Alan Hunter: Gently where the roads go

‘What was the name of it?’ she jeered.

‘It doesn’t matter, not the name. If I told you, what would that be? A funny name in a funny country. But I was the mayor, and a big man. Lots of money, pretty women. If I did not like a man it went hard with that man.’

‘And now the big man is a truck driver.’

‘Uhuh,’ Teodowicz said. He was speaking in his soft, purring tone. He used that tone when he was satisfied. ‘Now I own a couple of trucks in a little town in England. Very funny, don’t you think? Everything is very funny.’

‘Where’s Madsen?’ Wanda said.

‘Ove? He’s up in Scotland. A load of machine parts for Glasgow. Are you interested in Ove?’

‘He’s all right,’ she said.

This time Teodowicz directed the smile.

‘You like it a lot, don’t you?’ he said. ‘That’s all right. It does not worry me. You get a woman who likes it so much, she is usually one you can depend on. And I can depend on you, Wanda. You like the men, but you love me.’

‘What makes you so bloody certain of that?’

He waved the cigar. ‘I have a knack for it. That is why I am lying here, Wanda, instead of pushing up the daisies. During the war it was not easy for some of us to keep alive, and after the war still harder. But what do you know of that in England? Here, you have never known a war. Oh, it is nice to be English! The government robs you, you rob the government: those are the facts of life in England. Very gentlemanly, very just. I make a very good Englishman.

She sniffed at the coffee cup she was nursing, sitting droopingly naked. Her whole body was swearing at him for denying it its rights. Outside on the Road the traffic grumbled and buzzed, never thinning very much till around dawn, and just after. Now it was twenty minutes to twelve. It would go on rolling for four hours more.

‘You’re a rotten sod, Tim,’ she said.

‘I know.’ The flicking shrug again. ‘Sometime you will understand, Wanda. I wanted it badly. It happens at times. You don’t know, you are too English; the English are not conditioned as we are. A Polish woman would have understood. Perhaps it is good you are not a Pole.’

‘I wouldn’t damn well want to be,’ she said. ‘And you’ll never be an Englishman, either.’

The smile came back. ‘I am agreeing,’ he said. ‘I think it may be time I gave up trying.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I am going away, Wanda.’

She jerked up straight. ‘When?’

‘Soon.’

‘Where to?’

He stirred lazily, his lids drooping, cat-like.

‘I think to America,’ he said.

‘America! They’d never let you in.’

‘I’m not proposing to give them the option.’

‘You’re mad, Tim. Quite mad.’

He reached for his coffee, drank noisily. ‘The reverse,’ he said. ‘I’m being sane. I have a knack, you remember? It has kept me alive so far.’

‘But why? Is it the police?’

‘The police!’ He chuckled. ‘They are my friends. No, your English policemen are wonderful. That is true — oh, so true.’

‘Then… what?’

The shrug. ‘My instinct. I feel I’ve been here long enough. And you are coming with me, Wanda. That is why I am telling you this.’

‘Me — to America?’

‘Yes. I will fix it.’

‘Man,’ she said, ‘you’re really high.’

He shook his head. ‘I am stone cold sober. You are coming with me. We are leaving soon.’

She sat very still on the hard chair, trying to see his eyes in the semi-darkness. And he was watching her too, from his shadows, from under the almost-closed lids.

‘I can’t,’ she said at last. ‘This place.’

‘I’ll appoint an agent to sell it for you,’ he said.

‘What about your trucks?’

‘Madsen can have them.’

‘Just like that?’

‘I am not entirely impoverished.’

‘Christ,’ she said. ‘When do we go?’

He sat up, shaking with his low chuckle. ‘Soon we go. When all is ready. I am playing it by ear, as the Yankees say. So you must be ready, day or night, just to lock those doors and go. You will be discreet, especially with men. You are not to mention my name at all. I will tell you more in a little while. I shall be back quite soon, Wanda.’

