by David Lodge
“Going out again?” she said.
“I’m going home.”
“I phoned an auctioneers, they’re coming to collect the old furniture tomorrow.”
“I hope the new stuff is just as strong,” said Vic, looking her in the eye. “That sofa gets a lot of wear and tear.”
Shirley went white, and then very red.
Vic felt slightly ashamed of himself. “’Bye Shirley, thanks for seeing to it,” he said, and hurried out of the office.
…
He drove home fast, straight down the outside lane of the motorway, overtaking everything, wanting to get it over with. Marjorie sensed something was wrong as soon as she saw him in the kitchen doorway. She was standing at the sink, wearing an apron, scraping new potatoes. “You’re early,” she said, letting a potato fall into the water with a splash. “What’s the matter?”
“Make us a cup of tea, and I’ll tell you.”
She stared at him, knitting her wet, podgy fingers together to stop herself from trembling. “Tell me now, Vic.”
“All right. Pringle’s has been sold to the EFE Group, and merged with Foundrax. I’ve got the push. As from tomorrow.”
Marjorie came over and put her arms round him. “Oh Vic,” she said, “I’m so sorry for you. All that work.”
He had steeled himself for tears, perhaps hysterics. But Marjorie was strangely calm, and he himself felt strangely moved by the unselfishness of her response. He looked over her shoulder at the smooth surfaces of the fitted kitchen and all the shining gadgetry arrayed upon them. “I’ll get another job,” he said. “But it may take time.”
“Of course you will, love.” Marjorie sounded almost cheerful. “You knew, didn’t you? You’ve known for some time this was going to happen. That’s why you’ve been so strange.”
Vic hesitated. He had been deceived so comprehensively himself, he was so sick with the sense of betrayal, that he was tempted to tell her the truth. But the least her loyalty deserved, he decided, was a merciful lie. “Yes,” he said, “I knew it was on the cards.”
“You should have told me,” she said, drawing back her head and shaking him gently. “I’ve been that worried. I thought I’d lost you.”
“Lost me?”
“I thought there might be another woman.”
He laughed, and slapped her lightly on the bottom. “Make us that cup of tea,” he said. He realized, with a slight shock, that till now he hadn’t thought of Robyn Penrose once since Stuart Baxter had given him the news.
“I’ll bring it into the lounge. Your Dad’s in there.”
“Dad? What’s he doing here?”
“He just dropped in. He does occasionally, to keep me company. He knows my nerves’ve been bad.”
“Don’t tell him,” said Vic.
“All right,” said Marjorie. “But it’ll be in the evening paper tomorrow, won’t it?”
“You’re right,” said Vic.
So they woke up the old man, who was dozing in an armchair, and revived him with a cup of strong tea, and broke the news to him. He took it surprisingly well. He seemed to think that the year’s salary Vic would get was a small fortune on which he could live indefinitely, and Vic did not disillusion him—not immediately. As the three children came in one by one, and were told, the gathering turned into a sort of family council, and Vic spelled out the implications. “I’ve got no assets except this house, and there’s a big mortgage on that,” he said. “We’re going to have to tighten belts until I get a new job. I’m afraid we’ll have to cancel the holiday.”
“Oh, no!” Sandra whined.
“Don’t be so selfish, Sandra,” Marjorie snapped. “What’s a holiday?”
“I’ll go away on my own, then, with Cliff,” said Sandra. “I’ll work at Tweezers all summer and save up.”
“Fine,” said Vic, “as long as you contribute something to the housekeeping.”
Sandra sniffed. “What about university? I suppose you don’t want me to apply now.”
“Of course I want you to apply. I thought you weren’t interested.”
“I changed my mind. But if you’re going to make a fuss about money all the time—”
“We’ll find the money for that, don’t worry. It would help if you applied locally, mind…” He turned to his eldest son. “Raymond, I think it’s time you gave your mother some of your dole money, too.”
