Fast Fiction: Growing Out Of It
Oh how our opinions change as we grow older! Richard Mallinson's short story reveals the extent of the change when two characters meet by chance after many years.
‘Cyril Binstock!’ I exclaimed, ‘it can’t be… good heavens it is.’
And so it was - smartly dressed and shod, lounging in the club.
‘I’m in finance, old boy,’ he said, ‘and making a pretty packet.’
He ordered champagne for both of us.
‘Wait a minute,’ I said. ‘You used to scorn success - and now look at you, exuding affluence.’
‘Yes,’ he said, ‘I admit that I did go through a hippy phase. But I became fed up with living like a moron and got a job in the City.’
‘But what about your belief in equality and all that?’
‘Oh, youthful piffle, wasn’t it? One grows out of it. You surely don’t still believe in it, do you? I mean that would get you nowhere.’
‘Well, I haven’t done too badly,’ I said. ‘I am now a member of the European Parliament, getting well paid for airing my beliefs and -’
‘Beliefs, what beliefs? he snapped.
‘Well, er,’ I stuttered, ‘well, I suppose, mainly the belief that this country’s future is in a united Europe…’
Binstock glared at me.
‘God help us,’ he cried, ‘you criticise me but you’ve changed your bloody tune as well, haven’t you? I remember you in the old days calling Europe the capitalists’ club, enemy of the workers and all that… And now you’re making a fat living off it.’
He stopped and gulped his champagne..
Then he resumed as if he’d just thought of a killer line: ‘You’ll soon be making speeches in praise of the market economy and no higher taxes for the rich, won’t you?’
Little did he know.
