All The Nice Girls (17 page)

Whatever plans Dagwood might have formulated for becoming more intimate were hampered by the curiosity his interest in Caroline was arousing. The boys, those of them who noticed anything, were amused at the prospect of Nigel’s nose being sharply yanked out of joint. Few of them had any idea who Dagwood was but they wished him the best of British luck. Everyone had always assumed that Nigel would marry Caroline, once the time, the hormones and the respective parents’ marriage settlements were ripe; but this new chap, whoever he was, seemed to be about to put quite a different complexion on matters. If nothing else he would teach Nigel not to take anything in life, least of all a woman, for granted. The girls, led by Fiona, watched with a far closer, almost professional interest. Caroline was playing a new fish, and playing it cool. The girls were all agog to see which way it would leap.

There was therefore a feeling of anti-climax when Caroline announced that she had a sore throat and wished to go home.

‘Can I take you home then?’ Dagwood asked eagerly.

‘If you’d like to,’ said Caroline.

‘I’d like to very much.’ The bearded barbarian was bounding down the hill-side once more. ‘Tell you what, would you like to come back to my place? I can give you some hot punch and an aspirin.’

‘That’s sweet of you Dagwood, but I don’t think . . .’

‘Come on, it’s not very far. You can see my flat at the same time. It’s not a flat really, it’s a Tithe Barn.’

‘A
Tithe Barn
!’

‘Converted. All mod cons. You needn’t be afraid it’s terribly primitive.’

Caroline made up her mind. ‘All right. Let me get my coat.’

It was a clear, frosty night. A half moon threw a glistening light on the trees and houses sliding by outside the car. The white lines sped towards the bonnet, illuminated one by one in the headlights. The car was a warm, comfortable box, lit by the glow from the dashboard instruments. Dagwood was well aware of the aphrodisiac effect of motor-cars. Perhaps, he thought, that accounted for his present desire to stop the car and seize Caroline.

Then Caroline changed her mind.

‘I don’t think I want to go back to your flat after all, Dagwood,’ she said. ‘I really think I should just go home.’

Dagwood was astounded. ‘Why, what’s made you change your mind?’

Caroline tossed her head. ‘Need I have a reason? Surely it’s a girl’s privilege to change her mind if she wants to?’

‘Yes but . . .’ Dagwood paused. The Dagwood of only a few hours before would have made some sharp retort. But Dagwood was trying hard to learn to be circumspect. ‘There must be
some
reason for you to change your mind! If you think there’s going to be some . . .’

‘Some what?’

‘Well, funny business, you’re mistaken.’

‘It never entered my head there would be any
funny
business, as you call it. I just want to go home now. Are you disappointed?’

‘Of course I’m disappointed ..

‘Don’t shout Dagwood, I can hear you all right . . .’

‘One minute you say you’d love to come to my place and the next you say you want to go home. Which do you want?’

‘I want to go home.’

‘All right, I’ll take you. You’ll have to show me the way because I don’t know where you live,’ Dagwood added, ungraciously.

‘It’s almost next door to Hilda’s.’

‘Oh Good God,’ said Dagwood, in exasperation.

‘There’s no need to be so rude. I don’t have to come to your place.’

‘All right. You don’t.’

Caroline said nothing more except to give Dagwood curt directions, which he acknowledged with grunts. They passed the Judworths’. The cars were still parked outside. The lights were still blazing. Dagwood thought bitterly of his own exit from the party in such gleeful triumph, only a few minutes before.

When the car stopped, Caroline jumped out quickly and slammed the door.

‘Mind that door!’ Dagwood bellowed. ‘You’ll have it off its hinges! ‘

Caroline bent to the window. ‘Oh you stupid man,’ she hissed, and marched up the steps to her front door.

Dagwood raised his eyebrows, opened his mouth to retaliate and then shrugged and drove off towards the farm. The whole thing was much too difficult.

‘He’s met her,’ said The Bodger, significantly.

‘At the point-to-point, you mean,’ said Mr Tybalt, speaking in a low voice out of the side of his mouth.

‘I introduced them myself.’

‘How did it go?’

‘Bit cool at first but they all shot off to a party afterwards. I’ve great hopes.’

‘That’s good,’ said Mr Tybalt huskily.

‘Why do you keep talking like Guy Fawkes, Frank? Anyone would think we were plotting something.’

‘Well, aren’t we? I feel kind of guilty about all this, Bodger. We can’t just marry the wretched fellow off for political reasons.’

