Voice of the Fire by Alan Moore (essential reading txt) 📕

a fuss about getting me in another drink before we left, by way of gratitude, and he had one himself which, to be frank, was one too many. From the state of him, he’d had a few before I’d got there, and once we were in the car I didn’t get a lot of sense from him. Most of the time he was asleep and snoring.

It might have been a different story if I’d had a bit of conversation like I wanted, just to take my mind off my troubles. As it was, the only company I had was far too sloshed for conversation, so I’d nothing else to do but drive along and brood on things, with him behind me rasping like a saw-mill. I got madder with him as we went along. I mean, there I was in the midst of all my troubles, Nellie’s baby born a week before and Ivy’s nearly due, and meanwhile there was him snoring like a carthorse, slobbering on my upholstery. I’m not saying that I feel any animosity towards him now, of course not, but it’s how I felt about it then.

We drove on up the Roman road towards Northamptonshire, which we came in by way of Towcester. It’s a funny thing, what you remember, but I can recall what I was thinking when we passed Greens Norton church spire on our left. I don’t know why, but I was thinking back to when I was a little lad and we lived on Herne Hill, just up the road there from the Half Moon Inn. When I was younger I was that inquisitive, how children are. I wanted to know everything. One day, I couldn’t have been more than seven, I remember asking Mam about Herne Hill and why they called it that. She said she didn’t know, but if I was that bothered I could look it up in Pear’s Encyclopaedia, so I did.

I don’t know if you ever opened up a book, back when you were a nipper, and you saw a picture that was just so frightening you slammed the book and never dared to look at it again? Well, that was how it was with me. I opened the encyclopaedia to the page I wanted, under H, and there was this old line engraving of this bloke, and he had antlers like a deer growing out from his head. I know it doesn’t sound much now but I was terrified. I’d never seen a picture in my life until that point that had upset me half so much, I can’t say why.

I shut the book and went and hid it underneath the wardrobe in my parents’ room, beneath some copies of Reveille that had ended up there. I wanted to bury it, you see, I was that scared of it. Why I should think of that chap with antlers as I passed Greens Norton church I’ve no idea, but there you are. The mind’s a funny thing. You don’t know why you do things half the time, or at least I don’t.

You take what I said that evening when I got to Ivy’s house in Wales, just after I’d been in her room and touched her up. Her parents had been kind enough to offer me a nice bit of boiled bacon and potato for my supper which I was halfway through eating when there came a knock upon the door. The Jenkins had a neighbour three doors down who seemed to know all of their business, which included me and Ivy, and it turned out it was her stood on their doorstep with a copy of the local paper. Had we seen, she said, the picture of a car found in Northampton? Now, that’s how it is in villages, you see, with everybody knowing everybody else’s business. I’d not been in Gellygaer more than an hour or two, and here was somebody had heard already what I’d said to Ivy’s dad about my motor getting pinched. As it turned out, I still had worse to come.

They asked her in and let her show this paper round to everyone, and when I saw it I was in the middle of a mouthful of boiled ham. I’ll tell you, it’s a wonder that I didn’t choke. There was a picture of my Morris Minor standing burned out in the field at Hardingstone. There was a paragraph beside it said a human body had been found inside the wreckage. Well, it’s like I said, you don’t know why you do or say things half the time, but when I looked at that I blurted straight out, without thinking twice, ‘That’s not my car.’ I followed that by mumbling something about how I’d not thought there’d be such a fuss made in the papers over things.

It was a bloody stupid thing to say, I think now looking back on it. I mean, it was my car, there wasn’t any doubt about it. You could read the licence plate, MU 1468, as plain as anything. It was about the only bit that wasn’t burned away. All I did by making out it wasn’t mine was make myself look fishy and get everyone’s suspicions up. I got out of it best I could by claiming I was tired and making off to bed in the spare room, where I thought about Ivy’s tits and had a quick one off the wrist to take me mind off things.

Now usually, no sooner have I brought myself off than I’m fast asleep, but not that night. Oh no. I didn’t sleep a wink except for bits where I’d doze off and have these horrid little dreams that woke me up almost before they’d started. They were vivid at the time, but now I can’t remember anything about them, only that they put the wind up me so that I lay awake until the first light crept across the lily-patterned paper on the end