Chapter 27

Sandy jumped in before I could say a word, “Looking to build an extension, actually,” she told the architect. “Our house is too small for a family. Bob here bought it while he was still single and not anticipating meeting me.”

“Good, good. Do you have planning permission?”

“We hadn’t got that far yet. We thought we could work with you on a rough design – we have ideas – and then apply for planning permission. We want to invite you to come and see what we have now, the land available, and our general conception on the extension.”

“Fine, fine. Have you looked into what sort of mortgage you might need?”

“No mortgage. We can pay for it ourselves.”

“You can? Neither of you look very old.”

“Looks don’t tell you about financial assets, Mr Thorogood,” she responded waspishly.

“Too true. Too true, my dear lady. May I have your names?”

“Robert McIntyre and Mrs Alexandra McIntyre, but we prefer to be known as Bob and Sandy. You are James Thorogood, we understand; an unusual surname.”

“An ancient name from the south of England, Mrs McIntyre. Only unusual out of context. What size of extension were you thinking of?”

“Quite large; larger than the existing house, as that doesn’t even have a dining room. The original owner was a single man, it seems. We hope to have a number of children, so we need to have a range of bedrooms. That way we won’t have space problems as they grow older. Bob remembers having to share a bed with his younger brother, and it did not go well.”

“True, true; I can appreciate the difficulty. So, the largest number of bedrooms the site will accommodate within the planning limits, and other appropriate rooms?”

“That’s it. The present house is single storey, so we thought we could add another floor, with a staircase in the extension.”

“You have obviously thought this through, but not all single-storey buildings have the built structure to sustain another floor. You might have to thicken the exterior walls to take the additional mass, and there is the technical question about removing the existing roof while keeping the structure watertight until the new storey is in place, and the roof put back; unless you can afford a new roof linked to the roof of the extension. That is simpler to build, as the trusses can be matched for the whole roof and all bought at the same time. You don’t want to have different roof pitches if possible. The planners dislike odd shapes.”

“You seem to be the man we want, Mr Thorogood, and I would agree with a new roof for the whole structure. Can we arrange for a time for you to visit? It is just a few streets up the hill from the station.”

“If you are free now, I could go today, and get my initial impressions as to planning permission. If it is too out of synch with the rest of the street, the planners may not be supportive, but if the street has a range of house styles, my design may be fine with them.”

We agreed with his strategy, so we walked round to the car park where his car was, and he drove us back to our house. He stood and looked at the building, then took a wander round the boundaries of our plot. Sandy then explained the way we wanted the extension to be oriented and its approximate footprint, and then we took him round to see inside the house. He looked puzzled as to why we ignored the door facing the road, so I gave him a story.

“There is a vestibule, but that is all. The interior door was blocked off sometime in the past by a previous owner, so the back door is the main entry now; and we like it that way; confuses unwanted visitors! When and if the extension gets built, we want the main entry to be in the more sheltered corner where the extension and main house meet, with a large vestibule there.”

“That is not a building problem, just an unusual feature; quite do-able.”
“The whole house is unusual, Mr Thorogood, but we like it. We use the front vestibule for an exterior lounge. It has its value in getting away from the rest of the house.”

Thorogood had his notebook out and was recording details he needed.

“I’ll come back another time to accurately measure your boundary line to confirm it matches the planning department’s records. Occasionally there is a discrepancy that needs to be clarified. Today’s information is enough for me to make initial enquiries with the planning officer and see if we can agree on an outline ground plan that I can work within.”

“Great,” I answered. “If we close up now, can you give us a lift to the office of solicitor Mr Thompson? It would be most helpful.”

“Sure, I can do that. It is not far from my own office.”

Sandy looked a question at me, but I said nothing, and five minutes later we were dropped off as requested. Once he had gone, Sandy asked, “Why are we both coming back here?”

“Two things. One, I want to see how your dad is reacting to Julie, now that he knows she is interested in him romantically, and two, we need to know what sort of car she needs. I am thinking that we should buy ourselves a car at the same time. We should be able to get an extra discount by buying two and for cash.”

“Oh, goody. Our car has to be large enough to seat five.”

“Five?”

“Allowing for the possibility of Carol in the future, or for several children. We have to think ahead, Bob.”

“True. I tend to think primarily about our immediate needs.”

We entered, and the staff welcomed us most peculiarly, and Sandy registered this immediately.

“What has happened?” she demanded to know.

