Northern hospitality
Jeremy Clarke
Ifound the address in Newcastle — a redbrick Victorian terrace house — and pressed the doorbell. A furious dog came to the door first, then I heard someone tell it softly to be quiet and the door opened.
Mr Hillyard was younger than I'd imagined. He put out a hand and smiled. After my boy had bought his Audi 80 on the Internet auction site eBay for £150, we'd exchanged emails and a couple of phone calls. He'd obviously found it amusing that a buyer was coming from 400 miles away to pick up a £150 car. 'I expect you'll be wanting a cup of tea,' he said in Geordie, that most musical and soulful of English accents. In harsher Essex tones, I said that a cup of tea certainly would not go amiss. We went inside, negotiating the dog, a brindle Staffie bitch, in the narrow passageway.
In the equally narrow kitchen at the end of the passage his wife was standing at the counter buttering slices of bread. Mr Hillyard — Stephen — introduced us. Kath's eyes were red and puffy as if she'd been crying for hours. She smiled warmly, though, and said, 'You make it, then.' To go with the cup of tea, Kath offered me a choice of either a cheese or a corned-beef sandwich. A grave little girl wearing a black-and-white striped football shirt drifted in and accepted a plate with a cheese sandwich cut in half on it. She, too, looked as if she'd been crying. 'We've had a bereavement,' said Stephen, putting me in the picture. 'Father-in-law. Passed away the day before yesterday.'
Kath opened the fridge and took out the corned beef. I said how very sorry I was to hear it and that I was sorry to turn up at such a difficult time. Stephen said it was fine because they just had to accept it and try to get on with their lives. I asked him if he and his father-in-law were close. 'Close?' said Stephen. 'He lived four doors down and came round twice a day to take the dog for a walk, and in the evenings we ran a minibus firm together. I drove, father-in-law looked after the buses at his garage and answered the phone. That's where the Audi is, by the way, at the garage. No one's been there since I found him dead in the chair at home with the phone in his hand. Heart attack. We couldn't believe it. Fit as fire he was. Sixtyeight years old and he could outrun me, I tell you what. I'm not looking forward to going in his garage in a minute and not seeing Brian there in his overalls, am I, love?'
We finished our teas and Stephen took me round to the garage in a 20-seater minibus. He talked some more about his father-in-law. 'The paramedic said he must have been sitting dead in the chair all night. And I know this sounds a bit weird, like, but the dog knew he was dead as soon as it happened. Every night it goes to bed in the front room at nine o'clock. It's like clockwork. But around the time father-inlaw must have had his heart attack we were lying in bed and there was a scratching at the door. The wife got up and opened the door and the dog came in looking absolutely gutted, like it was ill or something. I even turned to the wife and said, "I think there's something wrong with the dog, pet." We didn't have the heart to throw it out. It climbed up on the bed and stayed there all night. It didn't sleep. It just looked at the wall.'
We pulled up outside a garage on a small industrial estate. 'Oh, man, I'm not looking forward to this,' said Stephen. As he fiddled with the padlock, I saw a man inwardly struggling with unusually powerful emotions. He undid the padlock and hauled back the heavy sliding door. Lined up inside a tidy workshop were two minibuses and the Audi. It was the workshop of an orderly, conscientious man. Even the coffee cups beside the kettle had
been washed up. His overalls hung on a peg beside the door. The calendar on the whitewashed wall showed a photograph of the Lake District.
I made straight for the Audi and made myself busy looking over it. The first thing I did was see if the radio worked. It was going to be a long journey back to Devon without one, It did. 'Very nice,' I said to Stephen, but he wasn't paying attention. He was leaning over a workbench as if he was absorbed in reading something important — except there was nothing in front of him. And as I looked, I saw a tear fall from his chin and splash on to the bare wood.
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