The Broken Chariot (34 page)

Nor was it encouraging when the men and women bantered him as to how he had landed such a cushy job for his convalescence. While the flesh of his wound coloured back to normal he spent a fortnight sharpening tools, finally put back on his lathe though the scar was still raw enough to give pain when he knocked it against box or turret. Galling though the work was he forced a smile and stuck up two fingers to the heckling so that the others could say: ‘Good old Bert! He's back on form!'

Walking home in the warm evening uplifted the spirit, a happier mood after spending his energy for eight hours. The short future of some spare time made life tolerable, and in his room he massaged all fingers into sufficient flexibility to put a few paragraphs on to paper. Any old words to which he could attach the grandiose label of thought. From lathe to typewriter, one machine to another, seemed not too big a difference.

Archie called on Saturday morning: ‘Come outside, and see what I've got.' He and Raymond had bought an old banger of an Austin between them for seventy quid.

‘How long yer bin drivin'?'

‘A couple o' months.'

‘I suppose you've got a licence?'

‘What's one o' them? Course I 'ave. I took the test last week; passed first time.'

‘Is it taxed?'

‘What do you think that is on the windscreen? A Guinness label? Come on, and I'll tek yer to Aspley for a run round the estate. If Macmillan says we've never 'ad it so good I want to 'ave it good as well, if not better.' He opened the kerbside door for Bert to get in. ‘When I see somebody in a posh car who's rich I don't want to nick his money – I just want to be rich myself.'

Archie the demon driver bawled at the dilatory, and cursed the speed mongers until he had passed them as well, his reaction micrometer-tuned. Bert felt no anxiety that he would chock or be chocked. He would certainly make a good job of driving the sun chariot across the sky.

‘My motto is,' Archie's eyes gleaming at a straight bit of road, ‘nobody in front, and nobody behind. If you see somebody in your rear mirror, it don't matter how far away he is, he's right behind you.'

Beyond the middle of town Archie got out and tied L-plates back and front. ‘Come on, Bert, there's no traffic here, so it's your turn to have a go at the wheel. But whatever you do,' he said, showing the gears, ‘don't drive like me, or you'll never pass your test.'

‘I never like to tek tests.'

‘Nor me, but this one you'll 'ave to, sooner or later. Don't worry about it, though. You either get through, or you don't, and if you don't you can allus tek it again.'

‘I suppose so.' Archie was more locked into the world and its ways than Bert ever could be, Herbert thought, because he never had to question who he was or continually mistrust himself. He was solid enough to show such confidence in a friend that he could even offer him the wheel of his car, which was as close to love as any two people could hope to get.

One machine was much like another. At the controls it was a matter of synchronization, the only difficulty being that man and machine moved at the same time, which Herbert soon got used to because Archie was a patient instructor. Bert enjoyed driving so much that Herbert wondered why he hadn't bought a car years ago, in which case he could have driven to London and impressed that fuckpig Dominic even more with his proletarian dexterity.

The galley proofs of
Royal Ordnance
came with a covering note from Dominic. Herbert tackled the tight knots of the string, no problem to industrialized fingernails. He got it off in one length because Mrs Denman kept a drawer full, having the habit, even so long after the war, of not wanting to waste anything.

The long story was so enthralling it seemed to have been written by somebody else. All was clear, everything was in place, as he read from sheet to sheet, though by the end he sensed it might not be so, and a second reading showed printing errors missed on the first time through.

The dedication page was blank, no name, no words of memory or appreciation, nothing to thank anybody for. He wanted to write: ‘To Bert Gedling, without whose labour and life's blood this book would never have been written.' Or maybe: ‘To Herbert Thurgarton-Strang, without whose help this confidence trick of a novel could not have been cobbled together.' But such notes would betray him to the wolves, who would rip him even further apart than he already was because of the stunt he was playing on them.

His sense of loss seemed beyond a joke, knowing he should dedicate the book to Cecilia because writing it had cost him her love. The fresh clean sheets were soaked in the invisible ink of shared memories, which he wanted to retain for his own special hoarding till the emptiness in him was filled with something else – or he became bored and no longer interested in picking up bits of the book at random with which to torment himself.

