‘Higher rate taxpayers, like non-taxpayers, have to take care they get the best from their savings. For both, tax-free investments such as Personal Equity Plan, Save as You Earn schemes, and friendly society investments are all attractive. Because of this, of course, the Inland Revenue sets very strict limits on how much can be invested…’
I peeped in. He was propped up against her pillows, his legs stretched out on her coverlet. He’d kicked his shoes off on the bedside rug. She lay comfortably in the crook of his arm, listening in rapt attention as he read to her from the Ross & Killearn Building Society Step-by-Step Guide to Good Money Management that came free with her big plastic acorn money box.
He came down ten minutes later, triumphantly flicking off unnecessary lights.
‘… seven, eight, nine! There! That should slow the little electric wheel down to a sprint!’
I followed him into the living room. I had to. It was practically pitch-dark now all over the rest of the house. Before he even noticed I was behind him, he’d stepped across and flicked the television switch as well. With perfect timing, Scots Money Box appeared on the screen.
I sat beside him on the sofa. (After he’d been so nice and cooked our supper, and saved me half the washing up for the next ten years, it seemed rude to sit miles away in the armchair.)
‘Don’t you ever get bored with all this stuff?’ I asked him.
‘Stuff?’ he said. ‘What stuff?’
I nodded towards the telly. Ms Moira McCready was warning everyone in Scotland that they should think very hard indeed about the new pension scheme options.
‘This stuff. Don’t you ever find it the slightest bit boring?’
‘Dear me, no.’ It seemed to be the first time the idea had struck him. ‘Not boring, no. Not at all boring.’
His answer interested me.
‘You don’t think it’s a bit of a boring way of looking at the lovely green planet you live on?’
A spot of pink rose on his cheeks. I think he thought I might be getting at him. But I was taking the most enormous care not to seem hostile or aggressive or contemptuous. I truly wanted to know. His eyes shifted from me to Ms Moira McCready on the telly going on and on about the advantages of contracting out of the State Earnings Related Pension Scheme, and finally he answered:
‘It’s just the way I’ve always thought about things.’ I took even more care now. Casually picking at a loose thread in my sock, I asked him politely:
‘But, Gerald.’ (Yes! I said it!) ‘Suppose you looked around you one day really hard, and suddenly had a sort of vision. Suppose you saw the trees and skies and clouds and birds and animals as clearly as if you were seeing them for the first time, and realized you maybe only had a hundred years to live on the planet, and make the most of them all, and be happy. Wouldn’t you think, after that vision, whenever you were reading the Stock Exchange reports or Building Society handbooks, that maybe the way you think about things is – well – a little bit boring?’
(I meant thin, miserable, unimaginative, blind, stupid! But, being polite, I said ‘boring’.)
However carefully I wrapped the question up, I still thought he might find it rude. But I wanted to know the answer, I honestly did. It suddenly occurred to me that part of the reason I couldn’t stand Goggle-eyes was because he was so different from me and Mum, and thought and cared about such different things. And suddenly I thought, if I could only understand, I might be able to get along with him better.
However offensive the question may have appeared to him, he didn’t seem cross. He gave it quite a bit of thought while Ms Moira McCready burbled on about additional voluntary contributions, and death in service cover, and alternative options. And then he finally came out with it – his explanation.
‘Maybe it’s just because I really am boring myself. I think I might be. Sometimes I look at people like you and your mother, and I think: “No, I was never like that, even when I was young.” Maybe I was born boring. Maybe I was boring in my cradle.’
His eyes were still watching Ms Moira McCready opening and shutting her mouth, but he no longer heard her. He wasn’t just politely answering me now. He was telling me something that mattered to him, too.
‘And part of me thinks that’s what your mother really likes about me. I may be boring, but I have one or two of the old-fashioned virtues that often go along with that. I’m steady and reliable and predictable, too. Maybe she needs that. Sometimes I honestly believe that is a side of me she likes to have near her. I know your sister does.’
He turned and smiled.
‘And I think I rather hoped that, one day, you might too.’
There’s no way to answer a remark like that. Oh, you can drift upstairs after a bit, and think about it all you like; but there’s no answer you can really give except to shrug in an embarrassed way and smile back, and I did both those. But, later, lying in bed waiting for Mum, I wondered if I hadn’t been a bit unfair on poor old Gerald Faulkner, deciding so early on that he was the worst thing to have happened to our household since Dad packed his boxes and went off to Berwick upon Tweed. After all, if you thought about it, it wasn’t really Gerald’s fault that Mum seemed so much brighter and merrier when she had his company as well, and not just ours. Or that she went out to the cinema so often right after she first met him. She could have said no, and stayed home. (I got a bit of a guilt pang when I remembered she’d tried that and I’d got even crosser!) No. I’d not been all that fair.
And it had been a bit mean, too, to blame poor Goggle-eyes just because he liked to see Mum in her smartest clothes, and thought she had nice legs. Simon thought Mum had nice legs. So did Dad, when he bothered to say so. What was so wrong, for heaven’s sake, with simply liking someone’s legs?
I was still lying there in the dark, wondering why on earth I’d gone so berserk that first evening, when Mum came home.
I don’t know why I didn’t throw back the covers and rush downstairs to greet her at once. Perhaps, if I had, the ghastly, ghastly quarrel between Mum and Goggle-eyes would never have had the time to happen. So why did I stay upstairs, lurking so quietly under the blankets pretending I was fast asleep? Was it really only because I was exhausted and the bed was toasty warm? Or was it because, right from the moment Mum slammed through the front door, shaking the walls and shouting, ‘I’m home, folks!’ so triumphantly, I could tell there was trouble brewing.
‘Rosalind! Please! The girls are fast asleep. Don’t make so much noise!’
I can imagine the look that came over Mum’s face at this sort of greeting.
‘Is this the welcome for the conquering heroine?’
When he answered his voice was muffled, but I could still hear.
‘There’s nothing heroic about waking two exhausted children.’
Mum sounded even more reproachful now.
‘You might have let them stay up!’
‘Kept them up, you mean? Just to cheer you in? That’s a bit self-indulgent, isn’t it, when they’ve got school in the morning?’
I expect she was all cold and cross after hours of hanging about in the police station, and then the long ride home.
‘They would have been a lot more welcoming than you!’
‘Naturally. They’ve been a lot better indoctrinated than I have into believing that what you’re doing is important.’
What were those thuds? Were they just her muddy boots hitting the floor, one after another?
‘It is important.’
‘Some people might say that getting yourself arrested on the spur of the moment is not so much important as irresponsible!’