‘Oh hello! You must be my odd-job chap.’ My forty-something punter drawls, shaking my hand floppily and forever, in this ‘artisanal café’ we met in outside Bedford last Sunday morning before the removal gig kicked off. ‘I’m Laurence, Laurence Withayou.’
And I thought, that’s a funny name for a caff without any tradesmen in it, except for boiler-suited and hob-nail-booted me, and a funny surname, too, ‘Withayou’, ‘cos it took me a while to suss he was actually spelling out his Christian tag – ‘with a “u’’’, like. Maybe I should have been sharper, ‘cos he didn’t look anything like the Larrys ‘with a w’ I used to work with on the tools, before my semi-retirement – he’s got college-boy hair, long shanks, and a port paunch from the eighteenth century, and he’s decked out in a beige linen suit, an Oxford-Uni cravat, all that. (Now, I know you’re thinking ‘What the Dickens!?’ But I ain’t trowelling, or raving, not one little bit).
Loading up the silver Transit van ‘Withayou’ has hired for his manor move is fairly breezy, even though it’s got proper (that is, improper) ‘peas in the pot’ by nine o’clock. There ain’t that much stuff, and it’s simple to stow – cricket clobber, vintage vino, hunting rifles. But even before we get to half-time with the packing, Withayou says he feels ‘a tad queasy’ and sits down cross-legged in the driveway like some giant Buddha, all groggy and glowing and gammony about the gills. And part of me thought he was just being namby-plummy – he’s done, what? five per cent of the lugging, ninety-five of the nattering. Still, it was getting really nasty and peasy by this point, and I didn’t want to have to take care of a wobbly M’lord with heatwave on the brain.
‘You go and have a lie-down away from the radiation, Lord Very-soft;’ says I, loosening his tie, ‘anyway, you’re a BA, MA, sweet-FA Oxen aren’t you, so you can be the brains of the operation – you leave the hard graft to Sammy W over here… you know, Sam Weller… Mr Pickwick’s donkey worker?’ (but he didn’t know his Dickens, for all his old-schooling). Besides, I wouldn’t want you to break a sweat and ruin your Downton-Abbey outfit before the fancy-dress party.’
After I’ve filled up the van solo, I offer to drive, so wilted Withayou can kick back on the passenger seat. Anyway, I’d rather steer than ride shotgun cradling the special cargo – this huge tank brimming with manky water and tropical fish. He’s mad for rare Lilian Gish you see, and given their ginormous value – sentimental as well as financial, obvs – his aquarium couldn’t possibly go in the back, could it, or on the seat beside the passenger, ‘cos if we was to take a corner ‘at full tilt’, his ‘little finny friends’ might get shaken and stirred up, which wouldn’t do at all, as they’re uncommonly sensitive, especially the two guppies, Sebastien and Prunella (I nod like I can distinguish them from each other, and the rest, and like he’s not March-hare crazy). Unfortunately, though, Withayou wouldn’t dream of letting me pilot – that’s his responsibility – knobless oblige, apparently; besides, it’s his name down on the van insurance, and he’d rather not chance it, being a ‘safety first kind of fellow’.
So Withayou – who’s now the colour of the tank algae and who’s sweating pails of what-pongs-like past-it plonk – clambers into the driving seat in slow-motion and eventually fires up the van, while I squirm next to him, with a shoal of psychedelic fish sloshing around the three-tonne bowl in my lap. After a stop-start first half-mile – during which Withayou is glued to the maps-App on his handset, and hardly glances at the blinding road – we finally totter on to Swiveller Street. Then, suddenly, the van’s all over the place, all over the place – we’re ramming the curb, cutting up buses, terrorizing Deliveroo dudes and Uber girls. But despite that, Withayou seems daredevil-may-care and dandy, so long as the dot on his smartarsed device is pointing in the right direction. And when we hit Bedford High Street we reel across it – like the van’s full of booze instead of petrol – we hack the mirrors off three parked cars, punch the rear lights out of two others. And the grotty water gets choppy, starts over-spilling and drenching my overalls. So I’m narky now, as well as scared bolt upright by Withayou’s virtually-insane steering, and the odds that we’ll crash, and have the cops on our case… while the koi don’t seem too chuffed about things neither.
