Confessions of a Driving Instructor

by Timothy Lea

  It is about ten o’clock when we get there and he flashes inside mumbling something about “call of nature”. I don’t know what kind of piss house they have in there but when he comes back there is a new spring in his gait and a faint whiff of Scotch around his chops. I don’t pay much attention but not more than half an hour later it is the side entrance of the Metropole and he has disappeared again. I am therefore not surprised when eleven o’clock finds us outside the Admiral Nelson and Cripps asks casually if I would fancy a quiet half of shandy or something. His “something” turns out to be a large Scotch and you don’t have to have an I.Q. of 150 to guess what he spends all his pocket money on.

  Marvellous, isn’t it? After all that bullshit from Cronk, I’m driving round with a chronic boozer who can’t last half an hour without having a snifter. Not that it seems to affect him. He looks just as docile and disinterested as he did when I first saw him.

  “You have to be a bit careful with the stuff, don’t you?” I ask him.

  “Oh yes. But it’s no problem with me. I just have a quick snort occasionally to keep my spirits up.”

  “How long have you been with Cronk?”

  “Oh, let me see, I suppose about five years. I knew him in the army, you know. He used to work for me then. Very conscientious chap, and behind the gruff exterior, exceptionally kind-hearted.”

  “What made you leave the army?”

  I can sense that this is a question he would have preferred me not to ask and for a second I wish I wasn’t such a nosey sod.

  “Oh, a number of reasons. I was getting a bit old for it. I felt I needed a change, one or two other things. You know how it is.”

  I don’t, but I hold back from telling him and we go on to talk about our respective digs and how his landlady’s coughing keeps him awake at nights and her cat gives him hay fever. All in all he is a bit of a sad case is Arthur Cripps.

  Lunch is taken in the Red Mullett and is mostly liquid as far as Arthur is concerned and by four o’clock I feel I know the pubs of Cromingham better than the test circuits we have been driving round.

  For all the booze he has put away he still seems his normal unexciting self but I am glad when he suggests that we call it a day and I drop him behind the Grand Hotel where no doubt another bar stool is waiting for his arse to polish it.

  A small seaside resort out of season is like an empty house. It goes to seed pretty quickly. The paint starts peeling, the signs start drooping, the waste paper baskets look as if they haven’t been emptied since the last visitor pulled out and the dirty postcards begin to turn yellow and peel at the edges. In another five months, the residents will probably start soaking their paint brushes in turps, but it seems a long time to wait.

  I park the car and wander around for a bit learning how to lean into the wind like the locals and comforting myself that the air is probably doing me a lot of good. Once you get away from the sea front and the centre of the town, the streets fall into orderly rows of detached bungalows with names like “Shangrila” and “Trade Winds” and they are shooting up like bean stalks. The turves have no sooner been laid in the gardens of Seaview Close than the developers are levelling the foundations for Cromingham Heights. Most of the residents that I can see look like newcomers to the district. Retired, a lot of them, but a few middle executive type families with dad probably working for “Python’s Pesticides” whose “factory in a country garden” is just outside the town. Good fodder for the E.C.D.S. all of them.

  I walk back past the closed cafes with their whitewashed windows, and dead bluebottles who never made it to the door in time, and take a turn round the pier. The old geezer who grabs my money looks surprised and irritated to see me and says they close in ten minutes. Through the rusty salt-eroded turnstiles and I listen to my footsteps thudding against the planks and watch the greeny brown water swirling thirty feet below me. It is difficult to imagine anyone coming here for a holiday. At the end of the pier is the lifeboat station and two or three anglers wrapped up like Egyptian Mummys and gazing unemotionally at the spots where their lines disappear beneath a choppy sea. I look round hopefully for some sign of a catch but there is only a tin of rather frayed-looking worms. It is funny, but though I don’t fish because I find it boring, I watch fishermen for hours. It’s the same with cricket.

