The Dust and the Heat

by Michael Gilbert

  “Everyone in business always wants to know other people’s profit figures. If his accountant was stupid enough to talk to mine, that was his bad luck.”

  “I seem to recollect,” said Francis, “that at one stage in our discussion you were calling Oliver a crook.”

  Arthur’s face went darker still.

  “I suppose,” he said, “that if you’d wanted to know, being so friendly lately, you simply would have asked him.”

  “Why not? He’d probably have told me.”

  “Or perhaps,” said Arthur, “you’d have got Serena to put the question.”

  Immediately he had said it, he saw that he had made a bad mistake. Francis got up, his face white, and said, “Do you mind explaining what you mean by that?”

  “I didn’t mean anything.”

  “Then why did you say it?”

  “Good heavens,” said Arthur, “it was just a comment. They see a good deal of each other – go out a lot – they’re pretty friendly.”

  “You mean you think they’re lovers.”

  “You’re putting words into my mouth.”

  “They were there already. Filthy words. If you knew the first thing about Serena you wouldn’t have dared to say it. It’s laughable. Now apologize and go home.”

  Arthur was also on his feet by now. He said, “I’ve said nothing to apologize for. If your conscience is so tender that you read something into a perfectly innocent remark–”

  “If you don’t apologize, I promise you you’ll be sorry.”

  “You can go to hell.”

  “Thank you very much,” said Francis. His voice was as brittle as the first ice of autumn. “You’re too stupid to realize it, but you’ve done me a very good turn.” When Arthur stared at him in surprise, he added, “You’ve helped me to make up my mind.”

  Oliver and Serena were sitting together in the private bar of the Woodman, which is a nice little public house where the beer is still properly cellared and run up through wooden pipes to the old beer engines on the bar. The bar had a half-crown counter-sunk into its wooden surface. The coin was worn as smooth as the bar top itself, and you had to look closely to see that it was a crude forgery. Someone had passed it off, late at night thirty years before, on the landlord’s predecessor.

  “Do you think,” said Serena, “that you and Arthur could work together?”

  “It depends on him,” said Oliver. “He’s a bit bossy, isn’t he?”

  “He bosses Francis about in everything to do with the business,” agreed Serena. “It isn’t that Francis is afraid of him. In anything that really matters he’s probably got more guts than Arthur. It’s just that there are some things he doesn’t think are worth arguing about, and business happens to be one of them.”

  “Do you think business is important?”

  Serena considered the matter seriously. She said, “I think I feel rather like you about it. It’s important for the money it produces, but I don’t really see why someone like Francis should make himself unhappy for the best part of fifty years so that he can make enough to live happily for the next ten, if he survives that long – do you?”

  “It’s quite daft.” Oliver wandered across to the bar and ordered two more whiskies. When Serena protested, he said, “I’ll finish yours for you if you don’t want it.”

  “You drink a lot.”

  “I drink an enormous amount,” said Oliver. “I hope you’re not going to try to reform me.”

  “That would be a labour of Sisyphus.”

  “Chrissie tried to reform me soon after we got married. She kept it up for three whole months. Then she saw it was a question of leaving me or leaving me alone, so being a sensible woman, she gave up trying.”

  “Chrissie’s a dear, and far too good for you.”

  “Wives are always too good for their husbands,” said Oliver, “that’s the real trouble.”

  He finished his own whisky, pushed the empty glass over in front of Serena and took charge of her full one. “If you’re not interested in business,” he said, “why did they give you a share in it?”

  “The solicitors worked it all out. It was something clever, to do with estate duty. They didn’t want Arthur and Francis to have exactly half the shares each, so they gave me a few. If Arthur had been married they’d have given some to his wife as well.”

  “Solicitors always get their priorities wrong. They work out elaborate schemes to save estate duty in forty years’ time without thinking about what’s going to happen the day after tomorrow.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I was just thinking aloud,” said Oliver. “What would Francis do if he retired?”

