Old Dogs, New Tricks. Linda Phillips

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СКАЧАТЬ of these discussions. Either that or he would have assumed that the subject of them was someone else. Happily heedless of turned heads, longing glances or wagging tongues, he ducked into the pub next door to Spittal’s in search of a much-needed drink.

      Spotting his old friend in one corner, slumped over a glass of beer, he grinned that slow, charming smile of his.

      ‘Thought I might find you here, Tom,’ he said, jerking a stool from under the table and straddling it. ‘Things getting too hot for you back there?’

      Tom almost choked as Philip clapped him on the shoulder. He looked up sourly, licking foam from his bushy moustache.

      ‘Bloody chaos, it is,’ he complained with a despairing shake of his head. ‘Here, let me get you your –’

      ‘No, no, I’m buying,’ Phil insisted. He caught the barman’s eye above the row of backs hunched round the bar and was soon well into a glass of Guinness, with another pint lined up for Tom.

      ‘Not exactly a good place to be in at a time like this,’ Phil said, loosening his tie. ‘Personnel, I mean.’

      ‘You can say that again, man, indeed you can. You can imagine what it’s been like. Nothing short of a riot.’ He pretended to mop his brow. ‘I’ve come in here to escape, though I expect the hordes will soon catch up with me, demanding to know why they’ve been laid off with only a pittance when some other sod’s being kept on, and how the devil are they going to go home and break it to the wife? Like it’s all my bloody fault, you know?’

      He eyed his companion morosely, and since Phil rarely nipped in for a quick one on his way home asked, ‘And what’re you doing in here, pal? Turning over a new leaf?’

      Philip drank down a few more mouthfuls before adopting a wry expression. ‘Wondering how I’m going to break it to the wife, actually, just like everyone else.’

      ‘She doesn’t know?’ Tom’s surprise revealed the whites of his eyes. They were stained with red threads of tiredness.

      ‘No,’ Phil admitted reluctantly, ‘she doesn’t know a thing.’

      ‘But I thought …’

      ‘That I would’ve told her days ago?’

      ‘Well … with your prior knowledge … and surely you could have trusted her?’

      ‘Of course I could have trusted her. She wouldn’t have leaked it.’ Philip waved that line of questioning aside. ‘It was just that – well, I suppose I couldn’t broach it.’

      Tom snorted his disbelief. ‘Don’t tell me our sales director is scared of his wife? But … but it’s not as if it’s even bad news for you, is it? Won’t this just suit your Marjorie down to the ground?’

      Philip’s expression darkened. ‘You’re assuming I’m taking redundancy, Tom. And all things considered I suppose …’

      ‘Be plain daft, not to, wouldn’t it?’ Tom demonstrated his ideas with his hands. ‘Take the money – nice tidy sum –’ he grabbed air and clutched it to his chest ‘– and straight into your father’s business.’ He made a throwing motion. ‘Isn’t that what Marjorie’s always wanted? Not to mention your mum and dad.’

      Tom knew the history of Philip’s rebellion very well – mostly as related by Marjorie, the ubiquitous ‘girl next door’.

      She would have been about eight and Philip nine when his father’s local hardware shop had begun to make money. ‘Real’ money, that is, as opposed to scraping a living. Eric Benson was about the only person not surprised by his success. He had worked damned hard for it, he was quick to tell anyone who would listen, and he lost no time in putting his profits back into the business and buying himself another shop in the adjacent borough. He soon repeated his earlier success and bought yet another shop before calling it a day.

      Three shops, he decided at the end of a particularly busy week, hardly left him with time to draw breath. And being the kind of person whose powers of delegation were nil – although it was unlikely that he’d ever realised that fact – he told himself that enough was surely enough.

      After the purchase of the second shop the Bensons left their crowded flat and came to live in the house next door to Marjorie and her parents, by which time Philip was eleven and taking the dreaded 11-plus.

      Not that the tests presented Philip with much of a problem – he sailed through them all in less than the allotted time and wondered what all the fuss was about – but it brought the Bensons’ attention to the whole question of secondary education, and Eric, his new-found wealth growing steadily in the bank, began to get ideas above his station.

      The upshot was that Philip, his sister Chrissie, and later his brother Colin, were forced into private schooling. Forced being the only word for it, where Philip was concerned: he resented the whole idea and dug his heels in as hard as he could. He didn’t want to have to walk in the opposite direction to his friends every day and be called a toffee-nosed pansy, he complained in Marjorie’s sympathetic ear.

      Already he had a lot to live down. Since moving into the new house he’d been compelled to witness vulgar displays of his father’s newly-acquired wealth, as all manner of goods found their way from the high street stores to the family home. There had been a huge new television with shiny double doors, a radiogram with record auto-change, a tape recorder that weighed a ton, and a snazzy food-mixer that worked miracles. Even a shiny new car – the latest thing on the market – appeared outside the house one day. That neither of his parents could drive was neither here nor there.

      As for his mother, well, she went mad on a whole new decor for the house and ordered a truck-load of tacky knick-knacks.

      Philip was endlessly ribbed for all this by his slightly awe-struck friends, and then – horror of horrors – his father had come up with the idea of sending him off to a snobby school! But at least his mother had some sense left: she drew the line at putting any kind of distance between herself and her firstborn child. He must come home to be properly fed, she insisted. The school had to be a local one.

      And so Philip had had to grit his teeth – for no one could stand for long against Eric Benson’s domineering manner – and make the best of a bad job. No amount of telling him how privileged he was made a scrap of difference to young Philip as he trudged up the road each morning in his immaculate red blazer with gold and blue braid; he made up his mind to hate every minute of his new way of life. Absolutely every minute.

      But of course he hadn’t. He’d gradually settled in to the school, even distinguished himself, and left at eighteen with a batch of certificates that were more than good enough to take him on to university for an engineering degree.

      It was only on leaving university that the final stage of Eric Benson’s master plan was revealed, and Philip realised he was expected to take over the hardware businesses from his father.

      ‘With all your qualifications, lad,’ Eric had told him, throwing out his chest as he stood behind the shop counter, ‘you’ll be able to build all this into an empire for yourself. People are keen to do their own home improvements these days, and there’s big money to be made.’ He made it sound as though Philip ought to be eternally grateful, as perhaps he should; not many could expect to have such opportunities handed to them on a plate.

      ‘But Dad,’ he’d protested, already planning to СКАЧАТЬ