Passing On Read Online Free Page A

beat up van to a flashy new car every year. The times have been good to Ron. More so than to me. She thought of him as Ron, but always addressed him with formality, for good strategic reasons.
    ‘Mr Paget, you said you’d see to that gutter for us. And the slates.’
    ‘So I did, Miss Glover, so I did. Will do. Tell you what — I’ll send a couple of the men over tomorrow morning. How’s that?’
    ‘Thanks. I’ll expect them, then.’
    ‘A sad time for you,’ said Ron piously. ‘We’ve been thinking about you, Pauline and me. You’re keeping well, and your brother, I hope.’
    ‘We’re fine, thank you,’ said Helen briskly. She started up the Morris again.
    Ron Paget laid a hand on the bonnet. ‘It’s done you well, hasn’t it, your old jalopy. How old would it be now?’
    ‘I wouldn’t know,’ said Helen. ‘I’m not very interested in cars.’
    The Morris Minor, in fact, was fifteen years old but had seldom been more than fifty miles from Long Sydenham. The mileage was barely forty thousand and it was in pristine condition, exquisitely maintained by a fond mechanic at Willoughby’s Garage in Spaxton.
    Ron, eyeing the Morris, said, ‘I’ll tell you what, Miss Glover, I’ve had an idea. I’ll do you a favour. My sister’s wanting something to potter around in. She doesn’t need anything fancy. I’ll buy your old rattle-trap off you and do it up for her.’ Amazing what a good Morris would fetch now, collector’s items, they were. This particular one was hot stuff, in the right market. Old Miss G. wouldn’t know that, of course, not in a month of Sundays she wouldn’t. ‘Get yourself something more up to date,’
    he went on. ‘Nice little Escort, that sort of thing. You deserve it.’
    ‘Do I?’ said Helen. ‘Well, you may be right.’ She got out and contemplated the Morris. ‘What do you think it’s worth, Mr Paget?’
    ‘Well …’ Ron considered. “Course, they don’t make them any more. Gone right out of fashion. You can’t get the spares.
    And that’s long in the tooth, that one.’
    ‘Mmm,’ said Helen.
    ‘Hartwell’s wouldn’t look at it. Not as a trade-in for a newish Escort.’
    ‘I daresay not,’ said Helen.
    ‘I’d like to do you a good turn, though, Miss Glover. I can tinker about with it myself and see if I can put it to rights. Tell you what, I’ll give you five hundred for it.’ He slapped the Morris’s rump, scraped at a small scratch mark and frowned.
    ‘I’m a fool, but I’m feeling generous. Five hundred.’
    ‘It goes very well still, as it happens,’ said Helen. ‘I doubt if you’d need to do much tinkering. I’ll think it over. Or I could put an advertisement in the Morris Minor Owners’ Club magazine.
    Did you see that article in the Observer?’ She got into the car and started up the nicely tuned engine. ‘Thanks for the offer, anyway. And that’s a promise, is it, about the gutter?’
    Ron watched her go. Crafty bugger. Not so daft as she looks.
    Like the old woman. But where does it get them?
    Helen, experiencing the first little glow of pleasure for quite a while, turned out of Ron’s yard into the road. In fact, Edward was more in need of a new car than she was. The Morris had many miles in it yet, but Edward’s old Beetle (also, one understood, of rarity value nowadays but in this case, alas, too far gone) had packed up again that morning and he had had to go to school on the bus, a tedious process involving a change with a long wait.
    Edward taught at Croxford House, a private girls’ school catering for the daughters of the more prosperous local farmers, the less prosperous gentry and upwardly mobile business people from Spaxton. It had few educational pretensions. Hardly anyone went on to university. A few of the more aspiring girls took vocational courses and became physiotherapists or nurses.
    Most settled for clerical work, jobs as receptionists or, if the worst came to the worst, shop assistants. Marriage was very