Life Goes On (51 page)

I didn't intend to let Moggerhanger get his maulers on those bags and boxes jammed in the boot, yet what use was such a load of hot goods to me? There was no doubt enough hash speed dope or maryjane to keep me and half the country stunned till the twenty-first century and beyond. The counterfeit or stolen money would set me up in Papeete forever likewise, in which place I could light my cigars with the reams of national insurance stamps and think of all those working in Blighty (when they could) who had to shell out for them towards the pittance of an old age pension.

Maybe I would find a dumping ground and set fire to the car with the loot still in the boot. Or I could leave it outside some rural cop shop with a note pinned under the wipers and the boot key in a little plastic bag of the sort they fix parking fines in.

Perhaps I should, after all, leave it at Peppercorn Cottage, without waiting for further instructions, and walk off never to contact Moggerhanger again. Whatever I did beyond the call of duty I was a dead man. I wasn't in Canada now, where I had a whole continent to get lost in. I was in Albion fair and square, and never you forget it, I said to myself, ceasing to think of the problem for the time being.

Beyond Warwick, and heading for Henley, the road was narrower. A souped-up Mini was honking to overtake. They must be local lads who knew the route. Their horn played a truncated version of ‘Colonel Bogey' so loudly that my backbone shook. On a straight bit I slowed down and they shot by. It was pub closing time, so I would have to be careful. I'd never had a serious accident, but didn't want my turn to come now.

I waited for the next stretch of dual carriageway so that I could slow down and look for a layby. On England's arterial lanes you often see a sign for one just ahead, but when it comes it's two hundred yards long. Twenty cars try to overtake a hundred-ton lorry, and the scene develops into a madder version of the whacky races.

The stiff breeze had a bit of rain in it, showers approaching from the west, as it said on the news. The layby just before Bromsgrove was slippery with spilt diesel oil and plastic bags, and after doing his stuff Dismal wanted to get straight back in the car. I told him it was the best I could do and opened a tin of Bogie. He sniffed it, took a lick, then began to gobble as if a TV camera had started whirring away. I sat on the step with a packet of cheese sandwiches and the giant flask of coffee, coming back to life after not realising I had been so hungry, and blessing Bill and Maria who had stocked me up so well. Bill's old-sweat touch had also thrown in a small gas stove, and everything necessary to make me self-contained for a fortnight.

When Dismal had finished and I was having a smoke, we heard footsteps between the lion-roar of a lorry and the gazelle-purr of a car. Someone trod wearily into the layby as if about to fall after a very long walk. Dismal growled and I told him to hold back in language he was coming more and more to understand. The man was out of breath. ‘Is the dog safe?'

‘He wouldn't hurt a fly.'

‘I don't expect he would, but a chap like me can't afford to tek chances.' He leaned against the car, and in the dim light I saw the unshaven face of someone about sixty. He had a rucksack on his back, but there didn't seem to be much in it. The open neck of a white shirt came over his sports-jacket collar. He wore a pullover, flannels, black boots and a cap, more like a traveller than a hiker.

‘What are you doing out at this time of night?'

‘You might well ask.'

I took his response to mean he had no option, so got the flask and gave him a cup of coffee. He drank it straight down. ‘Good Lord, I don't think I've had one like that in years. It's nectar!'

I passed him a couple of cheese sandwiches. ‘Where are you going.'

‘The next town.'

‘You're hungry.'

He glared. ‘It's the human condition, for somebody like me. Or it has been for ten years. Before that it was another matter.' He stopped talking so as to eat.

‘I'll give you a lift, if you like.'

Humour just outweighed the bitterness. ‘I had a damned good car once. I had a house, a wife, a job – the lot, and I loved it. When you're sitting pretty you don't know what's going to strike in the next year or two, or even the next ten.'

His look made me uncomfortable. ‘Whoever did?'

‘Thanks for being kind to a bloke on tramp, anyway. They were excellent sandwiches. Don't think I can't appreciate it. It gets harder for a bloke in my position to explain himself properly. I've had more tribulations in the last ten years than Israel ever did in Egypt. Or so it felt, though I don't like to complain.'

