The Gift Room Read online

  Alexander returned to the seat at the desk, swung around to face the window and sipped his tea. He wondered if his father had sat there at that desk and written the letter that he had read not half an hour before. He casually opened the filing drawer at the bottom of the desk. It was all very tidy and he looked down at a range of tabs clearly marked with company names. BP, Shell, Barclays, Marks and Spencer etc, every one a household name; there must have been 30 or so, all neatly arranged in alphabetical order. Alexander pulled one file out: BP, the first one. He opened it and looked at the details of a dividend payment from six months earlier.

  “Fuck.” Alexander scanned through the backup sheets. He knew his way around such documentation, having toiled in the City all his working life. He quickly realised that his parents had many thousands of shares in the business.

  “Shit, they have £75 grand of BP stock. Oh my God, they are loaded.” As Alexander looked down at the neat filing, it dawned on him what was important in the letter he had read “…with our investments over the years…” You are not kidding, Dad!

  Alexander was excited and yet at the same time relaxed. He could shut off from the emotional matters that had consumed him for all of the last few hours and look at figures and investments. He was in his comfort zone… financial work. It took him two more cups of tea and around two hours to filter through the files sitting at his father’s desk. He had taken a piece of paper from the printer which was on the desk next to a computer to write down all the shareholding and checked the closing prices in a copy of the Telegraph he had found in a waste paper bin in the study. It was 10 days old, but it was better than trying to brave the village shop for an up-to-date copy.

  The phone rang. It was Julia.

  “Darling, have you left?” It is just that you are going to hit all the traffic now, it is gone 2pm and the M25 will be a car park. Sorry if I sound like I am nagging, but I really thought I would have heard from you by now from the car.”

  “Sorry, I have lost track of time. My parents were loaded. I mean, seriously wealthy.” Alexander was looking down at his list of 35 company names and, beside each one, a figure.

  “What? I thought you were going to have a cup of tea and look round the house.” Julia sounded slightly worried; she did not like the idea of her husband alone and so far away. She always felt protective of him, particularly where his parents were concerned. She had been there during the difficult times, when they had ignored his special birthdays, those milestones of her husband turning 30 or 40 or seen Christmases come and go. She often wondered if his increasing indifference to his birthdays was more a confirmation of his dysfunctional relationship with his parents, than a lack of his wish to celebrate them with his own close family of wife and kids.

  “I was looking around my Dad’s study and opened a drawer, and it turns out they have been investing in the stock market for years. Darling, they piled in with a load of cash 10-plus years ago. They have holdings of over £1.2m. I had no idea, when that solicitor told me this morning they had left everything to me, that it would be like this.” Alexander was sounding excited. “With the house it is probably around £2.5 million. Do you know what this means to us? I could retire…” Alexander paused as the news he was regaling his wife with sunk in. “Today! Bloody today I said! The kids will be secure for life.” He trailed off with his sentence. He realised he was talking to a silent phone. “Darling, are you there?”

  “Yes, I am here.” Julia was curt almost to the point of being rude. “I don’t want to have this conversation on the phone. When are you coming home?”

  Alexander heard the question but felt he needed to reinforce his message. “Darling, have you not heard anything I have said? My parents are loaded, I have inherited everything, we can enjoy so much together, without working every hour God sends, no more commuting on the train, early starts or late nights because of some rushed deadline!”

  “And clearly you have not heard what I said… I did not want to have this conversation on the phone. However, as you appear to insist on continuing it, so be it…” Julia’s voice was now raised in anger. “I don’t want their shitty, fucking money - is that clear enough for you! I don’t care if they are worth 20 million. We are fine as we are. I don’t want a bigger house, a holiday home or a Porsche. We have a very comfortable life, thank you. What I wanted was your parents to recognise what an incredible son they had when they were alive. To be grandparents to Will, Natalie and Harry, and not to pretend they had never been born. I remember them not being at our wedding, not being at our children’s christenings, school plays or speech days. I remember them not remembering your birthday for years, and seeing the disappointment on your face when all you were seeking was their bloody approval. And why? For what? The approval of a couple of selfish shits from Devon. There - that is the conversation that I did not want to have on the telephone. If you want to know what they thought about you when they were alive, I suggest you walk upstairs and look at all those presents… unsent.” Julia paused.

  “Darling…”Alexander started, but was cut off.

  “And another thing - I want you home, with me, because I love you very much and I don’t think this house visit is good for you,” Julia finished, and burst into tears.

  There was silence between them for a few seconds. Both needed to reflect on what had been said and Julia needed time to compose herself. Alexander heard her sniff and take a deep breath.

  “You have made your point, as always.” Alexander felt more than a little hurt by his wife. He needed even more time to consider what she had said. “Let me go upstairs, finish my grand tour, and I will call you later. In fact you are right about the time; I may decide to leave it a couple of hours, to miss the worst of the traffic.”

