The Lamp of the Wicked (2 page)

Too many blind eyes had been turned, this was it. Too many people – even so-called public servants, some of them – looking the other way, saying what’s it matter if a few Londoners gets taken down the road; they got money to burn.

Bad attitude, sneering at the incomers, ripping them off. They were still people, the incomers. People with dreams, and there was nothing wrong with dreams.

Mostly.

What about Gomer Parry, though? Would he have backed off like the rest or looked the other way, if he’d had any suspicion of how deep it went? What about Gomer? Just a little bloke with wild white hair and wire-rimmed glasses and a sense of what was right and honourable: the plant-hire code, digger chivalry.

No point in even asking the question, because, the way it started, this was just a drainage issue. Just a matter of pipes and shit.

***

It had seemed odd sometimes to Gomer that his and Roddy’s trenches had never crossed, even allowing for the fact that they operated from different ends of the county. Plant hire: big machinery in a small world.

But it was happening now, no avoiding it on this damp and windy Sunday – a weary old day to be leaving your fireside, and if Minnie had still been alive likely Gomer would’ve put it off. But the old fireside wasn’t the same no more, and she’d sounded near-desperate, this lady, and only up here weekends, anyway.

A Londoner, as you’d expect. Londoners were always looking further and further west in the mad rush to get country air down their lungs, like it was some kind of new drug. Rural properties in Herefordshire never stayed long on the market nowadays, especially the ones that really
looked
like rural properties, even if there were clear drawbacks.

Take this one. Classic example, see. What you had was this lovely old farmhouse, with a couple of acres, on the A49 between Hereford and Ross. Built in the rusty stone you got in these parts, and from the front there were good long, open views over flat fields to the Black Mountains.

But before that there was the A49 itself.

Gomer put a match to an inch of ciggy, October rain sluicing down on his cap, as another five cars and a big van came whizzing past – and this was a Sunday. All right, fair play, he spent his own days bouncing around on big, growling diggers, but no way Gomer could live so close to a main road like this, with fast cars and all the ground-shaking, fume-belching, brake- screeching juggernauts heading for the M50 and the Midlands.

Yet for this Mrs Pawson, in her tight white jeans, it was some type of peace, after London.
Oh, we’d had enough of it, Mr Parry. Or, at least
, I
had. We couldn’t hear ourselves think any more, and I was convinced Gus had the beginnings of asthma. I told my husband that if we didn’t get out now we never would, not this side of retirement. We desperately needed peace, above all. Somewhere to walk
.

Walk? Pretty soon, in Gomer’s view, you’d give up going for walks, being as how there was a good two hundred yards of no-pavement between you and the nearest public footpath. For half the price, the Pawsons could’ve got theirselves a modern place, with no maintenance headaches, up some quiet lane.

But modern places weren’t part of the dream.
This
was the dream: eighteenth-century, a bit lopsided, no damp-proof course, dodgy wiring.

And private drainage.

The FOR SALE sign lay in the damp gravel at the side of the driveway. Gomer reckoned it’d be back up in the hedge within the year. They’d get their money back, no problem at all – the way Hereford prices were going these days, they’d likely get it back twice over. Even allowing for what it was going to cost them to put this drainage to rights, after what Roddy Lodge had done to it.

Gomer tramped back up the drive, past his bottle-green van. It had GOMER PARRY PLANT HIRE on the sides and across both back doors in white. Nev’s idea, this was –
You gotter advertise, Gomer, gotter put it about, see. Your ole clients is dyin’ off faster ’n you can dig their graves
.

The other side of the van, Gomer could see the top of the installation poking out of the grass not two yards from the property.

Efflapure:
state-of-the-art sewerage.

Gomer had never even heard of an
Efflapure
before. Nev was likely right about him losing touch. He was well out of touch with the kind of rip-off junk getting unloaded on city folk who thought all they had to do was flush the lavvy and the council did the rest.

As for where Lodge had put it – un-bloody-believable!

‘Mr Lodge showed us several brochures,’ Mrs Pawson had told him earlier, ‘and gave us the telephone numbers of two other people who’d had these particular models installed.’

‘Phone ’em, did you?’

Mrs Pawson hadn’t even looked embarrassed. ‘Oh, we had far too much to think about.’

Woulder made no difference, anyway,’ Gomer conceded. ‘Both be stooges, see. Friends of his, telling you you couldn’t get no finer system anywhere in the country. Load of ole wallop.’

