Ellipsis

8 The Reading

8 The Reading

Thom is only beginning to recover from the funeral when the reading of the will pops up like an uninvited relative. He doesn’t even remember he has to attend until Aunty Val shakes him awake in his old bed, three days after the funeral, where he has been having nightmares for most of the night. She says they’re leaving in an hour.

He turns on his side and stares at the wall. He sees the faint remains of the treasure map he and Richard drew on the wall the first summer he’d been here. Daniel insisted it was too simplistic and went to draw his own, more complicated and realistic map. Two hours after they finished their hunt, Daniel appeared with a five-page map, complete with cryptic clues. He and Richard could make no sense of it and resorted to mocking him instead.

This is how Thom feels now. Like he is standing in a map, an infinite number of pages long, trying to find somewhere familiar, somewhere he can start from. He can’t help thinking he has lost the solution page to the puzzle that had been Daniel. But as soon as he returns from the solicitors, he is determined to find at least an impression in the wet sand, however small, that will lead him somewhere.

The solicitor is a well-spoken man and all Thom can remember about him is his twitching moustache that nods along to his every word. A desire to laugh jabs at the back of his mouth throughout the reading. Yet Thom is sure that laughing will be inappropriate and it is so quiet in the office that the clock could be arrested for excessive noise. Its only competition is the shuffling of papers on the solicitor’s monster of a desk for five minutes, and the formalities of death, voiced softly by moustache man.

The solicitor, Thom, Richard, Aunty Val and a shrunken prune of a woman, who has yet to identify herself, occupy the room. Aunty Val’s husband left when Richard was two and Daniel not even born, and no one cared to find him. In this room were the people that Daniel wanted to share himself with, or share his possessions with, which were probably just as estranged from him as most of them felt.

After reading the obligatory paragraph, the moustache moves on to awarding prizes, for knowing Daniel, for loving Daniel, for caring he is dead. Yet Thom misses most of the information. He drifts away until he realises the moustache is addressing him.

“And to Mr Thomas Mansen, I leave this key”. The moustache slides a key across the desk, as though he is passing him a bribe. “I hope he finds his gift as thoughtful as I hoped it would be”.

Thom takes the key, weightless in his hand, contradicting his heavy frown lines. Why did the comment about his gift seem loaded? After all, what twenty-four-year-old has a will anyway?

Aunty Val and Richard have passed by, without event. Then focus turns to the prune woman. Her face is a fruit gone bad, folding and collapsing into itself. Her skin is a landscape of rough ground filled with ditches. She stares at the moustache throughout, squinting, holding a handkerchief. Thom doesn’t remember seeing her at the funeral.

“I leave Mrs Mary Tray, the sum of two-hundred pounds, to spend as she pleases”. The moustache has concluded, abruptly. The woman, Mrs Tray, doesn’t flinch or express any emotion. She continues to sit for a further ten seconds, Thom counts, then excuses herself with a graceful wave and hobbles out of the room. The rest of them watch, on the edge of words, silenced by the resolve of the door.

“Thank you for attending the reading”, the moustache says, dismissing them. The three of them, a small fabricated family, help each other up.

The reading of the will means more questions. Thom has a desire to put his hand up, like a schoolchild, and wait for somebody to ask him what he wants. Perhaps that way, someone will have to answer him and he won’t need to think anymore.