If he’d meant a potter’s wheel I’d have made more money than working for him. I couldn’t but wonder what he was getting at, something never easy to divine. There was a motive for every word he spoke, never the man to throw talk away. My opinion of him was too simple, and his words were sometimes so devious that if I didn’t regard them as simple I’d have no chance of getting close to what lay behind. All I could do was nod, and listen, and enjoy the cigar, and mull on the fact that with Moggerhanger my suspicions were always nine-tenths of certainty. He had a job for me, and a very dodgy one it would be.
“Do you remember Chief Inspector Lanthorn?”
I scented mischief, because how could I forget that six-foot blunt instrument who got me sent to jail, the biggest bastard of a bent copper in the business? “I certainly do.”
He put on a sinister chuckle, and knew it. “It was such a pity he had that massive heart attack crossing Horse Guards Parade a few years ago.”
“It made my day. I was happy for a whole year.”
“Not mine it didn’t, though every cloud has a silver lining, even a gold one at times, because like father like son, his eldest lad is now working for the customs at one of our seaports.”
Ash fell from my cigar. “I hope he’s doing well.”
“Let’s put it this way: it’s very convenient, and he’s loyal to me now and again. And don’t get that tone in your voice. We all have to make a living, you as much as anybody, otherwise why are you here? Am I right?”
I lost patience, but only enough to shift my feet. “I’m afraid you are.”
“So let’s get down to business.” He leaned towards me, cufflinks clinking on picking up his glass to take a swig. “Do you have an up-to-date passport?”
“I did some motoring with my wife in France and Spain last year. I don’t even go to the bog unless it’s in my back pocket.”
“Better and better. Would you like to travel a little further afield?”
Would I? He’d been looking at a photograph of me before my arrival, so knew the best way to tempt me. “Depends where.”
“Michael, there are times when I don’t think I can trust you, but at least I know how far I can trust you, and that’s worth a lot in my business. So don’t be evasive. All I want to know is, are you with me, or aren’t you?”
“I’m with you.” Apart from being in no position to argue, a bit of continental motoring was right up my street.
“The first mark of intelligence,” he said, “is curiosity. The second is a sense of humour and, as you know, there’s nothing I like more than a good laugh. It’s the men who can only smile I can’t stand. I want you to drive to Greece in the Rolls Royce. My wife loves Greek food, and she’s got a shopping list as long as Kenny Dukes’ left arm.”
He laughed, at my simulated look of relief. “That’s all right then,” I said. “But only as far as Greece?”
“No further. I don’t want you wandering to look for Noah’s Ark in Turkey, or vanishing into the poppy fields of Afghanistanley. Just Greece, you understand? I know what you can be like when you’ve got horse-power between your knees.”
“I’ll keep strictly to instructions, Lord Moggerhanger.”
“Too right you will. You can take a week going and a week coming back. All expenses will be remunerated, though I shall want an itemised account in copperplate script when you get back.”
It didn’t sound either legal or even above board to me. I knew he knew my thoughts on this so I made an attempt to find out in case he sniffed trickery up my sleeve. “Can’t you get Greek foodstuffs in Soho, or Camden Town?”
“Not the sort she wants. Nor the kind I want, either. It’s the genuine groceries she’s after, not fakeries out of a garden shed in the Midlands. And you know I’d do anything to satisfy the cravings of my dear wife Agnes. I’m nothing if not a family man. I hope you’re the same. Always hold on for dear life to your wife, because she’s the only person who’s more precious than yourself. You are still married, aren’t you? I like all my lads to have good domestic relationships. Even Kenny Dukes is going steady, or so he tells me. We’re hoping to marry him off soon, and I’ve promised to pay for a lavish spread in his local church hall. The only thing is that when he has kids I hope they don’t have such long arms. He’s a bloody freak.”
His slimy philosophical crap was so piscatorial that it encouraged me to try finding whatever deep meaning it concealed. “What if I get caught?”
