Mr Doubler Begins Again: The best uplifting, funny and feel-good book for 2019. Seni Glaister

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      Seeing her words land with little impact, Mrs Millwood reached for a more powerful weapon in her arsenal. ‘Do you think your Mr Clarke floundered at the first hurdle?’

      Doubler thought hard. He imagined his great hero working by candlelight, scratching out his own findings with the worn stub of a pencil. He thought about the many generations of potatoes that man must have grown with no clear goal in mind, just the burning desire to improve the spud for the benefit of all. He thought about the achievement this represented when undertaken by a man with no education. Doubler was ashamed.

      ‘No, of course not. Mr Clarke overcame every obstacle.’

      Mrs Millwood chuckled to herself. ‘He did, didn’t he? And here are you hanging your head in shame and you haven’t had a single setback yet!’

      ‘You’re right, of course, as always. And poor Mr Clarke didn’t have the benefit of a role model as I do. But, Mrs Millwood, you can understand my worries, can’t you? This is my life’s work. I’ve made some sacrifices along the way, too, and I want there to be some meaning, some purpose behind it all. I want my legacy.’

      He stood up and went to look out of the window, clearing a small patch of condensation through which he could see the last of the winter sun as it chased across his fields.

      ‘When I die, Mrs Millwood, this work is all that will be left of me. My potatoes are my bequest. I have devoted every waking moment to them, and my most useful days are now well behind me. I want to leave my mark; I want to show the world it was worth it. I want to die knowing I made a difference. Is that too much to ask? Am I being greedy?’

      Mrs Millwood thought carefully before answering. ‘Not greedy, but a little impatient perhaps. You have your health, Mr Doubler, and, what’s more, you still have plenty of time left to make a difference. You should count yourself among the fortunate ones.’ She paused, and Doubler, focused on the view from the window, missed the shadow of something fearful flickering across her eyes.

      He turned to face her, looking at her quizzically as he waited for her to carry on. She shook her head a little sadly, a determined smile on her face, and she continued in a slightly different direction to the thought process she’d begun.

      ‘We don’t all get to do something of consequence, Mr Doubler, so you should be proud of everything you’ve achieved already. And who is to say this is your life’s work done yet? That will be determined when the time comes. Now, a short wait for the postman to deliver your answer is a small price to pay. Others suffer substantially more for less of a legacy, Mr Doubler.’

      Mrs Millwood bit into a Granny Smith with great relish and Doubler, grateful once again for her deep wisdom, and quite used by now to his housekeeper having a much greater instinct than his own for matters pertaining to life, chose not to comment on her choice of apple.

Chapter 4

      On the first Sunday of each month, Doubler’s only daughter, Camilla, liked to visit Mirth Farm with her family. This had been happening for many years. It was a habit that had been initiated by Camilla once she had her own children, as if she might be able to teach her father the correct procedure to hold a family together. One or two such lunches established a precedent, a couple more sealed it as a tradition, and this was then upheld by Camilla with great diligence and worn proudly as some sort of badge of filial duty.

      ‘It’s lovely to know that my kids are part of Dad’s life,’ she said to her brother, Julian, with a barely concealed stratum of aggression-tinged superiority that she rarely found cause to exhibit in her brother’s company.

      Conversely, Julian, Doubler’s only son, was ambivalent about his role in the family. His associations with both family and Mirth Farm were linked to his childhood and now, an adult with adult responsibilities, his main preoccupation at the weekends was the management, from afar, of his costly ex-wife and the ongoing provision for two expensive children who found little to interest them on a potato farm, having been exposed to the sort of infancy that valued lawn much more highly than soil. Even if they had clamoured to visit their grandfather, Julian would have found an excuse to resist. At Mirth Farm, there was little escape from the immediacy of fatherhood and Julian felt exposed by this. In stark contrast, his own home provided any number of distractions and barriers that allowed the children and their father to coexist without confronting the enormity of each other’s failings.

      To date, Julian’s involvement in his children’s upbringing had given him very little fulfilment other than the satisfaction of completing numbers in a column of the ledger of his mind. Nevertheless, he wore his paternal responsibilities quite heavily on his stooped shoulders and never was this more apparent than under the gaze of his father and sister. He didn’t quite understand Camilla’s need to imitate a conventional family so regularly, but nor did he quite trust his own emotional response to try to change or influence the pattern.

      Camilla, however, had a very certain sense of what these occasions should feel like to her offspring, and even though her own childhood had failed to live up to many of the obligations she liked to associate with the institution, she insisted on imposing her own needs upon all of them. She made sure that Julian and his children joined them at least four times a year, and this Sunday was one of those prescribed occasions when Doubler’s son and daughter and his four grandchildren were due to visit Mirth Farm all together.

      In his many years of voluntary isolation, Doubler had learnt to navigate the extremely narrow path that separates solitude from loneliness. One he sought; the other sought him. But never was he more certain that he would prefer to be alone than when his family descended upon him in this manner. Had Marie not gone in the way that she had, things would certainly have been different. Raising children was something that he and his wife had undertaken together, and he had no doubt that he would have approached grandparenthood with a similarly shared sense of commitment. But he had not sought the role of single parent with its double dose of duty and he eschewed all grandparental influence for fear that he would fall short twice. He deeply resented the additional pressure the seismic shift his wife’s departure had imposed upon him.

      And anyway, Doubler valued his time on his own. He relished the silence, and his intellect needed very little stimulation other than that provided by his potatoes, by his carefully stocked cellar and by his daily lunch with Mrs Millwood. In truth, he had come to dread these family occasions, but he knew that the more normality he was able to depict, the sooner he would be left to his own devices for the ensuing month. This meant interacting as well as he could, feigning interest in those around him, keeping off the subjects that tended to provoke conflict and never, ever letting any of his family realize that he had chosen to live life as a recluse.

      Julian wasn’t overly interested in the comings and goings of his father, Doubler knew that. But if Camilla had any idea of just how far, how conclusively, Doubler had removed himself from society, then she would be even more disappointed in him. As it was, Doubler felt his deceit had been reasonably successful, as his daughter believed quite vocally that her father was coping ‘as well as could be expected under the circumstances’.

      One of the greatest pretences that Doubler could enact to give the impression of lucid stability was to provide a flawless Sunday lunch. Increasingly he found great comfort in cooking well and these visits gave him an opportunity to put his skills into practice. He could produce a roast for eight people without any one of them even realizing there was expertise involved. To his visitors, lunch meant trays of piping-hot food sliding from the Aga at 1 p.m. with very little sense of the many significant decisions that separated a good Sunday lunch from a great one. His trick was to have completed the preparation long before anyone arrived – even the gravy was made. All he СКАЧАТЬ