Growing Pains Read online

  He had to force himself to lift his eyes to meet Stephen’s, and some of the lights were instantly extinguished in Stephen’s own. “What’s the matter?” he asked, acutely sensitive as always to every small cloud that passed over Richard’s countenance, and immediately concerned.

  Richard gave him a brave and not very successful smile. “Nothing,” he muttered. “Nothing at all. What did they tell you about Graham’s will? You said I’d never guess.”

  Stephen looked anxiously into Richard’s pretty face, still anxious. But he answered, with most of the excitement gone from his voice. “Well… it’s… I don’t know… it’s good news…,” he said, feeling faintly foolish, and somehow guilty.

  Richard gave him a wide, open smile; Stephen never knew what an effort it cost him to make it. “That’s marvellous,” he said, but inside he trembled. He experienced a sudden vertiginous sensation of bottomless nausea, as if a tangled knot of maggots was trying to unravel itself in his stomach.

  Stephen was by now seriously worried. He grabbed Richard by the shoulders and held him at arm’s length, gazing intensely into his light brown eyes. “Richard!” he said, almost shouting. “Please. Please tell me. What’s the matter?”

  Richard stared emptily at him for a few agonised seconds, then suddenly pulled himself free of Stephen’s grip and wept. There was no sound, his shoulders didn’t shake. He simply stood there with tears flowing from his eyes and sliding down his cheeks, his eyes all the time fixed on Stephen’s face, indistinct and fragmented by the fast-flowing sheen of tears.

  “Richard!” cried Stephen in horrified amazement. “RICHARD! What is it? What’s the matter? For Christ’s sake tell me!”

  Richard stood there, tears still sliding astonishing copiously out of his eyes, for a few moments longer. Then he took a couple of paces forward, hurled his arms around Stephen and buried his face in Stephen’s shaggy dusty-blond hair. Stephen could feel him shaking — it was too violent to be mere trembling — all over. He wrapped his arms round him and held him in a fierce bear-hug, managing to reach up to stroke his hair as he held him.

  After quite a long time the violent shivering quietened down, and then stopped completely. Stephen stayed exactly as he was, frightened to move or do or say anything in case it should bring on another fit. As he hadn’t the slightest idea what he had said or done to start the attack off the first time, he didn’t know what to avoid doing or saying this time. He held his beloved friend tightly, wondering frantically in his mind what he could have done. He rocked Richard gently for some time, consciously doing anything he could think of to soothe him. Eventually Richard raised a hand and tentatively stroked the back of his hair. Stephen felt a bolt of relief shoot through him that would have been more appropriate if he’d just reanimated a corpse, he thought.

  He relaxed his hold on Richard for a moment, backed away a few inches, and got a look at Richard’s face. It was flushed, blotchy and stained with tears, but some of the wild, hysterical panic had ebbed out of his eyes, to Stephen’s vast relief. He risked asking a question, still holding Richard loosely. “Can you talk a bit now, sweet?” he said very gently, tensing himself to grab him again if there was another outburst.

  Richard trembled again, just once, and gasped aloud, violently, as if expelling a vast breath of poisoned air from his body. Then his entire face seemed to sag. “Let me sit down, will you,” he said, and his voice sounded as tired as he looked.

  “Of course,” said Stephen.

  Richard went into the living room, walking wearily, as if he had been filleted. Stephen followed him into the big room and sat tentatively down beside him on a sofa, taking care not to touch him, for he had a sudden instinct that it would break the calm that Richard had reached with such apparent difficulty. “Tell me what the matter is,” he said gently. “Please try and tell me. It’s something I’ve done or said, I know that, but please tell me what it is. I don’t know what I can possibly have done to hurt you, but you’ve got to tell me, otherwise I can’t put it right, whatever it is. Tell me, my lovely,” he went on, keeping his voice low and hypnotic, and unthinkingly using Richard’s own favourite endearment.

  Richard looked up at him at the sound of it, and sketched a watery, grisly spectre of his usual bright grin.

