Shirley came down for the Wellington Weekend in the company of her husband Victor, and her children Serena (aged 6), Piers (aged 4) and Nell (aged 3). They travelled in a white Volvo Estate. The dog Harry sat behind a wire mesh and stared out of the back window. Shirley drove. The children slept. Victor dozed. He chose to use his spare time constructively. He needed rest. He had recently been promoted Chief Executive of the Chewinox Division of Gloabal Products Inc. There was a lot to be done: his new broom had to sweep briskly. There were factories to be re-deployed, lay-offs declared, non-aspirers fired, product images re-created, output minimised, profit maximised. His sweeping wrist got tired. Victor slept whenever opportunity arose. He looked like Rock Hudson in his prime: all charm and excellent physique. His daughters adored him. So did his wife. His son sulked. ‘He’s just like Napoleon,’ Shirley would say. ‘Able to catnap wherever and whenever.’
Just like Napoleon, pushing out the bounds of empire, drawing the bold red circle of mayhem on the map, so that those inside could wax fat and sleek and safe! And for those outside, who cared? Do you, reader?
Victor and Shirley, and the little Blades, came in response to an invitation. It had arrived a month ago, with the Christmas cards. It came from Joan Lumb and asked the Blades to attend the Wellington Lecture, to be delivered by General Leo Makeshift on January 18th. Joan Lumb was Victor’s eldest sister. She, a colonel’s widow, had been made Custodian/ Administrator of the Shrapnel Academy two years previously. It was a much coveted post, now for the first time given to a woman. The honour was self-evident.
‘Does she mean us to pay?’ asked Shirley. There was a handwritten letter with the card. She handed both now to Victor.
‘Don’t just come for the lecture,’ Joan Lumb had written in her big bold handwriting. ‘Come for the whole weekend! We’re having an Eve-of-Waterloo dinner on the Friday. The menu’s very special – a real surprise. We’ve a full house for the lecture already. Two hundred of the great and good from the ends of the earth. Not surprising, I suppose: the General’s a splendid speaker and a real world figure, even in peace time. Stay for Sunday if you can. I know Shirley can’t bear to be away from home, but we are family, aren’t we, and I haven’t seen either of you for so long. We’re between courses here – the Westpoint and St Cyr lads have gone and the Sandhurst Refresher week’s not started, so you can take your choice of rooms. I’ve provisionally booked you the Napoleon Suite: over the West Porch with a view over the ornamental gardens. So pretty in this bright, frosty weather. A real bargain at £35, I always think!’
‘I don’t know,’ said Victor, handing back the letter, ‘whether or not she expects us to pay. I leave that kind of thing to you.’
‘I suppose we have to go?’ asked Shirley.
‘We do,’ he said. Victor and Joan’s parents were dead. Joan was all Victor had left of his past; Shirley and the children were his present and his future, but a man must have his past as well, if he is to be whole, no matter how much he dislikes it.
‘What about the children?’ asked Shirley. ‘She doesn’t mention the children. Does she mean us to bring them?’
‘I don’t suppose,’ said Victor, ‘that the Shrapnel Academy often rings to the sound of children’s voices, but you must decide.’
‘Well,’ said Shirley, ‘I’ll see what I can manage by way of babysitters. But I don’t know if I’ll have any luck.’
‘I dread to think what the special menu is,’ said Victor. ‘Probably what the officers ate on the eve of Waterloo. Greasy and fattening.’
‘So long as it isn’t what the men ate,’ said Shirley. ‘Because that would be dry bread and maggots.’
‘I hardly think it was as bad as that,’ said Victor, rather curtly. ‘An army always looks after its own.’ Victor came from an army family, who, although happy enough to attack the army themselves, did not like outsiders to do so. Victor had formally renounced the army and gone into business, but who can renounce such an upbringing? Its ethics run in the blood, not the brain. Revulsion is only skin deep.
‘Is that a rising sun on the invitation?’ asked Shirley brightly and pacifically, to change the subject. Shirley’s parents had been teachers, and socialists. That too runs in the blood, not the mind. Hers and Victor’s had been a love-match, and a cause of anxiety to both sets of parents.
‘No,’ said Victor. ‘I imagine that is the symbol of the Shrapnel Academy. Henry Shrapnel invented the exploding cannonball in 1804.’
‘What did he do that for?’ asked Shirley. She liked to ask Victor questions, and he liked to answer them.
‘To gain promotion and be hailed as a genius,’ said Victor. ‘Why does anyone do anything?’
‘I see,’ said Shirley, dutifully. Presently, having thought a little, she added, ‘I suppose it’s better to bring a war to an end quickly, even if nastily. Otherwise it just lingers on and demoralises everyone. Was that the thinking behind the exploding cannonball, Victor?’
