He was taking off his overalls. He pretended he did not know what I was talking about. He had a way of rolling his eyeballs, as if they had got wet and loose in his head, while he was speaking to me and you never knew if it was sweat or oil on his face. It was always pale with high colour on his cheeks and very red lips.
“Miss MacFarlane doesn’t like being followed,” I said.
He dropped his jaw and gaped at me. I could not tell whether he was being very surprised or very sly. I used to call him “Marbles” because when he spoke he seemed to have a lot of marbles in his mouth.
Then he said he never went to the places we went to, except by accident. He wasn’t following us, he said, but we were following him. We never let him alone, he said. Everywhere he went, he said, we were there. Take last Saturday, he said, we were following him for miles down the by-pass, he said. But you passed us first and then sat down in front, I said. I went to Ingley Wood, he said. And you followed me there. No, we didn’t, I said, Miss MacFarlane decided to go there.
He said he did not want to complain but fair was fair. I suppose you know, he said, that you have taken my girl off me. Well, you can leave me alone, can’t you?
“Here,” I said. “One minute! Not so fast! You said I’ve taken Miss MacFarlane from you. Well, she was never your girl. She only knew you in a friendly way.”
“She was my girl,” was all he said.
He was pouring oil into my engine. He had some cotton wool in one hand and the can in the other. He wiped up the green oil that had overflowed, screwed on the cap, pulled down the bonnet and whistled to himself.
I went back to Muriel and told her what Colin had said.
“I don’t like trouble,” I said.
“Don’t you worry,” she said. “I had to have someone to go to all these places with before you came. Couldn’t stick in here all day Sunday.”
“Ah,” I said. “That’s it, is it? You’ve been to all these places with him?”
“Yes,” she said. “And he keeps on going to them. He’s sloppy about me.”
“Good God,” I said. “Sentimental memories.”
I felt sorry for that fellow. He knew it was hopeless, but he loved her. I suppose he couldn’t help himself. Well, it takes all sorts to make a world, as my old mother used to say. If we were all alike it wouldn’t do. Some men can’t save money. It just runs through their fingers. He couldn’t save money so he lost her. I suppose all he thought of was love.
I could have been friends with that fellow. As it was I put a lot of business his way. I didn’t want him to get the wrong idea about me. We’re all human after all.
We didn’t have any more trouble with Colin after this until Bank Holiday. I was going to take her down to see my family. The old man’s getting a bit past it now and has given up living over the shop. He’s living out on the Barnum Road, beyond the tram stop. We were going down in the firm’s car, as per usual, but something went wrong with the mag. and Colin had not got it right for the holiday. I was wild about this. What’s the use of a garage who can’t do a rush job for the holidays! What’s the use of being an old customer if they’re going to let you down! I went for Colin bald-headed.
“You knew I wanted it,” I said. “It’s no use trying to put me off with a tale about the stuff not coming down from the works. I’ve heard that one before.”
I told him he’d got to let me have another car, because he’d let me down. I told him I wouldn’t pay his account. I said I’d take my business away from him. But there wasn’t a car to be had in the town because of the holiday. I could have knocked the fellow down. After the way I’d sent business to him.
Then I saw through his little game. He knew Muriel and I were going to my people and he had done this to stop it. The moment I saw this I let him know that it would take more than him to stop me doing what I wanted.
I said:
“Right. I shall take the amount of Miss MacFarlane’s train fare and my own from the account at the end of the month.”
I said:
“You may run a garage, but you don’t run the railway service.”
I was damned angry going by train. I felt quite lost on the railway after having a car. It was crowded with trippers too. It was slow—stopping at all the stations. The people come in, they tread all over your feet, they make you squeeze up till you’re crammed against the window, and the women stick out their elbows and fidget. And then the expense! A return for two runs you into just over a couple of quid. I could have murdered Colin.
We got there at last. We walked up from the tram stop. Mother was at the window and let us in.
