‘It was only a matter of time,’ mumbled Tom.
They picked up the basket and carried it by the handles back to the house.
‘I did more than you,’ said Agnes.
‘Well, that’s not my fault. You wouldn’t let me do any. Anyway, mine are better than yours.’
‘They are not!’
‘They bloody well are. Mine are art.’
They staggered into the kitchen and put down the basket.
‘Oh, well done,’ said their mother, beaming at her united offspring hopefully. ‘So, did you have a nice chat?’
‘Agnes is too macho to chat.’
‘Tom’s a male supremacist. He couldn’t chat to a woman unless she was gagged and tied to a chair.’
‘Really, Agnes! Do you have to be so vulgar?’
‘Who’s vulgar?’ inquired their father, looking up from the paper.
‘Never mind, Alex.’
‘I must say, I do object to what they show on the television. I can hardly understand what they’re saying these days. All they seem to do is jump in and out of bed, as if that was all anybody did!’
‘Lunch is ready,’ said their mother firmly.
‘How’s your love life, Agnes?’ persisted her father; a question he had put with increasing frequency over the years, as he realised that something in his general bearing safeguarded him from receiving any kind of detailed answer.
‘I don’t have a love life, Dad. I’m too busy.’
‘She has a kind of love time-share,’ interjected Tom.
‘Besides,’ Agnes confessed, ‘there’s no one around these days — no one that I like, anyway.’
‘Don’t know what’s got into chaps these days,’ said her father. ‘Pretty girl like you. In my day they would have been queuing up at your door. These days they queue up for social security.’
There was a moment’s silence in honour of the death of romantic England.
‘I can’t think why they call it security,’ opined her mother, putting dishes on the table. ‘Tom feels very insecure without a job, don’t you, dear?’
Agnes and Tom glanced at each other across the table. Tom raised one eyebrow and began passing plates around in silence. A few minutes later, however, a loud guffaw escaped from their father’s lips. He leaned over and patted his wife’s arm fondly.
‘That was very good, dear,’ he said. ‘Very good.’
‘They’re both completely bonkers,’ said Tom. He turned around and looked at the house, from which they had just emerged to go for a walk. ‘Good thing they live out here, at any rate.’
‘What do you mean?’ said Agnes.
‘Well, if they lived anywhere else they’d probably have been locked up by now. I suppose it’s one of the privileges of wealth. You can go nuts in your own secluded home.’
Agnes thought she detected something untoward in his tone, as if he meant it seriously. She did not respond. They were approaching the very spot where they had argued several weeks before, the ill-feeling of which occasion was still fresh enough in her memory to make her not want to resuscitate it.
‘So what’s wrong with you?’ said Tom suddenly.
‘Nothing.’ Agnes opened the small gate at the bottom of their garden and strode out into the field beyond. ‘Why do you ask?’
‘Dunno. I just thought you only came home when you had something to moan about.’
‘You should know by now,’ retorted Agnes, becoming riled, ‘that I like to have the occasional luxury break from my spartan socialist existence. And I really don’t see why you’re trying to wind me up.’
Agnes delivered this speech with the dawning consciousness that Tom was, rather than attempting to detect dark motives for her own presence here, probably merely trying subtly to illuminate a conversational path towards his own. He had just lost his job, for goodness’ sake, thought Agnes. She resolved to be more patient.
‘I wasn’t,’ said Tom. ‘It’s just the truth, that’s all.’
‘Look, just because you’ve got a bloody axe to grind about getting the sack doesn’t give you the right to have a go at me! Much good your conservative claptrap has done you now. You can take your stupid principles and flog them for pin money for all I care. You’re going to need it, as I assume you won’t be accepting help from the welfare state!’
To her surprise, Tom flopped down on the grass and started laughing. The dogs lumbered over and began mournfully to lick his face.
‘I thought you were supposed to be depressed,’ snapped Agnes.
Tom tickled the dogs’ bellies.
‘Whatever gave you that idea?’ he said. ‘I’m not depressed at all.’ He shut his eyes and crinkled up his face towards the sky as if it were sun-filled rather than a cloudy iron-grey. ‘I feel — I feel free!’
‘What do you mean?’ said Agnes. For one so recently initiated into the working world, such claims to liberation outside it were hard to bear.
‘Well, it’s not exactly living, is it?’ Tom stretched languorously. ‘Cooped up in an office all day long with people you don’t really like. At someone else’s beck and call from morning till night. And what’s it all for?’
He sat up and glared expectantly at Agnes, who found herself without a reply immediately to hand.
‘Money,’ he revealed finally.
‘Well, of course it is,’ she replied. ‘What else did you think it would be for?’
‘But don’t you see?’ cried Tom exasperatedly. ‘It doesn’t mean anything! There’s no meaning!’
Agnes stared at him.
‘Look,’ he continued. ‘I’ve spent most of my life thinking that it didn’t really matter what happened to the rest of the world as long as I was all right. And I thought I was all right! But now I realise I was just — half-asleep, dreaming, and now I’ve woken up and really started to see things. I was living a lie, but I was so involved in it I thought it was the truth. My life was a kind of imprisonment, Agnes. I’ve set myself free.’
‘You didn’t exactly have much choice,’ Agnes reminded him. ‘You were sacked, after all.’
‘Yes!’ said Tom. ‘Being sacked was just the beginning. It was like a sign. It opened my eyes!’
‘A sign,’ said Agnes.
‘And shall I tell you what I see? I see that the world is dying, destroying itself with greed. All my life I’ve taken, without a thought to the consequences. So, now I reckon it’s time for me to give something back!’
‘You’re going to save the world?’ said Agnes. ‘Well, thank heavens for that. We were all getting a bit worried there. Good thing you had a change of heart.’
‘I understand it might take time for you to get used to it,’ said Tom. ‘After all, I used to give you a pretty hard time about things like this. But I hope that sooner or later you’ll be pleased. I remember something you said to me, last time we were home. It’s kept coming back to me the last few days. You said something about my making money out of other people’s misfortune. I’ll never forget that. That’s what started me thinking. I thought, is that really what I want to do? When I die, do I want people to say, Oh, Tom, yes, of course, he made his money screwing people who’d already screwed up their own lives. It was the way you said it, you make it sound so — so evil. Making money out of other people’s misfortune.’
‘I was probably just jealous,’ said Agnes, ‘I couldn’t make money out of my own misfortune, let alone anyone else’s.’
‘But I admire that, Agnes. You do your job for the love of it. That takes character, and guts.’
‘So what exactly are you going to do?’ inquired Agnes, moving hastily on from this undeserved eulogy. It disturbed her even more than his plans for global salvation, although she was reassured by her certainty that Tom’s creative views on unemployment would evaporate with the first whiff of a lucrative job opportunity.