فصل دوم

Chapter two

Everybody in England knew who Sir Arthur Willing was. He was sixty-three when he died fourteen months before his beautiful daughter walked into my office. And for the last twenty or twenty-five years of his life, he was one of the ten richest people in the United Kingdom. I knew this because an English newspaper publishes a list once a year of the 1,000 richest people in that year. Sometimes Sir Arthur was number one in the list, sometimes number two or three, but always in the top 10. Surprisingly, Sir Arthur was born into a very poor family in a poor part of London. He left school when he was fifteen to sell fruit and vegetables in a local street market. But Sir Arthur was one of those rare people who have a gift for business. And also the ambition to get to the top. By the time he was eighteen, he owned most of the stalls in the market. Then he opened his own import-export business when he was twenty. From that time on he became richer and richer. He bought or founded many more companies, and extended his business interests into construction, furniture, insurance, and just about everything else.

Sir Arthur was knighted for services to British industry when he was thirty. He married when he was thirty-two, and in the following years the couple had three children. Selena was first, and then two brothers. A few years later Sir Arthur’s wife died. Sir Arthur never remarried.

Sir Arthur’s favourite child was Selena. She was like her father in many ways. She was a good student and a very hard worker. And she loved her father very much. She helped her father with all his business, too. She learnt everything that her father was able to teach her about companies, finances, the stock market, and so on.

On the other hand, Sir Arthur’s relationship with his two sons was never very successful. They were not at all like their father. They were very bad students, very lazy and only interested in having fun. They escaped from the house as often as they could in the evenings. This was not difficult because their father usually worked late and didn’t return home until eleven or twelve. The boys went to the cinema or to discotheques or to games parlors. Both went to good universities but failed almost all their examinations and left without taking a degree.

Finally, when the boys were nineteen and twenty, their father lost patience with them. He tore up his will which was made years before. In this will, all his money and possessions and business interests were left to his three children equally. Then he made a new will which left everything to Selena. Well, except for one little company in Bangkok, in Thailand, which exported hand-carved teak furniture to Britain and other countries. This company did not make a big profit, but enough for his two sons as owner-directors to earn a living.

Of course, when Sir Arthur died and his will became known, the sons reacted badly. They found a solicitor who agreed to defend their interests. A long court case followed. Every day there were articles about it in all the newspapers. Finally, Selena won the case and stayed in possession of all her inheritance. The boys angrily left the family house in Surrey, and went to share a tiny rented flat in a not very exclusive part of London.