The Dust and the Heat

by Michael Gilbert

  “Wouldn’t that happen,” said Oliver, “when I’ve just been dealt the best hand I’ve held for years?”

  “A total loss,” said Mr Stackpool. “When a fire starts in a garage you can’t expect to salvage much. If the wind had been blowing the other way it might have spread halfway down the High Street.”

  “Bit of luck that,” said Oliver.

  “It’s the only thing about the whole business that was lucky. Snyder’s miserably under-insured. If I warned him once, I warned him twenty times.”

  “I remember you mentioned it to me,” said Oliver. “Do I gather that he’ll be broke?”

  “With what he can hope to get for the site, plus the insurance money, he’ll just about clear his mortgage and his trade debts.”

  “What will he get for the site?”

  “Five hundred pounds, seven-fifty if he’s lucky. The person who bought it would have to do a lot of clearance before he started building, and he might have to wait a long time for the licences?”

  “Offer him a thousand,” said Oliver.

  Mr Stackpool looked sharply at him, and said, “I take it you’re serious.”

  “Never more so,” said Oliver. “I’m well placed to buy it, you see. After last year’s trading, my bank manager looks on me as his favourite son. He’ll advance the money, and I can afford to wait for the licences. I don’t mind if it takes a year to get them. What’s the position about planning?”

  Mr Stackpool hesitated. That masterpiece of socialist legislation, the new Town and Country Planning Act, had just reared its craggy head, looming over the legal horizon like an uncharted mountain range. No lawyer was anxious to prognosticate what precipices and chasms it might contain.

  “I think it’ll be all right,” he said, “provided, that is, you intend to put up a garage or a motor workshop. Anything different would be what’s called a change of user.”

  “Well, that’s fine,” said Oliver, “for it’s exactly what I had in mind. When our new plans get under way we shall want all the space we’ve got in the existing building for our own production. That would involve moving the transport section out in any event. And Snyder’s site will do very well for it. Of course, a lot depends on how the new plans work out.”

  “Yes,” said Mr Stackpool.

  “Have you heard anything yet?”

  “I sent the transfers in to the secretary yesterday. Lucky that the articles gave founder members a free right of transfer, otherwise they’d have taken steps to block them, I don’t doubt.”

  “But in this case they can’t?”

  “No.”

  “You’re sure about that?”

  “Quite sure,” said Mr Stackpool. He might be hazy about planning, but he understood his company law.

  “Good,” said Oliver. “I expect we shall hear something today. By the way, I could use one or two of Snyder’s men. They’ll be out of a job now. There’s one called Palmer. I’d like him particularly. And two or three other drivers. Could you sound them out for me?”

  “Certainly,” said Mr Stackpool. “A public-spirited gesture, if I might say so.”

  But after Oliver had gone he rotated silently in his chair for some seconds, trying to pin down an elusive thought. The whole operation was like – yes, that was it – it was very like a pirate, capturing a ship, disposing of the officers and then offering the men a chance of joining his own piratical crew. But there was a flaw in it. To make the analogy a true one, Nugent must somehow have been responsible for burning down Snyder’s garage, which was clearly unthinkable. After a preliminary inspection the insurance assessors had been unable to attribute any specific origin for the fire. They suspected that it might have been caused by a cigarette end dropped into oily cotton waste; a suspicion fortified by the fact that Snyder had been notoriously slack about discipline, and had himself more than once been observed smoking whilst actually serving petrol.

  “Like master, like man,” said Mr Stackpool. “If they join Nugent he’ll smarten them up.”

  Oliver, walking through the packing department on his way back to the office, missed a familiar figure.

  “Where’s your daughter?” he said to Challen.

  “We’re not good enough for that young princess,” said Challen. He sounded huffed about it. “She’s been taking evening classes in shorthand and typing and now she’s gone off to the great metropolis to make her fortune.”

  “Enterprising,” said Oliver.

  “It’s daft,” said Challen, “but a lot of girls are doing it. I’m told she can get four and five pounds a week in the City. That was a man’s wage before the war. If it goes on, we shan’t be able to get any girls in the works at all. Did you see Mr Nicholson?”

