I Travel in Suspenders, AD 1931

I travel in suspenders. Selling ‘em, that is, not wearing ‘em. That always gets a laugh. You’ll often find a laugh will kick things off better than anything, whether you’re talking to a client, or young lady. Or for that matter a constable. Do you know, very often in the motor that carries me back and forth from Angel Lane to the assizes I’ll make some remark, you know. Just kidding them along, like, as you do. The other day we passed by this young woman in the street and honestly, the face on her, I’ve never seen one like it. I pointed her out to the young chap that I was handcuffed to. I said, ‘Ah well, there’s no sense looking at the mantel when the fire wants poking.’ As you might suppose, that raised a smile. They’re human just like everybody else.

I’ve noticed on the corner just across the street from the assizes there’s a Women’s WC that backs on to the big church in the middle there, All Saints. It’s down some steps and you can only see the staircase curving down and round away from you, with white tiles halfway up the wall. I’d like to know what goes on down there, I can tell you. Just imagine, eh, if you could have a look? I close my eyes and I can see it, with them pulling up their pants across their great big bums. I had dreams once, you know, when I was little, about being in the Ladies’ toilets. I was quite a cheeky little monkey even then, you can imagine. There’d be that green muck growing between the tiles and Heaven only knows how it would smell. Like every fanny in the world at once, I’ll bet. Now there’s a thought. I’ll bet you couldn’t find a man who hadn’t entertained it once or twice if he were honest.

There’s a lot of women come to court sat in the gallery. You’d be surprised, some of the looks I get. I shouldn’t say myself but I’ve got quite a following as if I were a blooming Picture Idol, not that I’m bad-looking in the natural way of things. Of course, I mustn’t do much to encourage them with Lillian sitting there before the dock each day and mooning up at me. It wouldn’t look good, would it, if I were to be seen making eyes at some lass in the back row with my own wife looking on? Not after that commotion with the papers printing what I said to the police, about how my harem keeps me away from home.

My lawyer Mr Finnemore reckons I put my foot in it with that one, but then he’s not what you’d call a worldly man. To my mind, for the greater part the general public have a soft spot for a dashing rogue, and secretly admire a great philanderer. If they’d had half the fun that I’ve had they’d be glad. Still, it won’t do for Lily to seem too much of a martyr so I must take care and not be caught out, flirting from the dock. There’s a brunet girl, busty little thing, that sometimes comes in on her dinner break and stands there up one corner looking at me. I should like it if she had suspenders on made by the firm I represent, and since they’re not far off in Leicester there’s a good chance that she does. You think about it one way, I’m as good as up her skirt already. How about that?

Lillian’s already had a lot of sympathy and has been given work down at a shop in Bridge Street here so she can keep herself while she attends the trial. The station where I’m kept in Angel Lane runs right off Bridge Street so we drive up past the shop each morning on my way to court. A little sweetshop as it happens, so it’s just the place for a sweet girl like her. Head over heels for me she is and always has been. Never likes to sit upon my knee, which is my favorite way to hold a woman, but in all particulars apart from that she’s the best wife I’ve got.

If I should think, I’ll have her bring me up a quarter pound of Menthol Eucalyptus sweets to see if they can ease my throat a bit. All of this giving evidence is making it play up. If I’m not careful I shall have no voice at all before they’re done with me, and then where should I be? There’s a great many people think me quite the best amateur baritone to sing down at the Friern Barnet Social Club in Finchley, where my ‘Trumpeter What Are You Sounding Now’ always goes down a treat. I’ve got a very decent set of pipes on me and shouldn’t want a thing like this to muck them up. I know that men in general often take against a chap who has the lighter type of voice, but ladies by and large seem to prefer it. Wouldn’t do to talk myself hoarse in the dock and spoil all that now, would it?

He was thrashing like a mackerel, banging on the windshield of my Morris. Not at all a pleasant thing to look at I can tell you, and the noise. You talk about a scalded cat. You’d think he’d be out cold and not know anything about it, but it was the fire. It woke him up. I’ll be quite honest, I can hear it now. It wasn’t even any words you’d take for English it was such an awful racket. Once he kicked the side door open and I thought, ‘Well, that’s it, Alf. You’ve been and gone and done it now.’ Only by then of course the smoke and flames were down him and he’d had his lot. He fell down forward over the front seat with one leg out the car, and that was it. Of course, Joe Soap here stood downwind and didn’t have the sense to move until my eyes were streaming. What a sight we must have been, the pair of us.

I saw the picture of my Morris Minor that they printed in the Daily Sketch and could have wept. Baby saloon it was, and not that old. I had the thing insured for one hundred and fifty pounds but don’t expect to see a big return from it, things being what they are. Judging from what it looked like in the photograph there wasn’t much left of the blessed thing. The mud-guards were all thrown about like ribs and you could see where all the rubber had poured off the wheels to leave the rims bare. If I ever catch them chaps that stole it, but then no, hang on, that wasn’t true, was it? I made that up. It’s such a job sometimes, just keeping track of everything.

That was the worst thing about keeping up two wives at once, apart from all the cost involved. It was a strain remembering my story sometimes, I can tell you. All the fiddling little details. Which one I’d told what. With Lillian it wasn’t quite so bad because she’s rather vague by nature and not so inclined to notice if I should slip up, but Ivy now, well. That’s a different matter. It’s not six months since I married her and she’s already quick to pounce upon the smallest thing.

