as they say, one thing led to another and soon I was squiring her around regularly. We took in more theatres, an opera, a couple of ballets, a special exhibition at the National Gallery, Regent’s Park Zoo, something she wanted to see at the Natural History Museum, and a trip down the river to Greenwich. We could have been a couple of Americans doing the tourist bit.
After six weeks of this I think we both thought that things were becoming pretty serious. I, at least, took it seriously enough to go to Cambridge to see my father. He smiled when I told him about Penny, and said, ‘You know, Malcolm, you’ve been worrying me. It’s about time you settled down. Do you know anything about the girl’s family?’
‘Not much,’ I admitted. ‘From what I can gather he’s some sort of minor industrialist. I haven’t met him yet.’
‘Not that it matters,’ said my father. ‘I hope we’ve gone beyond snobberies like that. Have you bedded the girl yet?’
‘No,’ I said slowly. ‘We’ve come pretty close, though.’
‘Um!’ he said obscurely, and began to fill his pipe. ‘It’s been my experience here at the college that the rising generation isn’t as swinging and uninhibited as it likes to think it is. Couples don’t jump bare-skinned into a bed at the first opportunity – not if they’re taking each other seriously and have respect for each other. Is it like that with you?’
I nodded. ‘I’ve had my moments in the past, but somehow it’s different with Penny. Anyway, I’ve known her only a few weeks.’
‘You remember Joe Patterson?’
‘Yes.’ Patterson was head of one of the departments of psychology.
‘He reckons the ordinary man is mixed up about the qualities he wants in a permanent partner. He once told me that the average man’s ideal wife-to-be is a virgin in the terminal stages of nymphomania. A witticism, but with truth in it.’
‘Joe is a cynic.’
‘Most wise men are. Anyway, I’d like to see Penny as soon as you can screw up your courage. Your mother would have been happy to see you married; it’s a pity about that.’
‘How are you getting on, Dad?’
‘Oh, I rub along. The chief danger is of becoming a university eccentric; I’m trying to avoid that.’
We talked of family matters for some time and then I went back to London.
It was at this time that Penny made a constructive move. We were in my flat talking over coffee and liqueurs; she had complimented me on the Chinese dinner and I had modestly replied that I had sent out for it myself. It was then that she invited me to her home for the weekend. To meet the family.
She lived with her father and sister in a country house near Marlow in Buckinghamshire, a short hour’s spin from London up the M4. George Ashton was a widower in his mid-fifties who lived with his daughters in a brick-built Queen Anne house of the type you see advertised in a fullpage spread in Country Life. It had just about everything. There were two tennis-courts and one swimming-pool; there was a stable block converted into garages filled with expensive bodies on wheels, and there was a stable block that was still a stable block and filled with expensive bodies on legs – one at each corner. It was a Let’s-have-tea-on-the-lawn sort of place; The-master-will-see-you-in-the-library sort of place. The good, rich, upper-middle-class life.
George Ashton stood six feet tall and was thatched with a strong growth of iron-grey hair. He was very fit, as I found out on the tennis-court. He played an aggressive, hard-driving game and I was hard put to cope with him even though he had a handicap of about twenty-five years. He beat me 5–7, 7–5, 6–3, which shows his stamina was better than mine. I came off the court out of puff but Ashton trotted down to the swimming-pool, dived in clothed as he was, and swam a length before going into the house to change.
I flopped down beside Penny. ‘Is he always like that?’
‘Always,’ she assured me.
I groaned. ‘I’ll be exhausted just watching him.’
Penny’s sister, Gillian, was as different from Penny as could be. She was the domestic type and ran the house. I don’t mean she acted as lady of the house and merely gave the orders. She ran it. The Ashtons didn’t have much staff; there were a couple of gardeners and a stable girl, a house-man-cum-chauffeur called Benson, a full-time maid and a daily help who came in for a couple of hours each morning. Not much staff for a house of that size.
Gillian was a couple of years younger than Penny and there was a Martha and Mary relationship between them which struck me as a little odd. Penny didn’t do much about the house as far as I could see, apart from keeping her own room tidy, cleaning her own car and grooming her own horse. Gillian was the Martha who did all the drudgery, but she didn’t seem to mind and appeared to be quite content. Of course, it was a weekend and it might have been different during the week. All the same, I thought Ashton would get a shock should Gillian marry and leave to make a home of her own.
It was a good weekend although I felt a bit awkward at first, conscious of being on show; but I was soon put at ease in that relaxed household. Dinner that evening, cooked by Gillian, was simple and well served, and afterwards we played bridge. I partnered Penny and Ashton partnered Gillian, and soon I found that Gillian and I were the rabbits. Penny played a strong, exact and carefully calculated game, while Ashton played bridge as he played tennis, aggressively and taking chances at times. I observed that the chances he took came off more often than not, but Penny and I came slightly ahead at the end, although it was nip and tuck.
We talked for a while until the girls decided to go to bed, then Ashton suggested a nightcap. The scotch he poured was not in the same class as Tom Packer’s but not far short, and we settled down for a talk. Not unexpectedly he wanted to know something about me and was willing to trade information, so I learned how he earned his pennies among other things. He ran a couple of manufacturing firms in Slough producing something abstruse in the chemical line and another which specialized in high-impact plastics. He employed about a thousand men and was the sole owner, which impressed me. There are not too many organizations like that around which are still in the hands of one man.
Then he enquired, very politely, what I did to earn my bread, and I said, ‘I’m an analyst.’
He smiled slightly. ‘Psycho?’
I grinned. ‘No – economic. I’m a junior partner with McCulloch and Ross; we’re economic consultants.’
‘Yes, I’ve heard of your crowd. What exactly is it that you do?’
‘Advisory work of all sorts-market surveys, spotting opportunities for new products, or new areas for existing products, and so on. Also general economic and financial advice. We do the general dogsbodying for firms which are not big enough to support their own research group. ICI wouldn’t need us but a chap like you might.’
He seemed interested in that. ‘I’ve been thinking of going public,’ he said. ‘I’m not all that old, but one never knows what may happen. I’d like to leave things tidy for the girls.’
‘It might be very profitable for you personally,’
