The news that a WA tycoon is making a bid for a share in Rolls-Royce parked off intense financial activity in our house.
My wife read it in a voice full of toast, tension and last years marmalade and I took another dry biscuit with a hand that sweated slightly.
Frankly, I was surprised at her interest.
For someone who thinks a corporate raider is a kind of electronics detection gear, she has never come on strong about big business, which she says she has been in ever since she began ironing my shirts.
Certainly one would count Rolls as a glamour stock.
“What about Rolls?” I said to my assembling family.
Tomato, cheese or ham,” they chorused automatically.
Yet the prestige of this great silent car, the whisper of mink and the hint of expensive perfume, the flawless profile of some beauty peeping from her furs beside you, the curt “To the Ritz” to the obsequious chauffeur.
What a dream for the prospective investor.
The best we can manage is my daughter’s pert profile leering from a twisted safety belt carelessly stung over her shoulder and the shout “To the take-away, Baldy!”
I feel a monetary interest in Rolls-Royce would being style to our home; one would be less inclined to drive with a hole in the manifold and the old pillows faded by the sun glaring on the tatty upholstery of the back seat.
One would think twice before being drowned at the car wash through leaky windows, or kicking and fighting for the car key on Saturday morning in a family scrum that would make the All Blacks turn pale.
There would be an end to funeral exchanges with the garageman about the cylinder head.
With a Rolls it’s different. You don’t put all your eggs in one gasket.
“Think,” I said. “Even if our attempt falls, it is better to have tried and lost than not to have tried at all”
My wife responded dreamily: “We’ve tried so much and lost so much that one finishes fit to be tried.”
“Think of it,” I said, “a share in a Rolls, a cigar at the club, the doorman…”
“Slamming it in our face as usual,” she said
“We would move into the automotive nobility,” I said. “These cars are sought by the oil princes. All you do is open the door and let out a loud sheikh.”
Her eyes glittered at the picture.
“What’s in it for me?” she said, her knuckles whitening on the piggybank.
“Monte Carlo in the sun,” I said.
“Lunch with the Rainiers on the terrace. A little futter at the Casino, a swim from a Greek tycoon’s yacht… playing the Paris Bourse with the bulls and the beach at Saint-Tropez with the bares.”
“We need only a small cut in Rolls and then our credit would come into its own?” I whispered.
“The butcher would smack his chops and your rump. The greengrocer would stop stalking us among the celery. We’d be able to stand on our feet at the bank instead of on our knees.’
So she’s thinking it over
I’ve written to an English friend saying I want a piece of the action in Rolls. He hasn’t been very encouraging, ending his letter “I hope things aren’t too bad in the prison hulks and remember me to Ned Kelly”
Meanwhile, the man from the finance company is calling to ex press his interest in my present vehicular situation.
So I’m contemplating my next move—on the back-door and down the street…as silently as a Silver Ghost.
Max Fatchen