Moggerhanger

Chapter Five

At Trent Bridge I forked into the left lane and turned west for Grantham, beads of water chased across the windscreen by Javert wipers. My ’flu or whatever had taken its miasma elsewhere, and I felt in top form passing the locale of Dropshort who had played the gentleman and rescued me the day before — though it had been no thanks to his trollop, who would have gone by with a wave of her knickers.

At the A1 turn-off George Delphick put up his thumb for a lift back to the carrot fields. I ignored his thieving of my mother’s posh chocolates, and hoped to bash his head in some other time. His two fingers lifted in the rear mirror as the Picaro shot by.

The weather always lightened going south on the Great North Road. My nose stopped running, the cigar gave off a roast beef aroma, and at eighty mph young Picaro purred like a she-cat on the batter, cruising along till Moggerhanger’s fake antique furniture warehouse was a fair way behind. In no hurry to reach Upper Mayhem I stopped at Moonshine Cross to take in fuel and food. My mother’s grit-cakes sopped up in raw milk at breakfast had left a belly ache that could only be annihilated with cornflakes and a full fry up.

From behind The Times I watched the indefatigable waitress, sprightly and robust, with clearly defined features, a pony tail behind like a horse’s, her carriage excellent as she smiled a way from table to table. Imagining her dressage as I rode her, I didn’t think she was English, since she was so pleasant at her work, and I imagined how succulent it would be to spend the rest of my life with her.

Two flies were having it off on a cube of sugar, and I was too fascinated by their lack of Kama Sutra expertise to wave them away. Everything has something to live for. The coffee came first, and I knew it was the real thing because it had froth on the top and tasted like cocoa. Breakfast was good, though, and while swabbing up the last of the liquid fat a face I’d seen before showed at the door.

Tall and rangy, he sloped in my direction, a tie hanging from his coat pocket like a dead snake, his previously immaculate boots mapped with milk chocolate mud, the hat in his hand had been through the mangle, a cut on his stubbled cheek had a bend in it, as if he had been interrupted shaving. With a hand deep in his trouser pocket, as if he had a hernia coming on, the other shook towards me as, I was sorry to say, a sign of recognition.

Someone had had it in for Horace Hawksley, a come down in a man of seventy-odd I’d never seen. He walked a few feet by, as if intelligent communication between brain and body had slowed since yesterday (though not impossibly damaged) then he swung back. “Michael Cullen?”

“So you never forget a name?”

“Nor a face.”

I noted a different angle to his lower dentures, as well as a slight bruise below his left eye, and that his watch chain was missing. “Sit down, if you like.”

He did, eyes shining. “I’m not who I say I am. You know that, don’t you?”

“I wondered about that, but then, I might not be who I say I am, either. Would you like a cigar?”

“After I’ve had something to eat,” he smiled. “Then I’ve got a story to tell you like no other.”

He expected me to listen, but why me? I wasn’t the only person in the place. I thought of telling him to get lost, knowing that the account of his misadventures so early in the day would wear me out. If Blaskin did this run he would pull in enough material to last him for life.

When the waitress brought me another rotten coffee she stared at Horace with a malevolence hard to understand, as he ordered the same thing I’d had. “You see,” he said, and I had no difficulty believing him, “things went a little less well than I expected.”

“I’m surprised. You were so confident and cock-a-hoop and, I must say, well prepared.”

“Yes, but in this case preparation turned out to contain nine-tenths of the enjoyment, so I got that much out of it, sufficient not to be demoralised for when I want to do the same stunt again. You see, I can’t afford to be discouraged. I’m too old for that, aren’t I?”

“You had one night away at least.”

“Only one? Are you sure? Is that all it was?”

“You should know.”

“I don’t, though. It seemed more like a month.”

I wondered who was off his block. One of us surely was, and more likely it was me. “There’s a calendar on the wall, if you want to check.”

“I’ve lost my reading glasses, so I’ll have to take your word for it.”

It didn’t matter what time I got to Upper Mayhem, except it wasn’t my intention to be stuck here till next week. “So what happened?”

“Oh, everything. But it went like clockwork.”

He did look as if he’d fallen off Big Ben. “I’m glad to hear it.”

“For a while, anyway. It’s all coming back. Betty and the kids were very glad to see me, especially when I gave them the presents I’d been secretly stowing in my car boot for the last month. After that, things went crackingly good.”

His language bordered so close to the archaic, with which I supposed he had been brought up all those years ago, that it was almost edible. You could hear it coming out of the BBC.