“This is Miss MacFarlane,” I said.
And mother said:
“Oh, pleased to meet you. We’ve heard a lot about you.”
“Oh,” mother said to me, giving me a kiss, “Are you tired? You haven’t had your tea, have you? Sit down. Have this chair, dear. It’s more comfortable.”
“Well, my boy,” my father said.
“Want a wash?” my father said. “We’ve got a wash basin downstairs,” he said. “I used not to mind about washing upstairs before. Now I couldn’t do without it. Funny how your ideas change as you get older.”
“How’s business?” he said.
“Mustn’t grumble,” I said. “How’s yours?”
“You knew,” he said, “we took off the horses: except for one or two of the older families we have got motors now.”
But he’d told me that the last time I was there. I’d been at him for years about motor hearses.
“You’ve forgotten I used to drive them,” I said.
“Bless me, so you did,” he said.
He took me up to my room. He showed me everything he had done to the house. “Your mother likes it,” he said. “The traffic’s company for her. You know what your mother is for company.”
Then he gives me a funny look.
“Who’s the girl?” he says.
My mother came in then and said:
“She’s pretty, Arthur.”
“Of course she’s pretty,” I said. “She’s Irish.”
“Oh,” said the old man. “Irish! Got a sense of humour, eh?”
“She wouldn’t be marrying me if she hadn’t,” I said. And then I gave them a look.
“Marrying her, did you say?” exclaimed my father.
“Any objection?” I said.
“Now Ernest dear,” said my mother. “Leave the boy alone. Come down while I pop the kettle on.”
She was terribly excited.
“Miss MacFarlane,” the old man said.
“No sugar, thank you, Mrs Humphrey. I beg your pardon, Mr Humphrey?”
“The Glen Hotel at Swansea, I don’t suppose you know that?” my father said.
“I wondered if you did being in the catering line,” he said.
“It doesn’t follow she knows every hotel,” my mother said.
“Forty years ago,” the old man said. “I was staying at the Glen in Swansea and the head waiter …”
“Oh no, not that one. I’m sure Miss MacFarlane doesn’t want to hear that one,” my mother said.
“How’s business with you, Mr Humphrey?” said Muriel. “We passed a large cemetery near the station.”
“Dad’s Ledger,” I said.
“The whole business has changed so that you wouldn’t know it, in my lifetime,” said my father. “Silver fittings have gone clean out. Everyone wants simplicity nowadays. Restraint. Dignity,” my father said.
“Prices did it,” my father said.
“The war,” he said.
“You couldn’t get the wood,” he said.
“Take ordinary mahogany, just an ordinary piece of mahogany. Or teak,” he said. “Take teak. Or walnut.”
“You can certainly see the world go by in this room,” I said to my mother.
“It never stops,” she said.
Now it was all bicycles over the new concrete road from the gun factory. Then traction engines and cars
. They came up over the hill where the AA man stands and choked up round the tram stop. It was mostly holiday traffic. Everything with a wheel on it was out.
“On this stretch,” my father told me, “they get three accidents a week.” There was an ambulance station at the crossroads.
We had hardly finished talking about this, in fact the old man was still saying that something ought to be done when the telephone rang.
“Name of MacFarlane?” the voice said on the wire.
“No. Humphrey,” my father said. “There is a Miss MacFarlane here.”
“There’s a man named Colin Mitchell lying seriously injured in an accident at the Cottage Hospital, gave me the name of MacFarlane as his nearest relative.”
That was the Police. On to it at once. That fellow Colin had followed us down by road.
Cry, I never heard a girl cry, as Muriel cried, when we came back from the hospital. He had died in the ambulance. Cutting in, the old game he used to play on me. Clean off the saddle and under the Birmingham bus. The blood was everywhere, they said. People were still looking at it when we went by. Head on. What a mess! Don’t let’s talk about it.
