J. Gregson: In Vino Veritas

His wife Eleanor smiled down at him as he sat at the kitchen table. ‘I do live here. And I didn’t creep up on you. It’s just that you were miles away.’

Bert resumed turning the letter between his fingers, as if he had been interrupted in some ancient and essential preliminary routine. ‘I knew it was coming, didn’t I? Now that it’s here, I almost wish it hadn’t come. It’s like being a child again. It brings back the Barnardo’s home and having to open the letter with my GCE results.’

‘This will be as positive as they were.’

For a moment Hook was back in that boyhood world, at the long table in the office of the institution’s principal, fingering that other envelope. ‘I enjoyed that day. They told me at the home that I’d done well enough to get into the police, if I could meet the other criteria. I felt as if I’d won the lottery, getting myself a job — any sort of job.’ He could hear again the cut-glass tones of that well-meaning lady who had chaired the governors of the home, telling him on the day that he left that he had done well for himself, that he should continue to give thanks for the grace of the good Lord, who had seen fit to reward him for his rectitude.

At length he said abruptly, ‘I don’t want to open this. I know it’s silly and I wouldn’t confess it to anyone else, but as long as I don’t open it I can’t have failed, can I?’

‘You haven’t failed, you great lummox.’

It was a long time since Eleanor Hook had left her native north, but she retained the occasional colourful dialect word. There was a bump on the ceiling and the sound of childish admonishment from above. She said, ‘The lads will be down any second. Better to get it over without that sort of audience, don’t you think?’

‘You know how to produce the ultimate threat,’ said her husband glumly. Bert picked up the paperknife, slit the envelope decisively, and carefully drew out the single sheet within it.

Eleanor could divine nothing from his weather-beaten, impassive features. Only she knew how much effort he had put into his studies over the last six years. She was probably the one person to whom he would have admitted how much this meant to him, but marriage meant that these things did not have to be spoken. He stared for a long time at the notepaper with the Open University crest at the top of it. Then he looked at his wife and felt the smile creeping over his face. He handed her the paper. Eleanor read as unemotionally as she could: ‘Herbert James Hook is awarded the degree of Bachelor of Arts, with second class honours, division one.’

She paused for just a moment, to let the joy flood into her own face, then threw her arms round Bert. The kiss had relaxed into a hug and she was murmuring words of congratulation into his ear when a voice from the doorway said, ‘They’re at it again, Jack!’ and the two of them sprang automatically apart.

A noise as of approaching thunder from the stairs announced the precipitate arrival of their elder son, who studied the tableau before him, shook his head sadly, then announced to thirteen-year-old Luke, ‘You’d think they could control themselves, at their age and at this time in the morning.’

‘And in front of innocent children at an impressionable age, too,’ said Luke with the despairing shake of his head which he had spent some time developing in front of his bedroom mirror.

‘There’s nothing innocent about you two,’ said Bert Hook sadly. ‘And you’re about as impressionable as Genghis Khan. Sit down and eat your breakfast.’

They hastened to obey. ‘God knows what it’s doing to us, being exposed to shenanigans like this at this time in the morning,’ said Jack.

‘You wouldn’t recognize a shenanigan if it got up and bit you,’ said his father with feeling. ‘Do you want toast?’

‘Two slices, please, if you two can tear yourselves away from each other.’

‘That’s enough of that,’ said his mother, with all the sternness she could muster.

‘That’s what we thought,’ said Jack, with a benign smile at no one in particular.

‘Your father has some news for you,’ said Eleanor seriously.

They caught a hint of her seriousness, and looked up expectantly from their cereals at Bert, who drew in a deep breath and said, ‘I’ve got my degree — the one I’ve been studying for over the last few years.’

Luke’s thirteen-year-old eyes widened. ‘Who’s a clever boy, then?’ he said with his head on one side.

Like many a boy of his age, he did not quite know how to react when confronted with some serious issue in his parents’ lives. It was left to his fifteen-year-old brother to say simply, ‘Well done, Dad!’ Jack got up and came round the table and shook his father’s hand, awkwardly but firmly. It was at once touching and slightly ridiculous, like a parody of adult congratulation, and it became more so when Luke followed him and solemnly repeated the exercise.

Eleanor, who was suddenly very much moved by the sight of the trio, said stoutly, ‘That’s a very good degree, you know. And he’s done it part time, whilst making sure we’re all safe in our homes. I hope you realize now that your father is a man of many talents.’

‘We know that, Mum,’ said Luke. ‘Billy Singh, our opening bat, has the top average in the whole league, and Dad bowled him middle stump in the nets last summer, didn’t he, Jack?’

‘Yes. Got him out twice in five balls. Billy says Dad should never have retired. Should still be playing for Herefordshire, he says.’

Eleanor smiled. ‘Well, even a man of Dad’s amazing talents has to give up some time. And he might never have had time to get this magnificent degree if he’d gone on playing cricket.’

Luke obviously thought such academic distinction a poor consolation for eschewing triumphs on the sports field, but he did his best to look impressed. The boys demolished large bowls of cereal and two slices of toast in swift succession.

It was not until Jack was alone in the hall with his mother that he said, looking determinedly at the carpet, ‘He’s a bit special, our dad, isn’t he, Mum?’

On the day after the meeting at Abbey Vineyards, Vanda North cornered Martin Beaumont in his office.

‘We need to talk.’

‘If you say so.’ Martin looked at her coolly as she sat opposite him on the other side of his desk. The table which had been brought in for the meeting on the previous day had been removed immediately after it. With the lack of ornaments and the single picture of the Malvern Hills on the wall, the room had resumed its normal rather bleak spaciousness. He looked at Vanda’s short, expertly cut dark-gold hair, then down at her slim, small-breasted figure and the long legs in the fawn linen trousers. She had always been striking rather than pretty, but she was still a handsome woman at forty-six, he decided.

When a woman had been your mistress, you were surely entitled to have an opinion on such matters.

He wasn’t good at assessing other people’s reactions to his words and attitudes. That was probably just as well, for Ms North was wondering for her part why she had ever been enticed into his bed. She was well aware by now that sexual attraction often paid little heed to matters of character, but now she couldn’t even see the physical attraction which had once driven her to this man.

Beaumont was ten years older than her, and he wasn’t ageing well. The face which she had seen as handsome was now florid, developing jowls and the suggestion of a double chin beneath them. No man could successfully combat thinning hair, but as he drew the ever-scarcer strands which were left obstinately across his pate, he risked looking ridiculous. Well-cut suits could disguise an insistent embonpoint only up to a certain point, a point which her critical eye insisted had now been passed.