But for once he did not reply. He was catnapping again, between the last sips of breakfast coffee and the arrival of the company car. That day he was to cut the proportion of gum in Chewinox by one part in a thousand. Twelve villages in Southern India would die.
The invitation was accepted, the Napoleon Suite booked and no mention of money made. Shirley made babysitting arrangements and Victor returned home early, at 3.25 on the Friday afternoon. As he changed out of his grey stubbly-woven heavy silk suit into more deliberately casual weekend clothes, he said: ‘I wish we were taking the children. I don’t see enough of them as it is.’
‘We are taking them,’ said Shirley. ‘We have to. Angie left this morning. She walked out after breakfast.’
‘Why?’
‘She threw away Piers’ comforter,’ said Shirley, ‘saying he was too old for it. And he bit her.’
‘Good for Piers.’
‘That was my reaction,’ said Shirley, ‘and I said so. So she got upset. I would have been more sympathetic, I expect, had I liked her. But I didn’t, I’m sorry to say. Nor did the children. All in all I’m glad she’s gone.’
‘So am I!’ he said. ‘Our lives to ourselves again! Just the five of us, two big and three small.’ Victor loved his family, his present and his future, wrapped safely into one; so much better than the past.
‘They’ll sleep in the car,’ said Shirley. ‘They’ve fizzed and overflowed all day they’re so glad she’s gone. Now they’re flat and calm and tired.’
‘Like Asti Spumanti,’ he said, dreamily, ‘opened for an hour or two.’ They took their holidays in Italy, their happiness thus being complete.
‘Do you think Joan will mind very much,’ asked Shirley, ‘if we bring them?’
‘Joan will just have to put up with them,’ said Victor.
The moods and fears of unmarried, childless and no longer young women are easily disregarded by those in the active, fruitful and positive mainstream of their lives. I hope, for your sake, reader, you belong to this latter group. But do remember that membership of it is only temporary: so try to be less ruthless than Victor and Shirley.
Serena, Piers and Nell were put in the back of the car while their parents locked up the house, a process which of necessity took some time. Harry the Doberman took up his position behind the dog mesh. The children heaved and fought for a little, as they liked to do, and then fell obligingly asleep in a warm tangle of limbs. Harry trembled and waited. The house had been recently re-protected by security experts to the high standard required for Chief Executives at Gloabal. Victor, on leaving, threw a master switch too soon and locked himself in and Shirley out. Internal sensors detected the presence of an intruder. Sirens went off in the garage, waking and frightening the children, and Harry, who rolled his eyes and slavered at the mouth. Red lights flashed at the Police Station. Shirley soothed the children, and fed one of her tranquillisers to Harry. Victor, unable to nullify his last security decision, now electronically enforced, waited in the kitchen, while the police summoned the Gloabal Security Officer. He, on arrival, first checked Victor’s voice patterns against a master, and then talked the system down with his own voice, to which the relays were programmed to respond. Victor was released, and the police went home. ‘Think nothing of it, sir,’ said the Security Officer. ‘It’s what I’m paid for.’
When they finally set off, an hour late, Shirley said, ‘It’s wonderful to know the system works, and feel so safe. Gloabal certainly knows how to look after its employees! Aren’t you glad you work for them?’
But Victor was catnapping again, gathering strength. Shirley left the blueness of the motorway for the yellowness of a minor road, for the modest white double line of a country lane. In the back the children sucked happily on bottles, between sleep and drowsiness. Victor smiled as he napped. Occasional flakes of snow hit the windscreen. Shirley was happy. She drove as fast as the various roads allowed. She made good time. Her headlights picked out a hitchhiker – a young woman in jeans and donkey jacket, with a rucksack in her hand. Perhaps she should stop? What was a girl doing here, so far from anywhere, and in the dark? Shirley drove on. No. If that was the sort of situation a girl could get into, that was the sort she could get out of, without expecting big white passing Volvo Estates, full of husbands, children, cases, dogs, to stop. Some shabby vehicle of the kind Shirley’s parents once had owned, would stagger along presently, flaking rust, and like would call to like, and help would be at hand.
And so, in tune with their prosperity, and their virtue, made only a little late by the problems that accompany success and power, Shirley, Victor, and the little Blades approached the Shrapnel Academy: Shirley driving, the children sleeping, Victor dozing, and Harry the dog, the sleek black Doberman, quivering in surprise as snow swirled out of the darkness to hit the heated rear window, where it melted and disappeared. There one minute, gone the next! Harry was less than a year old and had never seen snow before. He did not like surprises.