A Rather Lovely Inheritance Read Online Free PDF

mistook his bared teeth for a smile, so I was unprepared when he hissed and spat on my arm. His mistress smiled at me with fake benignity.
    “Look! He likes you,” she assured me. I wondered why this animal wasn’t in steerage, drugged into a stupor, or making himself useful by stomping on suitcases to test their strength. Later, when the Monkey Lady was dozing, I asked the bright, brittle blonde flight attendant, who just shook her head, saying, “That’s a legitimate ‘service animal.’ For people who need physical or emotional support.”
    By then everyone else was nodding off, too. Except the monkey. Unlike the adage, he saw but he did not do. Under the circumstances, I thought it unwise to take out the snack I’d grabbed from the fruit bowl in the hotel and shoved into my raincoat. It was probably smashed, and although this flight didn’t serve a meal, who in her right mind would pull out a banana in front of Curious George? I decided to focus on London, and Great-Aunt Penelope’s will.
    I busied myself with my little pen and pad of paper, diagramming the family tree. I’d have to meet some of these people in London.This is what I got:
    I sat back, trying to recall what little I knew about the actual personalities of my English elders from that brief visit to Cornwall so many years ago. Mom’s father, Grandfather Nigel, was still alive back then, and I remember him as a kindly old man who usually disappeared right after breakfast to potter around in the garden. Grandmother Beryl, who normally wore tweeds and a wool alpine hat with a feather in it, donned an old-fashioned wool bathing suit on this occasion and insisted that we all go down to the sea for a plonge . As a child I didn’t see the point of my grandmother’s cheerful hardiness; she seemed so proud of proving how durable she was by doing uncomfortable, difficult things.
    But Grandmother’s sister, Aunt Penelope—she insisted we call her “Aunt” and not “Great-Aunt” because she said the “great” made her feel like a moose head on the wall—well, she was what the ladies of her day called “a live wire,” who simply crackled with energy. She lived in London but spent that summer with Grandmother Beryl. They were both what I considered old ladies, but Aunt Penelope was always slightly subversive. I remember being instantly grateful when she whispered conspiratorially that I didn’t have to plonger into the ice-cold water any deeper than my knees—my lips were already turning purple. She scandalized the adults with whispered gossip from London, about everything from famous English lords, ladies and politicians who were obscure to me, to the fates of her own past beaus. She was frank and theatrical while telling stories, and Grandmother Beryl ate it all up but then disapproved in a provincial way.
    I contemplated the “other side” of the family tree, who were relatives I’d never met. Great-Uncle Roland, the brother of Grandmother Beryl and Great-Aunt Penelope, had died about twenty years ago. His wife was Dorothy, “that dreadful American divorcée,” a blue blood from Philadelphia who seemed to regularly offend her sisters-in-law with her careless, offhanded insults. Dorothy had reportedly spoiled their son, Rollo Jr., especially after his father died, so Junior never did what my mother called “a day of honest work.” Instead, he gambled away most of any money he got hold of, took drugs in a big scary way, got in trouble and hit up his aunts for cash, then vanished for long periods of time until he went broke again.
    The ladies must have been a little afraid of Rollo’s sudden, unannounced appearances when he was desperate for money, so his name itself was always shrouded in some dark and vaguely threatening cloud. When Grandmother Beryl died a few years ago, she’d already sold her house in Cornwall, leaving the money to Mom and Great-Aunt Penelope, who took it upon herself to rescue Rollo Jr., because he owed money, she