France two months before I caught the shrapnel at Givenchy. Head and leg. The head was worst, apparently, though Muggins here can’t bring to mind a blessed thing about it. Not the moment that it happened or the morning that I’d had before, and not much after. Gone. Clean as a whistle. First thing I knew afterwards was being halfway through a plate of dinner at the hospital. I lifted up a spoon of stringy mash and looked at it, and I remembered that I was Alf Rouse. It was the most peculiar sensation, I can tell you.
I don’t have the education to explain it but the world seemed different to me after that. I don’t mean that the War had opened up my eyes, like I’ve heard other fellows say. I mean the world seemed different, like as if it was a different world, a stand-in for the real one. How can I explain it? Everything looked wrong. Not wrong, but put together in a hurry as though it could fall apart at any time. The best way I can say it is like when you’re doing art in school, and Miss gives you a sheet of paper first where you can try things out and make a mess, because it’s not the proper picture and it doesn’t matter. When I woke up in that hospital it was like waking up inside the practice scribble, not the picture. Nothing mattered. You could rub it out and start all over. When I think about it, I suppose I’ve pretty much felt that way ever since, though now I’m used to it.
That was the point where I first got my ‘thing’ about the weaker sex. Of course, for one thing there was opportunity, what with the nurses they had over there. You wouldn’t think to look at some of them, but there was more of that went on than you’d suppose. You see, to all intents and purposes they were the only women over there and they could have their pick. You wouldn’t think they’d feel much like it what with seeing chaps half blown to bits all day, but I could tell a tale or two, believe me. Well, of course, I had a twinge of guilt from time to time regarding Lillian, but nothing that would bowl me over. Like I say, by then things had all sort of flattened out, and nothing that I thought or did seemed to amount to very much. I mean, I know there’s right and wrong, but you come to a point where, honestly, you’re not much bothered.
Once I had this chubby little RSN who sucked me off while there was some poor fellow with no hands lay raving off his chump in the cot next to mine. I played along, but frankly wasn’t very struck upon it, if you can believe that. There was something funny with this nurse that put me off, the way she acted. Gone a bit mad, by the look of her. You got a lot like that.
When I was pensioned out the following year and came back home, it didn’t ease up on the female front one bit. If anything, it just made matters worse. That was the wound, you see, did that. That’s what attracted them. My injury. What I just said, about girls being daft for chaps in uniform, well, that was nothing to the way they were if you were hurt or wore a bandage. Even when the bandages were off, if you just talked about how you were wounded to ‘em, that would do the trick. I’d pull my hair to one side so that they could see the scar up by my parting, and I’d let ‘em touch it if they wanted to. I’ll tell you, ten minutes of that and I was up ‘em. They were gasping for it. They’re some funny wonders, women. I can’t make them out, not after all the ones I’ve had. It must be getting on for seventy or eighty of them that I’ve done it with since I took up commercial travelling when I came out the army, but they’re still a mystery to me. I expect they always will be, now.
I won’t say little Helen was the first girl that I took to bed while on my travels. After all, I’d had five year of it by then, but it was Helen who I came to care about the most. I wanted to look after her. She was a child, when all was said and done, and so she needed looking after. Anyone would do the same, that had a heart.
A little Scottish girl, was Helen. Little servant girl. I used to have her in the back seat of the Morris. There were lots of memories in that back seat. I’m sorry that it’s gone. I suppose that when you think about it, she was on the young side, Helen. Only fourteen, but you know the girls these days. Very mature and well developed. If they’re old enough to bleed, they’re old enough to butcher, that’s what I say. Good one, eh? I heard that first when I was in the services, and thought that it was proper comical.
I got her pregnant, but it died soon after it was born, which was an upset at the time. It’s like I say, I’m very fond of children. Anyway, I kept on seeing her and two years later, by the time she was sixteen, she’d fallen with another one. Now, Helen, she was only young, but she could be insistent, and this time she put her foot down. Said we must be married for the kiddie’s sake, and there wasn’t much that I could say to that. I’d told her me and Lily were divorced, you see, so couldn’t use the fact I was already wed to get me out of it. It was a pickle, I can tell you.
As it turned out, what I did was go through a sham wedding with her, just to keep her happy, then I set her and baby up at this nice flat in Islington where we could live as man and wife. I told her I’d be on the road a lot away from home. Of course, I’d told Lily the same thing back in Finchley, so it all worked out quite nicely for a time. Still, she wasn’t daft, and in the end she got suspicious I was having an affair outside of marriage. What she didn’t know of course is that I was and she was it.
It all came out eventually, and my God, but you should have heard the uproar. I don’t know quite where I should have been if Lily hadn’t been so understanding. She’s said all along it’s not my fault, me being a sex maniac, and that it’s only happened since the War. They both agreed to meet, did her and Helen, after things calmed down, and sorted it all out across the French sponge at a Joe Lyons’ corner house. They both thought it was best if Helen’s baby, little Arthur, should have somewhere decent to grow up, so me and Lily took him in to live with us at Buxted Road. You can say what you like, there’s not a lot of women as would do that for their chap, now is there? Take another woman’s baby in and feed it?
