The Grass Widow's Tale

“Careful!” said Bunty. “You’re getting lyrical.”

“I’m getting homesick. For the past. It’s a sign of age creeping on. By any standards, this is a town now. You don’t notice it sneaking in, but suddenly there it is. Chain shops, supermarkets, bingo halls and all. Automatic- barrier parking-grounds, gift stamps, special offers, fourpence off—the lot! Bunty, let’s move!”

“It used to be so lovely,” she said; and then, reasonably: “We couldn’t go anywhere that it wouldn’t catch up with us. Why run?”

In the main street, which had once been the road through the village, neon lights peered shortsightedly through the murk, all their greens and blues and reds filmed over with sour grey gloom. The jostling cars of the affluent society glared shoulder to shoulder from the new car parks, their colours dimmed with thin, glutinous mud. The cinema frontage sustained with evident effort an almost-nude blonde twelve feet long, sprawled the length of its lights, three feet of flaxen hair extending her at the head, as though someone had dragged her there by those pale ropes. She wore a bikini, and she might have been merely sun-bathing, but she looked dead. There was no queue to find out the truth; no one was interested.

“Wait till you see what they’re doing with old Pearce’s place,” said George, between resignation and revulsion. “Or didn’t I tell you he’s sold out? To some chain moving in from the south. He had too good a spot to survive long, once the urbanisation started.”

He turned the car left out of the High Street, and slowed as he approached the glittering frontage of what had once been Pearce’s Garage, long inhabited by three generations of passionate motor-maniacs without a grain of commercial acumen between them, but able to do just about anything with an engine. All its capital had been in the background then, and the forecourt and petrol sales had been a somewhat tedious chore, very modestly lit and little regarded. No advertising was needed for a first-class service to which every well-run car in the county knew its own way.

Within ten days of the sale things had changed radically. A long festoon of lights in four colours stretched all along the frontage, which was being torn back into a great arc to accommodate nine new pumps of the latest type. They looked more like something from outer space than mere petrol pumps. A large neon sign over a repainted office flaunted the name of the chain in the single word: FLEET.

Two large posters in fluorescent orange proclaimed apocryphally: “Double stamps’ week!”

“See?” said George, with bitter satisfaction.

“Oh, well,” sighed Bunty helplessly. “He was pushing retiring age anyhow, and the offer must have been monumental.”

“Still, if Tony hadn’t emigrated his dad would never have sold out,” observed George, drawing the Morris neatly into position by the nearest Super pump. He opened the door and slid out as a snub-nosed, shaggy-headed youngster came loping down from the office in answer to the bell. “Fill her up, Bobby.”

“Sure, Mr. Felse!” The sombre young face brightened faintly at the sight of them. Bobby had been on probation, an apparently incurable driver-away of unlocked cars, when George had followed a hunch and talked old Pearce into taking him on and giving him a gloriously legitimate interest in the machines he couldn’t resist. George found himself hoping that two years had been long enough to effect a cure, because he felt in his bones that this experiment wasn’t going to survive the change of ownership. Commercial garage chains have very little interest in the salvation of local problem children. In such a county as Mid-shire, however, there are still plenty of family businesses in the remoter areas, and a two-year apprenticeship with Pearce’s is a very sound recommendation.

“Well, how’s it coming along?” said George, avoiding any appearance of actual concern.

“Not sure it is, Mr. Felse.” Bobby frowned darkly over the purling petrol, watching the level with dubious eyes. “You know how it is, you get used to certain people’s ways. I don’t reckon this lot care all that much about cars.” He delivered this indictment of blasphemy with more sorrow than anger.

“Then you’ll be all the more likely to score a personal hit,” said George reasonably, “since you do.”

“Well, maybe—but they don’t really want you to. It’s the quick money they’re interested in. You know! Make it look good, and that’s it. The money’s out here, really, not back in the workshops. Not unless you can pick up a nice juicy insurance job,” said Bobby disdainfully, and withdrew the pipe accurately and dexterously at the crucial moment. He hung it up, and wiped the neck of the tank, though it was spotless. “I don’t reckon I shall be here long, Mr. Felse.”

“What’s the pinch?” asked George easily. “The new boss?”

Bobby shrugged and grinned. “He wouldn’t matter so much, we shan’t be seeing much of him, anyhow. Thirty-seven of these stations they say he’s got now, most of ’em in London and the south. We’re about the most northerly yet. No, he wouldn’t matter. It’s this new manager he’s put in. Proper thruster he looks like being—you know, town style, all flash and everything on the surface.” Bobby counted change expertly, with one eye on the new, large window of the office, festooned with pot plants. “That’s him now, just coming out on the concrete—the one who looks like a bruiser.”

Two men had emerged from the glass doorway, and were pacing the length of the concreted arc, studying the renovations with critical approval. The one in the white overall was large-chested and thick of feature, and had a peeled-down, aggressive confidence in his manner that would not have been out of place in either a boxing ring or a sales ring. The other was several inches taller, a long-striding, elegant figure in a pearl-grey suit.

“Mister Mostyn,” said Bobby, eyeing the distant white figure with eloquent dislike. “Don’t you never let him sell you a used car, Mr. Felse, that’s all!”

“Who’s the other?” asked George, pocketing his change.

“Oh, that’s the boss… that’s Fleet himself. Been looking his buy over and viewing the development plans. Mostyn had me working on his car this afternoon… believe me, that was one he wanted done properly.” He closed the door firmly upon George, and waved a hand. “See you, Mr. Felse!”

“So long, Bobby! Just give it a whirl before you make up your mind. But he’ll go,” George prophesied the next moment, for Bunty’s ear alone. “That’s not his kind of set-up now.”

The Morris wheeled back from the apron on to a dark, slimily gleaming street, and the long festoons of lights slithered away behind them. They re-entered the main street at the next corner, close to the southern edge of the town now, with the ordered glimmer of the new housing estate of Well Meadow terraced up the green slope in the darkness ahead. Across the street the six plate-glass windows of the Betterbuy supermarket glared steamily, plastered with bargain offers in poison green and electric orange.