Father of the Man (15 page)

He was taken to a large bare room in which a number of railwaymen were standing drinking tea and chatting. There was a solidly old-fashioned sink in one corner and there were girlie pictures on the walls. He remained between his escorts at the further end of the room while they wordlessly waited for someone. The dozen or so railwaymen glanced at him incuriously and proceeded with their conversations.

The man who came in was tall and thin. He looked a little like Norman Tebbit and this again gave Roger grounds for mild amusement; he wondered if he might be told to get on his bike and simply leave home a bit earlier.

His escorts moved away.

The man said: “I’m the Revenue Protection Manager.” Roger thought he must try to remember that. “I’m acquainted with your case. You have the right to remain silent but I must warn you that anything you do say may be taken down and used in evidence. Has it been pointed out to you that travelling without a valid ticket is a prosecutable offence?”

“Yes,” said Roger.

“So you actually knew that by being on the train this morning without a valid ticket you were contravening the law?”

“Yes.”

“Then why didn’t you buy one?”

“Because I believe you owe me further travel. Besides, I haven’t any money.”

“What you’re saying, then, is that if you’d had the money you’d have paid for your ticket?”

“No.”

Irrelevantly, or maybe not, it suddenly struck Roger that, tall though the man was, he was still having to look up to him. It was the first time he could recall ever regarding his height as an advantage (indeed he had more often thought of it as a drawback—as making him conspicuous and at the cinema, for instance, even antisocial—and on account of this, despite his parents’ nagging, he had always been inclined to stoop) but now he straightened himself, to an extent that he felt the slight resistance in his shoulders, which were unaccustomed to being squared. He hoped that the movement were imperceptible; but what did it matter if it weren’t?

He was perhaps three inches taller than his questioner.

“But you can’t really pretend you don’t have any money. Why are you leaving your job if you don’t have any money?”

At first Roger thought that the man couldn’t have heard what he had said; but in the next instant he saw his grandmother, his father’s mother, laughingly wagging her finger at him when he had been—what?—about five years old. “None so deaf, my lad, as those who will not hear!” (He associated many such finger-wagging maxims with his grandmother, whom he wished he had managed to see more of. And he could have done: she hadn’t died till he was seventeen.) Now he realized a few things simultaneously: that the railwaymen in the room had all stopped talking; that this Revenue Protection Manager obviously
was
better acquainted with the case than some of his questions might have indicated; and that if Gran’s maxim upon deafness were right, then this automatically added a certain strength to his own position.

“I’m leaving my job because there’s no way I can afford three-and-a-quarter thousand pounds to buy a new ticket.”

He had slightly raised his voice. Whatever their feelings of loyalty he believed there couldn’t be a single man present—other than possibly the one in front of him—who wouldn’t sympathize with his explanation.

“But your ticket expired last Saturday. You should have left your job last Saturday.”

“My boss and I had taken into account the six extra days you owed me.”

“No. I’m sorry. We don’t owe you anything.”

“But doesn’t that seem a bit inconsistent? I was told if I’d bought a new season ticket there’d have been no problem adding on those missing days.”
Thank you, Greg
.

The man didn’t answer. There was a pause: no, something that seemed far longer than a conversational pause: and, although he felt its awkwardness, Roger was determined not to fill it. He thought: Perhaps I ought to begin visiting a gym. If extra height can give you an advantage, think what extra breadth could also do for you. He imagined Norman Tebbit in confrontation with Arnold Schwartzenegger. Roger would hate to be like Arnold Schwartzenegger. But there was always, of course, a happy medium.

“You could leave your job today instead of Saturday.”

“No. It would mean letting everybody down. It would also mean my losing three or four days’ salary.”

“Well, suit yourself. But if you’re on that train tomorrow morning you know you’ll be arrested?”

Coming from someone of such standing the threat carried authority. It had carried authority before but might now have stood in danger of being dulled by repetition.

“Yes.”

“And will you be on that train tomorrow morning?”

“Yes.”

“I see. Well, as I say, that’s up to you. You’ve been informed about the possibility of a refund, haven’t you?”

“Six pounds a day.”

“No, I haven’t mentioned any figure. I haven’t worked it out. But in court I shall say I offered you a refund. You’re totally clear on that point? I want to be absolutely fair.”

