Screwtop Thompson

by Magnus Mills

  The snow had by now lost its charm for us, so instead we opted to stay indoors for the day. Martin suggested a game of snakes-and-ladders, to which my brother and I both agreed, and when Conker arrived he offered to make up a foursome. Before play could begin, however, there was a matter to settle. As Martin reached for the dice, Conker knocked him down and pinned him to the floor. Then my brother and I did our very best to screw his head right off.

  ∨ Screwtop Thompson ∧

  8

  They Drive by Night

  It was a dark and stormy night, with the threat of rain moving rapidly in from the west. I glanced along the road, hoping that at any moment a pair of suitable headlights would appear.

  Two minutes passed.

  Nothing.

  There were very few cars on the road this evening, and I hadn’t set eyes on a van since about half past seven. The occasional vehicles that did go by all seemed to be making local journeys only. They rumbled past in a stately way, their drivers glancing casually at the lone figure standing by the roadside, and then disappeared into the gloom.

  “Come on,” I murmured to myself. This was the worst day’s thumbing I’d had for a long while, and it was beginning to get to me. Normally such a trip would take five or six hours at the most, yet on this occasion I’d been on the move since early morning and still had over a hundred miles to go. If I didn’t get a ride very soon I was going to be stuck here for the night. And it was about to start raining.

  A gust of wind tore through a clump of nearby trees and rushed across the fields pursuing a flurry of late-autumn leaves. Then, as it faded away, I heard another sound: a faint roar in the distance like a great beast labouring under an enormous burden. My ears pricked up, and a moment later a bloom of artificial light appeared between the converging hedgerows. A lorry was coming!

  There were no street lamps here, so I’d positioned myself near to some reflective posts at the beginning of a lay-by. Hopefully this would help the driver spot me in good time, and give him plenty of opportunity to pull over. As the vehicle approached I saw that it was an eight-wheeler, its load hidden beneath a great tarpaulin and roped down on all sides. I stuck out my thumb.

  A whistle of air brakes told me he was stopping, so I shouldered my bag and watched as the lorry veered into the lay-by and came to a noisy halt. Then I ran quickly up to the cab door on the passenger side, where a window was being wound down. A man’s head emerged. He was wearing a woolly hat.

  “Want a lift?” he yelled. He had to yell because of the racket the lorry was making. The whole cab seemed to be shaking with the motion of the engine, which clamoured incessantly beneath the rattling bonnet.

  “Yes please!” I yelled back. “How far are you…?”

  “Eh?” interrupted the man, thrusting his head even further out of the window.

  “Going south?” I tried.

  “South?”

  I nodded and his head disappeared. Then the door swung open and I climbed up. To my surprise the man turned out to be not the driver but the driver’s mate, an occupation I thought had disappeared decades before. He leant back and with some difficulty I squeezed past him into the middle seat.

  The driver sat behind the wheel grinning across at me. He, too, wore a woolly hat.

  “Thanks!” I shouted to him above the din. It was just as noisy inside the cab as outside, or if anything even noisier.

  “You in alright?” he bellowed, jamming the lorry into gear. This involved moving my right knee out of the way, since it was pressed up against the gear stick. I complied and we pulled away just as some large drops of rain began to fall on the windscreen. Second gear required another knee movement, as did third, and not until we got into fourth was I able to relax my leg. The catseyes lit up on the road ahead, and I sat back in my seat thankful to be moving once more.

  The noise made by the engine had now built up into a steady drone, augmented by the roar from the exhaust stack, which seemed to be mounted somewhere close behind us. Because of all this din I expected conversation within the cab to be kept to a minimum, but after a short while I realised that the driver was speaking to me. I strained to hear him, but only caught the end of his sentence, which sounded something like, “Ease parts then?”

  “Just passing through really!” I replied. “I’m on my…”

  “You what?” he said, cutting me off. His ears were hidden beneath his woolly hat.

  I raised my voice. “I said I’m on my way home for a few weeks!”