“Michael, you know what I think about illegal immigrants? Make it legal. My opinion is that everybody should be allowed to come into this sceptred isle who wants to. There should be no passport controls of any kind, but at the same time not a penny of public money must be spent on them. After all, it’s my money, and maybe yours as well. Let them come in freely and make their own way with honest work, but with no help at all from government organisations. All I’m saying is don’t you dare contemplate trying to make a few hundred pounds by smuggling immigrants in in the back of the Roller. Forget it. I wouldn’t like it. That’s the only way you could get caught, by doing something like that. As for anything else while you’re in my employ, you’re covered by Arnold Killisick, the best lawyer in London. We’re all safe with him. I may be a lord, but I’m a democrat at heart, meaning that if any of my lads are in trouble they get the same lawyer as I do.
“Your journey to Greece will be easy because Alice had booked you and the car on the train as far as Milan, which will give you a head start. When you get to Greece you’ll do the shopping, then collect a few packages from a chap called Ulysses Klepht-Polati, or some such name. It’s all written down. Oh yes, there’ll also be a packet to deliver on passing Belgrade, otherwise you’ll have a successful run, I’m sure. Alice will put everything in writing. And you’ll come back to England through the port I’ll tell you to.”
The ratbag had me, but the smell of adventure was stuck so far up my nostrils I thought I was getting the flu again, which put me in a state of delightful irresponsibility.
“Leave in two days time,” he said. “Meanwhile you’re confined to the compound, because I don’t want anybody to know where you’re going. Understand?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Or I’ll brain you.” My back stiffened, and on noting it he went on: “Though only as a mater of speaking. If anybody defames me I’ll sue them to within an inch of their life. You know my passion for secrecy.”
“None better. And I share it,” which was true. “Nobody ever got a thing out of me that I didn’t want to tell them,”
He stood by the mantelshelf, as if to warm his arse at a non-existent fire. “I can see a lot of me in you, which I suppose is why I’ve taken such a shine to you, and been more patient with you than with anyone else who works for me. What I like about you is that you know how to think. I can almost hear thoughts moving in your brainbox, whereas with the others all I can hear is a roar of the deep blue sea. Can you imagine the likes of Kenny Dukes, or Toffee Bottle, or Cottapilly, or Pindary driving my Rolls Royce around the Continent, on the sort of job I’m giving you? Every time they came to a signpost they’d have to get out and read it close.”
He flattered me, and the mistake was I enjoyed letting him. “Alice will give you maps and currency, tickets as far as Milan, and any general information she thinks will be useful. I want you to call my personal number every evening on your arrival at a suitable hostelry, to let me know you’re still among the living. Another thing is: don’t drive after dark or before dawn. I set great store by my Rolls Royce, as you know, and I don’t want any mishaps. I’m sure Alice hasn’t left any stone unturned to speed you on your way. So go to your room above the garage now, and play clock patience, or read a book. You’ll find whisky in the locker behind your bed, as well as a few packets of peanuts and crisps to soak it up with. Whenever you feel like a meal all you have to do is come into the kitchen, and Mrs Blemish will fi
x you up.”
Chapter Seven.
Jock the mechanic waved me out of the gate, a thumbs up with envy at my departure for what to him looked like a long holiday. I hoped it would be that way as well, because my only responsibility on the road would be to keep myself alive and the car unbumped, cautions built into me from birth.
With the inertial compass approximately set, I was off. May blossom was early, floated along the street and came to rest in drifts along the gutters, some settling on the windscreen like snowflakes. Threading onto the Uxbridge Road at seven on a Sunday morning I was in tune and twist to the way I felt, hardly any traffic to hinder me, so that twenty minutes later I stopped on Horseferry Road to buy the papers.
Throwing them onto the spare seat, I was off towards Lambeth Bridge, down to the Elephant, along the Old Kent Road, through New Cross, over Blackheath and, a few minutes later, shooting up Shooters Hill.
