Collected Stories

The Introspections of J. P. Powers

J. P. Powers, big, forty-three, his face a mass of moustache, said: ‘You must depress the clutch, Miss Hobish. It is impossible to change from one gear to another without you depress the clutch.’

J. P. Powers was aware of his grammatical lapse. It is impossible to change from one gear to another unless you depress the clutch. It is impossible to change from one gear to another without depressing the clutch. Either variant would have done: both were within his idiom. Without you depress was foreign to him, the way the Irish talk. Despite the Celtic ring of his name, Justin Parke Powers was not Irish.

Miss Hobish drove the Austin in a jagged manner down Cave Crescent and into Mortimer Road. Ahead lay Putney Hill and an awkward right turn, across both streams of traffic. Powers prepared himself for the moment, feet ready for the dual controls, fingers poised to jab the starter when the engine stalled.

‘Slowing down signal,’ said J. P. Powers. Then: ‘Change to second, hand signal, indicator. Always the old hand signal: never rely on the indicator, Miss Hobish.’

Miss Hobish edged the car forward, aiming at a bus.

‘Wait for a gap, Miss Hobish. All that traffic has the right of way.’

He had said without you depress just for the novelty sound of it, because he had become so used to the usual patter of words, because his tongue grew tired of forming them.

‘Now, Miss Hobish.’ He seized the steering wheel and swung it, giving the engine a spurt of petrol.

The Austin bore to the left at the traffic lights, along Upper Richmond Road, and later turned right, into the quiet roads of Barnes Common. Powers relaxed then, telling her to take it calmly. Miss Hobish was always happy on Barnes Common.

He lit a cigarette and lowered the window so that the smoke would be carried away. He sat in silence, watching the road. Occasionally he glanced at Miss Hobish and occasionally at parts of himself. He saw his fingernails splayed on his two thick knees. He was not a particularly clean man, and this was a fact he now thought about. He visualized his grey-brown underclothes and the tacky yellow on the underarms of his shirts. Once his wife had commented on this yellow, saying he was a dirty man, running baths for him and pushing deodorants at him. She did all this no longer, only sighing when by chance she came upon his socks, stiff like little planks, in the big cardboard carton she used as a laundry basket. A complaint had come in one summer from a fastidious man called Hopker. Roche had had him in and told him about it, with the typing girl still in the room. ‘Wash out your armpits, old son. Get Lifebuoy and Odo-ro-no or Mum.’ Roche was a little fellow; it was easy for Roche, there wasn’t an ounce of sweat in him. Powers was fifteen stone: rolls of fat and muscle, grinding out the perspiration, secreting it in fleshy caches. To keep himself sweet he’d have to take a shower every two hours.

During his daily periods of boredom J. P. Powers was given to thought. It was thought of a depressing quality, being concerned with his uselessness. Fifty years ago there were no driving instructors in the world: what would he have done fifty years ago, how would he have made a living? The truth was he brought no skill to the job, he had no interest in it. How could one be interested in so unnecessary an occupation as teaching people to drive motor-cars? People could walk, they had legs. People could avail themselves of public transport. He gave no real service; better to be a booking clerk for British Railways. Not that people weren’t grateful to him. They waved to him afterwards, implying that he had helped them on their way. But J. P. Powers was thinking of himself; there was nothing expert in what he did, anyone could teach the gears and the knack.

‘Well, that was nice,’ said Miss Hobish. ‘I do enjoy it, Mr Powers. Now, will you take a cup of tea with me?’

Miss Hobish had been learning to drive for five years. It was an outing for her: Miss Hobish was seventy-three.

There was a job that was waiting for J. P. Powers, preserved for him by Ransome, with whom he had served in the Royal Air Force. ‘Any time you’re ready, J. P.,’ was how Ransome put it. Ransome with an amber pint in his paw, down at the Saracen’s Head on a Sunday morning. Ransome was sorry for him, remembering how he had driven a Spitfire during the war, thinking of him being driven by inept drivers now. Ransome felt he owed him something, some vague debt incurred in 1945. ‘Your day’s your own,’ said Ransome. ‘We supply the car.’ The task was to sell baby requisites from door to door: gripe water and talcum powder, disinfectant and baby oil: Ransome was expanding: he’d just bought up a concern that manufactured nappies; he was taking a look at the plastic toy business. ‘Let me ask you a question,’ said Ransome. ‘Doesn’t it send you up the wall hawking these learner drivers about?’ Ransome had a nice little patch keeping warm for Powers out Kingston way. ‘Look at the commission,’ said Ransome. ‘You won’t find commissions like that in your front garden.’

Justin Parke Powers, a man unclean and not entirely satisfied with himself, said yes to Miss Hobish; said yes, he would take the cup of tea, and held the car door open for her and followed her into her small house. Miss Hobish paid for her lessons in advance, by the quarter, but each lesson lasted only twenty minutes instead of the full hour: Miss Hobish at seventy-three could not sustain more.