‘Why not?’

‘It all seems a bit like white-slaving or something,’ said Mr Tybalt, uneasily.

The Bodger looked sternly at Mr Tybalt; so might Guy Fawkes have looked at a conspirator who pleaded to be excused on the critical night. ‘Anything that gives
Seahorse
a chuck-up is worth doing, isn’t it? She needs it, doesn’t she?’

‘That’s true,’ Mr Tybalt admitted, unwillingly.

‘Well then. I shouldn’t let it worry your conscience too much, Frank. We can’t really influence these things. All we can do is throw the raw materials together and hope they’ll gell.’

‘How did
you
come to know the wench, anyway? At the last showing you and Sir Rollo were not exactly
en rapport
,’

‘We’re not now, but Julia is on some women’s committee or other with Lady H-G. She hates racing and Sir Rollo was going to be tied up with being Joint Master and Steward and Lord High Everything Else and the regular boy friend hadn’t turned up so Lady H-G asked us to take Caroline. You should pay attention to these women’s committees, Frank. Julia tells me they’re an eye-opener. Julia says she can’t imagine why the press bother to turn up to council meetings and that sort of thing. If they really want to know what’s cooking she says they ought to hide under the sofa when the Lady Mayoress is entertaining the other wives to tea and scandal. And that reminds me, I’ve got a committee meeting myself this afternoon so I’d better not have any more of this stuff. I don’t want to go to sleep in the middle of it.’

‘What sort of committee meeting?’

‘Civil Defence.’

‘How did you come to be lumbered with that?’

‘My predecessor left it to me.’

‘To tell you the truth, Bodger, I didn’t know there was any Civil Defence in Oozemouth.’

‘That’s just it. Nobody knows and nobody could care less. Everyone says if the bomb goes off we’ll all be fried up anyway so why worry?’

‘It’s a point, you must admit.’

‘It’s absolute balls. There’s a hell of a lot you can do. If you can survive the first few days you might survive for good. It’s every citizen’s duty to survive!’ The Bodger’s voice rose in a sonorous rumble which made Guv look up anxiously from his stance at the other end of the bar.

‘Seriously Frank, this is a vital question which affects everyone. When I was in Singapore a few years ago I met an old Johnnie of an Engineer Captain who told me, between sobs, that one of his jobs was to organise Civil Defence in Singapore and in two years’ hard bashing his head against brick walls he had achieved exactly nil. Everybody patted him on the head, said There there, don’t worry about it old son, if anything happens we won’t be here, we’ll be miles away out of it all. They seemed to forget that last time anything happened most of them were still there and that in any case the fall of Singapore would affect them wherever they were. It’s the same in this town. Civil Defence-Wise, Oozemouth runs Singapore a close second.’

Mr Tybalt sympathised with The Bodger’s problem but the whole subject was immediately driven out of his head by an event which eclipsed everything else in Oozemouth. The boilermakers and the shipwrights in Harvey McNichol & Drummond went on strike.

The strike arrived like a thunderbolt out of a clear blue sky. Neither Ollie nor Dagwood knew anything about it until they arrived at the office after lunch and the Chief Stoker broke the news.

‘Heard about the strike, sir?’

‘What strike?’ said Dagwood and Ollie together.

‘Boilermakers and shipwrights arc all on strike, sir.’

‘Since when?’

‘Noon today, sir.’

‘How did you come to know about it, Chief Stoker?’

‘My cousin told me, sir. Her brother-in-law’s a fitter in Maxwells and he came home to lunch full of it.’

‘What are they striking about, do you know?’

The Chief Stoker shook his head. ‘Couldn’t tell you that, sir.’

‘Doesn’t your cousin know?’

‘No sir. Her brother-in-law says the strike’s the thing. It doesn’t matter what it’s about.’

‘I must try and find out what this is all about,’ Dagwood said.

Dagwood could excuse the Chief Stoker’s cousin’s ignorance of the cause of the latest industrial unrest at Harvey McNichol & Drummond, but he was surprised to find that this ignorance was general. Nobody knew why the men were on strike. Furthermore, nobody cared.

‘ . . . Does it matter what they’re out for?’ said Mr McGillvray, bitterly.

‘ . . . It’s the time of year for it,’ said Happy Day.

‘ . . . Probably the full moon,’ said Sid Burlap.

‘ . . . I expect they just want to dig their gardens,’ said Sam Sollarwood.

It was Mr Tybalt, as usual, who had all the details.

