Old Dogs, New Tricks

‘You know what your MD’s like,’ she reminded him. ‘He’s hopelessly old-fashioned. Moralistic. Stuck in his ways … He’s bound to go for an older man, isn’t he? One of the old school.’

‘Well, I only hope he knows what he’s playing at, bucking current trends. And how the hell did I come to be lumbered with an anachronism like that? I tell you, Jade, if I’d known what the set-up would be like I’d never have joined this firm.’

‘Your time will come, Olly.’ Jade put out a comforting hand.

‘Oh yes. When I’ve one foot in the grave and no teeth.’

Jade hooked one side of her hair behind her ear. ‘I suppose …’ her blue-green eyes flickered over Oliver’s face ‘… I suppose this Philip Benson’s a married man?’

‘How the hell would I know? Though come to think of it maybe he is. There was a discussion in the office as to where he might live, and someone suggested that one of those big new houses on the Brightwells estate might suit him. Personnel are sending him the details, anyway.’

‘God, no!’ Her eyebrows arched. ‘Not that hellhole. He’d have to be out of his skull.’

‘Yeah!’ Oliver managed a smile; it amused him to think of his new superior, whose guts he already hated on principle, coming to live with the plebs. True, some of the houses were quite desirable if you liked that kind of thing; but the ambience was all wrong. Brightwells was nothing but a huge town over-spill. Accommodation for the masses. A sprawling nonentity hastily thrown up to meet the ever-growing demand for executive-type housing.

Oliver dragged at the cigar and blew the smoke over their heads. ‘So I suppose he must be married,’ he concluded, ‘if they think he needs a place like that. What difference does it make, anyway?’

‘Well … I was just wondering. Perhaps it helped him get the job. I mean –’ she hurried on ‘– it might count with your MD, mightn’t it, whereas … now don’t look at me like that, Olly, I’m not advocating that you and I should be married, even after your divorce has gone through.’ She flushed, tossing her hair again. ‘You know I’m not.’

Olly regarded her carefully. Did she really mean that? You never could tell with women. Most of them couldn’t be trusted. They would swear blind they didn’t want something, when all the time it was the very thing they did want. Like babies. Goodness me, no, they’d protest. Whatever would I do with one of those? And half the time they’d be glued to the Mothercare window. Same with marriage. Who’d want to be married these days? they would claim. It’s a perfectly meaningless institution. Only a piece of paper … oh look, what a gorgeous ring! And I just love white weddings, don’t you?

Jade, to be fair, hadn’t been like that so far, and they’d been living together for nearly six months. But then, he had made things crystal clear to her from the start. Since his first shot at marriage had been such a failure, he told her, he believed that ‘open’ relationships were a safer bet, and had gone on to explain exactly what he meant by that. He was nothing if not honest.

‘I love you, Jade,’ he’d said, ‘but to be perfectly frank with you I can’t promise to be completely faithful. I’m not that kind of man. I need to feel free to – er – engage in other relationships from time to time. Nothing permanent, mind. Just the odd fling. I’d always come back to you …’

Seeing Jade’s startled expression – the involuntary parting of her lips, the narrowing of her cat-like eyes – he had hastened to reassure her. ‘Of course, it would work both ways. You’d be free, as well, you know. To go with other guys.’ Jade said nothing.

‘And if, on the odd occasion,’ he blustered on, since he appeared to have blown his chances and had nothing more to lose, ‘if on the odd occasion the opportunity of a swap came up – you know, at a party or something – well, it could be great. Really. It would. I mean – have you ever tried it? Afterwards you compare notes. And that’s the best part of it, you know, telling each other about different experiences – in bed – and – God,’ he’d wound up, hastily adjusting his trousers, ‘I’m getting horny just thinking about it.’

Two plates of venison arrived and Oliver stubbed out his cigar. ‘Our not being married hasn’t bothered H J up until now,’ he told Jade.

‘H J?’

‘Holy Joe. Big boss. Jocelyn Hemmingway-Judd.’

‘Oh, him. Well, no, maybe not, who knows?’ She shrugged, so that her baggy cotton sweater slipped to one side revealing a naked shoulder. ‘But it might have affected your promotability without your realising it. In his eyes –’ she made her own goggle ‘– I presume, we’re living in sin.’

