For Old Time's Sake

"Scratch, if you remember we always finished what we started in the old days."

"But that was then and this is now, Stella. Lots of things have changed over the years and we're supposed to be adults, remember."

"Lets see what's changed, shall we? You dumped me and went off with..."

"I dumped you?" I interrupted her. "You took up with Toby or was it that guy with that Harley Davidson?"

"Oh, he was a real creep, but that bike of his was something else. Anyway I only went out with him once, just to have a ride on that bike of his."

"It was a pile of scrap, a bleeding museum piece, a piece of junk that the Americans left behind after the war," I retorted. Probably sounding more annoyed than I should have, but my emotions were playing their part, even after all those years.

"Yeah, but it was the only Harley around and I know you rode it at least once," Stella replied.

"Just to see what it was like to ride, that's all!" I said as stoically as I could manage

"And that's why I went out with him; I just wanted the experience of being on that Harley as well. His problem was he wanted payment for the privilege. Well, he never got a ride out of me I can promise you. But what did you go and do? I go out with him for one little ride on his Harley and the next thing I know, you let Elaine take over my pillion seat."

"I'm sorry, Goldie, but the guy told a slightly different story than you," I retorted. I think I was remembering how angry I'd been at the time, when I'd heard the rumours.

"And you believed him?"

"Why shouldn't I?" I replied. "Look, Stella, we didn't have anything permanent going between us at the time. Although it wasn't for the want of my asking, if you remember rightly. And then suddenly everyone's talking about you and... Christ, what was the bloody idiot's name?"

"That's true, you did ask me to be your girl several times and I said to wait a while, didn't I? And I have no idea what that little twerp's name was either. You know that Toby gave him a right seeing-to for spreading that rumour about, don't you? It had got back to my dad by then; he nearly killed me and I was grounded for weeks."

"So that's what happened! All I knew was that the rumour went about that you and the creep were getting it on, and then the two of you disappeared. Well, Elaine and me had always got on well, so after a while we got together. The next time I saw you, you were riding pillion to Toby."

"Well, what did you expect me to do? You were with Elaine, and Toby had always been sweet on me from when we'd been at primary school together. So I was just hanging around with him to make you jealous."

"You made a pretty good job of doing that!" I commented.

"But then all of a sudden you and Elaine were gone. The next thing I know you two got married."

"Yeah, well, my uncle found me a good job in the place where he worked down west; so I moved down there and lived with him and my aunt for a while. Elaine followed me down later that summer and got herself a live-in job at one of the local hotels. Well, to cut a long story short, houses were cheap down that way at the time, so a year or so later we got hitched.

"I've moved up in the company over the years; I'm in management now. Although my boss just dropped a real clanger and it looks like I'm going to be in the driving seat come Monday morning. I've got a couple of days off whilst the guys from head office go down there and do the nasty bit. From what I can gather they think my boss has been taking kickbacks from the suppliers or something. Whatever, he's apparently been up to something not quite kosher."

"Will there be any flak coming your way?"

"I doubt it somehow, or they wouldn't have offered me my boss's position, would they? Anyway how did you and Toby finish up getting hitched? I know you were his current girl when I left, but we all thought Toby would finish up with Brenda. You know they were always together until she went off to that Veterinary college place."

"I'm not sure what happened with Brenda. Toby had always been sweet on me, and I liked him a lot."

"Crikey, Stella, all the guys were sweet on Goldie!"

"Not exactly, Scratch; they were sweet on my arse when it was in those jeans. And didn't I know it. Maybe if I hadn't been so full of myself, things would have worked out different."

I wasn't at all sure as to what Stella was alluding to there, but I let it pass.

"Anyway as time went on everyone was getting hitched. I went through a few different boyfriends, none of whom lasted the course. Then one day a few years after you'd gone and completely out of the blue, Toby asked me to marry him. I think we were both a little drunk at the time; anyway I said yes and things just went on from there.

"We had a good marriage, I think. Although Toby's life revolved around motorbikes and the children, of course! You know he raced professionally for a while, don't you? But I think he was more in love with speed than the racing and he never was one for caring about safety. He lost his sponsors in the end and he never could get a place on any of the works teams."

