Brian Aldiss - Remembrance Day

‘There’s also such a thing as an obligation to your fucking family.’

‘Swearing will do no one any good. I’m not angry with you, Mike, but please will you drive on to the garage. I can’t sit here all day.’

Bottling up his fury, Tebbutt threw the Hillman into first gear and they jerked violently forward. Five minutes later, they rolled into the forecourt of Joe Stanton’s garage. A CLOSED sign swung idly by the pumps and the large double doors of the service station were padlocked. An old blue car stood forlornly on the forecourt with a FOR SALE notice stuck under its windscreen wiper.

‘That’s funny,’ Linwood remarked. ‘I had anticipated seeing the Chrysler standing ready for me out the front. Wait here a minute, will you, Ray?’

He got out of the car and stood about indecisively on the forecourt, arms hanging by his side. Tebbutt was tempted to drive away. Later, he regretted he had not done so. But a feeling of loyalty to his friend kept him where he was, tapping the fingers of his right hand on the steering wheel. After a moment, he tried the radio, hopefully, but it had not functioned for some months.

Joe Stanton’s garage did not inspire confidence in a discerning motorist. First impressions suggested that many cars rolling in here never left. Most had been cannibalized and their wheels removed. Rust, weather, and hooliganism had reduced them to a kind of auto Stalingrad. Long-defunct Stantons had worked a forge on the site. The ramshackle old building had been converted by Stanton’s wife, Marigold, into a shop for the sale of newspapers, bread, milk, Mars bars, and other necessities. But the shop was either too near to or too far out of Melton for it to flourish. It had died by slow degrees, until the ‘Out to Lunch’ sign in the door window became an informal funeral notice. The concrete of the more modern filling station was crumbling in sympathy. The whole place, Tebbutt considered, would qualify for a picture on a ‘Quaint Norfolk’ calendar. November, probably.

Marigold Stanton had retreated to the bungalow behind the garage, where she kept geese in considerable squalor. A handwritten notice on the Four Star pump advertised ‘Gooce Eggs’.

After walking about the forecourt for some while, Linwood made his way through the automobile skeletons to the bungalow. The geese roused a hullabaloo as he disappeared from Tebbutt’s sight.

Tebbutt sat at the wheel of his car, staring at a tin advert for Pratt’s High Test, remembering how life used to be. He watched bees tumbling among the trumpets of a bindweed growing up a telegraph pole. Ruby would be at work by now. She caught the bus into Fakenham every weekday to do a summer job in Mrs Bligh’s cake shop. Agnes would be safe at home with the cat for company.

Ray got out of his car and pottered about the forecourt. He took a look at the car offered for sale. It was a model unknown to him, a Zastava Caribbean, with an Oxfordshire number plate. A faded sticker on the rear window said, ‘I Love Cheri’. On the FOR SALE notice, under the price, Stanton had written WON ONER.

Melancholy increased, Ray went back to sit in his car.

When Linwood reappeared round the side of the old forge, he was accompanied by Stanton. The two men were arguing. Stanton was an untidy, straggling kind of man who walked with a limp and a decided list to starboard. He wore boots, a pair of dungarees and an incongruous checked cap. His chest was bare. He shook his head in time with his rapid slanting walk. Beside Linwood’s rather boneless figure, Stanton appeared an embodiment of energy.

Crossing to the double doors of his shed, he unlocked the padlock, wrenched the doors a few inches open, and elbowed his way inside, to leave Linwood on the forecourt. Linwood appeared to be studying the cracked concrete at his feet.

After looking at his watch, Tebbutt leaned out of the car window and called, ‘Any problems, Mike? Is it repaired?’

His friend looked round slowly, as if previously unaware of Tebbutt’s presence, and said, nodding his head, ‘Hang on a minute, Ray.’ It was not a satisfying response.

A small builder’s lorry drew up at the pumps and tooted. As Stanton emerged from his fortress, the driver of the lorry, leaving his engine running, jumped down from the cab and stretched. He appeared to be on good terms with Stanton, who momentarily stopped scowling.

While Stanton filled the lorry’s tank with Four Star, the driver nonchalantly lit a cigarette, flinging the match down on the ground. Tebbutt watched the two men talking, Stanton gesturing jerkily in the direction of Linwood. Linwood, taking advantage of this diversion, walked rapidly into the garage.

‘’Ere, come on out of there, you!’ Stanton bawled.

Linwood reappeared, looking embarrassed, thrusting his hands into his pockets and immediately pulling them out again.

When the lorry drove off, Stanton walked rather threateningly towards Linwood, gesticulating loosely with both hands, as if he was trying to toss them over either shoulder. Both men went into the garage. Tebbutt sat tight, sighing. Silence reigned on the forecourt.

Very shortly, Linwood emerged again, clutching a piece of paper.

He walked over to the Hillman with an expression of unconcern, to lean through the driver’s window so that his nose was only a few inches from Tebbutt’s.

‘We’ve got a bit of a problem here, Ray. It’s old Joe Stanton, cutting up a bit rough.’

‘I’d gathered that.’

‘Yes. Poor chap used to be pretty trusting. Caught him in a bad mood this morning. He’s repaired the car and it’s fine – good for another eighteen months, he says. He’s had to do more work on it than anticipated. He said something about the rear shock-absorbers, I believe. Replacements needed.’

He showed Tebbutt the piece of paper in his hand, on which a number of items were scrawled in Biro.

‘It’s a bill for three hundred pounds, Ray. Bit of a shock.’ He cleared his throat.

‘Is the car worth it?’

Linwood looked very serious, withdrew the paper, and straightened to tuck it into his pocket, so that when he spoke again Tebbutt could not see his face for the roof of the Hillman.

‘Of course the car’s worth it, Ray. You don’t understand the situation. The problem is, as I say, Stanton’s not in his usual trusting mood. He refuses to allow me credit this time. That wife of his was frankly abusive. I can’t have the car back, he says, until I’ve paid the bill. It makes things rather difficult.’

After considering the situation for a moment, and in particular debating what he should say next, Tebbutt folded his arms behind the wheel and asked, ‘So how do you intend to resolve this dilemma, Mike? Prayer?’

He still could not see Linwood’s head and shoulders from where he sat, but he heard his reply distinctly enough. ‘Unfortunately, I forgot to bring my cheque book along. I was wondering if you’d be kind enough to write him one of your cheques, and I’ll repay you when we get home.’

Opening the car door, Tebbutt climbed slowly out into the sunshine, so that he could look Linwood in the eye. ‘I’m in no position to lend anyone money. I don’t have my cheque book on me, either.’

Smiling, Linwood said, ‘But you do carry a credit card, Ray, I believe?’

Stanton had emerged into the light to stand before his barely opened doors, fists on hips and legs apart, as if prepared to repel all boarders.

‘I ent taking a penny less, neither,’ he shouted. ‘Three hundred quid I want.’

‘Well, you can see it from Stanton’s point of view, in a way,’ Linwood said.

‘Stanton evidently doesn’t expect the Lord to provide,’ Tebbutt said, feelingly.

‘I doubt that he and the Lord are on speaking terms.’ Linwood mitigated the humour with a miserable look, adding, ‘If you could pay with your credit card, Ray, just to get us out of this mess … We can’t stand here all day. I’d be immensely grateful and can repay you within the next couple of days.’