THREE

Dad spotted us and came over as soon as he could. ‘Sorry about that,’ he said. ‘They wouldn’t let me get away. Most interested, they were, in how we get the carrots to grow straight.’

I forbore to comment that the body language had suggested that it had been a captive audience rather than a captive lecturer. Max said brightly, ‘This is very impressive, Dr Elliot.’

He looked around, a man seeing success wherever his eye rested. ‘I’m fairly happy with it,’ he said airily, much as the bloke who built the Great Pyramid at Cheops had probably once been quoted as saying in Ancient Egypt Today. ‘They’re a good bunch of kids, too.’ Max clearly had that innate survival instinct that makes you automatically afraid of large school children en masse, for her face suggested that she might need a little persuasion on that subject. Dad continued with characteristic unregard, ‘Would you like to meet my star pupil?’

It was one of those questions that have only one answer. He led us over to a rather tall, clearly well-muscled lad with sandy coloured hair, light-blue eyes and high cheekbones. He was over six feet tall and his whole demeanour suggested that he thought he was the bee’s knees. ‘David? I’d like you to meet my son and his girlfriend.’

David turned and gave us a smile. Of its type, it was a fine example. It stretched his cheeks, it reached to his eyes and his body language opened up. ‘Of course,’ he said. His voice was standard South London, not ugly, not refined. He held out his hand; I was interested to see that he held it out to Max first. ‘How do you do?’ he asked of her with an expression that I thought was a tad too rakish for my liking. Max smiled nervously. To me, the hand was accompanied by a rather more perfunctory, ‘Hi.’

All sorts of primeval mating instincts whispered in the back of my head and I told myself not to be stupid.

Dad said, ‘David is Ada’s grandson.’

‘Oh,’ I said. ‘And where is she?’

‘Providing refreshments in the dining room. She’ll be along shortly when she’s finished her shift.’

In an effort to be sociable, I said to David, ‘You’ve done a wonderful job here, David.’

It took him a moment to respond, perhaps because he was staring rather more than I liked at Max. ‘Yes, yes,’ he said eventually, seeming to bring himself back from somewhere. ‘Not bad.’

‘David’s got green fingers,’ proclaimed Dad, as if David had recently had the Légion d’honneur bestowed upon him. ‘I gave him the beetroots, and look how they’ve turned out.’ He indicated two rows of dense and luxuriant green and purple foliage, neatly arrayed and impressively weedless. David bowed his head as if overcome with pleasure at this praise but, cynical old git that I am, I had the feeling that he was taking just a little bit of the urine at the same time. Dad smiled at Max. ‘I know how much you like them.’

Max smiled nervously. ‘Thank you so much.’

‘Don’t thank me, thank David.’

Whose smirk widened whilst into his eyes there came a certain gleam, one that perturbed me a tad; I was starting to have my suspicions about this metaphysical heir of Percy Thrower.

At this point, we were approached by a middle-aged couple and an adolescent girl who, it transpired, were David’s family. Pater was tall, completely bald, dressed in jeans and a black shirt and extravagantly tattooed; mater was somewhat shorter, with knee-high leather over jeans that she could only have got into by oiling up first, a T-shirt that probably had the nicest job in the world and the kind of make-up job that Michelangelo would have swooned over. Between them was what I assumed was their daughter, who was also carrying a considerable weight of cosmetics; it was difficult to judge her age and could have been anything from sixteen to twenty-two. The body language – I have read The Naked Ape, so I’m fairly adept at this – was fascinating. The father stayed with the girl, whereas the mother split off immediately to go to David and begin cooing at the vegetables.

Dad made the introductions – Mike and Tricia Clarke were the parents, Joanna the daughter – but then there followed one of those pauses I know so well; conversation is a tender plant and, unlike the Clarke filius, I do not have green fingers. It didn’t help that Mike Clarke seemed to be an angry man and Tricia Clarke a woman with little to say. Inevitably we were reduced to asking about jobs, but that didn’t help because Mike, it turned out, was a Fleet Street printer – which in those days meant that he earned substantially more than I did whilst doing considerably less; I am not a bitter man, but then I am not a saint either, and I have seething resentments against members of NATSOPA, the printers’ union. To make matters worse, Tricia apparently whiled away the long days by . . . well, whiling them away not doing anything much at all.

‘Are you a pupil here?’ I enquired of Joanna in some desperation but with little confidence that it would open a vein of dialogue rich in conversational possibility; for one thing, she seemed obsessed with her patent-leather shoes and had rarely raised her eyes from them. She was dressed in widely flared jeans and a bright yellow crop top that left little to my imagination. Her father replied for her immediately. ‘Yeah.’

‘What year are you in?’ asked Max.

‘She’s in the third year.’ That Mr Clarke should once again respond was strange; that he said what he said was surprising; she was no more than fourteen. Max’s surprise was as great as mine, I think, leading to yet another awkward lull in the social niceties. It lasted until Tricia asked Max if she had ever stuck her hand up a cow’s bottom, and then followed it up with the inevitable corollary, ‘What does it feel like?’ I think we were all grateful when Dad suddenly said, ‘Here comes Ada.’

I turned to see a woman of average height, greying hair and bright, sparkling eyes who, thankfully, bore little resemblance to her son. She was smartly dressed and had a smile that was, perhaps unfortunately, formed of thin lips giving it an underlying hint of cruelty; when she came up to Dad, she seemed genuinely pleased to see him, though; I am ashamed to admit that I had been starting to wonder if there was more to her affection for him than just a love of loony pensioners with beards. They held hands and it seemed that Ada’s slight faux pas a few months before (when her loyalty to Christ had outweighed all else, including her passion for Dad) was a thing of the distant past. She then turned to her son. ‘Hello, Michael.’ She give him a peck on the cheek for which he bent down obediently, then managed to exchange smiles with her daughter-in-law that struck me as a trifle strained on both sides, then turned to David, who was enveloped in the kind of hug that only grandmothers know how to give. David’s expression was difficult to read; he might have been enjoying it, might only have been enduring it. ‘Gran,’ he said noncommittally.

For a few moments I was dreadfully afraid that Max and I were going to be required to spend the rest of the evening making polite but entirely meaningless conversation about typesetting and fonts, hair dyes and blusher, but then Ada said to Dad, ‘I’ve got to be going now, Benjamin. Michael said he’d give me a lift home.’

Dad looked devastated. ‘But I thought . . .’

‘I know, but I’m rather tired, and you’re going to be here for a good hour longer, aren’t you?’

Dad nodded sadly; the call of love being trumped by the call of duty is not an easy thing to swallow. ‘Of course.’

A quick peck on both cheeks for Dad (I admired her fortitude and pluck in not flinching before she buried herself in the Brillo pad that is Dad’s beard), a smile for Max and me, and Ada was gone with her family.

‘Isn’t she wonderful?’ murmured Dad as he watched them go.

‘She seems like a nice lady,’ I said carefully and Max concurred.

It was just the rest of her family I wasn’t so sure about.