"No, I didn't now that Toby raced. I kind-of switched to cars right after Elaine and I got hitched. The house we brought is out in the sticks and, well, the bike isn't very practical for carrying home the weekly shopping or all the DIY stuff I needed for the house. Elaine and I would go out on the bike during the summer sometimes but in the end it got parked in the back of the garage and almost forgotten about. It's still there to this day."

It was surprising how much that Stella and I found to talk about. After eating we went back to her place and sat chatting until about two in the morning. Claire sat with us for a while and then went into the kitchen where she played the radio (quite loudly), I think to remind us she was there. Young Toby had obviously gone to bed before we'd arrived back at the house.

Stella and I exchanged telephone numbers and she asked me to drop by again next time I was in town. That I figured could be sooner than she expected, because I was aware that my new position called for planning visits to the head office every month or so.

God alone knows what time I got to the hotel that morning, but I crashed the instant I got into the room. I think it must have been about seven-thirty when my daughter Angela called me on my mobile phone.

"Hi, Dad. Are you sober?" she asked after I croaked hello down the handset. "Are we on the breadline today or not?"

"No chance, kiddo, quite the reverse. Bill Morgan's for the high jump and guess who's going to be the new head honcho?"

"There you go, dad! I told you, you did the right thing. What did you do last night? Go out and celebrate?"

"No, I took a very old friend out to dinner and we sat and talked about old times until some god awful hour this morning."

"Oh, you crafty old dog. Who is she? Is she pretty? What's her name? Did you kiss her?" Angela asked in quick succession.

"Angela, she is just an old friend from back when your mother and I were young. Why do you try to marry me off every time I speak to a member of the opposite sex?"

"Come on, Dad, you need a good woman to look after you."

"I've got you for now, Angel. Anyway I didn't kiss her and, yes, Stella is pretty. We were very close once but that was a long time ago."

"Any husbands or boyfriends kicking about?"

"Angela, give over! She's a widow and I don't know if there are any suitors around. I ran into her in a café during the afternoon and invited her out for a meal last night, that's all there was too it. Now I'll be back around lunchtime, so I'll be home when you and Jimmy get home from college; I'm off work until Monday whilst the hammer falls on Bill. The three of us will go out tonight to celebrate so don't accept any invitations to go out on a date."

++++++++++++++

My journey home actually took longer than I expected. I hadn't been the only one in the office who was suspicious of what Bill Morgan was doing. But I'd been the only one (or so I thought) who'd been prepared to put his head on the block and ring the alarm bell. Bill Morgan never had been a very nice person to work under and he tended to run the office by fear rather than respect.

The result was my mobile rang at regular intervals during the journey causing me to have to pull off the road and stop to answer it. I received a long list of reports from various members of the staff informing me of the day's events. Apparently there were auditors and people from head office going through just about everything. My files as well, I might add!

I eventually got home about two thirty. As I pulled the car into the garage, I found myself looking at the old Triumph sitting there covered in its tarpaulin. I hadn't been home that long when something pulled me back out to the garage where I took the cover from it.

"Two new tyres at least and I suppose I'll have to pull the engine apart and check it over. Then there's the brakes and clutch, I suppose," I found myself thinking.

By the time Angela and Jimmy pulled up on their way home from college in the little Nissan I had bought my Angel for passing her driving test on her seventeenth birthday. My car was back outside in the drive and the Triumph was in pieces all over the garage floor.

"What are you doing, Dad?" Jimmy asked, as he climbed out of the Nissan.

"Trying to relive his youth, I should imagine!" Angela answered Jimmy's question for me. "So she was one of your motorbike dolly's, was she?" she quipped at me with a big smile on her face.

"Baby, your mother was, as you so nicely put it, "one of my motorbike dolly's" and don't you forget it! And you are right; meeting Goldie again did make me remember what it was like to ride the old bike around."

"Goldie!" Angela exclaimed. "You never said you took Goldie out last night, you said you went out with someone called Stella."

"Stella is Goldie. What difference does it make anyway who I went for a meal with?" I asked, somewhat surprised at Angela's reaction to the name Goldie.

