by Brian Aldiss
Ray got out of his car and pottered about the forecourt. He took a look at the car offered for sale. It was a model unknown to him, a Zastava Caribbean, with an Oxfordshire number plate. A faded sticker on the rear window said, ‘I Love Cheri’. On the FOR SALE notice, under the price, Stanton had written WON ONER.
Melancholy increased, Ray went back to sit in his car.
When Linwood reappeared round the side of the old forge, he was accompanied by Stanton. The two men were arguing. Stanton was an untidy, straggling kind of man who walked with a limp and a decided list to starboard. He wore boots, a pair of dungarees and an incongruous checked cap. His chest was bare. He shook his head in time with his rapid slanting walk. Beside Linwood’s rather boneless figure, Stanton appeared an embodiment of energy.
Crossing to the double doors of his shed, he unlocked the padlock, wrenched the doors a few inches open, and elbowed his way inside, to leave Linwood on the forecourt. Linwood appeared to be studying the cracked concrete at his feet.
After looking at his watch, Tebbutt leaned out of the car window and called, ‘Any problems, Mike? Is it repaired?’
His friend looked round slowly, as if previously unaware of Tebbutt’s presence, and said, nodding his head, ‘Hang on a minute, Ray.’ It was not a satisfying response.
A small builder’s lorry drew up at the pumps and tooted. As Stanton emerged from his fortress, the driver of the lorry, leaving his engine running, jumped down from the cab and stretched. He appeared to be on good terms with Stanton, who momentarily stopped scowling.
While Stanton filled the lorry’s tank with Four Star, the driver nonchalantly lit a cigarette, flinging the match down on the ground. Tebbutt watched the two men talking, Stanton gesturing jerkily in the direction of Linwood. Linwood, taking advantage of this diversion, walked rapidly into the garage.
‘’Ere, come on out of there, you!’ Stanton bawled.
Linwood reappeared, looking embarrassed, thrusting his hands into his pockets and immediately pulling them out again.
When the lorry drove off, Stanton walked rather threateningly towards Linwood, gesticulating loosely with both hands, as if he was trying to toss them over either shoulder. Both men went into the garage. Tebbutt sat tight, sighing. Silence reigned on the forecourt.
Very shortly, Linwood emerged again, clutching a piece of paper.
He walked over to the Hillman with an expression of unconcern, to lean through the driver’s window so that his nose was only a few inches from Tebbutt’s.
‘We’ve got a bit of a problem here, Ray. It’s old Joe Stanton, cutting up a bit rough.’
‘I’d gathered that.’
‘Yes. Poor chap used to be pretty trusting. Caught him in a bad mood this morning. He’s repaired the car and it’s fine – good for another eighteen months, he says. He’s had to do more work on it than anticipated. He said something about the rear shock-absorbers, I believe. Replacements needed.’
He showed Tebbutt the piece of paper in his hand, on which a number of items were scrawled in Biro.
‘It’s a bill for three hundred pounds, Ray. Bit of a shock.’ He cleared his throat.
‘Is the car worth it?’
Linwood looked very serious, withdrew the paper, and straightened to tuck it into his pocket, so that when he spoke again Tebbutt could not see his face for the roof of the Hillman.
‘Of course the car’s worth it, Ray. You don’t understand the situation. The problem is, as I say, Stanton’s not in his usual trusting mood. He refuses to allow me credit this time. That wife of his was frankly abusive. I can’t have the car back, he says, until I’ve paid the bill. It makes things rather difficult.’
After considering the situation for a moment, and in particular debating what he should say next, Tebbutt folded his arms behind the wheel and asked, ‘So how do you intend to resolve this dilemma, Mike? Prayer?’
He still could not see Linwood’s head and shoulders from where he sat, but he heard his reply distinctly enough. ‘Unfortunately, I forgot to bring my cheque book along. I was wondering if you’d be kind enough to write him one of your cheques, and I’ll repay you when we get home.’
Opening the car door, Tebbutt climbed slowly out into the sunshine, so that he could look Linwood in the eye. ‘I’m in no position to lend anyone money. I don’t have my cheque book on me, either.’
Smiling, Linwood said, ‘But you do carry a credit card, Ray, I believe?’
