An Englishman would rather die than expose himself by complaining. ‘These are jolly good turds. Aren’t they wonderful turds, darling?’
‘Eh? What? Turds? Oh, yes, excellent. Haven’t had such good turds since I was in India. Quite delicious. We ought to compliment the cook. As I was saying about Rupert’s school …’
‘They’re quite superior. You can’t find good turds like this everywhere.’
‘You could at one time, though. Now everything’s plastic and ersatz. Convenience food, nothing else. What? Well, as I was saying about Rupert’s report …’
When I’d played that one out, I perused a chapter of The Crimson Tub by Sidney Blood. Then I listened to my radio, fearful of using the one in the Roller because I had a horror of switching on the engine at zero hour and finding the battery dead. Acting senselessly did not mean that I could take chances like that.
Half an hour after lighting-up time I started the engine, and opened a door. Dismal climbed in as if used to such luxurious transport. The smooth movement over gravel and dead twigs onto the lane, all lights beaming, made me feel I was coming back to life. I only hoped I was right. My troubles at having lost half Moggerhanger’s precious cargo may have been just beginning, but I was mobile, and nothing else mattered. If I had failed in my duty it was through no fault of my own. I switched off most of the car lights as Dismal and I travelled like two outlaws up the lane and back onto public roads.
Eleven
Whenever I put the radio on, Dismal slept. When I switched it off he sat up and looked over my shoulder at the road. Being almost human, he was fair company. When I got out for a piss, so did he. When I ate a biscuit, likewise. He even lapped up half a slab of chocolate and when I said it would ruin his teeth, he bit me. Life was perfect, except that the police and Moggerhanger were out for my guts.
The direct route to London was through Hereford and Cheltenham, but I set off for Shrewsbury and the A5, making easterly across the country to slide unobtrusively into London via the Great North Road, the highway I had come out on when heading for Goole — full of mindless optimism — a few days ago. I was so tense that life seemed real.
I drove carefully, meaning not too fast in the darkness, along winding roads. When headlights frizzled behind me I slowed down to indicate that the driver could overtake. Mostly they were youngsters in souped-up bangers going from one pub to another. Forty miles out of Peppercorn Cottage I began to relax. Because of my previous care with navigation I found my way onto the Shrewsbury road with ease. ‘Dismal, I think we’ve got clean away.’
The car radio was an elaborate set, with extra wavelengths on which Moggerhanger could tune in to the police. I heard plenty of gabble about road accidents, abandoned cars, pub brawls and suspected break-ins, but nothing concerning a six-foot con-man and a kidnapped tracker-dog in a maroon Roller last seen heading towards the Severn.
Sooner or later I would get picked up, so I had to have sanctuary, and one place I reasonably expected to find it was at Moggerhanger’s homebase. If I got caught, so would he. It wasn’t my fault that the operation had gone wrong. If I got into London before anyone spotted me, Claud Moggerhanger, who was only human after all, would be obliged to keep me out of harm’s way. Such an assumption cheered me up. I had always been an optimist, even if only in order to survive, believing that any action was better than no action, and any thought more comforting than none.
On the outskirts of Shrewsbury I spotted a fish and chip shop and parked halfway on the pavement with hazard lights going. The Chinese bloke gave me a funny look when I ordered fish, chips, roe, peas, sausages and pie twice, plus two bottles of lemonade. Hugging the parcels, I went back to the car and tucked in, to the noise of Dismal’s disgraceful gobbling of his generous portions on the floor behind. I had brought a tin dish from the cottage, and poured out a bottle of lemonade so that he wouldn’t get thirsty. He lapped that up, and belched into the back of my neck for the next ten miles. When we stopped at a traffic light I returned an even riper series of eructations, but he didn’t take the hint.
After my stint at Peppercorn Cottage and my encounter with the police, I felt as if I had spent a fortnight going back and forth on an assault course at a very expensive health farm, and craved a wash and brush up. A public lavatory was still open, but there were no lights. Sinks were hanging from the walls, lavatory pans smashed, doors in matchwood, and the divisions in the urinal had, I assumed, been battered down with a sledgehammer. What they’d done with the attendant, I didn’t dare think about. Maybe they were part of an adventure training school, which sent kids out suitably equipped, with score cards and umpires, to see how many toilets they could vandalise in one day without being caught. It looked as if this particular class had got inside with a fieldgun. I propped my torch on a ledge, turned on a tap, had a wash and put on a clean shirt. Back in the car I combed my hair and buffed up my boots with Dismal’s tail. All spick and span, I could face the world again.
Huge raindrops thrashed at the windscreen. Dismal began to howl as if he’d never seen rain before. Or maybe the regularity of the wipers frightened him. I shouted for him to belt up. After passing Telford I was afraid of drifting into the never-never land from which you only wake up in death — or a very disagreeable fire. The clock glowed ten, and I fancied somewhere to bed down for a couple of hours. People would be coming out of the pubs and I’d need all my wits to avoid their antics, though I knew from experience that the worst time on country roads was before the pubs opened, when everyone was rushing to get their first drink. After closing time, when they were blind drunk, they at least tried to be careful.
Dismal was dozing, which didn’t help matters. I drifted through space. The yearning to fall asleep came and went. I fought off the worst attacks by reliving the sojourn at Peppercorn Cottage, from which place my troubles stemmed. I should have known that the rats would bring no luck. The two jokers who had taken half my stock in their canoe must have been hired by Moggerhanger from a school of actors. I envied the skill with which they had made the collection. Clockwork wasn’t in it. By now they had probably landed the stuff at some secluded bank of the Severn. The car that had picked it up was in London, and they were boozing with their girlfriends in some clip-joint roadhouse. Or they had transferred their cargo to a hired canal barge on the upper reaches of the Thames and were holidaying their slow way to Hammersmith — while I was driving east in Moggerhanger’s car with a police tracker dog in the back.
Things could be worse. When I pulled up at an all-night café, I should have left Dismal locked inside, but he leapt over the seat, and though I tried with all my strength to pick him up and heave him back, he insisted on following me in case he missed something to eat. He had a collar, but no lead, and at the door he cleverly pulled the handle down with his teeth so that I could walk in.
Half a dozen black-leathered bikers were eating toasted sandwiches and drinking tea when the best trained dog in the police force rushed in. The laugh on a tall blond biker’s face faded as Dismal sniffed forward and fastened his teeth onto the youth’s trouser pocket, whining a signal that it was time for the back-up force to do its work and take the drugs off him.
The biker eased away from the juke box. ‘I say, get this damned pooch out of here.’ The other youths laughed. The only method of calling Dismal to heel would be to get a whistle out of my pocket and blow it.
‘Jonas, you idiot, we told you not to bring that stuff back from school,’ one of the bikers called.