She wanted to see him but they said “No.” There wasn’t anything recognisable to see. She put her arms round my neck and cried, “Colin. Colin,” as if I were Colin and clung to me. I was feeling sick myself. I held her tight and I kissed her and I thought “Holiday ruined.”
“Damn fool man,” I thought. “Poor devil,” I thought.
“I knew he’d do something like this.”
“There, there,” I said to her. “Don’t think about Colin.”
Didn’t she love me, I said, and not Colin. Hadn’t she got me? She said, yes, she had. And she loved me. But, “Oh Colin! Oh Colin!” she cried. “And Colin’s mother,” she cried. “Oh it’s terrible.” She cried and cried.
We put her to bed and I sat with her and my mother kept coming in.
“Leave her to me,” I said. “I understand her.” Before they went to bed they both came in and looked at her. She lay sobbing with her head in the pillow.
I could quite understand her being upset. Colin was a decent fellow. He was always doing things for her. He mended her electric lamp and he riveted the stem of a wine glass so that you couldn’t see the break. He used to make things for her. He was very good with his hands.
She lay on her side with her face burning and feverish with misery and crying, scalded by the salt, and her lips shrivelled up. I put my arm under her neck and I stroked her forehead. She groaned. Sometimes she shivered and sometimes she clung to me, crying, “Oh Colin! Colin!”
My arm ached with the cramp and I had a crick in my back, sitting in the awkward way I was on the bed. It was late. There was nothing to do but to ache and sit watching her and thinking. It is funny the way your mind drifts. When I was kissing her and watching her I was thinking out who I’d show our new Autumn range to first. Her hand held my wrist tight and when I kissed her I got her tears on my lips. They burned and stung. Her neck and shoulders were soft and I could feel her breath hot out of her nostrils on the back of my hand. Ever noticed how hot a woman’s breath gets when she’s crying? I drew out my hand and lay down beside her and “Oh, Colin, Colin,” she sobbed, turning over and clinging to me. And so I lay there, listening to the traffic, staring at the ceiling and shivering whenever the picture of Colin shooting right off that damned red thing into the bus came into my mind—until I did not hear the traffic any more, or see the ceiling any more, or think any more, but a change happened—I don’t know when. This Colin thing seemed to have knocked the bottom out of everything and I had a funny feeling we were going down and down and down in a lift. And the further we went the hotter and softer she got. Perhaps it was when I found with my hands that she had very big breasts. But it was like being on the mail steamer and feeling engines start under your feet, thumping louder and louder. You can feel it in every vein of your body. Her mouth opened and her tears dried. Her breath came through her open mouth and her voice was blind and husky. Colin, Colin, Colin, she said, and her fingers were hooked into me. I got out and turned the key in the door.
In the morning I left her sleeping. It did not matter to me what my father might have heard in the night, but still I wondered. She would hardly let me touch her before that. I told her I was sorry but she shut me up. I was afraid of her. I was afraid of mentioning Colin. I wanted to go out of the house there and then and tell someone everything. Did she love Colin all the time? Did she think I was Colin? And every time I thought of that poor devil covered over with a white sheet in the hospital mortuary, a kind of picture of her and me under the sheets with love came into my mind. I couldn’t separate the two things. Just as though it had all come from Colin.
I’d rather not talk any more about that. I never talked to Muriel about it. I waited for her to say something but she didn’t. She didn’t say a word.
The next day was a bad day. It was grey and hot and the air smelled of oil fumes from the road. There’s always a mess to clear up when things like this happen. I had to see to it. I had the job of ringing up the boy’s mother. But I got round that, thank God, by ringing up the garage and getting them to go round and see the old lady. My father is useless when things are like this. I was the whole morning on the phone: to the hospital, the police, the coroner—and he stood fussing beside me, jerking up and down like a fat india-rubber ball. I found my mother washing up at the sink and she said:
“That poor boy’s mother! I can’t stop thinking of her.” Then my father comes in and says,—just as though I was a customer—
“Of course if Mrs Mitchell desires it we can have the remains of the deceased conveyed to his house by one of our new specially sprung motor hearses and can, if necessary, make all the funeral arrangements.”