Darker than the strands that crossed his scalp, softer than the bristle of moustache, was the mat of hair beneath the arms of J. P. Powers. ‘A growth that traps, a growth that sours’, said Roche, referring to the twin clumps and Powers’ perspiration. The hair overflowed from the armpits like stuffing from a mattress – yet his chest was naked as a girl’s. Smooth and white; a suggestion of breasts; pitted, if you cared to look, with blackheads. Earlier in his life J. P. Powers had been concerned about it: a big man like him with so unmanly an expanse. He had turned his back on the company in changing rooms, whistling to cover the gesture.

In the bath on Sunday mornings he washed this body with passing diligence, watching the milky scum form on the water, lathering himself with Lifebuoy as Roche had counselled. As he bathed he could hear the cry of the radio in the kitchen and the quarrelling sounds of his two small daughters. It was a Sunday ritual, accepted by his wife who took no part in it; ritual that the geyser should snarl and the water flow, that scum should form, radio play, daughters quarrel; ritual that at midday precisely J. P. Powers should emerge from the bathroom temporarily cleansed, should leave his rented house by the back door and board a bus to the Saracen’s Arms. It was ritual too that he should later return with four pints of beer in his barrel stomach and eat a lunch that had been kept for him in a low oven.

When he got going he couldn’t stop himself. The images of himself, of his daily work and of his body, rose often and unbidden before him. They bloomed in Mortimer Road and Cave Crescent, among the similar houses, detached or partly so. They hovered, then, over conversation and instruction; they were there in the Austin, like fog. He saw houses and roads being built and wished he had the courage to join a labour gang. He saw his big hands on the steering wheel and considered afresh their function.

On Tuesday September the 21st, Justin Parke Powers gave Miss Hobish her next driving lesson, her two hundred and forty-first. He sat beside her, feet and hands alerted.

‘We’ve had no summer, Mr Powers.’ She sighed, settling herself. ‘One, two, three, four, up and back for reverse. Are we ready, Mr Powers?’

She drove raggedly from Cave Crescent to Amervale Avenue.

‘Hand signals,’ said Powers, and Miss Hobish extended a scrawny arm and waved it arbitrarily about.

He fancied the typing girl in Roche’s office. When the weather was cold she wore knitted jumpers that shaped her breasts. They quivered as she typed, but there was nothing he could do about them now. Probably she’d giggled with Roche afterwards, about what fastidious Hopker had said, about Roche so bold as to recommend Odo-ro-no or Mum.

‘You’re forgetting those hand signals,’ said Powers.

‘So difficult,’ murmured Miss Hobish.

‘Come and have a drink,’ a woman had said to him once, at the end of a lesson; and his heart had fluttered in his naked chest, for he had heard from the other men of such approaches made. Nothing had come of it though, because with the drink in his hand he had laughed and been himself, had told her a few jokes and moved around the room so that he was positioned to give her an exploratory slap on the bottom. All this the woman had not welcomed, and had requested a different tutor for future lessons.

‘Slow down for the crossing,’ Powers said.

‘I beg your pardon?’ said Miss Hobish, turning to look at him, jerking the Austin onwards, missing a woman with a pram.

‘Turn right. We’ll go up Mortimer Road. Hand signal, indicator. Draw out to the centre of the road.’

Excited, Miss Hobish allowed the car to stall.

‘More gas, more gas,’ cried J. P. Powers, apologizing to the traffic.

‘Tell me about the RAF,’ said Miss Hobish in Mortimer Road. ‘I love to hear your tales.’

‘We must concentrate on our driving, Miss Hobish.’

‘Shall we have a cup of coffee afterwards and shall you tell me then?’

‘Yes, Miss Hobish; a coffee would be nice.’

He closed his eyes and within seconds Miss Hobish had driven the Austin into the back of a stationary van.

‘Oh dear, oh dear,’ said Miss Hobish.

Powers got out and examined the damage. Both wings and the radiator grill had suffered considerably. The bumper had folded like a length of cardboard.

‘I’d better drive,’ said Powers. ‘The steering may be wonky.’

He drove in silence, reflecting upon what the incident would cost in terms of himself. Then he wondered idly, as he often did, what it would be like to be a solicitor or a bank manager. He couldn’t fit himself into either role; he couldn’t hear himself advising on the purchase of a house, or lending money, or retailing the details of the divorce laws. It seemed a truth that his tasks were destined to be expendable; only in war had he established himself.

‘Coffee now?’ Miss Hobish asked with meekness.

He looked at the front of the car again. Both headlights were smashed.

‘I’m going to give you a cheque,’ said Miss Hobish. She handed him coffee, and biscuits with icing on them. ‘For that damage to your motor. I suppose it would be two hundred pounds?’

‘Two hundred,’ said Powers, falling in with the plan. ‘J. P. the initials are.’

‘Now we’ll forget about it?’ She was anxious, and he nodded, tucking the cheque away and thinking about it.

Ransome would be at the Saracen’s Head at lunchtime. He’d park the Austin round at the back where Ransome wouldn’t see it and wouldn’t guess anything. Two hundred: he could make it last a long time, nice to have it by him, nice to be able to draw on it now and again.

‘Lovely biscuits, Miss Hobish.’

