Every Last Cent

21

EVERYBODY WAKES DIFFERENTLY, don't they.

There was somebody talking, somebody whose scent was familiar answering back. Was it a row? I was back hearing my parents rowing. I was five, and she was going to be absent when my brother and I returned from school that night, though I didn't yet know it. That wasn't right, though, because she wasn't screaming hate. And the man wasn't Dad, who never raised his voice but just took what was coming.

When dreams go wrong, slip back into the doze and maybe when you start again things will all come right. It's what I used to do when I was little, so I tried.

Male said in tones of iron, 'You've got any alternative, Olive dear?'

'No, Mel.'

'Then what are you saying? That you've discovered oil under your pseudo-Mediterranean patio? Or a hundred new Names clamouring to come aboard?'

Silence, then sounds of a backhander. Olive yelped. A fleck of spittle fell cold on my closed eyelid. The motor rocked. Mel and Olive in the motor with me, but doing more than bickering. It had all the sounds of a lover's tiff.

That couldn't be right, my sluggish brain went, because Mel and Sandy are ... And Olive and me had been ... Suddenly I didn't want to hear this. I wanted sleep back.

'You'll be witness, dear.' Mel at his most vicious. 'They'll start home the minute Sandy waves them off, capeesh?'

Silence. A sudden bounce in the motor's suspension, and Olive whimpered. Mel swung at her, three savage slaps, his voice shaking with rage.

'You ... shall... do ... it.'

Olive wept and cringed. My eyes opened. Mel was the beater in the passenger seat, Olive the beatee. I'd never heard him speak with such venom. The jokey waspishness of the avowed person of his proclivities, the barbed wit that amuses women so and always sounds audience-aware, made for titters. But this? Savagery.

Outside was dark, except for slashes of yellow glim from the village hall. I didn't want to be discovered.

'Promise, dear.' That dear was the frightener. As bad as Big John's quiet voice.

'Yes.' Her whisper didn't please him because he sighed.

'I can't hear it, Olive, dear.'

'Yes, Mel. I'll do it.' She sounded so weary. 'Look. If—'

'No, Olive. There's not a single if left. Not since Lovejoy's by-blow scuppered us all.

Understand?'

I thought, Mel means Mortimer. I almost got up and clobbered him but wanted more.

'We're all in it. You too.'

He opened the passenger's door and to my horror the interior light came on. I froze, wishing I'd had the sense to cover myself with a blanket. Except Olive never does carry a blanket in her motor, the stupid cow. See the trouble you get into, depending on women?

'Let the Giverills drive out of the car park, then follow.'

'What do I say when somebody asks me what I saw?' Olive sniffed.

'Use your head, you stupid mare.'

He slammed the door, almost perforating my eardrums. The light dowsed. I thought, God Almighty, I'd never heard Mel speak like a gangster before. A betrayed lover, sure, when Sandy was doing what Sandy gleefully calls pub rubber, or taunting Mel across crowded auction rooms when they'd disagreed on some colour scheme. We all go embarrassed and look at the floor. Mel gets bitter and sulks for days. Sometimes he storms out, even drives off to his cousin's shack near Cherbourg, yet always returns.

The most remarkable thing was, he threatened Olive Makins! Olive, doyenne of affairs of the heart and wallet, the one woman who you'd put your money on to survive.

Queen of cut-throat competition, she ran the local auctioneers' society, and was a hard-dealing contract agent for most. I'd heard Gimbert himself call her Mother Shark. Hard as nails, I'd seen her sack two women for simply getting tired in the Mile End central office. And Olive was a serious investor in trust funds, where you pay in monthly and bankers pretend they've made you a fortune that's always smaller than they promised.

I've seen her throw ledgers in a high street bank.

That was the lady currently weeping at the wheel while I hid. If I sat up, might I try pretending I'd just woken up? I'd never get away with it. Maybe I could eel out, then stroll up and beg a lift to town? Except the light would come on.

No. Stay put. Maybe she would go to the loo? Or go and find Sandy, try to argue him out of whatever course of action he was bent on?

I heard Sandy call, 'Byyyeee peoples! Missing you alreadeee!'

