Like many an artist of any sort, I found that it was to my own self alone that I could admit to the level I’d reached in my trade. It was also thanks to my uncle Ron’s embargo on arrogance that I let the things I made achieve birth without trumpets.
That the existence of the tape explaining how to make the necklace was in common knowledge among jockeys in the changing rooms didn’t trouble me. I’d made it myself. It had my voice and hands on it, describing and demonstrating step by step what to do. I’d recorded it the way my uncle Ron had taught me in my teens. The actual gold necklace I’d made was in my bank, where I normally kept the tape as well. I’d better check on that, I supposed. I’d lent the instruction tape to Martin and didn’t care if he’d shown it to anyone else, although I dearly wished he had returned it before it disappeared, along with all the others from his den.
I made a fairly brisk return to the end of the walk to find Jim striding up and down again and trying to warm his fingers. I thought perhaps he might not want to double the experience on the following day, but to my surprise, he agreed. “Tom Pigeon’ll set his dogs on me if I don’t,” he said. “He phoned me just now in the car to check on you.”
I swallowed a laugh. I prized those bodyguards, not resented them.
Jim apologized for not being in the same class as Worthington and Tom at kickboxing.
“I can bash heads against walls,” he said.
I smiled and said that would do fine.
“I didn’t know anything about you when I picked you up,” Jim confessed. “I thought you were some useless sort of git. Then Tom tells me this and that on the phone and where Tom says he’ll put his fists, you can count on mine.”
“Well, thanks,” I said weakly.
“So where do we go tomorrow?”
I said, “How does Bristol grab you? A hospital area, best of all?”
He smiled broadly, transforming his face in one second from dour to delighted. He knew his way around Bristol. Up Horfield Road we would find a hospital, or on Commercial Road down by the river. No problem at all. He drove an ambulance there one year, he said.
Jim said to count him out when it came to fists or feet, but no one could catch him in a car. We shook hands on it, and I acquired bodyguard number three, one who could slide around corners faster than Formula One.
Jim took me home and, apparently on Tom Pigeon’s urging, came indoors with me and checked all ten rooms for uninvited occupants.
“You need a smaller pad,” he judged, finishing the inspection of the window locks. “Or...” — he looked sideways — “a swarm of children.”
Catherine arrived at that moment on her motorbike. The driver gave her a leer, and I had to explain... a swarm of children. Police Constable Dodd seemed not to think it a bad idea.
Much amused, the driver left. Catherine fussed over my fresher crop of trouble and said she’d been bored by the class reunion from registration to wrap.
I said, “Next time ditch the boredom and come home.”
The words slid out as if on their own. I hadn’t intended to say “home.” I’d been going simply to offer the house as a refuge, I explained. She nodded. It was later, holding her in bed, that I thought of Sigmund Freud and his tell-tale slip.
Bristol was wet with drizzle.
My driver — “Call me Jim” — was short and stout and pronounced himself shocked that I preferred quiet in the car to perpetual radio.
Quite reasonably he asked where we were going exactly in the city. To find a phone book, I replied, and in the yellow pages singled out Avon Paradise Tours without trouble. They advertised that they operated adventures throughout Cornwall, Devon and Somerset and all points to London.
Jim, with his ambulance memory, more useful than any paper map, drove us unerringly to their lilac headquarters and with a flamboyant gesture drew the busy bus depot to my attention like a rabbit from an abracadabra top hat.
Once they understood what I was asking, the women in the Avon Paradise Tours office were moderately helpful but reluctant to say too much in case they broke house rules.
I did understand, didn’t I?
I did.
They then opened the harmless floodgates and told me all.
On Tuesdays members of a Bristol area Health Clubs Association went on a scenic bus tour to the Hollerday Phoenix House nursing home in Lynton for medical checkups and advice on healthy living. Doctor Force, who ran the clinic because he lived in Lynton, was paid jointly by the health clubs and Avon Paradise Tours for his one day’s work per week. After extra consultation together, the office staff admitted they’d been told Doctor Force had been “let go” (given the sack, did I understand?) by the research lab he used to work for.
Which research lab? They didn’t know. They shook their heads in general, but one of them said she’d heard he’d been working on illnesses of the lungs.
Another phone book — listing all things medical — borrowed from the Avon Paradise ladies, had me trying all the remotely possible establishments, asking them via Paradise Tours phone if they knew a Doctor Force. Doctor Force? Unknown, unknown, unknown. The forever unknown Doctor Force had me looking out of the window at the distant sheen of the River Avon at high tide and wondering what to try next.
Illnesses of the lungs.
Check stubs. A lot of zeros. The payee... Bellows. In Martin’s handwriting, it had meant nothing to Bon-Bon and nothing to me.
There wasn’t any listing for Bellows in the Bristol area phone book, nor had Directory Inquiries ever heard of it.
Martin, though, had written BELLOWS boldly in unmistakable capital letters.
Lungs were bellows, of course.
My mind drifted. Rain spattered on the window. The ladies began to fidget, implying I’d overstayed my time.
BELLOWS.
Well... Maybe, why not?
Abruptly I asked if I might borrow their office telephone again and with their by-now rather grudging permission I spelled out Bellows in phone dial numbers, which resulted in 2355697. I punched them in carefully. There was nothing to lose.
After a long wait through maybe a dozen rings I was about to give up, when a brisk female voice hurriedly spoke, “Yes? Who is that?”
“Could I speak to Doctor Force, please,” I said.
A long silence ensued. I was again about to disconnect and call it a waste of time when another voice, deep and male, inquired if I were the person asking for Doctor Force.
“Yes,” I said. “Is he there?”
“Very sorry. No. He left several weeks ago. Can I have your name?”
I wasn’t sure how to answer. I was beginning to learn caution. I said I would phone back very soon, and clicked off. To the Paradise ladies’ curiosity I offered only profound thanks and left promptly, taking Jim in tow.
“Where to?” he asked.
“A pub for lunch.”
Jim’s face lightened like a cloudless dawn. “You’re the sort of customer I can drive for all day.”
In the event he drank one half pint of cola, which was my idea of a good hired driver.
The pub had a pay phone. When we were on the point of leaving I dialed BELLOWS again and found the male voice answering me at once.
He said, “I’ve been talking to Avon Paradise Tours.”
I said, smiling, “I thought you might. You probably have this pub’s public phone booth’s number in front of your eyes at the moment. To save time, why don’t we meet? You suggest somewhere and I’ll turn up.”