Salvation.(Short story)

Today was his fiftieth birthday and it was very hot, as it usually was on 24th June in London.

As he walked down the six flights of stairs from his flat, he could feel his shirt beginning to stick to his back under his lightweight jacket, and regretted putting on a cravat. Outside, although it was only nine o'clock, the heat rose from the pavement as he made his way round the corner to the cafe where he always had his breakfast. For once, he didn't start to read the Times that he'd bought from the shop next door immediately he sat down. Today was a day to think about things, to take stock.

Well, it wasn't really his birthday at all. His actual birthday was tomorrow but he'd adopted the 24th June as his "official" birthday. It seemed a better and more memorable day. The 24th June--Midsummer Day. It had a romantic feel to it. He'd first been taken with the idea during his very brief and abortive legal studies. Some old leases, he had learned, had a rent of "a rose at Midsummer", a variation on that oddity, a rent of "a peppercorn". He couldn't imagine anyone actually giving his landlord a peppercorn, but a rose at Midsummer to a gracious and smiling landlady was a pleasing notion. A red rose, undoubtedly.

The quarter days were very odd. There was 25th March, Lady Day--the jolly old Annunciation--and 29th September, Michaelmas, and of course Christmas Day. But why weren't they all on the 25th? And the summer quarter day was on 24th June--the birthday of John the Baptist. He remembered once on his official birthday going into Siena Cathedral to light a candle--because it was his birthday--and there was this notice in Italian and English, saying: "This way to the relic of St John the Baptist." So he went and looked at it. It was a skeleton of an arm in a glass case. "Bloody hell!" he'd exclaimed under his breath and made quickly for the exit. It was ghoulish and incredible and made him feel slightly sick. Once outside in the cathedral square though he'd remembered what his very religious father had always said to him when as a teenager he'd got so cross about what he called "the nonsense of religion".

"You should not take everything too literally! It's faith and the ideas that matter."

But all this was getting him nowhere, he realised, as his orange juice, coffee and croissants arrived. Take stock! Literally, that's what he'd resolved to do. The Stock Market had crashed and showed no signs of recovery. His shares were now worth roughly half what they had been. Interest rates had fallen too. Sixty per cent of his money was on deposit at a variable rate of interest and was now only earning about 4.25 per cent. Goodness, at one time it had been 7.5 per cent! So his finances were not in good shape. He'd hardly enough income to live on without resorting to capital and he'd have to do something about it!

He hadn't worked for the past twenty-five years. He should be grateful for that. After Cambridge and the abortive law course, he'd taught in an awful boys' Prep school for two and a half years. All right if you liked little boys. He didn't! The worst bit had been when the Head had approached him and asked him to teach French.