“I’m moving out,” said Raymond. “I’ve been offered a job.”
When the mild uproar that followed this announcement had died down, Raymond explained that the studio where his band had recorded their demonstration tape had offered him a job as assistant producer. “They hated our music, but I impressed the hell out of them with my electronic knowhow,” he said. “I went for a drink with Sidney, the owner, afterwards, and he offered me a job. It’s just a small outfit, Sidney’s only just started it up, but it has possibilities. There are dozens of bands round here looking for somewhere to record without being ripped off in London.”
“Hey, Dad, why don’t you start up your own business?” said Gary.
“Yeah, what about that idea you had for a spectrometer?” said Raymond.
Vic looked at his sons suspiciously, but they weren’t teasing him. “It’s a thought,” he said. “If Tom Rigby gets made redundant, he might invest his lump sum in a partnership. We’d still need a whacking great bank loan, but it’s definitely a thought.”
“Sidney got a loan,” said Raymond.
“Trouble is, I’ve got no equity to speak of. The house is mortgaged up to the hilt. It would look risky to a bank. There’s a lot of research to be done before we could even make a prototype.”
“Ay, it’s risky, going it alone,” said Mr. Wilcox. “You’d do better to look for another job like the one you had. Rumcol’d probably be glad to have you back, or Vanguard.”
“They’ve already got managing directors, Dad.”
“Doesn’t have to be a managing director’s job, son. You needn’t be proud.”
“You mean like a storesman’s job, Grandad?” said Gary.
“Don’t be cheeky, Gary,” said Vic. “Any road, I’m not sure I want to work for a company again. I’m fed up with flogging my guts out for companies and conglomerates that have about as much human feeling as a wagon-load of pig-iron.”
“If you started up on your own, Vic,” said Marjorie, “I could be your secretary. That would be a saving.”
“And I’ll do the accounts on my Atari,” said Gary. “We’ll make it a family business, like a Paki corner shop.”
“You could do worse,” said Mr. Wilcox. “They work ’ard, them buggers.”
“I wouldn’t mind having a job again,” said Marjorie. “I’m bored at home here all day, now you lot are grown up. And if it was our own business…”
Vic looked at her in astonishment. Her eyes were bright. She was smiling. And there were dimples in her cheeks.
…
When Robyn let herself into her house that evening, the telephone was ringing as if it had been ringing for hours. It was her mother.
“Is anything wrong?” said Robyn.
“No, something rather nice, I hope. A registered letter came for you from a law firm in Melbourne. I signed for it and posted it on to you this afternoon.”
“What on earth could it be about?”
“Your uncle Walter died recently,” said Mrs. Penrose. “We heard just after you went back to Rummidge. I meant to tell you, but I forgot. We hadn’t been in touch for years, of course. I don’t think anybody in the family had. He became a bit of a recluse after he sold his sheep farm to that mining—”
“Mummy, what has all this to do with me?” Robyn interpolated.
“Well, I think he might have left you something in his will.”
“Why? He wasn’t a real uncle, was he?”
“A sort of uncle-in-law. He married your father’s sister, Ethel, she died very young, of a bee-sting. She was allergic and didn’t know it. They never h
ad any children of their own, and he always had a soft spot for you, ever since you made him put all his money in the crippled children’s box when you were three.”
“Is that story really true?” Robyn remembered the painted plaster figure of the little boy, with short trousers and a peaked cap and one leg in irons, holding out a box with a slot in it for coins—it had been unique in Melbourne, brought there by an English immigrant shopkeeper—but she had never been quite sure about the incident with her uncle Walter.
“Of course it’s true.” Her mother sounded hurt, like a believer defending scripture. “Wouldn’t it be nice if Walter had remembered you in his will?”
“It would certainly come in useful,” said Robyn. “I’ve just received my rates bill. By the way, Mummy, I’m probably going to America.” Robyn told her mother about Morris Zapp’s proposition.
