Of course, I’ve been told since that what he did was get straight on to the police as soon as he’d made sure that I was on the coach. He told them I was on my way and that some things I’d said to him had been suspicious. If you ask me, he just wanted to be in on the excitement. It’s the same with all them village types, there’s nothing they love better than a bit of scandal. Still, I’ve wondered if it might be Ivy’s father put him up to it, arranging me a lift to Cardiff with that very thing in mind. It isn’t very nice, to think he’d do that, but I wouldn’t put it past him. Never has been very fond of me, has Ivy’s dad. He took the attitude she’d given up a good career in nursing for a chap he thought beneath her station, as though anyone in Gellygaer ever earned five hundred pounds a year.
I suppose if I’m completely candid with myself, it was the nurse’s uniform as much as anything attracted me to Ivy in the first place. It’s a ‘kink’ I’ve got, and once more I can only think that it might be connected to the War in some way. Hospitals and that. Some
times, even the smell of Germolene or of surgical spirit, it will get me going quicker than a good rude book. She looked a little cracker, Ivy did, what with that little hat and those black woollen stockings. It’s a pity, but she’s not been able to get into her nurse’s outfit since she passed the five months mark, and that was quite some time back now.
I’ll tell you what, it’s very cold in here for January, don’t you think so? Angel Lane. I’ll tell you this, I’ve not seen many angels around here this last two months, only a load of bobbies all with faces like the rear end of a bus. Not that I’d know an angel if I saw one. Naked women, that’s what I imagine angels are. Now that’d be a thing to have fluttering round you when you kick off, wouldn’t it? A lot of nudes? That’s how I’d like to go. There’s ways a good sight worse than that, believe you me.
He was still fast asleep when I saw the first sign for Hardingstone, the chap whatever-his-name-was I’d picked up in the pub outside St Albans. Bill. I think he said his name was Bill. He was still snoring, and for my part half of me was in a panic over how I’d cope with all these bills and wives and children while the other half kept thinking of that fellow with the reindeer antlers in the Pear’s Encyclopaedia. No idea why. It’s like I say, the mind can be a curiosity at times.
Somewhere amongst all this, I first hit on the notion I should take the turn along the lane to Hardingstone when it arrived. What happened after that I’m in a muddle over still. I’ve told so many stories I can’t tell myself which ones are true and which ones I’ve invented. Do you ever get that? No?
I made a statement about everything that happened to the gentlemen from Hammersmith police station who’d been there waiting for my coach when it arrived from Cardiff, thanks to Mr Brownhill sticking in his oar. To tell the truth, I made a proper Charly of myself when I got off the bus and found them waiting for me, three of them. I’d not expected it, I suppose I should have, but I’d not. I was so taken back, I said the first thing that came into my head. I said I was glad it was all over, and I told them that I’d not had any sleep. I said that I was on my way to Scotland Yard that instant. That’s all fair enough, but before I could stop myself I went and said I was responsible. I didn’t say for what, but all the same they gave me quite a look. I could have kicked myself, the trouble that I’ve had about it since.
I don’t know if I told you, but they tried to trip me up on that in Court today, except I was too clever for them. There’s a saying, back in Finchley, that you have to get up early of a morning to catch Alfie Rouse. The prosecuting counsel, Mr Birkett, he was asking me why it had taken nearly two days for me to report what had gone on to the police, which threw me for a minute, but I soon recovered.
‘Well,’ I said, ‘I’ve very little faith in village constables such as you’ll find at the more local, smaller station, so I thought I’d go straight to the top. Didn’t I say that I was on my way to Scotland Yard when I got stopped in Hammersmith?’
He didn’t like that, I could tell, the way I wouldn’t let him pin me down, so what he says next is, ‘Oh yuss? Didn’t you also say you were responsible? What did you mean by that, my good man?’ How they talk, you know.
Now, I was feeling pretty cocky by that time, so I came back smart as a whip and said, ‘Well, in the eyes of the police, I thought the owner was responsible for anything that happened in his car. Correct me if I’m wrong.’
I raised one eyebrow when I said that last bit, that ‘Correct me if I’m wrong’, so that the jury and the girls up in the public gallery could see that I was playing with him, and I thought I heard a couple of them chuckle unless it was my imagination. They’re on my side, you can tell. A fair proportion of the jury’s women, so I’m bound to be all right. I’ve caught the eye of one or two of them, and I’ve a good idea which ones have got a thing for me. If I just stick to what I’ve said, there’ll be no upsets.
