Free A Fatal Inversion by Ruth Rendell Page A

house?
    “I want to sell it,” Adam said. “I want the money.”
    “Sell the land,” said Lewis.
    “I don’t want to sell the land. It wouldn’t fetch much anyway, agricultural land. And who’s going to want to buy it?” It was plain that Adam had gone into this aspect of things. “No, since you ask …” Clearly, Adam was only reluctantly willing to share his plans with his parents. “Since you ask, I’m going to go down and take a look at it as soon as I can and then I’m going to put it on the market.”
    Adam returned to college. That summer Lewis thought perhaps he was on the verge of a nervous breakdown. He made all sorts of wild plans. He would go down to Nunes and take over the house. If necessary he would break in and take possession. The village people would support his cause—didn’t they call him Mr. Lewis? Wasn’t he the rightful heir? Adam would never try to regain the house by force. By this time his fantasies took on the air of medieval barons’ wars. He actually dreamed of himself in a suit of armor opening the big oak front door with a mace in his hand and Adam riding up on a black colorfully caparisoned horse. More practically, he consulted solicitors of his own in an attempt to have the will disputed. They advised him against trying. He had another go at persuasion and wrote Adam long letters to his college begging for compromises. Adam phoned home and asked his mother to stop his father bothering him when he was in the middle of exams. Lewis’s doctor put him on tranquilizers and advised him to go away on holiday.
    In the middle of June he suddenly gave up. He washed his hands of Adam and Wyvis Hall and the memory of his Uncle Hilbert. The whole thing disgusted him, he told Beryl, it was beneath his dignity, only he couldn’t help feeling utterly disillusioned with human nature. He wouldn’t go to Wyvis Hall now if Adam invited him, if he went down on his bended knees.
    His exams over, Adam came home. He slept one night at home and then went down to Nunes, taking Rufus Fletcher with him. Or, rather, being taken by Rufus, in whose van they went. Lewis refused to show any interest. He practically ignored Adam for whom he now felt a deep distasteful antipathy. A few months before, if anyone had told him you could feel dislike for your own child, a real aversion from your own flesh and blood, he would not have believed them. But that was how he felt. He couldn’t get Adam out of the house fast enough. Two days later he was back. So much for Wyvis Hall. That was how much Adam appreciated the beautiful old house he had had the unheard-of good fortune to inherit at the age of nineteen. He was going to Greece with Rufus Fletcher and Rufus Fletcher’s girlfriend, who was an Honorable, the daughter of some titled person.
    “You would think someone with her background would know better,” said Lewis.
    “Know better than what?” said Adam.
    “Well, a single girl staying in places with a man like that.”
    Adam laughed.
    “How long will you be away?” said Beryl.
    “I don’t know.” They never did know, or if they did, they weren’t saying. Beryl might have saved her breath. “Term starts on October seventeenth.”
    “You’re never going to be in Greece for four months!”
    “I don’t know. I might be. Greece is quite big.”
    “Staying in tents, I suppose. Sleeping on beaches.” Lewis had forgotten to be indifferent and aloof, he couldn’t help it. “And what about that beautiful old house you’ve been unaccountably made responsible for? What about that? Is that to be allowed to go to rack and ruin?”
    “It’s not in ruins,” said Adam, looking him in the eye. “I don’t know what rack means. I’ve got someone from the village coming in every day to check up that no one tries making a nuisance of themselves. Squatters, I mean. There’s a lot of squatting going on.”
    Lewis had known what he meant. He knew who Adam thought the squatters might be. It was a terrible