The waitress slapped his breakfast on the table as if he’d misbehaved with her in the past: “Get it down you, and then go, you old goat,” her tone somewhat diminishing what beauty I’d thought she had.

Taking care not to inconvenience his dentures, he slid half an egg into his mouth. “Yes, crackingly good. I left the car at the station. Didn’t want it to be burned out by rough lads on the estate, did I? But I was happy to foot the couple of miles, because walking always gets my gander up — if you catch my meaning.

“Betty threw herself into my arms when she opened the door. She was very loving, and glad to see me, though a bit foul mouthed when shouting at the kids for calling me grandad, but who could blame her for that? She’d got her pride, after all. Once we’d closed the bedroom door she was all over me. I started to wonder whether or not I’d stocked up with enough rubbers.”

I was dying to know. “What do you take?”

Nonplussed was hardly the word. “Take?”

“To get it up.”

“So that’s what you mean.” He was insulted. “I don’t take anything. Only protein, plenty of meat, with lots of fat on it. Cheese, extract of malt, cod liver oil. How the hell should I know what I take? All I know is we didn’t come out of the bedroom for a couple of hours, and that was only to have the tea her mother had ready for us.”

I was enthralled. He should have been in a Himalayan ice cave dishing out advice to flaccid lovers. “And what did you have for your tea?”

“Ham, Collared head. Fish roes. Eggs. Black pudding. They know I like powerful stuff that tastes good. The trouble was we’d just got stuck in when a tall thin chap with a cap on came in and asked who the fuck I was, if you’ll excuse me using his word. ‘He’s my Uncle Horace,’ Betty said. He looked a bit leery: ‘I’ve been married to you for five years, and this is the first time I knew you’d got an Uncle-fucking-Horace.’ She picked up the breadknife, which inclined him to believe her: ‘Well, now you fucking do. He’s my Uncle Horace, isn’t he, mam?’ ‘I ought to know my own brother,’ her mother said. The man in the flat cap swilled a mug of tea: ‘I’ll leave you to it, then.’ The upshot was he went out of the back door with a couple of bundles under his arm, and I never saw the blackguard again, I’m glad to say.

“I retired to the bedroom with my darling Betty. In and out, we played Box and Cox till about three in the morning. I was fairly knocked out by then, and half asleep, till the kids and Betty’s mother in the other bedroom began screaming at a couple of flashing blue lights on the pavement outside. Suddenly the front and back doors got kicked in, and police were all over the place.

“‘Don’t say a word,’ Betty told me. ‘It’s not us they want.’ Getting my teeth in from the glass on the table, I began to wonder who they were after. If it was me, though I couldn’t see how it could be, and my name got in the press, my wife would kick up no end of a fuss.”

“And you wouldn’t be able to blame her,” I said, giving him the opportunity for some punctuation.

“I know that, you young fool. Anyway, a policeman tipped the bed up with one hand, and held it against the wall: ‘He isn’t under here.’ Another called from downstairs: ‘Where can he be, then?’ A fist was pushed at Betty’s lovely eyes: ‘Come on, where is he?’ ‘He went out at teatime,’ she said, as cool as a cucumber, as if it had happened a time or two before. ‘I expect he’ll be halfway to Mablethorpe by now, even if he’s walking. He never tells me where he goes, does he? I’m only his fucking wife.’ ‘He’s not under the stove, either,’ another officer shouted. The one with me and Betty had the gall to laugh: ‘We’ve got an old geezer from a geriatric home up here. Must have done a runner from his minders.’ In all innocence I gazed round to see who he was talking about, but it was only his sense of humour.

“‘He’s my grandfather,’ Betty said, ‘so you leave him alone.’ The copper wagged a finger at her: ‘Naughty, naughty! But if I was you,’ he said to me, ‘I’d make myself scarce. We don’t want anymore trouble than we’ve got.’”

He waited for the tinkling of pinball machines to calm down: “It sounded good advice, and I was in such a hurry to get out of the house I didn’t know what I’d left behind. As I hurried up the drive, with all the lights of the estate blazing away, one of the policemen called after me: ‘Hey, come back sonny! We shall want you to help us with our enquiries.’ I supposed he only shouted for a lark, so I turned a corner and headed for open ground where it was darker. I was in the Commandos during the War, and knew my stuff.” He pulled a faded photo from his wallet and held it close for a proper look. “That’s me, just there, in the middle. Handsome, wasn’t I?”