I married Lil November 1914, so that’s more than sixteen year back now. In all that time, if she’s had a suspicious thought she’s kept it to herself. Even when evidence was put in front of her, such as when I brought her mine and little Helen’s baby to look after — not the one that died, the second one, our little Arthur — even then she took it quieter than a mouse and said that she’d forgive me when I hadn’t even asked her to. Young Arthur’s nearly six now and I’ll say this for our Lillian, she’s brought him up as if he were her own. She’s never shown him any side, not to my knowledge. Like I say, head over heels for me, she is. No questions asked. Hard to believe it’s sixteen years. I missed our anniversary this last November what with all the set-to that we had. I’ll have one of the coppers pop and get her something, if I happen to remember. Better late than never, that’s what I say.

As for Ivy, I don’t know if it will last for sixteen months, let alone sixteen years. It seemed a good idea when we were wed in June at Gellygaer, though when I say a good idea I mean that she was four months up the spout by then and showing large already, as the skinny ones so often do. God, though, the tits they get on them. It’s almost worth it, having one more mouth to feed so long as you get lovely tits like that to stuff in yours. There now, you see? Another laugh. It’s like I say with laughter, it’s the best thing that there is to break the ice. Everyone feels that much more comfortable.

But to be serious, with Ivy something told me I was making a mistake from the word go. Not that there’s anything about her I don’t like, but just that you could tell somehow there’d be a lot of fuss involved. You take the last time that I saw her, when I went across to Wales that night directly after my ‘funny five minutes’ out at Hardingstone. Now, as you might imagine, I was in a dreadful tizzy, having lost the car. I’d come out of Hardingstone Lane and stood faffing about there by the end and peering back along the path to watch the two men who had seen me leave the field. I couldn’t spot them in the dark, although my Morris was still blazing, out across the hedgerows.

You know how it is at times like that. You feel that everything you do must look suspicious, although half the time you’ll find nobody notices. I went and stood beside the London Road up near the old stone cross they’ve got there, where Queen Eleanor was set down on her funeral procession back to London, and it wasn’t long before I’d thumbed a lorry down, on its way to that very place. I spun a yarn about a lift I’d missed from some well-off old chum who drove a Bentley, and the lorry driver was soon taken in. He drove me to Tally Ho Corner on the Barnet Road and we arrived there about six as it was getting light.

I told a fellow at the Transport Office there that my own car had been pinched from outside a coffee stall because to tell the truth by then I was quite dozy and forgot that rot I’d said about the Bentley. Still, I’ve got a way with people, there’s a lot of folk have said it, and this bloke was no exception. Put me on a coach, the nine-fifteen for Cardiff, so that I arrived there in the afternoon and caught another bus to Penybryn. I could walk from there to Ivy’s house at Gellygaer and got in about eight that night.

Well, as I say, there’s always fuss with Ivy. Not that it’s her fault, it’s just there always is, and that night was no different. First of all I had her father, old man Jenkins, buttonhole me in the passageway and ask why it had taken me so long to get there with his Ivy at death’s door with illness and my baby on the way. You know how Taffy Welshman likes his bit of melodrama now and then, and he had Ivy sounding more like Little Nell than anything before he’d done with me. I told him how I’d had my car pinched in Northampton which I dare say I believed myself by then, I’d had to reel it out that often. It’s a funny thing, but on my oath, stood in his passage at that moment I’d forgotten everything about that other poor chap and the fire.

After I’d gotten past the dad I had the daughter to contend with. Ivy was propped up on pillows in her room and she looked very bad. The baby was due almost any time. No sooner had I sat down on the bed than she was asking when we should move into our new house in Surrey. To be frank, it caught me off-guard and I looked at her gone out. I’d quite forgotten all the business about Kingston-on-Thames that I’d told her and her dad when I was tipsy at our wedding do. Before I could come up with something good she was in floods of tears and telling me I didn’t love her, and how she was sure that I was seeing someone else. Why was I spending all these nights away and so on. You can guess the greater part of it.

They don’t consider what you might have gone through, do they? Buy me this and buy me that and let’s live somewhere else. Five hundred pounds a year I’m earning now from Leicester Brace & Garter and you might think I’d be well-to-do, but not a bit of it. All of it’s gone on kids or women long before I see a penny of it. It’s the same old story.

As it stood, although I hadn’t mentioned it to Lillian, I’d planned to sell the house and furniture we had at Buxted Road in Finchley so that I could use the cash to get set up with Ivy and the nipper when it came. Now, you can call me what you like, but I’ve always been softer than I should be when it comes to kids. I’d make a settlement to Lily and young Arthur, naturally.

Of course, I couldn’t say all this to Ivy without having her fall wise to Lily and my Finchley set-up, so I acted all offended and made quite a fuss about having my car pinched from outside the coffee shop so that it took me eighteen hours to get to Gellygaer. I find it often works if someone gets upset to act as if you’re more upset than they are in return. When you’re a smart chap like myself it never fails, and Ivy was soon telling me that she was sorry that she’d had a go at me, and it was just her nerves, what with the baby due and her so poorly. I said, ‘There now, Climbing Ivy, you can cling to me,’ and when she did I put my hand inside her nightie-top and had a feel. Her tit was hard and heavy with the end part stood out like a football stud. I slept in their spare room that night and I was on the bone just thinking of it, even after all the upset I had during supper, with that neighbor and her bloody paper.

If I’m truthful it’s my biggest fault, the sex. I’ll tell you, half the time I think of nothing else, and when you’re on your own a lot like me, driving from place to place, it makes it worse. You spend a lot of time with daydreams when you’re up and down the road. Sometimes I’ll have to pull in at a lay-by for a fiddle just so I can think of something else but fanny for an hour or two. I’ve got a catalog I carry with me in the car with photographs of models in the company range. They’re only little pictures with four of them to a page, and you can only see the women from their tummies to the top part of their legs. You’ll think I’m crackers but to me they’ve all got different characters, and things about the way they stand so you can tell what sort of girls they are. Some of them, they’re the type you know that you’d get on with, and that they’d have decent personalities.