“Well, dear,” said Mrs. Penrose, “I don’t like to think of you being so far away, but I suppose it would only be for a year or two.”
“That’s the snag, actually,” said Robyn. “If I go, it will be difficult to get back. But who knows if there’ll be any more jobs to get back to in England?”
“Well, dear, you must do what you think best,” said her mother. “Have you heard from Charles lately?” she added wistfully.
“No,” said Robyn and brought the conversation to an end.
…
The next morning, when she came downstairs, there were two envelopes on her doormat. One was from her mother, enclosing the letter from Melbourne and the other was addressed in Charles’ hand. To extend the rather pleasurable suspense about the putative will, she opened the letter from Charles first. It said that he was getting on well at the bank though the hours were long and he felt exhausted at the end of the day. But things hadn’t worked out between him and Debbie, and he had moved out of her house.
She was such a novel sort of person to me that I was rather taken in at first. I mistook quickwittedness for intelligence. Frankly, my dear, she’s rather stupid. Most foreign exchange dealers are, in my experience—they have to be to play that electronic roulette all day. And they think of nothing else. When you come home from a hard day’s work at the bank, you need some civilised conversation, not more talk about positions and percentages. After a while I took to watching television just to have an excuse not to listen. Then I decided I would have to get my own place. So I’ve bought a nice little maisonette in a new development on the Isle of Dogs—mortgaged to the hilt, of course, but the average London property is going up by £50 a day at the moment, so you can’t really lose. I was wondering if you would like to come down and spend a weekend. We could do a show and some galleries.
I know what you will be thinking—“Oh, no, not all that again,” and I agree, it is rather absurd the way we keep splitting up and coming back together, because it seems that nobody else will do, in the end. I wonder whether it isn’t time we bowed to the inevitable, and got married. I don’t mean to live together, necessarily—obviously as long as I’m working in London, and you’re in Rummidge, that’s impossible anyway—but just to put a sort of seal on things. And if you can’t find another job when your contract at Rummidge runs out, you might find it pleasanter to be unemployed in London than in Rummidge. I’m fairly confident that I shall be earning enough by then to support you in the style to which you have become accustomed, if not rather better. There’s no reason why you shouldn’t go on doing research and publishing as a lady of leisure. Think about it. And do come down for a weekend, soon.
Love, Charles
“Humph!” said Robyn, and tucked the letter back into its envelope. She opened the second letter. It informed her in longwinded legal language that she was sole beneficiary of her uncle Walter’s will, and that he had left an estate estimated at A$300,000 after tax. Robyn whooped and ran to consult the rates of exchange in the Guardian. Then she telephoned her mother. “You were right, Mummy, Uncle Walter has left me something in his will.”
“How much, dear?”
“Well,” said Robyn, “when I’ve paid the rates, I reckon I should have about one hundred and sixty-five thousand, eight hundred and fifty pounds left, give or take a few.”
Mrs. Penrose screamed, and seemed to drop the phone. Robyn could hear her shouting the news to her father, who was apparently in the bathroom. Then she came back on the line. “Daddy says congratulations! I’m so pleased for you, dear. What a sum!”
“I’ll share it with you, of course.”
“Nonsense, Robyn, it’s your money. Uncle Walter left it to you.”
“But it’s so eccentric. He hardly knew me. It should have gone to Daddy if he’s next of kin. Or equally to me and Basil.”
“Basil has more money than is good for him already. And your father and I are quite comfortable, though it’s very generous of you to offer, dear. Now you won’t have to go to America.”
“Why not?” said Robyn, her elation subsiding a little.
“Well, you won’t need to. You could live off the interest on a hundred and sixty-five thousand.”
“Yes, I suppose you’re right,” said Robyn. “But I don’t really want to give up work.”
