JUNK and other short stories Read online

  “It’s the same distance however I go, isn’t it?”

  “Of course,” replied the lady. “But some airlines go by a different route from others, and on some – most in fact – you have to change aircraft somewhere.”

  The woman stared at her screen in silence.

  “Would you mind changing your flight in Dubai?” she asked.

  “Where’s that?”

  “Middle East, somewhere. Or you could change in Singapore.”

  “Singapore,” decided Albert, who had heard of that.

  “In that case,” she said, “I can probably get you a seat on a flight tomorrow evening from Heathrow, changing in Singapore. There’s a four hour wait there, so you should catch the connection without any trouble.”

  “So when do I get to Perth?”

  “About two o’clock on Thursday morning, if all goes well,” she replied.

  “Anything earlier?” asked Albert. “What about tomorrow morning?”

  “According to this,” she tapped her screen again, “according to this, the morning flight is full.”

  “Put my name down for the evening one then, please,” instructed Mr Ainsley. “How much is it by the way?”

  “Well, if I were you, I’d go business class,” she advised. “Much more comfortable on a long journey, and better food too. Especially as you haven’t done much travelling.”

  “Actually, I’ve never been anywhere before, on an aeroplane” he admitted.

  “In that case, I would definitely go business class,” she nodded persuasively. She told him how much.

  “I’ll just nip over to the bank, and be back in a minute,” he told her.

  Fortunately, the local branch was open that morning – it didn’t open every day – and the manager was free when Albert called.

  He explained his problem, showed the manager the letters from the Perth solicitor, and asked for a short-term loan to cover his immediate expenses until he got his diamond mine. He thought £5,000 would do, for the airfare and a hotel for a couple of nights. The manager agreed, told him the interest rate, took copies of the letters from Perth and made Mr Ainsley sign no end of papers, after which Albert hurried back across the Square to confirm his booking.

  The kindly lady with the bun, realising that Mr Ainsley was quite new to all this, explained how to get to London’s Heathrow airport, that he needed to be in terminal five at least two hours before take-off, and that he would have to collect his ticket from the airline desk. This was already beginning to look like a major challenge for Mr Ainsley, who began to wonder if it was really worth all the trouble and the rush. There had never been much of a rush on the farm, even at lambing.

  He decided he really should have a word with the solicitor in Perth next, and eventually got through to Mr Herrington, who, it seemed, was just about to go home. Mr Ainsley thought it an odd time to be going home, but put it down to being in Australia. In the end, they had a long conversation, and all the while Mr Ainsley was worried about what his next telephone bill would look like. But Mr Herrington agreed that the mine was now his, subject to satisfactorily proving his identity and signing all the necessary papers before the deadline. He looked forward to meeting Mr Ainsley on Wednesday he said, and hung up.

  “Er, hang on a minute – it’s Thursday,” protested Albert, but the line was dead. He dared not ring back because of the cost, and was sure Thursday was what the man meant anyway.

  ***

  Albert Ainsley packed his suitcase, an old leather thing that hadn’t been used since Bournemouth, and realised he had no real idea what the weather was like in Australia. He hoped for the best, taking a couple of pullovers in case October was cold like it was here, and crammed in a short telescopic umbrella for good measure.

  The airport was a nightmare. Queues of people everywhere, loudspeakers giving instructions, TV screens with arrival and departure information, baggage check-in, immigration, searches for guns – everything. He even had to take his shoes off, and the belt on his trousers set off the alarm. Everyone looked. And he seemed to spend hours hanging around, waiting. He looked at the shops, but didn’t buy anything. There was nothing he wanted that he couldn’t get in the village at home.

  But at least the flight was comfortable, if long and boring. He had a good meal with a little bottle of wine for dinner, dozed while trying to watch a film on the tiny TV in the seat in front of him – what would they think of next, he wondered? – and was then woken up for breakfast.

