“That’s just the problem,” Jago pointed out. “That’s where the lot of you ’re going wrong.”
“Which’s where?” Selevan spoke to his friend without defence. If he was going at this problem of Tammy in the wrong way, he meant to learn the right way at once, and he’d come to Jago because of that.
“The devil of young people,” Jago said, “is that they got to be allowed to take their own decisions, mate.”
“But?”
“Hear me out. It’s part of making their way to being grown. They take a decision, they make a mistake, and if no one rushes like the fire brigade to save them from the outcome, they learn from the whole experience. ’Tisn’t the job of the dad?or the granddad or the mum or the gran?to keep them from learning what they got to learn, mate. What they got to do is help work out the end of the story.”
Selevan could see this. He could even run it through his mind and largely agree with it. But agreement was a process of intellect. It had nothing to do with heart. Jago’s position in life?having no children or grandkids of his own?made it simple for him to adhere to this admirable philosophy. It also explained why the young people felt able to talk to him. They talked; he listened. Likely, it was similar to sharing one’s secrets with a wall. But what was the point if the wall didn’t say, “Hang on a minute. You’re making a bloody fool of yourself”? Or, “You’re choosing wrong, damn it”? Or, “Listen to me cos I been alive about sixty years longer’n you and those years damn well ought to count for something or what’s the point in having lived them”? Beyond that, didn’t parents and grandparents have some right to sort out their offspring, not to mention to determine what the offspring would be doing with the rest of their lives? That was what had happened to him, wasn’t it? He may not have liked it, he may not have wanted it, he may not in a hundred years have chosen it for himself, but wasn’t he a better and stronger person for having rubbished his dreams of the Royal Navy in favour of a dutiful life on the farm?
Jago was watching him, one bushy eyebrow raised above the frame of his worn-out specs. His expression said that he knew what Selevan was thinking about Jago-as-listener and he didn’t disagree with Selevan’s assessment. He said, “There’s more to it than that, mate, despite what you’re thinking. If you get to know ’em, you end up caring and you end up hating to see ’em decide something that you know’s for the bad. But no one listens when they’re young. Did you?”
Selevan dropped his gaze. For that was the fly in the ointment of his life, when everything was laid out in front of him. He had listened. He had chosen as he’d been told to choose. And doing that hadn’t spared him a lifetime of regret. Indeed, it was the single cause of it.
“Bloody hell,” he sighed. He put his head in his hands.