  “He’d write.”

  “Has he any idea what?”

  “Articles for newspapers to start with. He’s done quite a lot of reviewing already. One of his friends has promised him a regular column for one of the Sunday papers.”

  “I’m told that reviewers sell the books they review to bookshops at half price and the bookshops add them to their stock as new. If you review enough books you can make as much as an extra fiver a week that way.”

  “He’s writing a novel too.”

  “He won’t get rich on that. If he sells two thousand copies – and that’s good for a first novel – he’ll make just over two hundred and ten pounds.”

  “They get bought for the films sometimes.”

  “Zero turned up seven times running once at Monte Carlo. It was in 1913 and the croupiers haven’t stopped talking about it yet.”

  “The trouble with you,” said Serena, “is that you think of everything in terms of money. And if you drink any more, I’m not going to let you drive me home.”

  “How are you going to get there, then?”

  “I’d rather walk than end up in a ditch.”

  “It’s a popular fallacy to imagine that alcohol in anything short of stupefying quantities will always make a man drive badly. With the average bad driver it may be so. The safety element in his case is his lack of confidence in his own skill. When he’s sober he realizes what a bad driver he really is and that keeps him driving safely. When he’s had a few drinks he forgets it, and then he’s heading for trouble.”

  “Alcohol slows your reactions.”

  “My reactions are normally so fast,” said Oliver, “that a little slowing down does them no harm at all.”

  As he drove her home he was thinking about Serena. Thinking how well she and Francis were suited to each other. Basically they were both intellectuals. Where any other girl would have said, “Trying to reform you would be a waste of time,” she had talked about a labour of Sisyphus. (Who was Sisyphus? Some relative of Hercules?) The other thing he was thinking was whether he would ever get her into bed with him. It wasn’t that he underrated his own powers of seduction or even Serena’s essential willingness. What stood between them was the stupid confidence and trust which Francis seemed to have in her. It was this that was locking her up more securely than any chastity belt. “Anyway,” said Oliver to himself as he swung the car deftly round the corner and changed down for the climb up to Elsfield Hill, “she wouldn’t really enjoy it. She’d be visualizing the whole thing in terms of News of the World headlines. And after it was over she’d be so remorseful that she’d feel bound to confess to Francis. And Francis would be round the next morning with pistols for two. And anyway, it’s a great mistake to mix business and pleasure.” Here he started to laugh at himself, and said, “Sour grapes, old boy. Sour grapes.”

  “What’s that?” said Serena sleepily.

  “Nothing,” said Oliver.

  “This last downhill bit always terrifies me,” said Serena. “Please take it slowly.”

  “Slow as you like,” said Oliver, and realized as he said it that his brakes had stopped working.

  The road they were on was a country lane which made a short cut over the top of Elsfield Hill and back to the Watford bypass. They were on the final run down to the point where it emerged into the A
road. Oliver’s hands and brain worked in unison. Whilst he was thinking, “If I let her run out on to the bypass I’ll never turn her. We’ll go through the centre barricade and be hit for certain”, his hands were slamming the car down through the gears. It wasn’t enough. The gears alone wouldn’t check it. One thing for it. He smashed the gear lever into reverse. There was a tortured scream as the engine fought for an instant against the wheels and the teeth stripped on the mesh of the gear. Then the gear lever jumped out into neutral. Oliver jammed it back with a shock which nearly broke his wrist. The car went into a back-wheel, sliding skid. Oliver got both arms round Serena as the car hit the bank, rolled over sideways into the ditch, rolled right over again and came to rest on its left-hand side. The engine was roaring. Oliver felt for the ignition key, found it, and switched off. Then he switched off the petrol. Then he lifted himself off Serena, who was lying underneath him against the nearside door.

  The offside door was jammed, but the window winder still worked. He turned the glass down, climbed through, leant down and lifted Serena out.

  She said, “I told you we’d finish up in the ditch.”

  Oliver started to laugh, then said, “Excuse me a moment,” and turned away.

