GROCERIES DELIVERED BY VAN it said. NO ORDER TOO SMALL.
There was a local phone number, so that evening I made a list and called in at the phone box on my way to the pub. It rang about twenty times before a man answered.
“Hello.”
“Is that the van delivery service?”
“Might be,” he said. “Who wants it?”
“Well, I’m staying in the bothy up at Mr Parker’s place.”
“Oh, yes?”
“And I was wondering if I could order some groceries?”
“We go in that direction Tuesdays and Thursdays only.”
“That’s OK,” I said.
“And you’ve got to have your order ready two days in advance.”
“Fine.”
“Alright,” he said. “I suppose we can fit you in.”
“Thanks.”
“Wait a minute, will you? I’ll just go and find something to write it down on.”
While I waited it struck me that this person had a similar approach to his customers as Hodge. I’d practically had to persuade him to deliver my groceries, and now it turned out he didn’t even have a proper order book at the ready. When he eventually came back to the phone I heard him give a long, heavy sigh.
“Alright,” he said. “Let’s hear it.”
“Right,” I began. “Er … sliced bread.”
There was a pause.
“Is that ‘sliced bread’, or ‘er…sliced bread’?”
“Sliced bread.”
There was another pause as he wrote it down. “Yes. What else?”
“Twelve cans of baked beans.”
A long pause. “Yes. What else?”
“Tea.”
“Yes.”
“Sugar.”
“Yes.”
“Have you got any of those Fray Bentos individual cook-in-the-oven steak and kidney pies with gravy?”
“Yes, we have.”
“Three of those, please.”
He sighed again, then several seconds passed during which I could hear a pencil scribbling.
“Yes,” he said at length.
“Three pounds of potatoes.”
At this point the pips went. After I’d put another coin in there was a long silence.
“Hello?” I said.
“Hello.”
“Did you get that?”
“What?”
“Three pounds of potatoes.”
“Yes,” he said with impatience. “What else?”
“I need some biscuits as well.”
“Yes.”
“What sort have you got?”
“All sorts.”
“Oh, right,” I said. “Two packets of fig rolls, please.”
“No, we haven’t got those.”
“How about custard creams?”
“No.”
“Malted milk?”
Now the pips went again. I put another coin in the slot and heard the same silence as before.
“Hello?” I said.
Silence.
After a long wait I hung up and redialled, but this time he didn’t answer.
♦
Over in the Packhorse they had a new consignment of Topham’s Excelsior Bitter. After the frustrations of my phone call this came as welcome news, although I found it slightly surprising.
“Pint of Ex?” asked Tony, the moment I walked into the bottom bar.
“Please,” I said. “But I thought you weren’t getting any more.”
“We weren’t,” he replied. “There wasn’t enough demand for it.”
“But now there is?”
“Now that you’re back, yes,” he said. “You’ve tipped the balance.”
“Oh well. That’s good.”
Tony had already placed a glass under the tap and begun pulling the handle.
“Only thing is, we’ve had to mark the price up a bit.”
“Have you?”
“Just enough to cover costs.”
“How much do I owe you then?” I enquired.
He finished pulling the beer and placed a completed pint on the counter. “This one’s on the house actually.”
“Thanks,” I smiled. “Any particular reason?”
“We want to enlist you in the darts team as a regular. We were quite impressed by your performance the other night, and so was the visiting captain.”
“Was he?”
“She.”
“She?”
“Yes,” he said. “You know — Lesley.”
“Oh…yeah, right.”
“Very impressed, she was.”
“Well, I was just lucky really. Having a good night.”
“So you’re prepared to sign up with us, are you?”
“If you’d like me to, yes.”
“Of course we’d like you to.”
“Right then,” I said. “I will.”
I had more beer than I planned to on that first night back at the Packhorse, mainly because Tony wouldn’t accept any money. The first pint was ‘on the house’, I knew that, but when I followed it with a second, and then a third, he kept insisting that it was OK to run up a slate. I didn’t want to cause offence by refusing his trust, so I went along with it and ended up having five pints. On my way home later that night I made a mental note not to allow the tally to get out of hand.
♦
The first sound I heard the following morning was the ‘clunk’ of a milk bottle on my doorstep. Peering out of the bedroom window I saw Deakin retreating across the yard towards his truck before driving off. I thought it was a bit cheeky of him to start making deliveries without seeing me first, but I wasn’t bothered really as I was going to ask him anyway. Actually I was grateful he’d woken me up, because otherwise I’d have been too late for breakfast. I got up quickly and went across to the house, where Gail let me in. She seemed quite pleased to see me.
Mr Parker was already at the table when I sat down.
“You’ll be getting started on the boats today, will you?” he asked.
“Hope so,” I said. “Of course, there’ll be quite a bit of preparation to do before any paint goes on.”
“I’m glad to hear that,” he said. “We don’t want any sort of slapdash job.”
“No.”
“There’s an electric sander over there in the big shed if you need it. And a blowlamp.”
“Right.”
“So you’ll be able to get them done by Christmas then?”
“Oh yes. No problem.”
“Good.”
Gail placed my breakfast in front of me before sitting down herself.
“Settling into your new home alright?” continued her father.
“Yes, thanks,” I replied.
“Enough room for you?”
“Oh yes,” I said. “Plenty.”
“That’s good.”
“You’re a bit like the three little pigs,” remarked Gail.
“Am I?” I asked, glancing down at my sausages.
“Yes,” she said. “Your tent was your house of straw. Then you had a caravan, which was your house of sticks. And now you’ve got a house of stone.”
At that moment the Post Office van pulled up in the yard, and the driver went through the same routine as the last time I’d seen him. After bobbing up the steps he again opened the kitchen door by four inches, slipped the post onto the shelf inside, said ‘Thank you’, in a sing-song voice, and was gone again.
Mr Parker glanced across to the shelf. “Ah good,” he said. “Here’s the Gazette.”
He stepped across the kitchen and picked up the only item of mail, a new edition of the Trader’s Gazette, rolled up and specially labelled for postal delivery. He unwrapped it and began studying its pages with interest. In the silence that followed I remembered a question I’d been meaning to ask.
“You know those sheep?” I said.
Mr Parker looked up momentarily. “Which sheep?”
“The ones up on the fell behind here.”
“Oh, yes.”
“Have they got anything to do with you?”
“You mean do I own them?”
“Yes.”
“No.”
“Who does then?”