‘Another coffee?'

He nodded. ‘Yes, please.'

I gave him more sandwiches and a bar of chocolate. ‘I have to be going now.' I opened the door. ‘So if you'd like to get in.'

‘What time is it?'

I went to the headlight and looked at my half-hunter pocket watch. ‘Five to eleven.'

He leaned close. ‘I had a watch like that once, but I lost it. Or it got stolen, probably by the removal men. Such things happened to me in those days, when I still had a watch to lose. I was far too careless.'

We settled ourselves in, and I offered him one of Moggerhanger's prime cigars on the assumption that all fugitives were born equal.

‘I'd better not, but thanks all the same. That supper was a treat. I hadn't eaten since breakfast.'

I waited for a car to pass, then drifted onto the road. ‘Haven't you got any money?'

‘Oh yes, I've allus got a bit. Don't want to get pulled in for a vagrant. It happened once, so I never have less than five pounds in my pocket, though that ain't worth a sight these days. But I'm always economising. I set myself to spend so much a day, and I even try to save a copper or two out of that. It's a rigorous regime, but I never go really hungry. I think a Spartan existence does a man good, don't you?'

‘No,' I said.

He pulled out a tattered map. ‘I intended getting some fish and chips at the next town. Bromsgrove, ain't it?'

‘I hope so.' I saw the glow of lights in the distance. He asked if I owned the car. ‘I'm taking some stuff to a place in Shropshire. I'm the chauffeur.'

He settled back. ‘I'll have that cigar now, if you don't mind.' He stroked Dismal's head, and if there was one thing Dismal liked more than having one person to fuss over him, it was having two. ‘Lovely dog, this one.'

‘He's my best friend.'

‘Looks like a cross between a Newfoundland and a St Bernard.'

‘Could be,' I said. ‘Where are you going after Bromsgrove?'

‘It's anybody's guess. I keep on the move. I come from Nottinghamshire originally, and funnily enough I never seem to get more than a hundred miles away from the place. I go in ever increasing circles for a while, then in ever decreasing circles till I hit Slab Square, when I start my ever increasing circles once more. I suppose it comes from having been an engineer. I was a mining engineer, but I retired early because I came into some money. It wasn't much, so I don't know why I did retire. Stupid, it was. I let it go to my head. But my wife had left me the year before, though the time had come for us to go our separate ways in any case. We'd been together so long we were like two maiden ladies living together. When she'd gone I sold my house and moved to Leicester. I was fifty then. It was just over ten years ago. Seems like the ice age has come and gone. But I was happy enough to sell my house at the time. I got £4,600 for it, which was fair enough in those days.'

He settled himself more comfortably. ‘In Leicester I bought a small flat, took it on a kind of cooperative basis, organised by a man who said he had been a socialist all his life and wanted to put his principles into practice. I don't know who you are, but never have anything to do with anything like that, no matter what the principles are. If ever you get close to anybody who starts talking about the future, run for your life. But I fell for it, in reply to an advertisement. Never fall for an advertisement, because they are just a mirror to what's in the rest of the newspaper. Anyway, this smiling damned villain with his blond locks, fisherman's sweater, army boots and pigskin briefcase vanished one day, and the next morning the council moved in to demolish the house. I just managed to get out before the ball and chain came through my window. As it was I lost my books and records.'

A tearfulness came into his voice, but he checked it firmly, which endeared me to him. ‘I went mad. What money I had left I spent trying to sue them. In the end I was penniless. I had some family in Leicester, but from then on they wouldn't even speak when they passed me in the street in case I asked 'em for the price of a pack of fags. Even their children snubbed me. I got ulcers, and then I was in an asylum for a few months because – so they said, but I didn't remember – I threw a ten-inch nut and bolt through the windscreen of a councillor's car. Doughty props were giving way all round me.

