The Confessions Collection. Timothy Lea
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Dad.
It’s all pretty turgid, and when I tell Dad he is jealous and I have watched him giving Mrs. Ngobla the eye for years, he goes stark raving bonkers.
“Get out of this house!” he rages. “Get out! Get out! Get out!”
So I do. Straight out of the front door, slamming it behind so the whole terrace sways. And that is the start of one of the worst nights of my life. I am not going back, oh no, not me! But where am I going? Rosie seems a good bet, even if I do have to throw myself on Sid’s mercy, but I find that they have gone to Hastings for the week.
When I think about it, I’ve got the same problem I had when I was looking for a reference. No friends. I end up sleeping, if that is the right word, in one of the tennis court huts on Clapham Common, and I have to hang around there for an hour until the last pair of lovers vacate it. It is bloody cold and I think I still have the pattern of the benches stamped on my shoulder blades. When I eventually drop off it is only onto the floor and then it starts raining so I give up the whole idea of sleep and huddle in the darkness until it begins to get light.
The result of this is that by the time I get to the examination, I am totally knackered and can hardly keep my eyes open. I am not looking my best, either because pride has prevented me from returning to the family home and velvet jeans and a Mr. Freedom T-shirt are a trifle conscipuous amongst the selection of sports jackets set off by the occasional Burton masterpiece.
We have one hour and twenty minutes for the first two papers and by a superhuman effort I manage to keep my eyes open most of the time, though it is fatal if I prop my head on a hand. My habit of jumping out of my seat and taking violent swings at the empty air causes a little surprise though, as does the occasional slap round the chops I administer to myself.
We have a break before the second examination and I nip across the road for some tea and a couple of ham rolls. Trouble is I’ve no sooner sat down than I fall asleep and all the other buggers have been working for fifteen minutes when I come stumbling through the door. I try and settle down but it’s hopeless. Every question I read about five times and I can’t take in the words. I start writing and my mind drifts off into cotton wool and I forget what I was about. Then I make the mistake of thinking that if I could just take a little cat nap I would awake refreshed and be able to dash off the papers in half an hour. The next thing I remember is the examiner tugging my papers from under my head and the trail of saliva running down the desk and on to the floor. My paper has my number on it, the question number and “The interpretation of the reason for failure”. That is all. I could weep.
But of course, I don’t. I drag myself home and go straight to bed, ignoring Mum who is glad to see me, but damned if she is going to show it too much. It’s a funny thing but though I am still flaked out I can’t sleep. I just lie there thinking how I have blown the exam and how bloody unfair it is. After a while, I get up and go through all my AD12 and AD13s to see if and when I can take it again. Three months it says.
Three months! That is a bloody long time; especially now that I have vowed to get out of Scraggs Road just as fast as my tiny legs will carry me.
I pore over my papers and discover a faint ray of hope. I can get a “Licence to give Instruction” which would allow me to do just that whilst I am waiting to take the written exam again. Trouble is, that for at least one-fifth of the time I’m on the road I have to be supervised by an A.D.I. so that means finding a driving school that will accept me as a trainee. LEArn with LEA will have to wait for a bit.
Slightly cheered I pad round the local schools but not a sausage. They are all one man bands, fully staffed or “we only take fully qualified people” said with withering contempt.
So there I am again, on the scrap heap at 22. Stuck between the Devil and the Deep Black Ngoblas for another three months. Dad is, of course, not at all surprised by my failure to pass the exam and the verbal war between us festers unpleasantly with Mum flapping miserably on the side lines. The situation is intolerable, as my old schoolmaster used to say, and I keep out of the house as much as I can. “You use this place like a hotel,” moans Dad, who would start belly-aching about me always being under his feet if I watched five minutes of Coronation Street! It is at this time of frustration and bitterness that help arrives from an unexpected quarter.
I am having a solitary drink in the public bar of the Highwayman when I see Sid in the saloon. At first we pretend not to see each other but then, when I am sitting down thinking how stupid it is and on the point of going over and buying him a beer, he comes in and buys me one. I tell him my problems and he nods sympathetically.
“You want a driving school, eh?” he says. “Funny that, but I just might be able to help you. Bloke I knew in the army runs a driving school. Did I ever tell you about B.S.M. Cronk?”
“Cronk?! That’s a funny name!”
“Yeah. Battery Sergeant Major Cronk. He was the herbert who got me chucked out, bless him.”
Sid had done his national service, which shows you how old he is, and been dishonourably discharged after getting involved in some petrol fiddle. I could never understand the details and Sid swore that he was innocent—not that that meant anything. When he was caught red-handed in a fur warehouse he said he had heard a cat mewing, climbed in to let it out, and picked up the wrong fur in the darkness.
“I had a letter from him afterwards saying that it had all come out and that they now knew I was innocent. I said ‘forget it’ in case they took me back in again. I remember at the time thinking that it was good of the old bugger to write to me.”
“What’s all this got to do with me?” I say, because Sid can go on a bit once he starts his army reminiscences.
“Well,” says Sid, “he owes me a favour; said as much in his letter. I reckon if I dropped him a line and reminded him, he might see you alright.”
“Where is this school?” I ask.
“I dunno. Place called Cromingham, I think. Somewhere in Norfolk.”
“Norfolk! Bloody heck. It’s not exactly round the corner, is it?”
“No, but I believe it’s very nice up there. Very good air, your Mum always used to say. She went up there for her honeymoon, didn’t she?”
“I don’t know where she went. Look, I don’t know if I want to go all that way. It’s flat as a pancake, isn’t it, and there’s nothing there but a load of swede-bashers. What am I going to do in the evenings?”
“What do you mean? It’s a seaside resort, isn’t it? The place will be crawling with birds. It’ll be like a permanent holiday.”
“But it’s November, Sid.”
“Well, all the local birds will be dying for a bit of spare, won’t they? I went to Rhyl in October once and all the local tarts who wouldn’t have looked at you in the holiday season were roaming the streets in packs.”
“I’d have thought they’d have been better off out of season because their blokes weren’t knocking off all the new birds.”
“It works both ways. By Christ, but you’re hard to please. You don’t just look a gift horse in the mouth, you kick its bleeding teeth down its throat.”
“You’ve got a vested interest in seeing me out of the way, Sid. You can’t blame me for being cautious.”
And so we go on until I agree that he should write to Cronk and lend me two quid, the latter negotiation being a bit more difficult to effect than the former. A week later a very official looking letter arrives with “The East Coast Driving School” tattooed all over it. It is from Walter Cronk, Managing Director and Chief Instructor, and informs me curtly that the writer has reason to believe that I wish to become a licensed instructor at the above-named establishment and would be grateful for my verification of this fact and a statement of my availability. I write back saying that my availability is immediate and receive what Mr. Cronk calls a movement order, stating that upon acceptance of my application for a licence to give instruction in the driving