The sheets were needed urgently, the slip of paper said, and so, turning back to the dedication page, he wrote: ‘For Beryl Denman', then posted the package back, by which time he felt almost the same enthusiasm for the book that Humphries had shown.

Archie navigated him over the Trent and into a maze of lanes beyond the Fosse Way. A haycart or occasional tractor held them up, or a dozen cattle being shifted by dog and man to another field. Wheeling and turning through villages where hardly anyone seemed to live gave safe practice at the controls, so easy for Herbert till for some reason he saw beyond the windscreen the climbing of the lorry into the mountains of Cyprus. The woman in the vineyards looked at him, and he felt the same agonizing pull, seeing the curve of her breast as she lifted her arms, the houri eyes, the benevolent and promising smile.

Sunlight flooded the turning, and a tree came towards him, arms of privet and hawthorn ready to embrace him for a meal. He swung the wheel, slid along the bank and let the skid carry him till he was able to straighten out. Heartbeats pounded to his head as tyres scraped the verge, missing the tree and almost hitting another.

Archie, unnaturally still, said nothing. Herbert stared ahead, back to more measured driving. ‘That was careless. It won't happen again.' Such a near call unsettled him, seared his throat, and maybe Archie's, since he indicated the way to a snug pub at Cropwell Bishop.

When cool beer and salty crisps were on the table, Bert said: ‘What's up wi' yo'? Ye're too bleddy quiet for my liking. You've hardly said a word all evening.'

‘Tek yer sweat. We'll have a sup o' this first.'

I've more than enough material, but something's eating him, so I have to listen. Convinced he knew everything already, Herbert considered it time to quit. He'd soaked up people's troubles like a sponge, and felt he was sinking under water.

‘I'll tell yer.' Archie flipped open a packet of Senior Service, smoke soon drifting from his lips. Herbert saw him as a much regarded man of the local world, dovetailed into every square and circle; whereas he, Herbert, had problems only death could settle, though he expected to keep it at bay for the usual three score and ten. ‘Go on, then, tell me.'

‘Can't yer guess?' Archie leaned across, as if walls still had ears. ‘I've got a girl up the spout.'

‘You've what?'

‘In the club, on the tub, a bun in the oven, preggers.'

‘So what? She's married, in't she?'

‘Is she fuck.'

‘Yer didn't use owt?'

His bitter laugh suggested he had turned at last into a victim of Fate. The following smile indicated that he did not altogether dislike the fact. ‘I'd got a frenchie in my pocket. I allus 'ave, you know that, but summat stopped me bothering. We was in her house on a Saturday night while her mam and dad was out at the boozer. I didn't think I'd get it in that night, but she looked at me, and I looked at her, and suddenly we was latched on. I went in raw. In no time at all we was going at it like rabbits in a thunderstorm. Never known owt like it. Fuckin' madness! She's a lovely girl, long red hair, and tits like a statue's. Only nineteen, as well. I must have bin in love with her. I still am. I can't stop thinkin' about her. When she says she loves me I believe her. She says it every time we meet, and I love to hear it, just as she does when I say it to her. It's marvellous. Such a nice girl, as well. She's a Catholic, at least her family is, mam and dad Irish. She wants a lot o' kids, but we shall have to see about that.'

He knew Archie would make a superb father. ‘Then it's no problem, is it?'

‘I suppose not. I'm thirty, and I've 'ad a good run for my money. It's about time. I'll be all right with her.'

Herbert could only think of saying: ‘We've got to grow up sooner or later, Archie, my owd.'

‘Yeh, but I can't see yo' ever doing it.'

He's right. I'm as grown-up as I ever will be, Herbert thought, or will ever want to be, or will ever need to be for what I want to do. I was a grown-up me from the day I was born, and growing up's got nothing to do with it, in any case. I don't have any wish to kill myself in that way, and never will have. Growing up is for the others, for those who can't do anything else but live dead, or for those who go on living for people who write to show the living dead that they might not be as dead as they feel. ‘Yer can't?'