  “OK, call me later.” Julia rang off. She was still so angry with her husband. How could he not see how manipulative and hurtful his parents were being, even now, from beyond the grave. “It would have been so much easier,” she thought, “if they had just left everything to a charity - and then Alexander would be on his way home, with this whole mess in the past.”

  Alexander stood up from his father’s desk in the study, took the piece of paper with the portfolio list of stocks, folded it neatly and popped it into the inside pocket of his suit. He did not know why he did it; but somehow it seemed correct to keep a record of his work in analysing his parents’ investments. He walked upstairs and went to check the other rooms. He found his parents’ bedroom, bed neatly made and a picture of his sister at graduation on his mother’s dressing table. There was no picture of him anywhere to be seen. He passed another two spare bedrooms made up for guests, and then once again he pushed open the door of the room full of presents. The Gift Room.

  CHAPTER 4

  Alexander scanned the room again and this time started to understand that there was some order to this. Just like the meticulous way his father, or perhaps it had been his mother, had filed away their stock market investments, the room had been carefully structured. The piles appeared to be split for specific people and even into chronological order, with all the gift tags dated with a year. He found three piles close together with all the presents marked for his birthdays. A small, carefully wrapped box on the floor caught his eye. It was wrapped in 21st birthday paper and had a label to match.

  “Dear Alexander, Happy 21st, Love Mum and Dad.”

  Alexander unwrapped the present and opened a box to see an Omega watch presented within. It had long since run out of battery life and had stopped at 3.45 on the 26th of September. He had no idea of which year. Alexander sat on the floor and closed his eyes. He remembered his 21st birthday. He had walked out of his then family house a week or so earlier.

  “That’s right,” his father had said to him. “Give up just when you can do something with your life. All you have to do is go back to university for one more year and then you can take that law degree anywhere. Your mother and I have spent a fortune on your education, even allowed you that luxury of a
year off whilst you bummed around Europe picking bloody grapes, or whatever it was you did. Now it is time to knuckle down and finish your studies.” They were standing in the hall of the house. The family had lived in a village a few miles south of Bristol then. Alexander and his sister had been brought up in the house and both attended nearby private schools.

  His father had been a senior aero-engineer at the nearby factory, whose greatest claim to fame had been the work on Concorde. His mother had taught history at the same girl’s school where his sister had attended from 11 to 18.

  It had been a few years later that his parents, in retirement and no longer with their children living at home, had chosen to move to Godfrey St John in Devon.

  Alexander had already packed a rucksack which was on the floor by his feet, and as he looked over his father’s shoulder he could see his mother crying in the sitting room. She was being comforted by his sister. Frances was some five years older than Alexander and had gone on to university after school, completing a humanities degree before embarking on a career with a leading overseas charity. They had always got on as brother and sister, although they had tended to have different interests and outlooks. Alexander craved a more materialistic approach to life, Frances always assumed that things would turn out OK in the end, and what she did with her life was more important than what she accumulated during it.

  “Look, I am fed up with arguing. Dad, I don’t want to be a lawyer. I want to go out and work, earn my own money. It is not as though I am intent on being a dustman or something. I have been given a chance with a City investment firm. Charles from school is already with them and we can flat share in Clapham. A degree is not the be-all and end-all of life. My mind is made up and at 21, I think you could start treating me as an adult.” Charles had been Alexander’s best friend through school and they had spent their gap year together in Europe. He had not been as academic as Alexander but they had got on well since they were 11 and had started the same day at their senior school.

  “I shall treat you like an adult when you start acting like one,” his father said angrily. “You are throwing away two years of study. Just finish the course and then decide. You don’t have to follow in the footsteps of that hot-headed friend of yours.” His father had never really approved of Charles, and thought Alexander had been led astray somewhat as they had been growing up.

  Alexander picked up his rucksack and threw it over his shoulder. “I prefer to think of it as not wanting to throw away another year of my life, like I have done for the last two! Let me take my things up to London today, settle in for a week and then I will be back for my birthday on Friday. We can chat then.” He turned and walked out of the front door.

  Alexander had not seen his parents since that day and now he would never see them again; they were dead.

  He had travelled to London by train and settled into the flat with Charles over the weekend and started at the stockbroking firm on the Monday morning. Charles had been working there for more than a year and enjoyed the excitement of buying and selling shares for clients based upon the information provided on the three screens in front of him on his desk. For Alexander, the frenetic nature of his first working day was a welcome change from the usual mundane lectures on the Law of Tort which he felt had unfortunately consumed a disproprtionate amount of his time in the last two years.

  The flat had been rather a squash but in a way it felt as though this was the start of the great adventure of his life. By the Tuesday Alexander had calmed down enough from his argument with his father to ring his parents and leave his new contact details which he did, undoubtedly consciously, by calling during the evening when he knew they would be out at their bridge club. He left what he hoped was a friendly sounding recording on their answerphone, trying to sound upbeat about his imminent weekend return home for his birthday. His 21st birthday had come around the following Friday and he was due to catch a train home in the afternoon.