  Singapore smelt different, somehow, from England. Perhaps it was the orchids. He wished he could buy some for Julie. He hadn’t realised how much he missed her, but now he was a long way from home and even more alone than he had been recently, away from his familiar surroundings. He spent rather longer in Singapore than he should have, as his plane to Perth was delayed, in the end by several hours. Albert Ainsley was getting very tired and cross and bored. He was also getting a bit worried that he would miss his Australian deadline. He wasn’t very good at working out things like that, but he thought he should still be in Mr Herrington’s office in good time.

  Eventually, he got airborne again, only to be served another dinner, and then, almost immediately it seemed to him, breakfast again.

  At last, he landed in Perth, and although it was not yet mid-day, the heat was stifling. Nobody had told him it would be early summer when he got there. But his hotel room was air conditioned, and so was the taxi to Mr Herrington’s office, where he arrived just after lunch. According to his watch, which he had kept on Essex time, he had six hours to spare before the mid-day deadline. What a relief!

  Mr Herrington greeted him warmly, and offered him coffee in his air-conditioned office. Albert felt a bit out of place – and hot - in his old and rather worn tweed suit.

  “Sorry I’m a bit later than I thought, but my aeroplane was delayed in Singapore,” he explained.

  “Such a pity,” said Mr Herrington.

  “Anyway,” said Mr Ainsley, enthusiastically, “Tell me about the mine and about Kimberley.”

  “Well certainly, if you would like me to,” said Mr Herrington. “It’s way to the north of here, and the best way of getting to it is by air. It’s about a four day drive, otherwise, with stops. The whole area is bigger than Japan, and much bigger than the UK, but only about 25,000 people live there. There’s one decent road, and only three towns with more than 2,000 people living in them. The Argyle mine up there produces about a third of the world’s diamonds, and what used to be your brother-in-law’s mine is in the same area. There’s a bit of cattle farming, some agriculture based on the Ord River irrigation system, and a few people still work for gold, although the gold rush at the end of the last century didn’t really last long. And that’s about it, really. If you’re thinking of visiting, you’ll need a proper guide and plenty of emergency supplies, especially water. It’s pretty hostile up there.”

  “It sounds awful,” commented Mr Ainsley, “but I suppose I should take a look at it all before I decide what to do with it, especially if I’m now a director of the mining company.”

  “Ah,” said the Solicitor. “I’m afraid you are not a director of the mining company, Mr Ainsley.”

  “But I thought my brother in law was a director, and had a large shareholding, as well as a house of some sort up there.”

  “So he did,” agreed Mr Herrington. “But I’m sorry to say that none of that has passed to you.”

  “What do you mean? It all passed to my wife – I have your letter, telling her – and when she died, her whole estate passed to me. So it must all be mine,” protested Albert.

  “I’m afraid not, Mr Ainsley,” replied the solicitor. “You will recall from my letter, which I see you have with you, that your brother in law set a timetable in his will during which your wife should lay claim to his estate. She initially chose not to claim it. I have her letter here saying that she had no i
nterest in it, and that, furthermore, she had no intention of attending his funeral either.”

  “I know that,” agreed Albert. “We discussed it. But now she has sadly died and I have inherited her estate, I am here to claim what she didn’t want. Why else do you think I’ve come all this way?”

  “I understand that,” said Mr Herrington, “but I am sorry to say that you have missed the deadline which was set.”

  “No I haven’t,” declared Albert, getting cross. “The deadline, according to your letter, is today at mid-day.”

  “Quite so,” agreed the solicitor.

  “And according to my watch,” protested Albert, tapping the ancient instrument with his finger, “I have about six hours to go.”

  “The deadline,” argued Mr Herrington, “if you look at my letter, is mid-day today, local time.”

  “Exactly.” Mr Ainsley was getting quite hot under the collar, what with his tweed suit and the heat. “Exactly,” he repeated, “and it is only six o’clock in the morning local time in England, so I am well within the deadline.”