In a drifting calm, on auto pilot, I ate up the tasty miles as if with mustard on, not even a tune to whistle, the radio unswitched and, without rain, no wipers wiping. A couple of thousand miles into unknown territory, and my only duty was to care for Moggerhanger’s Rolls with my life because, as he had said the evening before, every scratch will cost a finger—yours. Though his threats were real enough—if he could catch me out—they were also as much to keep me in a state of high tension as to frighten me, assuming that a mind fine-tuned to a sense of danger was more able to carry out his mission without mishap. He needn’t have bothered. Nobody knew better than me how many mishaps could occur over a long distance, either going or coming, and that it was a matter of luck whether anything did or not.
Optimism drove me, the weather so good I didn’t even notice it, and I was soon on the outskirts of the town. Perhaps from overconfidence I couldn’t find a way into the harbour, my adrenaline not yet being at full spate. Maybe it was due to faulty signposting, or the fact that my intuition was warning me not to leave England on such a stunt but, no victim of superstition, all I had to do was another circuit around the one-way system to find my way in.
Trawling by the customs, a six-foot-eight pit prop with clipboard prominent came out of his command post and waved me to a stop. “Good morning, sir. Going for a spot of motoring to the mainland, are you?”
He wasn’t flagging anybody else, and I craved a woodsman’s axe to chop him down to size. “Only to Greece. I’ll be back in a fortnight.”
There was nothing on board for him to quibble at, as far as I knew, though I waited for him to give the tyres a kick with his winklepickers. He glanced at the back seats. In spite of Moggerhanger’s insistence that I confine myself to barracks for a couple of days before leaving I had gone out to buy things for my comfort, and for any emergencies on the journey: a bivouac tent, sleeping bag and groundsheet, a water container, mug, gas stove, tea coffee and biscuits, tins of sardines, and various tools. I went home while Frances was at the surgery and packed a suitcase of clothes. Everything was stowed in the boot, and the swivel-eyed get could turn it over and over for all I cared, because what was there to smuggle off this island that anybody in the rest of the world could possibly want? “Lord Moggerhanger thinks I deserve a bit of a holiday,” I told him.
“I see. And you’ll be coming back this way?”
“I might.”
“I’ll be waiting for you, if you do. Lanthorn’s the name.” He waved me on. “That’ll be all, for the moment.”
Son of the man who put me in jail, he might now be hoping to do the same. Or possibly not, because if he was in Moggerhanger’s pocket, and it couldn’t only be my imagination that he was, he would let me through no matter what I had on board, if he needed a bit of extra pocket money to spend with little boys and girls in the brothels of Bangkok. The uncertainty as to whether he would nab me when I got back was enough to keep the tenterhooks hooking more than Moggerhanger’s threat to cut a finger off should I damage his car, and for a moment or two I wondered whether I’d done right taking the job on. I could have been safer mangling wurzels in the fields around Upper Mayhem but, be that as it may, such thoughts left me no sooner had they floated in.
I joined the queue on the large open quayside, and half an hour later trundled into the hold. A couple of matelots swung ropes over the car and tied up the wheels. The weather might have been good from London, but the sea was rough outside, they said. “And we don’t want your nice Rolls Royce falling against that tractor and getting a lot of nasty bumps and scratches, do we—mate?”
There was nothing better they would like to see, as they swayed away laughing, hating anybody who drove a Rolls, especially the chauffeur, who might feel a notch above himself at the wheel.
Every school from southeast England was on a day’s outing to France, and because there were no seats, and hardly anywhere to move, I pushed around the Duty Free to buy two bottles of whisky, a hundred cigars, and some cartons of cigarettes. On the top deck for a bit of air, a few kids who had shoplifted in the Duty Free already were heaving their guts out over the side, empty beer cans and fag packets rolling around the scuppers, though they weren’t too sloshed not to know which way the wind was blowing.
From steerage to first class, the stink of frying chips and screeching television was everywhere, till I found a calm spot outside the radio officer’s cabin, to eat Mrs Blemish’s sandwiches and drink her coffee.
In better weather on the mainland I waited an hour before driving onto the railway flatcar, then made a way to my seat in the carriage. In the dining car for tea and cakes, a soignée woman across the aisle flipped through a glossy magazine, every turned page showing gorgeous half-naked dollies in bras and knickers, though what she saw in their vacuous faces I couldn’t imagine, unless she admired the underwear, or the women themselves, which thought set me aflame for getting to know her.
