Espresso Tales - Alexander Hanchett Smith [144]
Stuart smiled. “There’s something which I grasp very well,”
he said. “And that is this: it’s about time we let that little boy just be a little boy.”
“Oh!” said Irene. “So that’s it, is it? You think that you know what it is to be a little boy? You, the inheritor of the patriarchal mantle, passing it on to your son! Get him interested in things like cars . . .”
Stuart frowned. “By the way,” he interrupted. “Where’s our car?”
Irene, derailed by the question, stared at her husband.
“Outside in the street,” she said. “Where you parked it the other day.”
“No it isn’t,” said Stuart. “You parked it.”
“Nonsense!” said Irene. “You had it last. And you parked it in the street.”
304 Discussions Take Place Between Irene and Stuart
“I did,” he said. “I parked it there the other day and then you used it to go somewhere or other. You’re the one who parked it last.”
Irene opened her mouth to say something and then thought better of it. He was right, she feared. She had driven the car recently and had parked it somewhere, but she had no recollection of where that was. But then, something else occurred to her; something which was more serious than the temporary mislaying of the car.
“Be that as it may,” she said. “There’s something that I’ve been meaning to raise with you for some time now. That car of ours. How many gears does it have?”
Stuart swallowed. He could see where this was leading, and suddenly the whole business of painting Bertie’s room seemed to fade into insignificance.
Irene stared at him. “How many?” she repeated.
“Five,” said Stuart, his voice now deprived of all the assertiveness which he had injected into it earlier. So much for courage, he thought.
“Oh yes?” said Irene. “Then why does it now have only four?”
She waited a moment before continuing. Then: “So could it be that the car you brought back from Glasgow is not actually our car? Could that be so? And if it isn’t, then whose car, may I ask, is it?”
Stuart was defeated. It had become perfectly obvious to him that Lard O’Connor had ordered the stealing of a car for him and its fitting up with false number-plates. And once he had discovered that, he should have gone straight to the police and told them what had happened. But he had not done that because he had been frightened. He had been frightened of what Lard O’Connor would do to him when he discovered that Stuart had reported him. So he had taken the easy way out and done nothing, denying the problem, hoping that it would go away.
Irene sat down. “Now look,” she said. “We must settle this like sensible adults. We have several problems here, haven’t we?
We’ve got this problem of our car. And then we’ve got a problem The Gettysburg Address
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of your interfering with Bertie’s upbringing. Those are our two problems, aren’t they?”
Stuart nodded. He felt miserable. He would have to abandon this wretched attempt to do things for himself.
“So,” said Irene, her voice low and forgiving. “So, what you need to do, Stuart, is to let me sort everything out. You don’t have to worry. I’ll handle everything. But, as a quid pro quo, you just behave yourself. All right?”
Stuart nodded. He was about to say: yes, it was all right, but then he remembered the trip on the train with Bertie and what he had said to him. So now he looked Irene in the eye. “No,”
he said. “It’s not all right.”
93. The Gettysburg Address
“Six years ago,” said Stuart, “we conceived a child, a son . . .”
Irene interrupted him. “Actually, I conceived a son,” she said.
“Your role, if you recall the event, was relatively minor.”
Stuart stared at her. “Fathers count for nothing then?”
When she replied, Irene’s tone was gentle, as if humouring one who narrowly fails to understand. “Of course I wouldn’t say that. You’re putting words into my mouth. However, the maternal role is undoubtedly much more significant. And when it comes down to it, women do