Before

Another excerpt from my unpublished novel "The Mummy and Daddy Christmas Present Fund"

Tuesday 9^th November 1971

John came into the office to find a note from Lynda on his desk: “Mr Parfitt would like to see when you come in.”

So A.J.F. was already up and prowling. John removed his coat and hung it up on the coat-stand. Well A.J.F. wasn’t going to make him jump through a hoop like a tiger at the circus. It was raining and the tube up to Mayfair had been packed. And the train up to Cannon Street had been packed as well. John sat down at his desk, and checked his calendar. There was just one phone call he had to make, and it would be sufficient if he called this afternoon. And Lynda had also left the usual file containing the typed-up letters awaiting his signature. Normally, this would be a casual day. He hoped A.J.F. would have coffee served, if it were to be a serious meeting. But probably it wouldn’t.

He waited exactly 10 minutes and then called A.J.F.’s extension.

“Parfitt,” A.J.F.’s clipped voice answered.

“Oh good morning, A.J.F., it’s John Osborne here. You left a message for me?”

“John. Could you come up to my office straight away? There’s someone I’d like you to meet.”

Oh. Someone he’d like him to meet. Really. Who might that be then.

John took the stairs to the 4^th floor. He made the formal knock on A.J.F.’s door and entered almost immediately, only just overlapping A.J.F.’s confirmation of “Come.”

A.J.F. was leaning back in his chair behind his desk, in his usual pose of hands pressed together at the fingertips, and there was another chap in the room, on the other side of the desk, his legs crossed, a chap John had never seen before, and both of them rose as John entered. A.J.F. said, “John, I’d like you to meet Peter Grisham, from Operations at our new Headquarters in Norwich.”

John knew about Norwich. It was in East Anglia, and Lambe & Blunt's Sugar was moving its Headquarters up there in the following year. Although everything had already started. There was a “team” up there already, they were setting everything up. And Lambe & Blunt's Sugar was going to start marketing the product under the name “Golden Teaspoon”. It wasn’t something that really affected him, was it? Ladymere House was still going to exist, only the operational Headquarters was moving up to Norwich, all the rest was really still going to be controlled from Piccadilly. At least, that was what he had understood up to now. And particularly, Accounts was still going to be controlled from Ladymere House.

Peter Grisham was tall, large and had a moustache. And from the moment he started to speak, John knew that he was not public school. He flashed a look to A.J.F. and from the look that A.J.F. returned him, from that split-second eye contact, he knew that A.J.F. knew it too. Grammar school, maybe. He did not have a local accent. But they were not dealing with their own class here. In that case, if A.J.F. had called him in at this time of the day to discuss something with this man, whom he had never heard of, it was about something important.

“The Accounts,” Grisham was saying. “Need to be looked after by someone we can trust.”

We? Who did he mean by that? Grisham, was he part of the upper echelons? Surely, if Lambe & Blunt's Sugar had wanted an accountant they could trust, he, John, would be speaking to someone from the 5^th floor of Ladymere House?

“There’s going to be a new local Accounts Department in Norwich, John,” A.J.F. was saying. “They’ve got their own people up there, it’s a historical development.”

A historical development? Really?

“Ultimately, we had expected that the Accounts would continue to be checked by Ladymere House,” A.J.F. explained. “But in fact, auditing will be done in Norwich, locally, it seems we weren’t informed of that before.” He transferred his gaze to Grisham, and John knew exactly what that gaze meant.

“That’s correct,” Peter Grisham continued. He was not fazed. He knew exactly that he was in the presence of the old school, that his job here was not easy. But he also knew that he was in possession of the ultimate power. “Auditing will be performed locally. But we need an “old hand” to look over that. To report to Head Office.”

He leaned back and it was at this point that Lynda entered with coffee. John was grateful for that. It was becoming confusing and a distraction was necessary. And coffee was a grateful distraction, as well as a comfort.

A.J.F. cleared his throat. “John,” he said. “There will be an Accounts department in Norwich. In fact, they are already there, in the process of setting it up. We hadn’t expected this, I know,” he added some milk to his coffee. John took his coffee and added milk and sugar. Grisham picked up his cup. No sugar, no milk, John noticed. “The point is, precisely that. They’ve already started and we don’t know these people. Peter is an old colleague, affiliated with Ladymere House.”

