Chapter 7

The Poole family turkey was being hacked with greater ferocity than had killed it.

The hapless fowl was roasted by Janice (she bountifully gave Maggie Swain, the housekeeper, Christmas Day off) but her husband Ronnie liked to carve – it was a manhood thing.  Though he usually exercised greater precision in his art.

Warwick, watching with languid unhelpfulness like a teenager, guessed his head was the meaty matter Dad really wanted to embed that blade in.  Though it might have been just as gainfully plied trying to cut the atmosphere.  For four days there had been as close to an all-out snub as was possible between a father and son who also happened to be colleagues. 

Warwick thought it was part of the act, another monster huff to grind him into surrender, but this time Ron was genuinely thrown and brooding.

‘It’s embarrassing,’ he’d unseasonably moaned to his wife that morning, ‘thirty-year-old chaps didn’t go to university in our day, did they – they was quite happy working for an honest groat.  You know what I always say about these so-called “mature students,” dossing at the taxpayers’ expense with their bloody books – and now me own son’s gunna be joining ’em!  Even while he was with that sexy bird for two years, he was sneaking off to bloody evening classes!  What have we bred, Jan?’

Janice, at the dressing table, plastered blue shadow beneath the plucked-to-nothing moons of her eyebrows.  ‘You’ve got ’til October to talk the lad out of it.’ 

Ronnie was far from optimistic, though – Warwick was far from ‘a lad’ now.  He hadn’t fallen for the old ‘I’ll cut you off without a penny’ ploy the other day.  ‘Go ahead then,’ he’d shrugged, ‘I’ve got TESSAs.  I’d already accounted for the fact I’d be surviving on savings for the next three years.’

Ronnie had had too harsh a parentage himself to truly consider disinheriting his kids, and Warwick knew this.  Ronnie wasn’t even sure himself why he made such a patently empty threat.  It was one of his clichés.  He himself hated them.  They sounded like lines given to some soap opera ham to establish his character as Mr Hard-Nosed-Industrialist.  But since there was something of the actor in him, he trotted them out as duty – and infuriated himself with them.

‘Why d’you have to go on like we’re some Victorian mine-owning clan, Dad?’  Warwick lampooned his father’s austere Yam Yam brogue: ‘“Leave school, have to wairk in the pit office cuz that’s what yer father did.  No choice, no dreams allowed.”  It isn’t like I’m turning my back on a business that’s been in the family since 1830.  The Chill Cabinet’s your baby and I didn’t ask to inherit it.  You know I’ve never been cut out for business. The other blokes here resent me too – I can’t blame them, they’re good workers with genuine interest in supermarket management, but you’ve continually passed them over for promotions while shamelessly sending me soaring up the career ladder.’

‘That was the whole idea,’ said Ronnie gruffly.  This wasn’t lordly nepotism; he’d long dreamed his freezers would pass through dynasties of descendents.  And now he was fighting down his first tears since 1962.

‘Perhaps you could see if dear Ben would wish to return and be your right-hand boy,’ Warwick spat, ‘if his kiwi burgers ever cease to be the toast of Christchurch.  Bet you’d both love that.’

The Pooles made a soulless little bunch at their ludicrously huge dining table.  Starchy conversation and the squeak of knives across china formed the soundtrack to this allegedly rumbustious family day.

‘Gravy, Dad?’

Ronnie shook his head, grimacing.  The boat’s contents, as usual, required sieving.  The Pooles had Maggie to cook usually, or ate out.  Janice’s stuffing – which he was presently trying to chisel – was an argument in itself for having Christmas dinner in a restaurant.  Ronnie at such times almost regretted he hadn’t so much as switched an oven on in years.  He’d vowed never to cook again because the act represented where he’d come from; what his very survival had depended upon during his miserable youth.

It’s the same every year – yet every year I choose to stay home, in the bosom of my family, basking in what I never had as a nipper.  And for what reward, precisely?

No-one even sniggered as the rock of stuffing slid from his fork grip and ricocheted on to the carpet.  This carpet, this vast oaken dining room, this beloved home of Ronnie’s, reminded him randomly of something else he spewed at Warwick the other afternoon.

‘I’ve worked my balls off since I was sixteen for everything I’ve got today, and to give you and Ben the life of bloody Riley.  Now you turn round and wanna chuck all that away cuz you’ve come up with some barmpot scheme about going back to school!’

