Moggerhanger

  “Shut up, blabmouth. She’s coming down.”

  “Hello, my darling.” Bill opened his arms, at her lithe and soignée figure in a gorgeous damson-coloured frock with a white collar. He leered, as if he had made love to her instead of me: “You do look nice and rested. There’s nothing for you to do. Me and Michael’s cleared up, and we’re thinking about breakfast. Anything special you’d like?”

  “Lord Moggerhanger asked me to take his upstairs first. He’s looking a little better this morning.”

  After drying and stacking I took Dismal out for fresh air. Ragged-arsed clouds were shifting in from the higher hills, a chill sweep of wind smelling of fresh pastures and sheep droppings, yet freshening my nostrils after sleeping in a sealed room, which had mugged me sooner into oblivion.

  Bill set four places at the table, laying out plates of grilled bacon and sausages, fried eggs, and tinned tomatoes, as well as toast and pots of coffee. “The sort of breakfast we used to dream about in the army,” he said, “but which only the officers got, and they had to be lucky, as well.”

  Moggerhanger came in, a cigar still smouldering between his fingers. The wine-dark dressing gown had a masonic emblem at the top pocket, and his face was still far from reconstituted into its old form, looking something like landscape between the Flanders trenches. He took a bottle of mineral water from the fridge and poured a large glass. “I’m glad to see you’re all being fed, from the best of what my reserves have to offer. You’re eating quickly as well, which pleases me, not because we have a lot of work to do afterwards—though we do—but because I never could abide slow eaters. You can’t trust them. They’re lazy, and think too much of their stomachs, so aren’t the sort of people I’d want on my books. When you’ve finished, Michael, stand by for moving some cartons from the storeroom to the horsebox.”

  I counted thirty, as he did as well, only more carefully, in case I flipped one into the boot of my car. No need to speculate on what the packets contained. In the coming weeks a lot of people in London and the rest of the country would be lying on their backs and, even in daylight, counting the stars.

  Perhaps he read my mind. “Without this stuff, Michael, those young chaps in the City working their computers for the financial good of the nation wouldn’t be able to get through their long day. Oh, I know, lots of riff-raff get hold of it as well, and it doesn’t do them much good, but the country can do without them. If they’re weak enough to use it, they’re expendable.”

  His face turned as wine-dark as his dressing gown when Dismal sniffed eagerly around the last carton on the ground, scratching and licking as if about to tear a way to its insides. “Take that hound away,” he shouted, “before I drive a stake through its heart.”

  I dragged Dismal clear before he could put in a kick for which I’d have to retaliate by knocking the old bastard about.

  But he laughed. “It was Polly who first suggested I take him on board for training. Whenever an assignment was collected he’d sniff out whether it was genuine or not. He worked very well for a while. Then on one occasion, in Eric Alport’s chintzy bijou gem by the Thames, though I should name no names, he clambered from box to box giving each one the OK, till halfway through he cocked up his leg and began a very splashy piss all over the goods. Luckily it didn’t penetrate, but I thought it best to lay him off after that.”

  “He makes a good house dog for Upper Mayhem,” I said.

  “Keep him, then, for all I care. We’ll leave here at twelve. I’ve already arranged for a local firm to fix the French windows. Your job will be to follow down the M1 and A1, as far as the turn-off for your house. Then you can leave us. But if you see that mad poet pushing his panda wagon along the hard shoulder going south, don’t stop and pick him up. He’s a bloody pest. Alice noticed him on the other side of the road yesterday. I know you’ve got the makings of a soft heart, but as far as hitchhikers are concerned, leave them alone, especially that one.”

  I was only interested in Alice. “Will she come in my car?”—hoping she would, so that we could have another session at Upper Mayhem, before I put her on the train to London.

  “She’ll be in the Roller with me. As for Straw, he can travel all the way in the horsebox. I think I can rely on him not to take any of the powders.”

  I was glad to put in a good word for Bill. “He’s never indulged in stuff like that. I know from experience that the only stimulant he has any time for is warfare. He lives as if he’s on active service all the time.”