  “It was when you said I’d never guess what Graham had done in his will,” he said tremulously, and Stephen could see his lip trembling. “And then… then you said it was good… g-good news…”

  “Yes,” he said, mystified. “But how could that upset you like that? Please tell me. I wouldn’t hurt you, Rich, you of all people. I know I’m not good enough for you, but you’re the best friend I’ve got, and I wouldn’t hurt a… a hair on your head, not for the world. So what have I done?”

  “Well, I could guess,” snuffled Richard. “I can. He’s left you the bloody lot, hasn’t he? That’s why I got upset. I couldn’t help it…” He broke off, and a single giant sob pulsated its way right through him and out of him. Stephen, still groping helplessly for understanding in darkness, did the best thing he could have done: he sat silent and waited.

  “That m..m..means you’ll be rich,” snuffled Richard. “I mean seriously rich.”

  “Eh? Well, I s’pose it may do,” said Stephen. “I dunno how much Graham had, not really. Or how much of it I’ve got. There’s some kind of tax, or death duties or some such. They were waffling about them on the phone. But yes, certainly it means I’ll be pretty decently off. I shan’t have to fuck around looking for some god-awful bottom-of-the-heap job, anyway. But why, for Christ’s sake, did that make you go off into a fit of the vapours like that? Christ, I’d’ve thought you’d be as pleased as a guinea pig with one tail, knowing we’ll have enough cash to blow, do what we like instead of working for a bloody living. I don’t get it.”

  Richard had another attempt at a smile, slightly less damp and correspondingly more successful. “But that’s what set me off like that,” he muttered. Stephen shook his head. “Sorry, sweet,” he said. “I still don’t get it.”

  “Well, I thought you’d be off,” said Richard. “I thought you came back to me because you needed me to help get you over… over Graham… But I didn’t think you’d want to stay with me now you’d got a lot of money. I knew I couldn’t come first with you. I always accepted that. I always knew you’d go off to Graham as soon as he called you; and I could bear it once. But twice… I thought about it all happening over again, and… and I couldn’t bear it. I saw you going off to look for another Graham, and…” He sat back, gazing at Stephen through a fresh film of tears.

  Stephen stared at him, aghast. The impact of what Richard had said hit him so hard that for some moments he literally couldn’t speak. He sat for a while, feeling certain that he was going to be physically sick. Gradually he fought down the waves of nausea, which reminded him horribly of his single experience of sea-sickness. Eventually he regained speech. “Jesus!” he breathed. “You thought I’d do that? You thought I’d do that to you? To you? Jesus Christ, Rich. I said I knew I wasn’t good enough for you, and I’m not. I know that. But there’s a difference between not quite measuring up to somebody else’s standards and being an absolute copper-bottomed bastard. How could you think I’d do such a thing to you? Why, that wouldn’t be just cruel. That’d be bloody treachery.”

  He sat back, breathing hard. After a moment he shifted along the sofa and threw an arm heavily across Richard’s shoulders, which were still heaving spasmodically. “Rich, my dearest,” he said earnestly and very emphatically. “I don’t know how much money I’ve got, and I’ve no idea what I’m going to do with it, but you’d better remember this one thing, or you and I’ll have a little fight. Whatever I do with that money, there’s only one person I intend to do it with, and only one that Graham, bless him, would want me to do it with, and that, my lovely, is you.”

  6

  The building in Chancery Lane was a tall, thin relic of Victorian London, looking uncomfortable and squashed between two
shiny new cubes of glass and steel. The staircase within was narrow, dingy and twisting. They puffed their way as far as the fourth floor and then had a rest. “If it goes up any further we’ll need crampons and an ice pick,” gasped Stephen.

  “Oxygen bottles,” said Richard.

  “A couple of Sherpas,” suggested Stephen.

  “We’ll need the Union Jack to plant at the summit,” said Richard.

  Fortunately they spotted the nameplate of the firm of solicitors they were looking for, and pushed into the tiny reception area, tittering.

