Father's elevation and dignity had a silence effect, on our home. The words; Managing Director, put him in a trance. He told us that we had now many privileges; first we were the children of a Managing Director, living in a refined neighbourhood among neighbours who would study our manners. We has also the privilege of living within a hundred yards of a remarkable family and an even more remarkable woman, the secretary to the Company whose brother, high in financial circles, played tennis at a most exclusive club. My father doubted if this family would feel able to know us immediately, but if by some generous condescension they did, we would remember to have our hands and shoes clean, brush our hair, raise our caps and never sit down until told to do so. Father's face had lost its roundness. It had become square, naked and authoritative. It also looked pained; as if he were feeling a strange imposed constraint.
Mother supported him vogorously; in fact, as we soon saw, with unnatural vigour. It was irony on her part. Our debt to this family and to this lady was total, she said. The lady appeared almost before Father finished speaking, which took my father and my mother aback, my mother's hair (as usual) being not quite in a state for receiving another woman. And we were taken aback too. We have expected perhaps another operatic Mrs Murdo in red velvet; instead a tall, beautiful young womanwith burning brown eyes, and black hair, came in. Her eyeslashes fluttered. She had alluring lips and, on the upper lip, a few black hairs at the corner which, before the fashion changed, made women sensually disturbing. . Her voice was a shade mannish, low and practical, she was slender and wore a business-like coat and skirt with a white blouse. She struck us as elegant, even fashionable. To our delight she teasingly addressed our father as "Father" which made him blush. She even called him "Sawdon"; it was as she had called him Lord.She put so much at our ease,that we loved her at once and got boisterous, my father deterred to her and so did my mother who also blushed.
One of her first questions to me was: when I was going to sit for a scholarship to the college ? This was startling to me and I looked for help to my father.
?When he is ready,' said my father.?I do not want him to imagine that just because his father has his own business ha has only to sit about waiting for everything to fall into his lap.'
'Which school are you going to send him to?' she turned to my mother.
'I really don't know,' said my mother.
'We are considering the matter,' said my father in his boardroom manner.'It maybe this or that. It may be the College, though we shouldn't limit ourselves to that. There may be other, better schools,than the College.'
My father evasions stopped. Certainly appeared and a look of polite but firm rebuke came to his face. He liked the gaiety of the lady but he was not going to allow her to lead the way in his family or anywhere else. The matter was raised to a graver, higher and crushing tribune.
'He will go where the Divine Mind wishes him to go, for he is a reflection of the Divine Mind.'
Extract
from the book “A cab in the door” by V.S. Pritchett