Not far away an engine fired, small motor by the sound of it. It slowly rose in pitch. I heard the motor falter as it took to the highway. Hardly Fangio driving, more your staid middle-of-the-road elderly bloke who'd wax the bonnet to a gleam every Sunday after church ... A horrible thought took hold and I almost sat up, but Olive turned her ignition and moved off, tyres crunching. As the car tilted and picked up speed, I heard Sandy give a shrill scream of laughter.

Well, in for a penny. At least I'd find out what promise Olive had made and who else was involved.

The motor hummed, trying to lull me to sleep. I made myself stay awake. Easy, because the mention of Mortimer – it was Mortimer he'd meant, wasn't it? – had scared me badly. I felt clammy, this time not because of antiques. Maybe Olive secretly realized I was in her car and, sly cow, was chortling away, bent on exposing me at some horrible moment.

Except she had other things on her mind. She started crying again as she turned onto the main arterial road, sniffing and coughing. I heard her handbag click open. Getting a hanky? The last time she'd made that same click, I thought guiltily, was to find something else in her handbag when we were making smiles. I began to hear lorries and heavy wagons overtaking. Olive was not driving fast, so the car she was presumably following was trundling along the same.

Once or twice I heard an HGV irritably sound its horn as it thundered by, its airwave shoving Olive's light car slightly. She was driving slower than usual, following a slow motor. I wanted to risk a quick glance, but Olive might see my head in her driving mirror.

We'd been going fifteen minutes, I thought, when she spoke quietly.

'I see.'

She slowed. No sudden braking, just let the car lose impetus. I felt her motor nudged aside as something larger and heavier created an overtaking wash of air. A light swamped the car. The larger vehicle swished past.

'Oh, oh,' Olive moaned, and braked. A grinding sound filled the night.

There's nothing worse than the sudden squeal of car tyres. It always makes me tense up. Stupid. A scream of twisting metal took maybe a second, perhaps two. A fantastic screeching noise, endlessly drawn out, horns going, lights and shadows swirling in the car's interior – I could only really see the ceiling material from my position on the back seat. I was thrown forward.

Olive cried out, 'No, no, no . . .'

She braked a second time, harder, her tyres making a long sound as if they were tearing the ground. My back almost broke as something slammed into Olive's rear bumper. My head jerked, and I thought, Christ, I'm going to get killed, we've had it. We jerked forward, abruptly seemed to crunch against something massively inert, and spun round, halting almost nose down. Her headlights dowsed. People started shouting, car horns going everywhere. Her engine raced futilely. Olive was keening, 'No, no, no.'

For a long time I stayed put. I might have broken bones, my neck fractured at some vital spot. What if the car doors locked by some slick anti-theft mechanism so I couldn't get out? I heard somebody shout, 'There's somebody down there!' And another man call, 'I'll go down. Looks like a woman.'

'Is there anybody else?' a man yelled.

'Never mind that,' a bloke boomed in a deep bass. 'Give us a lift here.'

A cry for ambulances rose. Horns blared in a cacophony. The sound of engines was deafening. I worked out that Olive's car must be in a ditch beside the trunk road.

Olive, still whimpering, opened her door and climbed out. I heard her shoes slither on the sloping bank. Bracken crackled as she blundered. I felt myself for injuries. I should have helped her, but who was in a worse state, her or me? Survival of the fittest. She had a job to do. Now that events of the night had dictated their own grim logic, I guessed that Mel had simply instructed her to be a biased witness to a rigged accident.

It had all the hallmarks. I felt sick.

The door on which my head rested was down. Olive had climbed to get out. Therefore I had to go upwards. I had a sudden terror of explosion. I could smell petrol, and without worrying about broken bones I frantically scrabbled round, never mind who saw me, reeled the window down and heaved myself through into undergrowth.

Hawthorn bushes and sloes always go for my eyes. I was in a right state by the time I reached the road.

An ambulance was slowly trying to get through the array of wagons, pantechnicons, cars and vans crammed along the carriageway. An AA man's van was in the thick of it, having somehow come via the ditch. He was trying to get the traffic moving, signalling with lights, his reflective yellow jacket gleaming. Men were struggling with two motors that were concertinaed against trees. I couldn't see Olive. People were stooping over forms lying on the ground. I couldn't see, dazzled by the kaleidoscopic lights and the flashing ambers of security vehicles pressing in.