…
The rain cleared in the night. It is a calm, sunny morning, without a cloud in the sky—one of those rare days when the atmosphere of Rummidge seems to have been rinsed clean of all its pollution, and the objects of vision stand out with pristine clarity. Robyn, wearing a cotton button-through dress and sandals, steps out of her house into the warm, limpid air and pauses a moment, looking up and down the street, filling her lungs as joyfully as if it were a beach.
Her dusty, dented Renault creaks on its springs as she throws her Gladstone bag onto the passenger seat and gets behind the wheel. The engine wheezes asthmatically for several seconds before it coughs into life. It crosses her mind, with a little acquisitive thrill, that very soon she will be able to swap the Renault for a brand-new car, something swish and powerful. She could put Basil’s nose out of joint by buying a Porsche. No, not a Porsche, she thinks, remembering Vic’s homily about foreign cars. A Lotus, perhaps, except that you can hardly get into them in a skirt. Then she thinks, how absurd, the Renault is perfectly adequate for my purposes, all it needs is a new battery.
Robyn drives slowly and carefully to the University. She is so conscious of carrying a precious freight of good fortune that she has an almost superstitious fear that some maniac driver will come tearing out of a side turning and smash it all to smithereens. But she reaches the campus without incident. Passing the Wilcoxes’ house in Avondale Road, glimpsing a hand, perhaps Marjorie’s, shaking a duster from an upstairs window, she wonders idly why Vic was called away so suddenly from the University the day before, and why he did not return. She parks her car under a lime tree—the space is vacant because other drivers avoid the sticky gum that drops from its branches, but Robyn rather likes the patina it imparts to the Renault’s faded paint-work—and carries her Gladstone bag to the Arts Faculty building. The sun shines warmly on the red brick and glints on the shiny new ivy leaves. A faint breath of steam rises from the drying lawns. Robyn walks with a blithe, springy gait, swinging her Gladstone bag (lighter than it was in January, for the examinations are about to begin, and her teaching load is tailing off), smiling and greeting the colleagues and students that she recognises in the lobby, on the stairs, on the landing of the English Department.
Bob Busby, pinning a notice to the AUT board, beckons to her. “There’s an extraordinary General Meeting next Monday to discuss the implications of the UGC’s letter,” he says. “It doesn’t look good.”
He lowers his voice to a confidential murmur: “I hear you may be leaving us sooner than expected. I can’t say I blame you.”
“Who told you that?” says Robyn.
“It’s just a rumour.”
“Well, I’d be glad if you wouldn’t spread it any further,” says Robyn. She walks on, down the corridor, momentarily annoyed by Bob Busby’s inquisitiveness a
nd Pamela’s indiscretion—for the secretary must have been the source of the rumour. Robyn makes a mental note, heavily underlined, not to tell anyone in the Department about her legacy.
As usual, there is somebody waiting to see her, standing by her door. When she gets closer she sees that it is Vic Wilcox: she didn’t recognise him immediately because he is not wearing his usual dark business suit, but a short-sleeved knitted shirt and neatly pressed lightweight trousers. He is carrying two books in his hand.
“I wasn’t expecting you,” she says, unlocking the door of her office. “Are you making up for what you missed yesterday?”
“No,” he says, following her into the room, and closing the door. “I’ve come to tell you that I won’t be coming any more.”
“Oh,” she says. “Well, it doesn’t matter. Teaching is nearly over now. You wouldn’t find it much fun watching me mark exam scripts. Is there some crisis at Pringle’s, then?”
“I’m finished with Pringle’s,” he says. “Pringle’s has been sold to the group that owns Foundrax. That’s what the phone call was about yesterday. I’m unemployed, as from today.” He raises his hands and gestures at his casual clothes as if they are a sign of his fallen state.
When he has related all the details to her, she says, “But can they do that to you? Chuck you out, just like that, without notice?”
“Afraid so.”
“But it’s monstrous!”
“Once they’ve made up their minds, they don’t mess around. They know I could screw up the entire company if I stayed another week, in revenge. Not that I would be bothered.”
“I’m very sorry, Vic. You must feel devastated.”