England's Lane (33 page)

“Ay …? Blimey! Listen to it, Charlie! You hearing all of this, is you? We got a right keen one here, ain't we? Dear oh me. So all right then, Stan—listen: we'll have us just the one more for the road then, ay? And I'll slip round the back—give them a quick ring. Don't want to be walking in on nothing. Got any pennies on you, Stan? For the phone, like? Then you can get us in a last one, and we's off. It thirty bob they're wanting, you wondering. Each, like. Got thirty bob on you, Stan? Yeh? Good lad. Only you ain't got, say—three quid, has you? It's just I'm a bit short. Yeh? You does? Right then, Stan—Trojan. What a time we's going to have, ay? So what about you then, Charlie?”

“Me—nah. I'm buggering off home, aren't I? Had a right skinful, I have. Them Scotches just about done me in. Get my head down. Be out like a light. So yeh look—I'll see you then, Jim. All right? Tomorrow night, shouldn't wonder. See you Stan, yeh? Ta for the Scotches. Be in in the morning for my Capstans, ay? Here—that reminds me, Jim … ain't got a fag, has you? Just smoked my last one, haven't I?”

“You don't get no better, does you Charlie? Ay? Telling you, Stan—Charlie, he don't get no better. No matter how many Senior bleeding Service he have off of you, still I got to be giving him another one. Reckon he owe me about a million quidsworth.”

“Write you a check, Jim.”

“Yeh—bugger off Charlie, can't you? Here—take it: that's your last, you bleeder, I'm telling you. Here Stan—talking of fags, something you can maybe tell me, ay? You ever seen black ones, have you? Don't mean whiffs nor nothing—fags, proper fags, yeh? But with all black paper on them and a tip what's gold, if you can believe it.”

“Gold? Nah—never, Jim! Having us on …”

“Telling you, Charlie—I seen it. Yeh so what about it, Stan?”

“Let's go. Now, Jim. Do it! Do it! Let's just do it. What are we waiting for?”

“Right you are then, Stan—right you are. Blimey—never seen a bloke so keen. So look, what I'll do—I'll go and give them a little ring then, yeh? And you get us in a last one, ay? Good lad. Oh yeh, and Stan—you got some pennies then, yeh …?”

I don't really remember it, you know. No, not really—the journey down there to Adelaide Road. I think we might have had a few more, Jim and me. In that pub. In that horrible pub. He only put the brakes on me when he thought I might not have enough money left for what was to come after: read him like an open book. No … I'm really straining now, and I can't—can't at all remember it, the journey down there. Not even certain I could take you to the right door. Down a few steps, that I am fairly sure of. Cozy little place. They'd made it very cozy, the two girls who live there. Not sure then what happened to Jim, exactly—he seemed to have just sort of drifted off, and I wasn't too sorry to be seeing the back of him, that much I do recall. He's friendly enough, Jim—I'm not saying he's unfriendly. It's just that he grates on you, after a while. And especially then, after all I'd been through. And then the drink. No … I wasn't at my best, it's fair to say. One thing that really did begin to irritate me, though … I might even have let fly at him about it, I'm not too sure. But the way he talks, the way he's putting things—he always ends up asking you all these stupid questions. Like “hear me, do you Stan?” Well of course I bloody well hear him: not deaf, am I? And he'll ask you if you know what he's saying, what he's meaning, what it is he's on about—and then of course you have to keep on saying to him Yes Jim, Yes Jim—like you're, I don't know—some sort of a parrot, or something. Or his bloody budgie, Cyril. You just find yourself doing it. Reflex—is that what
they call it? I suppose that's what it is. And you hear yourself going Yes Jim, Yes Jim and you think you could lose your bloody mind. “You got a fair old drink there, ain't you Stan?” Yes Jim. “Go in the door now, will we?” Yes Jim. “Here, Stan—you're a right one, ain't you?” Yes Jim. Yes bloody Jim. Christ Alive—fair gets on your wick.

Anyway—it was lovely, really, just to be shot of him. And then there was Aggie … Aggie, she did seem to be ever such a kind person. Brought me a nice big cup of Cadbury's Drinking Chocolate, a thing I'm always rather partial to. Settled the stomach a bit. Lost track of how many Scotches I had in the end. And then she was sort of stroking my brow. Which was nice. I was in an armchair by the little gas fire, and she was sitting … I don't know—on the back of it? On the arm? Well wherever she was, I couldn't quite see her, not all of her I couldn't, and she was stroking my brow. And it made me think. How long is it? Since a woman so much as touched me? How many years? How many years? The only touch I had is when I went and kissed Milly, like the damned fool I am. And where did that get me, I'd like to know. She probably hates me now. Must do. And if she doesn't … well then soon she will. That's for sure. Because I didn't, did I? Do what she said. No. I'm not at all sure I've been a man about it.

