Timothy Lea's Complete Confessions

CHAPTER TEN

The next morning the Harlem Globetrotters are bouncing a concrete basketball round the inside of my nut and my tongue feels like the mat the All-Nippon Sumo Championships have been wrestled on. Added to that it is Monday, and only a berk of the first water would bother to show up at work. Nevertheless, I push my face round the door of the E.C.D.S. mainly because I want everybody to say flattering things about my performance in the sevens.

Sadly, the subject is hardly mentioned—certainly not by Dawn, who does not put in an appearance all day—and when Cronky arrives it is to brief us all on our part in the approaching Cromingham Carnival.

This riot of colour and spectacle occurs every year and is supposed to coincide with the arrival of spring—or April 1st, as it is known in the absence of any dependable signal from the weather.

It appears that all the local tradesmen take part in a procession of floats through the centre of the town and that it has been decided that the Major School of Motoring and ourselves will each contribute one vehicle with an instructor sitting beside his latest pupil to pass the test. Miss Frankcom is due to take hers again for the umpteenth time and Cronky is obsessed with the idea that, if she passes, she will be the ideal advertisement for the E.C.D.S.: the perfect, happy ending to all the free publicity we had the year before. I can’t get very excited myself but I play along to humour him.

I have my own test to worry about and it so happens that on the very same day that Miss F. is due to go into action I have to report to Norwich to take the practical part of my Register Qualifying Examination. Eyesight, driving technique and instructional ability are the three things I am tested on and, though I say so myself, I hardly put a foot or hand wrong and pass with flying colours. At last I am a ‘Department of the Environment Approved Driving Instructor’. I should be highly chuffed but now I have qualified it is rather like getting married to a bird you have been knocking off for months. There is nothing new to look forward to and you wonder why you bothered. When I first thought about it, being a driving instructor seemed quite a class profession, but now I’m not so sure. The more you come into contact with the nobs, the more you fancy a bit of their style of living, and when I look round the E.C.D.S. I wonder what my chances are of getting amongst it. Even Cronky, who runs the joint, can hardly be said to be overloaded with mazuma.

These and similar thoughts are running through my mind as I drive back to Cromingham, but they soon get pushed to one side when I pull up outside the office. Quite a party is going on and it appears that Miss Frankcom has passed her test and bought a bottle of champagne to celebrate.

“Oh, there you are, dear,” she says when she sees me. “We’d almost given you up for lost. Aren’t I a clever girl?”

“Very,” I say, giving her a peck on the cheek. “I passed as well, so we can have a double celebration.”

And we do. Gruntscomb of the Echo rolls up to take a few pictures and we all chip in for a couple of bottles of plonk, which go down very nicely. Miss Frankcom says she will be delighted to appear in the procession and Cronky beams away like a headmaster on Parents’ Day.

Unfortunately, his smile dries up on the morning of the carnival because Miss Frankcom rings in to say she has twisted her ankle and won’t be able to make it. He fumes and sulks but there is nothing he can do about it so we have to dig up a substitute. This proves no problem and Dawn, who is now back with us— and joining me in making no reference to the Shermer Sevens—soon gets a chap called Roper to agree to turn out.

He seems quite normal when you look at him. About fifty, with leather patches on his elbows and a white nylon shirt. His hands shake slightly but I don’t pay much attention to that—not then, anyway. We tell him what to do and he is perfectly relaxed about it all.

The procession forms up behind the bus station and the big scene there revolves around whether the M.S.M. should take precedence over the E.C.D.S. or the two of us should drive abreast. It is all so bloody petty, but in the end Minto and Cronky have to toss for it. Minto wins and with obvious satisfaction waves his bulled-up Ford in front of my equally gleaming Morris 1100. In order not to be upstaged by Minto, Cronky has lent his brand new private motor and had an E.C.D.S. sign mounted on its roof.

The instructor is Tony Sharp, who, for some reason best known to himself, has decided to wear a racing driver’s tunic. He looks a right berk, I can tell you. Rumour has it that blood samples taken from him at the hospital after the Sevens revealed signs of drugs, and there are differing schools of thought as to whether he was nobbled or took an overdose when trying to pep up his own performance. No prizes for guessing which version I am supporting.

“Take it nice and easy,” I say to Roper. “No need to get too close to him. Let the crowd have a good look at you.”