  The wind is now blowing so hard that I wouldn’t be surprised if the whole pier broke away from its moorings and started to drift out to sea. I watch with child-like excitement as one of the fishermen reels in his line, but there is nothing on any of the five hooks—not even a worm. He glares at me if he suspects I might have had a hand in nicking them and I push off back towards the turnstiles. In the centre of the pier is—would you believe it?—the Pier Pavilion, which has apparently been entertaining the masses with Eddy Seago’s Summer Follies, produced by Arnold Begstein, in collaboration with Lew and Sidney Godspeed for Wonderworld Enterprises in conjunction with Mash International. This starred, not unnaturally, laugh-a-line Eddy Seago—star of T.V., stage and screen—which probably means he once appeared in a dog food commercial—Conny Mara, Ireland’s little leprechaun of song, and the “Three Rudolphos” Jugglers Extraordinary. They were supported by Lady Lititia and her talking dogs, a group called “Armpit”, which I recall once having a record that got into the top thirty when you could still fix the charts and “that maestro of melody, the ever popular Harvy Pitts at the electric organ.”

  Looking through the glass I can see the chairs lying just where they must have been left since the last audience stampeded for the exits. I wonder where they all are now, Eddy, Conny and the rest of them. Rehearsing for “Babes in the Wood” at Darlington probably, or working their fingers to the bone ringing their agents.

  Looking along the coast I can see the lights of another resort beginning to multiply in the fast-falling darkness. This must be Shermer and it occurs to me to have a quick look at it before finding out what special delicacy Ma Bendon is whipping up for supper. I don’t hold any hopes that Shermer is going to be any more exciting than Cromingham but you never know.

  Unfortunately, I never find out. Not then, anyway. I’m in the Morris and just pulling up at the junction with the coast road when a Viva screams up from nowhere and draws alongside. You must be in a hurry, I think to myself and I take a cool look at the bloke who is driving. From what I can see in the lamp light he is a good looking bloke with blond curly hair and neat, regular features. He looks like a college boy in an Amercian movie and has the same spoilt, arrogant expression playing round his chops. I take an immediate dislike to him and it must be mutual because he sneers back at me and edges his car into the main road before pulling away towards Shermer with tyres screeching.

  Once he is ahead I notice the sign on the roof: “The Major School of Motoring”. So! Someone in the same line of business and not over-friendly with it. Having cut me up at the road junction I expect him to zoom off but the berk now proceeds to dawdle along in front doing about 25 mph. There is a bend about sixty yards ahead but with nothing coming towards me it is perfectly safe to overtake so I put my foot down and pull out alongside the Viva. Immediately blondy accelerates to keep pace with me. At first I think it’s just my imagination but when I put my foot hard down he is still purring along inside me.

  Just at that moment a car’s headlights come stabbing round the bend towards me. I immediately step on the brakes but, like it’s my shadow, the Viva slows down too. The bastard is obviously trying to wipe me out. I am screaming curses which are nine tenths sheer bloody funk and the headlights are bearing down on me like the Empire State Building on wheels. The road is not wide enough for the three of us so I throw the wheel over and swing across the road, just missing the oncoming vehicle’s near side wing. I am so close I can smell what the driver had for dinner. I don’t have time to think it though, because the Morris smashes against the verge, bashing my head against the roof. There is a crack of splintering wood and a spray of water lashes the windscreen as my forehead
jerks forward to meet it. To my horror I feel myself sinking.

  I am panicking, trying to remember whether you let the car sink to the bottom and then open a door, or open a window first, or do neither, when the sinking stops. I raise my head, still mumbling with terror, and find that I am tyre-top deep in what seems to be a duck pond. The six white ducks hurriedly climbing out the other side would agree with me, anyway.

  Both the other cars have disappeared and I am alone with the darkness and what passes for silence in these parts, i.e. the sound of a fifty mile an hour gale tearing through the treeless wastes. I manage to get one of the doors open and scramble to the bank to find that I have crashed straight through a wooden fence. This feat does little to cheer me when I consider what damage has probably been done to the car. Now that I have proved to myself that I am definitely alive, fear is being replaced by a homicidal desire to get my hands on the blond bomber in the Viva and bash his face in. My job with the E.C.D.S. is probably up the spout and only revenge is left.

