So I stayed until after dark, clearing huge basket-cases from the attic. Because I was working so effectively he realized there was more to do than he had thought, so asked me to stay the night and get an early start next day. ‘I don’t mind,’ I said, ready for any work as long as I got something to eat. Food wasn’t important to me if I ate regularly. It needn’t be a lot, but if it didn’t come on time it put me into a very bad mood indeed.
Old Clegg took my hand and held it: ‘Listen, Michael, whenever somebody asks you whether you want to do something, never answer by saying that you don’t mind, because it’s no answer at all. If you want to do something in the, world, always come out with a straight yes or no, and then you’ll be of great value to your fellow men, but also of even greater value to yourself.’
What could I say to such a sermon except nod my head? We went into the kitchen, which was warm because of an Aga cooker burning nicely — though the light was a bit dim. Clegg took out a plate of liver from the fridge, threw it into a pan of burning lard. With a tin of beans and a few slices of Miracle Bread, it made a good supper between us. He was disappointed that I didn’t play chess, so we stayed at the table with a game of draughts. But it was too easy for him, and he was bored after an hour of it. When neither of us spoke it was so quiet I thought I was going off my head. So this is what it’s like in the country, I said to myself.
Next morning I humped trunks and boxes from the attic and lined them up in the hall. It was a hard grind, which went on till after dusk, but I enjoyed it because I wasn’t working for a boss. Clegg gave me the general idea, and I just got on with it. There was a bureau I had to bring down, and in one of the drawers were at least a dozen old-fashioned pocket watches. I looked at them, able to see that the numbering in Roman style was beautifully and thinly marked on their white clock faces. Maybe they were prizes or presents he’d been given in his life. One was a large heavy gold piece, complete with its own chain, and a cover that went over the face to protect it, fastening with a firm-sounding click.
To see whether its tick was healthy I wound up the top knob, and in my stupidity didn’t give it a few twists but went on till I could turn no more without breaking it. I stood by the open drawer, gazing at the second hand strutting around in its small circle, till I heard the tread of Clegg on his way up. So I put it back and carried on dragging the bureau towards the door. When he went down I wrapped the watch in my handkerchief and put it in my pocket. He’d most likely never think of it again, and it was too good a piece of work to moulder away in that drawer for ever. The only thing was the powerful tick-tock, that I had no way of throttling short of snapping the main spring. Its noise, even from the far-off muffle of my handkerchief, seemed spiked into my veins, and my only hope was that Clegg was too deaf or absent-minded to notice, or that I could make enough noise when near him to drown it.
‘I think we’ve just about broken the back of it,’ he said, when we sat in the kitchen with tea, and cup-cakes I’d shopped in the village for.
‘I’ll stay here again tonight,’ I said, ‘if you think it’s necessary. Nobody misses me in Nottingham.’
‘I suppose you wish you’d never bumped, into me, losing your job, and then your girlfriend.’
‘What does it matter?’ I said. ‘Maybe it’s all for the good. I didn’t say that at the actual time but I always think so before a thing happens and after it happens. That’s the way I am. I was born like that.’
‘It’s lucky you were. It never was any use crying over spilt milk.’
‘You can say that again.’ I said, pouring myself another dose of strong tea. ‘I wasn’t glad at losing my job just because I don’t like work.’
‘I can see that,’ he said. ‘I’ll make it right with you before you go. That’s a watch I can hear, ain’t it?’
I held up my hand: ‘This bobbin-ticker makes more noise than Big Ben. It was the cheapest I could find. I’m glad I got it though. Came out of my first week’s wages.’
‘It does make a row.’
‘Yes,’ I said, ‘it was embarrassing when I sat with my girl on the back seat at the pictures. She used to think I couldn’t wait to get her outside in the fields. Put her off a bit, this bloody timebomb.’
He laughed: ‘It is that all right. Let’s get back to it, shall we?’
I wondered what he meant by making it right with me. During our short acquaintance we’d become as close as you could get without being related, or so it seemed to me. Due to my short-sighted power game, I’d done him a favour by getting an inflated price for his house, and all that remained was to see whether he appreciated it or not. If he didn’t, at least I had the watch, though I would have regarded it as a shabby substitute for the golden handshake I’d grown day by day to expect.
I used the bathroom for a wash, and put on my coat. Clegg met me in the hall, and handed me an envelope. ‘Take this, for your trouble. I always repay a kindness, and hope you’ll do the same throughout your life, even when you do have bad luck, which I don’t suppose you will, not very often, at any rate. But don’t get into trouble that’s all I can say. If you help people as much as you’ve helped me you should get on all right. In that envelope you’ll find a note with my address in Leicester on it, so if ever you get that way, come and see me.’
‘I’ll be sure to. I was glad to do a bit of work for you.’ After handshakes and a hug on both sides I went quickly along the lane to get a bus, feeling a right bastard with Clegg’s best watch beating time to my heart in the arse-pocket of my trousers. On the top deck I furtively opened the envelope and counted a hundred and fifty pounds in five-pound notes. I could have jumped out of the window for joy, but instead screwed up the paper with his best wishes and address on it, and let that go into the blackness instead. All I can do, when I think back on it, is wonder at the irresponsibility of youth, while knowing for certain that at the actual time I thought about nothing at all.
In the isolation of my bedroom I took out my savings and totted up the total wealth, which came to the fat fantastic sum of two hundred and sixty pounds. It seemed impossible that I owned such money, and as if in doubt I held all of Clegg’s five-pound notes up to the light to see if the watermark and steel strip were in them. I stowed it back under my mattress, and couldn’t sleep. The moon glowed, so I drew the curtains, and I trembled, all of a sweat, afraid to sleep in case some robbing bastard should shin up the drainpipe, get through the window, flatten me with a bludgeon, and make off with my fortune. If anyone in an area like ours came to know of it, that would have been my fate. I tossed and screwed my face into the pillow, pressing my eyes shut tight in order to blot my heart into sleep.
Nobody did know of it, except me. The only safe way was to spend it, so next morning I put on my best suit and went to a garage that sold second-hand cars. The manager showed me a Ford Popular only four years old (or so he said) for a hundred and thirty-five pounds, and after a good try-out around the city, then over the Trent as far as Ruddington, I paid spot cash for it. With tax, insurance, and a tank of petrol I still had more than a hundred quid to my name.
I piloted the car home with a Whiff between my lips, windows wide open even though it was like Siberia. A bus followed me down Ilkeston Road, and I was afraid to go too slow in case it kept right on and flattened me. Fortunately, the traffic lights stopped us both, but I was still fluttering nervously when I pulled up at the kerb outside the house. I ran in for a tin of polish and a rag because there was a touch of rust on the front bumper, and worked till every bit of chrome reflected my happy and grinning face.