The Rabbit

by Ted Lewis

  “What do you drink?” he said. “Shandies?”

  I rubbed my eyes again, and grinned, and pretended I hadn’t noticed the sarcasm.

  “Hardly,” I said. “Haywards’ Bitter, most of the time.”

  Clacker spat into the wagon.

  “Gnat’s piss,” he said. “No wonder your eyes ache. Send you bloody blind in the end.”

  “It’s strong, though.”

  “So’s meths.”

  “Whose do you drink, then?”

  “Stanley’s.”

  “That’s good stuff too.”

  I felt a feeling of warmth, knowing that I’d said some¬thing that he’d appreciate, the fact that I liked the bitter he drank. The warmth was dispelled by his next remark.

  “You’ll find most beer drinkers drinking it. Them as knows what beer’s about.”

  There was nothing I could say to that. There was no way he was going to let me through, whatever I tried. I closed my eyes and smoked my cigarette. The soft noises of the surrounding countryside buzzed around us, softening the occasional interior clanks that echoed from the kilns. Even¬tually the noise of an approaching lorry dispelled the morn¬ing’s natural sounds. Then Clacker said:

  “Have many last night, then?”

  “I don’t know. Five or six.”

  Clacker grinned to himself. Now the lorry was rocking up the slope. I said to Clacker:

  “This load should go to the kiln, shouldn’t it?”

  Clacker watched the approaching lorry but he didn’t answer.

  “Shall I tell him?” I said, getting up from the barrow.

  Clacker still didn’t answer. The lorry had already begun to turn away from us in order to back up to the wagons.

  “I said shall I tell him?”

  Clacker grinned.

  “Looks as though he’s coming in here,” he said.

  “Hang on!” I shouted to the driver, but my voice was vir¬tually inaudible against the noise of the lorry. I started to make for the cab but the driver had started the tipping mechanism. I looked at Clacker. He was still sitting on the edge of the wagon, making no move to unbolt the tailboard. The tipper continued to rise. I ran back to the rear of the lorry and unbolted one side of the tailboard. Clacker still didn’t make a move, so with the tipper continuing to rise I made my way hand over hand along the tailboard, my feet on the platform’s narrow lip. Already a miniature land¬slide of small stones was sliding off the top of the lorry’s load. A few big ones clanged down into the empty half of the wagon. I made the other side just before the angle of the tailboard became too steep for me to keep my feet on the platform’s lip. Gil Caldwell’s head was sticking out of his window and when I appeared from behind the tailboard he shouted:

  “What the bloody hell are you gaming at?”

  I unbolted the second bolt. Gil began to get out of his cab.

  “You’ll get us shot if Gaffer sees us.”

  The load boomed down into the wagon. A dusty silence swirled around us. Frank Peacock appeared at the edge of the kiln chute.

  “What about over here, then?” he shouted to Gil.

  “What do you mean, what about over there?” Gil shouted back.

  Frank was advancing towards us.

  “We were wanting that. You should have dropped it over here. What’s the bloody idea?”

  “Don’t start bloodying me.” Gil said. “I know fuck all about it.”

  “Aye, you never do.”

  “It’s my fault,” I said. “I didn’t think you wanted it straight away.”

  “No, that’s why I bloody asked for it,” Frank said dis¬gustedly.

  “I’ll drop next load on yours, then,” Gil said.

  “Write it down on racing page so you won’t forget.”

  Frank turned on his heel and strode off back to the chute. Gil gave him a V-sign. He turned to Clacker.

  “You don’t want to be sitting there when I drop a load,” Gil said. “Gaffer’d go spare.”

  Clacker grinned at him.

  “I mean, it’d be me as’d get it in the neck.”

  “I had to do what I did otherwise the load would have been all over the place,” I said.

  “Better than you being all over the place underneath it. You want to be careful.”

  Gil walked back to the cab, climbed in and drove off with the tipper dropping down. Clacker didn’t move from the edge of the wagon. A minute or two later, when the noise of Gil’s lorry was just a drone on the road, Clacker said:

  “Stupid bastard.”

  I didn’t know whether he meant Gil or me so I said:

  “Well, what else could I do?”

  Clacker looked at me and after a while gave a slow smile and shook his head. Then he got off the edge of the wagon and picked up his hammer and began to go to work on the new load.

  At breakfast-time I tried to get into the canteen in front of Clacker so that I could find a new seat for myself and allow him to have his old place back. But on the way up in the cab of the lorry he’d sat nearest the door while I squeezed in near the gear-box, and so when we got out the only way I could have got into the canteen before him would have been to run. When I got into the canteen, Clacker had already seated himself on the pile of tires. I had no choice but to sit in Clacker’s place.

  At lunch-time I walked away from the office, past the shed that housed the narrow gauge engine and its panniers, past the disused tipping chute and scrambled up the scree beside it and sat on the rim of the quarry in the shadow of an upturned pannier. The view from the top of the wolds was beautiful. If I turned to my right I could see the broad sweep of the river still and glossy as it wound away to the coast, and if I turned to my left the different squares of green and gold below me stretched to the horizon, their clear pers¬pective broken up by shadowed woods and motionless villages. Although I’d left my sketchbook down at the kilns I determined not to leave it there if the weather was as clear as this tomorrow, Clacker or no Clacker.

