much notice of yet another compliment. “Hm, so knowing the way Fossilface’s mind works – or trying to get into the perverse workings of Fossilface’s mind – maybe we should be on the lookout for some kind of ‘restitooshun’ involving tyres?”
“Any idea what?”
Mrs Pargeter shrugged. “If I had the skills to predict that, I’d win the National Lottery every week.”
“Right.” Gary yawned. “I’m for bed. It’s a mild night. Maybe I will leave the Roller out for –”
“I’d lock it up if I were you,” said Mrs Pargeter firmly. “I’m not having my investment put at risk.”
She went back to the cottage and bed. Gary drove the Rolls-Royce into the converted barn, and locked the large doors front and back. Then he too went to bed.
Neither Mrs Pargeter nor Gary knew that all their actions were still being watched.
? Mrs Pargeter’s Plot ?
Twenty-Seven
The next stage of Truffler Mason’s enquiries, forced on him by the loss of his archives, brought him up against that common British phenomenon, middle-class upward mobility. In all their researches into tribes from Poluostrov Tajmyr to Papua New Guinea, anthropologists have yet to discover a less secure social grouping than the British middle class. The status of this section of society is always fluid. They cannot find stasis, as the aristocracy and the genuine working class frequently do. The middle classes are never able to forget where they’ve come from, and spend all their time in heart-searching assessment of the number of degrees by which they are on the way up or down from that starting point.
The dilemma was well expressed by the household in which Truffler Mason found himself. Stan Gertler – known professionally as Stan the Orang-Utan, for reasons which you will either understand instinctively or which you don’t need to know about – was definitely born ‘lower middle class’. In fact, the young Stan might have slipped back quite comfortably into the working class, but for an aspiring mother who was determined to make something of her husband and her child. For there is nothing more daunting in the world than an aspiring mother with middle- class ambitions.
Stan Gertler’s social instability was then aggravated by his own marriage. Rita, with whom he fell in love as suddenly and heavily as he habitually knocked over nightwatchmen, regarded herself as ‘middle class’ – though she would more accurately have been described as ‘upper lower middle class’ – and, needless to say, her only ambition was to become ‘upper middle class’.
To this end, she moved her husband away from his Stoke Newington roots to the nice genteel suburb of Muswell Hill, and never did anything so lower-class as to ask him where his money came from but instead proceeded to spend a great deal of it on stripped pine, spice racks and Laura Ashley curtains.
When their son was born, she branded him for life with the hopefully classy name of Sebastian, and tried to use him as a crampon to pull the family further up the sheer cliffs of middle-class fulfilment. This involved sending the boy to a public school to develop both his vowels and his inbuilt antennae for the recognition and avoidance of anything ‘common’.
It had been Mrs Gertler’s hope that in time her son would meet a nice girl from the ‘upper upper middle class’ – or even, dare one hope it, “the aristocracy’ – to produce a new generation of children who, instinctively and without prompting, would for the rest of their days treat au pairs and waiters like dirt.
But her fond aspirations did not look likely to be realized. Sebastian was a sad disappointment to his mother. Even his expensive vowels had become deliberately roughened by that inverted snobbery to which public school boys are so prone. And his taste in women was proving to be decidedly down the tacky – not to say ‘rough trade’ – end of the market.
Thank goodness Rita Gertler didn’t know that her son was currently spending his days menacing motorists with a squeegee, thought Truffler Mason as she dispensed dry sherry and gave him a guided tour of her taste in interior decor.
“Of course,” she was saying, in an accent that still remained more broken glass than cut glass, “the sideboard’s Regency.”
“Of course.” Truffler looked appraisingly at the item in question. “Very nice, Rita. Stan always did have a wonderful eye for antiques, didn’t he?”
“Oh, I’ll say.”
“Knew how to pick them. Knew what he wanted, and didn’t bother with any of the other stuff.”
“That’s so true.”
“Wherever he went in, he always knew what to take and what to leave.”
Rita cleared her throat, indicating that the boundary of some middle-class prohibition was being approached a little too closely. Then she moved on. “I like to think Sebastian’s inherited some of his father’s flair.”
Sebastian, incarcerated for his mother’s benefit in a tweed sports jacket, checked shirt and paisley tie, smiled weakly.
“Oh, what?” asked Truffler. “You mean flair for –”
Rita came in firmly to divert the direction of the conversation. “Flair for spotting antiques. Sebastian’s doing a Fine Art course at university… aren’t you, Sebastian?”
“Yes, Mummy,” he replied, uncomfortably back in his best public school accent.
“Very nice.” Truffler looked blandly across at the young man. “That all he’s doing at the moment then, is it?”
Sebastian eased an awkward finger round the inside of his collar, as his mother said, “Oh yes. In three years’ time he’ll have a degree. That’s how universities work, you know.”
“Really? I’d often wondered.” She was unaware of his irony, as Truffler went on, “So his dad’ll just be out for the ceremony, won’t he?”
Rita pursed her lips, leaving Truffler in no doubt that his remark had not been in the best of taste. He hastened to cover over the gaffe. “Keeping well, is he… Stan?”
“Very well, thank you.”
The response was rather curt, but she softened when Truffler continued, “And you’re looking very good yourself.”
Slightly preening, she simpered back, “How kind. Anno Domini marches on, but one… endeavours to do one’s best.”
“Course.” He slid the conversation seamlessly into the next stage of his investigation. “Look like you’ve caught the sun too, Rita. That all been in this country, has it?”
“Oh yes. Just here, sitting out on the patio.” She pronounced the word to rhyme with ‘ratio’.
“Ah, right. So you haven’t been abroad since…” there was a conscious effort of tact, “… since Stan’s been away?”
“Well…” Rita confided, “I did have one rather enjoyable little trip…”
“Really?” Truffler’s response was casually poised, as if the subject held only the mildest of interest for him.
“It was what I believe is vulgarly known as a ‘freebie’…”
“Nice.” Then, as if his enquiry arose out of mere politeness, he asked, “Long way away, was it?”
“Yes, it was, actually, Truffler. Rather an exotic location, as it happens…”
“This all sounds very mysterious, Rita.”
She gave a coy flutter of the eyelashes, attracted to the idea of being a woman of mystery. “Well…”
“Perhaps you’d like to tell me about it?” Truffler suggested.
He and Sebastian leant forward together, as Rita Gertler prepared to tell all.
? Mrs Pargeter’s Plot ?
28