Oliver waited while the barman finished glugging wine into their glasses. ‘Living in sin,’ he muttered in disgust. ‘What a load of cock. It’s the job that counts, surely? The way you do it; the results you achieve.

‘Cheers, Tony,’ he dismissed the barman, and began to attack his food. But his mind was still with H J.

‘Perhaps this new guy’s not married,’ Jade said in an attempt to lighten his mood. ‘He could be gay, you know. H J wouldn’t be happy about that.’

Oliver considered the matter. He would like to think it a possibility, because Jade was right: H J wouldn’t be able to stomach that. ‘Now how am I supposed to know whether Benson’s gay or not? I’ve not even met him yet. If it’s anything to go by, word’s come down from London to the women in our office that he’s quite fanciable. The secretaries are wetting their knickers in anticipation.’

‘Really?’ Jade grinned. She had become inured to Oliver’s coarseness. ‘I thought you said he was old.’

‘Not too old for that, apparently. Even you might fancy him.’ Oliver chewed, emptied his mouth, and stabbed the air with his fork. ‘Hey, that’s not a bad idea!’

‘What?’ Jade had a quick brain, but couldn’t follow his thoughts on this occasion.

‘Well, how about –’ he began to chuckle at his idea ‘– how about we invite him over to dinner when he moves down here and that you get on rather well with him – follow my drift? And then, when he’s nicely drooling over you and making a complete arse of himself, it’s somehow spread around the office that he’s been pestering his junior’s girlfriend. Even tried to force himself on her. Hey presto! One disgraced sales director’s booted back to the smoke. And then yours truly steps in to fill his shoes.’

Jade let out a gasp, nearly choked on a sip of wine, and sat back fanning her face. ‘Oliver B Knox! Really! You’ll be the death of me.’

‘It would be worth trying it on, though. Think of the extra money.’

‘Only you could be so daft as to dream up such a preposterous scheme.’

‘Full of imagination, I am. And it isn’t all that daft. Or original really, as you must know in your line of work. Women are doing it all the time, aren’t they – claiming harassment and rape, and no one can prove a thing?’

Jade glanced coldly across at him. ‘I hope you aren’t suggesting that women make up things like that – just for revenge or compensation? And in any case, you know I’m not allowed to handle that type of work.’

Jade never missed a chance to air a grievance about her job: she wasn’t yet a qualified legal executive and, as soon as she was, she wanted to go on from there to become a solicitor. It was a long, hard, highly competitive road on which she had set herself – especially having to work and study at the same time – and all the experience she was gaining at Hart, Bruce and Thomson’s was in conveyancing. She longed to move on to more interesting work; saw herself as the star role in court dealing with the more contentious side of the law – criminal, perhaps, or marital. Something to sink her teeth into.

‘Jade,’ the doddery old senior partner was always telling her, ‘you cannot run before you can walk.’ Some days she felt like kicking him out of the way; she would soon show him her mettle.

Oliver still had his gleaming black eyes fixed on her. ‘Would that be a definite “no” then?’ he prompted. ‘Do I take it you don’t want to play at being a femme fatale?’

He waited for her to say something, but she carried right on with her meal, wrapped up in her own private world. She obviously didn’t think he deserved an answer. Which was a pity. He was rather taken with the idea himself.

4

Marjorie sat up in bed trying to read her library book while waiting for Philip to return from taking his parents home. What a ghastly evening it had been. Normally she would have been halfway through her latest thriller by now, but with the day’s events blotting everything out she was stuck on page three and had no idea of the plot. She kept staring up at the wallpaper, not seeing it. But all she could think of was Bristol.

Bristol? Oh, no, no, no. Not now. Not when she was on the verge of an exciting new challenge in her life – one that she needed with increasing desperation the more she thought about it all.

After years of looking after Phil and the girls – enjoyable though that had been – she yearned to exercise her brain, to use her skills, and to achieve, in doing so, a degree of personal satisfaction. More than that: she had a deep-down need to assert herself and prove to Phil that she wasn’t as dependent on him as he’d always seemed to think, that she was an equal partner in the marriage with independent ideas and a life of her own to be lived.

