Gone...

Sixteen

Thanks to the recession gripping Britain, the value of my house in Reigate had gone down faster than the Titanic (I mentioned to one of the French people I knew that Andre Citroen, founder of the company that made my automotive water-bucket, designed the steering gear for the Titanic. Quick as a flash the Frenchman replied, “Yes, but you know the iceberg was American...”).
I couldn’t sell the house in France, well at least not for anywhere near the amount I’d paid. Selling would have meant taking a massive loss, and I didn’t feel inclined to do that. You know, the trouble is, sometimes you just can’t see the wood for the trees...
I was out walking with the dogs in Reigate Park one day and I was having a think about my life when I saw these mushrooms. Or at least I thought that’s what they were. My Grandad often used to go out in the woods at his home near Rugby and pick mushrooms and take them home and cook them up in a little butter and eat them just like that, with a bit of crusty bread. I always admired his knowledge of the fungi but Tom told me many years later that the old bloke hadn’t a clue what he was eating. “Jesus”, said Tom, “you can buy them in the bloody supermarket!”  I think Tom missed the point, but you know, you just couldn’t tell him.
Turned out it was just luck that the Grandad had never picked and eaten any of the deadly ones.
The Grandad was interesting. He made a dog kennel for Tingha and it looked excellent but apparently it wasn’t to Tingha’s taste and nothing could entice him inside the bright red, blue and green painted wooden house, at least not until Tom threw a bone in there and the dog growled and snuffled and forced himself inside. We heard a good deal of banging and as Tom, the Grandad and myself watched these movements, the dog inside became more frantic and the sides of the kennel started to bulge and Tom shouted, “Look out! She’s going to go!” and then he started to dance from one foot to another. The Grandad looked at Tom like he was still a little kid and gave him an almighty cuff around the ear. Tom stopped dancing and clutched his ear. He would have been about 30 at the time.
Meanwhile, Tingha had worked himself up into a howling frenzy. I think initially it was about the bone but it had become much bigger than that - now he wanted to get out and there just wasn’t enough room for the shaggy dog to turn around. Suddenly there was a great creaking sound somewhat like an old sailing ship being squeezed in an ice pack in Antarctica (yes, yes, I am only guessing) and then the whole thing burst apart, scattering wood panels, splinter and nails everywhere. Tom and me ducked, Tom with his hands over his head, but the Grandad stood his ground and raised his arm and deflected a great chunk of wood. As the dog came running by he grabbed it by the scruff of the neck and hoisted it right off the ground and held it there like a dead fox. Tingha whimpered and the Grandad slowly put him back down and then he dutifully lay at Grandad’s feet and rolled over on his back, legs up in the air, his pink hairless belly exposed and panting. He’d never done that for any of us.
During World War II, Grandad stayed at home, which to me seemed like an excellent plan. Tom told us once that Grandad’s claim to war-fame was arresting an Irishman at the point of a pitchfork out in the fields at the back of his garden.
Grandad worked at Rugby Radio Station, which you can see as you motor north up the M1. Well, you can see the forest of aerials. What you can’t see is the underground lair where people with headphones stuck to their heads listen in on communications around the world. Once, when my brother and I were just little kids, Grandad took us into Rugby Radio Station and gave us a guided tour of the facilities. I was so young I can’t remember very much about it, except that we were introduced to this one man who was wearing headphones and looking at a massive round radar screen. He smiled when we came along and took his headphones off and Grandad shook his hand and introduced us and the bloke held the headphones out to me and I awkwardly tried to put them on my head until Grandad took them and roughly placed them over my ears, drowning me with language.
I could hear a man speaking but I couldn’t understand him and then there was a pause and I heard another man speaking and I couldn’t understand him either. Then the headphones came off and the bloke put them back on again and he pointed to a blip on the screen and said, “Russian submarine. In the Barents Sea. That’s the captain speaking to his base.”
When I was a bit older - I think about eight - I had to learn some French. We were going to Grandad’s and we were going to meet a friend of his - a Frenchman.
