
“Beneficiaries?”
With a hint of a smile, Derek pulls a sheet of paper out of a plastic folder.
“For the sake of clarity, your grandmother had disinherited your mother due to the life she had chosen to live.”
“You make it sound as if she were a criminal. She just decided to marry a man she loved, instead of some guy chosen by my grandparents.”
“According to your grandmother, Catriona, she was unworthy of the right of inheritance. She would never leave her possessions ‘to a degenerate daughter and that nobody of her husband.’ Forgive me, those were her actual words.” He shows me the document. “See? She wrote it herself, right here.”
I take a look at her handwriting full of flourishes. “I’ve always thought that grandma was an adorable lady,” I remark sarcastically.
“However, Catriona bequeathed everything to you.”
My jaw drops open in surprise. My chewing gum almost falls out but I catch it right away and resume chewing.
“Me?”
“Yes, she appointed you as heiress of her real and personal property.”
“Personal property? Damn!” I live in a studio flat, where the heck am I going to put all her stuff?
“It is indeed a significant inheritance. I’ll provide a list when you have more time.”
Just thinking about it makes me fidget in my chair as though I were strapped to it.
“I called you in to ask you if you intend to accept or to refuse the inheritance.”
“Do you think I’m crazy? Of course I intend to accept it! Where do I sign?”
His expression is suddenly serious. “There is a specific provision in the will.”
“A provision?”
“Yes, a legal restriction, a conditio sine qua non,” he further explains.
“Cut the bureaucratic talk, please…”
“Your grandmother bound the inheritance to your marriage. You cannot take possession of her property until you get married.”
“What? Like, Now? Right away?”
“No, Jemma. You can take your time.”
“Thank goodness. I’ll have to persuade Alejandro. Actually, we’ve just been dating for almost a month now, but you never know. Love works miracles!” I look at the clock on the fireplace, behind Derek. “I must go, now. The artistic director is bound to be waiting at the dressing room entrance ready to yell at me.” While saying this, I stand up and quickly put on my lilac eco-leather jacket.
“Excuse me, Jemma, does this Alejandro have any title?”
“What do you mean by ‘title’?”
“Your grandmother specified that you’ll be appointed as heiress only if you marry a gentleman of noble descent with a title.”
“I’m sorry?” I exclaim, shocked.
“You’re free to choose your future husband among equals from the United Kingdom…” and then, reading from the will: “… Belgium and Denmark. France is excluded, given that it’s a republic.”
Derek must have gone nuts, or at least that’s what I believe. But for some reason, he looks incredibly serious.
“That means I’ll never be an heiress! Why did you call me in, then? This makes no sense at all.”
“It was my duty to inform you. There was a 50 per cent chance that you would refuse, but you might also have accepted.”
“It’s utterly ridiculous! She might as well have disinherited me along with my mum. Why appoint me anyway? Mum refused an arranged marriage – why would I ever accept one?”
“Your grandmother wanted a different future for you.”
“Well, to hell with her and this obsession with the aristocracy.”
Derek tries to calm me down as he accompanies me towards the door.
“The will remains valid until you formally renounce. Take my advice on this one: think it over when your mind is fresh, tomorrow, or the day after…”
I say goodbye absent mindedly, while thinking about my grandmother. I would never have expected such a ridiculous situation.
When I finally arrive at the theatre, the actors are rather restless, as I’m over an hour late. Actually, after leaving Derek’s office, the Tube train got stuck for no apparent reason in the tunnel between Embankment and Charing Cross. London is totally unforgiving in the rush hour.
I try and sneak in the dressing rooms but Adriana is right there waiting to give me an earful. She’s the artistic director, and even though she’s from Milan, everyone calls her ‘the fake Italian’: she’s got no sense of humour, she never eats and she’s a real workaholic.
“Thank you for bothering to join us. I wish I could let you feel unfit, miserable and incompetent, but the play will start soon and you still have to do the make-up for the whole company. Speed up! And start with Angelique, before she gets a fit of tears and loses her voice.”
“I’m sorry, Adriana.” But she’s already turned her back and is going towards Oliver, the director.
Damn neurotic actors! I did the make-up of all twenty-three of them in record time, the last one just ten seconds before the curtain went up.
I grab my make-up kit and I move behind the scenes, ready for offstage touch ups. After two years in the company with eight performances a week, I’ve literally learned the musical by heart and I know exactly where and when the actors go off stage. The first year was terrific, we had lots of fun, we got on really well and worked amazingly as a team.
