Alan Hunter: Landed Gently

Gently wasn’t going home, but he was too sensitive to atmospheres long to resist this one. Well… perhaps it wasn’t going to be so bad, after all! There were other sorts of Christmases besides the one he had made a habit of. And it might do him good to have a change, to see how it was with other people.

The queue for the Northshireman was already moving through the barrier. In his pocket he had an unaccustomed luxury, a first-class ticket.

‘Anything to read on the train, sir?’ Dutt motioned to the bookstall.

‘Everything they’ve got, Dutt! I don’t often go away for Christmas.’

An armful of expensive Christmas supplements was added to his load.

‘All right for tobacco, sir?’

‘One of those half-pound tins… and wait a minute! Some cigars. One can’t go empty-handed.’

All the way down the platform he added to his store. A sudden urge to lavishness overcame his customary frugality. Wasn’t this the time to spend, with the turkey round the corner?

‘Get me some fruit, Dutt — oh, and one of those boxes of chocolate

… how about crystallized ginger? Get two, and take one home.’

He wouldn’t starve, at all events. As far as he was concerned, that train could now stick fast in a snowdrift. Struggling with the evidence of his extravagance, he got out the first-class ticket and waved it at the man on the barrier. Christmas with the upper crust — one had to make a gesture here and there.

The seat he had booked was in a compartment close to the barrier, and he was rather sorry to see that, in spite of the queue, he looked like having it to himself. In his present mood he wanted company. He wanted to keep himself immersed in the hurrying, scurrying current of home-bound people. But the train was filling up, and still he was the lone occupant. It looked as though first-class travel was getting to be a thing of the past.

‘’Fraid I’ll have to go, sir.’

‘You’d better, Dutt, and get that confounded Jag back in its garage.’

‘Well… have a good time, sir. And a merry Christmas from one and all.’

‘Same to you, Dutt, and many of them.’

He watched the burly form of the sergeant disappear through the crowd, and then sat down away from the window to make it quite clear that the compartment had vacant seats. Damn it all… there couldn’t be such a dearth of first-class custom going this way! Surely a latecomer would materialize from somewhere?

‘Say, is that train going to Norchester?’

He heard the American accent coming all the way from the barrier.

‘Hurry? You bet I’ll hurry! What have I been doing all the way from Oxford Street?’

Gently jumped up and whisked open the door.

‘Here!’ he called out. ‘There’s a seat here.’

A lanky figure, stooping low under its parcels, came bolting up the now-empty platform. Gently stood aside to give it passage. At the same moment the whistle shrilled and the Northshireman began to glide out.

‘Hell!’ ejaculated the sprawling American. ‘Who says these goddam Britishers don’t know how to get a hustle-on?’

Straight-faced, Gently gave him a hand up and helped him to organize his scattered parcels. He was a young man of about twenty-three, and although he couldn’t much have over-topped Gently’s six feet, he seemed big enough to fill up most of the compartment.

‘Hell!’ he exclaimed again. ‘Hell!’ Then he grinned at Gently suddenly. ‘Don’t you pay any attention to me, sir. Guess I’m just three parts riled with myself, that’s about it.’

‘You ran short of time?’ suggested Gently affably.

‘You can say that again — and again and again!’

‘It’s a bit of a rush up here at Christmas.’

‘A bit of a rush! Sir, you can put that down as the British Understatement of the Year.’

He brushed himself off, and, unconscious of Gently ’s amused scrutiny, settled his fluffy brown hair with a comb. He had a pleasant, button-nosed face with a square jaw and chin, his eyes were hazel, and he had very white, even teeth.

‘Do you know something?’ he demanded, catching Gently’s eye over the mirror he was using.

Gently looked suitably inquisitive.

‘Well, this is the first time I’ve been in this city of yours — yes, sir, the very first time. And, man, did I underestimate it or did I?’

Gently clicked his tongue sympathetically. ‘It’ll be quieter in a day or two.’

‘Lit in here, I did, like a hick from the backwoods. Sure, I was going to do my Christmas shopping. Sure, I was going to have it all sewn up in half a day. And do you know something else?’

Gently shook his head.

‘I didn’t do that Christmas shopping — I didn’t do the best half of it! One moment I was being shoved around that Selfridges like a steer in a stampede, next thing I know my train was due out in fifteen minutes. I ask you, where does time go to in this place? How do people ever get around to what they aim to do? I guess there’s only one thing left for this city, sir — you’ll have to done go and build some scrapers to get the folk up off the streets!’

Gently considered this solution seriously for a moment. ‘That’s a new idea for the planners, at all events,’ he replied.

‘You bet,’ said the American, intent on his parting. ‘It’s no good shoving the people out sideways.’

The north-east suburbs were crawling by on either hand, frosty deserts of streets and yards, dusted and parcelled with misty light. Hatched along the line came row after row of wretched slum properties, their obscene backs lit dimly from uncurtained windows. Fascinated, Gently watched the shameful pageant unfold. The imagination faltered at the sheer extent of such misery. Not a few hundred yards, not a mile, not two; it went on and on, district melting into district. Who would value honesty, trapped in that jungle?

‘Me, I’m Lieutenant William S. Earle of the United States Air Force.’

The American had got his packages on the seat and was sorting through them anxiously.

‘Me, I’m George H. Gently, Chief Inspector, CID, Central Office,’ returned Gently with a smile.

‘A chief inspector, huh?’ Earle said it as though chief inspectors meant nothing in his young life. ‘Well, I guess it takes all sorts. You going home for Christmas?’

‘No… not exactly. Someone invited me to stay.’

‘That’s nice, very nice. Me, I’ve got an invitation too. I’m having me a Christmas with a real live British lord — can you beat it? Right there on his estate out in the country, and, man, when I say estate I mean estate! He’s got a place back there would make an oil king throw fits.’

Gently made polite noises.

‘Yes, sir! Fits it would make him throw, and no two ways. But maybe you’ve heard of this guy. They call him Lord Somerhayes. Naturally, he’s got other names too, but once you get to be a lord, well, then I guess you just drop all the smaller stuff and leave it at that. You heard his name before?’

‘Yes, I think so.’

‘I reckoned you would have, too. And maybe you’ve heard of his estate, huh?’

‘Isn’t that in Northshire somewhere?’

‘You’re darned right it is, plumb in the middle. And you know something else? We’ve got an airfield called Sculton not ten miles off, and that’s how Lieutenant William Sherwood Earle comes to be having himself a Christmas with a British lord.’

Having, as it were, established his bona fides, Earle offered Gently a cigar, and then took time off to brood over the seat-full of packages beside him. They were getting out of the slum area now. Dark gaps were appearing in the laval deposit of slate, bricks and dirt. With surprising frequency long, well-lighted platforms swung out of the darkness and flashed by before one could catch the name-boards… the Northshireman was picking up her easy, space-destroying stride. Gently settled himself back more comfortably on the generous first-class cushions. Why should he spoil the rare pleasure by tormenting himself with the imagined wretchedness of the dwellers in that petrified forest? It might be better than one envisaged… there were occasional television aerials. If people could afford television, surely they could afford to leave a district uncongenial to them? He thought of Dutt’s noisy terrace house at Tottenham. The back of that row would probably look like slum property, and certainly there wasn’t a shred of privacy. But Dutt didn’t care, nor did his neighbours, and nor, Gently recollected with some surprise, did he either, when he was there amongst it. It was all an attitude of mind. If you were brought up as a member of a semi-communal society, you would probably feel lonely and naked in a detached house in a fenced garden.