  “I like that. I might even take him on the staff. But come on, work before talk. Let’s get moving.”

  In the kitchen, I gave Alice a goodbye kiss. “I love you, Michael,” she said.

  I used to think of her as a hard woman. Now she had a tear in her eye. “Love you too,” giving another kiss so that she would believe me.

  “Say it better than that.”

  “I do love you, my adored one.”

  “Better. See me again, won’t you?”

  “How can I forget last night?”

  “What about this morning?”

  My memory book would never be too full to forget it. “Second to none, seeing you do that.”

  I swear she blushed. “The main course was better, though. But don’t only see me at work.” She wrote her address. “I want to hear more of your stories, and soon.”

  “And you shall, darling. After I qualified as a ladies’ maid I had adventures to tell you about that’ll make your hair stand on end.” We billed and cooed, till Sergeant Straw showed his lantern jaw in the doorway to say time was up, and we were going over the top.

  Nothing untoward disturbed us on the run south. Leaving Yorkshire, it was high cloud all the way, flecks of water on the windscreen replaced by blotted yellow curlicues of squashed insects. I passed the time counting Eddie Stobart pantechnicons coming and going, and mulling on my night of love with Alice.

  The first thing noticed on manoeuvring into the open gate at Upper Mayhem was Ronald Delphick’s panda wagon, a fly sheet pinned to the chest saying: ‘National Poet on the Road. Coins for cups of tea much welcomed,’ then the name of the town where he would give his next reading. Some unwitting motorist in a Land Rover must have given him cartage from the A1. I intended going into the house to kill him, but Clegg met me at the door: “He came in dead beat last night, and I hadn’t the heart to get rid of him. He slept in the signal box.”

  Getting back to Upper Mayhem, it felt as if I’d been away for six months, though it was scarcely a week, and all I wanted now was time to relax, so the apparition of a dead-scruffy Delphick, with his black but greying beard, ponytail straggling back from his balding head, a tiny red bead of an earring in his left ear, his sallow skin, and missing tooth when he tried to smile because he knew I’d got his number, his woollen jersey splattered with what I would not like to say, and his anorak torn at one elbow—the sight of him sitting at my table made me aggressive, and think it a pity Bill wasn’t with me, who would have had him on jankers in no time.

  Sensing my anger, he said cheerily: “Welcome home. I hope you appreciate me coming to see you. It was a little out of my way, but I thought you deserved the privilege of my presence.”

  Dismal leapt to the table and, with a few sweeps of his tongue—he hadn’t eaten since breakfast—lapped up all that was on Delphick’s plate, which so distressed him he aimed a kick at Dismal’s arse. Consequently, while Dismal made a good job of savaging the offending foot, I got hold of Delphick by the throat to pull him outside where there’d be more space for my other arm to swing, and get going on him in such a way that he would never write any more poems. But Delphick was no light weight, so I only got him as far as the door, till soft-hearted Clegg pulled my favourite dog clear.

  “How did you get my address?” I stood a little way off, for fear that what he had eaten of the lunch would shoot over me.

  “Ettie,” he s
quarked. “Your old girlfriend. She told me.”

  “You lying git.” I pushed him away. It couldn’t have been her. She loathed him more than I did, because he’d tricked her out of ten quid once, when she was sweating for her living in a transport café on the Great North Road. The sort to rob or betray anyone, he had the effrontery to sit brooding over his empty plate.

  “It’s terrible what the world’s come to,” he said. “There’s no generosity anymore. I’m a left wing idealist, I am, and try to live accordingly, but it’s all dog eat dog nowadays, and every man for himself.” With which I agreed, seeing his fairly new trainers now half in rags. “I’m also England’s best poet,” he went on, “but it took half an hour’s pleading with Mr Clegg last night before he let me stay over. It was already dark, so where would I have gone? I’d have fallen into a dyke and drowned. I wasn’t only on my uppers when I got here, I was nearly on my hands and knees as well. I was worn out after pushing my pet panda for twenty miles down the A1. Then I thought of my old friend Michael Cullen, who I’d known for fourteen years.”

