The Chief Inspector was understandably proud of his brood, yet he was very uncomfortable with the way their interests, even in their earliest form, were sending them down divergent paths of estrangement. His wife, coming from more or less privileged circumstances, accepted this as being inevitable, but being of close-knit working-class stock he was unable to reconcile himself to the upper-middle-class perception of necessity. What was the purpose of nurturing children in such a manner, he wondered, if the price of doing so meant losing them?
On the surface David was oblivious to his father’s angst. In truth, however, not yet able to articulate the warning signs within his family, he externalised his perceptions thinking the cause must lay somewhere outside himself in the world he was becoming increasingly aware of. Little did he know then of the consequences and the unintended and purely accidental benefits to be gained from analysing the world he lived in and attempting to come to terms with his place in it.
The benefits came to fruition one day when he found himself dealing with a number of the younger kids who were absorbed in their game of tormenting Monkey Guts. He dealt them a baleful look which he had cultivated from his father’s copper’s repertoire. Cat-calls quickly turned to embarrassed silence as the offenders scurried off in search of safer prey. Instead of thanking him, Monkey Guts pointedly ignored his presence and began picking up her books and scattered papers. Without giving it a second thought, David knelt down to lend a hand.