The trainee solicitor, Fergus Baillie, said wonderingly, “Julie went in to see Mr Thompson, and five minutes later came out to tell us, “Mr Thompson is not well. I am driving him home for a rest, and I may not be back for a while as I want to make sure he is going to be all right.” That was an hour and a half ago, and she is still not back. We are a little concerned about it all.”

Sandy brightened up.

“Oh, that is a good sign. Daddy got an emotional shock before we had to leave, and I asked Julie to look after him. She will be making him a hot drink or a glass of rum, and if he is still in shock, getting him to bed for a rest. Julie knows what she is doing, Fergus, take it from me.”

“Thanks, Sandy ... I mean, Mrs McIntyre. Do you think she will be back soon?”

“Fergus, surely the office is not run by the secretary? Go about your business as normal, and keep the ship afloat until they both return, if they do.”

“Eh?” Fergus was startled by that negative suggestion.

“Julie may want to keep a close eye on him for longer. If he is slightly recovered, she might take him out for his evening meal, so that she can watch him like a hawk in case he has a relapse.”

“Ah, yes. That would be wise. Julie takes good care of the boss, I have always noticed.”

“That is so, Fergus. I go along with the old adage that a good man needs a good woman to look after him; is that not so, Bob?”
“Yes, darling. You look after me well; very well indeed. I have no complaints.” Sandy returned her gaze to Fergus.
“You aren’t married, I believe, Fergus?”
“No, Sandy, I am still a free man.”
“So was Bob until a few weeks ago. I don’t think he feels trapped in our marriage.”
I backed her up: “Not in the slightest, my love. If anything, I am freer now.”
“You see, Fergus. Find the right woman, and you will be happy.”
While they were talking, the phone rang, and the young clerk answered it. He called to Fergus, “Fergus, it is Julie on the phone. She wants to speak to you.”
Fergus rushed to the phone and demanded, “Julie, tell me how Mr Thompson is.”
He listen, and his eyes widened.
“Really? You and he? Good grief! I don’t know what to say. See you in the morning then.”
Fergus turned and regarded us with an amazed look in his eyes.
“That was Julie,” he muttered abstractedly, but Sandy interjected in exasperation, “We gathered that, Fergus. What did she say?”
“Mr Thompson must be more confused than I thought. She says he asked her to marry him! I am sorry, Sandy.”
“Don’t be. I am pleased. That happened faster than I thought. They have finally got on the same wavelength.”
“What? You expected this outcome?”
“Any observant woman could see that Julie was smitten with Daddy, but he hadn’t noticed her interest until I told him. This was the shock he got, taking it in all at once. He has spent so much time mourning our mother that he could not see what a treasure was right in front of him.
She must have admitted it when he asked her in earlier. That was the time she was in his office. He was therefore shocked to discover that Julie was in love with him and he had ignored her until now. When she took him home he must have got his wits together and talked it over to the point where they agreed to marry.”
“My God!” exclaimed Fergus. “I never knew.”
“Exactly. You are a man, Fergus. Not a romantic bone in your body, it seems.”
“I don’t know what you mean, Sandy. When I meet the right girl, I’ll know she is for me.”
“Rubbish. Take my dad: the girl he needed was sitting in his office, and he didn’t notice her as a romantic future for him. I had to metaphorically kick him in the behind to get him to notice that she was waiting for him outside his office door. Sometimes a man has to pluck up courage and start the wooing process, instead of waiting for life to bring her to him. Get looking, Fergus, and you may find your dream girl.”
“How do I do that, Sandy ... Mrs McIntyre?”
“Narrow it down; simplify the search. If she must be Church of Scotland rather than a Roman Catholic or an Episcopalian, choose the right church to look into. If you want a girl with your academic qualities, look at women in graduate careers: teachers, doctors, and other professional occupations. Must she have assets of her own, or can you support her on your salary?
You can make other value judgments, or just go by how she looks to your eye. Does she have to be tall, short, slim or full-bodied; big breasts or smaller neater ones? Is she a looker, with curves that attract you? Think of your own likes and preferences and view women in that estimation.
Bob likes girls my shape, and he regards me as beautiful (whether I view myself that way or not is immaterial). My breast size has become his favourite when looking at other women, so any woman not my shape and breast size I can ignore as not being competition of any kind.”
At this point in her musing Sandy thought to herself, ‘unless she can be altered by dieting to conform to his ideal’, and that made her wonder about the mysterious Carol. If she was short and dumpy, that would be the end of it. If she was tall and skinny, that might count her out, but if she was tall but with the right size of breasts, her extra height might be ignored by Bob. Small men of sufficient means have been known to be associated with tall women, but usually beautiful women attracted by wealth. Carol mustn’t be made aware of our considerable assets at first, she mused.
She kicked herself for making such preliminary conclusions without real facts to go on. It required finding out what this Carol was like, she concluded.
Fergus had seen her drift away in thought, so eased himself away and back to his desk. There, he thought of all the single girls, or women, he knew and put them into separate compartments in his mind. Most of them became immediately out of the question, as he could not imagine living permanently with these options. He was left with two or three that came to his immediate ken. One had been on the law course with him and was now at a law office in Greenock. Perhaps he should ring her up and suggest a meeting if she was still unattached; law careers tend to be intensive and not conducive to romantic liaisons.
This mental meandering diverted him from his boss’s entanglement with Julie the secretary, and he got back to the work he was supposed to be doing, drafting a legal contract that would enable their client to get the best deal possible. He was good at these, he told himself; use the right combination of words, and the law would later take care of fixing it as fact.