The noise was indescribable. Wnat the hell were all the engines revving for? Blokes in heavy goods vehicles leaned out calling questions. It was mayhem. I sat on the running board of a lorry. I had a bad headache.

I could have prevented this somehow. And hadn't. I could have lied to Mel that I knew what he was up to. I could have confronted Sandy, demanded what the hell. Or gone to the police. I could have seized Olive's wheel, flagged the mark motor down and warned them. I hadn't done a frigging thing.

A lorry driver came. 'You okay, mate?'

'Aye. Ta.'

'You look rough. In one of the motors, were you?'

'No. Thumbing a lift on the verge.'

'See anything, did yer? Here.' He gave me a swig of tea from his flask. Hot, thick, sweet.

'Ta. No, saw nowt. Anybody hurt?'

'Two people in a motor bought it. The other motor isn't too bad.'

He was a crew-cutted bruiser, but often they're the kindliest people on the road, do anything to help. He sounded Merseyside.

'This'll be a long time clearing,' he said. 'Get in my cabin and watch the telly if you like.'

'Ta,' I said, and did.

The plod came with their loudhailers, filling the night with questions.

They asked what I'd seen. I said I recalled seeing a motor driving past and swerving. I was trying to thumb a lift, but nobody seemed willing to stop in the darkness.

Something gave me a thump. I fell, heard tyres screeching, found myself down in the ditch.

'I climbed up the bank to the road,' I said.

'I gave him some tea and sat him down,' the lorry driver said. 'I wondered if he'd been thrown out of one of the motors. I've seen that happen.'

They let me go after an hour. I got a lift to civilization from the driver. I have an idea he knew my tale was made up, but that's the same for pope, poet, and peasant. We're all fibbers.

It took me a couple of hours to walk down to the river and up the footpath to my cottage. I made tea and pulled the divan down. I stripped and went to bed.

The tangled mass of Timothy Giverill's motor, crumpled against the tree in the lights, was with me as I closed my eyes and waited for the night to pass and bright day come with its new sequence of hauntings. I should have wept for what I'd done, but my senses wouldn't play my silly games any more. They just sat in me, eyes, hearing, touch, the rest, just knowing what a worm I really was.

In sad moments the past comes niggling, making you feel bad about things long forgot.

Melancholy blamed me for the tragedy. I remembered Trudy and Betcher.

It was all down to unrequited love.

Trudy was an accountant. 'I'm no oil painting,' she said jestingly. She did tax for antique dealers. Wisely she never learned the trade, or what dark deeds were done. Or, indeed, how much income flowed silently along the night hedgerows of East Anglia. I liked Trudy.

Enter Betcher. Extrovert, noisy, chatty, a caricature of the wartime spiv of old black and white films right down to the padded shoulders and natty trilby. He was called Betcher because of his gambling. 'The Derby's been run exactly for three hundred years, betcher ten quid,' and so on. He never owned a thing, simply gambled wildly. Losing a bet, he'd bet his way out: 'Okay, so it's Sheraton and I lose,' he'd say, spirits instantly lifting as something else caught his eye. 'Then that tallboy over there. Betcher it's Chippendale. Double or quits?' He used me as referee, seeing I was the only divvy around.

There was a problem. He longed for Trudy and hadn't the nerve to tell her.

'Trudy's got everything, Lovejoy. Bright, bonny. I'm rubbish.'

Tact seemed the best tack so I said, 'You frigging burke. Ask her out, God's sakes. This isn't Jane Eyre.'

'Help me, mate.'

I get uneasy in affairs of the heart. I'd lately been in trouble with Big Frank's new betrothed lady – his fifth wife, maybe sixth – and I didn't want to be anybody else's go-between.

'Look, Betch, I'm pushed at the moment.'

'She likes that thing. I could win it on a bet.'

He described a pendant that Trudy admired in Fookleston's window. Fookie is a cadaverous, stooping bloke of immense height, bespectacled and thin. He inherited our town's best jewellery shop, and spends his profit in the bookmaker's in Head Street.

