9: Inheritance

Lyle picked things up where he could, weaving and ducking the flying objects. This is Marsh Witches of the Godless Florin, Chapter Nine.

Photo by ahmet hamdi on Unsplash

Recap: We buried my dad and I witnessed Jocasta stealing tears. In his local pub, my dad’s friends made me feel like family but reminded me of how everyone adores Jocasta. I drank for a few days, and now for the will.

Prologue, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35

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28th December 1992

Monday arrived upbeat and ugly, sweeping the weekend to the corners. I pressed my eyelids shut and rolled over, pulling the duvet into my neck. Jocasta blocked the morning light.

“Get up. It’s nine thirty. Filby will be here any minute.”

I opened one eye.

“Huh?”

“It’s nine thirty. Filby will…”

“Oh, the solicitor. Shit. Why didn’t you wake me earlier?”

Jocasta pulled the covers off me with a violent whoosh.

“I’m not your maid. And it’s utterly disgusting in here!”

“What the hell?”

“I have no sympathy,” she said as she snatched clothes from the floor and slung them at me. “You’ve done this to yourself. When will this extended adolescence end, Cassiopeia? When?” She sighed wearily and said, “never, if your father is anything to go by.”

I hugged my bare legs to my chest and shivered. She perched on the bed next to me. Too close. Too kind.

“Cassiopeia,” she said, trying to tuck a tuft of my bed hair behind my ear. “I just hate to see you wasting your life away like this.”

I shrugged her off.

She said, “I am trying to love you but you don’t make it easy.”

“I’m sorry it’s such a chore for you.”

She pulled away from me in disgust, covering her nose.

“Oh my god, you smell like a sewer.”

I dragged the covers over my legs, retreating back into the warmth. Not a single bone in my body had what was needed to rise and behave like a decent human being. She was at the door when I called after her.

“Wait a minute, please.”

She turned, intrigued by my unusually needy tone. I hated myself for asking but the hangover was climbing up my throat.

“If you have a…. potion … or whatever,” I said, “I would appreciate it. Just something to wake me up and get me through this thing.”

I regretted it, instantly. She appeared to consider it for a moment, looking up, as if in thought, shaking her long hair down her back. Then she regarded me with cold precision.

“I’m sorry, but I’m not a drug dealer, Cassiopeia. Besides, if I gave you the cure, you wouldn’t learn the lesson, would you? And I love you too much to steal that from you.”

She closed the door behind her. Bitch.

I managed to brush my teeth, splash my puffy face, and get dressed. I snuck down the back stairs to reach the warm kitchen where Eve, monosyllabic but efficient, had painkillers and coffee for me. I could credit it to her witchy instinct but with me it’s a fair bet. When I finally appeared in the upper room, the meeting was underway.

Jocasta made a show of looking at my bare feet and then at the coffee.

“Would you like tea darling?” she asked before quickly adding, “Oh, you’ve taken the time to go downstairs to get yourself a drink. Well done you.”

I ignored her and sat on the velvet Knowle settee next to Filby, folding one leg underneath myself, focusing on not spilling my drink. Filby acknowledged me briefly and returned to counting a pile of documents on his lap. He checked his briefcase for a pen and then found it in his blazer pocket. Jocasta sat opposite, watching him. Lyle poured the tea and passed Filby a delicate teacup and saucer, adorned with hares frolicking in barley.

Flustered by the intrusion of the tea on his task he looked around as if he might just tip it in his briefcase for expediency, but he set the cup down on the table. Each of us got a copy of the will. Jocasta immediately began reading hers. Filby cleared his throat.

“Er, right, before you look, Jocasta, allow me to explain and then we can go into the detail.”

“Absolutely,” she smiled, looking up.

Filby began.

“Now, as you know we are here to discuss this, the last will and testament of Charles William Crowe: your father, Cassiopeia and your partner, Jocasta.”

“Partner?” she laughed. “Don’t be so officious. My husband.”

“Well,” he tilted his head to one side.

She stiffened.

“We were married Richard. And that’s the end of it. In the eyes of the whole village who came to watch the ceremony.”

“On the beach,” I said into my coffee.

Lyle said, “Perhaps you should continue, Filby.”

“Yes. We’re here to discuss Charlie’s will. Now, there was a will, which I’m sure you discussed with Charlie, Jocasta …”

“Was? What do you mean was? What’s was?”