He started scratting about in the fallen leaves, uncovering a meter-thing under an aluminium shield, with another one like it inside the house, to tell you where the shit level in the processing tank was at. Waste of time and money. Folk had got along happily for centuries without knowing where their shit level was at.

Presently, out she came again, under a big red and yellow golfing umbrella.

‘So what’s the actual verdict, Mr Parry?’ Attractive-looking lady, mind, in her sharp-faced way. Fortyish, and a few inches taller than Gomer, but weren’t they all?

‘You wannit straight?’ Gomer took out his ciggy. Mrs Pawson was looking at it like he’d got a bonfire going with piles of old tyres. She took a step back.

‘It’s the reason we came to you, Mr Parry. Our surveyor said that you, of all people, would indeed give it to us… straight.’

Gomer nodded. This surveyor, Darren Booth, he was a reputable boy. He’d said these Pawsons could be looking at trouble, and he wasn’t wrong. Gomer looked over at the Efflapure, blinking through his rain-blobbed glasses.

‘All your ground’s to the far side of the house, ennit? That orchard?’

‘We did try to acquire some more, but—’

‘And how far’s
he
from the house?’ Gomer nodded at the Efflapure. ‘Four foot? Five foot? Bugger-all distance, ennit? You don’t
do
that, see, Mrs P. Should’ve been set back, that thing,
well
bloody back. Likely Lodge done it this way to save a few yards o’ pipe and having to go into the old orchard, mess with roots and stuff. But you
never
digs it in that close to a house, specially—’

‘We specifically…’ Mrs Pawson all but stamped her nice clean trainer in the mud. ‘We specifically
told
him that cost was not an issue.’

‘Ah…’ Gomer waved a hand. ‘Some folk, they’d cut corners for the sake of it. Don’t reckon he’d’ve passed on no savings to you, mind. So, er…’ Holding back a bit, because this wasn’t good. ‘What exackly did young Darren say could happen?’

‘He didn’t.’ Mrs Pawson shivered under her umbrella. ‘He just said it could become a problem and advised us to get a second opinion, and he suggested you, as… as the most honest contractor he knew. For heaven’s sake, Mr Parry, what
does
it mean?’

Staring at him, all wild-eyed. She was up here on her own this weekend – husband still in London, kiddie with the nanny – and she was finding out, in the mud and the rain and the wind, how country life wasn’t always a bowl of cherries. She looked thin and lost under the big brolly, in her white jeans and her clean trainers, and Gomer felt sorry for her.

He sighed. Nobody liked jobs like this, where you had to clean up after another outfit. But this time it was Roddy Lodge, and Roddy Lodge had it coming to him.

He went over to the house wall. No way you could be entirely sure, see, but…

‘See this bit of a crack in the stonework?’

‘Is that new?’

‘Sure t’be. What he’s done, see, is dug ’isself a nice pit for this article, eight, nine feet down, right up against the ole foundations.’

‘You’re saying’ – her jaw trembling – ‘it could cause the
house to collapse
?’

Gomer thought about this, pushing back his cap.

‘Well,’ he said, ‘not
all
the house.’

They agreed it needed moving, this Efflapure, to a safer location. If you accepted that such an object was actually needed at all.

‘See, I wouldn’t’ve advised you to get one o’ them fancy things,’ Gomer said. ‘Wasteo’ money, my view of it. You got a nice, gentle slope to the ground there. Needs a simpler tank and a soakaway, like there was before. Primitive, mabbe, but he works, and he goes on workin’. No problems, no fancy meters to keep checking. Low maintenance, no renewable parts. Get him emptied every year or two, then forget all about him. Tried and tested, see, Mrs P. Tried and tested.’

A gust of wind snatched at the brolly. Mrs Pawson huffed and stuttered. ‘So what on earth are we supposed to do with the… Efflapure?’

‘Get your Mr Lodge to take the whole kit back, I’d say. Tell him what your surveyor said. He’ll know Darren Booth, see, know how he puts ’isself around the county, talks to the right people, so if you and your husband puts it over to Lodge, tackful-like, that it wouldn’t look so good if it got out he’d been cutting corners to save ’isself a few quid, you’d have most of your money back off him pretty quick, I’d say.’ Gomer nodded seriously, figuring this was good advice – at least let Lodge know there were a few folk onto his games. ‘Who was it told you to go to the feller in the first place, you don’t mind me askin’?’

‘He…’ She brought out some folded paper from a back pocket of her jeans and handed it to Gomer. ‘Somebody… pushed this leaflet through the letter box.’