‘Listen Mr Toad of Toad Hall, if you’re feeling sunstriken or seedy, maybe I should take the wheel after all, move you on to fish duties; apart from everything else, I reckon the Seb and Pru would be happier; I don’t want to alarm you, but they’re looking a bit stressy.’
‘I’m tip top old thing;’ Withayou croaks, ‘just a little squiffy; must be a combination of this blessed climate change business and that pheasant I ingested at my divorce party yesterni-’
But before he makes it to the end of his sentence, Mr Okay-yah slumps onto the wheel, kayoed. His foot hits the accelerator – the van lurches into warp speed – we go crash-boom-smash into this beer-delivery truck parked outside the pub near the John Bunyan statue. The front of the Transit concertinas – the beer barrels pinball around the road – I sumo wrestle the airbag, and juggle with the tank and two flying fish. And, while I’m doing the Cat-in-the-Hat, Withayou rests his soaking head on the safety cushion, snores and smiles away, as though he’s dreaming of Nemo, and brassy John Bunyan looks down at us from his pedestal like he’s about to crack up.
Eventually, I steady the slippy bowl and decant the fish back into their element. But while I’m counting up the critters, and my blessings, three beer-delivery boys bomb over and start banging my window, shoving, see-sawing the van. And they’re gonna shake hands with my kidneys for wrecking their god-damn lorry, aren’t they; they’ll fry my effing fish for upsetting their blankety-blank ale.
‘Have everyone’s little grey cells been microwaved by these dog months we’re having, or are we the oddballs out?’ I ask the fish, since there seemed little point philosophizing with the craft-bitter couriers. However, when I see that my little brothers-and-sisters-in-adversity are getting tossed and tangled up in seaweed all over again, I feel obliged to reason with the lager-shipment louts:
‘I get why you’re peeved, but might I suggest you’re suffering from false consciousness as well as hyperbo-thermia? The damaged property ain’t yours – it belongs to your exploiter-employers, Messers Becks and Bud.’
But my revolutionary red pill doesn’t make them pause, so I change tactic:
‘Anyway, there’s no need to take the Lord’s name in vain is there, especially on a Sunday,’ I thunder, pointing at the statue, ‘and in earshot of the author of Pilgrim’s Progress too.’
That put the flummox on them – and they say there’s no god no more! The rock-and-rolling stops, and they gawp up hangdoggedly at Bedford’s famous Puritan son. But then one bod comes to, and bells the boys in blue.
And it must be a slow, sweltering morning down the police station, ‘cos this pair of Peelers are on the scene sharpish, siren blaring, like Withayou and I were targeting Bunyan in some anarchic statue attack.
The older Old Bill is gaunt, bald, beaky; the younger beefy, black-mopped, gormless looking. The bad old cop marches unsteadily towards the van, like he’s being hung out to blow dry by the night-before’s booze as well as by the Bedfordshire scirocco. Shielding his peepers from sun, he eyeballs Sleeping Bertie next to me, then digs his sidekick in the ribs:
‘This is drink-driving, son – open-and-shut. It’ll be three years for driver Jeevesy and one for his half-cut skivvy, as an accessory before or after the fact. Look and learn, lad.’
‘But how could we be tanked?’ I protest, ‘It’s eleven o’clock on a Sunday morning! And, as a footnote, if we’re going in for literary parallels, the pilot would be Wooster, and I’d be Jeeves.’
Wincing, old fuzz leans into the van, filling it with a stale cidery reek, then sprays bile-spit into my face:
‘So, how come your gaffer has just driven into a dozen parked cars, and an artic truck, and is now sleeping off his exploits on an airbag?’
Officer Dribble then whips out a breathalyser, and shoves it in my mouth, before I can shout ‘You can’t do that – I weren’t driving!’
‘Failure to co-operate’, his numero duo squeaks up, ‘is a criminal offence.’