There’s one that I call Monica. If you look close up at the photograph you can see a light sort of fuzz upon her legs, so I imagine her as blond. The sort of girl you might find working at the counter in a Post Office, wearing her hair the way they have it now, all straight on top and curled up round the back. She’d look nice in light blue. Her belly button is the kind that’s more upright than wide, so that it’s like a little keyhole in a peach. She’s got one of the newer long-line corsets on that seem to flatter women with more slender hips, which to my mind seems a wise choice and shows she’s more the thoughtful type who takes a lot of care about her clothes. You can tell just by looking at her skin that she can’t be much more than twenty.

That’s the age, I’ll tell you, when they’re fagged out and fed up with younger lads and start to see the older fellow as romantic. If I could have Monica just hear me do ‘The Cobbler’s Song’ from Chu Chin Chow then I could have her drawers down quick as that. Of all my harem, do you know that sometimes I think I like Monica the best? She doesn’t cost me anything or get me into trouble. I just shoot off in my hankie, close the catalog and drive away.

I wasn’t always like this, with the women. Ask my Lily and she’ll tell you: when she knew me back before the War it was as much as I could bring myself to do to give a kiss goodnight, I was that shy. It wasn’t until I’d enlisted in the 24^th Queen’s Territorials I had the nerve to go up to a girl and ask her out. The uniform, you see. It made a difference, you can laugh now, but it’s true. I’ve heard women go on and on about how terrible it is the way men fight, but once they see the boots and buttons they’re all over you. They wave you off then stay at home and send white feathers to the conshies. Half the fellows in those trenches wouldn’t be there if not for the way their girlfriends look at them when they’re dressed up for war. Deny it if you can.

To be quite honest, Lily was the first girl I’d been out with, although I was getting on for twenty. When she first got me to bed I was that green I lay on top of her with my legs open for a time before I realized what I should be doing. In all honesty it wasn’t that successful. Well, I couldn’t get it in and ended up feeling that sick about myself, and when Lil said it didn’t matter that was worse. We never did it right until about a week after we wed. I mean, we’d rubbed each other off and kissed, but that was all, and when we did finally manage it, it was all over in a flash, though that got better as time passed. All told, though I was no great shakes in bed, I think we were happier then, me and my Lillian. It was a shame that we were never blessed with kids, although I’ve made up for it since.

Four months together, me and Lily had, and by the end of it the How’s-Your-Father, it was smashing. We were that in love, and then, come March in 1915, I was bundled off to France. My God, that was a terror. You don’t know until you’ve been in one. You live in mud and all around there’s lads no older than yourself with half their jaw blown off, and you give up on everything bar doing what you’re told. I’ve seen a horse that had no legs lie shuddering in the muckpit like a bloody seal. I’ve seen men burn.

I’d only been in France two months before I caught the shrapnel at Givenchy. Head and leg. The head was worst, apparently, though Muggins here can’t bring to mind a blessed thing about it. Not the moment that it happened or the morning that I’d had before, and not much after. Gone. Clean as a whistle. First thing I knew afterwards was being halfway through a plate of dinner at the hospital. I lifted up a spoon of stringy mash and looked at it, and I remembered that I was Alf Rouse. It was the most peculiar sensation, I can tell you.

I don’t have the education to explain it but the world seemed different to me after that. I don’t mean that the War had opened up my eyes, like I’ve heard other fellows say. I mean the world seemed different, like as if it was a different world, a stand-in for the real one. How can I explain it? Everything looked wrong. Not wrong, but put together in a hurry as though it could fall apart at any time. The best way I can say it is like when you’re doing art in school, and Miss gives you a sheet of paper first where you can try things out and make a mess, because it’s not the proper picture and it doesn’t matter. When I woke up in that hospital it was like waking up inside the practice scribble, not the picture. Nothing mattered. You could rub it out and start all over. When I think about it, I suppose I’ve pretty much felt that way ever since, though now I’m used to it.

That was the point where I first got my ‘thing’ about the weaker sex. Of course, for one thing there was opportunity, what with the nurses they had over there. You wouldn’t think to look at some of them, but there was more of that went on than you’d suppose. You see, to all intents and purposes they were the only women over there and they could have their pick. You wouldn’t think they’d feel much like it what with seeing chaps half blown to bits all day, but I could tell a tale or two, believe me. Well, of course, I had a twinge of guilt from time to time regarding Lillian, but nothing that would bowl me over. Like I say, by then things had all sort of flattened out, and nothing that I thought or did seemed to amount to very much. I mean, I know there’s right and wrong, but you come to a point where, honestly, you’re not much bothered.

Once I had this chubby little RSN who sucked me off while there was some poor fellow with no hands lay raving off his chump in the cot next to mine. I played along, but frankly wasn’t very struck upon it, if you can believe that. There was something funny with this nurse that put me off, the way she acted. Gone a bit mad, by the look of her. You got a lot like that.

When I was pensioned out the following year and came back home, it didn’t ease up on the female front one bit. If anything, it just made matters worse. That was the wound, you see, did that. That’s what attracted them. My injury. What I just said, about girls being daft for chaps in uniform, well, that was nothing to the way they were if you were hurt or wore a bandage. Even when the bandages were off, if you just talked about how you were wounded to ‘em, that would do the trick. I’d pull my hair to one side so that they could see the scar up by my parting, and I’d let ‘em touch it if they wanted to. I’ll tell you, ten minutes of that and I was up ‘em. They were gasping for it. They’re some funny wonders, women. I can’t make them out, not after all the ones I’ve had. It must be getting on for seventy or eighty of them that I’ve done it with since I took up commercial traveling when I came out the army, but they’re still a mystery to me. I expect they always will be, now.

