A Twist in the Tale by Jeffrey Archer Page A

within the hour and it was only a matter of days before he was back into his
old routine. After all, he often reminded his wife, it didn’t take a degree in
engineering to screw four knobs on to a wheel a hundred times a shift.
    Arthur soon
accepted the Act that he would have to settle for second best. However, second
best was not what he planned for his son.
    Mark had
celebrated his fifth birthday before his father had even set eyes on him, but
from the moment Arthur returned home he lavished everything he could on the
boy.
    Arthur was
determined that Mark was not going to end up working on the shop-floor of a car
factory for the rest of his life. He put in hours of overtime to earn enough
money to ensure that the boy could have extra tuition in maths ,
general science and English. He felt well rewarded when the boy passed his
eleven-plus and won a place at King Henry VIII Grammar School, and that pride
did not falter when Mark went on to pass five O-levels and two years later
added two A-levels.
    Arthur tried
not to show his disappointment when, on Mark’s eighteenth birthday, the boy
informed him that he did not want to go to university.
    “What kind of
career arc you hoping to take up then, lad?” Arthur enquired.
    “I’ve filled in
an application form to join you on the shop-floor just as soon as I leave
school.”
    “But why would
you -”
    “Why not? Most of my friends who are leaving this term have
already been accepted by Triumph, and they can’t wait to get started.”
    “You must be
out of your mind.”
    “Come off it,
Dad. The pay’s good and you’ve shown that there’s always plenty of extra money
to be picked up with overtime.
    And I don’t
mind hard work.”
    “Do you think I
spent all those years making sure you got a first-class education just to let
you end up like me, putting wheels on cars for the rest of your life?” Arthur
shouted.
    “That’s not the
whole job and you know it, Dad.”
    “You go there
over my dead body,” said his father. “I don’t care what your friends end up
doing, I only care about you. You could be a solicitor, an accountant, an army
officer, even a schoolmaster. Why should you want to end up at a car factory?”
    “It’s better
paid than schoolmastering for a start,” said Mark.
“My French master once told me that he wasn’t as well off as you.”
    “That’s not the
point, lad-”
    “The point is,
Dad, I can’t be expected to spend the rest of my life doing a job I don’t enjoy
just to satisfy one of your fantasies.”
    “Well, I’m not
going to allow you to waste the rest of your life,” said Arthur, getting up
from the breakfast table. “The first thing I’m going to do when I get in to
work this morning is see that your application is turned down.”
    “That isn’t
fair, Dad. I have the right to-”
    But his father
had already left the room, and did not utter another word to the boy before
leaving for the factory.
    For over a week
father and son didn’t speak to each other. It was Mark’s mother who was left to
come up with the compromise. Mark could apply for any job that met with his
father’s approval and as long as he completed a year at that job he could, if
he still wanted to, reapply to work at the factory. His father for his part
would not then put any obstacle in his son’s way.
    Arthur nodded.
Mark also reluctantly agreed to the solution.
    “But only if
you complete the full year,” Arthur warned solemnly.
    During those
last days of the summer holiday Arthur came up with several suggestions for
Mark to consider, but the boy showed no enthusiasm for any of them. Mark’s
mother became quite anxious that her son would end up with no job at all until,
while helping her slice potatoes for dinner one night, Mark confided that he
thought hotel management seemed the least unattractive proposition he had
considered so far.
    “At least you’d
have a roof over your head and be regularly fed,” his mother said.
    “Bet they