2498. Inheritance

John-Claude was a widower. He had one child, a son called Peter. His son was the epitome of laziness, but nonetheless John-Claude tried to cheer him (unsuccessfully) into doing some work.

John-Claude’s property was a few acres with a couple of cows and a few goats and a pet pony. The cottage was straight out of a book of fairy-tale illustrations, with a beautiful garden of hollyhocks and petunias and grape vines that ran around the thatched eaves. Things always seemed to be in flower!

John-Claude had a sneaky suspicion that he was on his last legs. He was getting on. “I think I hear an approaching death rattle,” he told his son. Well! Was the son excited or what! He suggested to his father that all should be put in his, the son’s, name. That way, there would be little to worry about when the dreaded moment arrived. John-Claude did that. The house and property was now in Peter’s name. All John-Claude need now do was die.

But he didn’t.

Son Peter was annoyed as anything. He still did no work, but the place was looking nice because John-Claude still laboured hard. In fact the relationship between father and son was more slave to slave owner. Peter made his father sleep out in the garden shed. He didn’t want to be woken with a racket in the early mornings when John-Claude rose to do some work on the property.

John-Claude developed an idea. For years he had been friends with the bank manager. They had been Friday-night drinking companions at the pub for yonks. The bank manager printed off a pretend document. It was a bank statement. It said that John-Clause had eleven million eight hundred and seventy-two dollars and seventeen cents in his account. John-Claude accidentally left it on the dining table.

After that son Peter worked his guts out. He couldn’t have been more helpful, more cheerful, harder working. John-Claude reverted to occasionally pottering in the garden as befits a retired gentleman. The place retained its picture-postcard look thanks to Peter’s back-breaking efforts.

Eventually, when John-Claude died, the fortune-expecting lazy son discovered there was zilch to inherit.

2436. Language

Now Errol, said the teacher, you shouldn’t be using naughty words like that. Who taught you such language?

My father, said Errol.

Well, said the teacher, you shouldn’t use a word like that if you don’t know what it means.

I do know what it means, said Errol. It means the car won’t start.

2376. Devious Dad

Father: (standing up at dining table after dinner) Who would like a cup of tea?

John:            Me!
Jennifer:     Me!
Philip:         Me!
Marjorie:    Me!
Bernard:     Me!
Patrick:       Me!

Father: (sitting back down again) Well make me one while you’re at it.

2374. Father’s frustration

If you kids don’t stop arguing I’ll do the dishes myself.

2373. Mother’s frustration

If your father was still alive he’d be turning in his grave.

2350. Family secrets

Even though Stacy had been told all her life that she was adopted she suspected in fact that her mother was her real mother and her father was her real father. Stacy was number six in a family of six children. In fact, four of her brothers and sisters were her full brothers and sisters, and even though she was ten years younger than they were there was nothing unusual in that. One of her brothers, the fifth sibling, had the same mother but the father was different; “Swedish” the DNA tests were to reveal.

To prove her point, Stacy had had secret DNA tests done of the family and the results proved her point: her mother was her real mother and her father was her real father. So why the adoption story?

Just as Stacy was about to confront her parents to learn the truth they were both killed in a traffic accident. Perhaps one of her brothers and sisters might know the story. Her oldest sister might know; mothers often divulged family secrets to daughters. But Yolanda, the oldest sister, knew nothing. Perhaps the Portuguese family living next door might know something; they had been great friends of the family. Possibly Stacy’s mother had divulged something, woman to woman, over a nice cup of tea. Nothing. Jorginho, the Portuguese husband, said that even if he knew something he was staying out of other families’ personal affairs. He didn’t know anything of course.

That was when Stacy’s “half Swedish” brother, Björn, stepped forward with an explanation. Their mother had had a torrid affair with a passing Swedish tennis player. The marriage broke up. The parents got divorced. Several years later the parents reconciled and Stacy was born “out of wedlock”.  After the re-marriage Stacy was formally adopted by her father.

All this doesn’t help to explain what the DNA tests missed: that all the brothers and sisters except for Stacy and Björn, were half Portuguese.

2148. Rest in peace

When widower Michael died he left in his will (apart from a few practical things) a beautiful recommendation to his five adult children:

Treat one another and care for one another as I would care for you all if I was still alive.

Mona said that since she had looked after their father in the last two months of his life she had full right to get a greater share of their father’s savings.

Colin said that since Preston lived in Australia, apart from the occasional communication, he deserved little in the way of inheritance. He might as well not have existed.