I’ve sunk to my mom’s level, he cringed now, retrieving the errant stuffing ball.  Guess every generation has its own idea of what constitutes a ‘barmpot scheme.’  She belittled my ambition too – while spending my wages pickling herself in cheap gin. 

Elva Poole’s last words, incredibly, were a rhyming couplet – ‘Yow’m a fool, Ronnie Poole.’  He’d heard her alternately glugging and cackling at her own vinegary wit as he left home for his still-new shop.  Dr Corfield deduced she died roughly two hours after that gin breakfast.

Shame, in a way.  I’d love to have shown her round this place; made her vomit on her words.  No doubt she’d have then crowed about her ‘marvellous son.’

Ronnie worshipped every brick of 2 Earl Crescent.  He’d been lord of it twenty-two years, dreamed of being so for three years prior to that, and would never sell it.
As a young entrepreneur and family man, his supreme goal had been an address on the Upper Bratchley estate.  The Pooles were living three miles down the road in Kingswinford at the time, and took country drives of a Sunday (these were the pre-Sunday trading days) for Ronnie to ogle these palaces. 

No two were alike.  Some were constructed in Spanish style – all balconies and arches – possibly to evoke the villas where their proprietors spent half the year; others were ivy-mantled, with gravel drives.  Then there were pads whose immense walled gardens revealed mere prongs of roof, to leave one guessing at the opulence within.

To Ronnie, accustomed to council housing and latterly cul-de-sac clone homes, this was another planet.  The smallest facets enthralled him – such as the gates which bore American style mailboxes and tubular receptacles marked ‘Newspapers.’
The place he would compulsively pass at kerb-crawler pace occupied the corner of Earl Crescent and Hadley Croft. 

It had the grandiose yet hideaway quality of a country hotel; architecture white and spruce, with gabling and a balcony at either wing.  Ronnie guessed (correctly) that one of the balconied rooms was the master bedroom, and envisaged striding out there for his morning cigar in a paisley dressing gown – lord of the neighbourhood.  (He still did that very thing daily in clement months – even if he didn’t truly fancy a cigar at six A.M. – for the sake of staying true to the dream.  The reverse of cutting off his nose to spite his face.)

Its half-acre of tiered gardens were set, rather unusually, at the front, unconcealed from the road.  A fountain dominated, and aesthetically nude statues peeped through bushes like naughty little eavesdroppers.  Railings and the obligatory electronic gate surrounded.

Unapologetically grand, but not brashly so, The House (always capped up in Ronnie’s vision) embodied the measured confidence he liked to radiate.  The place was an extension of him already.  It became his mistress.  During those pre-millionaire years as he saved zealously, he persisted in his strange pilgrimages just to stare.

‘They’ll think we’re burglars, Ron,’ Janice moaned, before she grew too embarrassed to accompany him.

Fate was at play.  The Chill Cabinet’s mushrooming profits and Ronnie’s capacity to afford The House jammily coincided with its elderly owners’ decision to emigrate.  The paint scarcely dry on the For Sale board, Ronnie leapt.  Discovering the much-visualised interior just as exquisite as its frontage, this usually masterly haggler offered in excess of the asking price there and then.  He and Janice sold the Kingswinford place painlessly, The House’s vendors retired to Italy, where they could access all the art they desired.  Ronnie became master of the nudes.  The Jag followed, then the villa – the trappings.

And the cynicism that so often took root during the grossing of wealth.  It was a different Ronnie who headed the table today; the era in which he’d goggled at mailboxes and lost his head over this place now seemed absurdly innocent.

‘Ben’ll be on the phone soon.’  Janice’s voice sounded tight in the shrill silence.  ‘It’s after closing time.  Bet he’s raked it in today.’

Warwick checked his watch, simultaneously scowling at the reference to Ben. 

Ronnie, whose Christmases weren’t the same without his gregarious, southern hemisphere-dwelling youngest, couldn’t wait for the call, but this acrimony between his lads saddened him.

I’ve played them off against each other too much.  Guess I just thought healthy rivalry was part of a man’s education.  (Education!  That was a sore word at the moment.)

It shamed him too that he’d been dismissive; not taken seriously enough, for example, Warwick’s aversion to the villa holidays.

‘Do I have to go this time?’ he’d whine every year.  ‘Is it really wise for us both to be away from the business so long?’

And Ronnie – who never so much as wangled afternoons off to play golf, who would probably die at his desk, aged ninety-eight – set such store by these filial reunions that he coolly entrusted his beloved store to the operations director for a month.  ‘Lance can cope.  This is the only time we’re all together; the only time you get to see your brother.’  But Warwick’s four weeks a year with Benedict were an exercise in how to not butcher your siblings.

