have our mattress conversation again. ‘You should get a new mattress, Dad. An orthopaedic one.’ ‘A what one?’ ‘A firm one.’ ‘What’s the point of wasting money on a new mattress at my age?’ ‘I’ll pay for it, Dad.’ ‘I don’t want you wasting your money either.’ The mention of money has the unfortunate effect of reminding him of recent correspondence with the Inland Revenue. ‘This bloke up in Scotland keeps writing to me about income tax. What’s Scotland got to do with me?’
‘I expect the administration of your tax has been moved up there,’ I say. ‘You know, to create jobs.’
‘Jobs! I bet it’s creating a nice little job for somebody, writing me letters, sending me forms to fill in.’
‘What do they say, Dad?’
As far as I can gather, the Inland Revenue are saying he is entitled to a refund of tax deducted at source on some building society accounts he has and asking him to fill in a form to that end, but he suspects a plot to defraud him is being hatched on the western seaboard of Scotland. ‘Put all the correspondence in an envelope and send it to me,’ I say. ‘I’ll try and sort it out.’
‘No, it might go astray in the post. You can look at it next time you’re down. A thieving lot the postmen are round here. And there’s another thing. I’ve found some share certificates in British Leyland. What shall I do with ’em? Sell ’em?’
‘I think it’s too late Dad. British Leyland disappeared years ago.’
‘Bloody hell! Just my luck!’
‘How many shares did you have?’
‘Twenty-five. At five bob each.’
‘Well, you haven’t lost much.’
‘They might’ve increased in value.’
I assure him that they didn’t. He then raises more financial worries, and I say, as I have said before, that if he would give me power of attorney I would sort everything out to his best advantage, but he immediately becomes suspicious and hostile. ‘You’ll be telling me to make a will, next,’ he says sarcastically.
‘Well, I do think you should make a will,’ I say. He knows this, of course: it is another conversation we have from time to time.
‘There’s no need,’ he says angrily. ‘You’re going to get everything I have. You know that. You’re my only, whatd’youcall it. Next of kin. There’s no need to pay some solicitor to make a fancy will.’
‘All right, Dad, have it your own way,’ I sigh. It will cause me some inconvenience when he dies intestate, but it would be unkind to pressure him further: I know he shrinks superstitiously from making a will, as if he feels it would be signing his own death warrant. I chat aimlessly for a while about the weather and television programmes until he has calmed down enough for me to end the call.
Then I call Anne. She’s in the sixth month of pregnancy and says she’s feeling fine, just a spot of backache, and cock-a-hoop because their bathroom is finished. She works for Derby social services, and lives in a village outside the city with her partner Jim. He’s an amiable if unconventional fellow who makes a living by buying old properties, doing them up while living in them, and then selling them at a profit, and buying another one, so they always seem to live in a state of semi-chaos, with only half their living space habitable. ‘I hope you’re not going to be moving house again in the near future,’ I said.
‘No, I’ve made Jim promise we’ll stay in this one for a while,’ she said. ‘Until the baby’s at least two.’
‘That’s good,’ I said. I confirm that she will be coming to us for Christmas dinner and staying overnight. ‘Fred is having a big party on Boxing Day,’ I tell her.
‘Oh, aren’t you having it too, Dad?’ she says. She is always hinting that Fred rules the roost here.
‘Well, I suppose I am,’ I say. ‘But needless to say it’s Fred’s idea.’
‘Will Granddad be there at Christmas?’
‘Of course.’
‘And Rick?’
‘I don’t know about your brother. He’s been invited.’
My son Richard is a scientist at Cambridge, low-temperature physics is his field. I understand hardly anything he says about it, and even less about Richard. He seems to me to have been in a low-temperature state ever since his mother died. He’s single and as far as I know celibate, lives in rooms in his college, has a passion for wine and baroque music and low-temperature physics, not much else. Sometimes I wonder if he might be gay