Free Holiday by Stanley Middleton

and he imagined the exaggerated expression on his listener’s face.
    ‘Is there anything particular why you want me over?’ he asked.
    ‘Friendliness.’
    ‘I see.’
    ‘Oh, ye of little faith.’ Vernon parroted a Welsh pulpit. ‘No, we’ve not given you up. You’re here. We know you; we’d like your company.’
    ‘Thanks. I’m sorry, but I’ve promised.’
    ‘That’s all right Edwin. We thought you might be on your own.’
    David Vernon threatened in this oblique manner. When one crossed him, he hung his head, murmured something polite and marked the incident indelibly down to be paid for at his leisure. He’d no time for sentimentalities.
    In the pub the young wife, Sandra, chose cherry brandy while her husband and Fisher drank half-pints.
    ‘We never go into a pub at home,’ she said. ‘Do we, Terry?’
    ‘We don’t often go out together.’
    ‘I like this,’ she said, flourishing the drink. ‘I feel excited.’ She did not sound so. Fisher disliked her common-place features, her redness of skin, the gentility of voice, of gesture. ‘There’s something about this.’ It was, in fact, hot, noisy and crowded. ‘Don’t you think some pubs have atmosphere?’
    ‘I suppose so.’ Fisher.
    ‘The landlord’s a character. Or the clientele. We ought to go out more, Terry. Your mother would sit-in. But he’s too tired. Do you like classical music, Mr Fisher?’ They’d exchanged names.
    Fisher now reeled off favourite orchestras, pianists, described his record collection, while Sandra, Mrs Smith, gushed and simpered as if she were tight already. Her husband manifested no offence, but smiled as if this animated silliness of his wife were commendable. She confessed she’d sung in the Harmonic Choral Society before she’d had the boys and was now considering rejoining them, claiming her voice had deepened, enriched itself. A contralto. He’d never have guessed that from her speaking voice. No, she’d not enjoyed Belshazzar’s Feast, nor the War Requiem, but A Child of our Time wasn’t too bad and the Berlioz Te Deum staggering. Fisher grinned; his highbrow colleagues might take exactly the same line without loss of face.
    They drank again.
    After her third cherry brandy, when he had told her that he lectured at the University on the philosophy of education, she screeched admiration, clutching his arm.
    ‘I know you’ll think me a fool,’ another cackle, both hands on the crook of his elbow, ‘but I’ve not the remotest idea what that is.’
    The piano struck up. Middle-aged faces brightened.
    He tried to tell her, but diffidently. David Vernon, that bright day’s adder, had poisoned him too often there.
    ‘I can just see, Edwin, what the philosophy of education is. Only just.’
    ‘Isn’t there a formulation of principles behind law?’ His father-in-law encouraged such circumlocutions.
    ‘I’m sure of it. There must be books on it. Mind you, I’ve not read them.’
    ‘Didn’t they lecture on it at university?’
    ‘I went only,’ the sly voice whined, ‘to a Welsh university, not to Oxford. And though they occupied us with branches of learning I now consider useless, I don’t recollect any specific course on the philosophy of the subject. One or two, as I recall, tried perhaps to take us beyond the detailed instance, but I’d hardly have seen it as philosophy. History, perhaps, archaeology, sociology, economics, guesswork. Yes.’
    ‘The concept of justice,’ Fisher had snapped.
    ‘The concept, yes. The concept.’ Vernon smiled. ‘I don’t understand that. I steal your purse. At one time I am hanged for it; at another my hand is cut off; elsewhere you forgive me; nowadays I’m examined by a psychiatrist and put on probation. These are the forms of justice, are they? I don’t know.’
    ‘But as soon as you tackle that question you embark,’ his jargon deteriorated, ‘on philosophy. That’s what it is; an enquiry to see what these actions have in common.’
    ‘A