by Timothy Lea
‘No doubt you noticed a change?’ I say grimly as Sid eases the van into first gear.
‘In Maureen?’ says Sid. ‘No, not particularly. She was always gay and vivacious.’
I don’t say any more after that – I mean, what can you say? Sid would probably reckon that Attila the Hun was a dead ringer for Tiny Tim on a horse.
The journey to Peterborough is a nightmare. Not because of the road but because of our condition. We are both falling asleep before we hit the A1. I suggest that Sid keeps his window open and hangs his arm out of it so that the wind rushes up his sleeve and keeps him awake. Sid reckons that he would be better off hanging his leg out of the window. He actually tries it, but finds that he has to steer with his right arm underneath his leg. It is possible but does not give you quite the freedom of movement recommended by the Highway Code. In the end he packs it in because he is worried about getting his dick perished. I reckon that mine perished on that bed with Mrs Ripley.
It is just getting dark when we reach Peterborough and I am not looking forward to our meeting with Mr Ripley. For one thing, I am going to have difficulty looking him in the eye, and for another, he has probably been expecting us for the last three hours. I hope he is not the impatient type.
‘Here we are,’ says Sid. ‘Number eighty.’
‘Are you sure?’ I say. ‘It’s much smaller than the last place.’
‘So much the better,’ says Sid. ‘We won’t have so far to carry the stuff, will we?’
‘There’s no lights on,’ I say. ‘I hope there’s somebody there.’
‘There must be,’ says Sid. ‘Come on.’ Sid is always more hopeful than me when disaster beckons. As we toddle up the garden path I have a nasty feeling that all is not well. Sid rings the front door bell and nothing happens.
‘It is ringing, is it?’ I say.
Sid presses his head against the door. ‘I can’t hear anything,’ he says.
‘Try pressing the door bell while you’re listening,’ I say. Sid looks as if he is going to say something and then does as I suggest. ‘Yeah, I can hear it,’ he says. ‘He must have popped out for a moment.’ He listens again and the door clicks open as he leans against it.
‘Might as well have a shufti,’ I say. ‘Maybe he’s left a note.’
‘I’m surprised that Maureen isn’t here,’ says Sid.
‘Maybe half a dozen blokes arrived to disconnect the electricity,’ I say.
Sid does not say anything but pushes open the front door. ‘Blimey!’ he says. ‘It’s already furnished.’
I look over his shoulder and see a hallstand, mirror, table, carpets, the lot. ‘We must have the wrong house,’ I say.
Sid shakes his head in amazement. ‘I could have sworn this was the address.’
We tramp down to the gate and check the number.
‘It is the address,’ says Sid.
‘Maybe there’s two roads with the same name,’ I say.
‘There can’t be. We’d better have another look inside. Maybe it’s only the hall that’s furnished.’
‘I don’t like the sound of this, I say. ‘I’ve got one of my feelings.’
‘Shut up!’ says Sid. ‘You’re always on about something.’
He leads the way into the house and wipes his feet on the doormat. ‘Let’s try and get everything right, this time,’ he says. ‘No mess ups.’
I don’t say anything but wipe my feet and open the door of what turns out to be the lounge. ‘You couldn’t get a copy of the TV Times in here,’ I say. ‘It’s chockablock.’
Sid takes a gander at the room full of furniture and a worried expression comes over his face. ‘There’s something funny going on,’ he says, like a kid watching Santa Claus climb into bed with his mum.
‘There could be a flat upstairs, I suppose,’ I say.
‘We’d never get that wardrobe up those stairs,’ says Sid.
‘We could if we took it apart a bit more.’
‘We weren’t supposed to take it apart in the first place!’ says Sid, heatedly. ‘Gordon Bennett. What are we going to do?’
‘Better take a look upstairs,’ I say.
We have just got to the landing, when a door opens and a bird sticks her head round it. Her hair is all over the place and she looks rumpled in more ways than one.
‘Mr Ripley?’ says Sid.
The bird looks surprised, as well she might. ‘What do you want?’ she says.
‘We’re the removal men,’ I say. ‘I’m sorry if we disturbed you but nobody answered the bell and the door was open.’