  The area was just about large enough for the two of them to lean on the highly polished wooden counter. A busy girl looked up and asked them their business, and a few moments later they were sitting in a surprisingly spacious and airy office, being greeted by one of the sharp operators in person. “Mr Hill,” said Mr Guilfoyle, raising his eyebrows a little as he saw how youthful his new client was. “I’m Stephen Hill,” said Stephen, still a little out of breath, and thankful to drop into the chair to which the solicitor motioned him. Richard drew up another, and they ranged themselves before the enormous desk, looking around them interestedly.

  The office was in remarkable contrast to the building that contained it. It was sparsely furnished with ultra-modern designer furniture, there were several Paul Klees on the wall which, Richard informed Stephen afterwards, were either originals or very high-class reproductions indeed. There was the big desk, which was almost bare except for a large personal computer, a calculator, three telephones, an intercom and a single, thick grey folder. The only other things in the room were a grey metal shredder, another computer terminal on a table on its own, and a large and impregnable-looking safe set deep into a recess in an internal wall. Richard smiled in pleasure at the ascetic room. Stephen glanced about in disappointment: of the dusty leather-bound and gold-blocked legal tomes and yellowing, dog-eared papers bound in red ribbon for which he had been hoping, there was not a sign.

  He turned his attention to Mr Guilfoyle himself, who, after shaking hands with the two of them, was sitting with a polite expression of mild amusement as he studied the two very different reactions to his sanctum.

  “Not what you were expecting, Mr Hill?” he said pleasantly.

  “Nunno,” said Stephen, colouring a little as he realised that his covert survey of the room had not gone unnoticed. “I was expecting — well, law books and old papers and suchlike.”

  Guilfoyle grinned, a youthful, human grin that caught them both by surprise, and brought involuntary grins in response. He was an athletic-looking man in his early thirties, with immaculately groomed dark hair, penetrating blue eyes and a very expensive suit. Stephen found himself wondering if he was a cricketer. “Not today’s style,” went on Guilfoyle in the same pleasant tone. “No quill pens, either, I’m afraid. The law library’s down on the first floor.”

  “You must keep fit working here,” ventured Richard.

  Guilfoyle grinned again. “It keeps me in trim for weekends,” he said.

  “Cricket?” asked Stephen hopefully.

  “Sailing,” said the solicitor with a regretful smile. “And golf — though that’s part of my professional duties, really. Now then,” he went on, deftly turning them to the matter in hand. “First of all, I have to ask — forgive me…” He left the sentence hanging in midair and offered Richard a courteous nod of acknowledgement.

  “I wanted to bring a friend with me,” said Stephen, disconcerted. “He’s got eleven times as much brain as me. I thought he might understand more of what you said than I shall.”

  “All right,” said Guilfoyle. “But I’ll do my best to make it all easily understandable. Before we proceed, I must ask you for some form of identification — I mentioned it when we spoke on the telephone this morning, you’ll recall.”

  Stephen produced his passport from the pocket of his blazer — the boys had discussed the matter and decided that their smart school blazers would be the most appropriate things to wear. Guilfoyle inspected the passport, subjected first the picture inside it and then Stephen’s face to several seconds’ intense scrutiny, then nodded briskly and slid the document back across the desk.

  He opened the grey folder, which, Stephen observed with a further pinprick of regret, was very new and sharply creased. “This is Mr Curtis’s will…”

  * * *

  “… so,” said Guilfoyle smoothly three-quarters of an hour later, “I’ll advance you a reasonable sum to cover your everyday living expenses now. Since you’ve agreed — very sensibly, if I may say so — to allow us and Mr Curtis’s accountants — and Mr Westwood’s before him, as a matter of fact — to continue to manage the estate for you, that concludes our business. Very satisfactorily for all concerned, I think we can say. So, unless you have any further questions…” He waited; but both boys were too stunned by what they had been told to have any thought to spare for questions. They shook their heads, a little dazed. Guilfoyle watched them with an understanding smile. “Good,” he said after a moment, seeing that they had nothing to say. “Well, if you’ll wait here for a moment, I’ll go and arrange a cheque. Would…” He paused, looking thoughtfully at Stephen and calculating swiftly. “Would a thousand be a reasonable sum for the time being? You will, of course, as I said, be able to draw on the estate fairly shortly, but we can advance more if you think it necessary. But…” He pursed his lips and left it at that. Stephen goggled at him, not sure whether he was more dumbfounded by the prospect of having a thousand pounds of his own or at the offer of more, with its implication that a thousand wasn’t enough.

