Enchantment (9 page)

Helen finished her beer at last. Was it too soon to leave now? But he heard himself saying, ‘Have the other half.'

(‘Buy her champagne. Find some excuse to celebrate and bring out the bubbly. It always works.')

‘Should I?' The parallel lines were ravines in her forehead.

‘Oh, definitely, darling,' said the older man at the table.

Damn you, keep out of this. But Helen shook her head. She had gathered up her bag into her lap, and looked as if she wanted to go too. Which of them was going to say it?

Two new arrivals were standing talking to the couple at their table, so Tim was able to say, ‘Perhaps we should be moving along and let these people sit down.'

‘No, no, don't think of it.'

‘But really we –'

‘Stay where you are.'

‘Don't let us disturb you.' Helen stood up and went through the tables to the coathooks by the door. The rain had diminished
slightly, so Tim could drive a bit faster, although the wipers did not do a very good job. Helen put on her glasses, as though it would be safer if she could see too. Going up a hill, Buttercup flagged, so Tim did a flying change down into second to give her a boost. Or would have done a flying change if the gears had not stuck.

‘Damn.' He pulled on the handbrake as the car began to move more backwards than forwards. Helen said nothing. Most women would be telling you what to do, or jittering because they thought someone was going to roar up the winding hill and hit them from behind.

At last Tim crunched dear little Buttercup into first gear. He was sweating, and his hand on the gear knob was trembling as he transferred it to the wheel.

‘Sorry about that.' He glanced at Helen, as they started safely down the other side of the hill. She was looking ahead through her glasses. ‘That's the only thing about Fiats. Always a bit tricky on the gears.'

‘Are they really?' She believed it.

‘Afraid so, but they're such brilliant little cars, and it only happens once in a blue moon.'

They were ten miles from home when it happened again. The lights were red at a narrow railway bridge, and they waited in a line of cars. The last car came over towards them. The lights changed. Tim followed the cars ahead up the rise of the bridge in first gear, changed into second –
back-into-second
-get in there damn you! – and with the terrible grinding shriek of an iron humanoid in agony, the gears jammed. Oh, totally jammed. Nothing like the minor difficulties of meshing that had once been so traumatic, but now seemed like trivia.

They were stuck on the top of the humpback bridge that was turned at right angles to the road on either side. The cars ahead had gone. The cars behind were eyes of light. Round the corner in front, a line of waiting headlights stared through slanting rain.

‘What's happened?' Helen asked in a low voice, as if no one must hear.

‘We've had it.' Tim got out into the rain. Mist and exhaust vapour rose white and red in the lights behind and before him. The traffic lights changed, and a car came up the narrow bridge from the other side, saw him and stopped. Behind it, someone sat on his horn.

Men got out and walked up the bridge.

‘What's up?'

‘The gearbox.'

‘Stripped the gears, have you?'

‘Bloody hell.' A man kicked Buttercup's back tyre. ‘I'm in a hurry.'

‘Can you help me push it?' Tim asked.

They laughed. ‘Jammed in gear? Not unless you lift up the back wheels for us, mate.'

In the end, that was what they did. By this time, there were about ten cars on both sides. No time to wait for a tow truck. The cars in front backed out of the way. Helen got out of the Fiat and walked away under the umbrella. Four of the men lifted up the rear end of Buttercup, swearing and groaning, and trundled her like a wheelbarrow off the bridge. Someone had to steer and brake, so Tim had to sit in the car like a dummy while everyone else did all the work and said terrible things about him.

At the foot of the bridge, they pushed the yellow car off the road. Before Tim could thank them, they disappeared back to their cars and drove away. He got out. The traffic lights changed, with a small click from somewhere, from green to red and back to green. Cars waited, looking at him, then drove up and over the bridge. Cars came from the other side, and their headlights swept over him. He moved behind his car. Helen and her umbrella materialized out of the dark curtain of rain and stood beside him.

‘Sorry about this.' He waited for her to start the sour grumbling and hissing complaints.

She only said, ‘What do we do now?'

‘Someone is calling for a tow truck.'

‘How long?'

‘I don't know.' He moved away from her, because he wanted to cry. Helen folded her umbrella and got into the car.

They rode in the cab of the truck that towed Buttercup backwards, her rear end in the air like a tart. From the garage, they rang for a taxi, and waited a long time. Tim did not apologize again. You can't go on and on saying, ‘I'm sorry,' especially if the other person does not seem to mind. In the taxi, they sat at opposite ends of the back seat, leaning into the corners.

Tim had an uncomfortable thought. He cleared his throat and asked Helen, ‘See Val much – my sister Val?'

‘No. She did help me when I moved into the flat, that's all.'

Good. Tim did not want Valerie to know about this.

‘Except just that one night, at the theatre. I suppose she only asked me to be someone for you. Or did she ask you to be someone for me?'

‘Both, perhaps,' Tim said miserably.

‘Yes, perhaps.'

By the time the taxi had dropped Helen and taken Tim home, the fare was enormous. Helen asked him in a quick whisper behind the driver's back whether he had enough money on him, and when he murmured, ‘I don't know,' she took a ten pound note out of her bag and put it into his hand. His hand was sweaty and clammy, had been ever since Buttercup croaked on the bridge. Helen's fingers felt dry and bloodless, like gloves.