"You don't know?" Angela reaction was getting stranger by the minute.

"No! What are you making so much fuss about?" I asked her.

"Dad, you went out to dinner with Goldie last night!" Angela said again. Actually I wasn't sure whether she said that as a question or an affirmation.

"What's got into you, Angela, and what do you know about Goldie anyway?"

"Lots, dad. Mum used to talk to me about Goldie all the time!" Angela replied, with what I can only call one of those female knowing looks on her face.

Her mother used to do that all the time. For one strange moment my mind pictured Elaine standing there instead of Angela. I shook my head to clear the vision from my mind.

"And just what reason could your mother have for talking to you about Goldie of all people?" I asked her.

Angela's demeanor suddenly changed. "Dad, I've got some stuff I've got to study here, I'd better get at it if we're going out tonight," she blurted out and disappeared towards the house.

"Angela?" I called after her, but she either ignored me or didn't hear.

Jimmy, in the mean time, had ignored what his crazy sister had been saying and was nosing around the pieces of the Triumph scattered over the floor.

"Can I help you, dad? You are going to put it back on the road, aren't you?"

"That's the theory, son, but it's been sat here a few years now. You know it isn't going to be a two-minute job. But anyway, you can't do anything tonight. You heard what your sister said; we're going out to celebrate my promotion.

"Will you take me out on it when you're done?" Jimmy asked

"Yeah we'll take a few runs over the moors I should imagine," I replied.

+++++++++++++++++++

The meal that evening was enjoyable if somewhat different to what normally happened when we went out as a family on Friday evenings.

It was normal for Angela and one of her fellow students who waiter'd part time in the restaurant that we normally used, to make goggle-eyes at each other all evening. It wasn't unusual for us to discover that a girl that Jimmy was sweet on at school was eating there with her parents either, so they made goggle-eyes at each other all night as well.

The thing that made it different was that more than a couple of my colleagues from work were there with their families. Our entrance was greeted by a sporadic round of applause and a few cheers that I found quite embarrassing. Angela had to drive home as well because all sorts of spurious drinks kept arriving at our table for me.

A couple of times during the meal I tried to ask Angela what reason her mother and her had had to discuss Stella. But I was greeted with another of Elaine's old looks. Angela would look me in the eye and then glance at Jimmy -- who inevitably would be staring at his lost love or whoever the girl was anyway -- this I knew, from when her mother used to do it, meant "not now; we'll discuss it later when the children aren't around", or in Angela's case, when Jimmy wasn't within earshot.

I eventually collared Angela in the kitchen after we'd gotten home.

"Okay, Angel, now tell me just what did you and your mother had cause to discuss Stella for?

Angela sat and looked at me for a couple of moments with a particular expression on her face. God, she was a chip off the old block, I'd seen her mother do the same thing a thousand times. I know that Angela was deciding exactly how to reply. Suddenly she said, "Wait there, father!" then ran up to her room. Three minutes later she returned carrying a King Edward's Cigar box.

I assumed it was one of several that we'd had around the house for years. My father used to lay his hands on the "full" boxes somewhere; I never knew where, but I suspected illegally. This one was different though it was tied up with a red ribbon.

Angela placed the box in front of herself, and then opened it in a manner so that I couldn't see inside. She took out several monochrome photographs and studied them, then she handed one of them to me.

It was a picture of a very young looking Scratch Caisey sitting astride the same Triumph motorcycle that was lying in pieces all over the garage floor. Behind him -- on the pillion seat - sat a quite beautiful young woman dressed in a pair of tight denim jeans that looked like they'd been painted on her, with her long golden tresses blowing in the breeze.

I turned the picture over and on the back it said "Scratch and Goldie on the South Downs" with an unintelligible date underneath. It had been so long that couldn't recall the picture being taken.

"I wonder how your mother came by this?" I asked.

"Oh, she had lots more," Angela replied. Scattering several others on the table. "And there's some here of mum with Reg and a lot of you two together."

Reg was one of the guys who been sweet on Elaine before she tipped her hat in my direction.

