Chapter 6

‘Dad, I’ve got something to tell you,’ Warwick rehearsed, pounding his office later that afternoon, ‘Dad, I’ve got an announcement; Dad, I’ve decided – ’

Drying up mid-pace, he poured another, delaying coffee from his personal percolator and sagged into his chair.  He twiddled absently with the office toy – he didn’t know its technical name, but it was the one featuring the row of magnetic balls which swung and clonked into each other like pendulums.  Warwick despised the thing really – it was a cliché, like his yucca plant and the Venetian blinds.  They served no function other than to define the room; to scream ‘This is an office, you know!’

He supped his coffee and let this highly eventful day ripple over him.  It was perverse how so much at work now reminded him of Heidi.  He was even watching his phone with ingrained dread.  Weird to think it would rattle no more with her continual calls – well unless she took the career move of many an ex and became a stalker.

‘You’re such a square bear,’ she’d been known to accuse when, bored, she’d steamed him up with sexy chat and demanded he take the afternoon off to come and ‘service’ her.  ‘You’re in charge, for crying out loud!  Well, near enough.’

‘That’s precisely why I can’t just up and leave in the middle of the day.  I’ve got three meetings this afternoon – what do you propose I do, tender my apologies on the basis I’m slinking off to shag my girlfriend?’

‘I bet you could if you wanted to.  You’re a bloody martyr, Wozzy, working for your dad like that, doing a job you detest.  Like you need it anyway!  How about taking some time off, spending a bit of that wad you’ve got in the building society, instead of drudging away in that stupid supermarket of yours?’

‘“That stupid supermarket” happens to be our family business, Heid.  A business we can ill afford to get complacent about.  OK, we make a fair bit, but it could all go tits up if I start playing hooky, we sit back and let Iceland and Kerry bloody Katona totally clobber us.  Anyway, you make it sound like I stack shelves here – I’m the assistant director – ’

‘A vital cog in the machine.  Yeah, yeah, Wozzy.  You just don’t have a clue how to have fun, do you?’

‘Yes, well everything has to be a laugh for you, doesn’t it?  You and your airhead mates.  Life, unfortunately, isn’t always fun and smooth down here on Planet Earth, however.’

Heidi, at twenty-six, had no concept of ‘going out to work.’  Her career history amounted to a week’s stretch on reception at her dad’s garage.  The hours encroached on her manicure and gym time, so she gave notice to Daddy on the Friday and was back to her birthright calling, as a lady of leisure.

Warwick long aspired to more erudite circles, orbited by girls whose treasures did not only exist in the places they were always getting waxed and augmented.   So it naturally galled that his randy kid brother should bag a girl of Erin’s ilk.

Just as it galled that Ben got to bum around the world after leaving school, whereas Warwick – by simple virtue of being the eldest – was on the Chill Cabinet payroll the day after his final GCSE, his higher education aspirations foiled by Ronnie.

‘As of the end of term, I won’t be a-forking out no more school fees for you.  The University of Life provides all the schooling you’ll ever be a-wanting.  I flunked the eleven-plus – and look at me.  We need you in the business, boy.’

Warwick continually told himself he was lucky, being heir to a supermarket empire.  In more magnanimous moods it even shamed him he wasn’t more passionate about the Sara Lee gateaux and bags of peas that paid his mortgage. 

These four shops literally meant the world to Ronnie, a fact of which he never ceased reminding Warwick.  They represented the strides he’d made; his journey from an outside-toileted Netherton terrace to affluence, influence and golf club membership.

Meanwhile Warwick, an idealistic boy, evolved into a man with not so much a chip as the entire McCain factory on his shoulder.

Of late, though, he had clandestinely resumed his education at night school.

3:00, flared Warwick’s digital clock.  It was fashioned in the shape of an ice cube and bore the Chill Cabinet logo in suitably ‘frosty’ blue.  Another cheesy accessory.
It’s time, Warwick decreed, slapping down his mug.  He propelled himself down the corridor to Dad’s den.  There was no hesitancy – almost no steps – to his walk; he seemed to make it to the door of R. POOLE, COMPANY DIRECTOR in a continuous slick glide.

Their connection meant Warwick didn’t knock.  He found the old man (who in his home would have required Ordnance Survey to locate the housekeeper’s duster cache) polishing Ben and Erin’s wedding photo.

‘Me babby,’ Ronnie crowed, tender-eyed.  Not a flicker in the direction of his opening door and elder son entering via it.  ‘Such a smashing wench and all.’  (The word ‘wench’ had no scrubber-ish overtones in the Black Country, but was simply a synonym for woman.)  He spoke as though to himself – tracing a sausagey finger around Erin’s veil-haloed face – then asked ‘You been gone ages – how d’you get on up church?’ like he’d been aware of Warwick’s presence all along.  It was such an arrogant technique – I know you’re there but I’ll acknowledge you when I feel like it – though it all washed over Warwick these days.

‘Oh, the wedding’s actually off – not that it was ever seriously on.’  Warwick was amazed how clipped and blasé he made the tale sound.  Ronnie listened, at the same time positioning the frame on a book in front of him and annoyingly twizzling it to optimise his view of Ben and Erin.

‘Well I can’t say as I’m sorry.  She was never quite on your level.  How are you feeling, though, son?’ he added with real fatherly care – although to Warwick the question came so late it felt cursory.

‘I’ll live.  What’s the book?’  He indicated Heavenly Bodies: A History of Comets by Dr Dominic Osbourne, being unceremoniously used as a platform for his brother’s wedding photo.

‘Oh, Frank Osbourne sent it me – said “Here’s a hot off the press copy of our Dominic’s book.  It’s coming out in the States, but not here for a while yet.”  Well whoopee!  Bloody ponce – I’ll never read the thing.’

‘Can I borrow it?’

‘Have it.  It’s the sort of thing that would interest you.  Doctor indeed!  His sort would faint at the sight of blood!’

Warwick slid Ben and Erin off the hardback, reinstating them at a spitefully wonky angle.  ‘No Dad, he’s not actually that sort of – oh, never mind.  Look, there’s something rather more important than astrology books and my non-event wedding that I need to discuss with you.’

‘Oh?’  Ronnie flopped down, leaving the other picture on his baronial desk – a far smaller-framed one of Warwick, which was not elevated on a book – untroubled by his duster.  He motioned to the opposite chair, as though his son were a trainee attending for interview.  Warwick did not compliantly sit; a standing position afforded him a smidgeon of command.

‘Dad,’ his voice was self-consciously booming, but a quaver betrayed him, ‘I’m leaving the business.’