Stanton had emerged into the light to stand before his barely opened doors, fists on hips and legs apart, as if prepared to repel all boarders.
‘I ent taking a penny less, neither,’ he shouted. ‘Three hundred quid I want.’
‘Well, you can see it from Stanton’s point of view, in a way,’ Linwood said.
‘Stanton evidently doesn’t expect the Lord to provide,’ Tebbutt said, feelingly.
‘I doubt that he and the Lord are on speaking terms.’ Linwood mitigated the humour with a miserable look, adding, ‘If you could pay with your credit card, Ray, just to get us out of this mess … We can’t stand here all day. I’d be immensely grateful and can repay you within the next couple of days.’
They stood regarding each other until Tebbutt lowered his gaze. Unable to think of a convincing lie, he decided on the truth.
‘Mike, you see Ruby and I have a Visa card just to identify ourselves – for identification of cheques and so on. Nothing else. We never ever charge anything to the account. It’s our rule. That way we don’t get into debt. You know how it is.’
‘Well, charge this sum up now, and I’ll repay you before the end of the month. That’s how those things work, isn’t it? They won’t sting you for interest. Then you stand no chance of “getting into debt”, as you put it. That’s not asking much, is it? We can’t stand here all day.’
Tebbutt pulled an awful face. ‘Well, it is asking quite a lot, to be honest. As I say, we have never had anything on credit. That’s how we live.’
Linwood turned away. ‘I’m sorry. You don’t mind a friend asking you a favour, do you? Very Christian, I must say. I don’t know what to do. I’ll have to phone Jean. I’ll walk into Melton and find a phone, don’t worry. This means another terrible family row … But you’d better get back to work. Thanks for the lift, anyway.’
As he made off towards the road, Stanton called, ‘’Ere, what about my bloody money? I’ll sell your bloody junk heap else.’
It was not in Tebbutt’s nature to let a friend down. ‘Hold on,’ he called. ‘All right, I’ll charge it on my card. You will pay me back at once, won’t you? Otherwise we’ll be in the shit.’
Turning briskly back, Linwood said, ‘Thanks. I’ll let you have the money by the end of the week at the latest. Perhaps you’d like to cope with Stanton – he seems a bit miffed with me this morning.’
While Linwood stood about in the sunshine, Tebbutt penetrated the gloom of the garage and completed the transaction with Stanton, who muttered darkly as he processed the credit card. ‘That there bugger never pay up. Must think as I’m a millionaire. I can’t do the work for narthin’, can I now? ’Sides, these old Chryslers, time they was off the road.’
‘Thank you very much, Mr Stanton,’ said Tebbutt, retrieving his card and pocketing the Visa slip the man gave him. He stood aside as Stanton rolled the garage doors back and drove the car out to the forecourt.
‘Don’t come a-bothering me again,’ Stanton told Linwood, shaking his fist. Linwood, ignoring him, asked Tebbutt for the slip. Tebbutt hung on to it; it was his transaction. Frowning, Linwood jumped into his car and drove off without another word.
‘You got a right one there,’ Stanton said, laughing at Tebbutt’s discomfiture. ‘I notice as you don’t trust him further than what you can throw him, neither.’
‘He’s thinking of entering the Church.’
‘And a fucking good place for him,’ Stanton shouted, as Tebbutt drove away.
On Wednesday, Tebbutt went to work with Yarker as usual
. As he rolled into the garden centre, he could see both Yarker and his wife. Greg Yarker was a big, ill-proportioned man in his mid-thirties, vain, uncertain of temper but, in the words of those around, ‘not a bad sort’. ‘Ole Yarker’ll do you a favour,’ his drinking buddies in the Bluebell would say.
At present, Yarker was doing himself a favour, standing in the doorway of his mobile home half-dressed, savouring the morning sun and biting into a huge bread roll from which pieces of bacon dangled. He took both hands to the job. There was little half-hearted about Greg Yarker.
Meanwhile, Pauline Yarker – ‘Ah, she’ll do you a favour too,’ they said, and cackled – was trundling down the pathway between the clematis section and the roses, hugging to herself a plush-covered armchair almost as rotund as she was. Pauline was a big old gel, as they said, strong, and quite a match for her husband. She was carrying the armchair down to the black-painted store where their better furniture was kept. The Yarkers’ trade in secondhand furniture supplemented their income from the garden centre.
