His crocodile chops were ably managing a long crispy loaf with sheets of salami hanging out. I had to take mine to pieces, otherwise my jaws would come adrift. “You know I always eat on the assumption that you can never be sure where your next meal is coming from.”
“I suppose that’s why you stay so thin. But I have bad news for you, I’m afraid.” Problems kept you young, or so I had heard, and the next one coming up was how to get rid of Bill before turning off the motorway near Ancona to call on Sophie. I had memorised her address and pencilled the location in on the map. I pleasantly reflected that adventures with women had happened reasonably often in the last few weeks, with Frances my everloving wife first of all, then Claudine Forks the bereft Nottingham widow, followed by Sophie on the train, Marie in Greece, and Rachel on the ship. Now it was to be Sophie again. After checking through the list to make sure I’d left no one out I realised I’d almost forgotten what Sophie looked like, but supposed that when she opened the door with a welcoming smile I would know her well enough.
Bill swigged off the second cup of coffee, and on me picking up the third turned to a bottle of beer. “There’s no such thing as bad news for me,” he said.
“South of Ancona,” I told him, hoping he’d weep at the news, “I’m going off into the hills on my own. I’ve got a woman to see.”
He looked as if this was the best news for months. “That bint on the train you told me about? We can both see her.”
I didn’t swear, so that he would know I was serious. “No we won’t.”
“I promise to behave, and leave the field clear for you.”
She wouldn’t have anything to do with a scumbag like him, but I knew that if I dropped him on the motorway he would display his GB sign, which he’d stuck on the lapel of his jacket, and wait for Rachel’s father who, being a decent bloke, wouldn’t leave a smart-looking Englishman by the roadside. I wished I had never met him begging at Liverpool Street. “All right, we’ll stay together, but no hanky-panky, or I’ll cut you off without a crust.”
He tapped my hand. “It’s not that I’m after your woman. Why should I want to run you off? They’re all over the place. My only purpose in life is to see you safe to the White Cliffs of Dover and beyond, and make sure Moggerhanger’s powders don’t come to harm. If you tell him what a help I’ve been he might give me a job. I could do with a spot of work. I won’t have to do anymore begging then.”
You couldn’t discourage someone who needed employment, especially a friend from too long ago. We motored through one monsoon after another, water belting down like flak against a bomber. I was as anxious as a helmsman at his wheel, but kept the old ship ploughing on. When clouds moved aside near Pescara we saw the spectacular coast, and rivers with lushly wooded banks coming from the mountains, crossed by long viaducts. Tunnels under the connecting spurs were dim and narrow from the steering of a Roller, though I soon enjoyed whatever peril there was, Bill meanwhile telling stories of accidents he’d been in. “Some were so serious the cars were write-offs, but none of it was my fault.”
“After a night or two with Sophie we’ll drive fast to Switzerland, and get over the Alps.”
“No, Michael,” he said. “We won’t go that way, not with all that there is in the back. The Swiss will be sure to find it. Every cuckoo in the land will burst with laughter as it pops out of its clock and sees us being led away. We’ll make our way home through France, then there’ll be only one frontier to cross before the Channel. I’m doing another good turn telling you this. I know Moggerhanger said you should go home through Jugoslavia, but we don’t know what his motives were, do we? Maybe he doesn’t have any. He isn’t all that clued up nowadays, if you ask me. He’s getting old.”
I had wondered about that myself, but would age make him more cunning, or less? I turned off the autoroute and drove through a village. “By the way, I told Sophie I was Lord Blaskin, and that my chauffeur had gone down with appendicitis. I’ll have to say you recovered, and met me in Athens.”
He settled himself more comfortably, and with binoculars spied out the landscape of vines and mulberries on low hills like a cavalry colonel from his scout car. “I’ll back you up. Rely on me. If that’s the case, though, you’d better let me take over the car, or she won’t believe you.”
I didn’t want that, because though he could drive anything from a soapbox on wheels to a hundred-ton motorhome I couldn’t bear the thought of the gaffer’s pride and joy getting into someone else’s hands, not even Bill’s. “I’ve broken nearly all Moggerhanger’s rules on this trip, but the one I’ll stick to is not to let anybody else get at the wheel. If Sophie remarks on me driving I’ll tell her you’ve had eight bottles of beer since leaving the ship, and can’t be trusted.”
His reply came soon enough. “Michael,” he scoffed, “nearly all accidents are caused by people who haven’t touched a drop. And watch out for that little old man crossing the road, by the way. You know I can drive better when I’ve had a couple or two. I say, that looks a comfortable café up on the corner.” He belched. “I could do with another sandwich.”
I passed it. “There’s nowhere to park. Tell me what the map says.” “You’re a cruel bloody taskmaster, Michael.”
“So which way now?”
“Beyond the next little town we turn right and go up a hill. Another three kilometres, and the house should be on the left.”
Even after last night’s delectable bout with Rachel, and knowing I would be half dead on stepping out of the car, I was beginning to twitch for another cakewalk in Sophie’s velvet lining. “Stop by the roadside,” he said. “I want to check the map.”
I used the binoculars for a closer look: a typical Italian farmhouse on a low hill, almost surrounded by trees. Exactly as she had described it. A BMW, a Rover, and an old Fiat were parked outside, but I didn’t like the fact that every shutter was closed except one, which had a white towel hanging from the sill. Maybe she wasn’t there. She could be shopping in the nearest town. Or squatters had got in. Things didn’t seem right.
Bill went to the gate, and signalled that the name on the postbox was the right one. He came back. “If I go up on my belly with the gun I’ll have the place on our side of the line in two minutes.”
“Any unnecessary violence,” I said, “and I’ll have you put down.”
“Oh you are a hard man. I’ll stay in the car, then, if that’s your express wish.”
I drove up the track and, in the space available, did a three-pointer till the car faced roadwards, a wise manoeuvre in an unknown place. Bill got into my seat, while I walked until a heavy lion-headed knocker stared me in the face. I let it bang a couple of times, thinking the hinges needed a squirt of WD-40, when the door squeaked open like one in Castle Dracula.
A tall thin bloke in khaki shorts and singlet, with a raddled face and a pot belly, asked what I wanted. He had a spur of short grey hair on an otherwise bald head, and wore an earring, not the person I cared to know. Sophie, angled behind, put a finger to her lips, so I assumed him to be her husband.
“I’m Lord Blaskin,” I drawled, “wandering the area. Heard in town there was a house for sale this way. Pretty landscape, don’t you know? Be nice to find a bolt hole here.”
His suspicions dissolved like milk in a cup of tea. “Do you know of any place?” he asked Sophie, in a halfway civilised voice his appearance denied.
“I heard the Thompsons had notions of selling up, but I think the place went.”
“No problem,” I said. “We’ll go on with our exploring. It’s a pleasant enough pastime. So sorry to have troubled you.” Hopes crushed in a rubbish wagon, is how it was. If he wasn’t her husband he was some toerag the trollop had picked up on the motorway, who’d spun better tales than I had.