He stood up, tall, massive, the hair on his chest dark with sweat. She smelt the odour of his sweat as he reached for the jacket. He put it on, but didn’t button it. It was all he wore in the summer. He was a good fifty, perhaps more, but tough as rawhide. And virile.

She gave a moan. ‘Don’t go yet.’

He took her breasts in his hands and kissed her.

‘I shall be back.’

‘No. Stay.’

‘There are things to be done. I must go.’

‘But — do you mean it? This going to America?’

‘Have I ever said what I didn’t mean?’

‘It’s so bloody mad,’ she groaned.

He was smiling. ‘You will see.’

And then he was gone, moving silently, avoiding the close-packed furniture in the next room; vanishing away out of the house while the warmth of his hands was still on her. She sat desolate, listening for the latch click, but this too was managed silently. All she heard was the buzz of his van as he drove out of the park and towards Offingham. Midnight. She had had him for exactly an hour. Their loving had lasted, at the most, ten minutes.

‘The rotten so-and-so,’ she kept murmuring.

Though the room was so warm, her flesh felt chill.

Statement by Robert Arthur Goodings, truck-driver, 42, of Bellingham Crescent, Plaistow, witnessed by Detective-Sergeant Felling, CID, Offingham Constabulary. I left Middlesbrough at 11.10 p.m. on Monday August 12 with a consignment of industrial sulphuric acid for Simper and Parkes of Croydon. I proceeded through Stockton to Darlington and continued down the A1 till I passed the turning to Offingham, which would be at about 4.30 a.m. on Tuesday August 13th. It was beginning to get light, and I thought I would pull up at the lay-by between Offingham and Baddesley for refreshment and a nap. As I came up to it I noticed a green Commer 10-cwt. van already parked there. I pulled in behind it.

Because even the Great Road has its moments of quietness, when the traffic strangely fades, as though an hour had struck which was uncanny for it. It happens at dawn, at the beginning of light, and lasts for a while after sun-up, when the night drivers are resting before the early drivers set out. Then, for a space, the Road is spellbound in that greyish, brooding light; the bruised surface lies deserted, like a fairground when the crowds have gone; sparrows chip along the verges, rattle the paper which wrapped sandwiches; a pheasant may strut in the yellowish field, there is even dew on the dusty hedges. And a solitary car — who is driving now? — scuttles along like a guilty animal, hastening to find a town or village to protect it with their walls.

And Robert Goodings finds a lay-by between Offingham and Baddesley, perhaps the only lay-by on the Road beyond sight and sound of any dwelling. Across the fields, three miles away, rise the pastelled cones of Bintly Power Station; to the south of them, still a long way off, the slant grey roof of an aircraft hanger; up the road, two miles, a drab ribbon called Everham; down the road, out of sight round a bend, a forlorn roadhouse called The Raven. As lonely a spot, as lonely a time as the Great Road can show. When Robert Goodings pulled in his Bedford behind the silent green Commer.

Another bloke taking a spell: that was what Robert Goodings thought. He got down stiffly out of his cab, found a gap in the hedge, relieved himself. Then he stretched his arms, did a knees bend, did some feeble running-on-the-spot; spit a couple of times into the hedge, and climbed back into the cab. He carried a snap-tin and a Thermos. They had both been filled at a caff in Middlesbrough. Tea — the caff made coffee that tasted of mud — and corned beef sandwiches, larded with mustard. He ate drowsily, thinking of nothing, staring at the back of the green van: glad only to have got to a quiet pull-in after shoving the Bedford all night. But he was noticing, though he wasn’t thinking. He was noticing a stain on the concrete by the van. What was the geezer carrying — meat? It looked as though the stuff had begun to drip. He went on eating. He stopped noticing the stain. He noticed the paintwork of the van instead. It had taken a beating, that paintwork had, and there were holes in the panels, too. Holes? His jaw came to a stop. Yes, it was like a blinking sieve. A lot of little round holes punched through it, the paint all cracked away round them. Robert Goodings didn’t move for some moments. A car went heedlessly by on the Road.