  Filled with this warming thought I hook my thumb viciously at a few passing cars but either they can’t see me, or they don’t want to know and I’m forced to squelch back to the nearest garage where I manage to chivvy up a breakdown van. I also take the opportunity to phone the police and report my version of the attempt on my life but when we get back to the scene of what they laughingly call the accident, I am surprised to find a Mini parked there and a man with a flashlight camera hovering expectantly.

  “Excuse me, but were you driving this vehicle?” he asks clicking away before I can say anything.

  “Yes I was. Who are you?”

  He is a nervy little sod hopping around like a jack rabbit and his eyes never stop moving.

  “Gruntscomb. East Coast Echo. You’re an instructor, are you? I don’t think I’ve seen you before?”

  “I’ve only just arrived. Look, I was driven off the road you know. Some bastard from the Major School of Motoring. At least, he was in one of their cars.”

  “Really? Very lucky to be alive, aren’t you? Have you been instructing long?”

  “I’ve just started. I’m under licence.”

  “Oh.” Gruntscomb scribbles something in a little black note book. “Got your L-plates up have you?”

  “You could put it like that.”

  “Look, would you mind getting back in the car again. It would make a great photograph.”

  “No.”

  “Oh, good. Hop in then and—”

  “I mean yes, I would mind. It’s embarrassing enough as it is.”

  I wish I had not said that because Gruntscomb writes something else in his little black book.

  “O.K. Just as you like. Well, thanks. See you around.”

  He snaps his notebook shut and is gone.

  It takes about ten minutes to winch out the Morris and in all of that time I’m waiting for the police to show up and even wondering if I shouldn’t have left the car where it was until they got there. But the boys in blue don’t put in an appearance, and I am back inside the Morris trying to make the engine turn over. It must be wetter than a mother of the bride’s handkerchief because it splutters a bit and then refuses to make a sound.

  “It’ll be dried out by the morning,” says the breakdown man, cheerfully. “You don’t want to drive it now, anyway, because you don’t know what else might be wrong with it. It needs a thorough overhaul.”

  So I’m forced to sit beside him and listen to his harrowing tales of limbs strewn across the road and cars full of courting couples plunging over cliffs whilst the Morris bobs along behind like a fat minnow on the end of a fishing line. My mind is working overtime on what Cronk is going to say and I can see his face swelling up and exploding like a big red balloon.

  I hope to God there isn’t too much damage.

  I tell the breakdown man that there will be a few bob in it for him if he can get the garage working on the car first thing in the morning and push off back to my lodging with my tail between my legs like a barrel bung.

  It is half past nine when I get there and Mrs. Bendon is showing signs of both alarm and irritation.

  “There you are!” she exclaims. “I was getting quite worried about you. Been having a few drinks, have you? I suppose you realise your supper is quite ruined. Lovely piece of fresh mackerel, too. I’d be grateful if you could let me know if you’re going to be in late for meals. I did say half past seven and it’s not easy keeping food hot without it drying up. I hope you understand. I don’t want to start laying down rules, but—”

  “I had an accident,” I say. “Someone forced me off the road.”

  “You were driving?”

  “Yes. I wasn’t instructing. I was going to have a look at Shermer.”

  “Well, that was something. Is the car all right?”

  “I don’t know. It went straight through a fence and into a pond. It doesn’t look too bad.”

  “Gracious me. You’re lucky to have escaped alive. You are all right, are you?”

  After that, she can’t do enough and I gobble down her mackerel while her eyes roam over me as if expecting parts of me to start dropping off. It’s like being watched by a cat when you are opening a tin of salmon.

  “That was very nice,” I say, wiping my mouth on the patterned paper serviette she has thoughtfully provided.

  “Thank you, dear. I’m afraid there’s not much to follow, but I’ve got some nice crisp Coxes.”

  “An apple would be very nice.”

