“No further. I don’t want you wandering to look for Noah’s Ark in Turkey, or vanishing into the poppy fields of Afghanistanley. Just Greece, you understand? I know what you can be like when you’ve got horse-power between your knees.”
“I’ll keep strictly to instructions, Lord Moggerhanger.”
“Too right you will. You can take a week going and a week coming back. All expenses will be remunerated, though I shall want an itemised account in copperplate script when you get back.”
It didn’t sound either legal or even above board to me. I knew he knew my thoughts on this so I made an attempt to find out in case he sniffed trickery up my sleeve. “Can’t you get Greek foodstuffs in Soho, or Camden Town?”
“Not the sort she wants. Nor the kind I want, either. It’s the genuine groceries she’s after, not fakeries out of a garden shed in the Midlands. And you know I’d do anything to satisfy the cravings of my dear wife Agnes. I’m nothing if not a family man. I hope you’re the same. Always hold on for dear life to your wife, because she’s the only person who’s more precious than yourself. You are still married, aren’t you? I like all my lads to have good domestic relationships. Even Kenny Dukes is going steady, or so he tells me. We’re hoping to marry him off soon, and I’ve promised to pay for a lavish spread in his local church hall. The only thing is that when he has kids I hope they don’t have such long arms. He’s a bloody freak.”
His slimy philosophical crap was so piscatorial that it encouraged me to try finding whatever deep meaning it concealed. “What if I get caught?”
“Michael, you know what I think about illegal immigrants? Make it legal. My opinion is that everybody should be allowed to come into this sceptred isle who wants to. There should be no passport controls of any kind, but at the same time not a penny of public money must be spent on them. After all, it’s my money, and maybe yours as well. Let them come in freely and make their own way with honest work, but with no help at all from government organisations. All I’m saying is don’t you dare contemplate trying to make a few hundred pounds by smuggling immigrants in in the back of the Roller. Forget it. I wouldn’t like it. That’s the only way you could get caught, by doing something like that. As for anything else while you’re in my employ, you’re covered by Arnold Killisick, the best lawyer in London. We’re all safe with him. I may be a lord, but I’m a democrat at heart, meaning that if any of my lads are in trouble they get the same lawyer as I do.
“Your journey to Greece will be easy because Alice had booked you and the car on the train as far as Milan, which will give you a head start. When you get to Greece you’ll do the shopping, then collect a few packages from a chap called Ulysses Klepht-Polati, or some such name. It’s all written down. Oh yes, there’ll also be a packet to deliver on passing Belgrade, otherwise you’ll have a successful run, I’m sure. Alice will put everything in writing. And you’ll come back to England through the port I’ll tell you to.”
The ratbag had me, but the smell of adventure was stuck so far up my nostrils I thought I was getting the flu again, which put me in a state of delightful irresponsibility.
“Leave in two days time,” he said. “Meanwhile you’re confined to the compound, because I don’t want anybody to know where you’re going. Understand?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Or I’ll brain you.” My back stiffened, and on noting it he went on: “Though only as a mater of speaking. If anybody defames me I’ll sue them to within an inch of their life. You know my passion for secrecy.”
“None better. And I share it,” which was true. “Nobody ever got a thing out of me that I didn’t want to tell them,”
He stood by the mantelshelf, as if to warm his arse at a non-existent fire. “I can see a lot of me in you, which I suppose is why I’ve taken such a shine to you, and been more patient with you than with anyone else who works for me. What I like about you is that you know how to think. I can almost hear thoughts moving in your brainbox, whereas with the others all I can hear is a roar of the deep blue sea. Can you imagine the likes of Kenny Dukes, or Toffee Bottle, or Cottapilly, or Pindary driving my Rolls Royce around the Continent, on the sort of job I’m giving you? Every time they came to a signpost they’d have to get out and read it close.”
He flattered me, and the mistake was I enjoyed letting him. “Alice will give you maps and currency, tickets as far as Milan, and any general information she thinks will be useful. I want you to call my personal number every evening on your arrival at a suitable hostelry, to let me know you’re still among the living. Another thing is: don’t drive after dark or before dawn. I set great store by my Rolls Royce, as you know, and I don’t want any mishaps. I’m sure Alice hasn’t left any stone unturned to speed you on your way. So go to your room above the garage now, and play clock patience, or read a book. You’ll find whisky in the locker behind your bed, as well as a few packets of peanuts and crisps to soak it up with. Whenever you feel like a meal all you have to do is come into the kitchen, and Mrs Blemish will fix you up.”
Chapter Seven
Jock the mechanic waved me out of the gate, a thumbs up with envy at my departure for what to him looked like a long holiday. I hoped it would be that way as well, because my only responsibility on the road would be to keep myself alive and the car unbumped, cautions built into me from birth.
With the inertial compass approximately set, I was off. May blossom was early, floated along the street and came to rest in drifts along the gutters, some settling on the windscreen like snowflakes. Threading onto the Uxbridge Road at seven on a Sunday morning I was in tune and twist to the way I felt, hardly any traffic to hinder me, so that twenty minutes later I stopped on Horseferry Road to buy the papers.
Throwing them onto the spare seat, I was off towards Lambeth Bridge, down to the Elephant, along the Old Kent Road, through New Cross, over Blackheath and, a few minutes later, shooting up Shooters Hill.
In a drifting calm, on auto pilot, I ate up the tasty miles as if with mustard on, not even a tune to whistle, the radio unswitched and, without rain, no wipers wiping. A couple of thousand miles into unknown territory, and my only duty was to care for Moggerhanger’s Rolls with my life because, as he had said the evening before, every scratch will cost a finger — yours. Though his threats were real enough — if he could catch me out — they were also as much to keep me in a state of high tension as to frighten me, assuming that a mind fine-tuned to a sense of danger was more able to carry out his mission without mishap. He needn’t have bothered. Nobody knew better than me how many mishaps could occur over a long distance, either going or coming, and that it was a matter of luck whether anything did or not.
Optimism drove me, the weather so good I didn’t even notice it, and I was soon on the outskirts of the town. Perhaps from overconfidence I couldn’t find a way into the harbour, my adrenaline not yet being at full spate. Maybe it was due to faulty signposting, or the fact that my intuition was warning me not to leave England on such a stunt but, no victim of superstition, all I had to do was another circuit around the one-way system to find my way in.
Trawling by the customs, a six-foot-eight pit prop with clipboard prominent came out of his command post and waved me to a stop. “Good morning, sir. Going for a spot of motoring to the mainland, are you?”
He wasn’t flagging anybody else, and I craved a woodsman’s axe to chop him down to size. “Only to Greece. I’ll be back in a fortnight.”
There was nothing on board for him to quibble at, as far as I knew, though I waited for him to give the tyres a kick with his winklepickers. He glanced at the back seats. In spite of Moggerhanger’s insistence that I confine myself to barracks for a couple of days before leaving I had gone out to buy things for my comfort, and for any emergencies on the journey: a bivouac tent, sleeping bag and groundsheet, a water container, mug, gas stove, tea coffee and biscuits, tins of sardines, and various tools. I went home while Frances was at the surgery and packed a suitcase of clothes. Everything was stowed in the boot, and the swivel-eyed get could turn it over and over for all I cared, because what was there to smuggle off this island that anybody in the rest of the world could possibly want? “Lord Moggerhanger thinks I deserve a bit of a holiday,” I told him.