But of course he knew nothing of her recent way of thinking, so as soon as he came back to the house she would try to explain. Would it make any difference to his plans, though? Could she get him to change his mind? He’d seemed so adamant that they had to go to Bristol, but even now she could hardly believe he was serious. They had lived in London all their lives.

To be honest, their suburb was no longer the place it had been – in fact it had changed almost beyond recognition like most of suburbia had done – but it had always been their home. How could Phil think of moving away? The matter of the shops aside, how could he expect her to leave Becky when she was about to have her first baby? How could he expect her to abandon this house with its comforting familiarity, their relatives and friends. Moreover how could he take her from her much-loved garden? If nothing else occurred to him, surely he must realise how much that meant to her?

Why, only that afternoon, inspired by Sheila’s gardener and urged on by the glorious sunshine she had hurried home to give the grass its third cut of the season. There would just be time, she’d surmised, to fit it in before her in-laws arrived. Their meal had already been taken care of: she had one of her home-baked pork pies lined up in the fridge, and the pastry had turned out deliciously golden and buttery – exactly as Philip liked it. With a salad prepared and new potatoes waiting to be boiled there had been practically nothing left to do. She’d only hoped that the subject they would be discussing would not spoil everyone’s enjoyment of it.

Marjorie turned back two pages, wondering how many words her eyes had travelled over without her brain making any sense of them. Pork pie, indeed! If she’d only had the success of the meal to worry about!

Although the garden had slipped into shadow and was rapidly cooling to a chill, the sky remained light and high. A peacefulness lay over everything, save the odd bird flapping from tree to tree and chattering to its mate. She would have loved to carry on pottering about on what promised to be a heavenly evening, but Philip was due home any minute.

She’d opened the garage door in readiness for him, hurried into the house, and checked that his slippers were by the back door – this last duty being performed with a guilty glance over her shoulder, as though her daughters were in hiding, watching.

‘Mum!’ they would have chorused had they been there, raising their eyes at each other. They agreed on very little, being opposites in character, but on one thing they did concur: their mother was a hopeless case.

‘This has nothing whatever to do with feminism,’ Marjorie had vainly tried to advise them whenever they bemoaned the way she lavished attention on her man. ‘It’s simply a matter of common courtesy.’ At which the girls would giggle behind their hands until their mother went on to remind them that she had carried out much the same little acts of loving kindness for them as well throughout their childhood, and didn’t they intend to do the same for their families when they had them? She sincerely hoped they would.

Marjorie had often fretted after these exchanges, wondering what selfish little monsters she had brought into the world. Had she failed in her duty as a parent?

But, back in the kitchen and arranging the salad in a bowl, she’d consoled herself that the girls seemed to have turned out well enough after all: Becky had found herself a husband, in spite of her dreadful bossiness – a trait that she had unfortunately inherited from her grandfather. And Em, eighteen months her junior, had astonished them all by plumping for a ‘caring’ profession. She whose favourite back-chat throughout her teens had been ‘see if I care’, had suddenly decided to do precisely that. She was now in her final year at nursing college.

Marjorie crushed a sliver of garlic and whisked up a vinaigrette dressing, her thoughts suddenly changing track. Why hadn’t Philip told her about Spittal’s closing? She was sure he must have known before the local media got hold of it. Why had he kept it to himself?

Well, all right, she had kept her little secret from him, as Sheila had reminded her, but she didn’t think him capable of doing the same. How well, though, could you ever know someone – even someone you had lived with for nearly twenty-five years? It was a disconcerting thought. She was still frowning when Philip’s car swooped on to the drive.

It was soon apparent, by his slackened tie and the whiff of rotten apples on his breath, that he was guilty of something he rarely did: he’d been drinking on the way home.

‘When did you find time to do that?’ she asked, nodding toward the wrought iron clock above the kitchen table. The clock was in the shape of a sunburst and had jerked out the seconds for them with its distinctive throaty rasp since the day they’d moved in. Like the contents of the rest of the house it had a dated look about it, Phil’s early distaste for materialism having stayed with him. Nothing was ever replaced in this house unless it fell apart – and even then Phil thought twice about it.