  “Oh!” he said, pulling himself together. “I… er… a thousand will be fine,” he went on. He felt a sudden, almost irrepressible urge to jump up and perform several cartwheels across Guilfoyle’s very expensive carpet, or perhaps, he thought inconsequentially, he might stand on his head.

  He suppressed the urges with an effort, watched with great amusement by Guilfoyle, who was wholly unaccustomed to this kind of response to his professional services, and thoroughly enjoying the contrast with his more usual kinds of client.

  “Yes,” said Stephen, feeling a little more himself after a few moments’ quiet. “A thousand will be wonderful.”

  “Good,” said Guilfoyle. “If you’ll just wait here, I’ll only be a few minutes. And then, if you’d care to, perhaps we might — ah — permit ourselves a small celebration of your good fortune.” He shot a dazzling inch of white cuff and consulted a Patek Philippe wristwatch. “Yes, I think I can spare half an hour. Will you allow me to buy you a drink?”

  Stephen stared at him. “Er… aren’t we… aren’t I… shouldn’t it be me buying you one?” he said in surprise.

  Guilfoyle turned on his way to the door and smiled. “You’re a very wealthy young man, Mr Hill,” he said. “I think you’ll discover that among the benefits that status brings in its wake is the fact that other people, mostly less wealthy than you by some orders of magnitude, are most anxious to spend their money on you, rather than the other way about. I’d only advise you to be very careful which ones you allow to do so.” And with that he disappeared.

  * * *

  An hour later the boys stood gazing at each other, in a state of considerable emotional shock that left them unable to think of anything sensible to say, and more than a little dazed, on the pavement outside the very expensive wine bar to which Guilfoyle had led them. The solicitor had considerately done most of the talking as they sipped a grand cru Burgundy that was wholly wasted on them, had offered a few last bits of advice, presented Stephen with his card and instructed him to telephone at once if he later thought of any questions he wished to ask, congratulated him once more on his good fortune, and returned to his office in a glow of pleasure in his work that came very rarely to a sharp operator such as himself.

  “Golly,” said Richard at last. It summed up perfectly what they were both feeling, and neither felt the need to say more. Then, suddenly, moved by an identical feeling, they both lau
ghed, at first normally, then wildly, uproariously, and finally almost hysterically. Passers-by stared at them in astonishment as they side-stepped them, wondering if they were drunk or escaped from some home for the mentally ill, as people do on seeing anyone laughing aloud in a public place.

  When the fit at last subsided, leaving them doubled up and clutching their sides in pain, they looked at each other and wondered what to do.

  “The first thing I’m going to do,” said Stephen, “is to get a taxi back to the station. Bugger the underground!” This started them off again. When the second attack had subsided, they waved frantically at a passing taxi, and went home.

  * * *

  They had no chance to discuss their startling afternoon on the train home. When they arrived at Euston in their ceremonial taxi the evening exodus of commuters was in full swing, and they watched in dismay as train after train filled to capacity and beyond. Staring at people with their heads pressed at impossible angles against windows, Stephen was struck by a sudden thought. “Hey, Rich,” he yelled at the top of his voice, startling several dozen Evening Standard readers out of their semi-stupor and into freezing, yet furtive, glances of disapproval. Richard, trapped by three fat men and a bevy of secretarial beauty some yards distant, cast him a despairing look. Stephen gestured frantically, and Richard fought his way through the press to his side. “I’ve just realised,” crowed Stephen — though he prudently lowered his voice as he thought about what he was saying. “I’m bloody rich, aren’t I?” he hissed into Richard’s ear. “Let’s go and get first-class tickets.”