  “Not this morning.”

  “He’s looking for you. He’s in a lather about something. I think he’s in the office now.”

  Dumbo was in more than a lather. He was angry. He said, “Look, we’re in this thing as equal partners, aren’t we?”

  “Right,” said Oliver.

  “Then, for a start, when you make plans for the business you might tell me about them. And if those plans include putting yourself into control of the show behind my back–”

  “If you’ll preserve absolute calm,” said Oliver, “I’ll deal with all your questions, but I can’t do it if you froth. Sit down. Relax. Undo the bottom three buttons of your waistcoat. That’s better. Now, do I gather that you’ve been talking to Arthur Strickland?”

  “He’s been talking to me. Is it true that you’ve gone and bought Francis’ and Serena’s shares? And that you now hold more than half?”

  “It’s completely and absolutely untrue,” said Oliver. “If I had done any such thing I should deserve anything you could say about me.”

  “But Arthur said he’d just seen the transfers.”

  “He was obviously too agitated to look at them properly. The shares have not been transferred to me. They’ve been transferred to Quinn & Nicholson. They are now the property of this Company. Half owned by you and half by me.”

  “Oh,” said Dumbo blankly, “I see. Well, of course, that does make a bit of difference.”

  “I’m sorry I had to be so cagey about it, but if a word of it had got out, Arthur would have gone to Francis and talked him out of it.”

  “Is it true you paid fifteen thousand for the shares?”

  “Quite true. Five thousand in cash – that came from the sale of the right of way – and ten thousand put up by our bank on the security of the shares themselves. And pretty adequate security at that, when you think that they represent a controlling interest in a Company which owns a site and building valued at two hundred thousand, even if three quarters of it is mortgaged.”

  “Then,” said Dumbo, “actually, what it boils down to is that you – we, I mean – get Stricklands without having to find a penny for it?”

  “We’ve only got fifty-one per cent of it,” said Oliver, “but I’m told that under various provisions of the new Companies Act, which are much too complicated for a simple chap like me to understand, if you own fifty-one per cent of the shares, you control the Company. For instance, we could remove Arthur Strickland from the Board if he didn’t do what he was told. I wonder whether he realizes that.”

  “Judging from his expression when I saw him, I should guess that his own solicitor has been talking to him.”

  “He didn’t look pleased?”

  “He looked as if he was going to have a fit.”

  The telephone rang and Dumbo took off the receiver, listened and said, “Yes, yes, all right. Eleven o’clock. We’ll do that,” and rang off. “That, as you may have guessed, was Arthur Strickland’s secretary. He’d be ever so glad if we could both go round and see him in about a quarter of an hour. I said we would.”

  “On this occasion the mountain shall go to Mahomet. There’s a lot to be said for getting these things over quickly.”

  “But look here.” Dumbo sounded upset. “You’re not suggesting we j
ust barge in and tell him he’s sacked? This business is something he’s been building up for forty years. It’s his life.”

  “Certainly not,” said Oliver. “Arthur is, in many ways, a businessman after my own heart. We shall get on excellently together, once he realizes that, if it comes to the pinch, he’s got to do what he’s told.”

  Dumbo still looked doubtful.

  “He’s been boss so long,” he said. “Do you think he could ever–”

  “We’ll have a little talk and find out.”

  When they reached Arthur Strickland’s outer office it was not the secretary who came from the inner office but a grizzled man in a fawn raincoat whom neither Oliver nor Dumbo remembered seeing before.

  “I’m afraid that no one can see Mr Strickland,” he said. “I’m Doctor Frewen, by the way. He’s just had a heart attack. The ambulance should be here any moment now.”

  Dumbo said, “He isn’t–” and stopped.

  The Doctor said, “It hasn’t killed him, and it won’t if I can help it, but he won’t be able to think about business for six or nine months. I ought to get hold of his second in command and warn him. Who’ll be in charge whilst he’s away?”

  Oliver said slowly, “I suppose that’ll be us.”

