Valley of Decision Read Free

know that,’ the son confessed.
    â€˜No.’ Irony of disbelief. ‘You perhaps didn’t need such information about a prospective partner in marriage.’ The father slightly adjusted his dentures and, smiling, left David to think about the saw.
    One never knew exactly how one stood with the senior Blackwall.
    He had been pleased that his son had done well at school, and delighted by his scholarship to Cambridge. His wife had been responsible for his musical upbringing; her family, the Blakes, were accomplished amateurs, but Horace had attended the boy’s performances when business commitments allowed, congratulated him, made odd, old-fashioned comments. When David had suggested first a year at the Royal College after university and then a job as a schoolmaster, his father had not demurred, to his son’s surprise.
    â€˜I suppose it’s not well paid,’ David had said, feeling it his duty to ensure his family understood implications.
    â€˜What’s the salary?’
    David told him. His father touched his bristling moustache as if doing arithmetic.
    â€˜That’s more than you’d get if you started with me,’ he said.
    â€˜The big differences will come at the other end,’ the son argued.
    â€˜Do they, then? Do they?’ Glazing of eyes. ‘Yes. Yes. If you get there.’
    Horace had no ideas of founding a business dynasty. If David wished to become a schoolmaster, that would do; in time he would be rich compared with his colleagues, but that was no reason for largesse now.
    Here the mother had intervened.
    â€˜All they’ll be able to afford on David’s salary,’ she said, ‘is a semi-detached.’
    â€˜What’s wrong with that?’ Horace went through the motions of opposition.
    â€˜I don’t want my son in some poky little place when there’s no need.’
    â€˜But if that’s all they can afford?’
    â€˜What will people say?’
    â€˜That I’m mean,’ Horace said. ‘But I don’t mind that. On the other hand, they may think the boy’s too independent to accept my charity, and that will be much in his favour.’
    â€˜You talk to him,’ she commanded, beautiful still at fifty, proud of her husband, quick to defend his dryness, adored in return.
    When Mary’s opera company finally found itself in financial trouble and disbanded, thus making up her mind for her, father Blackwall had offered them money for a house. Neither of the young people had made much fuss about acceptance, disappointing him, but had not chosen a house very much grander than they could afford on their joint salaries.
    â€˜It’s quite pleasant,’ Joan Blackwall had said to her husband.
    â€˜You mean it’s not what you would have picked for them.’
    â€˜No. But it means we can buy Mary a grand piano.’
    â€˜You should have bought that first,’ Horace, indulgently expansive, ‘and built the house round it.’
    â€˜They could have ours for all the playing it gets.’
    â€˜Ah.’ Horace lay back and invited his wife to perform. They moved upstairs, almost formally, as if observing some protocol.
    â€˜Let’s have some favourites.’ He loved patronage of this sort, knowing how assiduously his wife kept up her practice. The opening of Mozart’s
Sonate Facile
, Chopin’s E flat Nocturne, the three Brahms Intermezzi, op. 117, and finally, brilliantly, the last movement of Bach’s ‘Italian’ Concerto. As she played he sat quite still, neither kicking nor shifting on his hams. She closed the lid with her usual comment: ‘Too many wrong notes.’
    He nodded, then shook his head, making no great play with denial. They put out the lights in the drawing room and went downstairs again, both satisfied by the recital. On such nights the television was left untouched.
    As a boy David had sometimes listened to these performances from his room but