Oliver was still married to Medea, the soprano and leading lady of the play; Michael – a wild Scot with a dangerous penchant for alcohol – was the artistic director and Sarah, almost my best friend, was the costume designer.
Then, Michael went into an alcohol induced coma, so Adriana had to replace him permanently. Oliver and Medea divorced. Medea chose another company and her role was taken over by the emotionally unstable Angelique. Oliver fell into depression and, lastly, Sarah decided to try her luck in Broadway and moved to New York.
Unlike all of them, I stayed here, mending costumes in my spare time, with a hysterical leading lady, a ruthless artistic director and a director suffering from panic disorder.
Believing I had gained enough experience, even though I worked in a secondary production, I started giving my cv to the artistic directors of the top West End shows, such as Mamma mia!, Les Misérables and The Phantom of the Opera…
I’m still waiting for an answer, but they promised they would let me know. I don’t think my chances will be affected much by the fact that I answered ‘Who?’ to the question: ‘What do you think of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s style?’
I’m still in touch with Sarah and she told me that, if she finds something good for me in New York, she’ll let me know. I’d give anything to move there. London isn’t my cup of tea, with its fog, its sombreness and the monarchy… well, of course it’s easier for Sarah, as she comes from a rich family and she can afford a high life in the us, whereas I have to watch my pennies here.
I’ve always lived with my parents in a block of flats in Lewisham, an area in South East London which perhaps doesn’t stand among those with the best reputation. If Londoners don’t love going south of the river Thames, well, I live precisely in the extreme south. When I had my first job, I realised that I couldn’t afford to rent a flat closer to the city centre, so my mum and dad agreed with the owner of our flat to tidy up our basement and turn it into a sort of studio flat. It’s not that bad, actually, I even have a window. Yes, maybe sometimes derelicts fall asleep right outside it and there isn’t much sunlight, but at least I have one.
As opposed to mine, Sarah’s place was stunning: a brand new studio – a real one – located in Fulham, where I often stayed for the night, at least until she started her relationship with Derek. Yep, the solicitor. They had been neighbours, as he lived upstairs, and when they became a couple, she moved into his flat, which was way bigger. That’s how I met Derek, who was just a trainee in his father’s office at the time. We weren’t that close, but when Sarah left for New York, he kept on coming to the theatre, maybe by force of habit, and after the performance we often went to the pub for a beer. We also went to the stadium together on Sundays to see Arsenal, but he was later admitted to the Law Society and stopped coming to the matches to avoid being arrested during some stadium fight. Today, I found out he’s also my grandma’s solicitor. It’s a small world, isn’t it?
My grandma. When I’m out in the street, I see lots of lovely grandmas, who take their grandchildren for walks, go pick them up from school and buy them plenty of presents and junk food. Instead, my grandmother Catriona always kept me at a distance. She wasn’t ‘grandma’, she was ‘Catriona’. Full stop.
I didn’t see her much and I spoke to her even less. My mum had me see her the bare minimum, and she didn’t make any effort to stay with me. If there’s a person who spoke to her even less than I did, that is my dad.
From Catriona, I received envelopes at Christmas and on my birthday. They usually contained a parchment card reading a cold ‘Best Wishes’ and a cheque for five hundred pounds. She paid for my braces, causing me to hate her for three years.
The fact that my parents couldn’t afford to pay the dentist’s bill made me so happy. I didn’t care about having crooked teeth if I could keep chewing bubble gum and gummy bears.
But that’s not all. When I was six, Catriona offered to pay the fees for a ‘decent school’, as she called it, and I attended it for four months. Right after Christmas, my parents found out that the board of governors was made up of pro-Thatcher conservatives, so they withdrew me and enrolled me in a state school, to my grandmother’s strong disapproval.
Later on, I met her perhaps once a year, on the occasion of my ‘examination’: how much I had grown up, how healthy I was and if school went well. She was disappointed most of the times and, whenever I opened my mouth, she rolled her eyes.
She lived in one of those monumental houses near Grosvenor Square. If I went there now, I’d probably ring the wrong doorbell, which is more or less what happened on the day of her memorial service. I rang the doorbell of an identical house in the wrong road. Catriona wasn’t that old or ill when she died. One day, all of a sudden, she had a heart attack – or, at least, this is what the maid told me.
I didn’t cry. I tried pretty hard, as I know you’re supposed to do it when your grandmother passes away, but as much as I pictured the saddest possible things in my mind, I wasn’t able to cry a single tear. My mum did cry. She did for days, perhaps because she knew that they would never have a chance to reconcile. She stayed long hours at the service, whereas I left in a hurry because I had to rush to the theatre for the evening performance. Just like I did today.