  “Eh?” said the man on my left, inclining his head towards me. For the last few moments he’d sat quietly gazing through the windscreen, but now his reverie had been disturbed and he peered at me in an enquiring way.

  “I was just telling your friend I’m on my way home for a few weeks!”

  A look of puzzlement crossed his face as he deciphered the words. Then he nodded vigorously. “Chance would be a fine thing!”

  “You what?” said the driver, leaning across.

  “He says a chance would be a fine thing!” I explained.

  “Oh yes!” he agreed, after giving the remark some thought. “Yes, indeed it would!”

  The rain was coming down heavily now. It drummed on the roof and did battle with a pair of very ill-matched windscreen wipers which had been switched on shortly after I came aboard. Each wiper had its own very distinct mode of operation. The one on the passenger side swished from left to right with short, violent flicks, while the other scraped irregularly back and forth in long, languid movements that only served to move the rainwater around, rather than actually get rid of it. In consequence the driver had a broad but rather dim view of the road while his mate could see clearly but only through a very narrow segment. It occurred to me that between them their field of vision was probably quite adequate, and I wondered in an idle way if this was the reason they operated as a pair.

  Certainly they had all the makings of a ‘team’. For a start, the two of them were of very similar appearance, both wearing a donkey jacket as well as the woolly hat I mentioned before. They each had curly hair and thick bushy sideboards, and identical accents which placed them from the north-west, though I couldn’t say exactly where. Both driver and mate seemed equally bent on pressing forward with the journey despite such atrocious weather conditions, their shared concentration evident as they stared intently at the road ahead.

  When it came to verbal communication, however, there was a problem. The inside of that cab was one of the loudest places I’d ever been, yet my two companions continually tried to discuss our progress, exchanging comments on every bend, puddle or similar hazard that we encountered. This would have been alright if either had been prepared to listen to what his partner was saying. Instead, the pair of them constantly interrupted one another with shouts of “Eh?” or “You what?”

  At one point we passed a sign warning of a particularly steep hill approaching, and the driver began the process of selecting low gear, a noisy operation that entailed much revving of the engine and stamping on the clutch pedal. While I deftly adjusted the position of my knee in relation to the gear stick, his mate chose the moment to make a remark about the weather.

  “Looks like this rain’s…!”

  “You what?” yelled the driver.

  “I said it looks like this rain’s setting in for the night!”

  From my place in the middle seat I could only just hear what was said. Therefore I suspected the driver had picked up nothing at all. Nonetheless I could see that he was about to attempt a reply, so I did my best to lean back out of the way.

  “What’s getting in?” he shouted across me.

  “Eh?” replied his mate.

  “You said something was getting in!”

  “Yes!” came the reply. “For the whole night, I shouldn’t wonder!”

  They both glanced towards me, apparently to seek my opinion on the matter, so I gave a judgemental nod of agreement and the pair of them appeared quite satisfied.

  Most of th
e time we had this road completely to ourselves. Occasionally, however, a blurred set of lights would struggle past going the other way, indicating that we weren’t the only people trying to travel in such dreadful weather. The rainwater was now practically bouncing off the tarmac, with great surges of spray being thrown up by our wheels as we ploughed southwards through the darkness.

  After another mile or so a movement ahead and to the left caught my eye. Twirling round and round in the wind was a revolving sign that marked the entrance to a transport café. On top of it was a metal flap bearing a single word: CLOSED. Next moment we’d passed it by, and as the deserted roadhouse disappeared behind us I realised I hadn’t eaten for hours. I’d managed to buy a box of individual fruit pies and a carton of milk round about four o’clock, but since then I’d had to concentrate so hard on getting a ride that I’d completely forgotten about food. Now my hunger was returning with a vengeance, and I felt a rush of disappointment as it dawned on me that all the cafés were more than likely shut for the night.

  Fortunately my two companions were more familiar with this road than I was, and the CLOSED sign triggered off a conversation between them about when and where we were going to stop and eat. This was carried out in the normal way, with many interruptions of “You what?” and “Eh?” but stuck as I was between them I was able to learn quite a lot about our prospects for getting a good meal, or ‘bait’ as they called it.

