Peter Robinson: The Price of Love and Other Stories

It sounded like a drug house. Banks made a mental note to keep his eyes open. If he noticed anything suspicious, he’d get on to the local police.

Banks’s father picked up the remote control and turned the television on at half-past five, as Banks remembered he did every weekday. “Is that the time?” said Ida Banks. “I’d better get the tea on. Pork chops, peas and chips all right?”

“Fine,” said Banks, his stomach sinking. As if there was a choice.

“And a nice bit of steamed pudding and custard for sweet.”

“I’ll help.” Banks followed her into the kitchen.

True to his word, Geoff Salisbury came back from Asda with a bag of groceries. He dumped it on the kitchen table and handed Ida Banks two pound coins in change, then they went through to the living room. Banks, peeling potatoes at the time, started to unload the groceries. As he did so, he came across the printed receipt stuck by condensation to the side of a bottle of chilled apple juice.

The print was a little blurred, but even so he could see that the total came to £16.08, which left a discrepancy of £1.92, between that and the two pounds Geoff had handed his mother. Holding the receipt, Banks went through into the living room.

“I think you’ve got the change wrong,” he said, holding out the receipt for Geoff to see.

Banks mother frowned. “Alan! Must you?” Then she turned to Geoff. “I’m so sorry. Our Alan’s in the police and he can’t seem to let us forget it,” she said, with a dismissive sniff.

“One of the boys in blue, eh?”

“CID, actually,” said Banks.

“Ah. All that Sherlock Holmes stuff.”

“Something like that.”

“Let’s see, then.” Geoff took a pair of bifocals from his shirt pocket and squinted at the list. “Bloody hell, you’re right,” he admitted, blushing. He showed the receipt to Ida Banks. “It’s a fair cop. See there, Mrs. B? It looks like an eight to me but it’s really a six. That’s what comes of being too vain to wear my glasses in the supermarket.”

Ida Banks laughed and slapped him on the arm playfully. “Oh, get away with you, Geoff. Anyone could make a mistake like that.”

Geoff counted out the rest of the change into her hand. He glanced sideways at Banks, still slightly red with embarrassment. “I can see I’ll have to watch myself now there’s a copper around,” he joked.

“Yes,” said Banks, not laughing. “I think you better had.”

“There was no need for that, Alan,” Banks’s mother said after Geoff Salisbury had left. “Embarrassing us all.”

“I wasn’t embarrassed,” Banks said. “Besides, he tried to cheat you.”

“Don’t be silly. It’s like he said. He couldn’t see the figures properly.”

“Does he do this often?”

“Do what?”

“Go shopping for you.”

“Yes. We can’t get around like we used to, you know, what with your dad’s angina and my legs and feet.”

“Legs and feet?”

“My varicose veins and bunions. Getting old is no treat, Alan, I can tell you that much. You’ll find out, yourself, one day. Anyway, he’s been good to us, has Geoff, and now you’ve gone and upset him.”

“I don’t think he’s upset at all.”

“Only here five minutes, and there’s trouble already.”

“Mum, I really don’t think I upset him. Maybe he’ll just be more careful in the future.”

“And maybe we’ll have to find someone else who’ll do our shopping for us and give the place a good dust and a vacuum every now and then. Fat chance of that.”

“I’m sure he’ll be fine.”

“Well, I just hope you’ll apologize to him next time you see him.”

“Apologize?”

“Yes. You as good as called the man a thief.”

“Fine,” said Banks, raising his hands in surrender. “I’ll apologize.”

His mother gave another disapproving little sniff. “I’d better see to those pork chops.” Then she strode off into the kitchen and shut the door behind her.

The Coach and Horses, about a hundred yards away, on the main road, was one of those pubs that had hardly changed at all in the past forty years or so. True, they’d got in a jukebox and a few video machines, and the brewery had forked out for a minor facelift sometime in the eighties, hoping to pull in a younger, freer-spending crowd. But it didn’t take. The people who drank at the Coach and Horses had, for the most part, been drinking there most of their lives. And their fathers had supped there before them.

Though there were few young people to be seen, it still managed to be a warm and lively pub, Banks noticed as he walked in with his father just after eight o’clock that night, the steamed pudding and custard still weighing heavy in his stomach. His father had managed the walk without too much puffing and wheezing, which he put down to having stopped smoking two years ago. Banks, who had only stopped that summer, still felt frequent and powerful urges.

“Arthur! Arthur! Come on, lad, come on over.”

It was Geoff Salisbury. He was sitting at a table with an elderly couple Banks didn’t recognize and two other men in their sixties he remembered from his previous visit. They cleared a little space when Banks and his father walked over to join them.

“My shout,” said Geoff. “Name your poison.”

“No,” said Banks, still standing. “I’m the visitor. Let me buy the first round.”

That got no argument, so Banks wandered off to the bar. He hardly had to fight his way through the crowds of impatient drinkers. The bartender, the same one Banks remembered when he had last been in the Coach that summer, nodded a curt greeting and proceeded to pull the pints. When Banks carried the tray back to the table, his father was already talking football with one of his old pals, Harry Finnegan. Harry looked up and said hello to Banks, asked him how he was doing.

“Fine,” said Banks. “You’re looking well yourself.”

“Fair to middling. Sorry to hear about you and that young lass of yours splitting up.”

Sandra. No secrets here. He wondered if they also knew about Sean and the imminent baby. “Well,” said Banks, “these things happen.” More to his generation than theirs, he realized. Theirs tended to stick at marriage, even when all the love had gone out of it. He didn’t know if that was better or worse than changing wives every decade. Probably best not to get married at all, he suspected.

But his mother and father still loved each other, or so he believed. Fifty years together meant they probably didn’t have much new to say to each another anymore, and the passion may have disappeared from their relationship years ago, but they were comfortable together. Besides, passion is transitory and infinitely transferable anyway, Banks believed. What his parents had was stronger, deeper, more permanent; it was what he would never get to experience with Sandra: growing old together. He was used to the loss by now, but every now and then he still felt a pang of regret for what might have been, and a lump came to his throat.

Harry introduced Banks to the couple at the table, Dick and Mavis Conroy. The other man, Jock McFall, said hello and shook hands.

“I hear you’re a Leeds United supporter these days, Alan,” said Harry, a twinkle in his eye.

Banks nodded. “For my sins. Not that I get the chance to go to Elland Road very often. Match of the Day is usually the closest I get.”

“Elland Road,” his father said. “You’d not be able to bloody afford it on what a copper earns, son.” They all laughed.

Banks laughed with them. “Too true.”

As the conversations went on in that vein, people started to pair off: Dick and Mavis talking to Jock McFall about the latest supermarket price wars; Harry and Arthur Banks discussing Peterborough United’s miserable performance that season. Banks edged his chair closer to Geoff Salisbury’s.