Sandy was thinking of other things. She took her husband’s hand and gently persuaded him into her father’s office for privacy. Once there, she told him, “This will be good in several ways, Bob. If Georgie turns up pregnant, he is less likely to fly off the handle. Julie will persuade him to look on the grandfatherly aspect, and probably suggest that if she herself had a baby, that would be another family achievement for him.”
I observed, “And what if Janet gets pregnant first? What do we tell him?”
“Different situation, dear. Janet, as far as he knows, is just a friend, so she may have become pregnant unintentionally, courtesy of some man we don’t know and who she doesn’t want to know any farther. We can be her friends in need, and provide her a home if she wants it.
A single woman with a baby would have problems finding a place to stay, but as we are going to have extra rooms in our extension, we put the two together and voila!: we apparently have a paying guest.”

“That is an admirable solution, darling. You talked about looking ahead; now if Janet goes back to work after the birth, and I am seen pushing a pram with her baby in it, what then?”

“Bob, my love, you are simply out getting practice for when I become a mother!” “You seem to have an answer to every problem, my love.”

“Every problem inevitably has an answer, darling. It is only a matter of being able to see what the correct solution is. That approach is used at university. At times the problem has to be seen clearly before it can be confronted, which is why it is about time we saw this mysterious Carol person that Janet told us about. She remains a question mark until we know more about her.”

“Oh, yes, of course. That had slipped my mind, with all the other happenings going on.”

“When Janet gets home, see if you can find out from her more about this Carol person, from your male standpoint.”

“Right, Sandy. Will do.”

She kissed me as a thank-you, and we left the office before I could take it farther. The others seemed to be busy at their normal tasks, so we left them to it, and walked home. It was a pleasant walk, and the clear weather gave good views over the Firth of Clyde, so we enjoyed what we could see, walking hand in hand and saying hello to faces we recognised – mostly people that Sandy recognised – and got back before anyone else was expected to arrive.

Sandy asked me, “Can we still afford to eat out, Bob?”

I shrugged and said, “As far as I can see, if we run short, we just cash in one of our paper-based assets, or a gold ingot. Unless of course you feel like showing off your cooking skills?”

“My cooking skills are pretty limited to throwing together a snack lunch. If our budget is holding up fine, let’s eat out again. Later we might consider hiring a cook.” Georgina appeared after closing the agency at five o’clock, but Janet had not appeared by ten to six, so I suggested we walk down to Kempock Street, and perhaps meet Janet on the way. On the walk back down, Sandy brought Georgina up to speed on their father and his secretary. Georgie was delighted at the news.

“With a bit of luck, Julie will be pregnant before they get around to marrying. That will help any news from us to be put into context.”

We arrived at the Cafe Continental, and when we entered we spotted Janet industriously clearing a table in preparation for new customers. As she completed that task and turned in our direction, she spotted us and smiled. She signalled ‘two minutes’ with her fingers and vanished to the staff area. I guessed that there was a staff shortage and Janet had filled in. When she reappeared, sans uniform, and back to day clothes, she approached us.

“Sorry, folks. Bad day today. One of the girls had been beaten up by her boyfriend and had to go to hospital, so we were shorthanded at no notice at all. I volunteered to help out, and have been busy all day. I have now clocked off thank God, and can join you at your table, though I am not in need of nourishment, just a chance to rest! That okay with you, Bob?”

“Fine by me, Janet. We’ll enjoy your company; right, girls?”

Sandy and Georgie declared their support, and we sat down. In moments all three were exchanging their news and I was forgotten. The wine waiter was soon standing by me, and we exchanged tolerant glances towards the chattering women.