‘So forgiving, Mr Powers! I thought you mightn’t speak to me, your beautiful motor broken up.’

‘Not at all –’

‘Have another of those biscuits, I know you like them. I get them at Sainsbury’s.’

He dunked the biscuit in his coffee and sucked off the coloured icing. It was a comfortable room. The armchair he sat in was large and soft. Once he had fallen asleep in it. Once Miss Hobish, recognizing his fatigue, had invited him to take off his shoes.

‘Goodbye, Miss Hobish.’

‘More coffee? Biscuits?’

‘I fear I must make my way, Miss Hobish.’

‘Goodbye then, Mr Powers.’ They shook hands as they always did.

It was the boredom, he thought; it was that that prevented him from being the easy extrovert he was born to be. The boredom of repeating, the boredom of talking in simple terms. Hand signals and gear changes: the boredom gave him time to think, it made him think. Powers did not employ these words in his survey of his trouble, but that was the meaning he arrived at. Thoughts ran around in his brain like hares. He didn’t know how to catch them.

‘I couldn’t be happier,’ said Ransome.

Powers examined the beer in his tankard. He nodded, smiling to display enthusiasm.

‘Do you know,’ queried Ransome, ‘what I’m going to do next?’

In three months’ time Powers knew he’d be beginning to think Ransome a swine. Ransome had the makings of another Roche; probably he was worse.

‘I’m going to fire Jack Clay,’ said Ransome.

It was one thing knowing the man in the Saracen’s Head, talking over a beer about their days in the RAF; it was rather different having him in charge of one’s daily life. I’m going to fire J. P. Powers. He could hear the man saying it, in this very bar, to some youthful figure who might make a better hand of distributing the requisites.

‘I’m going to fire Jack Clay and put J. P. Powers in his car. What d’you think of that, a big Consul?’

‘Fine,’ said J. P. Powers. ‘Fine, fine, a Consul’s lovely.’

‘I’ve got a concern making rubber sheets and hot-water bottles shaped like a bunny rabbit. I’d like to have the lot, you know; carry-cots, everything, a full service. I’ve got a fellow in Hoxton working on a wee-control.’

The old, tired thoughts began all over again. He couldn’t see himself clearly; he couldn’t see how his pattern was cut or what he was meant to do, or had ever been meant to do. He began to worry and he hated himself for it; because he didn’t want to worry, because the thoughts were forced upon him.

‘A pregnant woman,’ Ransome was going on, ‘will buy anything. Apples off a tree, old boy. Two days out and by God, you’ll know you never had it so good.’

Powers nodded.

‘Two pints,’ Ransome said to the barmaid.

If he worked on the public transport he’d be a cog in a big machine, getting people to work in the morning, taking them home at night. Otherwise they’d have to walk. He’d seen them during a transport strike, walking from Regent Street to Wimbledon. You couldn’t do that more than once a week.

‘Will I be all right?’

‘Old boy?’

‘Will I fit the bill?’

‘Haven’t I said so? Haven’t I been plaguing you to come in for years? I mean what I say, old boy.’

It occurred to him that Ransome, far from being kind, was deliberately being cruel. Ransome was pointing the moral. They had walked out of the RAF together on the same day. They had gone their separate ways, he to teach learner drivers, Ransome to set up in business. And now Ransome was going to employ him. For years, all those Sunday mornings in the pub, Ransome’s persuasive talk had been designed to needle him. He had been Ransome’s superior in the RAF.

‘Drink to it.’

He raised his tankard to meet Ransome’s.

‘Get a nice new suit,’ suggested Ransome, smiling. ‘Spick and span, with a polish on the shoes. They’ll love you, old boy.’

He sat in the Austin, thinking about the last three hours. The pints of beer had darkened the hue of his face. He could feel them in his stomach, thick and comforting – a moat against Roche who was talking in his mind. He saw his flat mouth open and close, and the words lay between them, above Roche’s tidy desk, eaves droppings for the typing girl. So that was that: Powers must nod and understand, and go away and never return, must be forgotten by Roche, and by the typist whose breasts he had so much desired. Already he was a man of another trade, a good-hearted man who talked to the pregnant woman about what was to come, taking an interest and selling a requisite.

The sun was hot on his face as he sat in the Austin. His skin relaxed, that part of him happy in the heat. He closed his eyes and gave himself up to the tiny moment. The sun touched his hands on the steering wheel and warmed them too. Beer in his stomach, sun on his skin: he had felt such cosseting before. He had lain in bed, stretched and at peace, warmly covered. The warmth of his wife had welcomed him and given him another version of simple sensuality. Blearily, an awareness stirred in J. P. Powers. He did not think in so many words that the excuse for his life lay in moments like these: only in what he received, since he contributed nothing. He did not think it because it was absurd when it was put like that, clarified and clinical. The feeling hammered at his brain but no tendril stretched out to fashion it into thought. A cloud obscured the shaft of sunlight and the feeling evaporated, giving way to an afternoon depression. He switched on the ignition and drove the Austin for the last time, past Cave Crescent and Mortimer Road, out on to Putney Hill and into the stream of traffic.