Davey looked at me as though I was crazy, an opinion I was starting to share. I looked away and concentrated on the appallingly narrow road ahead, hoping he might take the hint and do the same thing. 'We do contribute,' he said. 'We're all fucking members. You made us all join when you won that forfeit game of Diplomacy in Geneva, remember?'
I remembered. I already gave lots of money to the Labour Party; I even gave lots of money to the Communist Party, even though I hadn't dared join (they still asked you about having been a member on the US visa application) .
'Yeah,' I said, 'but I mean give a lot to them, like... I don't know; ninety per cent; just keep back what we need to...'
'NINETY PER CENT?' Davey screamed. 'Are you insane?'
'Well, I don't know; that was just a f-figure off the...'
'You must be crazy, Dan; I mean, why the hell bother with all this if you're going to give it all away? I mean, okay, we get well paid; we know that. Sure; we get paid more than a nurse or a doctor and people, and sure that's a bit crazy, but we do work, for Christ's sake; we put in the hours, we sweat, man... and how long's it going to last, eh? You know what it's like; we've been flavour of the month for a few years, but how many people get that? Fuck all; that's how many. Very damn few indeed.' Davey took both hands off the wheel to gesture Italianately. I closed my eyes. 'Us; The Stones, Led Zep ... the Who, I guess... but how long's it going to last?' I dared to look; Davey had both hands on the wheel again. 'There aren't any guarantees, you know that. We could be nobodies... next month. Next year, anyway. No money... or bugger all money coming in, and with all our overheads, and tax to pay to... to wherever we're supposed to be living these days.' Davey shrugged. Another village swung into sight round a bend and Davey eased the brakes on again; hey, only fifty this time. We zipped past parked cars and bunches of kids leaving school.
'Oh, come on,' I said. 'Even if we didn't make another penny, none of us would be p-poor, ever. We might have to sell a house or two; you might have to get rid of the plane, but...'
'Yeah, exactly,' Davey said. 'So why not enjoy it now, while we can?'
'We could still have a damn good time on a hell of a lot less.'
'Yeah, and we could lose whatever the hell it is we've got that puts bums on seats and... and albums on turntables, because we'd know ninety per cent of everything we did was for somebody else.'
This struck me as an almost sensible comment. I looked, mildly surprised, at Davey as we cleared the speed limit and powered off again.
'Some people do it,' I said. 'They play for the love of it and they don't need all the money they make. They put it back.'
'That's them. We're us. I'm a middle-class kiddy, Danny boy. It would go against the grain. You do it; don't let me stop you. But don't be too surprised if you get no thanks. It isn't as easy to give money away as you think.'
'Hmm,' I said, in a sceptical tone of voice.
'You don't believe me, do you?' Balfour grinned. 'Okay; next village we get to, we'll try and give some away.'
'Davey,' I shook my head. 'Don't...'
'No; I'm serious. We'll try and give some away. We'll see who'll take it.'
'That's not what I meant; that isn't the sort of thing I...'
'It's the same principle.' Davey slowed the car again as a small village appeared over the summit of a small hill. 'Here; we'll try this place.' The Roller dropped below forty for about the first time since London. 'I know;' Davey said, grinning. 'I'll try and give the car away; that's putting my money where my mouth is, isn't it? Must be worth thirty K, minimum. I'll try to get rid of it.'
'Davey,' I said, tiredly.
'No, no.' He held up one hand, and put the cigarette out, blowing grey smoke at the windscreen. 'I insist.'
So we stopped in this little village somewhere north-west of Maidstone and got out — me still protesting: Jeez, you'd have thought it was my car — and Davey took the keys out of the ignition and went up to a man cutting his hedge in front of a smallish terrace house. 'Excuse me!' he said breezily. He brandished the keys with the RR tag and pointed at the car, standing at the kerb, door open. The man was about fifty, greying, heavily bespectacled; a soft, gentle-looking guy.
'Yes?'
'Would you like that car?' Davey said, pointing. The man looked surprised at first, then smiled.
'Oh,' he said slowly, looking at the Roller. 'Yes. It's very nice.'
'Would you like one of those?' Davey said.
'Oh, I suppose, yes, I would, but I don't know I could aff...'
'It's yours,' Balfour said, thrusting the keys at the chap. The man looked down at the keys. He laughed, shook his head, but didn't seem to know what to say. 'Go on,' Davey said. 'I'm serious; you can have it; I'm trying to give it away. Take them; we can complete the formalities later. Go on!' He pushed his hand with the palm-held keys spread on it towards the man, who actually backed off a little. The old guy smiled uncertainly and looked around; at me, at the car, up and down the road, at the nearby houses, including his own.
I leaned against the car, elbow on the warm bonnet. It was a mild summer evening, slightly hazy, and with the smell of woodsmoke on the gentlest of warm, lazy breezes. I heard the hooter of a train, in the far distance, and a dog barked. Balfour went on trying to get the guy to take the keys, but he wouldn't. He kept smiling and shaking his head and looking round. I wondered if he was looking for his wife or somebody, or just feeling embarrassed and hoping his neighbours weren't watching.
Finally, he said, 'You're from that programme, aren't you?' He laughed nervously and looked up and down the road again, shading his eyes at one point. He smiled at Davey. 'You are, aren't you? That... what d'you call it? Aren't you?' Davey looked back at me. I shrugged.
'You found us out, sir,' Davey said, smiling insincerely and taking out his wallet. He handed the guy a twenty-pound note.
'Thank you for taking part, though.' We left the guy looking puzzled and holding the twenty-quid note up to the light, shears still in one hand.
'A draw,' I said. 'You did get him to take some money; twenty notes, to be precise. And it was a rotten example anyway. Totally irrelevant.'
Davey was still beaming as we swung off the public road and into a poplar-lined gravel drive which led to a large house in the distance, past a small airstrip and a new concrete and steel hangar. 'Bullshit, Danny. He turned down thirty grand. Even if he had taken it, you think he wouldn't have stayed suspicious? I mean even after he'd got the log book in his name? Or if he did believe I'd done it, know what he'd think of me? Know what he'd think of the guy who'd been so kind and generous? He'd think "What a stupid bastard," that's what he'd think. Believe me.'
I toyed with the idea of making some remark on the lines of, If the guy with the hedge clippers hadn't believed him, why should I? but we were doing eighty up that narrow gravel drive, and there was a nasty-looking corner coming up Balfour had already braced himself for, so I just shut my eyes and dug my fingers into the leather under my thighs instead and waited for the sickening lurch of the four-wheel drift I knew was coming.
Musical beds, and starting to feel... not old, but that events in the lives of those I knew and used to know, were gathering pace ... starting to feel no longer young, I suppose.
Davey and Christine had gone to the Greek islands that spring, after the European tour ended. Inez and I joined them on Naxos for the second two weeks. We stayed at a villa on one of the less frequented lengths of coast; the house belonged to the promoter of the tour we'd just finished and had a jacuzzi and all the luxuries but, best of all, it didn't have a telephone.
The villa came complete with its own fast cruiser, but that wasn't good enough for our Davey; he'd got his pilot's licence justthe year before, and he'd always thought the ideal way to tour the islands — apart from taking a year or two and going by yacht — was to have a nice villa somewhere fairly central, and a seaplane.