The beret was at a cocky angle, half a row of medal ribbons on his battledress, the background of bare hills looking a bit like Greece or Italy. His features were a mixture of brutality and youthful innocence, but the self-satisfied face was his right enough. “Cut a few throats, didn’t I?” he said. “But that’s how it was. Him or me. I’d do it again as well.”

“So you were up shit’s creek without a paddle?” I reminded him.

“For a while I was, couldn’t tell north from south, but when I got to the edge of a wood I saw my old pal Polaris shining its little heart out, and got my bearings. What was I to do? I floundered around in that bit of wood for an hour or two, though I did consider spending a couple of days there, snaring a rabbit and roasting it over a slow fire, just like the old times. But common sense got the better of me, and I put my thinking cap on. Betty’s husband was wanted by the law, that much was clear, and I wondered what for. From what I’d seen of him it could be anything from murder to marketing hard drugs. They wouldn’t have kicked the doors in like that if he’d only stolen a few Mars bars, would they?”

“You never know.” I was nailed down by his story. Had Blaskin been here he would have slavvered at hearing of such misfortunes. “What,” I said, admiring his ability to eat and talk so well at the same time — though I did get a few bits on my jacket, “happened next?”

“You may well ask.”

“I just have.”

“Don’t rush me. I’m not at my best when I’m rushed. The face was, I decided that my little romance with Betty was over, with a sad heart, I might tell you. I had a very soft and tender spot for that little baggage, but I couldn’t take anymore risks with such a family. I suppose all families are wicked in England today, but some are more wicked than others. On the other hand the thought of being shot of Betty cheered me up, because I was free to take up with another young lass. Starting over again is an enticing prospect. But to make a long story a bit shorter, I went by a circuitous route to where I’d left my car at the station, thinking that a good plan would be to cruise down to London and take a look at Soho. In any case, if I got home too early the wife might get suspicious.”

“What’s your wife’s name?”

His face went as blank as the North Sea beyond Skegness. “How should I know?”

“If you don’t, who does?”

“Well, she does, I expect. Oh yes, I’ve just remembered.” But he forgot to tell me. My stomach ached from the effort of not laughing at the old chokka’s yarn. “Where does she think you are?”

“At my brother’s, in Halifax. Mind you, it’s not all roses when I want to go away. Weeks beforehand I tell her I’ll go and see my brother on a certain date, and she agrees to it as if she can’t wait to see the back of me. Then a couple of days before my departure she says she doesn’t want me to go. She might even have a good reason why I shouldn’t, but most often she just wants to put me through the hoops, knowing I don’t like to change what I’ve been planning to do for so long. Makes it a bit awkward for me, doesn’t it? All I have to do though is agree with her immediately and say: ‘Oh, that’s all right. I don’t mind. I won’t go. I can see my brother any time.’ This evidence of my good nature discombobulates her, doesn’t it? In the next few hours she forgets why she said she didn’t want me to go, and ends up pleading with me to follow my plan. So I go, don’t I?”

“Sounds like the ideal relationship,” I said, “but, all the same, don’t you imagine that while you’re on your travels she might be having a good time as well? What if she’d only said she didn’t want you to go because her boyfriend had told her he needed to change the time for his visit to her?”

A grin took over his face. “It did cross my mind. Everything always does. But if she is seeing somebody, then good luck to her.” His smile dropped into oblivion, leaving an aspect of utter misery: “Do you think she might be having an affair, then?”

“It wouldn’t surprise me. Especially since she doesn’t seem to spend any trouble checking up on you.”

The waitress came back to our table: “I don’t know what you find so interesting, listening to that filthy old swine. A few weeks ago he put his hand right up my skirt and squeezed my thingy.”

He gave as innocent a smile as was possible with such imperfect dentures. “Yes, I was spot on. Very warm. Right first time. But I thought you’d enjoy it, a woman of the world like you.”

She seemed about to weep. “If the manager comes in now he’ll throw him out again.” She bent low, and bawled into his ear: “When are you going?”

“Can’t hear you, darling. My hearing aid jumped out last night when I was in bed with my girlfriend.”