‘Come here,’ he said to Dagwood. ‘Come and look out of this window.’

Once more Dagwood looked out of Mr Tybalt’s window at the gloomy ravine through which Christian must surely have trudged on his perilous path to Castle Despair.

‘ . . . Can you see that round man-hole cover down there, underneath that water tap, just by where that jet of steam’s coming out?’

‘Yes, I can see it.’

‘Can you see four holes drilled in it?’

‘I can’t say I can, sir.’

‘Just take my word for it, there are four inch holes drilled in that man-hole cover.’

Mr Tybalt paused.

‘Well?’ said Dagwood.

‘Well, those holes are what this strike’s all about.’

Dagwood searched Mr Tybalt’s face, expecting to see the tell-tale sign of a practical joke. ‘You’re pulling my leg, sir.’

‘My dear Dagwood,’ Mr Tybalt exploded, ‘I was never more serious in all my bloody life! It’s like this. Every manhole cover fitted in this yard for the last two hundred years has been made by a little foundry firm just down the road from here. They’re the same firm that replaces the iron knobs as they fall off the Great Iron Bridge. I’m told that those are their only two contracts so you can imagine they’re a pretty go-ahead, progressive sort of firm. Every man-hole cover is made of cast iron and comes here undrilled, that’s to say with no holes in it. But there’s a local by-law or something which lays down that every man-hole cover in the urban district of Oozemouth must have four or more holes or apertures in them. You may then ask, as I did when I first heard about it, why don’t the foundry drill the holes in the man-hole covers before they send them here? Ah, but that’s not the way they do things here. Whenever a new man-hole cover arrives in this yard the holes are, or were, drilled by Old Vic.’

‘Old Vic? He sounds like some sort of impresario.’

‘He’s only called Old Vic to distinguish him from his son Young Vic, the present foreman of slingers here. Old Vic was a very responsible official. He was no less a person than sole man-hole cover hole-driller for Harvey McNichol & Drummond’s. Mind you, they only had a new man-hole cover about once every twenty years so he didn’t exactly break his back doing the job. In between man-hole covers he was head plate-shop sweeper. But just lately, what with the new dock and everything, they’ve had dozens of new man-holes put in. I guess the strain must have been too much for Old Vic because he retired last Friday and the jackpot question now is, who’s going to take over from him?’

‘But anyone can drill four holes. I’d do it myself for five bob an hour and my keep.’

‘Dagwood,’ Mr Tybalt said patiently, ‘your naivety continues to astound me. Don’t you understand, this whole strike is about who should drill man-hole covers. It’s our old friend demarcation again. Way back in 1929 Old Vic must have had a sudden brainstorm because he joined the Boilermakers’ Union. He soon sobered up because he never paid his subscription, never attended any meetings and he doesn’t seem to have had anything more to do with them. But technically he’s still a boilermaker and boilermakers are like Red Indians. Blood brothers. Once an Apache, always an Apache. Once a boilermaker, always a boilermaker. Now that Old Vic’s gone, the boilermakers insist that he be replaced by another boilermaker. The shipwrights say it’s a clear case for a shipwright. So there we are.’

‘But they
can’t
be striking about who should drill holes in
man-hole
covers!’

‘This won’t be the first time whole shipyards have struck over who should drill holes in things, Dagwood, and it won’t be the last. I could tell you even more fantastic stories . . . But I won’t. Just believe me when I say that in about six weeks’ time this mighty yard will be at a complete standstill and all because of Old Vic.’

Mr Tybalt made a gesture of irritation. ‘Devil take the man, if I’d only known he was going to retire I might have slipped him a fiver or two to keep going for another few weeks, at least until they’d finished stripping out your submarine.’

‘I still can’t quite believe it,’ said Dagwood, shaking his head.

‘I had the Director of Dockyards himself on the telephone just before you came in and if he believes it I don’t see why you shouldn’t. Now push off Dagwood, and leave me to me dark thoughts. I’ve got to try and recast your programme in the light of all this. And if you pass a man-hole cover on your way. . .’

‘Yes sir?’

‘
Spit
on it, will you?’

The next time Dagwood went to ‘The Smokers’ for his usual pint and gossip with Daphne, he saw a new aspect of the strike. There were two strangers at the bar, both burly men in heavy overcoats and bowler hats. They both had florid heavy-jowled faces and were drinking double Scotches. They were talking so loudly that Dagwood could not help over-hearing their conversation.