The K-Y Warriors
by Bob Shaw
“Grandma Gina’s fridge runs without being plugged into the electricity,” Tommy Beveridge said, casually throwing the remark into a discussion about machines in general and the workings of the internal combustion engine in particular.
Willett Morris smiled indulgently at his nephew. “Some fridges run on gas.”
“Yes, but she hasn’t got gas.” Tommy spoke with the assurance of a precocious eleven-year-old. “Grandma Gina is all-electric.”
“Then her fridge must be plugged into the mains.” Willett switched from car engines to the principles of refrigeration, determined to educate the boy into seeing how nonsensical his statement had been. But Tommy soon exhibited signs of boredom, darted out of the garage/workshop and began pursuing the butterflies that twinkled over the lawn. Willett was disappointed, thinking it a shame that nobody else in the family appreciated the beauty inherent in even the simplest machines.
He shook his head, returned to the workbench where—just for the sheer pleasure of it—he was rewinding a washing-machine motor, and the snippet of conversation quickly faded from his mind. It had seemed pointless and inconsequential in the extreme, and when he recalled it many months later it was unrecognisable as a prelude to sudden death.
There had been times, right at the beginning of Muriel’s driving instruction, when Willett had believed himself to be enduring the worst extremes of misery and fear.
To take but one example, there had been the business of her control—or lack of control—of the clutch pedal. That period had lasted for a couple of months, and during it Muriel had, when trying to move off from standstill under the slightest hint of strain, simply taken her foot off the pedal and allowed it to spring up. Each time the car had bucked to a self-damaging halt and Willett, visualising shock waves racing through the transmission, had waited with sick apprehension for the metallic thunk and sudden roar of a freed engine which would have signalled a broken half-shaft. It had seemed miraculous to him that no component had ever actually failed, although he had no doubt that the car’s mechanical life had been drastically shortened.
At least twenty times he had taken a deep breath and, while stoically staring straight ahead, had said, “You must bring the clutch pedal up slowly.”
“There was a lorry coming,” Muriel would say. “I had to get away quickly.”
And at least twenty times Willett had replied, “Forgive me for being so dense about these things—but how does stalling the engine aid a quick getaway?”
The sarcasm had never had any noticeable effect.
Then there had been the occasions when, with a dangerous obstacle looming directly in front, he had snapped out the order to brake and had experienced an exquisite and soul-withering dread as the car had continued on its way, direction and speed unaltered, with Muriel apparently in a trance. The frenzied uncontrollable stamping of his right foot on a non-existent brake pedal at his side of the car had always startled her into last-instant action, followed by tears and recriminations about his lack of consideration for her nerves.
In retrospect those incidents, so harrowing at the time, were seen to be trivial and almost amusing—for now Muriel had progressed to driving in traffic. And, what was much worse, she had acquired a totally unwarranted confidence.
Please hurry up, Willett thought as he leaned against the car and surveyed the deepening colours of the sky. It was late on an April afternoon and he wanted the day’s lesson to be completed before darkness fell, otherwise the risks to the vehicle and its occupants’ health would be greatly increased. He glanced towards the house and detected a blurry movement behind the pebbled glass of the hall window which told him that Muriel was on the phone to her mother or one of her sisters. A good two hours had passed since the five women had met over tea and scones, and therefore it was necessary for them to be brought up to date on each other’s activities before Muriel could leave the house.
Trying to control his impatience, Willett used the toe of his shoe to decapitate a small weed which had had the impertinence to thrust up through the gravel of his drive. What was it that Muriel had accomplished in the course of the afternoon which was so important that tidings of it had to be electronically circulated with the expensive help of British Telecom? All he had noticed her doing was giving the shower curtain its weekly wash. The curtain was a sheet of pink plastic whose sole function in life was to withstand repeated dousings with hot soapy water. At regular intervals Muriel decided it needed revivifying, a goal she sought to achieve by putting it in the Hotpoint and dousing it with hot soapy water.
Willett had long since given up criticising the procedure on the advice of Hank Beveridge, who had been married to Yvonne, the youngest of Muriel’s three sisters. “You’ll never win that kind of argument,” Hank had counselled, “and your health will only suffer if you try. Hypertension, old son! That’s the way women get you, you know. They kill you by making you kill yourself.”
Willett still missed Hank for his black humour and cynical wryness, even though in the weeks before his death he had shown distinct signs of progressing beyond the socially acceptable degree of neuroticism. At lunchtime on most Sundays the two had met at the Rifleman’s Armss—a pub which was equidistant between their homes and mercifully free of juke boxes and games machines—and had spent pleasurable hours in conversation. Declining standards in just about everything had been a favourite topic, and the essential strangeness of the female mind had been another.
“It’s hard to find a fresh egg in my house,” Hank had once said. “And do you know why? Yvonne refuses to keep them in the fridge. She thinks she read somewhere that eggs keep better at room temperature. But do you know what she does keep in the fridge? Pickles and preserves! The two kinds of food whose names are synonymous with imperishability! Our fridge is so full of pickles and preserves you can hardly get anything else in there, Willett, but I pass no comment. She’s not giving me hypertension.”
The last had been a reference to Clive and Edward, the deceased spouses of Yvonne’s older sisters. Both men had died before their time of blockaded hearts, and afterwards Hank had never tired of elaborating on a fantasy based on the notion that the Sturmey sisters were a breed who consciously killed their husbands…
The sound of the front door being closed interrupted Willett’s reverie. He raised his head and watched Muriel carefully making her way towards him on red sandals whose slim heels went deep into the gravel at every step. At the age of fifty his wife looked almost exactly as she had done in her twenties and could wear her daughters’ clothes without exciting comment. Willett was not particularly aware of his own mortality, but there were times when he was shocked to realise that Muriel—with her temperate habits and long-lived forebears—might be only halfway through her span. Another life awaited her if he were to die soon.
She was of medium height and medium build and had what he thought of as a medium face, one which had nothing particularly wrong with it and which could be made quite beautiful when she took the trouble, which was most of the time. Today she was wearing a white blouse and white slacks, and had tied her black hair in place with a red-and-white scarf. He recognised the ensemble as one of her motoring outfits—she always changed her clothes specially for driving lessons.
“The afternoon’s going,” he said. “Who were you phoning?”
“Yvonne.” Muriel got into the driving seat and began taking off her sandals.
Willett opened the passenger door and sat beside her. “But you were with Yvonne most of the day. What could you possibly have to talk about on the phone?”