Magnus Mills - All Quiet on the Orient Express

When I arrived at the Packhorse I discovered I’d taken far too much for granted about my status in the darts team. I was made welcome enough, but the demands of the fixture list had obliged them to recruit other players during my absence, and there were no spare places. Bryan Webb bought me a pint and then explained that I would have to play myself back into the side by turning up for future matches on a reserve basis. This sounded fair enough to me, so I sat on a stool in the corner and prepared to watch the action. The visitors tonight were from the Rising Sun, and seemed to be a friendly enough bunch. Unfortunately, they were one of those teams that brought no women with them, so there was nothing much to look at apart from men lobbing darts. The first game was won by the Packhorse, and the second by the Rising Sun. Then suddenly everybody was laughing about something. I blinked once or twice and saw Bryan and the rest of them standing in a half-circle, grinning at me and studying my face.

“Is he or isn’t he?” someone said.

“Well, he isn’t now, but he definitely was,” said Bryan, and they all laughed again.

“What’s up?” I asked.

“You’ve just slept through half the match,” he said. “Watch out, you’re spilling your beer.”

I glanced down. The glass in my hand was lying at a haphazard angle, its contents lapping the rim. Quickly I straightened it, and got up from the stool.

“Blimey,” I said. “I must be more tired than I thought.”

“Well, you can’t burn the candle at both ends,” remarked Kenneth Turner. “You’d better go home and get your head down.”

“Yes, I think I will. Goodnight.”

“Goodnight,” they all chorused as I walked out.

Despite not getting a game of darts, I felt quite good about my first evening back at the Packhorse. Nobody had said anything about me ‘letting them down’ on that previous occasion, and I assumed from their silence on the subject that I was forgiven. Now it was just a matter of time before I was fully accepted as a team member again. The way Bryan had bought me a pint beforehand suggested that this wouldn’t be too long at all. Feeling fairly contented about the way things had gone, I wandered back to the bothy and went straight to bed. I was asleep the moment my head hit the pillow, waking again at half past four feeling fully refreshed. After a quick cup of tea I set off in the pick-up, and realized I was actually looking forward to embarking on my milk round once more.

As I emerged from the front gate I noticed there was another early-riser out and about. A figure appeared in the headlights walking along the road towards Millfold, and I knew instantly that it was old Mr Pickthall.

I pulled up beside him and wound down my window.

“Want a job?” I asked.

“Course I want a job,” he said.

“Well, I could do with an assistant.”

“Thought so.”

Without another word he walked round to the passenger’s side and got in. I noticed he was carrying a canvas bag from which protruded a Thermos flask.

“You’ve come prepared then,” I remarked as the journey continued.

“Might as well do it properly if we’re going to do it at all.”

“Yeah,” I said. “Suppose you’re right. What about your son though?”

“What about him?”

“Won’t he object to you coming with me?”

“None of his business.”

“But what if he finds out?”

“Look,” snapped the old man. “Do you want my help or not?”

“Of course I do.”

“Well stop going on about him then.”

“Alright,” I said. “Sorry.”

Having settled the matter we didn’t mention it again, but continued driving through the pre-dawn darkness towards Greenbank. We arrived at the dairy bang on five o’clock and I backed straight up to the loading bay, where the men were ready and waiting. It turned out that Mr Pickthall was on nodding terms with a couple of them. They remembered him from the days when he ran his timber yard, and once again I was struck by the way everybody appeared to know everybody else around here. This in its turn helped oil the wheels, and we had the milk crates on board the truck even quicker than the day before. I handed over the requisition docket, signed the sheet, and we were soon on our way again.

What I liked about the old man was that he didn’t waste words in pointless conversations. He just rode silently beside me in the passenger seat, peering out through the windscreen at the road ahead and awaiting the opportunity to do some work. Obviously, I didn’t ask him to take every bottle of milk to every house we called at: that would have been demanding far too much of him. The gold-tops along the common below Greenbank, for example, I delivered myself, since they were all straightforward drop-offs. It was when we began doing the more remote dwellings that he really came into his own. The first such place had three sets of gates on the entrance drive, all closed, and Mr Pickthall practically leapt out of the pick-up to open them.

“Damn fools,” he said, getting back in after the third gate. “They don’t need them closed at this time of year.”

“Suppose not,” I agreed. I knew nothing about farming, but my assistant seemed to talk with some authority so I took his word for it.

“All the fields are empty,” he added.

Nevertheless, if the customer wanted the gates to be left closed, then we had no choice but to oblige. Mr Pickthall wasn’t really bothered either way. He needed something to do, and opening and closing gates was as good a pastime as any. His only complaint was that the people who owned them were ‘damn fools’.

Another task cropped up for him when we came to places with awkward-shaped yards. These had been real inconveniences the day before, but with his help they proved to be no problem at all. The procedure was simple. While I did a three-point turn in the truck, he would get out and make the appropriate delivery, returning with the empty bottle just as I completed my manoeuvre. In this efficient way we saved minutes at a time.

It was not yet daylight when we arrived at Wainskill. As we passed the ice-cream fartory Mr Pickthall peered through the wrought-iron gates and said, “So Snaithe finally sold up then.”

“That’s what I heard, yes,” I replied.

“Started up from nothing, you know.”

“Really?”

“Same year as I established my sawmill.”

“Oh, right.”

“Good businessman, Snaithe is.”

“Do you know him then?”

“I run into him from time to time, yes,” said Mr Pickthall. “Last occasion was Whit Monday, 1962, if my memory serves me correctly.”

“Oh…er…right.”

“Of course, they’d never let him build anything like that these days.”

“Suppose not.”

“Too many planning regulations round here now, you can’t build anything.”

“No.”

“Damn fool regulations.”

This long conversation seemed to take its toll of Mr Pickthall and he fell silent for quite some time. Meanwhile, I thought about Mr Parker’s big shed and wondered if he’d got planning permission before he built it.

The milk round was going very nicely. We completed the deliveries in Wainskill, and were well on schedule as we approached the Millfold area around a quarter to eight. I’d noticed that the pick-up’s fuel gauge was running low. It had a diesel engine, and the only place I knew with a DERV pump was Kenneth Turner’s garage, so I pulled in for a refill. Kenneth was already at work underneath a van, which he had jacked up on the service ramp, and he emerged when he heard us arrive. I got out to speak to him, leaving Mr Pickthall in the cab pouring some tea from his Thermos flask. He’d brought two cups along, as well as some jam doughnuts, and had obviously chosen this moment for us to have a tea break. When Kenneth saw him sitting in the passenger seat he gave me a wink and said, “I see you’ve got yourself an assistant.”