Filby persisted, calm and steady.

“It was fairly straight forward, that will. However, last year on er…,” he flipped the first page back to check the date, “the fourth of March, 1991, Charlie changed his will. So, some of this,” he prodded papers with his fingertips, “may be new information for you, Jocasta. And for you Cassiopeia.”

I wished he would stop saying my name.

“Firstly, the executor of the will is no longer Lyle.”

Jocasta straightened her back and looked at Lyle and then at Filby.

“What? Why not?”

“I can’t tell you that Jocasta.”

“You will tell me.”

I pulled my other leg up to the sofa.

“I’m sorry,” Filby said, “it’s not that I won’t tell you, I can’t tell you. I don’t know why Charlie changed his will, but he did.”

Jocasta pouted and jutted out her chin. Filby went on.

“The executor of this will is Steven Parker -”

“Oh, you’re joking!”

“…Riesling.”

“That oaf. I can’t work with that man. He’s an odious creature. I’d rather just deal directly with you Richard. It’s intolerable. Why would Charlie make it more complicated than it needs to be?”

Filby looked down at the document and waited for her to stop talking.

He continued, “Okay now, in the event of his death, Charlie leaves, sorry.. left, his estate - The Florin, Pipit’s Shack, one hundred acres of pasture, eight hundred and forty-two acres of marsh land, his collection of occult antiquities. Specifically mentioned are: The Lachrymorium, The Storium, Malleus ….”

“Right, right, right. We understand what ‘estate’ means,” snapped Jocasta.

“Yes, well he left all of it to his sole trustee.”

Filby looked back at Jocasta and awaited her reaction. She laughed.

“What’s this cloak and dagger act Richard, it doesn’t suit you.”

The blood in my left leg was leaving and I needed to move but even breathing felt loud. I wiggled my toes and watched Filby. He followed his finger halfway down the page and read aloud.

“I revoke all previous wills etcetera, etcetera… I give all my estate, wherever situated to my trustee with full power at their discretion to …”

“GET TO THE POINT!”

He looked up and said, “Jocasta. It’s Cassiopeia. Cassiopeia’s the sole trustee.”

Nobody spoke. I listened for the echo of what had just happened but couldn’t hear it. I looked at Filby, at Jocasta, to Lyle and back to Jocasta. Red blotches were spreading across her jaw and up into her cheeks, but she was smiling, broadly and brightly at Filby.

“Absolutely not,” she said, “That’s… it’s not what he wanted… No that’s all …. wrong. I’m his wife. I happen to know for a fact that I get everything.”

Filby said nothing. Lyle observed his cup of tea intently.

“I’m his WIFE!”

“I’m sorry Jocasta but not in the eyes of the law.”

“We were married for twenty-two years!”

“A marriage certificate does not exist. You were not married legally.”

Pins and needles urged me to get up, but the immense gravity held me down. I searched the coffee table as if I might paddle away on it. The sides of Jocasta’s mouth were turning down and she looked at the will and slowly whispered through her teeth, “You … pickled … BASTARD!”

She threw the will into the fire and thundered from the room.

Lyle placed his cup and saucer on the table carefully and said, “Would you please excuse me?”

He stood and went out after Jocasta, leaving only the sound of flames licking paper. I inhaled as if for the first time in minutes.

“Shit,” I said.

“Indeed,” said Filby.

In the milliseconds before an explosion people often report dead silence. I don’t know if there is a word for that phenomenon, but it’s like the quiet that precedes Jocasta’s most violent rages.

After Filby’s swift exit I sat back down on the settee and listened to her muffled rant, safely contained by the slammed kitchen door, as if calculating its distance like thunder. And then it was no longer muffled but open and free, released into the hall and soon it was rolling through The Florin, gathering force. A rage like this would be painful, I thought.

She punctuated her words with a stamp up each step and I was frozen to my seat.

“I. Won’t. Be. Treated. Like. This.”

She summited the stairs, breathless, seething, looking at me with pure hatred. Eve and Netty were close behind, with their heads down.

“You,” she snarled, marching at me to the beat of her own attack, “you’re just like him. Ungrateful. Selfish. A waste of air.”

She loomed over me now, lips curled, stabbing her pointy finger to within an inch of my nose. I did not flinch or blink, as if it was all happening to someone else.

“And if yooooou think that I’m going to let you … you little wanker … little … addict … destroy everything that I have worked for, then you’re wrong. Wrong!”

