Corduroy Mansions Page 0,88
it’s a little bit expensive—I’ve got plenty of money, you know.”
“I’m not sure I’d recommend it, Mr. Moongrove. Perhaps you should talk to your sister about it?”
It was the wrong tactic, and Terence pursed his lips in determination. “No,” he snapped. “I shall not talk to my sister about it. Cars are things for men, Mr. Marchbanks. We men can make up our own minds about these things without bossy women coming and poking their long noses into our cars. My car is not a matter for my sister at all.”
Lennie shrugged. He was very reluctant to acquire a Porsche for Terence, but could he stop him? And if he did not do this for him, then somebody else—some unscrupulous person—would sell him some dreadful Porsche that had been driven to death and would just prove a headache for everybody: for him, for Terence and for the AA.
“All right,” he said. “I’ll get you a Porsche, Mr. Moongrove. But only if you promise to drive it very, very carefully.”
“Thank you,” said Terence. “And you must promise not to tell my sister until the new car is safely in the garage. She can be very bossy, you know.”
Lennie nodded. He knew.
62. Eddie Shows His True Colours
MARCIA CAME ROUND to the wine shop shortly after two on Monday afternoon. It was a good time to call, as the midday rush, when people took advantage of their lunch break to do a bit of shopping, was over. If Marcia was in the area—as she often was—she would call and share a cup of tea and an apple with William in the back office. In the days of Paul—before his sudden defection to Oddbins—he would be left in charge while William chatted to Marcia. Now, of course, it was Jenny who took over, even though it was her first day in the shop and everything was very new to her.
“She’s doing remarkably well,” said William, gesturing in the direction of the till, where his new assistant was attending to a smiling customer. “Her first day, but it’s very much a case of being to the manner born. A natural.”
Marcia looked through the open door of the office and took a thoughtful bite of her apple. She had been prepared to dislike Jenny on the grounds—and they were perfectly adequate ones, she thought—that she was a younger woman and she was now working in close proximity to William. But the welcome she had received from Jenny when she had come into the shop had been a warm one and clearly quite genuine, and that had taken the edge off her hostility. Then there was the matter of her own rather stronger position. For Marcia had that morning moved at least some of her possessions into Corduroy Mansions and was officially living in William’s flat. From such heights of advantage, the threat posed by other women, even young and attractive women like Jenny, was perhaps not so acute. She could afford to be generous.
Looking back on it, she marvelled at the smoothness with which the whole move had been accomplished. William had shown little resistance, a passivity that she attributed to his utter weariness of Eddie’s perverse refusal to move out. When, on Sunday morning, she had telephoned William and been told that Eddie had not come home the previous night, she had decided to take decisive action.
“Right. We go ahead.”
William had hesitated. “I’m not sure that—”
But Marcia had pressed on. “I’ll come round,” she said. “I’ll finish what we started yesterday. I’ll clear his room and dump his clothes in the hall.”
William had been privately appalled. He had never imagined that it would come to this, that he would effectively throw his own son out of the flat, but what were the alternatives? Every attempt at discussion, every offer of help with the purchase of a flat, every hint or offer of pastures green—elsewhere—had been ignored. Had Eddie been more considerate, had he made the slightest effort to recognise that his father also lived in the flat, it might have been different. But he had not, and William had reached the reluctant conclusion that Eddie wanted him out. And once he had come to that realisation, then the only thing to do was to assert himself by acting first. Had we been cavemen, he thought, it would have been a battle with old animal jawbones or whatever it was that cavemen used to settle family disputes. And the outcome, in those days, would have been