“Yes,” said Deakin. “I must come and get it sorted out.”
“Don’t put it off any longer than necessary.”
“No, you’re right.”
“By the way, I ought to settle up with you for my milk.”
“Don’t worry about that,” he said. “There’s plenty of time.”
Now that he’d got the matter of the ice-cream van off his chest Deakin seemed to perk up a bit. By the time I’d served him a cup of tea with some biscuits he was beginning to return to normal. Then his eyes fell on the new copy of the Trader’s Gazette.
“Ooh yes,” he said. “There’s something in here I must show you.”
He reached over and began leafing through until he found the page he wanted. It came as no surprise when he showed me the item advertising ‘CIRCULAR SAW WITH MAN FOR HIRE’.
“That’s you,” he announced.
“Yes,” I replied. “I thought it must be.”
“Hasn’t Tommy mentioned it then?”
“Not directly, no.”
“Well,” said Deakin. “He hires you out for so much an hour, and pays you so much an hour, and the difference is his profit.”
“Does that include wear and tear?”
“Er…no. Wear and tear would be a separate calculation.”
“Oh, right,” I said. “Have you any idea what his hourly rate is?”
“No, sorry.”
“Well, what did he pay you?”
“When?”
“When you helped him build the shed.”
“Nothing.”
“What!”
“The thing is,” he said, “Tommy doesn’t like parting with cash. Not if he can help it.”
“No, I’ve noticed.”
“But I dare say I got something or other for my trouble.”
“You mean payment in kind?”
“Sort of, yes.” Deakin rose to his feet. “Anyway, thanks for the tea and biscuits, but I must get a move on. I’ve got some homogenized milk in the refrigerator. Special delivery.”
“Where to?”
“It’s for Bryan Webb’s Uncle Rupert. He’s always there on Wednesdays.”
Not long after that Deakin was on his way. I went out into the yard and stood watching as he descended the concrete road in his surplus ice-cream van. Then I heard the clarion call of ‘Half a pound of treacle’, and he was gone.
♦
That night I began my two-week sentence at the Ring of Bells. Two weeks of sitting in a pub with no women, no darts and no Topham’s Excelsior Bitter wasn’t very appealing, so I put it off until about quarter to ten. Prior to that I passed a couple of hours drawing up plans for the mooring raft and wondering why I’d talked myself into building the thing. The truth was that although I knew what it was supposed to look like, I had no actual experience of putting one together. Only after I’d messed about with a pencil and paper for half the evening did I come up with a suitable ‘design’. Then, when I’d run out of things to do, I went out.
The Ring of Bells seemed even quieter now than it had done during my previous visit. The same people sat in the same places and stared at their drinks, while the landlord (whose name, apparently, was Cyril) stood behind the counter and polished glasses. The conversation was at best desultory. Occasionally someone would make a remark about the weather, or mention whom they’d seen during the day, but most of the talk was less interesting than that. Hodge was present, of course, occupying one of the stools near the counter. He nodded when I walked in and I nodded back, and it struck me, not for the first time, that our relationship was an odd one. I’d been regularly phoning in with my grocery orders for quite a while now, and receiving invoices which I hadn’t paid yet. I was sure it was Hodge who answered when I rang, but he never acknowledged the fact and I never identified myself either. I just asked for the groceries to be delivered to the bothy. If Hodge knew it was me, then he didn’t let on. For my part, I had no idea when I was supposed to settle the invoice. Nothing was ever said, and we just sat side by side drinking and having little to do with one another.
Not until the third such evening did the subject of groceries come under discussion, and even then it was only brief. Hodge turned to me at the end of a particularly quiet interlude and said, “By the way, we’ve got a new consignment of beans at the shop.”
“Baked beans?”
“Yes.”
“Oh, right,” I said. “I’ll bear it in mind.”
“Just thought I’d let you know.”
“Thanks.”
After that we both returned to contemplating our drinks, and the matter wasn’t raised again.
Walking home it occurred to me that I could have gone over to the Journeyman to see if Lesley was around. After all, she’d been very friendly on that first night we played darts together, offering to buy me a drink and then saying, “Maybe another time.” This had seemed like a very obvious hint. The only trouble was that I didn’t have a good enough ‘excuse’ for suddenly turning up at her local. Wainskill was a good ten miles away and the road went there specially, so I could hardly walk in and say that I just happened to be passing through. The darts match I’d missed would have provided the perfect opportunity to get to know her better, but unfortunately this chance had gone. Now I had no idea when I would see her again.
♦
Meanwhile, I spent my days trying to get on with the boats, only for the work repeatedly to be postponed by Mr Parker. It seemed there was always something else cropping up that was more urgent. One morning, soon after I’d agreed to build the mooring raft, he announced that all the materials I required were waiting for me down by the jetty.
“Do you want to get started on it today?” he asked.
“Could do,” I replied. “Of course, it means I’ll have to abandon the work on the boats for the time being.”
“That’s alright,” he said. “Christmas is still weeks away.”
His word was my command, so a little later I found myself amidst a collection of oil drums and planks. There was also a box of coach bolts to hold everything together. Assembling these components into a complete unit took a lot of trial and error, despite my carefully drawn ‘plan’, and the work took all day. The finished raft looked fairly robust, but whether it would float or not was a different matter. I tried hauling it to the water’s edge for a buoyancy test and discovered it was quite heavy. In fact, I could only move it with the greatest difficulty. This was something I hadn’t thought of. I was struggling with some spare planks trying to make a sort of slipway when someone came up behind me and said, “Need a hand there?”
It was the old man who’d helped me repair the jetty.
“Oh thanks,” I said. “Yes, two of us should be able to get it launched.”
“You built this, did you?” he asked, examining the raft.
“Yeah, just finished it.”
“Wouldn’t have caught that other lad making anything like this.”
“No?”
“Never. Just lounged about all day long, playing with the girls.”
“What girls?”
“All of them,” he said. “Holidaymakers, day-trippers. Didn’t do a stroke apart from pulling them in with his boathook.”
“Sounds like nice work,” I remarked.
“Work?” snapped the old man. “That’s not work!” He walked round the other side of the raft and found a suitable hand-hold. “Well, do you want a lift with this or not?”
“Yes, please,” I said. “That’d be a great help.”
I grabbed the raft on my side and the two of us succeeded in dragging it to the water’s edge. Another pull and it was floating beside the jetty. Then I tied it up and tried walking about on the deck.
“Stable, is it?” he asked.