She lit a cigarette, and turned to me. “Nobody would be seen in bed with a bag of old bones like that. All his tales are lies. I can’t think where he gets them from.” She stood back, and blew a smokescreen over him. “Just look at what a state he’s in. He’s been driving up and down the A1 for the last five years telling dirty stories to anybody who’ll listen. He hasn’t been in bed with no mother and daughter like he told me last time. He just goes around insulting women, and gets knocked about by husbands and boyfriends. That’s why he looks like somebody who’s been pulled through a hedge backwards. He ought to be put down. Nobody’ll do it, I know, but it’d serve the dirty old bastard right if they did.” She waved the smoke away, to see him more clearly, a hand so close to his nose he twitched backwards, though the grin was still there. “And don’t call me darling,” she said. “I’m Miss Smith to you,” which tone and language answered the question as to whether she was English or not. She was.

He stood. “I know when I’m not wanted.”

“A good job you do.” She turned to me. “He always says that, though.”

I wanted to kill him, yet held back, because her version didn’t at all fit my assumptions, or I didn’t want it to, recalling the snowstorm of french letters he’d spent a fortune on.

“You can pay me, and clear out,” she said, “or I’ll bring this tray down on your head.”

He went through his pockets, took out a wallet, and I saw that it was empty of money. Panic eddied in all directions from his lips. “I’ve been robbed blind,” he cried. “I’ll kill the bitch when I see her again.”

“Maybe the children did it,” I said. “They must be very lightfingered in that sort of family.” I spared the waitress the anguish of putting up with the old lecher washing pots in the kitchen for a week. “I’ll pay his bill.”

He stood, and took my hands with a sincerity I could well have done without: “I owe you.”

Any such payback would mean listening to another of his stories. “Forget it.”

A tear dropped onto his withered cheek. “Don’t say that. You never know, in this uncertain life, when you might need to recoup my pittance.” He wiped a fleck of coffee from his glasses. “Luckily I have enough petrol to get home. Here’s my card, if you should ever need me.”

The chances were that when I did he would no longer be alive. In fact at the rate he was going I wouldn’t even bet on a couple of hours.

I was happy at him doing a good seventy down the slipway, and placing himself neatly between two lorries before barging into the fast lane. When I dared take a hand from my other eye he was speeding along with a Porsche behind him.

I took a left off the A1 and wiggled my way to the land of the Fens, a zone of England I could never resist because of the great space between earth and sky. I drove along by fullish dikes which reflected flat bottomed clouds but high and woolly on the top. In winter the winds that had picked up speed all the way from Siberia and made the car shake as if I was steering a boat would clear the brain when you were walking, if they didn’t knock you down first.

In a good mood I headed east then southeast to the ex-station of Upper Mayhem, always feeling good when closing in on home.

The three chimneys were seen from miles away, but I soon bumped over the one-time level crossing and went in through the gate onto the parking lot, noting that everything was spickspan, the platforms swept, windows cleaned, and the glass in the lamps shiningly polished.

I sounded the hooter for whoever was on the premises. Dismal my great black ex-police dog or, more recently, Polly Moggerhanger’s panther friend, flopped one step at time from the signal box and ran to lick my hand, farting with delight before sitting a few feet back to make sure it was me and not the postman.

“I haven’t seen him so lively in a long time.” Arthur Clegg who followed him down earned his keep as caretaker, head gardener, and child minder when the kids came over to see me from Holland. In his early sixties, he was a spare man, much weathered in the face, a head of thick but short white hair. A collarless striped shirt, a pair of cutdown jeans, and the wreck of a fine pair of boots whose leather was still fresh at the ankles but cracked and broken around the toes didn’t impair his dignity.

I followed him into the house. “You’re due for a bit more stipend, I think.”

“I’ve got all I need,” he said. “I’m happy living here, you know that. For one thing I can go through your library again — though I’m getting a bit tired of Sidney Blood — and for another you keep the freezer full. And there are plenty of vegetables in the garden. I stay busy.”

The signal box looked so clean and neat he might have been expecting an express train to come through any minute from London, platforms swept and bordered with alternating red white and blue flowers as if a call from the Queen was in the offing as well, fences and gates shipshape, the garden weeded and, best of all, the house tidy. “I don’t know what I’d do without you. How do you do it?”

“I’ll tell you sometime, but mostly little by little, a bit every day.”

Having lost my job I could only wonder where money would be coming from to keep him on once my stock ran out. I sorted a few bills in the sitting room, throwing junk mail down for Dismal to play post office. His tail wagged on finding an envelope with, splashed across the front: “YOU HAVE WON FIFTY THOUSAND POUNDS!”

Clegg said I looked worried.

