Billy Liar on the Moon by Keith Waterhouse

Author:Keith Waterhouse [Waterhouse, Keith]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Valancourt Books
Published: 2014-12-23T00:00:00+00:00

9

Helen and I, with Detective-constable Carpenter between us, sat in our favourite booth in the Heritage Motor Lodge bar, and Helen did not seem best pleased, for tears were trickling down her cheeks.

Grotesquely embarrassed myself, so that there was a pain in my diaphragm as the result of hunching myself up so tensely, I was glad to see that our plain-clothes gooseberry was equally dis­comfited. His solution, or attempted solution, to his novel social dilemma was to avoid looking at Helen, to pretend indeed that she was not among those present, and to address his en­tirely desultory remarks to me. My own policy was to follow his example.

The conversation with Detective-constable Carpenter as I drove him to the Heritage Motor Lodge had been of the what-fine-weather and they’re-making-a-cockup-of-these-roads vari­ety, the kind of chat you would expect to have with the bank manager before he opened your file. I had been in a state of great apprehension ever since leaving the Civic Centre, and was growing increasingly fearful that he was about to get down to brass tacks, whatever those would turn out to be. (Perhaps he was waiting for Helen to leave, in which case he would wait a long time.) But more than I was growing increasingly fearful, I was in­creasingly fancying Helen. I always did when she cried. I wanted to lick the tears away, savouring the salt taste on my tongue, then ask her how she felt about a quick bunk-up in London. If we got the first commuter train in the morning we could be in Euston by breakfast-time, find one of those hotels where they make you pay in advance so they don’t know or care whether you’re staying overnight or not, and crawl back on our hands and knees for the slow train at half-past midnight. Allowing five minutes off to ring the Nationwide programme to ask how they felt about covering a boring children’s dog show, this would give us thirteen hours and twenty minutes in bed, thus extending our golden June of shagging into a glorious July.

Whatever Detective-constable Carpenter wanted of me, he was certainly enjoying his vodka martinis. He and I were near­ing the end of our second, while Helen, whose dejection had not affected her thirst, had finished her third (assuming, as I could not assume, that she had had only one before we arrived), and was now toying pitifully with her empty glass.

‘I don’t know what they put in these,’ said Detective-constable Carpenter, ‘but they certainly carry a kick. Or is it because I’m not used to them?’

That’s a trick question if ever I heard one. Has Purchase been on to him, I wondered? Has Detective-constable Carpenter cast his no-doubt eagle eye over my swindle sheets?

Another tear trickled down Helen’s cheek. Don’t my love. Or if you have to, do it in private when you’ve wiped your eye make-up off and your bum is nicely settled across two hotel pillows.

Censoring my words very carefully, I said in my best Publicity Club of Shepford voice, ‘They’re a very bad habit to get into, I can tell you.

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