I learnt to say, “Bonjour Monsieur. Je m’appelle King”. It wasn’t much but it took a lot of practice. When I met the man he was tall and distinguished and grey-haired and I stood before him and spoke the words and he smiled down at me and shook my hand - I think he was the first person to ever do this grown-up thing with me - and I felt strength there in his grasp. This man was old then but Tom told me he’d been a leading French Resistance fighter during the war. How our Grandad of Irishman-on-end-of-pitchfork fame knew him, I don’t really know. It’s one of those family mysteries, but there’s a story in there somewhere about spies, and cloaks, and daggers, and one day I’ll find out all about it and write it.
Apart from that, Grandad was a normal grandfather, or at least I assumed he was. My friend Mike and me used to go and stay in the grandparents’ big old house sometimes and we’d roam the apple orchards with our hand-made bows and arrows and shoot at his apples, bringing a whole load of them down one afternoon and making them useless to eat. We also used to hang over the gate of the pigpen and kick the wooden door so the pigs would go mad. Once we were doing this and Grandad crept up behind us with a big plank of wood and whacked our arses hard and said, “Get down off that fence you little buggers! Worrying me pigs. And go and pick up all them apples. You can peel ‘em for the pie.” And then he’d tramp off into the fields out back to look for mushrooms (or maybe even an Irishman or two) hiding out there in the long golden summer grass.
So, I saw these great big fat mushrooms in Reigate Park and I thought I’ll have those, so I picked them and took them home and then I went out into my backyard and had a look around and found some dandelion leaves and I took them in and washed them and then I gently fried the mushrooms in olive oil of course, no butter for me, and then I chucked in the dandelion leaves, gave it all a stir, popped it on a plate and looked at it. That was my evening meal. I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. In fact, I had so little work, so little income, it had got to the stage where most days that was my one and only meal.
Sometimes I’d pick berries off the bushes in the park and eat as I walked. I started looking at all the other plants I saw out on my walks and because I’d always bought loads of books I scoured them for knowledge about the edible ones. I tell you, I was getting to be quite an expert. Maybe my next book will be Survivor! They Thought He Would Die Alone! (I figure any confusion with a crap but successful TV program has to be a winner in the book game. You know, you’ve got to use all your resources). Underneath, the catch-line would be, “Almost starving. Poor beyond belief. Then nature came to the rescue!”
I think I have the expertise required to put that one together quite nicely.
See, things had got really bad. I had virtually no income. I’d finished the novel, which I thought was a real accomplishment - 90,000 words of horror - that’s horror as in genre, not as in horrible bollocks, well, that’s what I thought anyway. I’d managed to get an agent but he kept asking me if I wouldn’t rather get another full-time job. It didn’t exactly fill me brim-full with confidence.
I had to cut down on everything. Soon the Citroen would have to go.
The thing is, every day the dogs were travelling in the car when I drove to the woods to take them for a walk. Apparently it smelt like a dog kennel in there.
I say apparently because I’d obviously got used to it myself but when I drove along the High Street with the windows down and the dogs in the back, people would stagger in the street and cover their noses with their handkerchiefs, as if the plague were passing.
When the time came to sell the car I took it up the road to one of those car valet places. The guy looked at it and then took a deep breath, which wasn’t wise because the dog odours infiltrated his airways, and caused a massive sneezing fit, which went on for some considerable time. However, his partner said he’d do what he could and could I come back in two days.
When I went back I saw all of the Citroen’s seats hanging from the rafters, still dripping water. “Had to give them a right seeing-to, mate. High pressure hose and all that.”
I went away and left it for another two days. When I went back everything had been reassembled and the gleaming Citroen stood there good as or even better than when it came out of the showroom.
I drove it to a Citroen dealer; careful to pick one who was not familiar with the pungent odours that had so recently made their home there. I couldn’t believe the transformation though - this car was just so clean it was unbelievable. I didn’t think it had looked this good when it was new.
The car salesman gave it the once over outside and commented on the amazingly bright and blemish-free bodywork, while the gleaming red paintwork simply made him stand back and admire, arms crossed, silently nodding his head, a firm smile on his face. “Might have a buyer for this already,” he said.
Then we climbed inside and he had a drive.
 “Goes well,” he said as he took it sideways through a roundabout and accelerated briskly up the road. “Low mileage too. Nice colour.”
Then he turned to me. “You’ve got dogs then?” He gave me a cold smile, “I think I can almost tell the breed.”
I stared ahead out of the windscreen.
All I can tell you is that the secondhand price on a one owner, two-dogs, Citroen ZX is not good. Not good at all.