  “Thirteen.”

  “‘He’ll be sure to give me bed and board till my feet heal and I’m ready to go on the road again.’ A kind old lady dropped me here from the A1, otherwise I’d have died of exhaustion on the hard shoulder. Luckily it was in the right direction because I’m on my way to read in Cambridge. I’m beginning to think it’s better to thumb lifts on minor roads. People who drive on main roads and dual carriageways are callous and uncharitable. They’re always in such a hurry I wish they would go to hell as they zoom by; while drivers on minor roads are more human, because they’re closer to where they live, don’t go so fast, which means they notice more, and are kind enough to stop and help a poet who’s doing the best he can to help himself. So when I was lying flat-out and fucked-up on the hard shoulder this woman thought I’d had an accident and stopped for me, and it was good that she did, because in another hour I’d have been close to death. Imagine my obituary in the Guardian, and me not alive to read it.”

  He started to cry. “And then you set your savage dog on me, and want to throw me out. That’s the absolute end. Oh where are the Good Samaritans of yesteryear?” He stopped crying, and took a grubby note pad from his pocket. “I must work that into a poem.”

  “Just pack up,” I said, as brutally as the words would come, “and get out of this house before I brain you.”

  I expected argument, but he grinned. “I don’t have brains, only heart, and feeling, and there’s no flesh on them.”

  My own failing was that I liked stories, even when they were fantasies, which as much as anything showed something of a man’s character, but I knew of Delphick’s depredations, and whatever he spouted to disprove them was unacceptable, though because he could be entertaining I decided not to boot the fraud out until first thing in the morning.

  “If you expect to be helped by decent people,” I said, “why do you travel the country looking like a tramp, with that ridiculous dummy panda in your pram? You’ve got a very snug house at Doggerel Bank, and a lot of smart clothes donated by well-wishers. I know, because I was at your place once, the time I came for refuge, and you threw me out. All I wanted was to hide for a few days because Moggerhanger was after my guts. You actually phoned and told him where I was,” which memory led me to wonder where in the garden I’d bury him if I did him as he deserved. “I ought to kill you for that.”

  He started to cry again. “Go on, then, do it. I’d thank you for the trouble as soon as I got to heaven. I have such a hard and miserable life you’d be doing me a favour.”

  “It was as blatant a case of betrayal,” I reminded him, “as I’d ever encountered. Didn’t you at least feel guilty about it? I wouldn’t know where to shove my face if I’d done anything like that, and here you are, claiming my hospitality.”

  From snivelling he turned smug. “I would have felt guilty except that Moggerhanger forgot to pay me for the information. But since your memory’s so good, don’t you remember how you took that lovely admiring popsy Frances Malham away from me. And you married her!”

  “Your life wasn’t at stake, as mine might have been at Doggerel Bank. Killing would be too good for you.” Clegg came in from the garden, washed his hands at the sink, and put the kettle on for tea. “We’ll have some of that plum cake left over from Christmas,” I said. “I fancy a slice.”

  “Can’t do,” he replied. “Our guest found it last night, and before I could stop him he’d gobbled the lot.”

  “And you want to know why I don’t stay too long at Doggerel Bank?” Delphick said, a clumsy diversion to keep my hands from his throat. “You would want to know, wouldn’t you? You were about to ask, weren’t you? You don’t know what being a poet means, do you? You don’t even read poetry, do you? You probably never read anything at all, do you? You must be the biggest philistine since the Dark Ages.”

  This last assumption got to my craw, and even Clegg jumped at my shout that I’d smash his ugly face in if he didn’t belt up. “Get on with some straight talking, or we’ll hold you down and let Dismal eat your dirty feet off. He’d love to. Look how he’s salivating.”