She’s one in a million, is my Lily. I remember that last night before this all blew up, the last time I saw Buxted Road. We’d sat there in our front room with the lights out, me and Lillian and little Arthur, watching all the rockets and the Roman candles going off just up the road, it being Bonfire Night. I’d told her I’d got business up in Leicester with the braces and suspenders people, so she didn’t mind when I set out just after seven to head up the Great North Road towards the Midlands. I let her have one of my extra special kisses by way of farewell, since I was feeling bad about the way things were between us and I meant to leave her.
Pulling out of Buxted Road; I went straight round to Nellie Tucker’s. I’m ashamed to say I’d not been round there since she’d had the baby just the week before, so you could say that I was overdue. I can’t remember, did I mention Nellie? I took up with her in 1925, during the troubled patch with Helen and our Lily. I was under a great deal of pressure at the time, as you might well imagine, and I turned to Nellie so that I’d have someone I could talk about it to, as much as anything. Naturally, one thing leading to another how it does, it wasn’t long before we’d got a baby. Lily would have killed me, so I kept it quiet and paid five pounds to Nelly every month for maintenance. That was all right until she fell again, this last time. Had it the end of October, on the 29th as I remember.
I went round to see her after leaving Lil that night and got round there a little after seven. Both the eldest and the baby were in bed by then, so we could have a quick one on the couch. I felt a bit blue afterwards, the way you sometimes do, and started pouring out my troubles to her, telling her about all of the debt that I was in. She’s a good listener is Nellie. Always has been.
How it is with me, I suppose it’s like that film A Girl in Every Port. Victor McLaglan. Do you know that one? That was a smasher. Went last year to see it with our Lily, and the women that were in it, well, what a selection. Myrna Loy, she’s nice. And Louise Brooks, although to be quite honest I’m not half so keen on her, her hair like that. It looks too lesbian, if you know what I mean. The real star, though, to my mind, it was Sally Rand. You must know Sally Rand. ‘The Bubbles Girl’? She danced with fans and these big bubbles, and I have to say that there’s a lot of art in what she does. She doesn’t wear a stitch beneath those bubbles, yet you never see a thing. Her song was ‘I’m Forever Blowing Bubbles’, naturally enough. A lovely girl.
I stayed at Nellie’s for about an hour and left just after eight. I should have had a pee before I left but anyway I didn’t, and so by the time I got past Enfield, heading out St Alban’s way, I was near bursting. I saw this pub just set back from the road a bit and thought, ‘Well, I’ve got time for one to brace me for the journey.’ Also, I could use their Gents. It’s funny, I’ve been out that way before and though I know most of the pubs up there, this one was new to me. I think it’s how you come upon it, round a bend. The first sight that I had of it was when my headlights swung across and caught it, and at first it looked half derelict. They ought to do it up a bit, in my opinion. It’d be money well spent, because set back there from the road I’ll bet that most folk overlook it. Had a funny name, as I recall, although I can’t think what at present. It’ll come to me, I’m sure.
I parked the wagon round the back and went inside, and it was first stop Gentlemen’s. God, talk about Relief of Mafeking. It was one of those where the stream seems to go on for hours. Well, I’m exaggerating, but you get the gist. I came out of the W.C. into the bar, and there was hardly anybody in at all. Dead as a doornail.
Labour In Vain. There, what did I just say? I knew it had a funny name. Propped up against the bar was this old tinker with a funny stand-up hat. Quite honestly, he looked half-sharp, so I steered clear of him. I got the girl behind the bar to serve me with a brandy, then I looked about to find a place where I could sit. Up in one corner was a scruffy looking chap, sat talking to this little lad of ten or so. I thought it was his son at first, but then the boy said something to the man and left the bar. He didn’t come back, so perhaps he didn’t know this other bloke at all; just happened to be sitting with him when I looked. I fancied chatting with another chap to pass five minutes after having women rabbit on at me all day, so
when the little lad got up and left I went and sat at the next table to the scruffy item.
We struck up a conversation before long, and I could see he was impressed when I showed him my business card. It turned out he was heading north as well. He’d come from Derbyshire originally, he said, which wasn’t a surprise given how thick his accent was. He told me how he’d had a job up at the pits there, but he’d thought that he might make a go of it in London, as so many do, and headed south. You won’t be shocked to hear it hadn’t worked out how he’d planned, so now he was on his way back to Derby, hoping for his old work at the pit.
They’ve asked me why I offered him a lift, as if I had some motive for it, and they won’t believe me when I say that back then at the start I’d no idea what I was going to do. I said I’d take him up as far as Leicester because I felt genuinely sorry for the chap, and that’s the long and short of it. He made a fuss about getting me in another drink before we left, by way of gratitude, and he had one himself which, to be frank, was one too many. From the state of him, he’d had a few before I’d got there, and once we were in the car I didn’t get a lot of sense from him. Most of the time he was asleep and snoring.