For once the Town Council have got their dates right and it is a nice day—the best I can remember in my six months at Cromingham. I wind down my window and savour the warm sunshine on my cheek. Behind us a party of six fishermen sit on a float, representing the sea-bed, and make unfunny jokes in order to hide their embarrassment. Beside the inevitable Neptune with a pitchfork for a trident there is a self-conscious mermaid sporting a fish-net brassiere and what looks like jodhpurs sticking out of the top of her silver foil tail. She is obviously not taking any chances with the weather.

At last the Town Cleric gives the signal and the procession lumbers off with all the proud patrons racing back to the middle of the town to watch their underlings make fools of themselves. Past the Methodist chapel we go and Roper is performing perfectly. Sharp’s ex-pupil is a middle-aged, middle-class woman dressed up as if for a Buckingham Palace garden party, and I watch her flowered hat practically obscuring the windscreen in front. The first part of the procession hits the High Street and I can hear the cheers beginning to build up. A policeman waves his arm officiously and I tell Roper to take up a position in the middle of the road. There it is, the High Street. Bunting and flags everywhere. Dear old Woolworth’s next to the new Marks & Spencer’s, the ‘Comeinside Cafe’ (called the ‘Semen’s Rest’ by Garth), the crab shop, ‘Cromingham Crafts’. I look at all the familiar landmarks and feel almost attached to the place. The Majestic Cinema—are they still showing ‘The Big Sleep’ or is it that they never change the posters?—and opposite, in all its shabby glory, the East Coast Driving School, with Dawn, Cronky, Lester, Petal and Garth all waving from the first-floor window.

I am wondering where Crippsy is when Sharp’s car suddenly back-fires. I have only just woken up to what the noise is when I am thrown back in my seat as Roper’s foot goes down on the accelerator.

“The swine’s firing at us,” he screams and rams the Ford up the backside.

“Stop it, you bloody fool!” I begin, but before I can grab the wheel he has done it again.

Crunch! The Ford shudders forward a few feet and the beautiful flowered hat is jerked over its wearer’s eyes.

“Fight fire with fire,” shouts Roper, who is quite clearly mad. “That’s the only thing the bastards understand.”

He gets in one more lunge just as Sharp is clambering out of the passenger seat and my rival is thrown into the gutter like an ejected cartridge.

“They’re abandoning ship! We’ve got ’em! Depth charge the survivors!”

I manage to turn the ignition off and Roper and I are wrestling over the front seats.

“Bloody Kraut-lover! Don’t you see, you fool? If you don’t get them, they’ll get you.”

It must be shell-shock or battle-fatigue or something, but why does it always have to happen to me?

Suddenly Roper changes tack.

“We’re sinking,” he howls. “Let me out of here. Let me out! Let me out!” He begins beating against the windscreen and pressing the horn as if he intends to push it out through the front of the car.

“Abandon ship! Abandon ship!”

Bugger you, I think, and start to open the door.

“Women and children first, you swine,” he hisses. “I’ve met your kind before.”

I can’t bring myself to say anything so I shake him off and climb out.

But my troubles are not over yet.

Sharp is coming for me, bristling like a fur jelly.

“What in God’s name are you playing at now, you fool—” he begins.

Sometimes it becomes painfully obvious that the gods intend to destroy you and that you are only delaying the inevitable by trying to deny them. This revelation comes to me with startling clarity when I see Sharp’s undershot jaw quivering invitingly eighteen inches away. I swing my fist into it so hard that his feet nearly leave the ground, and I stride across the road to resign.

Ten minutes later I am leaving Cronk’s office and my career with the East Coast Driving School is over. I have done most of the talking, but Cronk has been quick to agree that my particular streak of impetuosity and ability to attract questionable publicity makes me somewhat of a liability to any firm not registered purely as a tax loss.

As I come out, Gruntscomb of the Echo is lining up a photograph which captures both Cronk’s mangled Morris and the front of the office. He is working with swift relish and I shudder when I think of the headlines in the evening.

“Well, that’s it, lads,” I say to the assembled throng. “I’m off! Great to have worked with you all. I’m sorry it has to end like this and I hope this little lot doesn’t cause you too much embarrassment. I’ll probably see you if Sharp brings an assault charge—remember, it was self-defence—or maybe I’ll be back with my bucket, spade and icepick one day.”

“You can’t go just like that,” says Garth. “You’re staying for the Ball, aren’t you?”