‘Removal men?!’ says the bird. ‘I’m not moving anywhere.’
‘We know you’re not,’ says Sid. ‘We’ve brought the stuff.’
‘What stuff?’ says the bird.
Sid clears his throat and I get another of my nasty feelings. ‘The furniture from Wandsworth Gardens.’
‘WHAT?’ The exclamation comes from the interior of the bedroom and is followed by the appearance of a middle-aged geezer wearing a pair of trousers with his shirt half tucked into them.
‘Ah, Mr Ripley,’ says Sid in his most ‘pleased to meet you’ manner. ‘Your furniture is without. Where would you like it?’
‘Back in my fucking house!’ says the bloke. ‘Who the hell told you to bring it up here?’
‘Your wife,’ says Sid. ‘We were hired to assist in the movement of your goods and chattels to your new abode.’
‘New abode?’ says the bloke. ‘I haven’t got a new abode. This house belongs to my part-time secretary. I stop in here sometimes to give her a bit of dictation. I do a lot of business in the midlands.’
‘A very satisfactory arrangement, I’m sure,’ says Sid, gazing past the bird now revealed in her transparent black negligee to the crumpled bed with the large Teddy Bear sitting on it. ‘Am I to understand, then, that there has been some kind of misunderstanding?’
‘There’s been no misunderstanding!’ snarls the bloke. ‘If you’re telling the truth, it looks as if my wife has been playing some kind of stupid practical joke.’
‘Oh dear,’ says Sid. ‘What do you suggest we do?’
‘I’ve already made my suggestion,’ says the bloke unpleasantly. ‘Get the stuff back to my home where it belongs!’ I can see this bloke as a captain of industry. Add water and you would have instant shit.
‘But we haven’t got paid yet,’ I bleat.
Ripley remains unmoved. ‘That’s your lookout,’ he says. ‘You want to be more careful about the kind of work you take on.’
Sid looks at me and we exchange what might be described as an emphatic nod. ‘We’re going to get paid for this job,’ he says grimly. ‘If you think otherwise, we’ll dump your stuff in the front garden. Right, Timmo?’
‘Right, Sid,’ I say.
We move towards the door waiting for the sound of Ripley’s voice. ‘Hang on a minute. Tell you what I’ll do. I can see that you’ve been put to a bit of bother. You take the stuff back and I’ll pay you for the journey up here. After all, you haven’t had to unload it.’
‘I’d better get on with that shorthand you gave me, Mr Ripley,’ says the bird patting her hair and trying to appear dead nonchalant.
‘He gave you a short hand as well, did he?’ says Sid. ‘You might take something down for me some time.’
Mr Ripley does not care for the tone of that remark and I am not sorry that he does not travel with us on the way back to Wandsworth Gardens.
‘I reckon he’ll kill her, don’t you?’ says Sid. ‘I wouldn’t half belt Rosie if she ever did anything like that.’
‘Why do you think she did it, Sid?’ I ask.
‘It’s obvious, isn’t it? She found out he was having a bit on the side and thought she’d clobber him in his love nest. It’s funny when you think about it. Imagine how that bird would have reacted if she’d been on her tod when we rolled up.’
‘Highly jocular,’ I say. ‘But it seems a bit like cutting off your hampton to spite your cobbler
s, to me. What is his wife going to do without any furniture?’
‘Women never think about things like that, Timmo,’ says Sid wisely. ‘Poor little thing, I expect she was distraught.’
I look at him closely but I think he is serious.
It is funny, but though I was dead knackered on the way to Peterborough, I feel much better on the way back. I must have found a second wind from somewhere. Sid, if the niff in the cab is anything to go by. We get back to Wandsworth Gardens at half past ten and Ripley’s car is parked outside with steam pouring out of the radiator. He must have nearly done himself an injury rushing back home.
‘We’d better see what the form is, hadn’t we?’ I say, starting up the path.
‘Hang on,’ says Sid. ‘Don’t go without something. We’ve got to organise our remaining resources of energy. Give us a hand with this settee.’
We have just lugged the thing up to the house when the front door flies open. Standing there, shaking with helpless fury, is Mr Ripley. ‘Was this place like this when vou left?’ he shouts.
‘Like what?’ says Sid.