When they met me off the coach at Hammersmith Bridge Road, they took me to the local station where I told them what had happened early on that morning of the sixth, as best I could. I said I’d picked the chap up on the Great North Road, outside St Albans, which was true enough, and that as we’d got close to Hardingstone I’d thought I saw his hand upon my sample case, which I keep in the back seat of the car where he was sitting. Later on, I started to nod at the wheel a bit, and later still I heard the engine spluttering and playing up like I was running low on petrol, so I thought I’d pull into a field just off the main road there and down the lane a bit. Also, I needed to relieve myself, it having been a long drive from St Albans.
He woke up as I pulled in the field, and I told him that I was going to refresh myself. I said that if he wanted to be useful he could take the petrol can from the back seat and top the tank up, since it seemed that we were running low. I lifted up the bonnet and I showed him where to put it, then he asked me if I’d got a fag that he could cadge. I’d given him quite a few already so I said I hadn’t, and then walked off from the car a stretch so that I could relieve myself in private. I’d gone some way from the road and had my trousers down when I heard this big noise and saw the firelight coming from behind me. I pulled up my trousers and I ran towards the car but I was too late. I could see him there inside, but there was nothing I could do. The silly bugger must have lit his cigarette while sitting with the petrol can. The things some people do.
They saw I’d got my case with me and asked if I’d gone back to get it out of the burning car, but I was ready for that one. I’d seen his hand upon the case and had an idea he might steal it, so I took it with me when I left the motor. I told them I went into a panic when I saw the car go up, as well you might, and ran towards the road where those two young roughs saw me coming through the hedge. I said that I’d been at my wits’ end ever since, and not known what to do, which was no more than the unvarnished truth.
Later, policemen from Northamptonshire arrived in Hammersmith to talk to me, then brought me back with them to Angel Lane here. I asked if I could see Lillian, and when they said that I could see her a bit later I’m ashamed to say I rather let my feelings run away with me, what with being so tired, and told them what a woman Lily was, and how she was too good for me and always made a fuss of me and everything. I mentioned how she wouldn’t sit upon my knee, but how apart from that one drawback she was all a man might wish for.
If I’d stopped there I’d have been all right, but I was in the mood for showing off and anxious to impress, so I went on to tell them how I had a lot of ladyfriends around the country, and how my harem took me to several places so that I was seldom home. Somehow that got back to the papers, though as I’ve remarked, I feel it will work for me rather than against, despite what Mr Finnemore might think. He’s just a barrister. He doesn’t know the first thing about women.
That poor chap. I can see him as we pulled into that field, sat in the back seat fast asleep. All I could think about was bills and babies and how everything was coming down around me. I got out of the car as quietly as I could and went round to the boot to see if I could find the mallet that I’ve kept there ever since me and Lil went to Devon camping several years back. I suppose I keep it with me for protection: when you’re on the road a lot like I am you can meet some funny people. I was rummaging about back there and I suppose I must have made a bit of clatter, which is probably what woke him.
Anyroad, the next thing that I know I hear the car door open at the back there and him getting out. I lean around the open boot to look and there he is stood with his back to me, trying to get his trousers undone by the look of things, so he could have a Jimmy Riddle up against my tyre. I thought about Lil and the boy in Finchley, how they’d take it when I sold the house and furniture, and Nellie with another baby now to feed, and Ivy and Kingston-on-bloody-Thames and how my life was like a nightmare, worse than any picture in a book. I wished it had been something in a book, then I could slam it shut and never have to think about it any more. At some point while all this was running through my mind I must have finally laid hands upon the mallet.
Actually, they look quite nice, the fields out there in Hardingstone. I didn’t see too much of them that night, what with it being dark, but from the photo in the Sketch they looked like proper country fields such as they used to have round London when our dad was little. Sort of wild and overgrown a bit around the edges, not like parks at all. With parks, it’s all a lot of borders, forms and flower beds. There’s no adventure to it and to my mind it’s effeminate. Now what a lad wants is to go off crawling in the bushes like an Indian, or find a little den or something in the reeds where he could just sit by himself and not come out ‘til he was called.
