“If I ever pass him on the street,” George said, “and he’s at death’s door, I’ll kick him in.”
Even I’d never do that. Luckily, we were bypassing Grantham. “I’m going to put you off here, because I take the A52 for Nottingham.”
“Oh, thank you very much,” he said, too snottily for my liking. “That’s kind of you. Can’t you get me as far as Newark at least?”
I set the hazard lights going on the slip road. “I’d like to, but I’m in too much of a hurry.” I sensed what was coming, though his pockets must have been full of tin, if it was true he’d been working for a farmer in the Fens. “Can you spare a couple of quid?” he said, “so’s I can have a coffee and bun at the next service station?”
Maybe he wasn’t a student, just bumming around the country in the traditional Delphick fashion. I all but pushed him onto the asphalt. “You’ve already had a free ride.”
“Twenty measly miles. I expect that’ll make you feel like a Good Samaritan for a week, but if you give me a few quid you can feel chuffed for a fortnight and get written up in the Bible.”
“Fuck off.” All the Delphicks had a good patter. “Next time I see you on the road I’ll run you over.”
His curses didn’t bear thinking about. Should I give Blaskin a rundown on the trip he could sort them out. “I hope three of your tyres drop off at the same time,” was the most polite of his sallies.
I drove up the ramp and onto the A52, the smell of Nottingham already in the air, not so much black puddings and Woodbine smoke as drifts of curry shot through with whiffs of hard drugs. I decided not to pick up any more autostoppers, especially after searching the so-called glove compartment for a cigar and noticing that the small box of Belgian chocolates for my mother had gone missing. It was hard not to spin round and collar that prime specimen of the Delphick breed, and throw him under the wheels of an oncoming lorry loaded with a hundred tons of gravel, but it was no use trying to reverse bad luck, or worse judgement. The thieving bastard would go to hell in his own way, though I hoped I’d meet him again one day and kick him into the fires.
The dual carriageway coming up was a death trap created by malicious road planners who went everywhere by pushbike and made it their life’s work to kill or maim motorists, because it was only a couple of hundred yards long. I wanted to get by a lorry going at thirty miles an hour and belting out diesel smoke, expecting my sporty little Picaro to make it easily.
For some reason the car lost power, and I thought my time had come. I almost crushed the accelerator through the floor, but there was no boost, so I got back into the inner lane because a shit-coloured banger was right behind me. Even then I could hardly keep up in the dual carriageway stakes, managing thirty for a while, the clutch responding less and less to my prayers, till it flopped so loose it wouldn’t work at all, no doubt knackered by congested London traffic. The car had recently come back from a full service, so I should have known something would go wrong, as I peddled it into a lay-by just before it expired.
Only two years old, at least it had saved me from death. I sat for a moment to reflect, lit a cigar to calm myself, feeling as if in a boat on a salty river without oars or engine, going nowhere, the familiar bereft situation when a car packed up on you.
I upended the bonnet, though didn’t need a mechanic to know that the clutch had gone. Lorries and cars went inches by, causing such shudders that I feared my fragile tin vehicle would be blown over the hedge, or pulled along in the slipstream to be played with by a couple of white vans along the dotted white line. My mother expected me soon after lunch, though a little lateness wouldn’t trouble her. All I had to do was call the AA and get back on the road. The bonnet up was a flag calling for assistance, but the traffic flow continued, no one giving a toss for me. I had visions of camping for a month in the hedge bottom and living on slices of fried turnip poached from the fields. I’d sleep in the dilapidated car till the battery no longer worked my shaver, till I ran out of cigars and matches, till my clothes needed washing and my hair was too long — then I would walk away.
A Silver Cloud glided from the opposite direction, barely missing a black van on its way over, winkers flashing like lighthouse beacons. When snout to snout with my Picaro pal a tall thin-as-a-beanpole man in his fifties with a somewhat kippered face, wearing a yellow pullover, cloth cap, and smoking a large curved Peterson, got out and looked at my engine: “In trouble?”
His throat spoke more than his lips, but I thanked him for the enquiry. “My clutch has gone bang, so I’ll have to call the AA. There’s a farm up the road, and I was about to go and ask for the use of their phone.”
“Edward, why have we stopped?” a woman called from his car.
He poked his head inside. “Chap in distress, that’s why.”
“Oh, bollocks!” I was glad she came out because it gave me the chance to look at a pouting mouth I so wanted to kiss that it brought me back to life and hope, red cardigan over a thin black sweater moulding lively little breasts I longed to get my hands over. She wore a red skirt it was all I could do not to lift, and black stockings I yearned to roll down, at least as far as her ankles. Black hair brushed back from a high forehead was tied by a ribbon, and I wondered how much of her nakedness it would cover if allowed to flow like Lady Godiva’s. “We’ll never get to Stamford if we stop for every deadbeat whose car’s on the blink.”
His laugh showed stained teeth as he pull off his leather gloves. “Ignore her. It’s my car, and I’m the driver.”
Her long nails were painted red, all death and love, and I thought she was going to vandalise his car — then mine — by scratching the paintwork. “I want to get to a hotel so’s we can fuck some more.”
“All in good time, my dear.” He turned to me. “I’ll call the AA on my radio telephone. Won’t take more than a shake,” which, after I’d flipped my card out and given the number, it didn’t, me spelling details through the window, while his girlfriend stepped up and down the lay-by careful not to go up to her ankles in sludge. “They’ll be here in about forty minutes,” he said.
I offered a cigar, and told him my name. “I’ll never forget your kindness. I’m off to see my aged and widowed mother in Nottingham. Who do I have the privilege of being eternally grateful to?”
“John Dropshort,” he said in his upper class drawl. “Lord Dropshort, actually, of Dropshort Manor.”
I used to pass the place on bike rides up the Trent as a youth, sometimes climbing over a wall into one of the orchards, to be chased off by a gardener, though once I got close enough to see the big house covered in ivy, and people playing croquet on the lawn. “I know it. A fine old pile.”
“What sort of thing do you do?” He pulled his cap straight, though it wasn’t askew. “You know, to earn a living?”
“I write novels.” He deserved to know I was more interesting than a superannuated advertising copywriter. “Under the pseudonym of Sidney Blood.”
He stood up into even more than a ramrod. “Oh, but he’s awfully good. I have a few titles in my library — on a back shelf, of course.”
“Thank you.” A touch of modesty in the right place always impressed. “I’m only sorry I don’t have a copy in the car, but when I’m back at my country cottage I’ll send you one, signed personally.”