Narrow Dog to Wigan Pier Read online

They walk about the jungle

  Where it is quite hot

  All they do is eat ants

  Every night and day

  When they get a lot of ants

  They shout Hip Hip Hooray

  The last time Monica and I went on a camping holiday in France I kept looking round like a cat that had lost her kittens. Are they behind the tent? Have they gone to the lake? Are they safe?

  They grew up and left home, explained Monica.

  And indeed they did – Lucy is nearly fifty now.

  Clifford told me the other day that when his boy Max was sixteen he would take him to London. They would take a suite in a posh hotel and go to a strip club and drink beer and see the Thames at the Prospect of Whitby and the Schneider Trophy monoplane in the Science Museum.

  Just like when I was sixteen and you took me, Dad.

  Cliff, can I come?

  CHAPTER NINE

  SHARDLOW TO THE TIDAL TRENT

  Yellow Fish

  The Japanese turned out to be human beings

  The moles are closing in – Make the blood green – The most interesting job in the world – I chose life, not art – We bounded over the snow – Walls of white foam – I never got to grips with Bangkok – As if a gunboat lay offshore – He answered even the damnfool questions – The whorehouse Hilton, Taipei – Out with your vippets – In Nagoya little children would burst into tears – I am an old man and I will be dead soon – You are burning the furniture

  YOU HAVE GOT to stop at the Ragley Boat Stop, south of Derby. It has a wooden wharf with rings. There is a field. There is a pub. Ten years ago we had a bottle of wine and two steak dinners for a tenner. When I am very old I will go and live there.

  We did not stay to live out our days at Ragley but puttered on to Shardlow, where the canal drops into the stripling Trent. A main road goes through Shardlow, and the canal slips under it with such discretion that motorists wonder why there is a Navigation Inn so far from the sea.

  A few years ago on our way to the Inland Waterway Association Festival we found a kilo of windfall plums on the towpath by our boat at Shardlow, so Monica put some of that summer into jars.

  People do not gather wild fruit as once they did – blackberries, damsons, little yellow plums, pears in dying orchards. At Sandon Lock near Stone there is a garden with an apple tree blessed with a bumper crop year after year, and every year the apples fall and rot.

  We go to the Inland Waterways Festivals from time to time to sell books. We have a tiny stall in the corner of a tent, and Jim and Jess sleep under the stall, coming out for photo calls, or rushing out screaming if a dog passes by that they don’t like. We love meeting the fans – I like that bit where you say If you don’t shut up Jim it’s into a sack and over the side – and the other writers and the magazine editors and the canal painters and the chaps with waistcoats who make belts with a loop for your windlass.

  Today we lock down on to the Trent and away to Trent Junction, where the Trent joins the River Soar and flows east, and the Erewash Canal heads north. The river currents heave the boat and I feel the tugging under my feet and the pull of the tiller and I long for the old adventures in the great estuaries of America and check around me for alligators.

  Flat country, few trees, wide, light. A mooring by a stony bank. Power stations – they will pursue us all the way to York and back, growing ahead or slipping behind, occupying the sky.

  A walk up the Erewash Canal. A lad with four grey brindled creatures on leads. They look like whippets, but they are very small. They are electric with energy, doing star-jumps in the air on the end of their leads. Jim and Jess looked on them kindly – sight-hounds usually get on well with each other. They are whippets, said the lad – small ones. We race them – they are faster than the ordinary ones like yours.

  Further on a fisherman. Excuse me, I said. When I came up there were five molehills round you, and now there are twelve. The moles are closing in.

  * * *

  There never was a more uncomfortable and uncontrollable vehicle than my Morgan, but love knows no sense and I kept the ridiculous vehicle for six years. It was beautiful with the slits in its bonnet and the strap to hold the bonnet closed and the wire wheels and the flaring wheel arches. There were few flarers more flaring than the Morgan wheel arches.