I won’t say little Helen was the first girl that I took to bed while on my travels. After all, I’d had five year of it by then, but it was Helen who I came to care about the most. I wanted to look after her. She was a child, when all was said and done, and so she needed looking after. Anyone would do the same, that had a heart.

A little Scottish girl, was Helen. Little servant girl. I used to have her in the back seat of the Morris. There were lots of memories in that back seat. I’m sorry that it’s gone. I suppose that when you think about it, she was on the young side, Helen. Only fourteen, but you know the girls these days. Very mature and well developed. If they’re old enough to bleed, they’re old enough to butcher, that’s what I say. Good one, eh? I heard that first when I was in the services, and thought that it was proper comical.

I got her pregnant, but it died soon after it was born, which was an upset at the time. It’s like I say, I’m very fond of children. Anyway, I kept on seeing her and two years later, by the time she was sixteen, she’d fallen with another one. Now, Helen, she was only young, but she could be insistent, and this time she put her foot down. Said we must be married for the kiddy’s sake, and there wasn’t much that I could say to that. I’d told her me and Lily were divorced, you see, so couldn’t use the fact I was already wed to get me out of it. It was a pickle, I can tell you.

As it turned out, what I did was go through a sham wedding with her, just to keep her happy, then I set her and baby up at this nice flat in Islington where we could live as man and wife. I told her I’d be on the road a lot away from home. Of course, I’d told Lily the same thing back in Finchley, so it all worked out quite nicely for a time. Still, she wasn’t daft, and in the end she got suspicious I was having an affair outside of marriage. What she didn’t know of course is that I was and she was it.

It all came out eventually, and my God, but you should have heard the uproar. I don’t know quite where I should have been if Lily hadn’t been so understanding. She’s said all along it’s not my fault, me being a sex maniac, and that it’s only happened since the War. They both agreed to meet, did her and Helen, after things calmed down, and sorted it all out across the French sponge at a Joe Lyons’ corner house. They both thought it was best if Helen’s baby, little Arthur, should have somewhere decent to grow up, so me and Lily took him in to live with us at Buxted Road. You can say what you like, there’s not a lot of women as would do that for their chap, now is there? Take another woman’s baby in and feed it?

She’s one in a million, is my Lily. I remember that last night before this all blew up, the last time I saw Buxted Road. We’d sat there in our front room with the lights out, me and Lillian and little Arthur, watching all the rockets and the Roman candles going off just up the road, it being Bonfire Night. I’d told her I’d got business up in Leicester with the braces and suspenders people, so she didn’t mind when I set out just after seven to head up the Great North Road towards the Midlands. I let her have one of my extra special kisses by way of farewell, since I was feeling bad about the way things were between us and I meant to leave her.

Pulling out of Buxted Road; I went straight round to Nellie Tucker’s. I’m ashamed to say I’d not been round there since she’d had the baby just the week before, so you could say that I was overdue. I can’t remember, did I mention Nellie? I took up with her in 1925, during the troubled patch with Helen and our Lily. I was under a great deal of pressure at the time, as you might well imagine, and I turned to Nellie so that I’d have someone I could talk about it to, as much as anything. Naturally, one thing leading to another how it does, it wasn’t long before we’d got a baby. Lily would have killed me, so I kept it quiet and paid five pounds to Nelly every month for maintenance. That was all right until she fell again, this last time. Had it the end of October, on the 29^th as I remember.

I went round to see her after leaving Lil that night and got round there a little after seven. Both the eldest and the baby were in bed by then, so we could have a quick one on the couch. I felt a bit blue afterwards, the way you sometimes do, and started pouring out my troubles to her, telling her about all of the debt that I was in. She’s a good listener is Nellie. Always has been.

How it is with me, I suppose it’s like that film A Girl in Every Port. Victor McLaglan. Do you know that one? That was a smasher. Went last year to see it with our Lily, and the women that were in it, well, what a selection. Myrna Loy, she’s nice. And Louise Brooks, although to be quite honest I’m not half so keen on her, her hair like that. It looks too lesbian, if you know what I mean. The real star, though, to my mind, it was Sally Rand. You must know Sally Rand. ‘The Bubbles Girl’? She danced with fans and these big bubbles, and I have to say that there’s a lot of art in what she does. She doesn’t wear a stitch beneath those bubbles, yet you never see a thing. Her song was ‘I’m Forever Blowing Bubbles’, naturally enough. A lovely girl.

I stayed at Nellie’s for about an hour and left just after eight. I should have had a pee before I left but anyway I didn’t, and so by the time I got past Enfield, heading out St Alban’s way, I was near bursting. I saw this pub just set back from the road a bit and thought, ‘Well, I’ve got time for one to brace me for the journey.’ Also, I could use their Gents. It’s funny, I’ve been out that way before and though I know most of the pubs up there, this one was new to me. I think it’s how you come upon it, round a bend. The first sight that I had of it was when my headlights swung across and caught it, and at first it looked half derelict. They ought to do it up a bit, in my opinion. It’d be money well spent, because set back there from the road I’ll bet that most folk overlook it. Had a funny name, as I recall, although I can’t think what at present. It’ll come to me, I’m sure.

I parked the wagon round the back and went inside, and it was first stop Gentlemen’s. God, talk about Relief of Mafeking. It was one of those where the stream seems to go on for hours. Well, I’m exaggerating, but you get the gist. I came out of the W.C. into the bar, and there was hardly anybody in at all. Dead as a doornail.