“Fancy a bit of a lie down, do you Bert? Nice relaxing lie down—how's that sound …?”

“Wonderful. Sounds wonderful, Aggie. It's Stan, my name. Not Bert, no. I'm Stan.”

“Course you are, Stan. Course you are. Let's just go into the other room then, shall we …?”

“Not sure I can stand …”

“Your Aggie'll help you. Won't she, dear? You lean on me, eh? Have you there in no time.”

And I suppose, then, that's what must have happened. Though how she took my weight I'll never know, because she was only a little slip of a thing. And then I was on this bed, divan sort of a bed, and Aggie—lovely pink cheeks, she had, bright and shiny eyes—she was smiling at me. Perfume—I liked the perfume she had on. Like a garden, full of flowers.

“Right then, dear. Comfy, are we? Nice and comfy? That's the way. Now let's just see what we have here then, shall we …? There, my love … like that, do you? Nice, is it …?”

“Yes Jim.”

“Ay …?”

“Nothing. Nothing.”

“Bit tired—that it, dear?”

“Am tired, yes. Had quite an evening of it, really …”

“Couple of drinks with your mates, eh?”

“Couple, yes. Something like that.”

“Well I expect that's it then, lovey. Don't you worry about it. Quite normal, you know. Oh yes. See it all the time.”

“Normal? Is it? It's not really though, is it? Normal. Not really.”

“Course it is, dear. Don't you worry.”

“I think you are very … attractive …”

“Well aren't you the perfect gentleman.”

“So why can't I …? I want to. Do it. Just do it …!”

“Blame it on the distillery, dear. Not your fault—course it's not.”

“I think, Aggie … I'll go now, then. Things to see to.”

“All right then, dear. If you're sure. Well now … why don't we just call it fifteen bob, then? All right? Under the circumstances.”

And then … well then I found myself fumbling about with the lock on the back door of my shop. Heaven knows how I got there. I remember her waving me off, waving me away. Holding that shiny red gown around her, and standing in the doorway. “Bye, Bert …!”
she went—and she kissed me on the cheek. Well look—it's the thought that counts. And I do wonder, though—I have to—if it was the drink. Or if it was something else. You sometimes just have to wonder about yourself, really. So anyway … somehow got myself up the stairs. Didn't make a noise. Crept into Anthony's room—had a little look. Peaceful. All quite peaceful. And then I went in to see Janey. Quiet as the grave in there. Oh yes. Peaceful as you like.

Have you ever, I wonder, heard the tale of the shadowy and unspeakable creatures who happily will compensate the more lowly and gullible, the needy people, in easy exchange for attending to—as it is customarily termed—their “dirty work” …? The moneyed and well-suited gentleman bruisers …? If not, you will surely have heard tell of them. And I am delighted and irremediably relieved to be able to announce that from this very bright and icy morning, now I am firmly of their number: yes indeed—I have joined their despicable ranks. Although it is true that in the past, my past—and in Henley, most certainly—I had not the least hesitation, no qualm whatever, over personally seeing to any little necessity, taking a certain measure, the immediate need for which might unforesee-ably have arisen during the day-to-day running of what, by this stage of the proceedings, I had come to regard as being my business, and my business solely (this headstrong attitude of mine being the source, I suppose, the fountainhead, of the subsequent … well now—shall we call it a rift? Rift, yes—which very rapidly yawned and deepened into a fathomless chasm of mutual sin, then ultimate depravity). No … I did not at all mind taking care of any such things—indeed, one might even say with not inconsiderable justification
that positively I relished it. While always remaining rather tediously aware, of course, that intimidation, even physical harm—the threat of it, or its execution—if it is to be inflicted upon so very evidently inferior a victim … then it all and always was so very effortlessly accomplished: elderly ladies bound by correctness, embarrassment, the necessity for manners … inarticulate and greedy legatees, a legion of casually ignorant and slaveringly avaricious idiots …? Barely challenging, I think we can agree.