It might have been a different story if I’d had a bit of conversation like I wanted, just to take my mind off my troubles. As it was, the only company I had was far too sloshed for conversation, so I’d nothing else to do but drive along and brood on things, with him behind me rasping like a saw-mill. I got madder with him as we went along. I mean, there I was in the midst of all my troubles, Nellie’s baby born a week before and Ivy’s nearly due, and meanwhile there was him snoring like a carthorse, slobbering on my upholstery. I’m not saying that I feel any animosity towards him now, of course not, but it’s how I felt about it then.
We drove on up the Roman road towards Northamptonshire, which we came in by way of Towcester. It’s a funny thing, what you remember, but I can recall what I was thinking when we passed Greens Norton church spire on our left. I don’t know why, but I was thinking back to when I was a little lad and we lived on Herne Hill, just up the road there from the Half Moon Inn. When I was younger I was that inquisitive, how children are. I wanted to know everything. One day, I couldn’t have been more than seven, I remember asking Mam about Herne Hill and why they called it that. She said she didn’t know, but if I was that bothered I could look it up in Pear’s Encyclopaedia, so I did.
I don’t know if you ever opened up a book, back when you were a nipper, and you saw a picture that was just so frightening you slammed the book and never dared to look at it again? Well, that was how it was with me. I opened the encyclopaedia to the page I wanted, under H, and there was this old line engraving of this bloke, and he had antlers like a deer growing out from his head. I know it doesn’t sound much now but I was terrified. I’d never seen a picture in my life until that point that had upset me half so much, I can’t say why.
I shut the book and went and hid it underneath the wardrobe in my parents’ room, beneath some copies of Reveille that had ended up there. I wanted to bury it, you see, I was that scared of it. Why I should think of that chap with antlers as I passed Greens Norton church I’ve no idea, but there you are. The mind’s a funny thing. You don’t know why you do things half the time, or at least I don’t.
You take what I said that evening when I got to Ivy’s house in Wales, just after I’d been in her room and touched her up. Her parents had been kind enough to offer me a nice bit of boiled bacon and potato for my supper which I was halfway through eating when there came a knock upon the door. The Jenkins had a neighbour three doors down who seemed to know all of their business, which included me and Ivy, and it turned out it was her stood on their doorstep with a copy of the local paper. Had we seen, she said, the picture of a car found in Northampton? Now, that’s how it is in villages, you see, with everybody knowing everybody else’s business. I’d not been in Gellygaer more than an hour or two, and here was somebody had heard already what I’d said to Ivy’s dad about my motor getting pinched. As it turned out, I still had worse to come.
They asked her in and let her show this paper round to everyone, and when I saw it I was in the middle of a mouthful of boiled ham. I’ll tell you, it’s a wonder that I didn’t choke. There was a picture of my Morris Minor standing burned out in the field at Hardingstone. There was a paragraph beside it said a human body had been found inside the wreckage. Well, it’s like I said, you don’t know why you do or say things half the time, but when I looked at that I blurted straight out, without thinking twice, ‘That’s not my car.’ I followed that by mumbling something about how I’d not thought there’d be such a fuss made in the papers over things.
It was a bloody stupid thing to say, I think now looking back on it. I mean, it was my car, there wasn’t any doubt about it. You could read the licence plate, MU 1468, as plain as anything. It was about the only bit that wasn’t burned away. All I did by making out it wasn’t mine was make myself look fishy and get everyone’s suspicions up. I got out of it best I could by claiming I was tired and making off to bed in the spare room, where I thought about Ivy’s tits and had a quick one off the wrist to take me mind off things.
Now usually, no sooner have I brought myself off than I’m fast asleep, but not that night. Oh no. I didn’t sleep a wink except for bits where I’d doze off and have these horrid little dreams that woke me up almost before they’d started. They were vivid at the time, but now I can’t remember anything about them, only that they put the wind up me so that I lay awake until the first light crept across the lily-patterned paper on the end wall.
By the time I was up, the morning paper had arrived. It was the Daily Sketch. They’d printed the same photo of my burned-out Morris, only this time they gave out my name as well, which I thought was a blessed cheek. Of course, that really tore it with regards to Ivy’s parents. All that I could think to say is that there must have been a dreadful mix-up somewhere and that I was going back to London until it was sorted out. The Jenkins had another neighbour, name of Brownhill, ran a little motor business down in Cardiff. He piped up and volunteered to run me back there on his way to work so I could get a coach to Hammersmith. I couldn’t very well say no, so I made my goodbyes to Ivy and said what she wanted me to say about how we should both soon live together in Kingston-on-Thames. Her father shook my hand, though not without some prompting on the part of Ivy’s mam, and then we drove away.
It was a long drive down to Cardiff and I don’t know if it played upon my nerves, but for one reason or another I found that I couldn’t for the life of me stop talking. I kept on and on about my car and how it had been stolen from outside a coffee shop, and this chap Brownhill just kept staring at the road in front of him and every now and then he’d say, ‘Oh yes?’ or ‘Is that right?’ but other than that it was blood out of a stone to get a word from him. When we arrived in Cardiff he insisted on accompanying me down to the station, where he saw me on the coach for Hammersmith.