shadow of the porch, with a blanket round her shoulders. As the winter came on she looked more and more demoralised and disreputable. There were whole days when she didn’t speak a word to anybody, and didn’t set foot outside the house.
The back doors of the ambulance opened, and the ambulance men lifted Mrs. Sidney and her wheelchair and set them carefully on the ground. One of them waved in the direction of the family. They swivelled the chair in the road, edged it onto the pavement, and pushed it to the front gate. Mrs. Sidney was swaddled in a gay scarlet blanket: only the top of her head showed. “Here we go,” the attendants cried, running her up the path. “She can walk, you know, but she says it’s not etiquette. Are we glad to see you lot! Took one old lass home last week, the whole family had done a moonlight. Like the
As they brought the wheelchair to a halt, Mrs. Sidney’s skeletal hand emerged from her wrappings. She pulled the blanket aside from her face and peered out. “Where’s your father?” she enquired of Colin in her rasping voice. Colin looked at Sylvia for aid.
“Tell her,” Sylvia said. “Tell her he’s dead. Don’t pander to her.”
Colin cleared his throat. “He’s passed on, Mother. Don’t you remember? It was, oh, ten or eleven years back.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Mrs. Sidney said. “I expect he’s off shooting at Sandringham. Who is that woman in a certain condition, standing in the porch?”
“Well, can we give you a hand?” the ambulance men enquired. “Where do you want her? Upstairs, downstairs, in my lady’s chamber?” Suzanne stood back to let them pass. They winked at her on the way out. “Give us a call if you start up sudden, love. Twenty-four-hour service, that’s us, no job too large or small.”
“What nice men,” Claire said. “I wonder if they’d like a boiled egg?”
“All yours!” they cried, as they sped off down the path.
Mr. Ryan—Jim—was a spare eager man in his early thirties. He had a sandy moustache and brown dog-like eyes.
“Sit down, Mr. Sidney,” he said. He paused, unhopefully. “I don’t suppose it’s about the account, is it?”
Colin pulled a chair up to the desk. “My wife thought that perhaps we ought to talk, but I don’t know…perhaps somewhere else would have been preferable?”
“It hardly matters,” Ryan said. “As long as you keep your voice down.”
“I haven’t come to make a scene.”
“No…well, that’s all right then.” Mr. Ryan shrunk a little in his swivel chair. His eyes wandered over Colin and away to the framed print of a fishing village which hung on the far wall. The quay seemed strangely deserted; little boats bobbed on blue-black waves. “Only it wouldn’t help if I lost my job.”
“Is that likely?”
“She’s a customer.”
“Of course.”
“And we have our professional ethics.”
“Like doctors and dentists? I didn’t know that. I mean, if a woman comes in to open a deposit account, you don’t ask her to take her clothes off, do you? Not in the normal case; though I can see there are exceptions.”
“You’d be surprised what happens, Mr. Sidney.” Mr. Ryan’s dark eyes flickered; he picked up a paper clip from his tray and began to unbend it. “You really see life from behind this desk. When the customers get divorced, they come into your office and fight.”
“I had no idea.”
“Oh yes. They get very personal.” He met Colin’s eye briefly. “That’s not what I came into banking for, I don’t enjoy it at all. They come in to divide their account, and then next thing you know, they’re arguing about fellatio and who’s going to have the hamster.”
Colin took out a packet of cigarettes. “Smoke?”
Ryan shook his head gloomily, as if at this moment any silly habit would have been a relief. “It’s no joke,” he said. “I don’t like it. It upsets me.”
“You don’t like emotions.” Colin lit his cigarette. “Leave it to the women, eh?”
“Why not?” said Ryan, sneering a little. “They have the expertise, don’t they, or so they say? They keep shifting the ground, you can’t keep up. To them, big rows are like, what do you call it, fashion accessories—they have a new set every season.”
“Have you got an ashtray?” Colin said. I won’t be drawn, he thought, I’ll keep my cool. He looked up. “I can’t help observing, Mr. Ryan, that you are a man of what…thirty-three, thirty-four?”
“Whereas Suzanne is eighteen. You think I took advantage of her.”
“I haven’t heard that expression in years,” Colin said. “But still, in this case…I can’t imagine where you met.”
“We met at the university,” Ryan said. “We have these annual promotions, you know, you must have seen the adverts. We call it our Someday Package. Someday You’ll Make a Million, that’s the slogan. The people who dream up these things are living in the past. They still think there are jobs for graduates.”
“Yes?”
“And there was your daughter, coming in for her free plastic clipboard with the logo, and her free packet of felt-tipped pens. Myself, I thought the felt-tips were a mistake, a bit juvenile, but your daughter said, on the contrary, you know, she being a student of geography, they’d be useful to her—and that’s how we got into conversation.”
