Free Man Overboard by Monica Dickens

little cocktail parties, where the
hors d’oeuvre
were more exciting than the conversation.
    At the end of the war, when everyone was trying to get out and there was a scramble for jobs, Ben had transferred to the regular Navy. His father desperately wanted it, and he had to have a decent job if he was going to marry Marion. She was not the type who would live in a caravan until you found work, or get up at half-past five to send you off fed to a factory.
    School and the Navy were all he had ever known of life beyond the threshold of home. Now he had a chance to find out what else was going on in the world. How could his father talk about his life being taken away from him? When he got away from this house and could think straight without this confusion of irritation and pity, Ben believed that he was going to find that what the Navy had done was to give his life back to him.
    When he told his parents that he must get the bus for Gosport before lunch, his mother put on a little act of bravery. She braced her small body in the cerise wool dress, jerked her chin up, and said: “We don’t want to interfere with your plans. I had made an apple pie for you, but I dare say your father and I will manage to eat a little of it.” Stepping rather high, like a pony, she went upstairs to telephone her sister in Reading and tell her about Ben, and spoil her day too.
    Mr Francis went to look out of the bay window which faced across the sandy road to the Carsons’ house, where there was a flag-pole in the paved garden, and red and green running lights on either side of the gate.
    “You know what did it, of course.” He turned round, and his voice was matter of fact, discounting argument. “It was the scandal. The Admiralty has all those newspaper clippings about your wife.” He hardly ever said Marion’s name. “They would be attached to your confidential reports, and they’ve counted against you.”
    “That was more than three years ago. None of it was my fault anyway. They couldn’t hold that against me.”
    “Then what else have they got against you?” Mr Francis looked defeated. His head sagged forward on his short neck, and youcould see what he would look like at eighty. “You’ve had a fine career. Never put a foot wrong, as far as I know. A good war record, and command of two subs since then.” He looked at the wall by the fireplace, where photographs of all Ben’s ships hung in chronological order, with the date of his service in them printed underneath.
    With a disappointed little snort, he turned from the pictures and sat down heavily in his armchair. “I don’t know why this should happen to me,” he said in a wondering, child-like way. “I really don’t.”
    “Please understand, Dad.” Ben made one more effort. “You shouldn’t take it this way. It’s happening to everybody.”
    “So you tell me,” his father said mulishly. “So you tell me.” He picked up the newspaper and rustled it over to the page where he was pursuing, with every expectation of winning a speedboat or a six-cylinder car, a weekly competition to choose the six smartest cocktail dresses from some thirty small and ill-defined fashion photographs.
    “Edna sends us all her deepest sympathy,” his mother announced, returning from the telephone. Ben hoped that he was not going to start getting letters of condolence from all the people to whom his mother had announced the tragedy. If Aunt Edna had the nerve to write patronizingly, after what the magistrates had said about her son, he would answer her on black-edged paper.
    “Well, Benjy.” His mother stretched her pale lips into a gay little smile. “You’ll want to be getting along, I suppose. Daddy, shall we have the cold beef, or would you rather finish the curry? There’s still a spoonful of chutney left, I believe.”
    If she had begged him to stay on bended knees, with tears streaming down her face, it would not have had as much effect as this bleak little speech. The