  He clicked back into gear, unstoppable. “Doggerel Bank’s all very well, but I have to get away from it when I think that the world’s starting to forget what a great poet I am, and that’s not good for ordinary people such as you. When I push my panda wagon down the Great North Road thousands of motorists see us, and it heartens me no end, though I do feel a bit disappointed when I go into a service station and the red carpet’s not rolled out.”

  Clegg passed mugs of tea. “But why go to London?” he said. “I imagine it’s easier to write poetry among the baa-lambs and daffodils.”

  “You do, do you? I can think of better things to inspire me. I know what words are worth, I do, mate. Have you ever seen a tree when it’s got Dutch Elm disease? Or a lamb that rattles when it runs away because it’s got a claggy bottom? Have you ever seen a daffodil that’s brown and dying? I go spare. I get stir crazy. So I hop it to London for a week. I show my face there now and again, because I meet other poets. They’re contemptuous of me, but at least they know me, and I know them. Oh yes, I know them all right, scribbling and competing with one another, reading each other’s poems and reviewing each other’s books. But I like to listen to their gossip and poet-talk, and get the gen on who sleeps with who. I don’t stay long though, because I don’t have to live there for mutual support. London’s a life-raft they think might stop them sinking without trace. I don’t need it, so get back to Doggerel Bank after a day or two, before I choke. Usually there’s a couple of performances to do first, but this time I’ve got a gig in Cambridge, and I’m on my way there. I’ll meet lots of lovely young girl students, all very fresh and naive, who think a bloke like me is God, especially after I’ve read my poems. They come up to my panda and ask if they can kiss it, and when I sit him on my knee as an encore and make as if he’s reading a poem it brings the house down.”

  I had lived too long to believe anything he said. He was a living monument to envy and opportunity, and different from me only insofar as his ways of survival varied.

  “Why don’t you come to Cambridge and hear me give a piquant performance with my panda? You’ll see me in full spate. You’ll be bowled over. Students are always generous and appreciative. You might even pull a couple of tarts yourself. If there’s one person they like more than me it’s a pig-ignorant type like you who doesn’t know anything about poetry. They love him. They’re all over him. They want to convert him into a lover of poetry, especially of Ronald Delphick’s immortal verse. I’m not joking. Come and see for yourself.”

  “I know your game. You only say all that because you want me to drive you and your poxed-up panda wagon to Cambridge tomorrow. It won’t work. I’ve got better things to do.”

  He turned sulky. “It was worth a try, you’ve got to admit. Is th
ere anymore of that lovely strong tea, Mr Clegg? I’ve only had two, and I’m still parched, after entertaining you with my latest effort. If I’d performed all that at a gig I’d have earned fifty quid. You might at least give me a cigar, or a common fag if you can’t be generous. You aren’t too stingy for that, are you?”

  “Delphick, you’re a guest in my house, at the moment anyway, and while I let you stay you’ll have to be as polite to me as I’m trying very hard to be to you. I can’t say fairer than that, can I, you scumbag?”

  I admired the way he came straight back, making me regret that I might have offended him. “It’s all very well for you,” he said. “You exist on only one layer of the mind, because that’s all you’ve got. You’re a simple bloke, and good luck to you, but I operate on several, though I can live on one at a time when I feel like it, but mostly it’s three or four, and sometimes they’re mixed up together. But whichever it is, at least I know I’m doing it, because I’m a poet. In fact that was how I found out I was one. Nobody told me. They didn’t have to. It came in a blinding revelation when I was drunk one night. I was somebody special from then on because I could function on more than one level of my mind at a time.”

  “You just made that up,” I said. “Get the trickster another pot of tea, Clegg, please.”

  “Of course I made it up. It’s even more that proves I’m a poet, and more complicated and worthwhile to the world than you are.”

  I’d had enough of him. “I’m going upstairs for a kip. I had a busy day yesterday. But don’t touch a scrap of our food till I come down for supper. If you do I’ll tie you to the railway line and let an express run you over.”

  “I just love the way people run their mean bourgeoisie lives,” he sneered.