‘Let’s have some more tea,’ I said when he got back. ‘Maybe we’ll find out the name of the bandit who did it.’ There was a sharp pain in my heart, and tears mingled with rain under my eyes. No one knew who Mad Bert was, or said they didn’t, so after throwing a few curses over our shoulders we humped out. ‘That’s the solidarity of the working-class,’ Bill muttered. ‘Very strong among lorry drivers.’
‘Well, fuck it,’ I said, ‘we’re working-class, aren’t we?’
‘Not at a time like this, cock.’
In spite of its fearful wounds I felt a swamp of affection for my car as we went down the road. I was in a state of shock from my first automobile accident. All I wanted was peace and quiet, and didn’t much fancy any talk from my passenger. In fact I was beginning to wish I’d never picked him up, and made up my mind that there’d be no more lifts from then on. I was brooding so badly that I almost got to blaming him for what had happened, till I realized how cranky this was, and laughed. ‘What’s up?’ he asked.
‘We’re on our way,’ I told him. ‘The rain’s packing in. It’s light over Stamford.’
‘We could do with it. But what’s that smoke coming out of your headlamp?’ Through the drizzle it was like a gnarled finger going a little way into the air, as if diffident about the prospect of finding God’s arse. ‘What now?’ I cried.
‘Pull in when you can, and I’ll fix it. I’m a dab-hand when it comes to cars.’ His voice had such conviction, such solemn wisdom, that he sounded as if he’d lived for three hundred years and knew everything. ‘When I stopped on a grass verge he jumped to the front of the car and peered into the lamp. ‘Switch off,’ he shouted. ‘Now put your lights on. Put them off. Now on. Off. On. Off. On. No. it’s no good.’
‘What is it then?’ I wanted to know.
‘Don’t worry. You’ll reach London today, as long as we get there before lighting-up time.’ He was wrestling with the whole headlamp, as if it had threatened to come out and do for him. His two hands gripped it, a sort of spiteful look now on his face.
‘Leave it,’ I cried, getting out. ‘Stop it.’
He fell back with it in his hand and, as if it could still sting, threw it with mighty strength clean over a hedge.
‘That wasn’t bloody-well necessary.’
‘Didn’t I say I knew about cars? Listen, I was a garage mechanic for three years. All the wires in that lamp had fused. You’d have had a fire on your hands if it’d bin left in. Got a fire extinguisher on board? Of course you bloody-well haven’t. I’m not stupid, so don’t think so.’
‘Keep your shirt on,’ I said, beaten for the moment. ‘Let’s get going.’
True to its promise, there was sun beyond Stamford, and we both became more friendly at the feel of it through the windscreen. ‘I’ll get on with my story,’ said Bill.
‘I’m listening,’ I said, skating around a lorry and feeling for a moment as if neither of us would come out of it alive. But Bill hadn’t shown a tremor, seemed to have absolute faith in my ability to get him to London. I began to have faith too, in him, glad now that I’d picked him up, in spite of the terrible (though necessary, I had to suppose) piece of brute surgery on my brand-new second-hand car.
My name isn’t really Bill Straw,’ he said, ‘but don’t let that bother you. What’s in a name, anyway? I was born in Worksop thirty-seven years ago. My old man was a collier at the pit, and a weedy little get he looked as well, though he was hard enough for the job, but not so hard that he didn’t die of dust on the windpipe when I was ten. I remember going with my mother to the Co-op to get fitted up with a black suit, the first one, and I’d have been proud of it if I hadn’t been up to my neck in salt tears for my father. My two brothers and a sister followed Mother out of that shop like a gaggle of black crows, and next day we went to the cemetery, with fifty-odd colliers who were mates of the old man. It was a sunny day in September, and I remember being shocked and feeling sick because I’d always been told that most people that died, died at the end of winter, and I thought God had done this to my old man out of spite, and from then on I told myself I’d have nothing to do with Him. Kid’s talk, because it don’t matter whether you think about Him or not. Makes no difference, so you might just as well set your brain on to other things if you’ve got any brain at all.