  I thought about Janet and I thought about Veronica. I felt bad about the way I’d engineered last night. It had just been that once the realization had dawned that I was no longer keen on Veronica in the way I had been, every other sense had screamed at me to get away, to get out of her house. Today the feeling had disappeared. It was difficult even to remember how I’d felt. Now I felt guilty and unsure of what I’d done. Besides, I was only home for seven weeks. Seven weeks wasn’t a long time. I’d go and see Veronica tonight and apologize, tell her she’d got it all wrong.

  “I’m off,” I shouted, holding the front door open.

  Three voices came in muffled chorus from behind the curtain. It was O.K. tonight. I was going to see Veronica and then probably on to the pictures with her.

  I was walking past Pond’s Orchard when Cec Hale’s A90 rolled round the corner and pulled up by the curb next to me. Cec made up the third member of the trio of boys I’d become friends with during school. Now Cec spent his work¬ing hours driving a bread van and most of the rest of the time bird-watching down on the river bank.

  Inside the car were the other two members of the trio. Don leaned out of the front-seat passenger’s window.

  “Where you off, Sambo?” he said.

  “Veronica’s. Then pictures. Where are you off?”

  “Scunthorpe.”

  “What for?”

  “We’re off to the Queens. There’s a new stripper on this week.”

  Cec leant across Don so that he could talk to me.

  “We’re off to see if she’s worthy of inclusion in my revised edition of the Big Boys Book of Mucky Women.”

  “No, I’d better not,” I said, then to Mart, who was sitting in the back, “Are you going?”

  “May as well,” he said, flicking his ciga
rette out of the window.

  “Get in then,” Don said.

  “I ought to go and see Veronica.”

  “Get in. It’ll be twice as nice tomorrow night.”

  Full hedges sped past the car. The only other traffic on the roads was the occasional tractor dawdling back to the farm¬yard. All the windows of the car were rolled down and the warm evening wind streamed in.

  “How’s your kid?” Mart asked Don.

  “The daft bastard’s getting engaged.”

  “What, to Pam?”

  “Aye, silly sod. They’ve decided to start saving up.”

  “Ah, well, there you are, you see,” Mart said. “No imagin¬ation, the younger generation. Straight from one family and into another. From the cradle to the cradle.”

  “Should be like us,” Cec said. “From the pub to the pub.”

  “I mean,” said Mart, “I could maybe see some sense in it with, say, Gloria Grahame or Ida Lupino.”

  “Or Kim Novak,” I said.

  “No, not her, Ida Lupino. Ida Lupino, about siesta time, in an upstairs room in a ropy Mexican hotel, bottle of Tequila, just wearing a half-slip, covered in sweat, literally covered in it, sheets soaking, even the cockroaches are doing the breast stroke—”

  “—and downstairs there’s Gilbert Roland waiting till you’re through—” I said.

  “—and Gonzales-Gonzales serving him drinks with a dirty serviette over his arm and cracking cracks—” Don said.

  “—and talking about his sister—”

  “—played by Debra Paget—”

  “Who plays the rancher?” Cec said.

  “Cesar Romero, who else?” said Don.

  “And the Johnny Sombrero part?”

  “Eugene Iglesias, natch.”

  “Start shooting tomorrow?” I said.

  “Open on Clark’s brickyards, dressed up as a Spanish mission.”

  “A few chickens for atmosphere.”

  “Get Sally Army to do the Mexican band.”

  “Led by Lacquer Shucksmith with a big moustache.”

  “Another first for Columbia Pictures.”

  “Imagine though,” Mart said. “Ida Lupino and all that sweat. Caramba.”

  “The Mexican Twat dance,” Cec said. “Eh up, fancy one at Somerton?”

  “May as well,” Mart said.

  “O.K.?”

  “Suits me,” Don said.

  A few minutes later we were in Somerton. The village’s main street was empty. Cec pulled the car into the small car park at the side of the Wagon and Horses. All four car doors swung open.

  “You three go round the back. The rest of you come with me,” Don said.

  “And don’t shoot till I give the order,” I said. “Remember we have to give our undercover man time to get clear.”

  As I got out of the car, Mart, still inside, pulled an imaginary gun.

  “I’m Randolph Scott,” he said. “Who are you?”

  I froze.

  “Lee Marvin,” I said.

  “In that case, blam blam.”

  I spun away from the car, towards the pub. As I whirled away I drew my own imaginary gun and shot Mart as he was halfway through the car door. Mart jerked twice but got in another shot before he slumped back into the car. I staggered towards the side wall of the pub, intending to claw the brickwork and slide down to the gravel. But the window of the public bar was set in the pub’s side wall and beyond the window there was Clacker, drinking his pint and watching me. I froze again, but this time for different reasons. I pulled myself together and began to walk towards the saloon bar entrance, round at the front of the pub. As Mart emerged from the car he took another shot at me but I ignored it. Cec and Don were standing by the entrance to the Public Bar.

  “Where you off to then?” Cec called out.

  “Saloon. We’ll get served quicker.”