‘Look!’
We leave the settee and go into the hall.
‘Blimey!’ says Sid.
The walls look like someone has tried to imitate the writing in the piss house of The Highwayman. There are some very rude words about, all of them drawn with a lipstick. ‘I never knew you spelt it like that,’ says Sid.
‘It’s the way she does her Ks,’ I say.
‘Upstairs it’s even worse,’ sobs Mr R. ‘I don’t know what could have come over her.’ I try not to look at Sid.
‘How could the bed have got like that?’
‘The bed?’ says Sid. ‘Oh, the bed. Yes.’
‘It was all right when we left,’ I say.
‘That’s right,’ says Sid. ‘Has something happened to it?’
‘It’s shattered,’ says Ripley sounding as if he isn’t in such good nick himself. ‘She left this note,’ he continues. ‘I can’t bring myself to read it.’
‘I’ll read it,’ says Sid cheerfully. Even as he stretches out his hand I feel that he is making a big mistake.
‘Maybe Mr Ripley doesn’t want –’ I begin, but Sid waves me down, and rips open the envelope.
‘“Dear Pig-face –”’ Sid smiles confidentially at Ripley. ‘It’s for you.’ Ripley clenches his fists but Sid is continuing to read. ‘“– if you want to know why the bed collapsed, I suggest you ask the two –”’
‘Yes?’ says Ripley. ‘The two what?’
Sid tries to crumple the note up. ‘It’s too harrowing,’ he says. ‘It was clearly written while the balance of the woman’s mind was overdrawn.’
‘Give me that!’ Ripley snatches the note from Sid’s hand and starts to devour it with his eyes.
Sid nods towards the door desperately. ‘Run for it!’
We are neck and neck as we thunder down the stairs and out through the front door. ‘Stay where you are, you swines. I’m going to kill you!’
With Ripley shouting things like that, there is no incentive to hang around and Sid and I are clearing the garden gate as Ripley hits the crazy paving – literally, as it turns out. Mr R does not know about the settee parked outside the front door and takes an Oliver Hardy over the top of it. Come to think of it, I don’t think the path had crazy paving until he landed. I start to scramble into the cab but Sid pulls me back.
‘Leave it!’ he says. ‘We’ll never get it started in time.’
He starts to run up the street and I go after him. If this is what being a removal man is all about I reckon we would be better off sticking to road haulage.
CHAPTER NINE
‘That’s funny,’ says Sid, pushing the paper across to me me. ‘Look at that.’
It is next morning and we are having a quick cuppa in the caff prior to picking up the van.
‘Yeah. One of them’s a bit bigger than the other one, isn’t it?’ I say.
‘Not the bird’s tits, you berk! I’m talking about the lead story “Furniture van burns to ashes in suburban street”.’
‘What!’ I snatch back the paper. ‘By the cringe! That’s ours, isn’t it? I recognise the number.’ In fact, the buckled number plate is about the only means of telling that the twisted pile of metal was a vehicle. ‘Yeah, look! It says Wandsworth Gardens in the write-up.’
‘No! I can’t believe it,’ says Sid. ‘All your wages were tied up in that van. How could it have happened?’
‘It says here it was empty,’ I say. Sid looks at me. I look at Sid. ‘He couldn’t.’
‘He has,’ says Sid. ‘What a mean, twisted bastard.’
‘Not to mention that rotten bitch, Maureen,’ I say.
Sid is swift to take jumbo-sized umbrage. ‘What are you on about?’ he says. ‘This act of arson reveals the twisted mentality of the man she was married to.’
‘She was a bit twisted herself, wasn’t she?’ I say. ‘Dragging us into bed like that.’
‘That was a cry for help,’ says Sid as if explaining something to a child. ‘Your knowledge of fundamental physiology isn’t worth a kick up the Khyber, is it?’
‘You must be soft in the nut,’ I say. ‘That Maureen was a very no, no lady. Why did she want to drop us in it with her old man if she was so blooming nice?’
‘Integrity,’ says Sid. ‘She couldn’t live a lie. Feeling as she did towards me, she realised that it made a mockery of her relationship with her husband. She had to tell him. I think that shows real courage.’