He turned towards me just as I was bringing down the mallet so that rather than just tap his head there at the back as I’d intended, I caught him above the ear and he went sideways like a pole-axed cow. He fell against the Morris and slid down it until he was face first on the grass. He made a noise, just one sound on its own he spoke into the mud, but didn’t move. I stood there staring down at him I don’t know how long, breathing like you do when you’ve just had one. I’d not really thought about what I was going to do, up to that point. I mean, the idea hadn’t come to me at all before we got to Towcester. I looked down at him, pegged out there in what light there was coming from inside the car, the little over-head, and knew I’d better think of something quick.
Now, as a salesman, or commercial traveller as I prefer to call myself, I’m at a great advantage in the thinking stakes. My line of work requires a man who’s used to thinking on his feet. I’ll give you an example. There’s a firm up north I visit once a quarter where I’ve known the buyer years, a nice old chap who’s partial to the younger woman and has cash enough to spend upon a string of girlfriends. I’ve buttered him up, across the years, by bringing him some of the racier suspenders now and then that have a lot of frills, just as a present he can pass on to his favourite young lady. Anyway, I get there one day, march into his office with a handful of the cheekiest suspenders that you ever saw, as if I’d done the tidying at a brothel.
What I didn’t know was he’d been sacked a month after I saw him last for fiddling the till, and sat there in his place was this old baggage with a face like vinegar who’d not see fifty-five again, with tits like two pigs in a hammock. I stopped dead and looked
at her, then at the bunch of scanties in my hand. Quick as a flash, it came to me. I looked her in the eye, then made a big display of dumping ten bob’s worth of best suspenders in the office paper basket with the torn-up envelopes and such. She looked at me like I’d gone mad. I put my best voice on and told her, ‘Madam, I apologize. I’d heard a lady was in charge of this department and I’d thought to gratify myself to her by offering her garments that might make her more alluring, but I see now that this would be quite unnecessary.’
I might just as well have said that I could see this would be quite impossible, but kept a civil tongue about me and it paid off as I knew it would. One of my better clients after that, she was. The point I’m trying to make is that it’s all a part of life for a commercial traveller, coming up with ideas at a moment’s notice.
I bent down and reached beneath his belly so that I could pick him up, and tried to get him round towards the front end of the car. My idea was, you see, to get him in the driver’s seat or thereabouts. I didn’t fancy trying to manoeuvre him in past the steering wheel and so I hauled him all around the car’s front to the other door, which meant I pulled him through the headlights that were still switched on. By God he looked a sight, dragged through the beams like that. He had blood coming out of one ear by now, and from the look of it I’d smashed his cheekbone where I’d caught him with the mallet. I’ll be honest with you, I thought he was dead.
You’d think I’d know the difference between somebody alive and someone dead, but how things are for younger chaps, it’s not the same as when you’ve fought a war. It all gets rather blurred in my opinion, the distinction between live and dead. You see a fellow face down in the muck with only half an arm, and yes, I suppose he might well be alive, but if he’s not dead then he will be in an hour or two, so, really, what’s the point? It sounds harsh, but like a good many things, it’s something you get used to. I did. I was a War Hero, I was. Had a medal and a scar, up near my parting. Did I show you?
Had to put the blighter down so I could reach across inside the car and open up the passenger-side door which, being worried about car thieves, I keep locked up as a rule. Having done this I went back round and shunted him about again until I’d got him face down in the front seat, although he looked very awkward, with one leg all squashed up under him. I thought to take my sample case out of the car from where it was down by the driver’s seat. It had the catalogue inside, you see. I’d not want Monica to end up in a bad way.
Next I fumbled in the back seat for the petrol can I keep there and began to splash it round inside the car, with quite a lot of it falling upon the thing there in the front. I was just doing this and wondering what had happened to the mallet, which I couldn’t think where I’d put down, when suddenly he made a noise. He seemed to mutter something, but it wasn’t any language that I’ve ever heard. It gave me goosebumps, I can tell you. I shut all the doors after running a petrol trail back from the car, and then I thought to have a shufty underneath the bonnet so that I could loosen up the petrol union joint and take the top from off the carburettor. I know cars, you see, my line of work and all. A clever little touch, was that, so that it might look as if it had been an accident.
I looked around a bit but couldn’t find the mallet, so I went back where I’d left the petrol can to mark the ending of my trail, then struck a match. The flames ran off across the grass like little ants that march in file, and then there was that noise like a great sigh and they were everywhere across the car. My little Morris Minor.