Preston said that on the contrary; he may have lived in Australia but he maintained more contact with his father than a number who lived close by. Inez, for example, lived only ten minutes away from their father and never visited.

Inez said that as far as she was concerned Adele wasn’t entitled to any of the inheritance. We have watched her and her husband squander their life’s savings on drink, and I’m not going to watch father’s well-earned money get flushed down the toilet.

Adele said that she had been her father’s favourite and it was only fair that she should get father’s house. Besides, Mona’s oldest son was in rehab for drug taking. That alone should count Mona out.

Colin said Adele could buy the four-fifths of the house that wasn’t hers; he wanted the car.

Mona reckoned…

Whatever… court cases are pending.

1864. An unsolved murder

The murder of Octavius Snickenbough was in all the papers. It was in all the papers not because it was a murder (goodness knows, murders are so common these days they could hardly be considered newsworthy) but because of who Octavius Snickenbough was.

Octavius Snickenbough was the local vicar who, despite having being married to a lovely wife for many a year, had singlehandedly fathered three children on the one night, all born in the same local maternity hospital on the same day, and all registered by different mothers with the information on the father recorded as “Octavius Snickenbough, Vicar”.

It had turned Octavius overnight, on the one hand, into a folk hero, and on the other hand, into a fiend. And now, several weeks after the births his body was discovered lying murdered in the sands of the local beach. The beach was in a sheltered bay and most popular over the summer months. The sand was a mass of hundreds of footprints going in all directions, so the murderer’s footprints going to and from the body were indecipherable.

Clearly, Octavius Snickenbough had been chopped to death by a tomahawk. In fact, it was patently obvious because a tomahawk, the kind used to split firewood kindling, was still protruding from the crown of his head.

Naturally, the three mothers of the three new-borns were questioned by the police, as indeed was Octavius’s wife. None could offer any information that caste the slightest light on the situation.

This all happened several months ago, and the police are no closer to solving the mystery and making an arrest. The closed beach has subsequently reopened, and parishioners seem to rejoice in the appointment of the new vicar whose homilies are considerably shorter than those once offered by the late Reverend Octavius Snickenbough. Rather fortuitously, the new vicar has his own house, so Mrs. Snickenbough is more than welcome to continue to live in the old vicarage. After all, why should it remain empty when it is warm and welcoming, and suitable enough for a lone widow to live comfortably? The potbellied stove in the kitchen is a little old-fashioned but Mrs. Snickenbough doesn’t mind that – once she gets a new tomahawk to split the kindling.

1805. Motherly advice

Look, I told my son. Look, I said. I told you how to do it but you wouldn’t listen. And now you’re in deep trouble. You’re just like your father was, I said, always acting before thinking things through.

I tried to warn you, but oh no! Young people always know better these days. Well in this case I knew better, from personal experience. You didn’t listen, so now you’ll have to pay for the consequences on your own. I’ve achieved what you’ve achieved I suppose a dozen times or so, but without any of the hassle.

I’ve come across so many like you. They all thought they knew better. They just ignored common sense advice. And now look at them.

You know I’ve been wanting you to do what you did for a long time, but not in the way you went about it. If you’d asked me I could have given you names to help. From now on it’s nothing to do with me. Just don’t involve me.

If I’ve told you once, I’ve told you twice: if you were going to murder your father you didn’t have to do it yourself. You hire a professional. I could have helped with the cost. Now look at the mess you’re in.

1661. Feet in the Shire

(Thanks to Matthew for suggesting the opening sentence).

He lived on hills resembling ‘The Shire’ and his feet were covered with curly hair. His name was Bartholomew Baggins and his solo mother always said that his father was a hobbit. He thought it was a big fib, but now that he’d reached puberty he began to suspect, with his hairy feet, that what his mother claimed was true.

Bartholomew always wore shoes to school, even though sandals (and even bare feet) were permitted in summer. That was to cover up his emerging hobbitness. He was ashamed to think that his father was a hobbit. No one had seen a hobbit, and even though everyone liked hobbits in books and films there wasn’t a person at his school who believed they actually existed. They would make fun of his hairy feet.

And then, one evening, Bartholomew left his mother’s house. There was a full moon although ragged clouds scuttled across the night sky. He knelt down and drank rainwater that had gathered in a strange footprint in the garden. Bartholomew stood and howled to the moon. He was covered in hair. He was on his first hunt.