Another gambler. I'd never known a bloke like him – well, I have, but you've got to say that. Fookie gambles serious money. With Betcher gambling's a mere introductory spiel leading, he hopes, to better things.

'That spinel?'

'Isn't it a sapphire?'

'No. Fookie's just trying it on. It should only be a tenth of the price.'

People let themselves get carried away by simple points of recognition. Men do it with women – she's got a terrific shape, so she must be desirable / holy / honest / kind /

trustworthy, etc – and women invariably do it with jewellery. They see something prettily mounted and blue, and think, 'Egad! A princely sapphire in twenty-four carat gold! Astronomically priced, so it must be terribly valuable . . .' and so on. A spinel can be red, through blue to black. Most people think that so-called 'noble' spinel (only means gem quality) is always red, which isn't true. Okay, blue spinels are sometimes cloudy and not so bonny, but when you see transparent violety or frankly blue stones, they don't come any lovelier. The great 'Black Prince's Ruby' in our Crown jewels is secretly a spinel, not a ruby at all, but don't let on. Blue and red spinels have been substituted for sapphires and rubies over the centuries.

Like a duckegg I decided to help Betcher. I got Fookie to sell me the blue spinel pendant for a fraction of his asking price. I sold it on to Betcher for exactly what I'd paid. He wooed Trudy, heavenly violins soared and angels sang, and we all waited for wedding bells to chime. No such luck. The sky fell in. Trudy abruptly resigned and went to Manchester. Betcher sank into profound dejection, recovered slowly to his usual,

'Wotcher, Lovejoy. Betcher that new cat of Chrissy's gets lost within the week, ten quid on it?' I thought, oh well, lovers' parting is such sweet sorrow and all that. I'd done my bit so was it my fault?

Needless to say, yes it was.

One day I was in Manchester collecting some fake English secretaire bookcases – lovely mahogany, narrow, finely dovetailed drawers. Manchester repros are by far the best anywhere on earth. They're dead ringers for 1795. Dunno why, but Manchester craftsmen take the trouble of matching wood grain top and bottom, banding the same.

Other forgers are too damned idle, don't do a proper job ... Where was I? Manchester, bumping into Trudy in an antique dealer's.

She still wore Betcher's spinel pendant. In fact I recognized it before I even looked at her. We said hello. I stood shuffling, waiting for her to get mad over something I'd done / hadn't done, the usual female response to me. Until she said, 'I'm married now, Lovejoy. A little girl, twelve months.'

'Oh, good.' What can you say?

'It didn't work out with Brendon,' she said wistfully. I remembered in the nick of time that was Betcher's real name. 'I waited, but he never said anything. I saw it was hopeless.' Sorrow pained her eyes. 'I just had to leave.'

Betcher had been too much of a dope to speak out and I'd been too thick to bang their silly heads together and tell them to get on with it and stop annoying us. A classic tragedy, English reserve versus ardent longing.

The question was, what to say? Tell Trudy the truth, that Betcher had always loved her, now she was married with a family? Or reveal all to Betcher? Or let things slide? Being me, I took the easiest, saddest route. When next I met Betcher he said wistfully, 'Back from Lancashire, eh?' And asked, heart in his eyes, 'Betcher didn't see Trudy, Lovejoy.

Tenner on it.'

'No,' I lied evenly. What else could I say?

So Betcher languishes and Trudy languishes and me helping made it shambolic. And that, said Alice, was that.

The lesson? When I help, things get worse. My gran used to say, 'Lord save me from helpers.' She meant me.

There's no doubt. Morality's punk, dud from start to finish. I believe there's only one moral problem in life. It's this: if you could save somebody's life and you don't, then you're a murderer. That's the only moral dilemma since the dawn of man, like Brigadier Hedge's australopithecines question. Except it's no problem, for it's solved before you even utter the question.

Whoever else was responsible for Florence and Timothy Giverill's deaths – plus the deaths of whoever else had died in the crash – there was no doubt who was the real culprit. It was me, as surely as if I'd driven Timothy into that tree.

No sleep that night. The bluetits knocked on my window at seven as usual. I got up, filled their thing full of nuts, diced cheese for the robin and scattered a load of gunge for them to get on with. The plod came and took me in. I wasn't quite ready for them, but answered as I'd worked out during the lantern hours.