  9

  The paper was cream-coloured and had “Marshalls Farm, Cullompton, Devon” put on, rather crookedly with a purple ink stamp at the top on one side and “Cullompton 27” on the other. It said:

  “This isn’t really a farm, or not any more. It’s a large cottage a little way outside the village. We’ve got what are lightly described as ‘mod cons’, i.e., a telephone (but no gas for cooking, except in cylinders delivered irregularly) and a television set (but no main drainage). We’re both in a honeymoon state about it still, seeing all the pros and none of the cons. Francis writes diligently all the morning whilst I do the housework, hindered rather than helped by a local girl of fifteen who, I’m sure, is going, any moment now, to tell me she is expecting a baby. Have you been reading Francis’ reviews in the ‘Onlooker’? One author got so angry he rang him up and talked for hours at him. Incidentally, you were right about the books. We’ve got a bookseller in Exeter who buys them all back except one – a rather expensive one, unfortunately – which I spread marmalade over. Francis makes me wear gloves now when I read them. You’ve no idea how peaceful it is here–”

  Oliver turned the page. He was sitting in the office. Noise racketed round him. The steady rhythmic background of hammering, the occasional syncopation of the drill, sporadic outbursts in the bass key as the British workmen expressed their views, on life, love and holidays-with-pay. It had all been going on so long that he found he could ignore it now, as engineers in the bowels of a ship are said to ignore the hissing and thudding of the monsters that wall them around, being disturbed only should they fall silent.

  The confusion in the office was, if anything, worse than it had been on that summer day – it hardly seemed two years ago – when he had first set eyes on it. It was hardly worth tidying anything, since everything was so soon to be moved into the larger and much grander offices that were being prepared for him and Dumbo and Bill Blackett in the adjoining building.

  Fred Fisher knocked and looked round the door.

  “Hello, Fred,” said Oliver. “Come in. What’s broken down now?”

  “Everything’s going all right,” said Fred. “I just wanted to tell you – I told Mr Challen – I’m handing my cards in at the end of the month.”

  “You can’t do that,” said Oliver. “You’re a founder member of the firm. What’s up? Aren’t we paying you enough? Has someone been rude to you?”

  “You’re paying me all right,” said Fred. “That holiday bonus. Very handsome. Me and the wife appreciated it a lot.”

  “Well then?”

  “It’s just that there isn’t the scope, sir. And there’ll be less to do when you get the new outfit going. They say we’re going right over to chemicals. Is that right, sir?”

  “Right enough,” said Oliver, “but we shall still need a transport section, and you’ll be running it.”

  “That’s what I was thinking,” said Fred. “It isn’t really my line. I got this offer of a half-share in a garage. It’s down on the South Coast near Shoreham. The wife’s very keen on the idea, she’d like the kids to grow up by the seaside, and there’ll be plenty of money in it with all these new cars coming along and people who don’t understand a thing about them driving down to the Coast in ’em and breaking down because they forgot to put any oil in the sump.”

  “All right,” said Oliver, “I can’t argue against your wife and the laws of economics. I shall be damned sorry though. With Tom Everton going and opening his own shop it’s breaking up a good team.”

  “Just before I go,” said Fred, “I wanted to tell you something. I was talking to Palmer – he’s a good bloke, he’ll run your transport for you and do it well – he was saying that someone had told him that you thought old Snyder messed up your car that time you had the accident, remember?”

  “I shan’t forget it in a hurry,” said Oliver, running the tip of his finger down the side of his face.

  “Well, it wasn’t.”

  Oliver stared at him. He said, “Explain that, Fred.”

  “To start with, Palmer said old Snyder didn’t know a blind thing about motors. He got the business from his brother’s widow. All he knew about was fiddling spares and making out bills. He couldn’t have done a job like that. He wouldn’t know how.”

  “Somebody did it.”

  “Ah,” said Fisher, “and he reckons he knows who that would be. They took this chap on about a month before it happened. He was a clever enough mechanic. Then it transpired he hadn’t got a work permit, so they had to get rid of him. He was under notice that week, and Palmer remembers seeing him one evening round the garage where your car was.”