  There was not enough room for both my feet in the pedal well and the canvas top leaked and it steered like a drunken pig. But anyway here I am steering into the drive of Ragdale Hall for a week’s break.

  When I got into reception I was met by a lady who believed that a loud and rude manner was a sign of high class and distinction. Not a bad soul in fact but no asset to a business.

  There were women everywhere but no men! Oh Lord this is a retreat for women who will talk about make-up and exfoliation all day and I will stand out like an idiot and the week will be a disaster – I had better go home.

  Then I spotted a man – there were four of us.

  There was a programme of talks and exercises and the countryside around was beautiful and I would go jogging along the sides of the fields with the manager. There was very little food – six hundred calories a day, and the hunger grew and grew.

  One of the guests looked just like a fat version of Trevor Nunn, the famous theatrical director, and turned out to be Trevor Nunn, the famous theatrical director. He was a pleasant chap, very interested in Plan B. He knew most of the poets who had read for us. I had lately been swept away by his TV production of Antony and Cleopatra, with Janet Suzman, his wife at that time. I told him so and he was pleased. I was surprised he was so pleased, but however famous you are and on whatever scale your work is known you can only please people one at a time and it is nice to be told about it. I understand that now in my little way.

  Trevor Nunn had seen quite a lot of Yevtushenko, the Russian poet, and told me stories of him. The best was about when Yevtushenko saw Trevor Nunn’s production of Macbeth. What did you think of it? asked Trevor. Yevtushenko took his arm. Trevor, he said, make the blood green!

  If you try living on six hundred calories a day you will know what the thirty inmates of Ragdale Hall suffered during that week. There were no classes in the afternoon and a dozen of us would sit in a semi-circle in the bay window smoking and talking and longing for food and home and for anything to happen.

  If something does not happen soon, I said, I am going to go mad.

  The roof above reception fell in, just missing the rude receptionist. Masonry crashed through her desk and glass and plaster covered the floor.

  At the Department of Industry in Whitehall there were civil servants on the other side of the table like a row of stoats. Research Associates had been invited to bid for a worldwide study into a new type of ceramic manufacturing machinery.

  I opened my briefcase and my papers exploded across the table. Now I have your attention, I said, we will begin.

  We had a few things to offer – as the oil shock eased I had recruited some multilingual staff who were pretty good – alone in the market research industry we recruited via national advertising. Oxbridge recruits we found risky – too often they cracked under pressure. I suppose the best Oxbridge people were not going to work for a little firm in the sticks. A star from a provincial university might better realize the level and romance of the work. After all, market research of the type we carried out is the most interesting job in the world and the only profession I know where you are paid to tell the truth.

  Three members of my staff sat with me, looking keen. I gathered my papers and the examining board tried to look serious. We have a few worries about your proposal, Mr Darlington. You do not have any engineering experience in your firm?

  But this is a marketing job – you want to know how many of these dust-pressing machines exist, and the speed of future uptake, and the opportunities for our chaps to make them and sell them. That’s nothing much to do with engineering.

  How do you propose to get this information?

  From
the big ceramic manufacturers and also the dust-press suppliers themselves. Research Associates interviews competitors as a matter of course.

  But no one does that!

  We think of ourselves as investigative journalists. We will wait for days to get our man. There are people who can get competitor interviews and people who can’t – we can.

  Your proposal is well written, Mr Darlington, and your price is right.

  We filed out alongside the civil servants. One of them spoke to me – Last month a chap came in to give a presentation. He was very nervous and at the end of the presentation he got up and walked into a cupboard and stayed there until we had all gone.

  The contract came in the next week. There was work in a dozen countries around the world including Taiwan and Japan. My brilliant new Oxbridge-economist research head resigned instantly at the thought of going to the Far East and getting the big interviews. It looked like that was the bit I was going to do.