  His head was full of bees, the blood was running down his face from a long cut on the side and he had cracked his right kneecap against the steering column when they went over. It was stiffening up painfully but he could still hobble. There was a telephone kiosk, he remembered, on the main road about a hundred yards from the turning. Serena was sitting with her head in her hands. He wondered if he was going to be sick again. He held a handkerchief against his face to check the bleeding, and hobbled slowly off.

  Half an hour later Challen and Fred Fisher were on the spot with the breakdown van and a first-aid kit. As Oliver strapped up his knee they set about righting the car and extracting it from the ditch. Serena was on her feet now and looked more or less all right. She had fallen off too many horses to take the bruises seriously.

  “We’ll take Mrs Strickland home first,” said Oliver. “Then we’ll take the car to the works. There’s something I want to look at.”

  “Tonight?” said Challen.

  “Yes, right away,” said Oliver.

  It took an hour to get the car back to the works, up on to the hoist and stripped down. After that Oliver and Challen sat smoking and watching Fred Fisher at work. He was the surgeon. They were only the nurses and assistants. Occasionally he asked for one of the inspection lamps to be shifted or for another spanner or wrench. Otherwise he worked in silence. Finally he climbed out of the pit and wiped his hands on a rag.

  “What’s the verdict?” said Oliver.

  “Well, it’s a neat job,” said Fisher.

  “Not accidental?”

  “It didn’t just happen,” said Fisher, “it was helped. I’ll get the parts out, you can see for yourself.” He disappeared into the inspection pit again and there was some more hammering and wrenching. He reappeared with two pieces of rod and what looked like a short section of bright steel tubing.

  Fred said, “Mind you, it’s been done real clever. If you weren’t a bit suspicious to start with and looking for trouble you’d pass it up every time as an accidental break – a flaw in the metal, see.”

  He placed the two jagged ends of the rod together and it did, indeed, look like a fracture.

  “He didn’t use a hacksaw or a file. That’d have been dead obvious. What he did, he clipped it away a bit this side and a bit that side with a size-one cold chisel. If you look close you can see the marks. See what I mean? What’s more, he done it inside this sleeve–” Fred indicated the metal tube. “It’s a sleeve that slides down when the rods are straight to give it a bit of extra strength at the joint. Doing it that way no one would spot it, supposing they happened to be underneath, greasing the car.”

  “A job like that,” said Oliver, “would take a bit of time, I suppose?”

  “You could do it in about an hour if you had the car properly jacked up.”

  “I see,” said Oliver.

  He thought of fat Mr Snyder lying on his back under the car late at night with the door of the workshop locked against casual intruders, the sweat running down his cheeks in the heat from the inspection lamp, busy chiselling away his life.

  “I never dreamed he had it in him,” he said at last. “If I had I wouldn’t have left the car where he could get at it. My mistake.” He turned matters over in his mind for a few seconds. Challen thought he had never seen him looking so ugly, six years of war included.

  “I’ll have to report this to the Insurance Company,” he said, “and the police, I suppose, though, since no one else was involved, there’s no hurry about that. If you put those two bits of rod back just as they were, will the insurance people tumble to what happened?”

  Fred Fisher snuffled through the back of his nose. It was the nearest he ever came to laughing. “Those insurance jockeys,” he said, “they won’t notice a thing. They don’t bother about why an accident happened. It’s what it’s going to cost to put it right.”

  “Fine,” said Oliver. “Then as far as we’re concerned this was a straight accident. A fractured brake rod. Understood? And thank you very much, Fred. You’d better get home now or your wife’ll be wondering what you’re up to.”

  When Fred had gone Oliver said to Challen, “I seem to remember that those SAS boys had a toy. It was a thermite bomb with a time-fuse operated by acid eating through wire. It was a favourite with the sabotage teams because it was self-destroying and no one could really tell whether the fire was accidental or not. Do you think you could get hold of a couple for me?”