"I didn't know your mother had these; I wonder why she kept the one of Goldie and me when we were together. Doesn't seem right somehow," I said.

"Mum told me that she kept them because she won!"

"Won what?"

Angela smiled as me.

"You silly! Mum told me that you were going out with Goldie, but she had a terrible crush on you. She said that one-day you and Goldie had a falling out about something or the other and you were really cut up about it. Anyway mum told me that she saw her chance, and latched onto you like glue. She never let Goldie get within a hundred feet of you after that. Sounds to me like they had a real war over you, dad."

"Bugger, you know I never noticed at the time, but now you mention it. It's strange though because yesterday, Goldie acted as if she couldn't remember who I married when we first spoke yesterday."

"Not strange at all, father. What's the poor woman going to say? 'Are you still with the woman who stole you from me?' According to mother, Goldie was just as much in love with you as she was back then."

"Sounds to me like you and your mother discussed a lot more than I thought you did."

"Oh, dad, mother told me all sorts of things in those last few weeks. She said she realised I was young but she entrusted me with this box that she kept her secret things in. She told me I'd know what to do with the contents if and when the time came. You know, I know all your darkest secrets, dad. Mother loved you very much, but I think she felt a little guilty about what she did to Goldie!"

"What could she feel guilty about? Goldie and I had a falling out and your mother chose exactly the right moment to get my attention. Pretty good timing on your mother's behalf, if you ask me,"

"Oh, mother did a little more than that, dad! Didn't you ask Goldie to be your steady date or something?"

"Yes, I did, more than a couple of times. But she said her father wouldn't like it if she dated the same boy all the time. I took it that Goldie wasn't as keen on me as she'd have liked me to believe."

"And you didn't know that Uncle Mark worked with Goldie's father and told him you were a real bad boy then," Angela said with a contrite look on her face.

Angela's Uncle Mark was Elaine's older brother; I had no idea that he'd ever worked with Goldie's father.

"Why the hell would Mark do tha---t? Oh, no, your mother put him up to it, didn't she!" The truth suddenly struck home to me.

"You're getting there, dad! It was a war that mother intended to win and she wasn't taking any prisoners."

"You know, I always thought that your mother had a devious streak in her. That I've got the nastiest suspicion you may have inherited."

Angela just laughed, then said goodnight and made her way up to her room. I sat in the kitchen for a while going through all the photographs that she'd left on the table. It was only when I went to put the pictures away again that I noticed Angela had taken the cigar box with her. I had to wonder what else was in that little box.

++++++++++++++++

The next couple of weeks were turmoil for me, what with taking over as boss of the office and weeding out Bill Morgan's little clique. I didn't trust any of them, but luckily for me they nearly all moved on to pastures new once he was gone. I had to build up the team again and replace those that left of course, but that wasn't easy. In the meantime those of us who were left, were working our socks off.

With the promotion I'd inherited a new secretary. Geena had been Bill Morgan's secretary for some time and to begin with I had my doubts about her loyalty. I think I was right to be a little sceptical about her at first, simply because she had been Bill's secretary. But I soon discovered she was the best PA I'd ever had. Bugger the secretary lark; Geena was a PA in all but name and a very efficient one at that.

She never actually said anything about it and neither did I; but when I'd been called to that meeting in London, I'd gotten the distinct impression that someone else in the office had been reporting their worries to somebody on the board. Over time I came to suspect that that somebody had been Geena.

I spent some time the following weekend working on the Triumph, but not very much. It was going to take me over two months to finally get it road worthy again and even then I had to call for some assistance from one of the mechanics at the local garage.

Six weeks after my promotion I had my first planning meeting in London. Angela asked me if I was going to see Goldie again. I told her I wasn't sure that I'd have the time. Apparently the big knobs at head office were very happy with what I'd managed to achieve in such a short time.

I'd gotten wind - through Geena - that the company chairman was going to invite me to a dinner party at his house in the evening after the meeting.

It was about this time that I realised that Geena had contacts at the head office. I learnt later when I looked through her personnel file that she'd work there for many years, before moving down to the West Country when she got married. I assumed that she knew some, if not all of the secretaries up there, as well as some of the board members.