  Apparently there was a choice of two places. The first was an establishment known as The Tiger Lily, which, despite its name, had no connection whatsoever with China or Chinese cuisine. This came as a relief as my appetite was veering strongly towards steak-and-kidney pie and chips, rather than noodles. The Tiger Lily, it seemed, was renowned amongst lorry drivers (and their mates) as being the place to get a meal quick and cheap at any time of night. It never closed, which was presumably the reason its proprietor Charlie never had time to shave, bath or even wash. My two comrades spent a considerable amount of time exchanging jokes about Charlie’s bodily hygiene. All the same they felt a certain bond of loyalty towards the man because they’d known him since before ‘the accident’. What exactly had happened wasn’t clear, but as I sat listening I began to form a picture of a one-armed (or perhaps one-legged) cook attempting to manage an all-night café single-handedly while wearing a heavily-stained apron. Privately I hoped that The Tiger Lily would not be our next port of call.

  The alternative, I soon discovered, was a commercial restaurant called Joy’s, run by a woman of the same name. This Joy apparently served up the most delicious meals imaginable, in the cleanest possible conditions, but from what I could gather ruled her customers with a rod of iron. Most of the lorry drivers on this route were actually afraid of her. Not only did she make them wipe their feet as they came in the door, but she forbade anyone from buttering their bread on the table rather than the plate, or from stirring sugar into their tea with the wrong utensil. She was a former beauty who’d had several husbands, all of whom were known personally to my two friends, but all of whom were now dead.

  “Very harsh woman!” concluded the driver at the end of a long debate. Then he remembered that Joy’s was always closed on Thursday nights when she attended her Highland Dancing Club.

  “It’ll have to be The Tiger Lily!” he announced.

  After another twenty miles or so a glowing light appeared at the roadside, and a moment later we were turning in. As the lorry’s engine fell silent it struck me that these two men would at last be able to hold a conversation without each having to yell at the top of his voice.

  Yet ten minutes later, as they both sat munching their pies, mushrooms, chips and peas, neither of them uttered a single word.

  ∨ Screwtop Thompson ∧

  9

  Half as Nice

  Auntie Pat had enjoyed a rich and colourful past, although she probably hadn’t enjoyed it quite as much as she should have. Nowadays she preferred the trappings of an ‘ordinary’ existence. Accordingly, when she popped in for a cup of tea she seemed just like a normal auntie: she was pleasant, humorous and without fail considered the needs of others before her own. True, she was very attractive and shapely. Even as youngsters we could see that. Yet nobody would have guessed that she had once been famous. During the liberated decade she was a member of the pioneering all-girl vocal group, The Katkins, who’d had four top-twenty hits in a row. Following that she’d gone on to be one of the most in-demand session singers in the country, appearing on numerous well-known recordings. In other words, Auntie Pat had tasted stardom. In recent years, life had become much quieter.

  She wasn’t our real auntie, by the way. She just happened to live nearby, and Auntie Pat was what we’d always called her. Born Patricia Elspeth Stephens, she was known throughout the world of pop music by her stage name, “Peeps’ (later changed temporarily to ‘Peppy’). Sometimes she’d come round while we were watching Top of the Pops, and occasionally they would show old black-and-white clips from years gone by. Suddenly, smiling for the cameras, would be a youthful Auntie Pat with her co-performers, instantly recognisable by their trademark ‘pile it high’ hairstyles. Also the shortest skirts imaginable. Their hits all used the same template: songs about loneliness that you could dance to. They also shared a common theme. Their first disc was ‘BABY, COME RUNNING BACK TO ME’, a minor triumph which only just scraped into the chart at number nineteen. It was enough to attract the public’s attention, however, and they quickly followed up with ‘BABY, COME BACK SOON’. This did much better, as did the seminal ‘HOW LONG, BABY, HOW LONG?”.