  “Even if he was under notice,” said Oliver slowly, “why would he want to take it out of me?”

  “I wouldn’t know about that,” said Fred. “Perhaps he thought the car belonged to Snyder.”

  “And why did he need a work permit?”

  “He was some sort of foreigner. A German, Palmer thought, though it seems a bit off, a German coming over here. You’d have thought they might have stuck to their own country for a bit after all the trouble they’ve caused.”

  “You can never tell what a German’ll do,” said Oliver.

  When Fred had gone he picked up the letter again, but it was several minutes before he went on reading. His mind had flicked back two years into the past. A clearing in the forest, a ring of sentinel pines, a barbed-wire fence, four figures running across the swathe of a spotlight, the juddering of the twin Vickers machine-guns in the turret of the tank.

  “We heard last week from Arthur,” said the letter. “He’s much better, but it doesn’t look as if he’s ever going to get back to full-time working. His doctor’s against it, and I think Arthur’s beginning to see sense. He told me about your proposal to buy in his shares in instalments with the money your army pal (Blacker? Blackett?) is putting up. That seemed to me to be a sensible way of doing things. I don’t believe two thundering individualists like you and Arthur ever would have got on well together. Hold on a moment, the boiler’s making the most peculiar knocking.”

  There was a knocking on Oliver’s door, too. One of the chemists, a flustered, elderly man called Toogood put his head round the door and said, without opening it any wider, “There’s a woman here. I told her you were busy.”

  He seemed to be holding the door against the determined efforts of someone outside to get in.

  “Has she got a name?”

  “It’s Mrs Williams. Mr Challen was away so she got hold of me. She insisted on coming along–”

  Oliver said, “Then you’d better let her in.”

  “She’s in rather a state.”

  “Let her in, man,” said Oliver. “You can’t have a fight in the passage.
”

  “All right,” Mr Toogood opened the door reluctantly and Mrs Williams came in. Oliver got up.

  He had only met Len Williams’ wife once, and he remembered her as a small, neat, compact woman with a worried expression and rather a nice smile. Now he hardly recognized her. Her face was white and there were livid patches under her eyes. It was as though some central cord which kept her parts taut had snapped suddenly, leaving a confusion of pieces where there had once been a woman. Her hands were jerking and her head scarcely seemed to belong to her body.

  “Won’t you please sit down,” he said. “What can I do for you?”

  “You can’t do any more,” said Mrs Williams. “You’ve done it all now, you filthy bugger.” She took a pace nearer, and spat at him. A wet blob of saliva actually hit his cheek as he turned his face away.

  She was screaming. The dirty words, carefully manufactured and hoarded, were coming out like a jet from a poison sac, an eruption of pus, slowly gathered, now violently extruded.

  The door burst open and Challen strode in. He grabbed the woman by the arm, said “Out” and pulled her after him like a tractor towing a small car.

  Oliver stood quite still, balanced on his feet as though he were in the ring staring, staring ahead of him. He dipped his hand into his pocket without looking down, fumbled, pulled out a handkerchief and wiped his face.

  Challen came back. He said, “I’m sorry about that. If I’d been here it wouldn’t have happened.”

  “She must be mad,” said Oliver.

  “I expect it’s shock.”

  “Shock?”

  “You hadn’t heard? Len killed himself last night. Put his head on the down line and the train went over it. Messy way of doing it. I’ll warn the people on the door she’s not to be allowed in here again.”

  “Thank you,” said Oliver.

  He sat down and picked up the letter. A final paragraph. It had been scribbled on the back of the last page and looked as if it might have been an afterthought.

  “Since this is the last letter I shall be writing to you for some time – you’ll probably think it impertinent, but I’m going to give you some advice. You’ve been marvellously successful, Oliver. Don’t let it harm you, because success can be just as dangerous as failure. More so sometimes. The Greeks had a word for it. They called it hubris. The pride which allowed a man to set himself above the gods. The gods didn’t mind, of course; they knew that they always had the last laugh. Damn – the boiler’s playing up again. Yours in haste, Serena.”