  8

  “Two hearts,” said Oliver.

  Serena, on his left, said, “No bid.” Dumbo took a second and third look at his cards, counted under his breath and then said, “Six hearts. After all, it’s only a penny a hundred.”

  “Your husband’s in fighting form this evening,” said Serena. Sylvia Nicholson, who was knitting a shapeless garment in two shades of wool with four needles, said, “What’s that?” looked up, dropped a stitch, and said, “Damn.”

  Francis said, “No bid. I hear you got a total write-off out of the insurance people for that car.”

  “They couldn’t do anything else,” said Oliver. “The chassis was twisted like a corkscrew. No bid.”

  “Lucky you weren’t twisted like a corkscrew too.”

  Serena said, “Oliver was all right. He landed on me. Double.”

  “Now you’ve given the game away,” said Oliver. “I shall finesse through you for all the missing trumps.”

  Serena said, “Humph” and shifted on her seat. “It was more than a month ago but I still can’t sit comfortably.”

  “It must have been such a terrible shock for Francis,” said Sylvia.

  “We argued about it at the time,” said Oliver. “Whether it would have been more of a shock if Serena had rung up and said quickly ‘We’ve had an accident, darling, but it’s quite all right’ – or whether it was better to turn up on the doorstep like she did and start explaining her appearance before he could get a word in edgeways.”

  “I have a slight preference for the second way,” said Francis to Serena. “That is, if you’re thinking of doing it again.”

  “I shall never again in my life drive or be driven at more than fifteen miles an hour,” said Serena.

  “That resolution will fade away when the last bruise fades,” said Oliver. “I’m running the ten of hearts – see? I told you you shouldn’t have doubled.”

  “Pig,” said Serena. “Where were all those men going in that bus?”

  “What men?”

  “Mr Challen and that gorgeous big Scotsman – what’s his name – McGlashan? And the tall sad one who looks after your cars for you.”

  “That’s the Quinn & Nicholson Works Darts Team. They’re hot stuff. They’re playing the Watford Police this evening. It’s the semi-finals of the North London Sect
ion of the News of the World Championship.”

  “Darts matches,” said Francis, “are simply an excuse for beer drinking. Two spades.”

  Serena said, “Most of them looked as if they’d drunk a good deal already.”

  “You play darts better with a bit of beer inside you,” said Oliver. “No bid.”

  Serena said, “Like driving, I seem to remember you telling me. Four spades.”

  No one contested this. Serena became dummy and went over to talk to Sylvia who had recovered her lost stitch and was rattling merrily away like a one-man band on all four needles.

  “If it fits into that,” said Serena, “it’s going to be an enormous baby. Or are you planning to have triplets and fit them all into it together like birds in a nest?”

  Sylvia looked worried. “It is rather big, isn’t it? The pattern distinctly says P 15 K 15 follow with P and K alternating times 15, reducing one each row. That’s sixty rows, alone. By the way, I hear you got that cottage in Devonshire you were after.”

  Serena looked startled. “How on earth did you hear about that?” she said. “It’s meant to be the most deadly secret. Francis only signed the contract yesterday.”

  “Sorry if I’ve been indiscreet,” said Sylvia. “Our char’s daughter goes to the same hairdresser as your au pair girl.”

  “And the Africans were supposed to have invented the bush telegraph. Well, it’s true.”

  “Does that mean you’ll be–”

  Sylvia broke off. The players were all listening too. Something was happening.

  “It’s a fire engine,” said Serena. “And another one.”

  They looked across to the window.

  “It isn’t far off either,” said Oliver. “You can see the glow. It’s somewhere just over the bridge.”

  “It must be the Duke or Snyder’s garage,” said Dumbo.

  “Not the Duke, I hope,” said Oliver. “They’re just beginning to turn back into a decent pub. Only yesterday one of the barmen–”

  No one was listening to him.

  “Let’s go and watch,” said Serena. “I love fires if they aren’t me.”