Linda Phillips - Old Dogs, New Tricks

Although elderly, Philip’s father still ran the three small hardware shops that he’d started as a young man, but recently he had been forced to admit to Marjorie that they were really getting too much for him. Philip’s mother was already semi-invalid and had not been able to assist for some while. In fact, had it not been for Marjorie’s unstinting efforts in recent times, both with helping Eric in the shops and in doing all she could for Sheila, some other arrangement would have had to have been considered.

Marjorie hadn’t planned to help out her father-in-law; it was something she’d fallen into one day when she’d dropped by at the largest of the shops for a bag of rose fertiliser and found him agonising over VAT.

It so happened that she had a talent for all types of figure-work: taxes, book-keeping, cash-flows – all these she could handle with ease. She had worked for a firm of accountants on leaving school and would have trained up to become one herself if Becky, their first daughter, had not put in an appearance. Family life, she had then discovered, suited her even more than accountancy, and she had never felt the urge to go back to doing anything like that – until she saw Eric huffing over his official forms.

‘My oh my,’ he’d said gleefully, when she’d asked if he needed a hand, ‘I’d quite forgotten. This is right up your street, love, isn’t it?’

He’d gladly handed her all the paperwork – along with a back-log from an old cardboard box – and from then on she’d been fully involved in all aspects of the business, learning as she went along.

And now the plan that the three of them – Eric, Sheila and herself – had been working on was that, since neither Philip nor his siblings had ever shown any interest in the shops, Marjorie would take over the complete running of them from the beginning of next month. She was to accept a proper salary, which she had never been offered before and wouldn’t have dreamed of accepting if she had, since she was only too happy to help out, and she would be allowed carte blanche to make of the business what she could.

Eric and Sheila would take things more easily from then on, although Eric said he would still ‘pop in now and again to keep an eye on things’. And they would only draw from the business what little they felt they needed to live on.

‘But –’ Marjorie’s face had clouded a little after her initial burst of euphoria ‘– what are Colin and Chrissie going to think of all this?’ Her brother-in-law and sister-in-law might raise all sorts of objections to their inheritance being ‘taken over’ in this way, even though they wouldn’t want anything to do with the shops themselves.

Both Philip’s brother and his sister had elected to go their own ways, just as he had done. In fact, much to his father’s disgust, it was Philip who seemed to have set the trend, paved the way, made it easier for the others to stand up to parental authority and say no. Heedless of Eric’s protests, Colin had gone into the leisure industry and Chrissie was married to a trout farmer in North Wales.

‘Colin and Chrissie can think what they like,’ Eric grunted. ‘They’ve had their chances and blown ‘em, as far as I’m concerned. They’ve not been forgotten in our wills, if that’s what’s bothering you, and that’s all they can rightfully expect.’

Marjorie noticed that he’d not included her husband in his condemnation. Philip had always been his favourite in spite of everything, though he would never admit it. Did he still harbour a hope that his firstborn might yet one day step into his father’s shoes? And was Marjorie merely the next best thing?

But she swept the notion aside. Eric’s proposal had touched and flattered her; why should she look a gift horse in the mouth? She had always felt as much loved by the couple as their own children were – perhaps even more so since her own parents’ tragic death – and to be trusted with Eric’s pride and joy … well, it was surely to be taken as an accolade. An accolade that she had been hoping for all along but one that she’d dared not expect.

She’d not whispered a word to anyone about her troubles of late, but the truth was that she had been feeling a little low and oddly insecure, what with it being that time of life when a woman feels less than her best and society conspires to make her feel utterly useless – fit only for the scrap-heap. The future had begun to look so empty and she had been desperately seeking something she could look forward to, with pleasure or even zeal.

Next year she and Phil would be celebrating twenty-five years of marriage; and with modern medicine being what it was, and people living longer and more healthily, it looked as though they stood a fair chance of maybe twenty-five more together. What on earth were they going to do with all that time? Or more to the point, since he at least had a busy career for a while, what was she going to do? These were the thoughts that had begun to haunt her, even before their two daughters had left home and her ‘caring’ role had already begun to dwindle. Since the girls had physically removed themselves from the family home and needed her even less, a kind of panic had set in.

But she had not let her concerns remain mere thoughts. No one could accuse her of sitting back, bemoaning her fate and wailing that there was nothing to be done about it. Instead she had started sowing seeds. And it wasn’t entirely by chance that Eric had come up with his proposal, if she was honest about it: she had been slowly and carefully working on him as she helped him in his shops, slipping in the odd suggestions here and intelligent comments there, and making herself pretty well indispensable, until one evening, just after Christmas, he’d hung up his overall, turned to her with a grave expression, and said he had something to say.

He had then proceeded to put forward what were essentially her own ideas for the future of the business as though they were all his own. It seemed not to have occurred to him to promote one of his managers to do the job in his place; his only thought was of her. And what a boost it had given her! Especially when she realised the size of the salary he was considering paying her, and the degree of control she was to be given. It was all far more than she’d ever imagined.

So now her life was mapped out. With the shops to keep her occupied and the prospect of grandchildren on the way, she could happily spend her remaining years here in London where she’d always lived, amongst family and friends, and not ask for anything more.

But what if Spittal’s closed down?

Whipping a towel from the radiator she scrambled to her feet. She must see Eric and Sheila at once.

By the time she reached her in-laws’ house, two blocks away from her own, the half-heard news about Spittal’s possible closure had become hard fact in Marjorie’s mind, and the only possible outcome a dead certainty. Grimly, her keys rattling in the lock, she let herself in at the front door.

She had had free access to the house for many years, but only in recent times, when Sheila’s joints had begun to grow too painful for her to greet guests at the door, had she taken advantage of it.

Stepping into the wide, well-polished hall with its thick Indian rug she never ceased to be impressed by her surroundings. She tried not to be because Philip always referred to the house – behind his mother’s back and well out of earshot – as ‘hideous’.

Never, he had been known to say, his eyes narrowed against the clashing wall-papers, the gaudy paint work and the eclectic assortment of ornaments, had so much money been squandered to such disastrous effect.

Certainly Marjorie would not have chosen such bold patterns either, or so many of them crowded together in quite the way they were – above the dado, below the dado, outlined with borders, panelled with borders; nor would she have considered the over-large crystal chandeliers as fitting for such a house. She would not have lain inch-thick ornate rugs on top of deep-piled patterned carpets. And the swags and drapes at the window were way over the top. Yet the whole was immaculately kept and gave out a sensation of luxurious comfort. Stepping into number fourteen Rosewood Gardens was like entering a secure, well-padded sanctuary.