A Short Walk from Harrods Read Online Free PDF Page B

implicit belief in your own dishonesty. God! Now, did you remember the two kilos of bullock’s cheek? Dog food, Dirk?’
    â€˜Ah!
That’s
what it was. I knew there was something. It was nagging … Hell … ’
    â€˜That’s what you went down there for. Manage on your own. Sure?’
    â€˜Perfectly. Never fear. Perhaps you’d go down, then, and get the cheek, now you have a nice clean plug? Otherwise I’ll boil up some rice. I know I got the rice.’
    â€˜Terrific. You’ll have an awful lot to learn in a year, chum.’ He sat down on an old packing-case left over fromthe move. It had a wine glass and an umbrella stencilled on the side. Began cleaning his nails with a bit of stick.
    â€˜Well, perhaps you’ll enjoy it here?’ I said, picking up the second basket, weighing them both without much thought. ‘I mean, decide
not
to return to the UK after all? I might have to do a film again one day. For the money. For a mower, the kitchen roof … You’d have to deal with that, wouldn’t you? Contracts, script approval …’
    â€˜Would I?’
    â€˜Well, yes …’ He was starting to make me feel slightly uncomfortable. He had a habit of doing that. Calm, reasoning, very pleasant. Firm. Perhaps he would clear off? In a year. He had never absolutely promised to stay on once I was ‘settled in’. I swung the baskets gently, to and fro.
    â€˜You have dealt with every film, every contract, the tax, all that jazz, for over twenty years. Every tax return. How could I do all that?’
    â€˜As you will with your driving. And how to change a plug. If you can drive a car, change a plug, and start
and
push the mower, you’ll be able to deal with the contracts and the tax. No problem.’
    I set the baskets down, feeling a little uneasy. ‘Well, I shall. I know all about plugs, for God’s sake. Plug-hole, earplug bath plug, Rawlplug - I’m not a complete idiot.’
    He rose, hitched up his jeans, started towards the cellar steps. ‘You are giving a quite brilliant impersonation, that’s all. And mind your head on this beam.’ He tapped it with an oily hand.
    â€˜Well, it could grow on you here? What on earth would you
do
back in the UK? At your age? Who would you manage? You said yourself it was all changing, the time now of the dialects and the uglies… not your scene. And there will bea mass to do here: mowing, driving, the garden. And if I
didhave
to make a film here, for the loot only, you’d be essential …’
    â€˜Thank you.’ I heard the edge of dryness in his voice. ‘We’ll see how it goes. Okay? I’m not totally convinced … remember what I just said? About this beam here?’
    â€˜You said, “Duck.”’
    He cocked his head lightly to one side, grinned at me. ‘Got it. Very good. Then do.’
    I collected my baskets.
    We went up the stairs from the windowless cellar into the kitchen – a dark pit: hooded stove in one corner, chipped stone sink in another, a smell of stale grease. I set the baskets on the table, unloaded. A six-pack of beer first.
    â€˜Fat-head. That’s what weighed you down. The beer.’
    â€˜I need the beer.’
    â€˜Need a dislocated spine as well?’
    He was washing his hands at the sink; the water was running so I did not feel obliged to answer. There were a bag of rice, six candles, some leeks, carrots, a green net-sack of potatoes, a pack of brown sugar with a parrot on the cover, a
cartouche
of Royal Longues - cigarettes which some-one who did not smoke had assured me were made from dried lettuce and therefore harmless. I counted the change, spread it on the table among the leeks and carrots.
    â€˜Not cheap, France. That’s the change from five hundred francs.’
    Forwood was drying his hands on a piece of kitchen paper.
    â€˜Beer and cigarettes cost. Luxuries. We
need
the