17 Alma Road
The ninth section...
IX
Even though he was there just four years previously, that visit is sufficiently distant for Owen’s immediate impression to be one of him crossing the threshold of a house which is both larger and darker than he remembered it. Removal of the furniture had insured the first, and the few remaining curtains being left partially closed guaranteed the second. Standing in the hall, the front door shut behind him, he allows his eyes to acclimatise to the subdued light before walking to the foot of the stairs unable to miss the silhouette on the landing above him where one of Maddie’s larger paintings had hung. Casting his gaze around the hall he sees similar rectangular and square traces everywhere, and tries to recall which art work had adorned which wall. Believing he should be able to do so, he feels a failure when he cannot.
“Don’t worry,” Maddie offers, “it’s harder than you think. Even I can’t remember them all.”
Owen tries a light switch but to no effect. Either the bulb has gone or the power is off. He suspects the latter, something which will limit his time there, the time he hadn’t planned on spending in the first place.
The room to his right is the lounge, its dual aspect windows admitting light from both the front and side of the house — even if that coming through the side window is somewhat constrained by the proximity of the border hedge outside. To the left (also with a dual aspect) is George’s study, and it is there Owen ventures first. Perhaps he has been prompted to do so by recent memory; perhaps that is the reason he finds it easier to locate the old positions of desk, sofa, and armchair. The wide expanse of the fitted bookcase stares back at him blankly. It almost seems as if it has been robbed. If it could cry out Owen is certain he would hear pain and loss.
“For you, that’s very poetic,” Maddie observes.
“It has been known.”
But even the silent screams of the shelves and the soft resonance of Maddie’s voice are trumped by echoes of his own voice, and that of his uncle. Owen imagines them in the precise locations from which they would have emanated, he on the sofa sitting slightly askew in order to face the older man enthroned in his armchair.
“You’re sure this is right?” George had asked.
“In what sense, uncle?”
“Career-wise.” The elder man paused. “It’s quite a jump — and quite a commitment.”
Owen glanced to the bookcases.
“You know I’ve always been a fan of order.”
George followed his gaze.
“Yes. I wonder where you get that from.” They both laughed. “But this, throwing yourself into auditing, and in such a major way…”
“Do you think it won’t suit me?”
“On the contrary,” George reached for the coffee cup which sat on the small table between them. “I think it will suit you very well. And, if you prove good at it — which I’m sure you will — the opportunity to travel is clearly there: America, the Far East. Why wouldn’t that be enticing?”
Placing his own empty cup back on the table, Owen’s attention was momentarily caught by the sight of Florence walking past the window.
“Then your objections are..?”
“Not objections, my boy. I just worry that it might prove too — I don’t know — too humdrum for you. You might find yourself in something of a rut. I can’t see much scope for imagination.”
“Which is just as well,” Owen smiled, “given I’m not the one with the imagination. Maddie would hate it in an instant wouldn’t she? All that process, the black-and-whiteness of it, the right and wrong.”
“And that doesn’t worry you?”
It was a thought which had crossed Owen’s mind more than once, but each time it had been summarily dismissed. There was something appealing about the regimentation of process. He had no problem with right and wrong — nor in telling someone when and where they had strayed and suggesting improvements accordingly. Honesty and integrity were two of the bywords upon which they had been raised, and were they not the most essential attributes of a good auditor? Did he not have the mentality and patience to be an excellent one?
“If anything, I’d say it was one of the things that was the most alluring.” Owen paused, sensing he had somehow upset or disappointed his uncle. “Don’t worry uncle; I know me and what I like and how I work. This feels like a glove that will fit perfectly. I would prefer do a job I know I can be good at rather than one which may seem more ambitious but where I will constantly struggle.” He watches George place his own cup back on the side table. “And yes, the travel is a lure too. Perhaps that will provide the excitement and interest to balance out any monotony in the work.”
What he had not told his uncle — or any of them, come to that — was that he had already signed the papers and accepted the post. It was, he had been told, a rare opportunity to join one of the core functions of the business; indeed, a function upon which the long-term health of the company depended. And he had proven, both in his work to-date and in the aptitude tests he had taken, that he was prime material to make a great internal auditor. Bait or not, he had swallowed it whole.