  “I am sorry to have to tell you, Mr Ainsley, that ‘local time’ refers to local time here in Perth, not in England. We are eight hours ahead of you here, so the deadline expired here at four o’clock this morning. That’s why,” explained the solicitor, “I was expecting to see you yesterday. Wednesday, not Thursday.”

  Albert slumped into his chair. He couldn’t work this out at all. Where he lived, it wasn’t even today yet, not properly.

  “Such a pity,” repeated Mr Herrington.

  “Do you really mean that I’ve come all this way for nothing,” asked a distraught Mr Ainsley.

  “I’m afraid you have had a wasted journey, my dear sir,” he replied.

  “Can nothing be done?” asked Albert.

  “Nothing,” said the solicitor. “Not even a court of law, at this late stage, can over-ride the conditions set in your brother in law’s will. Such a pity.”

  “So what happens to my diamond mine,” pleaded Mr Ainsley.

  “It isn’t your diamond mine,” replied Mr Herrington, “and it never was. Under the terms of the will, it now belongs to me.”

  Albert Ainsley sat stunned for a few moments, in silence. Eventually, he levered himself from the chair in front of the solicitor’s desk, and, without a word, stumbled like the lost soul he was from the office, into the summer heat of downtown Perth.

  As the door closed behind him, Herrington’s secretary appeared from an adjoining office. The solicitor was mopping his brow, in spite of the air conditioning.

  “That was close,” he commented. “Too close for comfort.”

  “What happened?” the girl asked.

  “That poor old pom had no idea what was going on, thank the Lord,” he replied. “He hardly knew what day it was, let alone could he work out deadlines and time zone differences.”

  “What if the penny suddenly drops?” she asked. “What if he suddenly works out that he was right after all, and that he was in time to claim the mine? What then?”

  “He won’t. And anyway, by then it really will be too late,” he replied looking at his watch. “It nearly is now.”

  “I couldn’t face the thought of having to give up all that, after all this time,” she said.

  “We’d never be able to afford to pay back all we’ve taken from the company, anyway,” said Herrington. “It makes me sweat just to think about it.”

  “Don’t worry my darling,” said the girl, putting her arms round his shoulders. “It was very clever of you to word that letter the way you did in the first place. It was so ambiguous, you could have argued about ‘local time’ for ever, if you needed to.”

  “Thanks to our friend, brother-in-law Stan, really,” he admitted. “He always said they were just a couple of outback farmers, and that’s certainly what he was. But I never thought either of them would ever turn up – not after her letter all those months ago.”

  The girl drew back a corner of the curtain and looked out of the office window.

  Albert was a tragic figure standing across the street, looking total bemused and lost. She almost felt sorry for him, but dared not go out to comfort him.

  Albert Ainsley was hot and tired and confused. What on earth was he doing here, in a strange city on the other side of the world? He must have been mad. He had ended up with no diamond mine and a debt of £5,000 he would now never be able to repay. He must have been quite mad.

  Now all he wanted was to get home, to his familiar surroundings and the memories of his beloved Julie. He missed her terribly. She would never have let him come.

  She had been right all along, of course.

  But then she always was.

  ***

  10 - DOWN ON THE FARM

  They met at University.

  Oxford.

  Henry Smith and Allan Wilberforce.

  Started at the same time, doing the same degree course, attending the same lectures, living in Halls. Inevitable that they should meet, really. And when they did, there was an immediate rapport between them, although neither understood why. They just got on well together, that’s all.

  Truth be known, they were from quite different backgrounds. Henry Smith came from the East End of London, and sometimes it showed. Did ever so well at school though. Well enough to get to Oxford.

  Allan Wilberforce, on the other hand, had gone to a good private school near his parents quite large home in the Surrey hills, and then to boarding school. In spite of distractions like trout fishing on the Hampshire chalk streams, a horse of his own in the paddock and a few years spent living abroad when his father’s work took him there, he also did well at school. But he tended to keep quiet about his background, so as not to embarrass Henry, whose friendship he valued.