Labor In Vain. There, what did I just say? I knew it had a funny name. Propped up against the bar was this old tinker with a funny standup hat. Quite honestly, he looked half-sharp, so I steered clear of him. I got the girl behind the bar to serve me with a brandy, then I looked about to find a place where I could sit. Up in one corner was a scruffy looking chap, sat talking to this little lad of ten or so. I thought it was his son at first, but then the boy said something to the man and left the bar. He didn’t come back, so perhaps he didn’t know this other bloke at all; just happened to be sitting with him when I looked. I fancied chatting with another chap to pass five minutes after having women rabbit on at me all day, so when the little lad got up and left I went and sat at the next table to the scruffy item.

We struck up a conversation before long, and I could see he was impressed when I showed him my business card. It turned out he was heading north as well. He’d come from Derbyshire originally, he said, which wasn’t a surprise given how thick his accent was. He told me how he’d had a job up at the pits there, but he’d thought that he might make a go of it in London, as so many do, and headed south. You won’t be shocked to hear it hadn’t worked out how he’d planned, so now he was on his way back to Derby, hoping for his old work at the pit.

They’ve asked me why I offered him a lift, as if I had some motive for it, and they won’t believe me when I say that back then at the start I’d no idea what I was going to do. I said I’d take him up as far as Leicester because I felt genuinely sorry for the chap, and that’s the long and short of it. He made a fuss about getting me in another drink before we left, by way of gratitude, and he had one himself which, to be frank, was one too many. From the state of him, he’d had a few before I’d got there, and once we were in the car I didn’t get a lot of sense from him. Most of the time he was asleep and snoring.

It might have been a different story if I’d had a bit of conversation like I wanted, just to take my mind off my troubles. As it was, the only company I had was far too sloshed for conversation, so I’d nothing else to do but drive along and brood on things, with him behind me rasping like a saw-mill. I got madder with him as we went along. I mean, there I was in the midst of all my troubles, Nellie’s baby born a week before and Ivy’s nearly due, and meanwhile there was him snoring like a carthorse, slobbering on my upholstery. I’m not saying that I feel any animosity towards him now, of course not, but it’s how I felt about it then.

We drove on up the Roman road towards Northamptonshire, which we came in by way of Towcester. It’s a funny thing, what you remember, but I can recall what I was thinking when we passed Greens Norton church spire on our left. I don’t know why, but I was thinking back to when I was a little lad and we lived on Herne Hill, just up the road there from the Half Moon Inn. When I was younger I was that inquisitive, how children are. I wanted to know everything. One day, I couldn’t have been more than seven, I remember asking Mam about Herne Hill and why they called it that. She said she didn’t know, but if I was that bothered I could look it up in Pear’s Encyclopedia, so I did.

I don’t know if you ever opened up a book, back when you were a nipper, and you saw a picture that was just so frightening you slammed the book and never dared to look at it again? Well, that was how it was with me. I opened the encyclopedia to the page I wanted, under H, and there was this old line engraving of this bloke, and he had antlers like a deer growing out from his head. I know it doesn’t sound much now but I was terrified. I’d never seen a picture in my life until that point that had upset me half so much, I can’t say why.

I shut the book and went and hid it underneath the wardrobe in my parents’ room, beneath some copies of Reveille that had ended up there. I wanted to bury it, you see, I was that scared of it. Why I should think of that chap with antlers as I passed Greens Norton church I’ve no idea, but there you are. The mind’s a funny thing. You don’t know why you do things half the time, or at least I don’t.

You take what I said that evening when I got to Ivy’s house in Wales, just after I’d been in her room and touched her up. Her parents had been kind enough to offer me a nice bit of boiled bacon and potato for my supper which I was halfway through eating when there came a knock upon the door. The Jenkins had a neighbor three doors down who seemed to know all of their business, which included me and Ivy, and it turned out it was her stood on their doorstep with a copy of the local paper. Had we seen, she said, the picture of a car found in Northampton? Now, that’s how it is in villages, you see, with everybody knowing everybody else’s business. I’d not been in Gellygaer more than an hour or two, and here was somebody had heard already what I’d said to Ivy’s dad about my motor getting pinched. As it turned out, I still had worse to come.

They asked her in and let her show this paper round to everyone, and when I saw it I was in the middle of a mouthful of boiled ham. I’ll tell you, it’s a wonder that I didn’t choke. There was a picture of my Morris Minor standing burned out in the field at Hardingstone. There was a paragraph beside it said a human body had been found inside the wreckage. Well, it’s like I said, you don’t know why you do or say things half the time, but when I looked at that I blurted straight out, without thinking twice, ‘That’s not my car.’ I followed that by mumbling something about how I’d not thought there’d be such a fuss made in the papers over things.

It was a bloody stupid thing to say, I think now looking back on it. I mean, it was my car, there wasn’t any doubt about it. You could read the license plate, MU 1468, as plain as anything. It was about the only bit that wasn’t burned away. All I did by making out it wasn’t mine was make myself look fishy and get everyone’s suspicions up. I got out of it best I could by claiming I was tired and making off to bed in the spare room, where I thought about Ivy’s tits and had a quick one off the wrist to take me mind off things.

Now usually, no sooner have I brought myself off than I’m fast asleep, but not that night. Oh no. I didn’t sleep a wink except for bits where I’d doze off and have these horrid little dreams that woke me up almost before they’d started. They were vivid at the time, but now I can’t remember anything about them, only that they put the wind up me so that I lay awake until the first light crept across the lily-patterned paper on the end wall.