‘Ley shaft bent. Two cogs completely jammed, and the teeth ripped. Whatever you did, you did a thorough job.'

‘I wasn't driving,' Tim lied to the garage on the phone.

‘I didn't say you were. Want us to go ahead and put in a new gearbox?'

‘How – what will it cost?' Whatever it was, it had got to be done for Zara's car. It was Zara's car again now.

The new gearbox was going to cost about four hundred pounds, with labour. Who could he ask?

Not Brian, for a start. Tim had talked to him a few times since
the dreadful episode on the couch, and Brian had been his usual normal self; but a pass was a pass, and you didn't ask the passer to do you a favour.

Jack? Easy-going Jack with his jokes and his wide smile which he beamed on Tim if he ran into him on the offices floor at Webster's, taking invoices up for Mr D. Tim could not ask either of them, because he had only just paid the rest of the overdue rent, which he had borrowed from his mother, to keep Brian at bay.

So not his mother, for that reason. Also, she had been talking about getting herself a video recorder, but if you gave her the chance, she'd sacrifice that money on Zara's car instead.

The garage wanted a down-payment of two hundred pounds before they would start the work. Tim was desperate enough to go round to Valerie and throw himself on her mercy.

It was like throwing himself off a cliff. No mercy there. When Tim was a child, two years younger than Val, she was the witch of fairy-tales, the wicked stepsister, with her teeth and her nails and her stringy black hair and crowing voice. In a real story, the hero would have confounded her, stabbed her, beaten her into the ground, incinerated her into a puff of smoke. Tim made spells against her, but nothing happened.

Val got better after she grew up and went to college and got a job of some power and lived with Colin, but she could still revert.

Without telling her about the disaster of his night out with Helen, Tim asked her for a small loan, just a hundred or so, and really to help Zara, since it was her car and the gearbox would have packed it in anyway. Val stared at Tim over the ironing-board, drew her thin red mouth back into a snarling grimace and said, ‘No.'

‘Just – er, just no?'

‘I have nothing to add.' She gazed at him through the thick glasses that protected her eyes and thoughts from your knowledge, like portholes protecting passengers from the sea. She thumped the iron about a bit, and then she suddenly put back her head and laughed.

‘Don't look so glum, poor old Tim.'

‘Were you joking?'

‘I never joke about money. Nor does our Dad Wallace. You'd better go and ask him. You're his responsibility, not mine.'

Wallace was in his woodworking shed, feeling it vibrate gently as he turned a paper-knife handle on the lathe. His beloved son appeared in the doorway, looking pale.

‘Hullo, stranger,' Wallace said, as a way of letting Timothy know that his casual visits at long intervals had been noted.

‘Sorry I didn't come last weekend, Dad. I had a lot on.'

‘Who said anything about last weekend? We weren't here anyway. I took m'wife to the coast.' His son was the champion liar, but Wallace could lie too as necessary. ‘Pass me that gouge would you? No, that's not a gouge. Up there, look, on the shelf. That's right, drop it. It only cost ten quid.'

‘Talking of the cost of things, Dad …'

When the boy cleared his throat in that strangled way, it reminded you of those unwholesome programmes Annie loved – always on the BBC, since no one would pay to advertise on them – where the handicapped tried to walk and speak, and would have been better shut away and not embarrassing people.

‘Is this a money talk, then?' Wallace asked, his mouth pursed, his skilled craftsman's fingers a marvel to see. ‘Money talks.'

His son stayed mum, biting his lip. Wallace, merciful patriarch, put him out of his misery.

‘Since you only ever come here to get a good hot meal or scrounge a bit of cash, I'm assuming, since it is neither lunch nor supper time, that you're after a loan.'

‘That's right, Dad.' The worm squirmed.

‘You know my motto. Never borrow, never loan.'

‘I can pay it back. I get my bonus, end of next month.'

‘Ah.' Wallace stopped the lathe and held the handle up to the
light for Tim to admire. Tim was looking at the floor, and pushing shavings about with the side of his foot. ‘So it's not just five pounds or so we're talking about.'

‘Bit more.'

‘How much more?'

Tim told him.

Wallace Kendall could not let his son continue with an explanation of what it was for. He could not trust himself, not with all these sharp tools about.

‘You'd better go,' he said, with admirable calm, considering his whole blood supply was up in his head and battering to get out.

‘All right, Dad.'

Why didn't the wimp stand up to him? Why didn't he say, ‘Wait a minute, Dad,' and stand his ground, instead of ducking his head and fumbling his way out of the workshop? Boy couldn't even shut a door.

‘Shut the bloody door!'

If Wallace Kendall had been Tim, he would have banged the door hard, and made the little hut shake. Tim closed the door as gently as if he were leaving a sick-room. His father started up the lathe again and the little hut began its gentle tremble under the hands of its master.

In a wild flight of fancy, Tim imagined casting himself on the kindness of Mr D., and Mr D. would respond like a benevolent employer of olden times, remembering that he too had been young once and in need of a helping hand.

But the only helping hand Tim would get if he was insane enough to try to touch his boss would be a shove towards the door. Out. Sacked. Plenty more like you queuing up to get your job.

Zara, where are you? Zara would have rustled up the money from somewhere. Even when she was out of work and out of unemployment benefit, she always had enough for booze and drugs.