Marjorie had never much cared about the state of the house. As long as her garden was in immaculate order she was happy. Let one of the girls gouge a groove in the dining table and she would hardly turn a hair; let one of them drop a doll in her display of daffodils and she would turn purple.

‘Find time to do what?’ Philip was gazing up at the clock, not seeing any connection.

‘Find time for drinks in the pub on your way home. You’re only a few minutes later than usual.’

‘Oh … there wasn’t much going on at the office today, so I left a little early.’ He shrugged off his jacket, hung it on the back of a chair and stood looking down at it. He slipped off his tie and coiled it. When he glanced up he had a lost look about him. It seemed he had something to say and had no idea where to begin.

Suddenly remorseful, because she’d been so busy thinking about herself that she hadn’t realised quite what his firm’s closure would mean to him, she went over and put her hands on his shoulders. ‘Oh, Philip! Don’t worry about how to tell me the news. I know about Spittal’s already. I heard it on the radio. And I’m so sorry that it’s had to happen to you; I know it must be a shock, but –’

‘You know?’ Alarm was plain in his eyes. ‘Good grief … I suppose it was bound to get around. Honestly, love, I meant to tell you all about it myself. I wanted to break the news gently.’

‘Well, now you’ve nothing to break. And your parents know about it as well. I went round and told your mother, and she’ll have explained everything to your father. And they’ll be here any minute, as it happens. I’ve asked them to come round so we can all have a talk about it.’

Philip pushed back his hair. It was thick, even if it was grey, and was unruly. Normally it didn’t trouble him, unless he was ill at ease. Then he would rake it with his fingers or try to smooth it down. ‘Talk?’ he repeated slowly. ‘About what?’

‘About your redundancy, of course, and what you’re going to do now that Spittal’s is closing. And about what we’ve all been thinking …’

Her voice trailed away at the sight of his grim expression. She put down the dish of coleslaw she’d been giving a quick stir, dropping the spoon with a clatter; suddenly it no longer seemed to matter that the mayonnaise dressing had collected at the bottom of the bowl.

‘Spittal’s isn’t closing,’ he said, his lips set hard in a line.

‘Yes it is, Phil. I told you, I heard it on the radio.’

‘No, Marjorie, no. It isn’t, strictly speaking, closing.’ Then he’d uttered the words that had sent a chill crawling up her spine. ‘It’s moving its premises to Bristol.’

Marjorie closed her library book and let it drop to her lap. All hell had broken loose a minute later when Eric and Sheila arrived for their meal. Phil had been horrified and angry at what they’d all been planning for him behind his back. Everything had come spilling out, even before they sat themselves down at the table – about how helpful Marjorie had been in the shops and how they’d decided she should take them over now that Eric wanted to retire – it was all laid bare.

Phil had turned an unpleasant shade of red, and had made it clear in no uncertain terms that it simply wasn’t on. Neither he nor Marjorie would be able to take over the shops, he’d told them; he had to go to Bristol in accordance with his employers’ wishes, and that was that. Redundancy? Not for him, and he couldn’t have afforded to take it anyway.

The pie was cut but no one enjoyed it. Marjorie had sat stony faced, Sheila pink and embarrassed, while Eric expressed his feelings at length and grew so agitated that he drank his wife’s glass of wine by mistake as well as his own, and then helped himself to more. In the end Phil had to run them home in his own car because his mother’s health prevented her from walking even the two blocks back to their house, and his father’s swimming head prevented him from driving them himself.

Marjorie snatched up her book once more, Phil’s return being heralded by the dull thud of a loose paving stone beneath the bedroom window. Propping the book open against her knees she tried to focus on the print. Perhaps, if she took no notice of him, he’d give the matter a rest. She’d made it clear that his plans didn’t suit her; he just needed time for the fact to sink in.

But he couldn’t leave the subject alone. He came into the room, walked round to her side of the bed and sat by her legs. She could no longer ignore him because she had to shift her balance on the mattress.

‘Why on earth didn’t you tell me?’ he asked after a while.

‘Tell you what?’