By the time I was up, the morning paper had arrived. It was the Daily Sketch. They’d printed the same photo of my burned-out Morris, only this time they gave out my name as well, which I thought was a blessed cheek. Of course, that really tore it with regards to Ivy’s parents. All that I could think to say is that there must have been a dreadful mix-up somewhere and that I was going back to London until it was sorted out. The Jenkins had another neighbor, name of Brownhill, ran a little motor business down in Cardiff. He piped up and volunteered to run me back there on his way to work so I could get a coach to Hammersmith. I couldn’t very well say no, so I made my goodbyes to Ivy and said what she wanted me to say about how we should both soon live together in Kingston-on-Thames. Her father shook my hand, though not without some prompting on the part of Ivy’s mam, and then we drove away.

It was a long drive down to Cardiff and I don’t know if it played upon my nerves, but for one reason or another I found that I couldn’t for the life of me stop talking. I kept on and on about my car and how it had been stolen from outside a coffee shop, and this chap Brownhill just kept staring at the road in front of him and every now and then he’d say, ‘Oh yes?’ or ‘Is that right?’ but other than that it was blood out of a stone to get a word from him. When we arrived in Cardiff he insisted on accompanying me down to the station, where he saw me on the coach for Hammersmith.

Of course, I’ve been told since that what he did was get straight on to the police as soon as he’d made sure that I was on the coach. He told them I was on my way and that some things I’d said to him had been suspicious. If you ask me, he just wanted to be in on the excitement. It’s the same with all them village types, there’s nothing they love better than a bit of scandal. Still, I’ve wondered if it might be Ivy’s father put him up to it, arranging me a lift to Cardiff with that very thing in mind. It isn’t very nice, to think he’d do that, but I wouldn’t put it past him. Never has been very fond of me, has Ivy’s dad. He took the attitude she’d given up a good career in nursing for a chap he thought beneath her station, as though anyone in Gellygaer ever earned five hundred pounds a year.

I suppose if I’m completely candid with myself, it was the nurse’s uniform as much as anything attracted me to Ivy in the first place. It’s a ‘kink’ I’ve got, and once more I can only think that it might be connected to the War in some way. Hospitals and that. Sometimes, even the smell of Germolene or of surgical spirit, it will get me going quicker than a good rude book. She looked a little cracker, Ivy did, what with that little hat and those black woolen stockings. It’s a pity, but she’s not been able to get into her nurse’s outfit since she passed the five months mark, and that was quite some time back now.

I’ll tell you what, it’s very cold in here for January, don’t you think so? Angel Lane. I’ll tell you this, I’ve not seen many angels around here this last two months, only a load of bobbies all with faces like the rear end of a bus. Not that I’d know an angel if I saw one. Naked women, that’s what I imagine angels are. Now that’d be a thing to have fluttering round you when you kick off, wouldn’t it? A lot of nudes? That’s how I’d like to go. There’s ways a good sight worse than that, believe you me.

He was still fast asleep when I saw the first sign for Hardingstone, the chap whatever-his-name-was I’d picked up in the pub outside St Albans. Bill. I think he said his name was Bill. He was still snoring, and for my part half of me was in a panic over how I’d cope with all these bills and wives and children while the other half kept thinking of that fellow with the reindeer antlers in the Pear’s Encyclopedia. No idea why. It’s like I say, the mind can be a curiosity at times.

Somewhere among all this, I first hit on the notion I should take the turn along the lane to Hardingstone when it arrived. What happened after that I’m in a muddle over still. I’ve told so many stories I can’t tell myself which ones are true and which ones I’ve invented. Do you ever get that? No?

I made a statement about everything that happened to the gentlemen from Hammersmith police station who’d been there waiting for my coach when it arrived from Cardiff, thanks to Mr Brownhill sticking in his oar. To tell the truth, I made a proper Charly of myself when I got off the bus and found them waiting for me, three of them. I’d not expected it, I suppose I should have, but I’d not. I was so taken back, I said the first thing that came into my head. I said I was glad it was all over, and I told them that I’d not had any sleep. I said that I was on my way to Scotland Yard that instant. That’s all fair enough, but before I could stop myself I went and said I was responsible. I didn’t say for what, but all the same they gave me quite a look. I could have kicked myself, the trouble that I’ve had about it since.

I don’t know if I told you, but they tried to trip me up on that in Court today, except I was too clever for them. There’s a saying, back in Finchley, that you have to get up early of a morning to catch Alfie Rouse. The prosecuting counsel, Mr Birkett, he was asking me why it had taken nearly two days for me to report what had gone on to the police, which threw me for a minute, but I soon recovered.

‘Well,’ I said, ‘I’ve very little faith in village constables such as you’ll find at the more local, smaller station, so I thought I’d go straight to the top. Didn’t I say that I was on my way to Scotland Yard when I got stopped in Hammersmith?’

He didn’t like that, I could tell, the way I wouldn’t let him pin me down, so what he says next is, ‘Oh yuss? Didn’t you also say you were responsible? What did you mean by that, my good man?’ How they talk, you know.

Now, I was feeling pretty cocky by that time, so I came back smart as a whip and said, ‘Well, in the eyes of the police, I thought the owner was responsible for anything that happened in his car. Correct me if I’m wrong.’

I raised one eyebrow when I said that last bit, that ‘Correct me if I’m wrong’, so that the jury and the girls up in the public gallery could see that I was playing with him, and I thought I heard a couple of them chuckle unless it was my imagination. They’re on my side, you can tell. A fair proportion of the jury’s women, so I’m bound to be all right. I’ve caught the eye of one or two of them, and I’ve a good idea which ones have got a thing for me. If I just stick to what I’ve said, there’ll be no upsets.