Half-way along the path, Pauline set the chair down and subsided into it for a breather. As he locked the Hillman, Tebbutt heard Yarker shout something at his wife. She shouted back. They both burst into raucous laughter. Yarker crammed the rest of his bacon roll into his mouth with the flat of his hand.
‘Morning, Greg.’
‘Look at her,’ Yarker said, with a derisive gesture, by way of response. His eyes, dark and in-dwelling – almost as if he had some sense, thought Tebbutt – were set in a knobbly face blue with shaving and crimson with exposure to the elements and alcohol. His hair, cut by his wife, stood out here and there in tufts, giving him a ferocious appearance which his manner did not belie. ‘Lazy as they come, our Pauline.’
‘What do you want me to do today?’
‘I tell you what, Ray,’ Yarker said, stepping down from his perch and taking up a blue and white banded mug of tea in one fist. ‘When I thinks of how that little bugger Clenchwarden … Well, I could kill him. And her.’ He took a drag of tea before repeating, ‘Little bugger …’
‘He was a little bugger,’ Tebbutt agreed. ‘Still, it’s over now – I wouldn’t think about it.’ The little bugger referred to was Georgie Clenchwarden, the previous occupant of Ray’s job, who had been caught making advances to Mrs Yarker, or possibly vice versa. Ray took the frequent references to Georgie as a personal warning, as though Yarker believed his wife’s virtue, if any remained, was under constant threat. He had no intention of trespassing.
Yarker ordered him to get on preparing the rough ground under a line of poplars marking the northern boundary of the property. After a while, he came over with a second spade to help with the work. Hiring a mechanical digger did not appeal to his pocket.
The dark uncordial Norfolk soil yielded flinty stone and bricks cozened so long under the earth they emerged like rough old fossil tongues. These the men chucked aside into a metal wheelbarrow. Their work was punctuated by a succession of clangs, bangs, and tinkles as the debris hit the target on the path behind them, at which they often aimed without looking. But the biggest obstacle was the roots of the tall poplars, which sometimes had to be attacked with a little tree-saw kept handy for the purpose. Grubbing and digging went by turns.
Greg Yarker straightened up, making his spade bite down into the earth to give him a little support as he rested on it.
‘My back ent so good today,’ he said. ‘I’ll leave you to it, Ray. I’ve got to go see a lady about some furniture Dereham way.’
As he stalked off, Tebbutt returned to the digging, working more slowly now, at his own pace. Although he had heard about Yarker’s back before, he held no brief against the man; he was grateful for the job. Five minutes later, he looked round at the sound of an engine, in time to see Yarker driving off in his old van in the direction of Dereham.
Within minutes, the door of the mobile home opened, and Pauline Yarker emerged into the light of day, smoking a cigarette, resplendent in a pink candlewick dressing-gown. Tebbutt straightened up and eased his back as she approached. He smiled and bade her good morning.
‘Don’t know what’s good about it,’ she said. ‘I’m having trouble opening a tin of peaches, Ray. Would you give me a hand a moment?’
‘Which hand do you want?’
She looked at him straight. ‘You can use both hands if you fancy it,’ she said. Then she smiled. They both laughed as he followed her to the caravan. He thought to himself, she may not be very lovely, but she’s willing. Luckily I can control myself.
The mobile home was an ancient model, once yellow, now patched with white flowers of damp. A toilet stood like a sentry box near the front step. Since it was situated in the middle of the garden centre, privacy had been attempted; a square trellis surrounded caravan and thunderbox, up which several varieties of clematis grew. Bees tumbled and buzzed amid the blossom. A dog kennel, now empty, stood to one side of the step. An irregularly shaped nameplate had been tacked against the door, evidence of Pauline Yarker’s sense of humour: ‘Fakenham Castle’.
‘Come on in, love,’ she said to Tebbutt. The whole caravan creaked as she grasped both sides of the doorway and heaved herself in, large and jolly. He looked with some awe at her rear view as he followed. She had a well-developed bosom which she knew no harm in displaying. Born shortly after the end of the war, she had recently taken to dyeing her hair. ‘You’re as young as you act, that’s what I say,’ she was fond of repeating, and the male customers of the Bluebell, where they met on most Saturday evenings, agreed vociferously.