Really, John thought, surprised. Well why haven’t I heard about him before then. He could tell that A.J.F. hadn’t really heard about him before either.

“We’d like someone to be stationed in Norwich,” A.J.F. continued. “Someone who would just be looking over those accounts, before the auditors got to them. Someone we could trust.” He took a sip of his coffee. “You’d be interested, John?” He looked at John meaningfully over the rim of his coffee cup.

The meeting had finished at 11:00 a.m. John had returned to his office. He had stared at the desk and the walls for probably about 15 minutes. He had stared at the telephone and realized that he could not call anybody at this time of the morning, nobody whom he could ask for advice, at any rate. He had stared almost blindly at his desk, at his photos under the glass top of his three children, of his wife. He had wondered how he was going to break the news to them. He had wondered what would happen if he were to refuse, and instantly he had known that a refusal was not possible.

He should do something, John thought eventually. He was not here to earn money and do nothing at all. He opened the file from Lynda and signed the four letters with his fountain pen, slowly and carefully. He took the stairs down to the second floor and entered the secretary’s office. Mrs. Higgins and Lynda were there. They were both sipping at cups of coffee and Lynda was telling Mrs. Higgins about her previous evening, with her boyfriend down at the pub. Mrs. Higgins was listening avidly. He placed the file on Lynda’s desk and turned to leave the room.

“Mr. Osborne!” Lynda called. He turned. They were both staring at him. “You all right, Mr. Osborne?”

“I’m fine, girls,” John smiled. “Everything just… tally-ho.”

They laughed.

“Well, it’s not like you to just dump work on us without saying nothing, and then just walk out,” Lynda reproached him. “Was your coffee all right, was it?”

John took a step back into the room.

“I’m very sorry,” he said. “My coffee was very good. As always.” He slowed down. Need to take this really carefully. Need a diversion. “You know, the other morning, on the tube, do you know what happened to me?”

“No, go on, Mr. Osborne,” Lynda and Mrs. Higgins both put down their coffee cups and leaned forward.

“Well,” John looked down, laughed. “Well, you know I was buying a new season ticket.”

“Yeah, go on.”

“Well, I had to show my passport, you see, to provide some identification.”

“Yeah, and what happened then?”

“Well, the lady at the till,” he started to chuckle. And Mrs. Higgins and Lynda chuckled too. “Well, the damn cheek of it-“

Mrs. Higgins and Lynda were laughing now.

“Well, the damn cheek of it, she turned to me and said, Oh, you were quite handsome when you were a bit younger, weren’t you? She was looking at my passport photo.”

Mrs. Higgins and Lynda were almost in tears.

“Oh, Mr. Osborne! That’s terrible! Oh what a cheek, honestly! Oh, that really is a cheek!”

“Doesn’t matter, Mr. Osborne! You’re still “quite handsome” now! Ooops!”

John smiled, still looking down. “Well, that’s it, ladies. I should let you get on with your work now.” He turned to go.

“Ooh, Mr. Osborne! Do you want a sandwich for lunch, Mr. Osborne? We’re going out to get a sandwich and then we’re going to sit in the Park.”

John half-turned. “No thanks, Lynda. But thank you for asking. I’m… going to take a little walk in the Park myself. I… might be a little later back from lunch today.”

“All right, Mr. Osborne, no sweat. No problem there. A.J.F. calls, I’ll tell him you’re on the phone or something.”

“Thank you Lynda.”

All they'd said was, just “looking after.” That was all. That was all they had talked about.

John walked slowly through the Park. He was going to give up all this? The Park, Piccadilly, the museums, the tube, the fun, the laughs, the Chinese in Soho, meeting Clive up in town and going to the strip joint in the lunch hour? All of New Eltham? Everything they’d struggled all these years to build up? His sister Mary, in Chiselhurst, his mother in New Malden? What about the kids? Lizzie’s new school? Aileen was so proud of that. All those things Lizzie was doing. Aileen going to all the concerts, all the acting, everything. The other kids would follow. What about all of Aileen’s studies? She’d ploughed through all of that, now she’d got her job. After all that? He was going to ask her to give up everything, all her work, and Betty in Streatham, and her father in Catford, and all her friends in Larchwood Road? Was Aileen really going to agree to do all that?