When they met me off the coach at Hammersmith Bridge Road, they took me to the local station where I told them what had happened early on that morning of the sixth, as best I could. I said I’d picked the chap up on the Great North Road, outside St Albans, which was true enough, and that as we’d got close to Hardingstone I’d thought I saw his hand upon my sample case, which I keep in the back seat of the car where he was sitting. Later on, I started to nod at the wheel a bit, and later still I heard the engine spluttering and playing up like I was running low on petrol, so I thought I’d pull into a field just off the main road there and down the lane a bit. Also, I needed to relieve myself, it having been a long drive from St Albans.

He woke up as I pulled in the field, and I told him that I was going to refresh myself. I said that if he wanted to be useful he could take the petrol can from the back seat and top the tank up, since it seemed that we were running low. I lifted up the bonnet and I showed him where to put it, then he asked me if I’d got a fag that he could cadge. I’d given him quite a few already so I said I hadn’t, and then walked off from the car a stretch so that I could relieve myself in private. I’d gone some way from the road and had my trousers down when I heard this big noise and saw the firelight coming from behind me. I pulled up my trousers and I ran towards the car but I was too late. I could see him there inside, but there was nothing I could do. The silly bugger must have lit his cigarette while sitting with the petrol can. The things some people do.

They saw I’d got my case with me and asked if I’d gone back to get it out of the burning car, but I was ready for that one. I’d seen his hand upon the case and had an idea he might steal it, so I took it with me when I left the motor. I told them I went into a panic when I saw the car go up, as well you might, and ran towards the road where those two young roughs saw me coming through the hedge. I said that I’d been at my wits’ end ever since, and not known what to do, which was no more than the unvarnished truth.

Later, policemen from Northamptonshire arrived in Hammersmith to talk to me, then brought me back with them to Angel Lane here. I asked if I could see Lillian, and when they said that I could see her a bit later I’m ashamed to say I rather let my feelings run away with me, what with being so tired, and told them what a woman Lily was, and how she was too good for me and always made a fuss of me and everything. I mentioned how she wouldn’t sit upon my knee, but how apart from that one drawback she was all a man might wish for.

If I’d stopped there I’d have been all right, but I was in the mood for showing off and anxious to impress, so I went on to tell them how I had a lot of ladyfriends around the country, and how my harem took me to several places so that I was seldom home. Somehow that got back to the papers, though as I’ve remarked, I feel it will work for me rather than against, despite what Mr Finnemore might think. He’s just a barrister. He doesn’t know the first thing about women.

That poor chap. I can see him as we pulled into that field, sat in the back seat fast asleep. All I could think about was bills and babies and how everything was coming down around me. I got out of the car as quietly as I could and went round to the boot to see if I could find the mallet that I’ve kept there ever since me and Lil went to Devon camping several years back. I suppose I keep it with me for protection: when you’re on the road a lot like I am you can meet some funny people. I was rummaging about back there and I suppose I must have made a bit of clatter, which is probably what woke him.

Anyroad, the next thing that I know I hear the car door open at the back there and him getting out. I lean around the open boot to look and there he is stood with his back to me, trying to get his trousers undone by the look of things, so he could have a Jimmy Riddle up against my tire. I thought about Lil and the boy in Finchley, how they’d take it when I sold the house and furniture, and Nellie with another baby now to feed, and Ivy and Kingston-on-bloody-Thames and how my life was like a nightmare, worse than any picture in a book. I wished it had been something in a book, then I could slam it shut and never have to think about it any more. At some point while all this was running through my mind I must have finally laid hands upon the mallet.

Actually, they look quite nice, the fields out there in Hardingstone. I didn’t see too much of them that night, what with it being dark, but from the photo in the Sketch they looked like proper country fields such as they used to have round London when our dad was little. Sort of wild and overgrown a bit around the edges, not like parks at all. With parks, it’s all a lot of borders, forms and flower beds. There’s no adventure to it and to my mind it’s effeminate. Now what a lad wants is to go off crawling in the bushes like an Indian, or find a little den or something in the reeds where he could just sit by himself and not come out ‘til he was called.

He turned towards me just as I was bringing down the mallet so that rather than just tap his head there at the back as I’d intended, I caught him above the ear and he went sideways like a pole-axed cow. He fell against the Morris and slid down it until he was face first on the grass. He made a noise, just one sound on its own he spoke into the mud, but didn’t move. I stood there staring down at him I don’t know how long, breathing like you do when you’ve just had one. I’d not really thought about what I was going to do, up to that point. I mean, the idea hadn’t come to me at all before we got to Towcester. I looked down at him, pegged out there in what light there was coming from inside the car, the little over-head, and knew I’d better think of something quick.

Now, as a salesman, or commercial traveler as I prefer to call myself, I’m at a great advantage in the thinking stakes. My line of work requires a man who’s used to thinking on his feet. I’ll give you an example. There’s a firm up north I visit once a quarter where I’ve known the buyer years, a nice old chap who’s partial to the younger woman and has cash enough to spend upon a string of girlfriends. I’ve buttered him up, across the years, by bringing him some of the racier suspenders now and then that have a lot of frills, just as a present he can pass on to his favorite young lady. Anyway, I get there one day, march into his office with a handful of the cheekiest suspenders that you ever saw, as if I’d done the tidying at a brothel.