“Then perhaps you’d like to work it out now?” suggested Roger. “I can wait a while. I’m not in any hurry.”

“Excuse me?”

Roger was aware he could have sounded impudent. “I just meant I don’t have to be at the shop until nine. And anyway, if necessary, I can always say I was delayed by my journey…that I was unavoidably detained.”

Not the least hint of an answering smile—and he didn’t look to see if anyone else might have appreciated his small attempt at humour. Had he perhaps made things a little worse? Could such a tongue-in-cheek remark be taken down and used in evidence?

“No, I certainly can’t work out a figure while we’re standing here.”

“I’m sorry.”

“But I hope you won’t deny I’ve offered you a refund?”

“Of six pounds a day.”

“That’s not correct. I haven’t named a figure.”

“It’s the only figure which anyone
has
named.”

There was another, but this time much shorter, pause. “Why not simply go to the Complaints Department, Mr Mild? After all, that’s the reason we have a complaints department.”

The production of his name was almost as disconcerting as the phrase
in court
. In their different ways they were equally insidious.

“I didn’t even realize you had a complaints department. I suppose I should have done. Could they settle it, then, by this evening?”

“No, they could not settle it, then, by this evening.” The man was clearly getting riled.

“Well, in that case…?”

The Revenue Protection Manager looked at his watch.

“So for the rest of the week I would advise you to stay at home,” he declared, crisply. “Because if you try to come back to London in the same way tomorrow it won’t be just us, it will be the police that you’ll find waiting for you. Understood?”

He would have liked to say:
I’d be a numbskull if it wasn’t, after the number of times it’s been repeated! Yeah, life gets tedious, doan it?

“Yes,” he said. “Understood.”

Nick Barratt was shortish and solid and although he was only in his early fifties—the same age as Roger’s father—the little hair he had remaining was not simply grey, it was almost white. Rose taunted him about his need to lose weight (which was one point you might have thought Rose would keep quiet on) but he responded genially to these jibes, even though he didn’t much care for Rose and even though he could be quick-tempered and oversensitive about other, apparently less hurtful digs. Roger got on well with him and was apt to confide things he didn’t talk about to anybody else at work except—normally—to Mr Cavendish. Nick had led an interesting existence and it was he who’d made the comment about writing that had prompted Henry’s claim to friendship with a famous author. While Nick was signing Henry’s card in the basement, Roger gave him an update on the train situation. His mention of it on Monday had been an error because he hadn’t taken into account Nick’s habitual pessimism and he spoke of it today only because Nick had asked about developments. (But on Monday Roger had simply felt the need to unburden himself to
someone
.)

Nick paused in his search for something original to put on Henry’s card, to say to Roger in a discouraging tone (and this from the man who’d crossed rope bridges over yawning chasms in South America, opened a marriage bureau in Chester, taken up the study of Arabic only a couple of years ago with a view to obtaining a degree in it): “No, I think it’s extremely dangerous, what you’re doing. I think you’re tempting providence—not to talk of prosecution and prison! I feel at the very least you ought to tell Mr Cavendish.”

“No. Absolutely not. He just wouldn’t understand. Any more than you do.”

“He probably thinks you keep arriving late because it’s your last week and you’ve lost interest.”

“I wasn’t late yesterday. Hardly late today. And on Monday some sheep really had got onto the line. Nothing to do with me.”

“And tomorrow?”

Roger shrugged. “Buck up with that card. He’s already been here half an hour. He’ll be dishing out the cakes at any moment. I think we should have bought him a present.”

In fact he was toying with the idea—and this wasn’t merely self-interest—of slipping out to buy a pound of handmade chocolates from nextdoor.

Actually his motive wasn’t at all one of self-interest. What largely prevented him was the thought that Jenny might believe he was chasing her.

Another deterrent was the knowledge that if he were indeed to buy such chocolates his parents were more the ones who ought to have them…except that his mother was currently on a diet; and, besides which, there was this niggling fear that if Oscar were coming home it might be Oscar who would end up getting most of them. Also, there was his awareness of how much better spent—probably—those several pounds would be if he simply divided them amongst the people of both sexes and all ages who absolutely every night, while he was on his way to St Pancras, asked him whether he had any change. (One night recently he had been accosted four times, although the average was only half of that.) Not of course that if he didn’t spend the money on Henry he would this evening give away more than a fraction of it but even so…

Milk Tray was possibly the answer.