  His phone on his desk in the large open plan office had rung; he picked it up.

  “Alexander, this is your Father. Your Mother and I are very disappointed in you. We think in the circumstances it may be best if you do not come home this weekend. I know it is your birthday, but after the way you have behaved towards us – the way you’ve not shown us any consideration - we really don’t want you in our house.”

  Before he could respond, Alexander heard the phone being placed down at the other end and the engaged tone sounded in his ear. He looked across the desk partition to his friend Charles.

  “You know you said we should stay in London to celebrate my 21st? Well, I think that is a bloody good idea. My father has just told me where to go!”

  Charles looked up from his desk, a mountain of papers and computer print-outs.

  “Christ! Well, your folks can be a bit weird if you ask me. They will ring next week sometime and say sorry and how it was all a big misunderstanding and life will return to normal.” Charles had known his parents for a number of years and had become accustomed to what he considered to be their emotional reactions to family situations. Charles often thought he was lucky to come from divorced parents. He lived happily with his mother for many years, seeing his father for weekends and holidays. He had never had to exist in a family with strife and angst on a daily basis.

  “I don’t know,” he said. “I think this is different somehow. Let’s chat over a beer… or three tonight.” And Alexander looked down at his own pile of paperwork and started to immerse himself in the detail, blocking out the emotional pain created by a feeling of abandonment by his parents’ approach. Cross-referencing data from the sheets of paper to the screen in front of him proved a ready escape for his mind as opposed to thinking too much about his parents. Whilst he had made the decision not to return to university, he had hoped he could at least have had a civilised dialogue with his father and mother. Perhaps, in time, they would understand the reasons. If he worked hard and made a success of his career, they may even understand his decision in the long term.

  Alexander looked again at the Omega watch in front of him in the spare bedroom of his late parents’ house. They must have purchased it weeks or months before his birthday and then, when they told him not to come home, just set it aside. Had they thought about giving it to him later? Did they think they would see each other again soon? At what point did they think they would never see him again, before creating this eerie room full of all the presents they had bought for him and, subsequently, his family? Questions which could never be answered. Now he was standing in the room, looking at their present to him to celebrate his 21st birthday and only now had he received it, some quarter of a century later, at the age of 46.

  Alexander took the watch downstairs and into the kitchen. He opened drawers and cupboards and then went into the utility room which was through a door just to the side of the kitchen and did the same until he found at last what he was searching for, a stock of assorted batteries. He knew they would be around as his parents had always been sensible at keeping such things, since he and his sister had grown up with various toys that consumed them at an alarming rate.

  He sat down at the kitchen table and, taking his time, looked at the watch. He quickly realised it would not take a battery but by the very act of walking it downstairs the arm had started to move around the dial. Alexander smiled to himself. He realised that a watch such as this, with a perpetual motion mechanism, worked by movement. It had lay dormant in its box all this time and now it had come back to life. Playing with the two dials, he quickly established how to set the piece to the correct time. He took off his own watch and slipped it into his pocket and placed the Omega on his wrist. He liked it. Not too chunky, but still robust and masculine. It was as he was admiring the watch on his wrist that he realised the time. It was now later in the afternoon and the thought of driving home did not appeal. He telephoned Julia.

  “Darling, I am starting to unwrap the presents.” Alexander was direct.

  “Is that sensible
at this time? Please don’t tell me you intend to unwrap them all?” Julia was concerned.

  “No, of course not. It is just that I spotted my 21st birthday present and, naturally enough for my parents’ generation, it was a watch. I know, a real cliché , but I tried it on and it got me thinking to when I last spoke with Dad and he told me not to come home for my birthday.” Alexander did not want to sound sentimental, but by unwrapping the present he had drifted back all those years.

  “Well, if you are going on a nostalgia trip, don’t forget what happened that Friday evening will you? On your 21st birthday pub crawl,” Julia replied.

  “How can I, darling? It changed my life. Let me go and check around upstairs and then think about finding a room in the local pub or something for tonight. I am sorry but there is no way I am safe to drive home tonight. I guess this has all been a bit much for me to cope with and I will be far too tired to drive.” Alexander wanted to go home to kiss his wife and be hugged, to sit in his home surrounded by his family, to remove himself from the control of his parents. And yet somehow he felt he had to look at more of the presents. Perhaps, as he unwrapped some of them, he would get a clue as to why they had not been sent and an understanding of his father and mother’s minds.

  “Of course, I completely understand. Can you keep me posted though? I don’t want you getting all maudlin down there on your own. And make sure you have something to eat. You know how you forget and it’s so unhealthy.” Julia did not wish to sound as though she were nagging, but she knew her husband only too well.