Simon Brett - Mrs. Pargeter's pound of flesh

The only awkwardness occurred when Kim’s mother Mrs Moore produced the cake she had baked to welcome her daughter home. It was a rich chocolate one, filled and crested with cream, and Mrs Moore was very put out when Kim refused a slice. The old lady subscribed to the East End tradition that equated food with love, and was offended to have her affection spurned.

Kim tried to explain, but all her mother could see was filial ingratitude. When Mrs Pargeter left, Kim was still holding out, but with a resolve that was wavering under a heavy barrage of emotional blackmail. Mrs Pargeter didn’t think many hours would pass before Kim succumbed to a peace-making slice of cake. The principles of self-denial inculcated by a few days at Brotherton Hall would be no match for the sheer force of Mrs Moore’s personality.

Gary took Mrs Pargeter to Greene’s, the discreetly expensive London hotel where she was currently residing. The house Mrs Pargeter was having built was not yet completed; and indeed, given who was building it for her, the prospect of its ever being completed continually receded.

Loyal as ever, Mrs Pargeter had employed one of the late Mr Pargeter’s associates to construct the house in which she planned to spend what she rather coyly (and, given her personality, rather inappropriately) called her ‘declining years’.

Now it wasn’t that Jimmy Jacket — or ‘Concrete’ as he was known to his intimates — was a bad builder. He was one of the best. Indeed his construction of the hidden basement to the Pargeters’ big house in Chigwell stands out as one of the architectural marvels of the late twentieth century; and the tunnel with which he linked Spud-U-Like and the National Westminster Bank in Milton Keynes bears comparison with many more publicly applauded feats of engineering.

But the drawback to employing ‘Concrete’ Jacket on a project was his availability. He wasn’t like some cowboy builders, who’re off on another job the minute their employer’s back is turned. He had assured Mrs Pargeter that, from the moment he started on her house, he wouldn’t take on any other work until its completion.

But the fact had to be faced — ‘Concrete’ Jacket’s attendance record at the site was not good. Maybe he was accident-prone; maybe he just had bad luck; maybe he chose the wrong kind of friends; whatever the reason, he kept having to be away from the job for periods of varying lengths. And, as a result, the building of Mrs Pargeter’s dream house tended to progress slowly.

Which was why she moved around a lot, and why she was currently staying at Greene’s.

As Gary ushered Mrs Pargeter into the hotel, its manager, Mr Clinton (who, under the soubriquet ‘Hedgeclipper’ Clinton, had in the past done some useful if unsophisticated work for the late Mr Pargeter) bustled forward in his jacket and pin-striped trousers to fawn tastefully over his most favoured guest.

‘We’ve missed you, my dear Mrs Pargeter. But I do hope that you’ve had an enjoyable break. Oh, and while I think, there was a message for you to ring a Mr Mason…’

‘Truffler?’

‘I would assume so,’ Mr Clinton replied with a discreet wink.

Mrs Pargeter rang through as soon as she was in her room with a tray of coffee and biscuits.

‘Mrs Pargeter,’ said Truffler with funereal directness, ‘how’d you fancy a trip to Cambridge?’

‘Cambridge? Have you got something from Jenny Hargreaves’ university friends?’

‘I would say I very definitely have, Mrs Pargeter. Some very useful pointers they’ve given me. But I think I’ve got as much as I’m going to get out of them… you know, kids of that age’re, like, suspicious of a man snooping into their private affairs.’

‘Hm.’

‘Whereas I think they’d be much more likely to open up to a woman. Particularly to you, Mrs Pargeter.’

‘Yes,’ she agreed. ‘Yes, they probably would.’

Mrs Pargeter had never had much to do with students. She had left school at sixteen, and though the sum of knowledge accumulated during the early years of her marriage far exceeded that with which most graduates leave university, the process by which she had gained it did not qualify under the traditional definition of formal education.

Nor, though the late Mr Pargeter, philanthropic as ever, had assisted many young people with further education courses (particularly in the fields of law and accountancy), had he introduced many of these aspirants to his wife.

As a result, the word ‘student’ conjured up for Mrs Pargeter an image of sixties hedonism, of beautiful but scruffy young people drifting around, either in a benign drug- and pop music-induced haze, or in a white heat of determination to take the world apart and reconstitute it from its basic ingredients.

The only real live student she had met in recent years, the painfully idealistic Tom O’Brien, had done something to endorse the second stereotype.

But neither Tom nor Mrs Pargeter’s other preconceptions had done much to prepare her for the three young ladies whom she met, through Truffler Mason’s introduction, at Jenny Hargreaves’ college.

True, all three were dressed scruffily, but it was that neat designer scruffiness affected by all of their generation, a Levi-led conformity as staid as the twin-sets of a few decades earlier. Chloe, Candida and Chris manifested all the bohemian get-up-and-go of building society cashiers.

Though perhaps they were a bit higher up the social scale than building society cashiers. All their voices were tinged with that distinctive public school quack and clearly none of them had ever for a moment questioned her right to anything.

Mrs Pargeter did not know by what shadings of the truth Truffler had set up the encounter, but the young ladies showed no reluctance in speaking to her about their absent friend. Chloe, who acted as their spokesman, met her at the porter’s lodge and took her up to her room. Mrs Pargeter was led into an austere and institutional space, on whose walls soft-focus black-and-white posters of lovers kissing looked asexual and sanitized.

Chris and Candida were summoned from adjacent rooms on the same corridor (where Jenny Hargreaves had also lived) and the four sat down with all the formality of a charity committee.

Mrs Pargeter accepted an offer of tea (when it arrived, it was Earl Grey) and Chloe spelled out the parameters of their meeting. ‘I’m afraid we can only give you half an hour.’

‘Because, you know,’ Candida explained, ‘it is, like, Saturday, after all, and one does tend to sort of go out Saturday night to-’

‘I meant because of work,’ said Chloe reprovingly.

‘Oh yes, right.’

‘We all have exams at the end of this term, right, and must get back to revision as soon as possible.’

‘Absolutely,’ Candida concurred. ‘Sorry.’

‘So Jenny’s missing important work, being away at the moment

…?’ suggested Mrs Pargeter.

‘Oh right, yes, certainly,’ Chris agreed. ‘With languages the whole four-year course is very intensive. Missing even, like, a couple of days means you have a lot of catching up to do, know what I mean?’

‘Are you all doing the same course as Jenny?’

Chris was. Chloe and Candida were doing English. ‘Not that that’s any less intensive,’ Mrs Pargeter was assured.

‘I see. And Jenny wasn’t having any trouble with the course, was she? I mean, not finding the work too hard? You don’t think there’s any chance she’s given up because she couldn’t cope.’

‘Absolutely not,’ Chris replied firmly. ‘She’s very bright, right? Even though she came through the state system.’

‘She’s quite incredible,’ Candida agreed. ‘You wouldn’t know it to meet her.’