‘Feeling as she did towards you? What about me?’
Sid puts on his humouring smile again. ‘She was using you to get at me, don’t you see? She could sense that I was paralysed by nostalgia. She flirted with you in order to bring me up short.’
‘That’s certainly the way you came up,’ I say. ‘She has a lot to answer for, doesn’t she?’
‘It doesn’t matter what you say,’ says Sid. ‘I’ll always have a soft spot for that woman.’
‘I noticed that, too,’ I say. ‘Like a steamed-up pyjama tassle. You want to take a course of iron tablets.’ Not for the first time, Sid is swift to demonstrate that he is very short in the sense of humour department and we leave on bad terms. Sid is bird-brained in more ways than one. Not only is he an idiot but he has a bird’s ability to create an explanation for any sequence of events that bears no relation to the real facts and absolves him from any responsibility or blame. In this case, he genuinely believes that arch scrubber Maureen is as pure as driven Omo – stupid, isn’t it?
Of course, old man Ripley says that he knows nothing about the furniture van burning down and refuses to pay anything towards the expense of the Peterborough trip. He says that since his wife ordered it, she can pay for it. Unfortunatly, despite her insane infatuation for Sidney, the lady has done a bunk and is not available for comment. Sid is most upset and I am not totally surprised when someone nicks a precast cement lorry, breaks open a window on Ripley’s car, and tops it up with quick-drying cement. I believe that Ripley gets a very nasty surprise when he sets off for the office in the morning. What is more, he can’t find anyone to move the car. It looks as if it will have to stay outside his house for ever. Who could have done such a thing remains a mystery though Sid does have a lot of trouble getting the cement out from under his finger nails.
With the furniture van gone for a burton, it is back to the road haulage and a very strange experience in the north of England. I have been signed up to take a load of glasses to a working men’s club at a place called Barnly – apparently they go through quite a lot of glasses up there – and I am on a bonus for prompt delivery. As always happens on this kind of occasion I hit more snags than a hedgehog trying to have it off with a pin cushion and by the time I cross the border into Lancashire I am an hour behind schedule. It has been pissing with rain and one of the motorway lanes has been closed for repairs over a five mile period – I reckon they must make these motorways out of sponge cake. I gaze ahead
into the deepening gloom and see a lorry that has pulled up on the hard shoulder. Beside it is a familiar figure. Long fur coat, high heeled boots, shoulder length hair sprouting out from under a Dick Whittington titfer with a feather through it. It is Shirl. She waggles a thumb and my foot goes down on the brake pedal before I can tell it to mind its own business.
‘Can you take me away from all thees?’ she says.
‘I’m going to Barnly,’ I say. ‘Is the gaffer all right?’
She follows my nod towards the other lorry. ‘It depends what you mean by all right.’
‘Yeah,’ I say, deciding that it is favourite not to ask for further information. ‘Get in if you’re coming. I’m late.’
She clambers in beside me and I make sure that I clock a long gander at her pins. I am mighty partial to the sight of birds giving a trailer for the main feature as they get in and out of vehicles.
‘You don’t remember me, do you?’ I say.
She doesn’t even look at me. ‘I make it a point never to remember anyone. Life’s easier like that.’
‘You get around,’ I say. ‘I’ve seen you a few times.’
‘Yes,’ she says. She is clearly not a great conversationalist, this bird.
‘I suppose you travel from one public speaking contest to another.’
‘Very funny.’ Her expression tells me that she’s lying. ‘Come to think of it, I do recognise you. You were carrying a load of fertiliser, weren’t you? I thought I recognised the smell.’
‘Blimey. It’s not still hanging about, is it?’
‘The smell of your after shave – only it can’t be after shave, can it?’
‘Cologne,’ I say. The truth is that I have started growing a beard. Sid takes the piss, of course, but I reckon that it rather suits me. They are dead fashionable at the moment, aren’t they? I reckon that it brings out the artistic side of my nature yet at the same time emphasises my brutish masculinity. It also saves on razor blades. Dad is dead choked because he had a special use for all my old razor blades – shaving. He is so mean that he used to hang the tear-off calendar in the karsi – until one June morning when he ate too many prunes and took us through to December 23 at one sitting.