“Alice,” he called, “come and meet Sidney Blood.”
“Who’s he when he’s at home?” the mardy cow shouted above all the traffic noise.
“She’s illiterate, really.” Dropshort leaned close. “She came through her education in the sixties with flying colours, hardly able to read or write. Her teachers were very pleased at their accomplishment. However, she can do the one thing good that matters, and because of that I saved her from getting half killed this morning.”
I could think of no better way to pass the time waiting for the AA man than to ask: “How was that?”
He guffawed — he really did. “When we came out of the hotel lift in Nottingham my wife Joan was waiting in the lobby, and went for Alice with her walking stick. Quite vindictive. Can’t think why.”
“The fucking bitch.” Alice became more friendly at overhearing her adventure retailed to a stranger, as if it gave her some importance in the world.
“My wife hit the woman next to her by mistake,” Dropshort said. “Alice was very adept at getting out from under.” He gave a dry ruthless laugh. “She’s a quick little trollop, thank the Lord. I pulled the stick off Joan, and broke it.”
“Sounds a real killpig.” I was sure Alice recognised the word, and if she didn’t she had no right to be where she was.
“Killpig?” His eyebrows, or what he had of them, went up.
“It’s a Sidney Blood expression. Means mayhem, a fracas, a real set-to, a fight to end fights, a hard bloody time in unforeseen circumstances.”
“I’m not waiting here all day.” Alice turned to me. “He’s the biggest fucking liar I’ve ever known. It was him as set his wife onto me. He’d told her where we’d be. He does things like that just to wind me up. ‘Life’s too boring, otherwise.’” She imitated him perfectly, and I wondered why she didn’t use that accent all the time, to hide every trace of the slum-dump she came from. “But I’ll show him whether it is or not. He hasn’t seen me when I really get going.”
“She’s an utter slut.” He spoke as if sorry I had to witness them together. “The roughest bit of rough I’ve ever had, but I love her, and I’m not letting her go. She keeps me fit, don’t you, darling?”
“You shut your fucking mouth. He’s such a posh fucker,” she said to me, “he thinks he can get away with everything. But not much longer with me he wont, the fucking long link of shit.”
“See what I mean?” He put his gloves back on, as if he might give her the pasting she deserved. But no: “Doesn’t she have a wonderful vocabulary? It’s perfect. What more could I want? She never puts a word wrong.”
“If you don’t get back in the car this minute I’ll start walking to Stamford,” she said, a wicked glint, “then some lorry driver will pick me up and rape me. He’ll chop me to bits in a wood, and it’ll be all your fault.”
He may have been a member of the aristocracy in his yearning for a woman like that, but there was no doubt at my belonging to the same club in wanting to sink my mutton dagger into her. In spite of her foul mouth she had the sort of lively dead common come-on I had been familiar with all through my youth. It would have felt like being seventeen again pulling her under a bush. A woman like her wouldn’t have lasted five minutes in Blaskin’s presence either. She got her hands at one of his wing mirrors, as if to try twisting it off, which jerked him to life. “If you do that you’ll get the biggest thrashing of your life.”
“Just you fucking try.” The twist of her ruby lips suggested a Pyrrhic victory if he did, and she laughed in his face when he didn’t. “Come on, I’m getting snatched in this wind. I want to get to that nice warm hotel at Stamford you told me about, and throw back a few whiskies.”
“Afraid I have to go.” He offered his hand for a goodbye touch. “Your AA chap should be along any minute. Alice,” he shouted brutally, “come and say goodbye to Mr Blood.”
She poked her head out of the window. “I’m Alice Newbold, and I live in Radford. See you in the Plough sometime, Sid. They’ve got good ale there. Tar-rar!”
He wagged his head. “It’s impossible to civilise her.”
I don’t think he tried very hard, since that wasn’t what he wanted her for. All I could do was wish him luck, as he crossed the traffic lane, missing a lorry by inches, as if the road was empty and he owned it anyway, then drifted towards the A1 at Grantham.
Ten minutes later the AA man came in a breakdown truck, and agreed with my diagnosis of a knackered clutch. “Needs replacing. I’ll load you up and take you to a depot near Nottingham that deals with this sort of car.”
Chapter Four
Away we went, me sitting so high in the cab that I saw a lot more of the countryside than from my low slung Picaro riding piggy-back behind. At the frontier of Robin Hood’s county a sign showed a man in Sherwood green holding a bow, a dying stag at his feet with the arrow in its throat.
The driver told me he was thinking of packing up his job in the AA and going to work for the Post Office. Everybody itched for a change in their lives, and who could blame them? Maybe something in the St. Vitus climate left no one satisfied, not even me.
I felt my cold coming back, as it usually did on the approaches to Nottingham. I dropped the car at a garage not far from my mother’s, and the manager told me to pick it up next day, providing I had a credit card and could pay three hundred quid. The AA man informed me that he wasn’t allowed to take tips when I offered him a fiver for a drink, so I said it was for his kids’ money box, and then he did.
I walked into my mother’s house without knocking. She lived in one of the few old terraces still standing in the area, and I found her at the kitchen stove boiling some cereal product from Peru. She wore purple trousers and a charcoal grey sweater, and multicoloured saucer-sized earrings like Catherine Wheels about to spin her off into what heaven I’m sure she couldn’t imagine. Her hair had no grey so I knew she had been to the dyers, or she’d done it over a bucket. She was close to sixty, though I didn’t know which side. “I’m glad you’ve come,” she said. “Have you got any fags?”
I took a carton of Chesterfields out of my bag. “I bought them from a smuggler this morning. Only don’t drop them in that mess of pottage, or you might make it tastier.”
She laid the smokes by, and resumed her stirring. “It might ginger me up. I’m thinking of going back to meat.”
“A good idea,” I said, “and that’s a fact.”
“I’m lively enough, though, don’t you fret.”
“Shall I go to Billy Balls the butcher and buy you a hundredweight of chops?”
“No, I’ll get some tomorrow — organic.”
“Do you have enough money?”
“As much as I want. Gilbert’s generous. He sends me a nice cheque every so often.”
“He told me he was missing you. Said he was dying to see you, only the other day. He talked about your romantic beginnings. He went all moony about what you used to get up to.”
“Moony? That selfish bastard? He’s as hard as teak. I don’t believe it.” She bent down for another smell at the disgusting stuff on the stove. “Are you keeping busy?”
“You know me. Never anything else.”
An overweight girl with a round face and straight mousey hair stood in the doorway. “This is Paula,” my mother said. “She keeps me busy and lively, don’t you, love?” She gave her a kiss on the lips. “I love her so much I almost wish she had a sister. Don’t I, pet? And you can keep your filthy man’s hands off her.”
She needn’t have worried. I was still besotted by Dropshort’s foul-mouthed beauty, till it occurred to me he hadn’t been Lord anything at all. People hardly ever being what they say they are, he was a cove who had pulled off a big bank robbery and, having been to acting class as a youth, and done a fair amount of time studying the subject as well as others in jail, he was living it up while he could, doing so well in the pose of a dissolute lord he almost had me fooled. I hoped he wouldn’t get pulled in by the police before reaching Stamford.