‘At school I didn’t sing the hymns, just stood there with my lips firm, and though I got the strap for it I still didn’t sing, not bloody me. I got it again and again, but I never gave in. The teacher complained to my mother about it, and she asked me to be a good lad and do as I was told, if not for her sake, then for my father’s sake. That did it. I was more determined then not to give in, and they could do eff-all about it. It’s no use mincing matters. We starved for the next ten years. The only time I didn’t was when I got sent to an approved school for nicking a bike lamp. I wanted to go round the dark streets at night, and shine it into the sky. I must have been loopy to want to do a thing like that. Anyway, I went into a shop and took it from the counter, but the shopkeeper had a little glass panel in his cubby-hole door so that he could see anybody who came in. I was caught halfway down the street, and the police were called. So for a couple of years I got regular meals, even though they weren’t much cop, and when I came home at fourteen I’d grown tall and well set up. I made up my mind never to be so stupid again as to get sent away.
‘I got a job, and for fifty hours a week in a shop took home eleven shillings on Saturday night. I won’t go into whether it was worth it or not, because I’m trying to tell you how I come to be in your car, not complain about my life. Mother took in collier’s washing, and between us we kept the house going. Though I’d vowed never to nick anything again, I got into trouble a few years later. My youngest brother was still at school, and one day he came home with marks all over him where the teacher had pasted him. If we’d got a doctor and a lawyer on to our side we could have had this teacher thrown out on his arse — though I don’t think so, somehow. You see, I don’t believe in justice. I’d known him in my day as being a cruel bastard, but now I saw what he’d done to my own brother. Peter was the youngest of us, who’d hardly known his father, and for this reason we tried to make life easier for him than it was for us. He was also the weakest, and the brightest. A bit cheeky now and again, because perhaps he was spoiled, though he still had a hard enough life. Mother went to see the headmaster, but he shouted at her to leave the education of children to them, and get on with her own work. Something along those lines. You can imagine. Next day I left my job early and waited until that teacher came out of school. I caught him near the gates, and told him I was Peter’s brother. He pushed me aside. In front of a lot of the kids I smashed him in the chops, knocking him against the wall. I hit him twice before he got over the shock and came back at me. I went a bit potty, and in spite of his cracks (he was strong as well) I split his eyes and lips, and made enough of a mess before the police arrived and dragged me clear. You can imagine what happened.
‘The magistrate said I was a dangerous creature — that was the word he used — who ought to be put away from decent society — meaning that schoolteacher, I suppose. He said he’d have sent me to prison if I’d been old enough, but that under the circumstances, Borstal would have to do. I said nothing to all this. What was the use? I’d done the best I could to get my brother’s own back, but at the same time I had no use for revenge. My bitterness sank to the bottom like sand in a bucket of water, and I went into Borstal like a saint. I was a good lad, and gave no bother. Once my storm of temper was over I wanted peace to come back on me. I went through it like a zombie, which is the nearest thing to saying that I was let loose on the world, at the end of three years, a reformed character. That Borstal was a tough place, though. You had to fend for yourself, even if you wanted to get through it as easily as you could. But it didn’t seem too hard to me, I must admit. We all boasted as much as our imaginations let us. The stupid ones would claim that their brother was a racing driver or a champion jockey, but I used to entertain them with stories about gangs of young colliers from Worksop and Retford, who’d go to a lonely place in Sherwood Forest on Saturday afternoon to have fights with razors and bottles, just to pass the time, I said. I told them that even though I was young I’d been elected to the ranks of the Worksop Choppers because of my prowess at the pit face (where I’d never worked). They believed me, I don’t know why, and these stories made them wary of me when it came to persecution. They never knew when I wouldn’t go as berserk as a Worksop Chopper, and have at them in such a way that a few would bleed to death before they could overpower me. That didn’t save me from getting mixed up in a few midnight scuffles, but I soon learned that as long as you go on hurting somebody, then they can’t hurt you. If you stop, expect it, get out of the way, jump clear, mate.