“After you’ve pulled the whisky from the cupboard and poured a couple of drams I’ll tell you why.”

We clinked for health. “The fact is, I got the push from the agency, and Frances has as good as thrown me out.”

“Is that all? You still have this place.” He gave his ex-mining engineer’s laugh, as if the Doughty props were about to crumble in the narrowest seam of the pit but we would be out before they did. “If it has any relevance, there was a call from Lord Moggerhanger an hour ago. I told him you might be in later.”

The lads at the furniture factory and drug transport depot had phoned him to say I was back on the road and, putting two and two together, he knew I would turn up sooner or later at Upper Mayhem. I couldn’t think what he wanted, but whatever it was the advantage would end up far more weighty on his side than mine, though the dollop of prime malt stopped me caring.

Clegg with rolled-up sleeves went to cook us a meal in the kitchen, while I stood at the gate outside to finish another drink, a caressive wave of Fenland air keeping me in a good mood. I watched a cloud on fire drift west across a sea of blue, and took that too for a sign of encouragement for an idle life, wanting to stay where I was forever no matter how poor I became. I could, after all, go on the parish, where part of Clegg’s pay came from anyway. No one was allowed to starve in England, and I wasn’t too proud to take charity. At least Upper Mayhem was mine, paid for cash on the nail from the gold smuggling days, the best purchase I ever made. I gloated on how sitting pretty I was, when the phone in the house sounded M for Moggerhanger.

But it was Frances. “When are you coming home?” she said in a friendly and wanting-me-to voice.

“I’m home already.” I was in no mind for negotiation. “I’ve just got in. Had a good time in Nottingham.”

“I thought that was where you would go.”

“I only left yesterday.”

“I know you did. Seems weeks already. But Michael?”

“Yes, sweetheart?”

“You know I want you to be with me when you can.”

“All right, darling. Just give me a couple of days more, and I’ll be there.” I needed to go through the decompression chamber before going back. “I do love you.”

“Love you, too, much.”

No sooner was the phone down than it went again. Peace in the world wasn’t for me. “Michael Cullen, of Upper Mayhem,” I snapped into the mouthpiece. “I’ll pay you as soon as I’m back in funds.”

This time it was Moggerhanger, and I couldn’t think what he’d want with me. Our last talk was three years ago when he suspected I was hi-jacking his Rolls Royce with millions of pounds worth of drugs in the boot, but I talked him out of the notion, and left the car for his minions to collect. I did though get on the Dutch ferry at Harwich with a briefcase of evidence to give to Interpol in Amsterdam, my intention being to ruin Moggerhanger for having put me in jail some time before. But Bill Straw was on the same boat and, sensing my intention, and realising I was out to do myself no good in the end, snatched the bag and skimmed it into the stormy waters, so that he really did save me from Moggerhanger’s far-reaching wrath.

His gravelly death-like tone sounded too much like a continuation of our phone talk three years ago. “Michael Cullen here,” I said again.

“Don’t be a damned fool. I know it is. And I know where you are. You owe me money, but I don’t recall a case when it wasn’t so with everybody.” He was referring to when I had once taken too much cash from the car for my expenses. “I have to admit,” he went on, “that I’m not in need of repayment, because I haven’t needed money ever since I wanted it. And yet, think if it was money owed to some poor chap waiting to pay his gas and light bills. You not producing the ready would be a crying shame. Likewise with me. You owe, I want, and I know you have the wherewithall.”

I allowed him to get his breath, but thought it politic to use some of my own. “I’ve lost my job, so I’ve got no money. And my wife’s given me my marching orders.”

“We’ll forget what you owe me, then. It can’t be more than a hundred, and for my peace of mind I’ll assume you spent it on your duties to me. You probably did. I’m not unjust, or avaricious. In fact my dear wife tells me that generosity is one of my failings. So I’ll forget the bygones, since there’s a favour I want from you.”

The big brutal bastard — though he managed to look suave at all times — was in my mind’s eye, and I didn’t like it. “I’ll do my best to accommodate you, Lord Moggerhanger,” was my response.

His chuckle wasn’t very promising, either. “Michael, you know me, don’t you? Don’t say you don’t.”

“I do, possibly as well as anyone can, Lord Moggerhanger. Outside your immediate family, of course.”

