A Certain Road by Alan Ramsey

Author:Alan Ramsey
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2014-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

They arrived back half an hour later and the five of them enjoyed a raucous supper – with Cybil laughing at the inflammatory things Max was saying about the parish committee (there had been some talk) – and Sonny trying not to. Afterwards the three Collingwoods retired early and the two of them settled down in the sitting room with a couple of glasses of malt whisky.

What ensured was a discussion of philosophy. Without wishing to be overly critical it wasn’t exactly John Locke in conversation with René Descartes but in the spirit of fairness it needs to be said that it had been a very long day – they had started at 6am and it was now 11pm. In further mitigation they had endured many hours of lowlights – awful journey, awful work problems, excruciating traffic jam – enlivened by only a few minutes of highlights – toe sucking, some moments of demonstrative affection, some mothering by Hyacinth. To make matters worse Max was still feeling a little irritated with Bobby about the address and telephone number thing so the mood and balance were not all that they might have been. After a few minutes of preliminaries Max, rather testily, got down to specifics.

“So, these “erratics” who are supposed to present us all with such problems, give me an example of one.”

Bobby noted the rather provocative tone and guessed at the reason for it.

“Ash” he responded.

“Ash! Our Ash! What in hell’s supposed to be so enigmatic about him – he’s an open book?.”

“Go on then, tell me about him.”

“Well he’s a dapper little Indian, accountant, brilliant at sums and all that ….. and he likes sea fishing and gardening.”

“Interesting that the very first thing you mentioned is wrong; he isn’t Indian.”

“Anglo Indian then, his English had always been fantastic.”

“He isn’t that either, he’s Malaysian. The reason his English is so fantastic is that he was educated at a church school in Kuala Lumpur where he was born and where his father was born. His great-grandfather was a stone mason from Delhi who came to Kuala Lumpur in 1905 with the British to work on the construction of new government buildings. Until he arrived in Nottingham in 1982 he had never set foot in England; he still hasn’t set foot in India. He is, incidentally, not only a Christian but a confirmed member of the Church of England. You could be forgiven for getting that wrong because if you asked him he would probably describe himself as British or Indian.”

“Why would he do that?”

“Because he hates Malaya – loathes and detests it with an almost frightening intensity.”

“Come on – that can’t be right – Ash! – he’s a complete sweetheart. I can’t …… what do you …..”

“Why did he come here?”

“Well I do know that. Anjay, (his daughter and only child), had a place to do maths at Nottingham University.”

“Yes but you’ve accepted that at face value. If Daisy got a university place in Tokyo you wouldn’t relocate there and

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