Frances represented many things for Charles, amongst them a kind of fixed moral standard in his life. To ring her the following morning seemed, therefore, not just a good, but even a right idea. Like going to confession (though he had no intention of confessing anything), a bracing moral scour-out.
‘Charles. Well, are you coming or not? You’ve left it late enough.’
‘Left what late enough?’
‘Charles, you remember — Juliet and Miles invited you down for lunch.’
‘Oh yes, of course.’
‘You hadn’t forgotten, had you?’
‘Oh no, I. . er. . um.’
‘Well, are you going to come or not?’
‘Um. I hadn’t really thought. I. . er. .’
‘I will be leaving in an hour, Charles. If you’re here when I go, you will be coming. If you’re not, I will be going on my own.’
‘Yes, well, of course I — ’
‘Goodbye, Charles.’
Yes, he would go. After the moral squalor of the night before, he needed the redemption of playing at being the respectable husband, father and grandfather. A nice, straight day with the family — that seemed morally appropriate. Though a day with his son-in-law, Miles, could take on certain qualities of a penance.
‘Thing is, Pop, you see, that when Mums sells the house, she’s going to have a bit of cash in hand.’
‘Yes, I suppose so.’ Good God, at what point had Frances lapsed low enough to let Miles call her ‘Mums’?
And this is where she’s really going to feel the benefit of having someone in the family who knows about insurance.’ Miles took his mother-in-law’s hand confidently. ‘Aren’t you, Mums?’ To Charles’s amazement, she didn’t flinch. ‘Now, I’ve got a really exciting little annuity scheme worked out which I think will be just the ticket.’
Charles looked across at Miles Taylerson with his customary disbelief. Anyone who could get excited by an annuity scheme must belong to a different species from his own. And yet Miles appeared to have the same complement of arms and legs as he did, the same disposition of eyes, nose and mouth. Maybe, Charles reflected, his son-in-law was the result of some cloning experiment, by which creatures from another planet had created something that looked like a human being, but lacked the essential circuitry of humanity. Maybe one day Miles’s head would flip open like a kitchen bin to reveal a tangle of wires and transistors.
‘You haven’t thought any more about insurance, have you, Pop?’
‘No, I think I can honestly say that I haven’t.’ And come to that, what’s this ‘more’? his mind continued silently. It is one of my proudest boasts that I have never thought about insurance and I am convinced that, even under torture, I could resist the temptation.
‘I was just thinking that now’s a good time. Now you’re getting regular money from this West End show, it’d be a good opportunity to put a little aside each week — it needn’t be much, but you’d be amazed how it accumulates.’
‘Thank you. I’m sure if ever the occasion arises when I want advice on insurance, you’re the first person I’ll come to.’ Charles thought that wasn’t bad. It was the nearest he had ever got to saying something to his son-in-law that was neither untrue nor offensive.
Miles seemed to appreciate it, too. He sat back with a satisfied grin and looked contentedly around the open-plan hygienic nonentity of his executive sitting room in his executive house on an executive estate in Pangbourne.
His wife seemed to recognise some signal and took up the conversational baton for the next lap. ‘Incidentally, Daddy, I haven’t said how delighted we all are about this West End play. We really hope to get to see it soon, but, you know, things are pretty busy, what with this and that, and the boys.’
‘Of course.’ He couldn’t help feeling affection for Juliet whenever he looked at her. There was something about the set of her eyes which hadn’t changed since she was three years old, when she had been all hugs and trust for her father. He often wondered what it was that had brought about such a change in their relationship. Maybe his walking out on Frances.
He looked across at his wife. She was unaware of his scrutiny, gazing with fondness at the two blond-headed little boys who were shovelling gravy-sodden potato into their mouths, an exercise — and apparently the only one — that kept them silent.
At such moments he knew that he loved Frances, and he could feel the seductions of a conventional marriage, of meals such as this happening every Sunday, of knowing each other’s daily news, not always having to catch up on a few months’ worth of events. There was a kind of peace about it.
And maybe that peace was not completely beyond his grasp. If he really made an effort, perhaps something could be salvaged.
‘No,’ Juliet continued, ‘I mean this West End thing is something I can really tell my friends about. It was like when you had that part in
‘Thank you,’ he muttered. Good God, what had happened to Juliet? Her mind had set irrevocably into middle age when she was about ten. Marriage to Miles had only hardened her mental arteries further. The pair of them had just quietly fossilised together.
Julian finished his potatoes and looked gravely round the family gathering. ‘My penis,’ he announced, ‘is as big as the Empire State Building.’
His four-year-old twin, Damian, not to be outdone, immediately responded. ‘Mine penis,’ he proclaimed, ‘mine penis is as big as the World Trade Centre.’
In the confusion of scolding that followed, Charles reflected that maybe there was hope for the family after all.
Closer acquaintance did nothing to dispel his good impression of his grandsons. After lunch, Juliet, looking peaky and feeling grim, as she had done in the early months of her previous pregnancy, went upstairs to lie down. Frances and Miles went off to the kitchen to do the washing-up (and, no doubt, to talk annuities), leaving Charles to entertain the children.
He found that this was a two-way process. The two little boys were full of ideas for games and, even if most of them ended rather predictably in throwing the sofa cushions at their grandfather, they showed considerable powers of invention.
They were also at the stage when they still found funny voices funny, and Charles had his best audience in years for his Welsh, developed for
Somehow they got into a game of Prisoners. Charles would capture one of the boys and only release him if he said the magic word. The secret of the game was to keep changing the magic word, making it longer and longer and sillier and sillier, in the hope (always realised) that the prisoner would be giggling too much to repeat it. Since, while the prisoner struggled to escape, the unfettered twin would be bombarding his grandfather with cushions, the game was not without hilarity.
Charles clasped his hands round Julian.
‘What’s the magic word?’ Julian gasped.
Woomph, went a cushion from Damian into Charles’s face.
‘The magic word is — Ongle-bongle-boodle-boodle-boodle.’
‘Ongle-bongle-boodle-giggle-giggle,’ Julian repeated, wriggling free.
Damian rushed into the imprisoning arms.
‘What’s the magic word?’
Woomph, went a cushion from Julian into the back of Charles’s neck.
‘Nick-picky-wickety-pingle-pang.’
‘Nicky-picky-diddle-poo-poo.’ Damian snickered at his daring.
But it wasn’t good enough to secure his release.