  There then ensued some dissent within the group as they began to squabble about the musical direction they were taking. It was the usual problem: one of the girls (not Auntie Pat) wanted to be recognised as leader of the outfit, rather than as merely one third of a trio. Only after several months had passed did they release ‘HE CAME AND WENT’. It got as high as number twelve and paid the bills, but the end was now clearly in sight. As soon as the song dropped out of the charts the group split up; they’d missed the chance to record the album which might have saved them from obscurity.

  The four singles had all been produced by Auntie Pat’s former husband, the legendary Michael ‘Dwight’ Gardner, whom she married very young. Theirs was a stormy relationship, due mainly to Dwight’s unpredictable nature. He had a very chequered history, to say the least, and was reputed to have made and lost his fortune several times over. Convicted for armed robbery whilst still a teenager, Dwight studied electronics in jail and at the end of his sentence found employment as a sound engineer with a record company. Very quickly he moved into production, scoring some success, and subsequendy crowning himself ‘the high priest of rhythm’. He also fancied himself as a vocalist, and it was his jealousy of Auntie Pat’s sublime tones that ultimately soured their marriage. He had proposed to her not long after The Katkins drifted into his sphere of influence, and in the beginning they had been happy. After the group’s demise, however, his attentions seemed to focus elsewhere. She left him when he began beating her up regularly.

  Unfortunately, that was not the end of their entanglement with one another. Some months later Dwight unearthed a demo he had recorded as a duet with Auntie Pat, a soulful ballad entitled ‘THIS AIN’T HOW IT SEEMS (IT’S A SHAME)’. The song had been written by Dwight and then shelved, apparently forgotten. Such was the way of the music industry. Now, though, Dwight decided to bring his considerable production skills into play. Working late at night in his private studio, he adapted the recording by using an editing device which crudely ‘bleeped out’ selected words from the song, consequently leaving much to the imagination. The remastered version was then given a new title: “THIS AIN’T PAINT ON MY JEANS (IT’S A STAIN”), with the performance credited to ‘Dwight and Peppy Gardner’.

  Dwight knew a lot of people in the music business, and the tape was soon circulating amongst those ‘in the know’. Once the required ‘buzz’ had started, an easy ride lay ahead, ‘THI
S AIN’T PAINT’ was released as a single just before the start of the school summer holidays (a popular time for such questionable offerings) and was a massive hit, reaching number two in the charts despite being banned by all the mainstream radio stations for its presumed lewd content. Building on his own notoriety, Dwight fuelled the controversy further by holding a press conference; wearing his customary dark glasses he then sat in silence before the assembled journalists, steadfasdy refusing to answer any of their questions. The stunt was just part of a perfectly timed marketing campaign aimed at milking the song for all it was worth (a rumour later emerged that the so-called ‘ban’ had been concocted with the help of certain radio insiders). Finally, as a coup de maitre, the record was ‘rush released’ in its original unadulterated form, and Dwight made even more money. Needless to say, Auntie Pat never received a penny, though she did at last obtain her long-sought divorce. Naturally, she was mortified by the entire episode, as she disliked any kind of smut or innuendo. Therefore, she felt compelled to disappear for a while from the public’s gaze.

  ♦

  Dwight later tried his hand in management, taking on an experimental rock group called The Seas of Saragossa. They quickly came to rue the day they signed their contract with him. Though they lived an apparent life of ease in a stately mansion (rented for the purpose by Dwight) they were, in fact, his virtual slaves. Instead of royalties they were paid a weekly wage, and when they ate they dined on eggs and chips in a very un-hip transport café, where they were forced to endure taunts about their long hair from the rest of the clientele. Nonetheless, Dwight worked hard on their psychedelic image. Prior to a gig one night, he arranged for there to be several photographers from the tabloid press in the audience; he then ordered the group to smash up their instruments and amplifiers ‘live on stage’. Disastrously, they misunderstood his instructions, and proceeded to destroy their equipment at the end of the very first number. For years to come, witnesses told the story of how Dwight was seen fighting his way through from the back of the crowd shouting, “Not yet, you idiots!” By the time he reached them it was too late. The damage was done, and he was obliged to deduct the costs from their wages.