Gomer opened it out. There was a drawing on the front of a roses-round-the-door Tudor cottage. Cartoon man in a doublet-thing with a ruffle round his neck and a cartoon woman in a long frock and an old-fashioned headdress. They both had big clothes-pegs on their noses. Underneath the drawing, it said:

IN DAYS OF OLDE,
DAYS BEFORE…
EFFLAPURE

Gomer tried not to wince.

Mrs Pawson said in a panicky voice, ‘It was a
local
firm. We thought—’

Gomer shook his head. ‘Not what I’d call a
firm
, exackly. Lodge, he operates out of a yard, back of Ross-on-Wye, what I’ve yeard, with a coupler part-timers on sickness benefit.’

‘But he’s an authorized agent for… for Efflapure.’

‘Agent for more dodgy outfits than you can shake a stick at,’ Gomer said.

‘So you… You know him.’

‘Well… I knows
of
him. Seen him around.’

Roddy, with his baseball cap and his wraparound dark glasses. Roddy and his big, whipped-cream smile.

‘Can you…?’ Mrs Pawson gripped the shaft of the umbrella with both hands, knuckles white. ‘Can
you
take it away?’

‘Me?’

‘You could probably make some money out of it, couldn’t you?’

‘Well…’ Gomer scratched his cheek. ‘There
are
places one o’ these might be suitable. Working farm, light industrial, mabbe. We could likely come to an arrangement. But I gotter say, you’d be better off going back to this Lodge and—’

‘No!’ Her whole body a-quiver now. ‘I don’t want that. I don’t want him here again.’

Traffic swished past, all mixed in with the wind. There was a sudden thump in the leaves near their feet. Gomer saw that a big, ripe Bramley had tumbled from one of the trees, but Mrs Pawson jumped and looked behind her like it could be something a deal bigger than that. Now she was actually clutching his arm, the umbrella all over the place.

‘Mr Parry, how soon could you do it?’

‘You sure you don’t wanner talk this over with your husband?’

‘How
soon
?’

‘Well, you won’t be yere, will you, ‘less it’s a weekend?’

‘It doesn’t matter whether we’re here or not. Could you do it tomorrow?’

‘
Tomorrow?
’ Gomer was more than doubtful. ‘I’d have to put it to Nev – my nephew, my partner in the business…’

‘Look,’ Mrs Pawson said, teeth gritted, shivering seriously now, ‘I just want it out of the way. We’re new to the area and we made a mistake. It was a mistake and we’re paying for it. I want it out and I don’t want…
him
doing it, do you understand?’

Likely this was when Gomer should have spotted something. The look on her face: this kind of… well,
fear
, really. No getting round that.

The up-and-down of it was that he was sorry for this London woman, alone in her farmhouse with no farm attached, husband likely bored with it already. Smart-looking, educated woman washed up here, marooned in the flat fields with the traffic blasting past.

After what happened, he’d often think what else he might have said, how else he could’ve handled it – like stalling a while, taking advice, checking Roddy out a bit more. But what was to check out? What else was there to know about an operator, a wide boy, a conman, a ducker and diver, a bit of a poser?

‘
Please
,’ Mrs Pawson said.

Gomer wished he knew what else was bothering her but he figured she was never going to tell him. He nodded. ‘All right, then.’ What else could he say? ‘Tuesday. What about Tuesday?’

It didn’t feel right, even then.

S
OMETIMES, YOU JUST
wanted to shake her. You wanted to get her into a corner and scream,
Why don’t you just get on with it? You are a mature woman, you are unmarried. Like, being a priest is supposed to condition your hormonal responses or something? It’s the only life you’ve
got,
for Christ’s sake… whatever else you might think.

Jane was leaning forward, across the kitchen table, making no secret about trying to listen.

It was getting dark now in the big, beamed kitchen and Mum was partly in shadow, standing in the corner by the door, taking the call on the cordless. She looked very small but quite ghostly in her grey alb. Her expression hadn’t changed. Normally, when she picked up the phone and found out who was on the line, she’d
react
– like smile in relief, look curious, or maybe grimace. Like, she’d instinctively make a face if it was, say, the Bishop or – worse – Uncle Ted. The fact that there was no reaction at all this time meant that she was working seriously hard at concealing something she didn’t want Jane to know about. Most of the time, Mum was an open book – and it wasn’t by Proust or Joyce or anybody difficult.