Ancestral Vices (18 page)

But when he arrived the pickets had disappeared and workers were streaming out through the Mill gates. Yapp stopped a middle-aged woman.

‘Strike? What strike? No blooming strike here, and not likely to be one either. Pay’s too good,’ she said and hurried on, leaving Yapp more disillusioned and puzzled than ever. He turned and made his way up the hill
towards Rabbitry Road. Rosie would be getting supper ready and he was both physically and emotionally hungry.

Willy’s needs were rather different. He was exhausted. In his little life he couldn’t remember having walked so far in one day. In the abattoir he had hardly had to walk at all. The carcasses had come to him. Anyway, he had no intention of trudging up the hill for supper and trudging down again to the Horse and Barge for beer. He’d have his supper there and then go home early to see what the long-legged Professor was up to. He went round the back of the pub and was presently busy getting as much stew inside him as he could manage before opening time.

As dusk fell over Buscott it would have been impossible for the most acute observer to detect anything in the little town to suggest the seething emotions that lay beneath the surface. At the New House Emmelia dead-headed her roses with a rather more ruthless hand than usual. In the kitchen of Number 9 Rabbitry Road Walden Yapp consumed more hot scones than was his wont and eyed Mrs Coppett with an expression of such bewildered infatuation that it was hard to tell whether he was simply addicted to hot buttered scones or had fallen madly in love with a thoroughly unsuitable woman. For her part Rosie’s simple thoughts revolved around the question of asking him to take her for a drive in the old Vauxhall. She had only been in a car three times, once when Willy had been bitten by the badger and she had been rushed to the hospital and twice when she had been given lifts by visiting social workers. And since she had spent part of the day reading a
Confessions
magazine and there had been several lurid stories in which cars played a remarkably important part, the notion of going for a drive was much on her mind.

But the clearest indication of seething emotions was to be found above and below the bar at the Horse and
Barge where Frederick was questioning Willy about Professor Yapp’s habits, a process he tried to facilitate by filling the dwarf’s glass as soon as it was empty and which Willy, who only knew that Yapp walked too bloody fast for the likes of him, had to amplify by partial invention and definite exaggeration. With each bottle the invention grew wilder.

‘Kissing her he was in my own fucking kitchen,’ he said after his fifth bottled beer. ‘Kissing my Rosie.’

Frederick looked at him incredulously.

‘Go on with you,’ said Mr Parmiter, evidently sharing Frederick’s scepticism, ‘who’d want to kiss your Rosie? I ask you.’

‘I would,’ said Willy, ‘I’m her lawful husband.’

‘Why don’t you then?’

Willy stared at him lividly over the bar. ‘Because she’s too bloody big and I’m not.’

‘Why don’t you get her to sit down or stand on a chair?’

‘Wouldn’t make no difference,’ said Willy lugubriously. ‘There’s no way of doing her and kissing her at the same time. It’s got to be one or the other.’

‘You’re not suggesting that Professor Yapp was making love to your wife?’ asked Frederick hopefully.

Willy picked up the intonation and answered accordingly. His glass was empty. ‘He was and all. Caught them at it I did. She had on the nylon nightie I gave her Christmas before last and she was all made up with green eyeshades.’

‘Eyeshades?’ said Mr Parmiter. ‘What the hell was she doing wearing eyeshades?’

‘Betraying me,’ said Willy, ‘that’s what. Ten years we been married and . . .’

‘Another bottle, Mr Groce,’ said Frederick, wishing to get back to Yapp. Mr Groce filled Willy’s glass. ‘Now then, Willy, where did you see this happen?’

‘In the kitchen.’

‘In the kitchen?’

‘In the fucking kitchen.’

‘Surely you mean from the kitchen,’ said Frederick. ‘You saw them from the kitchen.’

‘I never. I was in the garden. They was in the kitchen. They never saw me. But I gave her a good hiding when I got upstairs.’

Frederick and Mr Parmiter looked at him in astonishment.

‘Did too. If you don’t believe me, you ask Rosie if I didn’t. She’ll tell you.’

‘Well I never,’ said Mr Parmiter. Frederick said nothing. In his devious mind schemes were stirring. They involved jealous and enraged dwarves. ‘And what did you do to Roger The Lodger The Sod, give him the old heave-ho too?’

‘Couldn’t do that. Paid a week’s rent in advance he had and Mr Frederick had told me to keep an eye on him.’

