Justin Parke Powers, a man unclean and not entirely satisfied with himself, said yes to Miss Hobish; said yes, he would take the cup of tea, and held the car door open for her and followed her into her small house. Miss Hobish paid for her lessons in advance, by the quarter, but each lesson lasted only twenty minutes instead of the full hour: Miss Hobish at seventy-three could not sustain more.
Darker than the strands that crossed his scalp, softer than the bristle of moustache, was the mat of hair beneath the arms of J. P. Powers. ‘A growth that traps, a growth that sours’, said Roche, referring to the twin clumps and Powers’ perspiration. The hair overflowed from the armpits like stuffing from a mattress – yet his chest was naked as a girl’s. Smooth and white; a suggestion of breasts; pitted, if you cared to look, with blackheads. Earlier in his life J. P. Powers had been concerned about it: a big man like him with so unmanly an expanse. He had turned his back on the company in changing rooms, whistling to cover the gesture.
In the bath on Sunday mornings he washed this body with passing diligence, watching the milky scum form on the water, lathering himself with Lifebuoy as Roche had counselled. As he bathed he could hear the cry of the radio in the kitchen and the quarrelling sounds of his two small daughters. It was a Sunday ritual, accepted by his wife who took no part in it; ritual that the geyser should snarl and the water flow, that scum should form, radio play, daughters quarrel; ritual that at midday precisely J. P. Powers should emerge from the bathroom temporarily cleansed, should leave his rented house by the back door and board a bus to the Saracen’s Arms. It was ritual too that he should later return with four pints of beer in his barrel stomach and eat a lunch that had been kept for him in a low oven.
When he got going he couldn’t stop himself. The images of himself, of his daily work and of his body, rose often and unbidden before him. They bloomed in Mortimer Road and Cave Crescent, among the similar houses, detached or partly so. They hovered, then, over conversation and instruction; they were there in the Austin, like fog. He saw houses and roads being built and wished he had the courage to join a labour gang. He saw his big hands on the steering wheel and considered afresh their function.
On Tuesday September the 21st, Justin Parke Powers gave Miss Hobish her next driving lesson, her two hundred and forty-first. He sat beside her, feet and hands alerted.
‘We’ve had no summer, Mr Powers.’ She sighed, settling herself. ‘One, two, three, four, up and back for reverse. Are we ready, Mr Powers?’
She drove raggedly from Cave Crescent to Amervale Avenue.
‘Hand signals,’ said Powers, and Miss Hobish extended a scrawny arm and waved it arbitrarily about.
He fancied the typing girl in Roche’s office. When the weather was cold she wore knitted jumpers that shaped her breasts. They quivered as she typed, but there was nothing he could do about them now. Probably she’d giggled with Roche afterwards, about what fastidious Hopker had said, about Roche so bold as to recommend Odo-ro-no or Mum.
‘You’re forgetting those hand signals,’ said Powers.
‘So difficult,’ murmured Miss Hobish.
‘Come and have a drink,’ a woman had said to him once, at the end of a lesson; and his heart had fluttered in his naked chest, for he had heard from the other men of such approaches made. Nothing had come of it though, because with the drink in his hand he had laughed and been himself, had told her a few jokes and moved around the room so that he was positioned to give her an exploratory slap on the bottom. All this the woman had not welcomed, and had requested a different tutor for future lessons.
‘Slow down for the crossing,’ Powers said.
‘I beg your pardon?’ said Miss Hobish, turning to look at him, jerking the Austin onwards, missing a woman with a pram.
‘Turn right. We’ll go up Mortimer Road. Hand signal, indicator. Draw out to the centre of the road.’
Excited, Miss Hobish allowed the car to stall.
‘More gas, more gas,’ cried J. P. Powers, apologizing to the traffic.
‘Tell me about the RAF,’ said Miss Hobish in Mortimer Road. ‘I love to hear your tales.’
‘We must concentrate on our driving, Miss Hobish.’
‘Shall we have a cup of coffee afterwards and shall you tell me then?’
‘Yes, Miss Hobish; a coffee would be nice.’
He closed his eyes and within seconds Miss Hobish had driven the Austin into the back of a stationary van.
‘Oh dear, oh dear,’ said Miss Hobish.
Powers got out and examined the damage. Both wings and the radiator grill had suffered considerably. The bumper had folded like a length of cardboard.
‘I’d better drive,’ said Powers. ‘The steering may be wonky.’
He drove in silence, reflecting upon what the incident would cost in terms of himself. Then he wondered idly, as he often did, what it would be like to be a solicitor or a bank manager. He couldn’t fit himself into either role; he couldn’t hear himself advising on the purchase of a house, or lending money, or retailing the details of the divorce laws. It seemed a truth that his tasks were destined to be expendable; only in war had he established himself.
‘Coffee now?’ Miss Hobish asked with meekness.
He looked at the front of the car again. Both headlights were smashed.
‘I’m going to give you a cheque,’ said Miss Hobish. She handed him coffee, and biscuits with icing on them. ‘For that damage to your motor. I suppose it would be two hundred pounds?’
‘Two hundred,’ said Powers, falling in with the plan. ‘J. P. the initials are.’
‘Now we’ll forget about it?’ She was anxious, and he nodded, tucking the cheque away and thinking about it.
Ransome would be at the Saracen’s Head at lunchtime. He’d park the Austin round at the back where Ransome wouldn’t see it and wouldn’t guess anything. Two hundred: he could make it last a long time, nice to have it by him, nice to be able to draw on it now and again.
‘Lovely biscuits, Miss Hobish.’
‘So forgiving, Mr Powers! I thought you mightn’t speak to me, your beautiful motor broken up.’
‘Not at all –’
‘Have another of those biscuits, I know you like them. I get them at Sainsbury’s.’
He dunked the biscuit in his coffee and sucked off the coloured icing. It was a comfortable room. The armchair he sat in was large and soft. Once he had fallen asleep in it. Once Miss Hobish, recognizing his fatigue, had invited him to take off his shoes.
‘Goodbye, Miss Hobish.’
‘More coffee? Biscuits?’
‘I fear I must make my way, Miss Hobish.’
‘Goodbye then, Mr Powers.’ They shook hands as they always did.
It was the boredom, he thought; it was that that prevented him from being the easy extrovert he was born to be. The boredom of repeating, the boredom of talking in simple terms. Hand signals and gear changes: the boredom gave him time to think, it made him think. Powers did not employ these words in his survey of his trouble, but that was the meaning he arrived at. Thoughts ran around in his brain like hares. He didn’t know how to catch them.