31. A Bit More Lamb?

What Ho Proles!

Harry Lamb’s fly was firmly fastened when he arrived at the Hall the next morning. It was the only caution he displayed, arriving at the Hall in a mobile scrapyard cunningly fashioned into the shape of a dull green Ford station wagon with a broken tail light. More worrying than the vehicle’s bobbing lurch produced by a bent front axle was the sticker pasted onto the back window that demanded justice for South Atlantic dolphins.

As you might know, I don’t like to rush to make any rash judgements about a man, woman, or child if I can help it. But Harry had clearly pushed his final penny over a hill called ‘Bonkers’ at some undetermined point in the past. His ecological bent was a worrying characteristic I had singularly failed to observe during the Friday afternoon we’d spent together.

Though I went out that Saturday morning to greet him with a rather gracious bounce to my step, the sight of the sticker only caused me to worry that I’d invited one of those climate control freaks onto the estate. It would be, I hope you agree, a most worrying development.

‘You’re a big fan of the dolphins, are you then, Harry?’ I asked, getting to the essential nub of my concern whilst still trying to look and sound a touch nonchalant. Even as Harry began to potter around his car, I could feel that my calm was not for sticking and I had to push my hands deep into my trouser pockets and kick idly at the gravel in order to stop myself rushing inside for the shotgun.

He looked up from under the bonnet of his car where he had disappeared to apparently fiddle with the battery.

‘Oh that?’ he said, casting an eye to the sticker. ‘My ex-wife works for Greenpeace,’ he explained sombrely. ‘She got the house and the kids in the divorce settlement. I got the car and a year’s subscription to the World Wildlife Magazine.’

‘I never know you were divorced,’ I said, wanting to hear about marital problems about as much as I wanted to know more about bottle-nosed squid catchers. ‘I didn’t know you were even married.’

‘Oh, we’ve mutually agreed to terminate that most holy and blessed of states four years ago now. It was a difficult time but I think we’re both better people for it. At least I can leave the loo seat up whenever I like.’

‘A better person indeed,’ I said but feeling like I had to add something supportive asked: ‘So, what was it? Another man or separation on the grounds of mental cruelty vis-à-vis one woman’s obsession with sonically superior sub-aquatic mammals? Don’t tell me it was both, Harry. I couldn’t bear to think of you as one of those poor men cuckolded by the type of chap who wears Angora cardigans and takes rambling holidays in the Brecon Beacons.’

‘It was her tennis coach,’ he said as he ripped a yard of cable free from the engine. ‘Six feet two, strong backhand, and, according to Mary, a man with a more detailed knowledge of the geography of the Southern Atlantic than I ever could ever muster. I tried to make the marriage work. I even took out a subscription to National Geographic to see if it helped.’

‘And did it?’

‘In the long run, the backhand proved more attractive than my new found understanding of the Flecheiros tribe tribes of central Brazil.’

I did feel sorry for my old friend, forced to face his life’s one big mistake at every cruel turn of his life.

‘It usually is the tennis coach,’ I assured him. It was a conclusion I felt I could reach having spent years hearing about other men’s problems with their spouses. ‘It appears to me that it’s the growth sector for chaps with an athletic bent and an unethical interest in other men’s wives. I believe it’s something to do with the cut of tennis shorts which display a man’s hairy knees to their best advantage. The female of the species seem to get some odd ideas when they see hairy knees at their best advantage. In fact, not so much advantage as game, set, and match…’

I looked back to the car. ‘Still,’ I sniffed, ‘thought you would have had that sticker out of the back window. Not the sort of thing you’d want to be judged on, Harry... Not when hairy kneed tennis types have such a high going price.’

‘Don’t you think I’d have it out of there in an instant if I could? I was warned at my last MOT to leave it there since it’s actually performing a key structural job in holding the back window in place.’

Say what you want about Harry: you can’t fail to admire his bravery it not his flagrant disregard for his own life.

‘And now the battery’s gone dead?’ I remarked as he hefted it from the engine and dropped it on the floor. ‘You see now why I’ve never married? Marriage can be damn tricky business and there’s not much chance of getting a jump start once the battery’s gone dead.’

‘Nothing wrong with this battery,’ he said, tucking it under his arm before he picked up his overnight bag.

‘They why did you remove it?’

‘It’s the locks,’ he said as though it made the most obvious sense. ‘They don’t work. Can’t lock the car. I always take the battery out with me when I’m not going anywhere. Can’t steal a car when it hasn’t got a battery.’

‘You have a point,’ I said looking over the ruin. ‘So you think somebody might steal this little death-trap of yours?’

He kicked the front wheel as he turned to me. ‘I only worry that if somebody does steal it they will end up wrapped around a lamppost. In this compensation culture of ours, you know I’d be to blame.’

By now, you can see that Harry was now speaking my kind of lingo. All my doubts had receded, gone the way of Mrs. Prigg’s rice pudding of the night before.

‘So glad to hear you’ve not turned green on me, Harry,’ I said, slapping him on the back as we entered the Hall.

‘Green?’ he laughed and we both enjoyed the silence that usually accompanies such undiluted absurdity.