Around the bend
Jeremy Clarke
Ihave a recurring nightmare. I’m driving or walking or cycling, I’m not sure which, up a winding, muddy country lane. At a sharp, uphill bend, I’m overwhelmed by terror of what lies beyond and can go no further. Freudians, I imagine, would interpret this as a psychic utterance of repressed homoeroticism.
I know exactly where this bend in the lane is, oddly enough, though I haven’t seen it for 35 years. When I was at school, the family home was briefly on the outskirts of an Essex village right on the edge of London. (Although our house was surrounded by fields, and felt sufficiently rural, after dark the western sky was apocalyptically ablaze with energy and light from the metropolis.) The bend in the lane was on the bus route on the way home from school. It marked the point at the end of the journey where I pressed the bell and went forward in good time to stand at the front of the bus, ready to alight.
Last weekend I drove up this lane for the first time since we left there. I came up from Devon for a 50th birthday party at the nearby golf and country club. My friend Cass Pennant has had an interesting halfcentury. From Barnado’s boy, to leader of West Ham’s notorious hooligan gang, the Inter City Firm, to prisoner, to doorman, to head of a large security firm, to successful publisher. He’s been shot numerous times, and even run through with a sword, though none of these incidents, I believe, has so far involved rival publishers. A lavish biopic is in the can and about to be released. I had a birthday card and a tray of caramel coloured Maran pullets’ eggs gift-wrapped on the back seat.
I easily recognised the left-hand turn in the road that has been troubling my sleep for over three decades, but felt nothing. I turned the corner. Nothing. It was a piece of cake. A hundred yards further on, next to the bus stop, is the centuries-old pub where I used to earn pocket money at the weekend ‘bottling up’. I had an hour to kill. A queasy nostalgic impulse made me turn into the car park and pop inside for a pint.
I stood at the bar and recognised the shelves beside which I’d knelt every Saturday and Sunday morning, lining up Babychams, Indian tonic waters and Manns brown ales, labels smartly to the front, like soldiers on parade. There were few customers: an elderly bloke at the far end of the bar and a couple bent conspiratorially over their knives and forks at one of the tables was all. It was just after six o’clock and quiet before the Saturday-night rush.
As the landlord poured my pint, I said to him, ‘Thirty-five years ago I used to work in here. I used to bottle up at weekends.’ He looked between the pumps at me. Inscribed in his features were humour, mischief, dishonesty, violence and tragedy. He took in my dark suit and 90-quid shirt and wasn’t fooled. ‘Well, I hope you’ve found yourself a better f***ing job since then, mate,’ he said.
A girl aged perhaps 14 or 15, small, spherical, with chunky glasses, appeared behind the bar. She went up to the landlord and appeared to slap his face with terrific force. The landlord jerked his head back. That, she proudly informed both him, and me, was what is known in the game as a stage slap. She went to give him another. This time he expertly caught her wrist, twisted it about, and put her in a headlock. A customer appeared at the bar with a wine list. He looked puzzled. Gripping the girl’s head in the crook of his arm, the landlord put on his most unctuous, here-to-help face. ‘This here Merlot,’ said the customer, ignoring the plight of the girl. ‘Is it French?’ ‘No idea,’ said the landlord.
Dragging the struggling girl with him, he went to the wine chiller, took out a bottle of Merlot and judiciously examined the writing on the label. But the mystery only deepened. He opened a door, put his head through and shouted for help. A ginger-haired youth came in and examined the bottle. ‘French,’ he said, and went out. ‘He says it’s French,’ the landlord told us in confidence. ‘But you can never trust a f***ing ginge — that’s what I say.’ My phone rang. My mother. After being on the market for just over a year, the house I’ve been living and working in for the past 20 years was sold ten minutes ago. That’s it. It’s the end of an era. A bend in the road. My boy’s grown up. I’m leaving Devon. Possibly England.
The customer was still puzzling over the wine list. ‘What about this here Savig-non Cabinet,’ he said. ‘Is that French?’
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