  They started spending spare time together, what little there was of it. Pubs in the evening, the odd proper meal out, if you call burgers a proper meal – that sort of thing. But they couldn’t eat out all the time. Their allowances wouldn’t stretch to it for a start, and there was a limit to how much junk food you could take in any one day, however much you enjoyed hamburgers and pizzas. So they ate in Halls with the others in their first year. They both agreed to move out when they could though, and find a flat or some digs somewhere near their college. Everyone else did, so why not? They both had bikes, and everything was near everything else in Oxford, especially if you had a bike. So it didn’t matter where, really.

  Neither of them had much spare cash – students don’t, what with small grants and big loans and all that. They both reckoned they would be in their thirties before they paid off their student loans. So they needed good degrees to get good jobs with good pay. That meant they had to work. Hard. Another reason why they didn’t eat out a lot or spend much when they did. And in spite of his background and rather well-off parents, Allan was kept on a tight purse-string. His parents had decided that he had to learn the value of money, so refused to be forever putting their hands in their pockets to help him out. Like everyone else, Allan had to take a part-time job, when studies allowed, to help pay his way. So did Henry, who spent time at the weekends washing up at Alice’s Tearoom, while Allan helped out behind the bar at The Wheatsheaf.

  They both enjoyed their studies all right, but certainly not their lifestyle. They both missed home, even if for different reasons. Which is why they had decided to move into digs when they could after their first year, rather than stay in College accommodation. Up to a point, living in Halls was all right. They were at least able to eat in the dining room with other students when they wanted, even though it was expensive, but it reminded Allan too much of boarding school, which he had hated, and Henry didn’t like it because he thought it must be like that in prison, judging by what his uncle, who had first-hand experience, had once told him. So they opted for more freedom, in a ‘place’ of
their own, however humble.

  Their parents also thought it would do them good, even though they weren’t paying for it. The fact was that neither of them had any real idea about how to look after themselves, because they’d never had to. So far as Allan was concerned, boarding school, and servants when they lived abroad, had all helped to make sure of that. And no matter how hard times had been for the family, Henry’s Mum had always made sure that there was a warm home and a good meal ready for him whenever he had got home to his high-rise block of flats after school, or football, or whatever. But now he, too, was on his own, like a fish out of water.

  They eventually found a small flat in a quieter part of Oxford, away from where most students lived. Not many had digs south of Folly Bridge, on the Abingdon Road, and yet it was still not a difficult bike ride for them to get to their college. It was also handy for where they both worked part-time. Not a lot needed to be done to make the flat habitable for the pair of them, which was just as well, as neither of them was much good at DIY. The flat had a small kitchen cum dining room, where they could boil an egg or heat up some soup when they were desperate, a tiny bedroom each, a bathroom and a telephone. What more could impoverished students ask?

  However, the day they moved in, they decided not to celebrate by cooking for themselves, for fear of the consequences

  “Chinese would be nice,” said Henry. “Cheap and filling – specially made for penniless students.”

  “Sounds OK,” agreed Allan. “Which one?”

  “We’ve been to the ‘Opium Den’, and the Mongolian place next door, and they’re not bad, but why don’t we try the new ‘Golden Wok’ for a change. Someone said it’s quite good.”

  There was a small bar tucked away in one corner at the front, from where they served drinks to those who wanted them – or could afford them, in the case of under-graduates – and the usual silk dragon prints hung on the walls. But the tables had real tablecloths on, rather than paper ones, and little vases with real freesias in them. The little Chinese ladies who were bustling about serving had spotless white uniforms on, too. Worryingly, it looked a good deal more expensive than they could afford, although in the end it wasn’t. But Henry studied the menu closely, looking for the cheapest fried rice.