Linda Phillips - Old Dogs, New Tricks

Of course he was probably pushing up daisies by now, but recently, for some strange reason, his words had been coming back to her. Not so much about being honest with each other – presumably he’d thought that went without saying – but all manner of other unasked-for advice that he’d seen fit to offer them on the run-up to their wedding day. For example, it was his view that in all their future life-decisions the final word should be Philip’s. He should be the one to wear the trousers and Marjorie should defer to him.

Sitting side by side on the musty vicarage sofa as he delivered this instruction, they had stared at him in silence, hardly able to believe their ears, for even in those days such notions were so out of date as to be laughable.

Marjorie had sensed Phil’s suppressed mirth bubbling up, his hand tightening round hers as they solemnly nodded their heads, and she’d found it hard to keep a straight face. They had escaped from the interview as soon as they could, running hard to get well away from the vicarage before their laughter came spluttering out.

Nevertheless, a few days later Marjorie had found herself promising to obey her husband for ever more until they were parted by death. And she had largely adhered to the vicar’s words throughout her marriage; she had let Philip wear the trousers and had always deferred to him, even if at times he had jokingly had to threaten her with hell-fire and brimstone.

At least it had had the advantage that Phil had no one to blame but himself whenever things turned out badly – a neat cop-out for her, to be true, but it didn’t always suit. It certainly wasn’t going to suit her now if his plans clashed with her own …

‘Come and have dinner with us this evening,’ she urged Sheila. ‘I’m going to tell Philip everything. It’s time to sort all this out.’

Philip Benson hurried out of the lift and crossed the glossy foyer of Spittal’s admin. building in ten easy strides. He was far from being a vain man and would have been surprised had he been told that at least a dozen female heads turned to follow his progress before he disappeared through the revolving doors.

This owed nothing to the fact that he was the sales director; the MD himself could have stripped naked on top of the reception desk and no one would have batted an eye. But Philip Benson was ‘something else’, according to most of the women who worked at Spittal’s; he was generally considered by young and old, fat and thin, married and single, to be more than ‘a bit of all right’. Even though he was hitting fifty. Even though he’d gone grey. Even though he would soon be a grandfather. None of that mattered a jot. As for Mrs Benson, well, wasn’t she the lucky one?

Many a time had the phenomenon that was Philip Benson been thoroughly analysed, but no satisfactory conclusions had ever been reached. He was not conventionally handsome – whatever that might mean. Some said it was his slow, shy smile that did it; some his affable nature. Others considered his selflessness was the charm, for what could be more attractive than an all-round decent bloke, they argued, who had no idea that he was?

Philip’s ears would have burned with embarrassment if he’d had any knowledge of these discussions. Either that or he would have assumed that the subject of them was someone else. Happily heedless of turned heads, longing glances or wagging tongues, he ducked into the pub next door to Spittal’s in search of a much-needed drink.

Spotting his old friend in one corner, slumped over a glass of beer, he grinned that slow, charming smile of his.

‘Thought I might find you here, Tom,’ he said, jerking a stool from under the table and straddling it. ‘Things getting too hot for you back there?’

Tom almost choked as Philip clapped him on the shoulder. He looked up sourly, licking foam from his bushy moustache.

‘Bloody chaos, it is,’ he complained with a despairing shake of his head. ‘Here, let me get you your –’

‘No, no, I’m buying,’ Phil insisted. He caught the barman’s eye above the row of backs hunched round the bar and was soon well into a glass of Guinness, with another pint lined up for Tom.

‘Not exactly a good place to be in at a time like this,’ Phil said, loosening his tie. ‘Personnel, I mean.’

‘You can say that again, man, indeed you can. You can imagine what it’s been like. Nothing short of a riot.’ He pretended to mop his brow. ‘I’ve come in here to escape, though I expect the hordes will soon catch up with me, demanding to know why they’ve been laid off with only a pittance when some other sod’s being kept on, and how the devil are they going to go home and break it to the wife? Like it’s all my bloody fault, you know?’

He eyed his companion morosely, and since Phil rarely nipped in for a quick one on his way home asked, ‘And what’re you doing in here, pal? Turning over a new leaf?’

Philip drank down a few more mouthfuls before adopting a wry expression. ‘Wondering how I’m going to break it to the wife, actually, just like everyone else.’

‘She doesn’t know?’ Tom’s surprise revealed the whites of his eyes. They were stained with red threads of tiredness.

‘No,’ Phil admitted reluctantly, ‘she doesn’t know a thing.’

‘But I thought …’

‘That I would’ve told her days ago?’

‘Well … with your prior knowledge … and surely you could have trusted her?’

‘Of course I could have trusted her. She wouldn’t have leaked it.’ Philip waved that line of questioning aside. ‘It was just that – well, I suppose I couldn’t broach it.’

Tom snorted his disbelief. ‘Don’t tell me our sales director is scared of his wife? But … but it’s not as if it’s even bad news for you, is it? Won’t this just suit your Marjorie down to the ground?’

Philip’s expression darkened. ‘You’re assuming I’m taking redundancy, Tom. And all things considered I suppose …’

‘Be plain daft, not to, wouldn’t it?’ Tom demonstrated his ideas with his hands. ‘Take the money – nice tidy sum –’ he grabbed air and clutched it to his chest ‘– and straight into your father’s business.’ He made a throwing motion. ‘Isn’t that what Marjorie’s always wanted? Not to mention your mum and dad.’

Tom knew the history of Philip’s rebellion very well – mostly as related by Marjorie, the ubiquitous ‘girl next door’.

She would have been about eight and Philip nine when his father’s local hardware shop had begun to make money. ‘Real’ money, that is, as opposed to scraping a living. Eric Benson was about the only person not surprised by his success. He had worked damned hard for it, he was quick to tell anyone who would listen, and he lost no time in putting his profits back into the business and buying himself another shop in the adjacent borough. He soon repeated his earlier success and bought yet another shop before calling it a day.

Three shops, he decided at the end of a particularly busy week, hardly left him with time to draw breath. And being the kind of person whose powers of delegation were nil – although it was unlikely that he’d ever realised that fact – he told himself that enough was surely enough.

After the purchase of the second shop the Bensons left their crowded flat and came to live in the house next door to Marjorie and her parents, by which time Philip was eleven and taking the dreaded 11-plus.

Not that the tests presented Philip with much of a problem – he sailed through them all in less than the allotted time and wondered what all the fuss was about – but it brought the Bensons’ attention to the whole question of secondary education, and Eric, his new-found wealth growing steadily in the bank, began to get ideas above his station.