In ancient times she would have been one of those nubile women put into King Solomon’s bed, to kickstart him with an ejaculation and stop him dying. The scene set me examining her own figure, though I tried not to stare. When I was compelled to, for half a second, I knew I had seen her before, standing before me in the queue at the Albemarle Street post office about a week ago.
Now I had a closer look, at her pale face, and black well lacquered hair. She wore a white blouse with a scrap of lace at the collar, and the finest grey cashmere sweater. Seeing rings on both hands I glanced to see if she had bells on her toes, but shapely legs went into the finest Italian leather shoes, a neat complement to her handbag.
Having turned the pages from front to back she went through the magazine the other way. Maybe it was a catalogue. What she was looking for was hard to say, and if nothing in particular she must have been bored out of her otherwise interesting mind.
The train was cutting through France like a bandsaw, to make up for lost time, and it was somewhere east of Paris by the time I had finished my tea. She put the magazine down, took one up called Playwoman, though didn’t open it, and gazed out of the window. Then she picked up the first magazine as if still not having found what she wanted, which action scuffed a spoon onto the floor. Unlike when she had dropped the tissue at the post office, I had it on the saucer before she could look at me over the paper. Gratified by her smile of thanks, I decided that talk costs nothing, and often brought its just reward: “Are you going much beyond Milan?”
She put the magazine down, a good sign. “To Ancona, or nearby. In the hills.”
“Family?”
“My husband and I have a house there.”
I told her where I was going, on the principle that the more fantastical my story the more reward I might get, if it was believed. It was risky, but I was used to that. When I put out my hand we were parted by a waiter barging by. “I’m Lord Dropshort, of Cannister House, Berks.” I didn’t use any other name in case there was a real lord of that ilk who, on reading this, might sue me.
“Were you the man in that marvello
us Rolls Royce I saw coming up the ramp?”
“It’s a bore, having to drive the blasted thing.” I put on as much hee-haw as could be mustered. “My chauffeur was taken short with appendicitis yesterday, and let me down. But I’m getting the hang of it little by little.”
Whether she believed me or not I couldn’t say, but she seemed interested. “In fact,” I said, “I’m getting quite to like driving, which I suppose is how ordinary people feel when at the wheel of their own cars. Are you motoring?”
She laughed. “Yes, but nothing so grand. A Rover, though I expect it’ll get me there some time tomorrow. It’s all motorway, except the last bit. Looks like we’d better go. The waiters are getting edgy.”
We stood, her face a little above my chest. “Look here, since we’re travelling without our opposite numbers, if you’ll forgive the expression—even I’m constrained to look at television now and again—would you do me a kindness and be my guest at dinner in this swaying plankwagon? Better than eating alone, don’t you think?” I sensed her hesitation, but could have been wrong. “Unless you’re too stolidly married to those magazines,” I brayed.
The waiter pushed us aside again. “I say!” I cried after him, but he ignored me. “Damned impertinence. The lower orders don’t know their place anymore.”
But I thanked the waiter, because she was close enough to kiss. “That would be lovely,” she said, her hand warm and pliant.
“Settled. Think I’ll get some shut-eye.” I walked off before she moved, as befitted my status, pleased at my success, till I remembered she hadn’t told me her name.
Whatever the shaking and noise, I can sleep anywhere, and went off into the never-never land of seeing her white face close enough for me to move in, but her lips faded before mine could touch them. I woke with a hard thing pushing at my trousers, only diminished on swilling myself at the cold tap of my Wagon-Lit compartment, which dear Alice Whipplegate had booked by phone on the assumption that any courier of Moggerhanger’s deserved to travel in style. I put on a clean shirt and different tie, sprayed the deodorant, and went to meet my dinner guest along the corridor. Carriages in a siding across on the upline were, I heard someone say, filled with Spaniards going to look for work in Belgium. She had changed into a white leathery looking dress. “I say, what a splendid outfit!”