‘You’ve done that all right,’ continued Mr Parmiter. ‘Still, I doubt if I could have stood by watching my wife
and some bugger having it off in the kitchen. I’d have fixed the bastard proper.’

‘Maybe you would,’ said Willy, made melancholy by his own invention and a sixth bottle of beer. ‘You’re big enough.’

‘If you can knock the stuffing out of that missus of yours I’d have thought you’d have been more than a match for knock-kneed professors.’

‘Different with women. Rosie’s seen my little waggler and she don’t want ten inches of that up her innards, do she?’

Mr Parmiter took a long swig of beer thoughtfully. He was clearly considering Mrs Coppett’s sexual appetites and the proportions of dwarves.

‘Ten inches?’ he asked finally. ‘Well I suppose you’d be the first to know but all the same . . .’

‘Measured it myself,’ said Willy proudly. ‘With a ruler. And it used to be longer but it’s a bit worn down now. I’ll show you if you like. Ate supper with it. It’s in the kitchen.’

Before Mr Parmiter could recover sufficiently from the evident ubiquity of Willy’s little waggler to say he didn’t want to see the damned thing, Willy shot into the kitchen. He returned with a large and extremely nasty-looking knife. Mr Parmiter gazed at it with relief, Frederick with intense interest.

‘Yes, well, I see what you mean,’ said Mr Parmiter. ‘You could do someone a lot of mischief with that.’

Frederick nodded his agreement. ‘As a matter of fact
with law the way it is now a man killing his wife’s lover usually gets a suspended sentence,’ he said.

‘Always did,’ said Mr Parmiter gleefully, ‘suspended with a rope round his neck. Now they wouldn’t even fine you.’

Frederick bought another round of drinks and for the next hour, with Mr Parmiter’s unconscious assistance, primed Willy with tales of crimes of passion. By closing time Willy was stropping his waggler on the end of his belt and had worked himself up into a lather of jealousy. For his part Frederick was positively cheerful. With any luck Aunt Emmelia’s order to get rid of the egregious Yapp would be fulfilled to the letter. Urging Willy on to keep an eye on his victim, and sliding another tenner across the bar, he went out into the fading light with a clear conscience. A car passed and completed his happiness. Beside him Mr Parmiter gaped after it.

‘Blimey, did you see what I saw? And I thought Willy was exaggerating.’

‘It’s a sad world,’ sighed Frederick. ‘Still, there’s no accounting for tastes.’

At the wheel of the old Vauxhall Walden Yapp would have agreed with him. His taste for the company of Rosie Coppett was certainly unaccountable and the world was a sadder place for it. The childlike pleasure she took in riding in the car played havoc with his extended concern while her closeness and the car’s erratic suspension made
other extensions inevitable. Torn between the desire to accept those extras she had offered so vividly the night before and a conscience that would never permit him to seduce the wife of a Porg, Yapp drove ten miles along country lanes and twice through Buscott without a thought for what other people might think. Beside him Rosie swayed and giggled and once when he rounded a bend too fast grasped his arm so excitedly that he almost drove the car through the hedge into a field. When finally he stopped outside the house in Rabbitry Road and was promptly given a kiss of gratitude, he almost lost control.

‘You mustn’t,’ he muttered hoarsely.

‘Mustn’t what?’ asked Rosie.

‘Kiss me like that.’

‘Go on with you. Kissing’s nice.’

‘I know that but what would people think?’

‘I don’t care,’ said Rosie and gave him another kiss so vigorously that Yapp didn’t care either.

‘Come inside and I’ll give you a proper kiss,’ said Rosie, and getting out of the car announced loudly to several observant neighbours that she’d been for a ride with a real gentleman and he deserved a kiss and cuddle, didn’t he? She bounced through the garden gnomes leaving Walden Yapp to struggle with his conscience and a most uncomfortable pair of underpants. He couldn’t possibly go into the house in this condition. The poor woman would draw the obvious conclusion and then there was Willy to consider. He might be home by now and his conclusions would be even more fraught with danger
than Rosie’s. Yapp started the car again and was about to drive off when she appeared round the side of the house.

‘Wait for me,’ she shouted.

‘Can’t,’ Yapp called back. ‘This is something I must do myself.’