“You may have a point there. But I know you, as well, because twice in my long life I have been your employer. Don’t deny that, or you will soon be in that place best described by those words which precede a stroll through the gates of Hell. When you came to London as a brash young lad of twenty you showed a bit of road rage and tried to cut me up in Hendon. Or was it at Henleys Corner? A month or two later I set you on as a bouncer at one of my clubs, and from that privileged position I made you my chauffeur. You went from good to better, and earned a lot, so that our acquaintance turned into one of long standing.”

“I’d like to know where all this is leading, Lord Moggerhanger.”

“Of course you would.” Again the chuckle. “And so would I, but the fact is I’m in a spot of bother. Now you will own, if you are straight and honest — and I think you are, though you weren’t always entirely so with me, but I’ll forget that, because if I didn’t I would have been hard shouldered off the highway of life many a time, possibly halfway through one of my nought to sixty take offs in five seconds. But when I say I need your help the chances are I more than do. To put you in the picture, well, it’s a real damned Goya.” He’d picked up a few shreds of culture in his life, probably in prison. “The fact is, I’m pursued vigorously, relentlessly and, it could be, justifiably in the mind of the pursuer. I’ll tell you who he is in my own good time, but if he isn’t soon sidetracked into some shit pit of his own making (or yours) I’ll have a big hole dug into my financial resources, and that is something which I, Moggerhanger of all the Moggerhangers, can’t afford to let happen.

“You may wonder why I’m falling back on you rather than the lads normally at my beck and call, why someone like you can be of assistance to yours truly. I certainly would expect you to wonder. I’m nothing if not imaginative. After thinking about my request you might even tell me in plain unvarnished fashion, using the diplomatic style of the United Nations, which the polish of generations since the Congress of Vienna has honed to perfection, to fuck off. No less a response might in some way surprise and even disappoint me, but in you it would, I know, be but the prelude to profound and sincere reflection — before the heartfelt acceptance of all I want you to do for me.

“But for the fun of it,” the garrulous bastard went on, “let me say that though you could refuse my earnest request, to do so would be unwise in your present circumstances. I suppose, therefore, it would at this moment, while I have your ear — I still have it, I assume?”

I not only knew that he did, but my hearing box ached worse by the minute at his callous fingers gripping so tightly. “You have it.”

“I don’t intend to interpose a résumé as to how you got into your last period of employment with me, but considering your mischievous tergiversations, it didn’t end too badly for either of us and, I have to admit, it paid me in the end. You were very good at what you did. I only forgave your minor sins as a guarantee that you would from then on be loyal and one day come back to me. It behoves me to ask some return for having let you off my very sharp hook three years ago, in any case, and I don’t see how you can argue with that. I’m nothing if not reasonable. Whatever you do do for me will be amply remunerated, and for someone like you such opportunities don’t come twice. So turn up at my house in Ealing for instructions at three o’clock tomorrow afternoon. Make sure you’re on the dot, and on your own.”

Either he’d enjoyed thinking up such a long spiel in the bath, or there were notes on his cuff telling what order to put his thoughts in. Perhaps he’d dictated them to Alice Whipplegate his secretary, who had then produced a treble spaced typescript. However it was, he had me sweating with rage and anxiety as I went into the kitchen to see how Clegg was getting on with supper. “Moggerhanger wants me to do some work for him.”

Potatoes dropped into the pan. “It couldn’t have come at a more convenient time, could it?” He adjusted his striped cook’s apron. “I wouldn’t let it worry you if I was you. Just take things as they come.”

I poured more whisky for us both. “I’ve been doing that all my life, and look where it’s got me.”

“You’re sound in wind and limb, aren’t you?”

“But for how much longer, working for Moggerhanger?”

“Find out what he wants, but don’t do anything that smells of illegality.”

I poured another. “Illegal? For him?” Clegg knew of my past entanglements. “He’s illegal from the top of his bonce to his highly polished Hush Puppies.”

“I expect he wants a driver, and you’re the best he knows about.”

“Oh, Cleggy, I love you very much, but you’re a teeny-weeny bit naive. I’m worried to death.”

“Then don’t have anything to do with it. Get a job hoeing weeds in Farmer Brown’s fields for thirty-five quid a week. You’ll love bending over the soil till your back gives way.”

He was right. In a month or two I’d need money. Bridgette, my ex-wife, would want maintenance for herself and the kids, and I had my railway station at Upper Mayhem to keep up, not to leave out Clegg as well as Dismal, who stood on back legs and snaffled a sheet of prime smoked bacon from my plate, and then came back for a sausage.

“I know what I’d do in your place,” Clegg said.

So I decided to do it.