  Immediately Don and Cec began running on the spot, like Tom and Jerry, jostling each other for take-off position.

  I walked through the front door and into the sunless quarry-tiled corridor.

  The Saloon Bar door was the first on the left. I opened it and went in. It was more like a front room than a Saloon Bar. All the furniture was highly polished. There were vases and framed photographs on top of the piano, the lid of which was draped with a white lace cover. There were two wall clocks and one grandmother clock in the room. On one of the walls there was a big Victorian picture, framed in rose¬wood, of two tattered children on a broken bridge that spanned a chasm, being shepherded across by a pink neuter angel, and underneath the picture, pushed against the wall, was a dining table covered with a green velvet cloth trimmed with tassels. The bar counter was very small and beyond the counter was an archway so that the landlord could serve in both bars. Through this archway could be seen some of the activity in the sunlit Public Bar. The landlord was leaning on the Public Bar counter, watching the progress of a game of darts. From the Saloon Bar you could only see the players when they picked their darts out of the dartboard.

  Don, Mart and Cec came into the room.

  “Pints?” I said.

  “Three glasses of water and a pickled egg,” Cec said.

  “To take out,” said Don.

  I took my money out of my pocket.

  “Where’s the hostler?” Mart said.

  The landlord turned his head slightly and carried on watching the darts game.

  “Howard Hughes,” Mart said. “Who else doesn’t need the money?”

  Don took some change out of his pocket and rapped on the counter. The landlord didn’t move.

  “Shop!” said Don.

  Clacker’s voice drifted through from the other bar.

  “Don’t keep your customers waiting, Sid. You get a penny a pint more from that side.”

  A dart flew through the air and thudded into the board.

  “Fifty-one scored,” someone said. “That leaves you sixteens.”

  “I know, you daft bastard,” Clacker said. “Why do you think I got the treble?”

  Clacker threw the other two darts. The final dart landed in double sixteen.

  “Shooting,” somebody said.

  The landlord began to turn away, but Clacker appeared at the counter and slid his empty glass across the bar.

  “Before you go, Sid,” he said.

  The landlord took Clacker’s glass and began pulling a pint.

  “There’s a drought through here, mate,” Don said.

  The landlord took no notice.

  “Bloody marvellous,” Mart said, “mine host. One of a series depicting the charm of English country life.”

  “Leave off the “r y” and you’d have it,” Cec said. He craned his neck to see what was going on. “Who the hell is that, anyway?”

  “Clacker West,” Don said.

  “Oh, him.”

  “Works for your old man, doesn’t he, Vic?”

  I nodded.

  “We’ll have to order two if this is how long it takes.”

  The landlord gave Clacker his pint and lumbered through into our bar. He didn’t say good evening or anything. He just stood there waiting for us to tell him what we wanted, and whatever it was it was going to be too much trouble.

  “Could you direct us to the Scunthorpe Hilton?” Cec said.

  The landlord didn’t move or change his expression. Cec looked at the rest of us in despair.

  “Four pints of bitter, then,” Cec said.

  “Better make it one pint and four straws,” Don said. “It’ll be quicker that way.”

  “Four pints you want,” the landlord said.

  “Ah, si señor,” Cec said; then to us, “El Gringo habla Ameri¬cano bueno, si?”

&nb
sp; “Si, si,” Mart and Don said.

  The landlord trundled back into the Public Bar.

  “I theenk I keel heem,” Cec said.

  The landlord brought two pints and put them on the counter.

  “May your offspring all be boy-children,” Cec said. He gestured gracefully to Mart. “After you, dear boy.”

  The landlord went and brought the other two pints.

  “How much is that?” I said.

  “You’re all right, Sid,” said Clacker. “I’ll see to those.”

  I looked through the archway. Clacker took his wallet from his inside pocket and pulled out a ten bob note and let it drift on to the counter. The landlord began on his way back through the archway.

  “What’s he doing?” Cec said.

  “Looks as though he’s buying,” I said.

  “What the hell for?”

  “We’re working together at the moment.” I lifted the glass and looked at Clacker. “Cheers,” I said.

  The others made vague gestures of acknowledgement. Clacker put his wallet away and went back to his darts.

  “He must be after a rise,” Don said.

  Clacker looked over his shoulder and asked the others in the bar if they wanted the same again. There were murmurs of acceptance and a chair scraped on the stone floor and another figure, someone about my age, appeared and placed an empty pint glass on the bar counter. I looked at the figure and the figure looked at me. A knowing smile broke out on his face.

  “Now then, Gravey,” he said.

  I hadn’t seen Keith Phillips since the second form. He’d been in my class but at the end of the second year he’d been sent back to the Council School because of the low standard of his work and his absolute refusal to be intimidated by the teaching staff into doing anything about it. He’d never done his homework, never answered questions in class, never done anything other than lazily insult the teachers, the Head¬master included. No amount of corporal punishment had made any difference. He was one of the few people in life who were unafraid and uncaring.

  He had also witnessed the incident between the Head¬master and myself, and while he’d remained at school he’d been one of the people who’d never allowed me to forget it. That was why he was smiling the smile he was smiling.