  In the seventies few people had been to the Far East from England. I was forty-two and scared. I sat in my Heathrow hotel and watched the television. There was a play by a modern author about a chap who worked in advertising and never really grew up. I could have written that, I should have written that, instead of poncing off round the world. I should be a writer – that is what I was meant to be. That is where my skills are strongest, that is where I feel most happy.

  But one night not long ago Basil Bunting had read his poem ‘Kyoto’ in the Hayloft. That was marvellous, Basil, what was Kyoto like?

  Never been there.

  But I’m going there tomorrow!

  This was the turning point. From now on, I decided, I would abandon all hope of artistic success and put my money on this marvellous job I had created, with the travel, the excitement, the experiences beyond price. I chose life, not art.

  But as I watched the television play I was sick of an old love.

  I had not seen a jumbo jet before. It was like a flying cinema, rather bigger than the Grand in Pembroke Dock, and a lot grander. Pastel colours, soft even lighting.

  My seat was near a window. The sunset was unlike the quiet green and yellows in Stone. Under a fierce orange sky like this anything can happen.

  I was folded into a space too small for me close to a pretty Australian and her husband. These young people were proud of their Australian culture, which seemed built around tinnies and bottles of sweet sherry for the Sheilas and Vegemite.1 They rejoiced in the vulgarity of their country, and their jokes made me laugh all the way to the Middle East, where we fell asleep. I lay much closer to the Australian girl than I would to Monnie at home.

  When I woke up I considered my position – I was on my way to alien countries to win interviews with people who did not want to see me, on a topic which I barely understood. I wasn’t even an engineer, and I spoke neither Chinese nor Japanese. What would these places be like? The Japanese were war criminals, and I knew nothing about the Taiwanese, except that they were Chinese and famed for their corruption.

  There comes a point where fear congeals into a sullen acceptance.

  But first Thailand, with the eternal snows and the yaks and the holy men with all the wisdom of Shangri-La.2 A grand place to break my journey for a few days and cool off and unwind. I might even have a ride on a yak – I bet you can! I twisted my fingers into the rough hair and we bounded over the snow.

  * * *

  We tied up the PM2 opposite pubs and bars, chairs down to the water, all empty, and walked into Nottingham. Soon we faced a thirty-foot wall – mixed facings of brick, daunting and untidy. We couldn’t get through this without crossing a lot of roads, and dodging a lot of cars.

  Uphill and there was a small market in a large square. Everything was uphill in Nottingham. There were rings on the waterfront but no boats and I wondered why. It was a windy day and windy days make me uneasy. Nottingham made me uneasy. It’s like Cardiff, I said, without Cardiff Bay. It’s a bit like Cardiff in the fifties.

  How can you sum up a city in an hour? asked Monica. But I hope our mooring is safe.

  We had a quiet night and moved on early and soon the canal dropped into the Trent again.

  At Stoke Bardolf Lock the lock-keeper helped us through and pointed out the moorings below the lock. A wide lagoon, trees trees, low thunder from the weir. Climb out of the lock and here is a broad track through fields towards Newark and Jim and Jess ran free.

  England is such a lovely country, secret corners without number scattered like jewels. Old John of Gaunt3 was right – this precious stone set in the silver sea.

  That evening we stood on the lockside and held hands and Jim and Jess pushed their faces up towards us. They know, I said, they know how lucky they are to live in England. No alligators or panthers, no blasting heat. How green, and the wind soft in the trees, and the light fading, and the whispering of the weir.

  A sudden stench from the sewage farm down the river, and the weir was manufacturing walls of white foam that crowded down the river at us. Jim and Jess began to choke and we all tumbled into the boat, while the foam mounted the windows.

  * * *

  Bangkok. A wall of hot air on the steps from the jumbo. Sunlight like an electric fire in your face. At the bottom a chap holding papers – Passport, oh yes, entry visa, thank you.

  He took some of my money and gave me leaflets promoting a show, a restaurant and a massage parlour. I did not realize that he had no official status at all.

  The airport bus took me through the seething city, hell-hot and flat.