And surely Mr Cavendish knew him well enough by now to realize it wasn’t at all because he was leaving that it might appear he was taking liberties.

“I will say one thing, though,” volunteered Nick, as he handed back the card. “Whatever the rights or wrongs of all this, you’ve got more guts than I have. I couldn’t do what you’re doing. I don’t know many people who could.”

12

If it wasn’t raining Jean usually walked to work. She did this partly for the exercise and partly for economy but also because she enjoyed it: her route lay mainly among trees and brought both interest and perspective. They lived near the reservoir and from here the view over the city—with its tumble of houses and chimneys, skyscrapers and spires, its backdrop of blue-tinted hills—almost never failed to please her. The path eventually led down to a busy road but from this it wasn’t far to the Arboretum, and even setting aside the splendour of trees and flowers and shrubs—not to mention sightings of such things as squirrels, robins, blackbirds, magpies—just the skill with which the gardeners planted out the seedlings made her envy them their occupation; could there be many jobs so satisfying? (Since a spacious garden of her own now looked less and less likely, the only thing she thought could equal this in kind was a lovingly detailed model railway or doll’s house—and doll’s house she did in fact possess, an expensive one, double-gabled, half-timbered, which Ephraim had given her ten years before…but although she had built up a small collection of furnishings, had worked out biographies for the two elderly people who lived in it—enjoying frequent visits from their grandchildren, naturally!—had even bought the wiring with which to electrify the house, still she’d never found the time, or the energy, or the money, still after all these years, to do more than plan it and re-plan it in her head, most often during wakeful nights; it was like her wish to write, just another source of embittering frustration.) And then, leaving the Arboretum, you crossed to the cemetery. This also was beautiful: two pathways winding through it unobtrusively, leading you gently out of the hollow—so far your walk had been entirely downhill—but soon beginning to rise more steeply. Here the turf was less smooth and the only growing flowers were the wild ones which clustered under trees or along banks: a woodland atmosphere in spite of gravestones. If she hadn’t disliked so much the notion of being buried she would have considered this as good a spot as any in which to be laid to rest, preferably somewhere sheltered and close to one of the paths.

Laid to rest…

She was only fifty-two, three months younger than Ephraim…although already she was seven years older than her mother; a thought which wasn’t merely terrifying—heredity?—it was totally incredible. Yet, despite this, those three tranquil syllables appealed to her so powerfully that recently she had come to understand how old people could claim the prospect of death no longer worried them, indeed was positively reassuring, something to welcome. And that, too, was scary: that at a comparatively early age, with at least another quarter of a century absolutely vital to her—and even then only sufficient if every day was used, lived to its uttermost—she had actually begun to empathize with such a claim.

Apart from anything else, what percentage had she yet seen of this intriguing world she lived in? A little of France, a little of Germany, a tiny bit of Scandinavia; shamefully, just an equally small proportion of Britain. And she had always wanted so very much to travel (even—in the days of being a dreamer—to explore: one of her childhood heroines had been Mary Kingsley, who had fought off crocodiles with an umbrella: although Jean the explorer, forty years ago, had been still more scared of spiders than she was today). Oh, but how she envied Oscar all his travels—and not merely these current ones, either; he and his friends had been taking holidays abroad for several years now…And, oh, how she envied Abby, who had spent ten months in America au pairing, followed by a further three in Rome with a girlfriend whose aunt had an apartment there—Abby, who was now living, and would be doing so for as long as it suited her, with a forceful up-and-coming young executive in Brussels, from where she could at any time hop in a car, get on a train, cross so many frontiers…simply breathe and expand. (And their stay-at-home mother was thirty years older than this globetrotting son, twenty-seven than this gallivanting daughter!) And she envied them not the fact of being young but the fact of having been born at a time when it had become usual for students to swan off with backpacks and sleeping bags and send home little but the odd postcard: going on to Florence…or Venice…or Athens…or Krakatoa…or Alice Springs…Mum, could you please extend insurance: the world, instead of only Europe?…