Chapter fourteen

It had been, till that moment, the second happiest day of Bill Roach’s short life. The happiest was shortly before the dissolution of his household, when his father discovered a wasps’ nest in the roof and recruited Bill to help him smoke them out. His father was not an outdoor man, not even handy, but after Bill had looked up wasps in his encyclopaedia they drove to the chemist together and bought sulphur, which they burned on a charger under the eaves, and did the wasps to death.

Whereas today had seen the formal opening of Jim Prideaux’s car club rally. Till now they had only stripped the Alvis down, refurbished her and put her together again but today as the reward they had laid out, with the help of Latzy the DP, a slalom of straw bales on the stony side of the drive, then each in turn had taken the wheel and with Jim as timekeeper puffed and shunted through the gates to the tumult of their supporters. ‘Best car England ever made,’ was how Jim had introduced his car. ‘Out of production, thanks to socialism.’ She was now repainted, she had a racing Union Jack on the bonnet, and she was undoubtedly the finest, fastest car on earth. In the first round Roach had come third out of fourteen, and now in the second he had reached the chestnut trees without once stalling, and was all set for the home lap and a record time. He had never imagined that anything could give him so much pleasure. He loved the car, he loved Jim and he even loved the school, and for the first time in his life he loved trying to win. He could hear Jim yelling ‘Easy, Jumbo’ and he could see Latzy leaping up and down with the improvised chequered flag, but as he clattered past the post he knew already that Jim wasn’t watching him any more but glaring down the course towards the beech trees.

‘Sir, how long, sir?’ he asked breathlessly and there was a small hush.

‘Timekeeper!’ sang Spikely, chancing his luck. ‘Time please, Rhino.’

‘Was very good, Jumbo,’ Latzy said, also looking at Jim.

For once, Spikely’s impertinence, like Roach’s entreaty, found no response. Jim was staring across the field, towards the lane that formed the eastern border. A boy named Coleshaw stood beside him, whose nickname was Cole Slaw. He was a lag from IIIB, and famous for sucking up to staff. The ground lay very flat just there before lifting to the hills; often after a few days’ rain it flooded. For this reason there was no good hedge beside the lane but a post-and-wire fence; and no trees either, just the fence, the flats, and sometimes the Quantocks behind, which today had vanished in the general whiteness.

The flats could have been a marsh leading to a lake, or simply to the white infinity. Against this washed-out background strolled a single figure, a trim, inconspicuous pedestrian, male and thin-faced, in a trilby hat and grey raincoat, carrying a walking stick which he barely used. Watching him also, Roach decided that the man wanted to walk faster but was going slowly for a purpose.

‘Got your specs on, Jumbo?’ asked Jim, staring after this same figure who was about to draw level with the next post.

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Who is he, then? Looks like Solomon Grundy.’

‘Don’t know, sir.’

‘Never seen him before?’

‘No, sir.’

‘Not staff, not village. So who is he? Beggarman? Thief? Why doesn’t he look this way, Jumbo? What’s wrong with us? Wouldn’t you, if you saw a bunch of boys flogging a car round a field? Doesn’t he like cars?

Doesn’t he like boys?’

Roach was still thinking up an answer to all these questions when Jim started speaking to Latzy in DP, using a murmured, level sort of tone which at once suggested to Roach that there was a complicity between them, a special foreign bond. The impression was strengthened by Latzy’s reply, plainly negative, which had the same unstarded quietness.

‘Sir, please sir, I think he’s to do with the church, sir,’ said Cole Slaw.

‘I saw him talking to Wells Fargo, sir, after the service.’

The vicar’s name was Spargo and he was very old. It was Thursgood legend that he was in fact the great Wells Fargo in retirement. At this intelligence, Jim thought a while and Roach, furious, told himself that Coleshaw was making the story up.

‘Hear what they talked about, Cole Slaw?’

‘Sir, no, sir. They were looking at pew lists, sir. But I could ask Wells Fargo, sir.’

‘Our pew lists? Thursgood pew lists?’

‘Yes, sir. School pew lists. Thursgood’s. With all the names, sir, where we sit.’

And where the staff sit too, thought Roach sickly.

‘Anybody sees him again, let me know. Or any other sinister bodies, understand?’ Jim was addressing them all, making light of it now.

‘Don’t hold with odd bods hanging about the school. Last place I was at we had a whole damn gang. Cleared the place out. Silver, money, boys’ watches, radios, God knows what they didn’t pinch. He’ll pinch the Alvis next. Best car England ever made and out of production.

Colour of hair, Jumbo?’

‘Black, sir.’

‘Height, Cole Slaw?’

‘Sir, six foot, sir.’

‘Everybody looks six foot to Cole Slaw, sir,’ said a wit, for Coleshaw was a midget, reputedly fed on gin as a baby.

‘Age, Spikely, you toad?’

‘Ninety-one, sir.’

The moment dissolved in laughter, Roach was awarded a redrive and did badly, and the same night lay in an anguish of jealousy that the entire car club, not to mention Latzy, had been recruited wholesale to the select rank of watcher. It was poor consolation to assure himself that their vigilance would never match his own; that Jim’s order would not outlive the day; or that from now on Roach must increase his efforts to meet what was clearly an advancing threat.

The thin-faced stranger disappeared, but next day Jim paid a rare visit to the churchyard; Roach saw him talking to Wells Fargo, before an open grave. Thereafter Bill Roach noticed a steady darkening of Jim’s face, and an alertness which at times was like an anger in him, as he stalked through the twilight every evening, or sat on the hummocks outside his caravan, indifferent to the cold or wet, smoking his tiny cigar and sipping his vodka as the dusk closed on him.

PART TWO

Дата добавления: 2015-11-14