  That evening the bar – a five-star hotel bar containing twenty-five whores and the Australian Rugby League team. I soon got into conversation with the rugby players, but did not realize that the beautiful women were for sale. I was wearing my best suit and drinking beer and sitting upright as an English gentleman should. As we would have put it in the Coronation School Pembroke Dock, I must have looked like a tit in a trance. Relax, for Christ’s sake, said the Australian scrum half, taking off his shirt and climbing on the table.

  The musical group entertaining us, The Regulars, could manage a handful of tunes and then went off into a mish-mash of Western and Oriental music that sounded like sweet and sour Yorkshire pudding. They seemed frightened of the audience, and frightened of being fired. We are The Regulars, they kept explaining, we are the regulars.

  A girl under the mirror turned her face away and looked up so I could see her skin and the curve of her cheek.

  I went to bed fending off messages from the massage parlour – jet-lagged, confused, a tit in a trance.

  I never got to grips with Bangkok. Perhaps the fact that it turned out to be in Thailand, not Tibet, got me off balance. I had been looking forward to the yaks.

  The heat bothered me, the dirt, the size of the place, the corruption in every corner. I saw some gold Buddhas, bought a ring and some silk, and lay on my bed in the hotel trying not to worry about Taiwan. In the evenings I would chat with my friend the scrum half, who explained that his team had won a cup, the cup even, and had been sent to Bangkok as a reward. For Christ’s sake, relax! You English are as stiff as boards!

  He and his friends kept going for short breaks upstairs. I looked for the girl under the mirror, but the girls were changed every hour.

  We are the regulars, sang The Regulars.

  It was a relief to be on the way to Taiwan. The island lies off the coast of China south of Japan. It was big in the ceramic industry and the UK government was encouraging trade. This was where my research would begin.

  My interpreter, supplied by the British export office, was a man of a certain age, a real gent, who arranged interviews and set up an atmosphere of goodwill. He came with a car and a driver, and another guy as a reserve. There were always a lot of guys available in Taiwan.

  People in the ceramic industry were happy to see me, thinking that I was a direct representative of Britannic wealth and power, and could be a customer. A formal lunch was set up for me by the Taiwan Ceramic Feder
ation.

  I was being treated as if a gunboat lay offshore so I tried to be as official as I could, moving slowly, making considered gestures and talking in proverbs. This went down well enough. There were a dozen of us at a round table – mainly people from the Federation and some manufacturers. Rice wine was poured. Tell them I do not doubt our countries will flourish together in the new dawn after the oil shock, I said.

  They all raised their glasses. We look forward to your orders pouring in, they replied.

  There must have been a hundred dishes on the table and we were to help ourselves. The food was mainly those white plastic erasers that compete with the rubber type and rub out more cleanly – the ones with square edges. They had been drizzled with black stuff that smelt like oil from the sump of my Morgan. They were served in bowls and alongside were boiled nettles and white noodles and rice. There were raw pink creatures that I was not familiar with, though I may have seen one under a stone in Swansea Bay.

  What is the output of the type three dust press? asked a manufacturer.

  More than sufficient, I replied, and capable of cost-effective upgrade.

  We toasted each other and my glass was refilled. Then there was a crash of gongs and a man came in carrying a flower, and behind him a man with a silver platter with a dome and behind him a man with a sauceboat. The platter was set on the table and everyone put their fingers together and moaned. It was lifted to another clash of the gong and there was a yellow fish, several pounds in weight, on a bed of rice. It was not shaped much like a fish – it had too many corners. I could not see it doing well in the deep. Reverently it was broken up and served.

  It is an important dish, whispered my interpreter.

  What is it called? I asked.

  I will enquire.

  My interpreter had a long discussion with his neighbour and then checked a point across the table. Someone went into the kitchen and there was banging. A man in white came out waving a knife and shouting. At our table there was a lot of conferring and nodding.

  My interpreter leaned towards me.