It was hard, sometimes. Sometimes Aileen was very demanding. She was actually always very demanding. But he had tried. He had tried leaving, but it didn’t work. It just couldn’t work. You couldn’t leave your wife, with three children. You didn’t do that. You needed some time off, sometimes. But that was all, really, just a few hours, maybe just a day. Your heart ached to see your children again, just after a few hours. And you needed to see your wife. Sometimes, and it really just had been occasionally, just a couple of  times, down the pub, drown a few beers, drown a few whiskies, sometimes, just the occasional times, with Clive, talking about leaving. That was for fools. You didn’t do that.

How was he going to break it to her?

The children were in bed. All of them. Lizzie had been difficult, but she always was. “I’ll come up later,” he’d said. “I’ll come up later and play cards with you.”

“When?” Lizzied had persisted. “When will you come up, Dad?”

“Later,” he’d answered. “A little bit later, tonight”. God it was difficult.

Aileen was sitting down. She was a little shell-shocked. It was a bad day for John. All this confrontation. He didn’t like it. He didn’t like having to make decisions, having to tell people things. In his perfect world, you just continued as you were before. Even that was hard enough. Why did people have to make things harder? Why was he being put in this position?

“All right,” Aileen said for about the third time. “All right! I need to know John-“

“Please don’t shout.”

“I’m not bloody shouting,” this was a stage shout, so kind of a loud whisper. “I’m just trying to understand! They want us to move up there, in one or even two years’ time, and they want us to give up everything, all the things we’ve just managed to get going here! What about my job? What do you think I’m going to do?”

He helped himself to a small whisky. “I don’t know, Girlie. I’m sure you can get a job as a teacher up there-“

“Oh, I can get a job as a teacher up there! Yes, it’s so easy for me isn’t it! It’s so easy for me! You know damn well how I’ve struggled here, how I’m trying to do this degree, how hard it’s been for me-“

“Yes. I know.”

“Don’t damn well interrupt me for Christ’s sake! We’ve barely been here ten years, building up everything again, now you’re telling me we have to start right from the beginning again!”

“Yes. That’s what I’m telling you.”

“Well you know sometimes I think you can damn well go and do it by yourself. Why don’t you damn well leave and do it by yourself.”

He knew that was the sherry talking. She had had two already. She would never be able to cope on her own. He was silent. He stared at the floor.

“Oh, you and your job. You think you’re so big. And you think I don’t know about what you and Clive get up to. You think I don’t know that you and Clive go out on the town.” She downed the rest of the sherry.

“It’s in the lunch hour.” He breathed slowly. “Sometimes we go for a drink, for lunch, we just have a talk.”

Aileen slammed her glass onto the table. “Get me another sherry.”

John heaved another sigh and filled up Aileen’s glass. He handed it to her.

“It’s just a beer in a pub.”

She took the glass and downed almost all of the sherry in one gulp. John remembered his father’s words, “She won’t keep your house clean for you.” He had said, “I know and I don’t care.” And she really had not kept the house clean for him. And look at it. It was filthy. Even though Mrs. Hennigan, the cleaning lady, came once a week, she only cleaned certain parts. And the rest was still filthy. Is that what he had wanted? Not really. This job could mean, this job could mean… that they had a different kind of a house, one that was always clean. For example.

Jack, his father, had said, You’re marrying out of your class. She’s not our class, he had said.

Well, did that bloody well matter? He had three children with her, didn’t he? What did it bloody well matter that she wasn’t his class? He loved her, didn’t he?

He took another small swig of his whisky. “Look, Girlie-“

“Oh yes. Look at you.”

He turned to her. “Aileen. They are offering us 10,000 pounds, cash, if I will take the offer.”

She paled visibly. He continued to look her in the eye. His stare was constant. Aileen did not move. Her eyes widened. She was transfixed. She was visibly scared.