‘Ah, and I’m going to act as young as I feel,’ she’d add, with an arch look at her husband. Many of the men fancied her, with her big tits and her complaisant humour.
But Tebbutt took the tin-opener and opened her can of peaches without being molested. They understood one another. She liked flirting with her husband’s new employee, but it went no further; the flirtation was a part of her humour; it would be difficult to determine whether she knew another way to behave towards men.
Her little radio was playing music of a dated kind to be heard only during mid-morning on a local station.
‘Have a beer while you’re about it, while the old bugger’s away,’ she said, patting a patch of bunk beside her, encouraging him much as she might have encouraged a dog. He showed her his soil-stained hands as warning and sank down gratefully beside her.
‘Those bloody roots …’ he said.
The beer, which he drank from the can, was produced from her little fridge. The chill of it trickled luxuriously down his throat. ‘Not a lot is ever going to grow in that ground even when we’ve cleared it,’ he told her. ‘It’s too near the trees. I told Greg as much.’
‘He never listens to a thing you say, he don’t. Where are you going for your holiday this year?’ Plainly she was not interested in her husband’s business.
‘I don’t reckon we can afford a holiday this summer, Pauline. We’re broke. I’ve got to renovate the back porch.’
‘I may go to Yarmouth on me own. I know a nice little hotel on the front, ever so posh, has a Jacuzzi and everything.’ Her plump arms briefly sketched the shape of a Jacuzzi for the benefit of those who had never visited Great Yarmouth. ‘Why don’t you come with me?’
‘Don’t think Ruby would like it.’
‘She hasn’t got much meat on her, though, your missus.’
When he was getting ready to go, he gave her a light kiss. Pauline did not attempt to follow it up, though she made grateful cooing noises. At heart, she was a decent woman and he did, after a fashion, owe his job to her.
She pinched his buttocks and gave him a juicy wink. He nodded and went back to his digging.
Arriving home tired after seven that evening, his first question to Ruby was whether Mike Linwood had come round with the money.
Ruby said no, and looked rather tight about the lips. She had heard the whole story from her husband the evening before, and secretly blamed him for being weak enoug
h to lend money to anyone. Her moods being transparent to him, he perceived this without her uttering a word.
‘You’ll have to go to Hartisham to get it back,’ she said now, lighting one of her rare cigarettes. ‘You’ve got us in a real doo-dah. Supposing he refuses to pay us back?’
‘Don’t be silly. ’Course he’ll pay us back. Mike’s no crook. Besides, you know how that household works. Difficult though his father is, he bales them out in a crisis. Jean told me once that he’s got a heap of loot stashed away in those rooms of his – stuff he acquired in the Middle East. Every now and again he flogs something off in the London auctions.’
‘When did Jean tell you that?’
‘Ages ago. She told you, too.’
‘No, she didn’t. I don’t remember.’
‘You’re getting forgetful.’
The evening passed rather silently. Like the silence, the sum of money owed seemed to grow and smother them. It was a sin, a squandering. It represented the amount they might hope to set aside for Christmas for themselves and Jenny, Ray’s wages for three weeks, earned by the sweat dripping into Yarker’s arid soil. He could no longer believe he had been credulous enough to pay Stanton’s repair bill.
That night, he lay next to Ruby in the double bed, listening to her quiet breathing, wondering what he should do. Ruby always slept well. Owls cried about the chimney tops of the ruinous cottage opposite, a partridge croaked in the hedgerow. Still she slept. From across the landing came the downy snore of his mother-in-law; they never closed her door at night in case she should need something.
Agnes in her little wooden room became woven into his anxieties. Fond though he was of the old lady, who represented herself as having had a fairly dashing past, she was in her present decrepitude a burden, one more factor requiring attention every day, like a goat with no yield. Yet, meanly, they made a tiny increment of money from her: Agnes wanted little, corsets apart – another of her sudden whims, easily deflected – and a tithe of her old-age pension flowed weekly into the shallow family coffers.
