Free Legacy by Alan Judd

They’re so totally
different.’
    Charles was still well adrift. ‘Of course they are, I know. Can’t think why I said David.’
    ‘It’s about time you got another girlfriend, isn’t it? So long as she’s not like the Awful Alison. I think we should vet her first.’
    ‘I’m working on one but she’s married, with children.’
    ‘Oh no, Charles,’ said his mother.
    ‘Better that than have your own with the Awful Alison. Imagine.’ Mary shuddered.
    He discovered later from his mother that James was ‘in the City’ and that they had met, twice, when Mary had had friends down.
    ‘Ah, so there were others there.’
    ‘A whole lot of them came down for lunch and you all went for a walk afterwards, leaving me to clear up. Except that you didn’t because you went off to see Alison.’
    He remembered the weekend now. It hadn’t been Alison but another girl he’d never mentioned. He still had no memory of James.
    On the Saturday he cleaned and tinkered with the Rover, then resumed his slow sorting of his father’s shed, which had gradually and unspokenly become his own. Hidden behind a hedge at the
back of the double garage, the shed smelt of wood, engine oil and musty overalls and was crammed with tools, spanners, screwdrivers, awls, hammers, vices, clamps, pumps, hoses, braces, brushes,
drills, oils, solvents, fuel cans and old batteries. Whiskey flake pipe tobacco tins contained screws, nails, nuts, jubilee clips, car lightbulbs and anything else that would fit. Many of the
carpentry tools were old enough to have value but Charles would no more have sold them than his father’s photographs. The shed was infused with his father’s presence and Charles’s
intermittent sorting – little more than a process of picking up and handling things before replacing them in a slightly different order – was part mourning and part adjustment. He felt
he was both preserving his father’s inheritance and making it his own.
    In late afternoon, beneath dark unbroken cloud, he went for a run. He loved the patchwork quality of the Chilterns, with their towering beeches, hills, valleys, sudden declivities and surprising
vistas. Little Switzerland, his father used to call it, invariably adding that it was just about as expensive. He still ran in army boots, slithering in the chalky mud of logging tracks, his breath
like gouts of steam. The last part of the run was across a ploughed field back up the hill, the clinging mud weighing on his boots, his heart thumping and his legs so leaden it was impossible to
think of anything but keeping going. When he reached the top the clouds parted across the Hambleden valley and the sun briefly touched the hills. He faced the view, gulping air, hands on head to
lift his rib cage from his lungs.
    He didn’t feel he was running for or from anything now, but still he kept doing it. Physical exhaustion was gratifying; it took him out of himself, out of everything. Nevertheless, he had
given himself a purpose in running that day, and had failed. He had meant to decide during the run whether to ring Rebecca and suggest an early dinner on Sunday evening. The thought had been
hovering throughout the drive from the Castle the day before. He didn’t have her home number but the office switchboard would connect him. Dinner on Sunday gave focus to the weekend and was
more relaxed, less a declaration of intent, than dinner on Saturday.
    But he had not decided. He suspected it was contemplation of the event rather than the event itself that he enjoyed. He wanted something to look forward to but, otherwise, why was he taking
Rebecca to dinner? The others, if they found out about it, would assume he was making a play for her, as might she. And as he might, indeed. Or might not. He decided to decide during his bath,
while watching the glow of sun ebb from the room. He next decided to decide with a cup of tea in his hand, telling himself he did not actually have to decide until his hand