This time, however, the situation that confronts me could hardly be more different. For it is no less a personage than my old friend and subsequent foe whom, albeit involuntarily, I now find myself up against: John Somerset himself—the founder of both our feasts, long before all such gorging turned to sickness. And never must one forget that Somerset, he is not just utterly ruthless and extremely determined, but clever so very far beyond the regular intention and understanding of that word. My initial assault, therefore—for perfectly possibly, one more successive attempt might well be required—this must be mounted by a disposable and unthinking spearhead: the decoy, the bluff, the first and expendable wave—cut, if needs be, to bloody and shrieking tatters, solely in order for the generals to better assess both the extent and ferocity of the enemy's firepower … so usual, in war. And this, in a word, is my man Obi. For I have decided, you see, to wait not a moment longer. The state of limbo, I have come uncomfortably to realize, is not one in which I any longer care to dwell. This impending threat of the glinting sword must dazzle and teasingly prick me no more. I shall now assume the great and gaudy mantle of the swaggering aggressor: I am firmly convinced that it is wholly essential to seek out now this one single person who already has come so very unsettlingly close to finding me, and must remain quite desperate to do so. The coming battle—and it will be, please make no mistake about this, very much
one to the death—this looming attack, it must now be taken to the other side. Then, and at last, can there be elimination. This to put right the wrong of my unthinkable omission of all those years ago. Why did I not strike? At a time when I could have done so with such demonstrable ease, and decisive velocity. Was I merely distracted and hesitant? Was I fearful? Surely amid my inexcusable inaction there could not possibly have loitered even the merest suspicion of anything approaching mercy …? I cannot imagine so … but well, let us see. Let us look at it: investigate the circumstance.

The time I am remembering—the pertinent moment—is so very far along and down the briskly straightforward route that initially John Somerset had charted for me. Over this, at first, I had no more than added merely a splatter of color—rendered the rolling road but a touch more scenic—before abandoning utterly so circuitous a course in favor of something new. My way now was direct, you see: it got you to the desired destination so very much more quickly. They were oddly reluctant, John and Adam, when first I had put it to them; the money, though, soon made them recognize the folly of their ways. As, so often, money will. At the beginning, though—before all of that—I was happy enough to be obedient: to accompany John's boy Adam to each of our appointments, I there to engage the witless householder in always elegant and redly gushing banter (the thrown-up and roughcast walls of which, and purely for the purposes of my own quiet amusement, I would thickly plaster over, and ever more lavishly—though never, not on a single occasion, did even one member of this bland and self-satisfied battalion of proles, parvenus, withered aristocrats and money-grubbing derelicts appear to suspect that even so much as a smidgen of my so very orotund and full-barreled praise for their home—my lusty laudations over their exquisite taste, personal charm, physical beauty, the very vast and
limitless depths of their soul … that none of this could be in any way inordinate).

Adam's eye did indeed prove to be fine—this much was immediately evident to me. If he did not possess a positive knowledge of any particular piece, then surely his instinct was always more than sound. And of course we very gaily and gallantly took away from all these cold and crumbling piles every manner of unspeakable bric-a-brac, and solely in order to conceal the one and true intent. I sometimes did wonder about the eventual destination of all those sulking collections of vilely glimmering lusterware vases, the Edwardian bachelor wardrobes with always a cubbyhole devoted to “sundries,” utilitarian vanity tables in the Japanese taste, more than detestable elaborately spindled mahogany whatnots, bisque and friable Parian busts of forgotten dilettantes—those insolent, glossy and muscular blackamoors brandishing eternally their lances and flambeaux, murky conversation pieces in chipped gilt plaster frames depicting some whiskery and melancholy old fool in gaiters and fingering a churchwarden, or else a surprised and rouge-cheeked young milkmaid secreting a letter into the pocket of her pinny—these in twine-tied bundles together with the limitless depression of all those endless oils of cows, ruminating in a brown and waterlogged field … the beastly little bits of Sèvres and Limoges, stuffed and mounted rodents, the consoles and commodes—not to say the perfectly extraordinary quantities of mutely offensive Staffordshire dogs. It transpired that Adam would weekly transport this whole very terrible caboodle to some sort of junk shop on the outskirts of Oxford—which, I thought highly comically, traded under the soubriquet “Oxonian Antiquities”—where in lieu of cash payment, he accepted first the hospitality of the proprietor's wife—by all accounts a first-rate cook in possession of a starred Cordon Bleu qualification—and then, following a digestif, the rather more carnal
delights of both the man's twin daughters (though whether in turn or simultaneously, I have not an idea). How aware and willing a party was this trampled trader in pennies' worth of debris to so broad and encompassing an arrangement, I did not discover. Rather because I had no interest whatever in so tawdry a matter. Though I cannot but think this entire household quite purposefully mercenary to the exclusion of any of the finer senses—because to have suffered any time whatever in the company of Adam when not most absolutely necessary was surely more than any right-thinking person of taste, refinement or even good humor could remotely have contemplated, let alone endured. For Anna, it almost immediately became clear to me, had been perfectly correct in her summation of his character: it would be difficult to imagine any other young man on earth who could be less engaging. Anna, yes … Adam's mother, John's wife. For of course it was she, by now, who consumed me wholly.