The poor lad, it must be torture for him.  Oh shit, though!  I’ve just booked that extra fortnight there in May.  I didn’t even ask him what he wanted to do for his birthday – I’ve just been a presumptuous sod again.  No wonder he detests me.  I hate the thought of not being with them all at the villa, but I’ll make this his last holiday.  Talk him into coming with us this time, then tell him he can do his own thing in future.

Warwick, having golloped his lunch and uncivilly fled the table, went for the phone – despite knowing who it’d be.

‘I heard about the Heidi situation.’  Ben’s Yam-Yam/Kiwi brogue was more pompously twangy than ever.  ‘Hard luck, old man.’

‘What kind of tosser calls their brother “old man” these days?’

‘Ooh, get her!  Compliments of the season to you and all.  How’s frosty Blighty today?’

They exchanged unpleasantries for a few minutes, then Warwick shoved the cordless at Ronnie, who was already on his post-dinner Castella (oh, yet another cliché of his image).  ‘It’s your number one son,’ he said spitefully.

‘Benny-boyyy!’ Ronnie rumbled.  Warwick was pained despite himself at such paternal zeal.

He stomped to the cloakroom (the Pooles possessed nothing so humdrum as a ‘downstairs loo’) and locked out their boysie dialogue, though snatches oozed through the thick doors.  ‘Yes, it is a huge blow – don’t s’pose you fancy a job back here, eh?  How’s about you anyway?  Good day at the restaurant?’

Benny P’s, Ben’s eponymous eatery, was his first sensation in business after a few hot-headed flops.  His temperament seemed to suit kitchen life.  He’d once sold mobile phone keypads on a market stall, and thereafter had a stab at an ink cartridge shop – mere hiatuses in his lifestyle of prolonged holidays, clubbing and lounging like a pampered young viscount. 

Early impatience to leave home was something that at least united Warwick and his father – and Ben was a factor in Warwick’s acquisition, at just nineteen, of the then newly built apartment he’d called home ever since.  Close to Chill Cabinet HQ, its security gates, landscaped lawns and underground car park elevated it to ‘luxury apartment’ status.

He never invited Heidi to share it – despite her subtle-as-scud-missile hints, such as a spare toothbrush and a make-up bag the size of a body bag taking up permanent residence in his cool blue bachelor bathroom.

‘We’re not too disappointed,’ he heard Ronnie bellow, ‘she was never his type.  Though I’ll still have to face Chancey at some point, I suppose.’

Hypocrites, the lot of them.  Warwick viciously pumped liquid soap into his palm and scrubbed his hands at the oyster-pink sink.  The one time he managed to impress Ben was on holiday last year, by whisking out a photo of Heidi, casually captioning her as ‘this girl I’m seeing at the mo.’  He still smirked at the memory of Ben’s smug blue eyes virtually boinging out on cartoon-character springs.

Even Ronnie, stoked up with whisky (his mother’s undoing having put him off gin for life) had made melon-juggling gestures in front of his chest.  He was wearing his huge summer hat, and winking.  ‘You ought to see her, our Ben!’

Warwick was delirious with the attention.  So, when guffaws derided his news this year that he was marrying the vision, he was instantly squashed again.  Ben dropped the pally act and, barbecuing at the villa, set about educating Warwick on the difference between ‘spouse’ material and girls who were good for fun – and other ‘F’ words.

‘Heidi, based on photographic evidence, very definitely falls into the latter category,’ he patronised, prodding a lamb chop.  ‘Tart about with her sort, sure mate, but pick someone a bit more dem-ew-err to be your wife.’

‘What century are you living in, Bendy-dick?’  Warwick regressed to boyhood name-calling.  But the scoffing explained a good deal.  At once, supping pensively from his Tiger beer can, he understood why Heidi was still unworthy of an invitation to the villa; why the family enthusiasm for their relationship waned after that initial ‘Fwooarrggh’-ing over her picture.

Only Erin was kind (for she numbered compassion among her copious virtues).  ‘If it’s meant to be, it’ll be,’ she slid a plate of bread rolls to her brother-in-law and patted his hand, ‘just don’t rush into anything, darl.’

That was the evening Warwick phoned Heidi to try and renege on their heedless betrothal – until she informed him she’d booked the vicar. 

Warwick could grin at the memory now.  He scoured his hands with the pink towel, enjoying the cleansing feeling.  He was free of her now – and of so much else besides.