Now this is getting seriously screwy, and it gets seriouser and seriouser after I receive the all-clear. ‘Cos despite that, and the absence of an accusation, and the unconscionable temperature, the old Mosleyite marshal reads me the entire Riot Act, then brandishes his notebook and biro.
‘The driver’s name?’ He shrieks, squinting through the laser sunlight.
‘His Lordship,’ I fib, to lord it over them, ‘Laurence… with-a-“u”’.
‘Lord Laurence Withayou?’ He scrawls, struggling to keep his pen and pad level, between his stupefaction, his sweats and his shakes.
‘Yeah, I thought it was funny too, but then I savvied it’s how you spell his first name – you know, Laurence, with a “u”, instead of a “w”.’
‘Never mind the spelling of Laurence, what’s His Lordship’s surname?’
‘Dunno. Never met him. He saw my ‘odd-job man Friday’ ad in the local rag, and hired me to help him and his fish move house, following his mid-lady-wife crisis.’
‘Leave His Lordship’s private life out of this. Where have you come from?’
‘Elstow borders.’
‘The address.’
‘No idea – we met in this “artisanal café” near My Lord’s former mansion. You know, I reckon they call greasy spoons that to put tradesmen like me off entering. Hard to know where you are, innit, when names and things are arsy-versy – you’re law-enforcement, Withayou’s public school and ‘safety first’, while climate breakdown is climate “change” – could be good, could be bad, couldn’t it, change; it’s definitely different, so, it’s as good as a rest – even though you can’t rest in this changed climate can you, orificer; I mean, no offence, but you look like you haven’t slept since this heat-tusnami started swelling up in June … and as for the global warming, that sounds like a big suburban house party…’
‘Just shut up and answer’, he screams.
‘You can’t do both, you oxy-moron.’
‘Where were you going?’ He sighs.
‘Bolnhurst.’
‘The address!’ He starts flicking sweat off his forehead with his biro, faster and faster, windscreen-wiper style.
‘Dunno. Didn’t need to, did I. If you hadn’t noticed, Sherlock, I weren’t driving; which begs the question: what am I being accused of exactly? Criminal bysitting?’
‘So, in summary:’ he peers at his notes, ‘you’re in a hired Transit, with a distinguished gent you’re unacquainted with, whose name you don’t even know, and you’ve set off from an unknown address and are heading towards ditto. That’s your cock-and-fish tale is it Mr Clever-clever?’
He smirks at sideshow Bobby, who explodes with psycho-phantic laughter.
‘You’ve hit the head running Sarge, with that mixed-up metaphor;’ I come back, ‘but the legal point is – what’s the accusation? You can’t book me for holding a fish tank. And, without a charge, you can’t KGB me either – not, at least, until your mate Nigel Farrago is elected Prime Minister by the hard of thinking…’
But then I twig there’s no point reasoning with them. In this mad, bad and broiling world we’re living in, you’d be crazy to act sane, since only the insane seem to make any sense or an impression, so I go on the psycho-offensive.
‘BTW, have you considered your statutory responsibilities vis-a-vis the top-drawer tropical fish who are in your care during this unlawful inquisitioning you’re conducting in illegally stifling conditions? They’ve been grievously disturbed by the smash up, and now you’re forcing them, against their will, to answer unnecessary questions in a combination Transit air fryer. Look at Seb and Pru – they probably won’t swim through unless I get them home pronto, the poor, dear creatures (very dear, at 900 pounds a plop).’
Gazing down at the swaying, swirling guppies, the Tweedledum duo go all boss-eyed, stupor-fied.
‘You wouldn’t want their deaths on your records, or consciences, or credit-card bills now would you, gents. His Lordship loves his minnows more than his ex-Ladyship – that was part of their problem, apparently; furthermore, his little bro is a ninja lawyer, who could nail on you a charge of fishslaughter or even cold-blooded murder.’
It looks like Dicko of Dock Green is either about to be convinced or keel over, but then he shakes himself out of his trance and starts barking about me ‘accessorizing’. So I demand to know if I’m being charged as an accessory before or after the fact, ‘cos I can’t be both, can I. And Dicky goes from shirty to shitty, ‘cos he hasn’t a clue what ‘before’ or ‘after’ might mean, especially after consulting Shat GBH, but he can’t confess pig ignorance in front of his Dr Watson, can he. So to save his damp, pukey-yellow face, he says he’ll haul me down HQ for a proper ‘evidential’ breath test and ‘further questioning’.