‘About working for Dad all this time.’ He gave an incredulous gasp as though he still couldn’t take it in. ‘What did you think you were doing?’

‘What do you think I was doing? Helping out, of course.’

‘I didn’t mean that. I meant, what did you think you were up to, not telling me about it? I realised you helped my mother a lot, but I had no idea you were working practically full-time for my father too. You’ve made me look such a fool.’

Marjorie bunched up a piece of frill on the edge of the duvet cover, her hands beginning to tremble with suppressed anger. Could he think of nobody but himself? And couldn’t he at least give her credit for the way she’d managed to pack so much in to each day? She’d obviously succeeded in making him feel as pampered and cosseted as he always had been – not an easy task on top of doing everything else – otherwise he’d have noticed something amiss.

‘I always meant to tell you. I would have done … but it’s your own fault, really. If you’d been more reasonable, where your father’s concerned … And anyway I was bored with being at home all day. Couldn’t you see that?’

‘You never said you were bored.’ He sounded miffed; insulted that being his wife hadn’t been fulfilment enough for her.

‘What would you have done if I had? Suggested I join the Women’s Institute? I already belonged to that. And the Housewives’ Register. And the PTA when the girls were still at school.’ She gave an impatient shake of her head. ‘These things are all very well, Phil … Oh, I suppose I just outgrew them. I never meant to work for your father. It just sort of happened one day when he needed some help with his VAT.’

A weary sigh whined from him. ‘It’s made everything so much worse!’

Getting up from the bed he walked over to the window and looked out. Marjorie had been loath to close the curtains against the setting sun, but the huge orange ball had dropped behind the houses opposite some time ago and it was dark. Nevertheless, Phil still stood looking out.

‘Fancy coming up with this crazy idea of taking over the shops! Don’t you think you should have consulted me before putting impossible notions in Dad’s head?’

‘What’s crazy about it?’ She thumped her fists into the duvet. ‘And why should it be impossible?’

‘Well –’

‘You’re surely not implying that I’m incapable.’

‘I didn’t say that, now did I?’

‘You didn’t need to. It’s what you were thinking, though, wasn’t it?’

‘I hadn’t actually got that far. What I’m saying is … well … that you can’t.’

‘Well, of course I won’t be able to now. Not if you insist on taking me to Bristol. But I wasn’t to know about your plans beforehand, was I?’

‘I didn’t mean that, and you know it.’

‘No?’ Marjorie was lost. ‘Well, what do you mean, then? I don’t get it.’

But as she glared into his face she saw, to her astonishment, that he’d adopted the taut, pitying expression that she recognised all too well. It was the one that came upon him only rarely, at such times as he could not avoid the usually unmentioned subject of her parents’ demise.

Marjorie’s mother and father had died from carbon monoxide poisoning fifteen years previously. A faulty water heater had been responsible, although Marjorie had never been able to look at it that way. She saw it as largely her fault and constantly blamed herself for not being in the right place at the right time.

To add to the horror of it all it had been Marjorie’s misfortune to discover them. She had called round to see them one Saturday morning with some school photographs of Becky and Em. Fortunately the girls had not been with her – they were out doing ‘ballet and tap’.

Certain that her parents would be at home she hadn’t even taken a key. She had knocked and rung with no result and eventually spotted them through a window at the side of the house. The tableau was one that would for ever be printed on her mind: the pattern the sun was making on the black and white tiled floor, the day’s post half-opened on one of the work-tops, two untouched cups of coffee on a wooden-handled tray, and the horribly familiar clothes that the two inert figures were wearing as they slumped together by the back door.

Later it was realised that the key had been removed from the keyhole, probably for safety reasons following a spate of burglaries in the area, and hidden under the biscuit tin. If Marjorie’s parents had ever been conscious of their possible fate, the locked door and the missing key had effectively sealed it.

But, Marjorie now wondered, if this is what Phil was thinking about, what had it to do with her ability to run the shops? Unless … was he alluding to the fact that she had had a breakdown after the event? A perfectly understandable breakdown, surely, under the circumstances? And if so did he really think it had any bearing on her present-day capabilities?

It proved to be the case as his next remarks showed.

‘The responsibility. The stress. The long hours …’ he was saying.