Читать книгу The White Gate - Warwick Deeping - Страница 8

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It was after buying tobacco at the village shop that Skelton usually ran up against adventures. An imaginative person might have expected that the “King’s Head” over the way would have provided more sumptuous and regal happenings than Mr. Dutton’s general shop, but Skelton had found the “King’s Head” dull witted and rather dirty.

This morning there was no splintering of spears on Roymer Green, no succouring of some full-blooded young woman with coal-black hair, red lips, and eyes like sloes, but merely a meeting with Mr. James Woodnut, who was standing outside his cycle shop with his right hand in a sling.

The projecting boards above, fastened by iron brackets, said “Garage,” “James Woodnut, Motor and Cycle Agent,” “Repairs.” The gable end of the garage and the red-tiled walls above the shop window were plastered with coloured plates advertising petrol, bicycles, and motor tires. The garage was an old coach-house that had been glorified and fitted with a pit, a bench, and a window looking out on a backyard. The doors were half open, and Skelton could see the grey nose of a big car poking out like a pig’s snout between palings.

“Good-morning, Mr. Woodnut.”

“ ’Morning.”

The cycle and motor agent had a round, white, greasy face, with pale blue eyes that never brightened. His lower jaw, which was rather prominent, showed a black crop of unshaven hair through most of the week. The hunch of the man’s shoulders and the way he held his head were very characteristic. He was one of those slow, stocky, obstinate mortals who had made up his mind to get on in the world, and had put his head down and butted. He had butted doggedly, consistently, and with success. Starting life as a boy in a bicycle shop, he had trained himself as a mechanic, saved money, and came up spluttering and aggressively successful. He owned cars now, letting them for hire.

“Something wrong with the hand?”

“Split a finger, and it’s festered.”

“That’s bad luck.”

“It is.”

Woodnut had no manners, but Skelton liked the man, respecting his doggedness and his pluck. He could imagine how that slow-moving brain had had to worry at the technical knowledge of his trade, for Woodnut had taught himself, and was no mean mechanician.

He had had to puzzle it all through, sitting with his chin on his fists, trying to see things with those unintelligent eyes of his. “I reckon I knocked it in with a hammer,” he had said once to Skelton, “and it took some knocking, I can tell you.”

Woodnut’s independence was apt to be offensive. He did not converse, he blurted, standing with his feet wide apart, and looking as though he were for ever waiting for someone to patronise or contradict him.

“Hung up over a job?”

“What job?”

“No business of mine, you know.”

Woodnut turned and scowled at the grey car that seemed to be poking out its grey snout and demanding attention.

“Got this. Darned if I don’t wish I hadn’t. Young Gascoyne’s ‘Hawk.’ Seems to think that by giving me the job he’d make me swell with pride.”

His air of savage melancholy made Skelton want to laugh.

“My chap’s on his holiday, and I can’t touch no tools. Car to be running by three o’clock. Sent to Thursleys to tell ’em to send a chap out. Wired back couldn’t spare one. Just to put me in a corner, ’cos I’ve cut in on them about ’ere. Young Gascoyne will come gassing down ’ere, and I don’t know as I shall be able to keep civil.”

“What’s wrong with the car?”

Woodnut swung the doors open, and began pumping out jets of technical jargon that only an expert would have understood. Skelton was the only man in the neighbourhood to whom he would have condescended to talk in such a strain, but, to Jim Woodnut, Skelton was something between a genius and a joss.

“A beauty, ain’t she? And that bloomin’ fool of an amater does knock ’er about shameful!”

Skelton’s eyes warmed as he looked at the great car painted battleship grey, with its gleaming brasswork and lamps. It said so much to him, this creation of man’s intricate and ingenious mind, this almost live thing begotten in the furnace of brain and workshop. To young Herbert Gascoyne it was just a luxurious contrivance for rushing hither and thither, a sort of purring triumphal car to carry his youthful swank. He liked to talk about “top-gear runs” and spasmodic rushes through imaginary police traps, but he had quite a vague idea as to what a cam was, and the exquisite subtleties of engineering craft were wholly beyond him.

Jim Woodnut’s contempt for young Gascoyne was unspeakable. It was the instinctive contempt of the man who had suffered and laboured to learn for the smoking-room amateur who had never worked and who knew nothing thoroughly.

“ ’E does bang ’er about.”

They examined the car together.

“I say, Woodnut, there are only two or three hours’ work wanted to finish this job.”

“That’s so.”

“What’s the time? Eleven? Look here, jump me into a suit of your overalls and I’ll finish the job.”

“You do it?”

“Do you think I can’t?”

“Wasn’t thinking nothin’ of the kind. But ’tain’t your business to be working ’ere—and on that young chap’s car.”

“Think I’m proud?”