The car moved forward leaving Rosie Coppett and several interested neighbours in some uncertainty. Not that Yapp was particularly sure himself. Never before in a life dedicated to the redistribution of wealth, rational relationships and the attainment of total knowledge had he had an involuntary emission in the twilight. It was most disturbing and he could only rationally account for it by blaming the state of the road and the car’s aged shock absorbers. Not even that combination, now that he came to think about it. The car had been stationary at the time. No, it had been a physiological reaction to Rosie’s kiss and for the first time Yapp had to concede that there was something to be said for the theory of animal magnetism. There was also something to be said for stopping as soon as he could and discarding his underpants.

Yapp braked and pulled into the side of the road and got out. He was just about to undo his belt when headlights appeared round the corner. Yapp crouched behind the Vauxhall until the car had passed and had to repeat the process of hiding a few minutes later when a car approached from the other direction.

‘Bother,’ said Yapp, and decided that if he was going to be floodlit every few seconds he’d better go somewhere
else. But where? A gate in the hedge suggested that things might be easier on the other side. Yapp climbed over, discovered in the process that the gate was topped by barbed wire, scratched his hands and having fallen over still found that he was floodlit when a car came round the corner at the top of the hill. He stood up and blinked round. Across the field there seemed to be some sort of coppice. He’d be invisible to passing traffic there. Yapp strode stickily off across the field, climbed a stone wall and presently was removing his pants and doing his best to wipe the ravages of passion from his trousers. In the darkness it was not easy, and to make matters more unpleasant it began to rain. Yapp crouched under the cover of a small fir tree and cursed.

Willy left the Horse and Barge drunkenly. He lurched up Tythe Lane and had an altercation with a Corgi at the back gate of Mrs Gogan’s garden before stabbing several plastic dustbins with his little waggler as a way of letting off steam about dogs that yapped and about Yapp himself. From the lane he crossed the main road after debating whether there were really two cars seemingly coming towards him abreast or merely one. The headlights suggested two and even when the car had passed Willy couldn’t be sure. The only fixed star in his mental firmament was that if he caught Rosie doling out extras to Professor Yapp when he got home he’d show the swine what his own tripes looked like. In short it was a
very nasty dwarf who weaved his way up the hill as it began to rain. Willy ignored the rain. He was used to getting soaked but his feet had begun to hurt again. That was another score he had to settle with Yapp. He wasn’t going to spend the next day trotting round town after the long-legged sod. To rest his feet he climbed onto an ancient mile-post and promptly fell off it, in the process losing his beloved little waggler.

‘Bugger,’ said Willy and proceeded to grope about on the ground for it. But the knife had disappeared. Willy got down on all fours and crawled out into the road and had just grasped the blade of the knife and was wishing he hadn’t when he became vaguely aware of a noise. Something was coming down the road towards him something dark and large. With a desperate effort he staggered to his feet and tried to scramble up the bank. But it was too late. A moment later Willy Coppett was a badly mangled dwarf and Mr Jipson had stopped the tractor.

He climbed out of the cab and went round to disentangle what ever bloody animal had got in his way. He had in mind a sheep or even more awkwardly a cow but a brief examination was enough to tell him it was neither. Cows didn’t wear size three shoes and no sheep he had ever known had buttons down its front. Mr Jipson struck a match and before it was blown out by the wind and rain he was a terrified man. He had just killed Buscott’s sole and very popular dwarf. There was no doubt about identification and in Mr Jipson’s mind no doubt that
Willy was dead. You didn’t drive large tractors into small people at high speed without killing them. Just to make sure he felt Willy’s unbloodied wrist for the pulse beat.

‘Fuck,’ said Mr Jipson and considered the legal consequences of the accident, not to mention his local standing. Buscott might not object to blood sports, but killing dwarves came into an altogether different category. Besides he had been driving without lights, had no number plates on the tractor and far too much alcohol in his body. By adding these factors to Willy Coppett’s popularity it took him less than thirty seconds to decide that this was one accident he had no intention of reporting. He’d dump the body in the ditch and go home. But the body would be found, there would be police enquiries . . . Ditches weren’t enough. Besides, he had passed a car a hundred yards back up the road and while he hadn’t noticed anyone in it they were bound to be about somewhere. They’d be wondering why he’d stopped. Then again . . . Mr Jipson’s thoughts turned to cunning. He walked up the road and peered into the car. No one there. No one over the gate. He thought for a moment and tried the door. It opened. Supposing he took the handbrake off and rolled the car forward . . . No, that wouldn’t do. He’d have to move the tractor first and whoever was wherever they were might come back at any moment. On the other hand there was a chance here of getting Willy’s body as far away from the scene of the accident as possible. Mr Jipson opened the boot and left it open.