The Sleeping Salesman Enquiry Read Online Free PDF Page B

too swift for him.
    “I’ve just remembered something else about old Roy,” he said, with a smirk. “I’m sure it was him who was once engaged to his cousin Ethel. Lovely girl, she was. Quite a bit younger than him. I never knew what happened, but my auntie told my mother that Ethel Goodman was jilted. Roy broke it off, they said. At the altar steps, if I remember rightly. He’d found some rich bloke’s daughter who was a better bet, so the rumours said. There was talk of him being sued for breach of contract, but I don’t know if that was even legal in them days. Are you sure he’s never been married? He must be getting on for eighty odd?”
    Gus was astonished. He was sure this had never been mentioned at Springfields, unless Ivy had been told by Roy and they had agreed to keep it quiet. Good heavens! If anyone had suggested that Roy was a dishonest old philanderer, Gus would have staked his life on them being wrong!
    “You’ve gone quiet, Gus. Something I said? Don’t you worry about old Roy. Whatever happened in the past is not going to make much difference to an old man in his eighties, is it?” Alf chuckled. “Let’s go mad an’ have another rock cake. What do you say, Gus? Then I’ll tell you the story of my life.”

S even

    “WHEN I WAS quite a young lad,” said Alf, fishing out of his pocket a grubby red handkerchief and blowing his nose noisily, “I fell deeply in love, as they say, with a gel who was at school with me. We were friends right from infants’ class. We used to do country dancing in them days, and Susan was always my partner. Her favourite was Gathering Peascods, where couples stood in a long line and then the bottom pair danced up to the top and so on. You in a hurry, Gus? I see you looking at your watch. There’s no bus for a couple of hours, and you said you’d got no shopping to do. Just you sit there and listen to me. You might learn something.”
    “No, no, I’m going nowhere. You carry on, Alf. Fascinating stuff.”
    “Then, later on,” Alf continued relentlessly, “during the war, we used to get what we called aeroplane glass—it was really some kind of perspex—and fashion it into rings and bracelets and stuff.”
    “How on earth did you do that?” Gus asked, fascinated by an aspect of World War Two totally new to him.
    “Not sure. Cut it, I think. My dad gave me one for Susan, and it had a blue stone glued into it. I told her it was a sapphire, and I made it myself, and she laughed at me. She was always laughing at me. Anyway we got married eventually.”
    “Good,” said Gus, with some relief. So Alf
had
been married. “And it ended badly, did it?”
    “You could say that. She died in childbirth. The baby died, too. It was a boy, a lovely bouncing boy. I suppose it wouldn’t happen now.”
    Gus looked at him and frowned. Alf had a dreamy look on his face, and a half smile, which hardly seemed appropriate.
    “Alfred,” said Gus. “Are you telling me the truth, or making it up as you go along?”
    Alf tried to look affronted, but gave up and burst into a raucous laugh. “Got you going there, didn’t I! I always could tell a good story. Known for it.”
    “So how much of all that was the truth, you old fibber?”
    “Not a lot,” he replied comfortably. “Susan didn’t die, and she didn’t have any children. Didn’t want them. But she left me. Wanted a divorce, but I’m Roman Catholic, and marriage is for life. So there we are. Husband and wife, but not lived together for thirty years. She gets in touch when she finds it convenient to have a husband, and that’s about it.”
    “Ah, now, is that really the truth? Because if so, that sounds like what you told Roy at the bus stop that day. So, do you want help or not? Seems you’ve rubbed along reasonably well up to now?”
    “But things have changed. She’s got her whole family together, and now they’re talking again about persuading me to give her a divorce.”
    “Sounds like a