‘Can I get a taxi around here?’ The man standing behind the counter of the convenience store looked at the floor and slowly shook his head. ‘What about buses?’ I said. ‘Taxis? Buses? You’re joking, aren’t you?’ said a chap standing behind me. He was wearing bedroom slippers and clutching a tin of processed carrots.
‘Where are you trying to get to?’ he said. ‘Stanton St Bernard,’ I said. His knees gave way in a pantomime stagger of incredulity. ‘Stanton St Bernard! Taxis? Buses? Are you mad? It looks like you’ll be walking, my friend.’ He peered through the window at the blackening sky. ‘And — oh dear — it’s coming on to rain.’
I began to dislike this unselfconscious old man and his hearing aid and country accent. The convenience store was hemmed by newly built executive boxes on one side and a council estate on the other. ‘Which direction from here?’ I said. He paused and stood for a moment like stout Cortez, silent, upon a peak in Darien. Then he pointed to a beaten-up old Ford Fiesta and said, ‘Give me a minute to clear the crap off the front seat and I’ll take you.’
‘I’ll give you the taxi fare,’ I said, gratefully. ‘You will not,’ he said. ‘Get in.’ As we set off he said, ‘I was born in Stanton St Bernard. I haven’t been back for 40 years. It’s about time I went and had a look at the old place.’
That he owned a car yet hadn’t visited a village six miles away in 40 years seemed to me highly unlikely. I asked him if he was married. He said he was. Grandchildren and everything. Then I said I didn’t believe him about not visiting his birthplace for 40 years when it was so close.
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