Her hand moved to her empty glass. “Can you… give me another sherry.”

John brought the sherry bottle to the table.

“Make it a double.”

“Alcohol is not the answer,” he said.

Aileen exploded. “Don’t you talk to me about alcohol! You and your bloody family!”

He flinched.

“What’s the 10,000 pounds for,” she asked. “Why do they want you so much?”

John sat down very slowly. He poured himself another whisky.

“I don’t know,” he said. He wasn’t going to tell her everything. “Maybe I’m a good accountant,” he replied finally.

Aileen snorted. Although he wasn’t sure if it was a snort or just her digesting the sherry. She had had a lot to drink after all. He decided to let it pass.

She was silent for a while. Then she said, “10,000 pounds. That could buy us a whole house.”

John placed his glass carefully on the table. “It might,” he said. “I’ve done some research. I know this house only cost 4,000 pounds. But it is actually worth about 12,000 pounds now, maybe 13,000. So we could make enough on this house to put down a good pile on a new house, up there, in the Norwich area. It’s not as expensive as London. And maybe we could even buy a house outright. And this extra 10,000, we could do a lot with that. They’d give that to us in advance. Next year. We could buy a car. We could buy a washing machine, even a tumble dryer. We could buy a freezer. All kinds of stuff. We could put a few thousand into a savings account. Or even buy shares! Eh, Girlie?”

He was smiling at her now. Her eyes were beginning to narrow, she was looking to the right of him, thinking, maybe, about all the things they could buy.

“And they would pay all the removal costs. We wouldn’t have a penny to pay! And they’ve even contacted a chap, someone called Tarrant, up in Norwich, he would take us around for a whole day, looking at the area, all expenses paid! What do you think? We could do it in summer next year, or maybe Easter the year after. What do you think? It’s all paid for!”

Aileen looked at him finally. “All paid for? Everything? Removal costs? You mean, someone to take us round, looking? Maybe they would even find a house for us?”

He put his whisky down and took her hand. “Aileen. They will find a house for us. There’s a budget, of course. But they will do all the work for us. We don’t have to go up there all the time and look at lots of houses. Just like the Norwich Union helped us here. Just like that.”

She stared at him. “Are you sure, John? Are you sure? Because I can’t cope with all of that again. I’m not going through everything again.” She stopped. She drained the rest of her sherry.

“Could you get me another sherry?” she was calmer now, she was looking him in the eyes. And it was the little girl Aileen again, not the big Aileen that he had had such a problem with since they had moved to England. Just the little girl, the one he’d met at the club, back in the early 1950’s, the one who had captured his heart, the one who would not be able to keep his house clean, the one who was below his class, the one he’d loved and hadn’t cared that she was maybe the wrong one, according to his father. The one his father had tried to prevent him marrying.

He poured her another sherry. It was going to be all right. And he hadn’t even told her the best part of it yet.

He handed her her sherry glass.

“Girlie,” he said. “Let’s drink to this. If you’re sure, let’s drink to this. They are going to pay me 50% more salary. We’ll be rich, Girlie. We’ll have money.”

He raised his glass and Aileen did not raise hers. Instead she stared at him and said, “What?”

“Girlie,” he said. “We’re going to be all right. We’re going to have money.”

“What?”

He laughed. He laughed like he hadn’t laughed for a while. Maybe it was the whisky. He got up, leaned over and kissed her. He put his arm on her shoulder. Then he stood back, sat down again and took up his glass.

“Come on, Girlie. Eh? We’re going to have cash! What do you think? Eh? Cheers! Here’s cheers! Come on!”

He raised his glass again. Aileen raised her glass now and smiled. She took a large swig of the sherry. She put down the glass and started to laugh. “All right, John,” she said. “All right.”

John emptied his whisky glass.

“I’m going to have to go up to Lizzie,” he said. “Play Rummy. Otherwise she’s going to suspect something. You know what she’s like.”

“Not a word to Lizzie,” Aileen said, also emptying her glass.

“No. Not a word to Lizzie.”

He bent down and kissed her again on the cheek.