‘The only thing I could do was take to the road. That was the saving of me. Every few weeks I pick up a bit of money from national this and national that. They all know me in the offices at Nottingham and Leicester, and it's not much money but it keeps me going. I'm lucky it's this world and not in Russia where a bloke like me would be put in jail as a parasite. But I've never felt so healthy since taking to the road. Summer or winter, I'm out in all weathers. Sometimes I get a bed, but often I sleep rough, inside a sewage pipe, or a barn, or under a hedge, or in an old car, or a derelict building – of which there's usually one round about. I never get colds, nor any aches and pains. My feet hardened after the first fortnight. I get a bit forgetful, that's the only thing. Ever since I set out, though, I've kept a Level Book to record my ups and downs.'

He laughed. ‘That's a joke, really, but I do fill in a log.' He held up a red, stiff-covered notebook which he kept in his pocket. ‘I record the date, distance and place names travelled to every day. Very brief, mind you, no description or stuff like that, otherwise I'd get to need more than one book. It's my only companion. Every mining engineer has his Level Book. If ever you meet another, just ask him. When there's black ice in winter, or bitter pouring rain, I go into a public library and read Shakespeare or the Bible. I never look at newspapers. I don't care what's going on in the world. They don't have any news to effect me. They write for themselves, not for us, so I just sit in the library on bad days, reading and keeping warm. They're my holidays. I never touch booze and I allus manage to stay clean. I don't know whether you've noticed, but I don't smell.'

He didn't.

‘When I've walked a long way you might get a whiff of sweat, but that's natural. In my rucksack I've got soap, toothpaste, shaving tackle, deodorant, boot brush and a tie. Not much else, except a pair of opera glasses, a bit of string, a small flashlight and a couple of pencils, a change of underwear and a clean shirt. The only luxury is a slide rule and a book of tables. Usually a bite of grub. When I want a new coat I get one for next to nothing from one of those Oxfam ragshops.'

He sounded more cheerful. ‘So you see, it's a healthy life. Plenty of exercise, fresh air, always something interesting in the view, or in people I meet. I never pass anyone without a good-day, and I don't care whether or not they answer. If they don't, that's their problem. I don't often accept rides like this, but when I got into that layby back there I was feeling a bit weary after walking from Leamington. It's not unusual for me to hike thirty miles a day when I'm in the mood, which isn't bad for a bloke turned sixty. Perhaps you chaps who work for your living think I'm sponging on the social system, but I did my share of work up to the age of fifty, and in all conscience it's not very much of the world's resources I consume.'

I was icy at the back of the neck. We were beyond Bromsgrove, but neither of us had mentioned any need to stop there. His story put such a decision out of my mind because the fact was, I knew him well. He was the man who had sold his house at Farnsfield through me when I was working as an estate agent's runabout in Nottingham. I had done a bit of fiddling because several buyers were after it, out of which he got an extra few hundred pounds. He generously gave me a hundred and fifty, but I was given the push from the estate agents, Pitch and Blenders, because they found out about it. However, I used the money to buy an old banger and finance my coming to London, so this tramp in my car was responsible for me being where I was and doing what I was doing – which was giving him a lift while ferrying Moggerhanger's loot to Peppercorn Cottage. Even Blaskin wouldn't believe me if I told him, and he's a novelist.

His name was Arthur Clegg, and I'd spent a couple of days helping him clear up his house after the contracts had been exchanged. We'd had fry-ups when we got hungry, and played draughts while a Handel oratorio blasted out of the gramophone. The valuable half-hunter gold watch in my pocket was none other than one I had pilfered from a chest of drawers. I later gave it to that elderly dropout Almanack Jack who came to live at Upper Mayhem, so that with a little red flag and a gold braided cap, which Bridgitte put together for him, he could play at being station master. When he kicked the bucket from a heart attack I got it back, and had carried it in my waistcoat ever since.

Such a long tale had exhausted him. ‘I don't know why I went on so long.'

We were intersecting the M5 and heading for Kidderminster at ten minutes past eleven. ‘I'm glad you did. You may find this hard to believe, but we've been acquainted before.'

His hand twitched on the back of the seat. ‘It seems unlikely, if you don't mind me saying so.'

‘It's true, all the same.'

A liveliness came into his voice. ‘Well, I do detect a trace of the old Nottingham in your accent. It's barely noticeable, but I would say you hail from Beeston – or somewhere near.'