Sid for the key. He was still trying to sell Harper on the car. ‘This model was the pride of the range, you know. There were people crying outside the factory when they brought in the new version.’
‘Yes,’ I said smartly. ‘All the people who had bought the old one.’ Harper laughed agreeably at my little sally but I could see that it had not gone down too well with Sid. ‘Put the bags in the boot!’ he snapped.
‘The boot?’ said Harper, looking at my feet.
‘He means the trunk,’ I explained.
‘I mean the boot,’ snarled Sid. ‘Harper is in England now. Home of the English language. Elephants have trunks, cars have boots!’ Harper and I exchanged a glance and I went back to the baggage. It was strange but I could have sworn that I had left the vanity case on top of the large bag. Now it was on the ground. I did not think much about it at the time. Later, I did.
The boot was not big enough for all the baggage so I took the vanity case in the back with me. Harper was in the front with Sid. We handed over a few rupees to Sid’s mate and were soon heading for Harper’s first taste of British driving conditions: the traffic jam into London that starts shortly after you leave the airport. Harper looked at Sid’s nut and I realized with a sinking heart that she was about to ask the inevitable question. ‘What did you do to your head, Sid?’
‘I didn’t do anything to it. He did.’ He nodded at me over his shoulder and I smiled winsomely. This was obviously the moment for a change of subject.
‘What does the solicitor want to see you about, Harper?’ I asked.
Her big blue eyes sparkled with excitement. ‘I don’t really know anything yet. It’s something to do with the English branch of the family. I’ve never met any of them. The Deneuves who live near Dartmoor. Do you know them?’
‘I know Dartmoor,’ I said. It might have been my imagination but I thought I saw Sid’s shoulders flinch. Rumour had it that a not too distant relation in the Noggett family did a stretch on the moor for robbing a bank. One of the last brushes with money that the family ever had. ‘Harper, there’s one thing I don’t understand,’ I continued. ‘Are you saying that your name is Deneuve? I thought Aunty Eileen had married somebody called Eikelberger.’
‘It’s kinda complicated,’ replied Harper, giving me the undivided attention of her melting mince pies. ‘Before Eileen married Dwight Eikelberger she was married to my father. I was his child by a previous marriage. Mom died when I was very young. When poor pop died I was the only Deneuve left.’
‘So we’re not really related at all,’ I mused, relishing the good news. ‘There’d be nothing to prevent us getting married.’
Sid groaned. ‘Only the fact that you’ve only known each other for ten minutes.’ He shoved an irritable hand into the glove compartment and fed himself a fag. A fresh feeling of unease held me in its grip. Now Sid was going to find out about the lighter. I fiddled for my own lighter – but too late. Sid pressed his fingers against the spot where he expected to find the lighter and then into the hole. As he looked down, puzzled, there was a little flash and he tore his hand away with a piercing scream. It quite made me jump, it did. Not as high as Sid though. His bandaged nut made a dent in the roof of the car. Poor old sod. With anyone else you would have felt sorry for him. After that the journey continued with a lot more silence and Harper trying to find a landmark to take a photograph of. Not easy when about the only building of merit is where Beechams make their little pills. We were approaching Hammersmith when Sid deigned to speak.
‘Where’s this address you want to go to, Harper?’
‘Oh yeah.’ She turned to me. ‘It’s in the letter just inside my vanity case. Somewhere near a saloon called Gray’s Inn. Can you get it out, Timmy?’
‘Right away.’ Ever eager to oblige, I popped the case up on my lap and flicked open the clips. To my surprise I was not looking at little feminine goodies but an alarm clock strapped to a couple of sticks of rock. Where they came from it was difficult to say because there was no lettering running through the candy. I glanced at the time on the clock. One minute to twelve. It bore no relation to the real time. ‘You’d better reset your travelling clock now you’re in England,’ I said.
Harper looked puzzled. ‘What travelling clock?’ We both stared into the case and when I next heard Harper’s voice it sounded even more surprised. That’s not my case.’
Sid turned his nut to take a gander and I will never forget the expression on his face if I live to be twenty-five. His eyes took over his face like two bloodshot raw eggs tipped onto a couple of saucers. ‘It’s a bomb!’ he screamed. ‘Chuck it out!’
The thought was not slow in occurring to me, especially as I had a nasty feeling that the minute hand approaching twelve o’clock could signify bang-bang time. I grabbed the window handle and started unwinding fast. Maybe too fast. The handle was still turning in my mitt but it was not attached to the door any more. Funny how you panic sometimes, isn’t it? Maybe funny is not the right word. Everybody in the car was going berserk. Sid started off by putting his foot down as if he hoped to leave the bomb behind and then realized that he was still carrying it with him. Harper was trying to open doors and windows all over the car and I was attempting to force the case over Sid’s shoulder so that I could push it out of his window. Unfortunately, in my eagerness, I pushed his nut against the dashboard so we ran into the car in front. At this point we were going over the Hammersmith Flyover and I must say that Sid acted with commendable courage and determination. Pausing only to clip another car he bounced the motor up against the parapet with an ugly scraping sound – I think it came from the car but it might have been Sid – and flung open the door. This did not do the paintwork any good but that seemed the least of our worries at the time. Without a word that I would care to repeat in a book that might fall into the hands of those of genteel upbringing he snatched the case from my hands and hurled it over the parapet.
Now of course Sid meant to chuck the bomb into somebody’s back garden but it is amazing how panic lends you strength. It is also amazing how close some of those houses are to the flyover. If you doubt me, here was a case in point. Only a few seconds after the case had left Sid’s fingers we heard the tinkle of breaking glass followed by a loud explosion. My heart dropped lower than Idi Amin’s bottom lip. Hardly daring to look, we got out and peered over the parapet.
Oh dear, what a sight met our eyes! This poor old lady sitting in her bath and looking up at us through the hole in the wall where the bathroom window used to be. Even as we watched, another few bricks fell down on top of the shed below. ‘Are you all right?’ I shouted. ‘It’s all right. It was a bomb.’ I was worried that she might think it was a gas leak, you see.
Well, I have to confess that I was surprised. Where a nice-looking old lady learned that kind of language I just cannot imagine. As for what I assumed was her old man in the outdoor karsi – no, it wasn’t a shed – he did not even have the good manners to pull up his trousers before he started sounding off at us. I was quite embarrassed for Harper.
‘Come on,’ said Sid nervously, starting to edge back to the car. ‘They’re all right. Probably due for rehousing anyway.’
‘Or at least a redevelopment grant,’ I said.
Still shaking, we jumped into the car and drove off. Nobody talked very much. We were all thinking what would have happened if the bomb had gone off on my lap. One bang I could certainly have done without.
‘I can’t get over it,’ said Sid. ‘How could we have picked up the wrong bag?’
‘Maybe
