‘He’s only a cuddly brown Labrador,’ I said, taking a lump of sugar from the table and leading him to the corner of the room where I thought he would be safe. The bikers, donning their gear to leave, looked strangely at me, and made obscene comments about Dismal, to the effect that what did it feel like living off its immoral earnings? I wondered how I could get rid of him, because if the police who raided Peppercorn Cottage assumed I had taken him away I was a marked man. Riding in a Rolls-Royce down the Great North Road with such a conspicuous dog sitting in the back as if I was his lord and master would be too rash for safety.
‘I don’t allow dogs in here,’ the proprietor called from behind his counter. ‘Especially a big swine like that. He’ll frighten my customers.’
‘We only want some tea and cakes.’ I put my fiver on the counter and pulled Dismal’s ear to make him be quiet. ‘I’d like a bowl for him to drink his tea from, if you don’t mind. He hasn’t learned to use a mug yet.’
The man, too exhausted to care, slid the goods across. ‘Dogs are a damned nuisance, urinating and breaking wind everywhere, and bothering my customers.’
‘Dismal!’ I shouted in my best police sergeant voice, ‘let’s go, otherwise we’ll never get to Glasgow.’
‘That’s what I mean,’ the proprietor said. ‘Nobody’s got a minute to spare. This is the worst kind of job to tell a story in. While I still had my factory and I told a story, people would listen. That was because it was in my time and not theirs. I was paying them to listen and they didn’t mind at all. That was what ruined my business and brought me here, but having a café on a main road, nobody will listen because it’s their time that’s taken up. They run in, order their food, eat with a blank stare, then pay up and get out. It’s no wonder the quality of life is deteriorating. They just want to get going on their journey, back to their homes, wives, children and’ — a disapproving glance at Dismal, who took it well — ‘to their dogs. Or back to their work, or businesses which in these times no amount of energy and good old British precision will save from going under the hammer.
‘We live in times of change right enough. My factory manufactured doors, all kinds and sizes of door, but not so many doors were needed all of a sudden, or my doors were no longer competitive, or I hit a rough patch on the production line, or I didn’t keep up with the times, or I didn’t advertise, or the designs were no good. The order books were suddenly empty. The salesmen took too many days off. They came in late. They sat at home watching television when they should have been out on the road. When I spoke to one of them about it he said he was earning enough already thank you very much so why should he try to bump up his income when the tax man would take the extra money? He’d got a spare time job serving cream teas at the local stately home, and his wife did bed and breakfast in the summer, and they got paid in cash so that they didn’t declare what they earned. So the order books were empty and I called the receiver in. My fault, if you think about it. Then my father died. He had a few shares in South African gold mines and when I sold ’em I bought this café.’
Though his story seemed banal, his complaints might have been justified. Dismal and I stayed by the counter. ‘Well,’ I said, ‘I have to go.’
When he rolled up his sleeve I actually thought he was going to start work. But he lit a cigarette. ‘Why can’t you be like Charlie over there? He’s never in a hurry.’
‘That’s because I’m on the dole.’ Charlie was a fair-haired blue-eyed relaxed sort of chap in his middle thirties. ‘Been on the dole seven years.’
I sympathised. ‘It must be awful.’
He looked up from his tea. ‘It’s a lot better than getting up at six every morning and going out into the rain and cold five days a week, month in and month out. I pushed loaded cartons from one department of the warehouse to another, but then they got fork-lift trucks and six of us got the push. I thought the end of the world had come when I couldn’t get another job, but I also saw that it was marvellous not having to go to work. I could do bits and bobs around the house, talk to my mates, go out on my bike, or sit in the public library reading dirty books. The dole’s a lovely system. If we got a few more quid a week we’d be in heaven. I often help here in the café and earn a few quid, and I don’t mind that because it don’t seem like work. And I vote Tory now, instead of Labour.’
I was aghast. ‘Tory?’
He laughed. ‘Sure. Think what the Tories have done for the unemployed. Got millions of us on the dole. All you hear them Labour bleeders go on about is getting us back to work. Back to work! They want us building motorways, I expect, though I’m sure that lot wouldn’t want to dirty their lily-white hands. If they ever did any work it was so long ago they don’t remember what it was like.’
He amazed me so much, I bought him a cup of tea and six cakes. ‘You’re a bit of a philosopher.’
That pleased him. ‘I never would have been if I hadn’t got on the dole. I’ve had time to think. Labour don’t want you to think. They think that if you do, you’ll vote Tory, and how right they are. Thinking’s always been the prerogative of the idle rich, but now it’s within reach of everyone, and it’s no thanks to Labour. The only time you’ll catch me voting Labour is when they promise to double the dole money and stop talking about getting us back to work. I only wish the Tories would give us more money, but I expect they will as soon as they can afford it.’
The light in his blue eyes changed intensity, an increase in candlepower that almost turned them grey. ‘I was thinking the other day what a nice place it would be if the whole world was on the dole. That’s the sort of future we ought to aim for. Work is the cause of all evil, and it’ll be heaven on earth when there’s no such thing. Universal unemployment is what we want, and England will be the envy of the world when we’ve brought it about.’
Weary as I was, I did my best to point out his errors. Most people were driven mad by being out of work, I told him, apart from the fact that they had to live in poverty. They lost their self-respect, and the respect of their children. They lost the respect of their wives. They became prematurely old. They sat at home wrapped in self-hatred, a feeling of uselessness paralysing them body and soul. They deteriorated physically, and in a year became unrecognisable to what they had been. The houses they lived in fell to pieces around them. Their wives left them and their kids were taken into care by social workers who’d been hovering around rubbing their hands for just such a thing.
‘That’s as maybe,’ he said, when I could say no more, ‘but my mates don’t think like that. As soon as they get the push they’re like Robinson Crusoe who’s just landed on that island after his shipwreck. They’re a bit dazed, but they start picking up the pieces and learning to live with what they’ve got. In no time at all, they’re happy, like me.’
A trio of white-faced young lorry drivers came in, and Dismal made a run for one in his capacity as a sniffer dog, but when threatened by a cowboy boot with glinting spurs, he ran after me to the door, changing his mind about whatever he knew to be in the man’s pockets. He was learning fast, and I sincerely hoped I would break him of such habits before getting to London.
‘Fucking dog,’ one driver shouted. ‘I’ll have it on fucking toast if it shows its fucking snout in here again.’ Such a crew must have cheered the place up no end, though I didn’t suppose bone-idle Charlie buttonholed them with his nirvana of unemployment as they shared their joints with him.
I only felt safe in the car. We steamed along the great dual carriageways of the A5, under streams of orange or white sodiums, with occasional traffic lights to break the monotony. To the south lay the Black Country, a desolate sprawl of industrial ruination and high-rise hencoops. Traffic multiplied, mostly private cars, though a fair number of HGVs were pushing on in both directions. I sometimes thought that most of the lorries and pantechnicons were empty — Potemkin pantechnicons in fact, whose drivers were paid to steam up and down the main roads to persuade visiting Japanese industrialists that the country was in better nick than it was.