I may not have mentioned that the day’s activities culminated in a Grand Fancy Dress Ball at the golf club with cabaret by an entertainer whose last recorded public appearance had been at Bow Street Magistrates Court on a charge of accosting males in a public lavatory—big deal!

“How can I?” I tell him. “I’m going to be a dead embarrassment, aren’t I, with Minto and all his mob there in force. It would probably end in another punch-up. Besides, I told Cronk I’d get out right away.”

“Well, have a drink before you go. I know a little place where we can knock back a couple undisturbed.”

So we all slope off and it develops into quite a session, I can tell you. One by one they drop out, starting with Dawn and working through Lester, Petal (“… look me up—and down—if you’re ever this way again, duckie … lovely working with you …”) to Crippsy, who we meet in the club, and finally Garth, who breathes a few emotionally charged words: “How are we going to win the Sevens next year without you, boyo?”—before we both stagger away, pissed out of our tiny minds.

Even in my paralytic state I am aware that Mrs. Bendon is going to be a problem. I have been having it away with her on a pretty regular basis recently and I don’t think she is going to take kindly to me suddenly announcing that I am never going to darken her bath towels again.

Maybe it is female intuition or something, but she looks uneasy when I come into the parlour—and not just because I catch my foot on the flex and bring down the standard lamp.

“I don’t know how to say this,” I mumble, deciding to come straight out with it, “but there was a bit of trouble during the procession today—you may have heard about it—and I handed in my resignation. That means I—that I—well, I will have to—I can’t stay here and it’s probably better if I go as soon as possible.”

“How soon?” Her voice seems remarkably composed.

“Well, if I paid you this week’s rent in lieu of notice, I was wondering if I might go immediately. Tonight, in fact.”

I hold my breath but she does not turn a hair.

“Yes, that seems quite fair, dear. In fact, it works out very well. I don’t mean your spot of bother, of course. No, I mean your vacating your room. My friend Mr. Greig, who you’ve heard me talk about, was saying he would like to sample a little sea air and it would be very useful having your room back again.”

My face must mirror my feelings pretty accurately because she stretches out a hand and squeezes my arm.

“Of course, I’ll be very sorry to see you go, dear. But really, to be honest, it would be better for me if you left. I want to get married again and having you in the house doesn’t help at all. It was very nice, what happened, but it couldn’t go on, could it?”

She is right, but the cool way she puts it leaves me a bit lost for words.

“You pack your things,” she says firmly, “and I’ll make us a nice tea to have before you go.”

I go upstairs feeling choked. I don’t want Mr. Greig sleeping in my bed or kicking his slippers off under Mrs. B.’s. I wish, too, I had got across Mrs. B. when I first had the chance. I hardly feel I have had my money’s worth.

Carefully draped across a chair, my Harlequin costume reminds me of the evening I will be missing. I have tried it on half a dozen times and would be the last person to deny that I look pretty magnetic in it. It is skintight so you get the total broad shoulders narrowing down to kitten hips bit, and with the mask to add an air of enticing mystery I would have been half-way to scoring before I opened my mouth.

The mask! A thought coincides with my discovery of the two quid admission ticket I had meant to give to Garth to flog. If I do look in for a couple of hours nobody need recognise me and it seems a shame to chuck a couple of oncers down the drain—not to mention the cost of hiring the costume.

That settles it. I throw my things in a case and spend fifteen minutes easing myself into my suit of lights. Snazzy is too small a word for it and my spirits perk up a bit. One thing I will say for myself: I may be a bit moody, but I am never down in the dumps for long.

Looking as good as I do, it is not surprising that I should draw a few admiring words from Mrs. B. and on the strength of this and with an attack of the ‘Auld Lang Synes’ surging through me I suggest that a bit of the other would be a nice way of saying goodbye—I also have two hours to kill before the carnival ball starts at nine o’clock and I don’t fancy wandering around the streets of Cromingham until then dressed in a style that might easily be misinterpreted by the bloody-minded locals. Unfortunately, Mrs. B. is not of a mood to take advantage of my suggestions and after a while I wish I had never raised the subject—about the time she hits me over the head with a frying-pan, in fact. This incident does at least rob our goodbyes of any lingering embarrassment and I find myself on the doorstep with my suitcase quivering beside me and her last words coming at me through the letterbox: “Don’t come back. If you’ve left anything, I’ll drop it in at the driving school.” I turn round and all the lace curtains in the street drop back into place.