Now, if I’m going to be hung, on some Trumped-up indictment, there’s no point being sheepish is there:
‘Haven’t His Majesty’s forces got anything better to do, given the nation’s state, like arresting disabled pensioners for protesting a genocide, or protecting poor Fascist rioters while they’re setting fire to refugee hostels?’
Mr even Angrier hauls me out of the van, with the help of his hulking protégé, then they drag me over to their Black Maria, and stuff me in.
As I slump on the barbecue-hot backseat, the morning’s misadventures must start tolling on me, ‘cos when I think of my new-found fishy pals, left unprotected in that microwaved van, for any passing street cat or aquatic-enthusiast to pilfer too, I begin to blub and can’t stop.
As we speed away, PC Plodder phones in an order for an ambulance for ‘His Lordship’, who’ll be taken to a private hospital, where he’ll be ‘cool and comfortable’ while his blood is ‘checked out for sherry’. And that forensic evidence is gonna nail me, according to the Laughing Policemen, for I still don’t know what, and neither do they, but at this point I don’t care.
Down the boiling cop shop, after I ace the ‘evidential’, Sergeant de Sade is about to charge me with ‘wasting police time’ – me, who hasn’t got the oomph to answer him anymore, let alone answer back. But then this Doctor-Spock type in a lab coat bursts in and hollers ‘hold everything’. He’s just come from the hospital with ‘My Lord’s’ test results, which prove he didn’t have a sherry breakfast after all. The reason the ‘poor fellow’ went sparko at the wheel is he’s got diabetes, unbeknownst to himself, and loading up the van beforehand in these tropical temperatures lowered his blood-sugar levels into the danger zone – the body is extremely sensitive to the extreme heat, it sends our innards and brains into overdrive (‘Who’d have thought it?’ gasps Plod). Now this seems a bit fishy to me – as much about the fact they think Withayou is a Lord as it is about the facts – but I ain’t contradicting Dr Deus ex machina am I. ‘It’s all down to the heatwave’ the Vulcan winds up, ‘an act of god; so it’s an insurance issue now, not a legal one’.
After Spock’s exit, the ghastly face of Constable Crushed and Burned turns from livid to liverish; he can barely spit out ‘shove off’.
‘I’ll learn you to nick me for being kind to fish.’ I say, strutting out. ‘I know my rights; I know animal rights too. Lord Withayou and I are gonna get the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals on to you.’
I dashed outside, sprinted back towards the scene of the non-crime, sweating my trousers off almost, while improvising a prayer to the patron saint of quality fish. And thanks be to St Whatsherface (and maybe to Bunyan’s watchful eyes too), I found my finny friends still there, still among the swimming. I hailed a taxi, and, with the cabby’s help, I hauled them out of the van and up to my council penthouse.
I’ve been keeping them company, and in colour-enhancing flakes, all this sizzling week, during which we’ve been in climate lockdown. I’ve learned their types and temperaments, and renamed them after Dickens characters – Headstone, Mr Dick, Will Dorrit, Miss Havisham. We hang out in whatever room’s the least scorching, depending on the time of day, curtains drawn, fridge or minibar wide open, fans and Classic FM on full blast. And when I take down my beloved Boz of an evening, I read him out loud for their entertainment, and I reckon that’s helping them get their technicolour and Mojo back. I’m reading out this story to them too, as I write, to their gyrating delight.
I’ve no idea if Withayou’s still sunstruck down; but if he’s up and shuffling again, he’s got my number, he can arrange to come and collect the fish whenever. And if he doesn't, all the better – I’ll take them as payment for the half-time work, and full-time hassle I had to put up with. In a burning world that’s gone looking-glass loopy, I reckon I need some intelligent comradeship to stay sane, don’t you…
Author's Note: 'With thanks to Andrew Fanning, who told me the outline of this story.'