I could have hit him because Muriel came into the room when he was saying this. But she stood there as if nothing had happened.
“It’s the least we can do for poor Mrs Mitchell,” she said. There were small creases of shadow under her eyes which shone with a soft strong light I had never seen before. She walked as if she were really still in that room with me, asleep. God, I loved that girl! God, I wanted to get all this over, this damned Colin business that had come right into the middle of everything like this, and I wanted to get married right away. I wanted to be alone with her. That’s what Colin did for me.
“Yes,” I said. “We must do the right thing by Colin.”
“We are sometimes asked for long-distance estimates,” my father said.
“It will be a little something,” my mother said.
“Dad and I will talk it over,” I said.
“Come into the office,” my father said. “It occurred to me that it would be nice to do the right thing by this friend of yours.”
We talked it over. We went into the cost of it. There was the return journey to reckon. We worked it out that it would come no dearer to old Mrs Mitchell than if she took the train and buried the boy here. That is to say, my father said, if I drove it.
“It would look nice,” my father said.
“Saves money and it would look a bit friendly,” my father said. “You’ve done it before.”
“Well,” I said. “I suppose I can get a refund on my return ticket from the railway.”
But it was not as simple as it looked, because Muriel wanted to come. She wanted to drive back with me and the hearse. My mother was very worried about this. It might upset Muriel, she thought. Father thought it might not look nice to see a young girl sitting by the coffin of a grown man.
“It must be dignified,” my father said. “You see if she was there it might look as though she were just doing it for the ride—like these young women on bakers’ vans.”
My father took me out into the hall to tell me this because he did not want her to hear. But she would not have it. She wanted to come back with Colin.
“Colin loved me. It is my duty to him,” she said. “Besides,” she said, sud
denly, in her full open voice—it had seemed to be closed and carved and broken and small—“I’ve never been in a hearse before.”
“And it will save her fare too,” I said to my father.
That night I went again to her room. She was awake. I said I was sorry to disturb her but I would go at once only I wanted to see if she was all right. She said, in the closed voice again, that she was all right.
“Are you sure?” I said.
She did not answer. I was worried. I went over to the bed.
“What is the matter? Tell me what is the matter,” I said.
For a long time she was silent. I held her hand, I stroked her head. She was lying stiff in the bed. She would not answer. I dropped my hand to her small white shoulder. She stirred and drew up her legs and half turned and said, “I was thinking of Colin.”
“Where is he?” she asked.
“They’ve brought him round. He’s lying downstairs.”
“In the front room?”
“Yes, ready for the morning. Now be a sensible girl and go back by train.”
“No, no,” she said. “I want to go with Colin. Poor Colin. He loved me and I didn’t love him.” And she drew my hands down to her breasts.
“Colin loved me,” she whispered.
“Not like this,” I whispered.
It was a warm grey morning like all the others when we took Colin back. They had fixed the coffin in before Muriel came out. She came down wearing the bright blue hat she had got off Dormer’s millinery man and she kissed my mother and father good-bye. They were very sorry for her. “Look after her, Arthur,” my mother said. Muriel got in beside me without a glance behind her at the coffin. I started the engine. They smiled at us. My father raised his hat, but whether it was to Muriel and me or to Colin, or to the three of us, I do not know. He was not, you see, wearing his top hat. I’ll say this for the old boy, thirty years in the trade have taught him tact.
After leaving my father’s house you have to go down to the tram terminus before you get on to the by-pass. There was always one or two drivers, conductors or inspectors there, doing up their tickets, or changing over the trolley arms. When we passed I saw two of them drop their jaws, stick their pencils in their ears and raise their hats. I was so surprised by this that I nearly raised mine in acknowledgment, forgetting that we had the coffin behind. I had not driven one of my father’s hearses for years.
The Pritchett Century Page 33