  “Would you like some coffee afterwards?”

  “No, thanks, don’t bother.”

  “It’s no bother.”

  ‘No, thanks. It might keep me awake.”

  “That’s right. You don’t want to lose your beauty sleep. Though you’ve got nothing to worry about. Not like me. I need every second.”

  I am obviously expected to say something and I don’t disappoint her.

  “Come off it! You’re a very handsome woman. I bet you’ve got every bloke in town chasing you.”

  “A few as shouldn’t, but not everyone by a long chalk. You sure about that coffee?”

  “Yes, thanks.”

  “There’s one of those ‘Plays for Today’ on the telly if you’d like to look at that.”

  The truth is that I am thinking about that heap of twisted metal sitting in the garage and I am finding it difficult to concentrate on anything else. Even the sight of Mrs. B.’s rich, ripe, round arse rearing up at me as she rummages at the bottom of the linen basket is hardly enough to divert my thoughts from the wrath to come tomorrow.

  “I think I’ll turn in,” I say. “I am feeling a bit shaky. Is it all right if I take a bath?”

  “Of course, dear. The blue towel is yours.” She stands up and smooths down the front of her sweater so that her breasts lunge out towards me like they are on springs. Such is my pitiful condition that I hardly notice them.

  “Thanks.”

  I pad upstairs and savour the unaccustomed luxury of a bath. This was one feature of gracious living that Scraggs Road did not offer, and I supplement the ecstasy by covering myself in Mrs. B.’s talcum powder.

  No sooner am I tucked up in bed than there is a knock on the door and Mrs. B. comes in before I can say “Get your knickers off”—not that I feel like saying it, anyway. She is carrying a tray and wearing a pink fluffy dressing-gown which presumably has a nightdress underneath it. I say ‘presumably’ because all I can see are the Bendon boobs lurching towards me again like a flesh Etna erupting.

  “I thought you might like a mug of Ovaltine,” she says. “It helps you sleep, you know.” She is wearing that perfume again and it doesn’t take any prisoners, I can tell you! By the cringe! When she sits down on the edge of the bed, I feel I am being anaesthetised.

  “You shouldn’t have bothered, really you shouldn’t,” I say—and then I notice she has started sniffing. It must be her talc she can smell. God knows how, with the pong she is giving out.

  “You naughty boy,�
�� she says, all skittish like. “You’ve been at my Rose Blossom, haven’t you?”

  Before I can say anything she leans forward and flicks open the front of my pyjamas. “Where have you put it all?” she says, running her finger down my chest. Most of it is between my toes and at her present rate of progress it won’t take her long to get there. Normally I would have her into bed quicker than you can say ‘Eric Robinson’ but tonight I just don’t feel like it. I can’t forget the bloody Morris and what I am going to say to Cronk in the morning.

  “Sorry,” I say. “I won’t do it again.” I spring back against the pillow and pull my pyjama jacket together. “I’ll buy you some more talc.”

  Mrs. B. takes her rebuff coolly and shakes her head.

  “You’re a funny boy,” she says. “Don’t bother about the talc. There’s plenty more where that came from.” She stands up and puts the tray down on the bedroom table. “Make sure you put the mug back on the tray. It leaves a ring otherwise. Goodnight.”

  “Goodnight. And thanks.”

  She goes out and I am left listening to the sea and the wind. They don’t sound so loud tonight. Maybe I am getting used to them.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  “Oh, it doesn’t do you justice, luv,” says Petal. “I’d hardly have recognised you. They’re beasts, those reporters, you know. They just don’t care about people’s feelings. All they want is a story.”

  Petal—real name, Peter Flowers—is about five foot six low, with dyed blond, razor cut hair, and is wearing a white safari jacket with purple silk scarf, blue towelling trousers that cling as if soaked in water, and dinky little brown wet-look shoes with enormous butterfly buckles across the insteps. He looks as out of place in the front office of the E.C.D.S. as Sammy Davis Junior at a Ku Klux Klan rally. Despite that, he is one of my fellow instructors.