“It ain’t for you to do work for that young squirt. It’s my livin’, and I’d throw ’is money back at ’im for tuppence.”

Skelton laughed.

“It’s for the car’s sake. She’s sick, poor dear. I say, Woodnut, if you let out like this—Half of us may be fools, but——”

“Do you think I let my tongue run with everybody? Not me!”

“Come along, then. Fetch me a pair of your overalls, and I’ll get to work.”

Woodnut still bristled.

“It’s business. I pay you for this job—top price.”

“Oh, all right. It will keep me in tobacco for a month.”

“That’s square.”

Skelton smiled to himself as he took off his coat and hung it on a nail. “Oh, you difficult, touchy, cross-grained, efficient, independent beggar!” he thought. “Don’t I know the type? Hadn’t I something of it in me myself? One has to try and be a bit of everybody in order to understand everybody. And that’s life.”

Jim Woodnut brought him a suit of clean blue overalls, and Skelton got into them after taking off his collar and tie.

“I can lend you one ’and.”

“Let’s have the doors wide open.”

“You don’t mind fools garping?”

“Not a bit.”

About half-past two Bertie Gascoyne strolled into Woodnut’s garage, his coat unbuttoned, and a tennis racket under his arm. He was in flannels and white boots, the trousers well creased, the boots spotless. Woodnut had gone up the village on some piece of business, and Bertie Gascoyne found Skelton doubled over one of the front mudguards with his head under the bonnet. The blue coat and trousers were misleading, and if the mechanic was not Woodnut, he was—well, a mechanic.

“Got her ready?”

“Not quite.”

“She’s got to be ready by three. Where’s Woodnut?”

“Gone up the village.”

“Who’re you? Chap he’s got over from Thursleys?”

“No, I’m a casual.”

Skelton came out from cover, straightened up, and looked at Bertie Gascoyne with a disconcerting twinkle in his eyes. The younger man stared.

“I say, I didn’t know——”

“That’s all right. Woodnut has a poisoned hand, and I have been amusing myself.”

Young Gascoyne eyed him dubiously, and Skelton, immensely amused, guessed what was passing through the other’s mind. It was a piece of cheek, this fiddling with another chap’s car. Besides, he—Bertie Gascoyne—didn’t want some blessed amateur messin’ about and makin’ a muck of things.

“I say, though, what was wrong with her?”

Skelton got back to work, and gave Bertie Gascoyne several mouthfuls of highly technical material to munch.

“Oh! That’s it, is it?”

He looked down glumly at Skelton, vaguely disliking the elder man for a certain something that chafed the smooth surface of his own conceit.

“Thought it was that. She’s been a bit tricky lately. Think you’ve got her all right?”

“Yes.”

“You know somethin’ about cars?”

“Just a little; always like a chance at a bit of tinkering.”

Bertie Gascoyne relapsed into sulky, distrustful silence.

Skelton, intent upon screwing up a nut, glanced round presently to find that the young man had disappeared. The grey-coloured double doors of the garage thrown wide open framed a view of Roymer Green, with the red brick pumphouse in the centre and a row of half-timbered houses in the background. The big chestnut tree outside Mr. Dutton’s shop thrust one half of its green dome into the picture.

Bertie Gascoyne was crossing the Green as though he were going in the direction of Mr. Dutton’s shop, and from under the shade of the chestnut tree came a figure in a pink linen dress. A pink sunshade went up where the white glare of the road began.

Skelton saw young Gascoyne raise his hat and cross the road. The girl faltered and stopped. They stood talking together, Bertie Gascoyne swinging his racket to and fro, Constance Brent looking up at him from under the shade of her parasol.

Skelton stood up, a spanner in one hand, a cleaning rag in the other. He was in the shadow, and it made his watching face appear darker and more intent. Bertie Gascoyne was talking with a free and easy graciousness, swinging his racket, and staring hard into the girl’s face. She appeared uneasy, as though conscious of an undesired publicity, her dark eyes throwing flitting glances from side to side.

They talked for little more than a minute, and then Skelton saw Constance Brent turn away rather abruptly and walk on down the village. Bertie Gascoyne went on towards Mr. Dutton’s shop. In five minutes he was back in the garage, smoking a cigarette, and looking peculiarly pleased with himself.

“Nearly ready?”

“In another five minutes.”

“Just went across to Dutton’s. He gets me the stuff I smoke.”

The line of Skelton’s jaw was not particularly amiable. He knew men pretty thoroughly, and the full-blooded young animal standing in the doorway was neither a very complex study nor a very pleasing one. The hard blue eyes were gloating over something in the distance, the selfish eyes of the male hunting down something feminine.

Skelton had a moment of chivalrous anger.

“Damn the cub,” he said to himself. “How dared the young beast look at that girl like that!”