‘Well, yer don't show any sign of it. You're a funny bogger, though. I never could mek yo' out. Ye're just like one of the lads, but sometimes there's a posh bogger trying to scramble out. I've allus known it, but I've never said owt. A bloke can be what he likes for all I care, as long as he don't think he's better than me, and I know you've never thought that.'

‘You're right there, Archie.'

The pink of the setting sun deepened against the window, and the steady expression in Archie's grey eyes seemed to need the kind of answer which would soothe them both, and fuse them together into one brotherly flame, or at least find an explanation for the intolerable burdens that had bothered them since birth. ‘You're not the only one who's puzzled,' Herbert said. ‘Sometimes I can't even mek mysenn out.'

‘For instance,' Archie said, ‘you could have bin a chargehand at work, but yer've never wanted to get on. Another thing is, yer've met some nice women, but you've never said owt about getting married.'

Bert banged him on the shoulder. ‘Come on. Let's slop another one down, then we can get back. I'm beginning to feel knackered.'

A pall of dusk lay over the fields, films of mist permeating the greens and browns till next morning. He knew Archie too well to judge him, which may have been a limitation when writing about such people, but the fact was that Archie's sins were also his, otherwise he couldn't have written
Royal Ordnance
at all. Under a microscope rather than a magnifying glass, he recognized the eternal turmoil of unrest, indicated by lines across Archie's forehead, the down-curving lips, and the occasionally twitching fists when speaking of real or imagined injustice. Perhaps it was only a phase in life which he, as well as those written about, would one day leave behind. Such feelings had become his own, which neither he nor Archie were ever likely to relinquish.

They leaned on a gate, staring at a dim light from a farm across the dip, and a cluster from the village like white spots surrounding a mysterious rural rite they could never be part of. Archie's voice startled him. ‘Work tomorrow. Never stops, does it?'

Archie knew nothing of his novel. No one did. Maybe they would one day. He wanted to tell him, but didn't in case the confession broke their notion of equality and trust. Whatever happened, he needed the friendship of his life to be safe, though the test would come later, which Archie would pass as easily as he had that for his driving licence.

‘Tek the wheel on the way back as well,' Archie said, ‘to mek sure you get over that near miss' – his first reference to it.

Herbert decided that his work in the factory must come to a stop. It would be too easy to stand rooted to the same spot forever, and go on till his life was washed away like milky suds flowing over shaved steel. ‘I'm packing it in,' he said, when they were going over Trent Bridge. ‘The firm, I mean.'

Archie handled the window down to bawl at an old man in a new Ford Popular who was too slow getting away from the lights. ‘I've been expecting it,' he said. ‘You should 'ave done it years ago. What shall yer do, though?'

He stopped for a Belisha beacon, so enclosed in himself, so dead selfish all his days that he hadn't realized how intensely Archie must always have thought about him – even though such thoughts had been made plain enough in his book. ‘I'll go down to London, be on the loose for a while. I'll have to get a job sooner or later, I suppose, but I've got enough dough for a month or two. Give me time to look around.'

‘Good luck to you, is all I can say. Let's not lose touch, though.'

Bert turned into Waterway Street. ‘We'll never do that.'

He wiped his hands on the sud rag, and walked along the gangway to the plate-glass office. A week's notice was the formality. ‘That's a shame,' the foreman said. ‘We thought you'd be with us forever. You're the sort of bloke we can't afford to lose, with these new export orders coming in.'

Good of him to say so, but all he could feel was a sadness that had no sorrow in it, because the world he half knew already was dominating his expectations. ‘I'll miss the old place.'

‘If it's the wages, I can put you in for a bit more.'

‘I've got a job in London.'

‘Ah, I wondered if it worn't summat like that.'

On the last afternoon he wiped his hands, looking around as machinery fell silent and sweepers came in to clear up. Overhead belts squeaked to a stop, dynamos whined into their weekend rest, and men reached for jackets and knapsacks, put on caps, fastened bike clips, and set out on a quicker walk than most had shown coming in. Waiting in groups, they clocked off, the ding of each buff card pushed down into the available slots making a monotone song of release that set Bert whistling as he made for the gate.