What I didn’t know was he’d been sacked a month after I saw him last for fiddling the till, and sat there in his place was this old baggage with a face like vinegar who’d not see fifty-five again, with tits like two pigs in a hammock. I stopped dead and looked at her, then at the bunch of scanties in my hand. Quick as a flash, it came to me. I looked her in the eye, then made a big display of dumping ten bob’s worth of best suspenders in the office paper basket with the torn-up envelopes and such. She looked at me like I’d gone mad. I put my best voice on and told her, ‘Madam, I apologize. I’d heard a lady was in charge of this department and I’d thought to gratify myself to her by offering her garments that might make her more alluring, but I see now that this would be quite unnecessary.’

I might just as well have said that I could see this would be quite impossible, but kept a civil tongue about me and it paid off as I knew it would. One of my better clients after that, she was. The point I’m trying to make is that it’s all a part of life for a commercial traveler, coming up with ideas at a moment’s notice.

I bent down and reached beneath his belly so that I could pick him up, and tried to get him round towards the front end of the car. My idea was, you see, to get him in the driver’s seat or thereabouts. I didn’t fancy trying to maneuver him in past the steering wheel and so I hauled him all around the car’s front to the other door, which meant I pulled him through the headlights that were still switched on. By God he looked a sight, dragged through the beams like that. He had blood coming out of one ear by now, and from the look of it I’d smashed his cheekbone where I’d caught him with the mallet. I’ll be honest with you, I thought he was dead.

You’d think I’d know the difference between somebody alive and someone dead, but how things are for younger chaps, it’s not the same as when you’ve fought a war. It all gets rather blurred in my opinion, the distinction between live and dead. You see a fellow face down in the muck with only half an arm, and yes, I suppose he might well be alive, but if he’s not dead then he will be in an hour or two, so, really, what’s the point? It sounds harsh, but like a good many things, it’s something you get used to. I did. I was a War Hero, I was. Had a medal and a scar, up near my parting. Did I show you?

Had to put the blighter down so I could reach across inside the car and open up the passenger-side door which, being worried about car thieves, I keep locked up as a rule. Having done this I went back round and shunted him about again until I’d got him face down in the front seat, although he looked very awkward, with one leg all squashed up under him. I thought to take my sample case out of the car from where it was down by the driver’s seat. It had the catalog inside, you see. I’d not want Monica to end up in a bad way.

Next I fumbled in the back seat for the petrol can I keep there and began to splash it round inside the car, with quite a lot of it falling upon the thing there in the front. I was just doing this and wondering what had happened to the mallet, which I couldn’t think where I’d put down, when suddenly he made a noise. He seemed to mutter something, but it wasn’t any language that I’ve ever heard. It gave me goosebumps, I can tell you. I shut all the doors after running a petrol trail back from the car, and then I thought to have a shufty underneath the bonnet so that I could loosen up the petrol union joint and take the top from off the carburettor. I know cars, you see, my line of work and all. A clever little touch, was that, so that it might look as if it had been an accident.

I looked around a bit but couldn’t find the mallet, so I went back where I’d left the petrol can to mark the ending of my trail, then struck a match. The flames ran off across the grass like little ants that march in file, and then there was that noise like a great sigh and they were everywhere across the car. My little Morris Minor.

That’s about the time that he woke up and started screaming and twitching about until he kicked the car door open, but by then, as I said earlier, he’d had his chips. I’ll tell you what was bad: he had one leg stuck out of the car and I don’t know how long I must have stood there staring, but it burned right through. It just fell off and lay there on the grass, this burning leg. To be quite frank I’ve never seen a picture like it.

In the strictest confidence, the thing that everybody thinks is cleverest about the operation was a thing I hadn’t even thought of for myself until the deed was done. To hear the papers talk, the idea is I did it all on Guy Fawkes’ Night so that the fire would be sure not to draw attention, which I must admit is very smart indeed. I wish I’d thought of it before the fact. The truth is, that’s just when the idea came upon me, on that night, there in that field. Came to me in a flash, from out of nowhere. That’s just how it happens sometimes, I suppose. It wasn’t until later as I stared into the flames I thought about it being Bonfire Night. I thought, ‘Well, that’s appropriate.’

After I’d stood there quite a while and made my eyes run with the smoke, it came to me I’d best be moving on. I walked across the fields to where a gap cut through the hedge led out on to the Hardingstone Lane. As luck had it, just as I came out on to the path I ran straight into these two chaps, both sozzled from the look of them, and coming home from some Guy Fawkes’ to-do down at the local Palais. The Salon de Danse, I think I’ve heard it called. As I approached, I realized that they could both see the car on fire across the field, and thought I heard them mention it.

I thought it best to put on a bold face and bluff it out, and so I said, ‘Looks like somebody’s had a bonfire’ or some words to that effect, the Guy Fawkes notion having come to me by now. They both stared at me and said nothing, so I hurried on towards the main road up ahead.

It was a clear night. Proper crisp. The moon was out and showed up very bright upon the dead Queen’s cross there by the London Road. Everything smelled exciting, frightening, full of smoke and gunpowder and like a war. My scar was itching so I stood there scratching at my head as if I was somebody gone out. I had a suitcase of unmentionables in one hand and a box of England’s Glory matches in the other. I was someone else, with their whole life in front of them, and I was scared to death but it felt grand.

I can’t wait to get out of here. I’m going to celebrate. I’m going to fill the world with babies, songs and lovely underthings. I’ll treat my Lily to a hat and go to bed with plain girls to be kind. I’m not a bad sort underneath, and I believe the jury know that. Oh, a rascal sometimes, to be sure, sharp as you like with no flies on him, but a character, a man with a romantic heart that leads him into trouble. I look down at them from out the dock and know I’ve one foot in the door already with them, how they look at me. It’s just an instinct. You can always tell, you know, when they look hesitant.

They’re buying it.