I looked away to escape the spit that was landing on my face, that was shining on her chin.

“LOOK AT ME!”

I slowly turned my head back towards her, knowing that my only option was to take what was coming. She balled her fists and landed them one after another on my chest, barking at me as she did, forcing me back into the cushions.

“How dare you do this to me? How dare you?” she cried.

I pulled myself into a ball, but she started on my head, slapping and punching. And then it stopped.

Lyle pulled her back and away from me.

“Jocasta, this is not the answer.”

Netty pleaded with her, “Oh dear, oh dear Jocasta. Be a good girl. Calm down now, please.”

“Get the fuck off me!”

Lyle stood back and held his hands up. She turned back to me again and spoke manically, her voice high and excitable.

“You want to get your grubby hands on the Storium. Write yourself some drugs. An easy life. You think it’s yours now, do you? All this? Is that what you and your twat of a father cooked up?”

In long heavy strides, she went to the cabinets, her chiffon gown lifting behind her, and tried to open one of the doors but it was locked. She ran to the desk and picked up the paper weight and threw it full pelt at the fine glass.

“No!” I shouted. “Stop it. Stop it.”

“This?” Jocasta pushed her hand into the casing, catching her wrist on a shard of glass, “Is this yours now?”

She picked up an onyx cross and hurled it at me. I crouched into the rug.

“And this!?”

A skull this time which smashed against the stone fire mantel. Then a book. And another. Lyle picked things up where he could, weaving and ducking the flying objects. Eve and Netty pleaded with her to stop, to calm down.

“That’s enough now Jocasta,” said Eve.

“Oh Jocasta no. Cassy’s a good gal aren’t you Cass.”

I stood slowly, looking to Netty who was pleading with me to fix everything.

“In’t it Cass. Tell your mum. This is her home and nothin’ can change that. Tell ‘er Lyle.”

Lyle remained silent. Jocasta picked something up and screamed as she launched it at me. A copper scrying bowl. It made contact with the side of my forehead and both my hands shot up to feel the damage. I looked at my bloodied fingers and then at Jocasta who stood panting and snorting.

I heard myself shouting, “You need to be committed!” And I marched at her, triggering Eve and Netty to close around their little sister who fell to the floor and wailed.

But I continued past the pile of sisters, as Eve said, “For pity’s sake, Jocasta, you’re bleedin’” and Netty said “There, there, this is silly. You’ve got yourself in a terrible state.”

I slammed my bedroom door and ran to the bathroom. The bleeding stopped quickly but left large rust spots on the white cotton towel I had picked up to clean it. I held the bloodied corner under the tap and scrubbed quickly, ensuring all the blood had gone and the cotton was white again. I hung it on the door and then shouted at myself.

“What the hell am I doing?”

Erasing the evidence. Pretending everything is fine.

We didn’t see.

We don’t know.

We won’t mention.

Crowe family rules.

I fell to the floor and angry tears overflowed. Tears that cast me back to being five years old.

Salty sobs shook my tiny frame, and I buried my head in my knees which brought Eve down to hers, folded to me on the floor.

“Shh shh shh now. Your mum don’t mean it. She’s just tired. Off to bed with you and in the morning I’ll make us bacon and eggs. How’s that sound then?”

But I couldn’t sleep. I watched the thin line of light beneath my door, hoping to see a shadow. Hoping it was my dad. But he did not come. After a while I was listening to something I had never heard before – enchanting, magical and soothing. An orchestra. I lowered my small feet to the cold floorboards and crept out to the upper room to peer down through the balustrades of the gallery. Where just moments ago, Jocasta had been growling and spitting, encased in my dad’s arms as he begged her to calm down, there was now a ring of seated musicians, dressed in black and white, eyes on their music stands, bows moving fluidly. The sound was full, warm, reedy, and deep.

And at the centre of it all my parents - entwined and waltzing like two figurines in a music box. Bassoons and trombones beat out the rhythm, one two three, one two three, and celli and violins swelled and swayed, carrying my parents as one, round and round the room in the glow of dripping candles. It was so real, and so loud - louder than any dream. They stepped and twirled to the music as it rolled over them and crashed into the painted ceilings.

I remember how I squatted in the balustrade spindles with my mouth agog and sniffed back my insignificance. But most of all I remember how Jocasta’s giggles didn’t stop when she spotted me.

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Prologue, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35