‘I think I’ll sit by the Good Samaritan,’ he said to the lorry driver who came in behind. I was ready to punch him in the face if he did, but I didn’t. The hut was public property. He opened his overcoat, and showed a fairly good suit, with collar and tie. ‘People don’t get rid of me so easily.’
‘Come outside and say that,’ I said.
He gave me a particularly scornful look, then went to the counter to order breakfast.
‘Where are you going to?’ I asked when he came back.
‘What’s that to you? Anyone who’d leave his fellow man to die of exposure by the roadside at half past five in the morning hardly deserves to be greeted with cordiality when they meet later in altogether different circumstances.’ When I said nothing in response, he added: ‘I’m going to Rawcliffe, just before a place called Goole, which I suppose you’ve never heard of. You can drop me off at Doncaster, if it’s on your way.’
He wasn’t exactly reeking of aftershave, but he seemed decent enough. The trouble was, you could never tell. He looked amiable, with mild brown eyes, and smiled as he rubbed a hand over his bald head. ‘You don’t trust me,’ he said, ‘I can see that.’ He held out the same hand that had stroked his head: ‘Anyway, I’m Percy Blemish.’
‘Michael Cullen,’ I told him. ‘I can’t give you a lift because the person I’m working for has spies all along the road, and if he found that somebody else had been in the car, from that moment on I’d be seen to have a pronounced limp whenever the dole queue moved forward.’
‘I understand,’ he said. ‘I’ll just have to continue my journey with that uncouth lorry driver, in his draughty cab.’
The driver in question, who sat a few feet away, twitched his shoulders and turned. ‘I heard that. You can walk. Too much fucking lip, that’s your trouble. I was going to throw you out, anyway.’
‘Oh dear,’ Percy Blemish said, ‘I talk too much.’
‘We all do,’ I said sadly.
‘I do hate swearing,’ Peggy said, though nobody heard but me.
Percy’s hand was on the sauce bottle. Mine closed on the ketchup. It was a tie. ‘Drop dead,’ I told him, getting up to leave, and never wanting to see him again.
I took the map out of the envelope and saw that I still had a good way to go, but it was only half past six so I dawdled along. The sky was clear, except that red streaks in the east were turning yellowish. The wind was cold and damp, however, though after a mile or two the sun burned through the windscreen. I thought I saw a police car going up a slight rise in front, but it was a white car and a motorbiker just ahead wearing a blue helmet. The sight made me nervous, so I overtook them both.
While getting in the car after breakfast I’d noticed a container as big as a toolbox down by the back seat, and on opening it saw about three hundred Monte Cristos inside. I unscrewed a tube cap, and then drove effortlessly through green scenery on a full belly and with a delicious cigar between my teeth.
In the last few years at Upper Mayhem I had begun to wonder about the purpose of my life. Living modestly off Bridgitte and my savings no longer seemed the right existence for an active man. Prison should not have depressed me as much as it did, but what pushed me down even more was my natural born liking for idleness as long as life wasn’t too uncomfortable. I’d never seen the point of stirring myself as long as I had a few quid in my pocket. Not that it could have gone on forever. My money was running out and Bridgitte realised that if she didn’t withdraw her support she would never get rid of me. The call to London had come just in time.
Another factor was that the attitude towards idleness was changing. There were too many on the dole for it to be a virtue anymore. I lived on the edge of despair because I did not know why I was alive. It wasn’t even a matter of reforming. Moral imperatives left me cold. But I had reached the stage where I had to do something to convince myself that I had been brought onto the earth for a purpose instead of rotting pleasantly at the disused railway station of Upper Mayhem. Almost accidentally and, so far, painlessly, I had got out of it, even though working for Moggerhanger was not the kind of job one could be proud of. But it was a start, and no matter what Bill Straw said, nor what I saw, or what I felt in my bones, I had no reason to suppose Moggerhanger’s business affairs were anything other than legal. Even he, I hoped, had changed in the last ten years.
The thoughts that go through one’s mind during a purloined luxurious smoke! A mouth doesn’t show its true shape till a cigar’s stuck in it, and when I took mine out between puffs I had an impulse to sing. I had set off from Upper Mayhem, forty-eight hours ago, determined to be honest in all my dealings. To put the cigar back where it came from was impossible. To throw what remained out of the window would be a criminal waste. I would finish my enjoyable smoke in peace, and steal nothing ever after. In the meantime, I would have a little music to soothe my faculties and make life perfect, so shoved a tape into the deck and waited for the overflowing balm of Victor Sylvester or Heavy Metal.
Luckily I was slowing down before the Norman Cross roundabout, otherwise I’d have swung off the road with shock. ‘Remember,’ said Moggerhanger, ‘you are now driving for me, and don’t you forget it. I don’t want you eating, or sleeping in the car when you shouldn’t be, or spitting, or dropping cigarette ends and sweet wrappers, or getting mud all over the carpets. Neither do I want you to help yourself at the cocktail cabinet, or interfere in any way with the emergency hamper. And keep your thieving hands off my cigars. I’m particularly insistent on that. For one thing, they’re counted. And for another, if any are missing I’ll cut you to pieces, though if you’ve already had one, consider yourself forgiven, but don’t do it again. You have been warned. Just keep your eyes on the road and look after my car, which means never going above seventy. It’s better for the engine, but most of all I don’t want my employees fined for speeding. I don’t think I need tell you that if that happens, you’re out. And try not to let the fuel gauge show below the halfway mark. Now listen to the sweetest sound in the world. And have a good day.’
I looked around, as much as I dared, for the closed-circuit television, and wondered if there wasn’t a built-in black box to register every stop. But his little joke seemed to be over and once more I was the captain of my ship, except that instead of music the tapedeck played a selection of church bells from parishes all over Bedfordshire, which racket I stood till I told myself that if another Quasimodo hung on my eardrums I’d belt the car into the nearest bridge support.
I was drifting north and without thought went more quickly, finding it hard not to stray above the stipulated seventy-mark especially as, now that traffic was building up, young blokes floated by in Ford Escorts at ninety-five, and their bosses flew in BMWs at a hundred and ten. I could have overtaken them all, but not with Moggerhanger breathing down my neck.
Some cars that overtook were plumbers’ vans or salesmen’s wagons, or old bangers with five men inside running a collective that got them to and from work (or the dole office) in the cheapest possible way. Others were smart and fast, and from a BMW window Percy Blemish waved his fist and pulled me a megrim as the car slid effortlessly by. It was my third view of him and I hoped it would be the last. His gloating and frantic face behind the Plexiglass reminded me of a baby deprived of its rights at the nipple, and I supposed he held every person he came across responsible for his misfortunes, unless he was given a lift. Even then, judging from the face that he turned on me, and which the benevolent driver of the moment could not see (luckily for him), I didn’t reckon his chances of cheap and easy travel were very high, either.