The Death of William Posters

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All afternoon Frank Dawley walked across the Lincolnshire uplands. Grey cloud corrugated the sky and deadened the sound of his feet on the metalled road. His mind had changed with the landscape since leaving Nottingham, surprising him at times by its breadth. A dog-wind snapped at the back of his head. The country was bleak, hilly and monotonous, and he had no reason for walking along that particular stretch of narrow road.

Journeying was cheap. The sale of his car had enriched him by four hundred pounds which he had split and spun out at ten a week for himself and ten for Nancy — rather than be shoe-horned into another job. He left his suitcase at his sister’s and set off with a small rucksack, walking, or hitching rides along whatever road suited him. Sometimes he would wait for a lift and, seeing a car coming from the opposite direction, would walk across and thumb that, set off north before south, east instead of west, all decisions meaningless now that he had made the great one of his life. One leg took him from Reading to Manchester, with a TV producer in a jungle-green Jaguar, which Frank also drove and so got him there in half the time by steering through the night, after a beano dinner at some typical English pub with Spanish waiters — coffee, brandy and a skittle-shaped cigar to follow, which this TV bloke said would go on expenses, so drink up and let’s blow town, he added, trying to imitate Frank’s life. Blinded with drink; Frank wasn’t, so let him sleep in the back while he, glad to be at the wheel after a fortnight on foot, took them steadily north through wind and drizzle, the radio playing softly the Fly-by-night Favourites for nomad boozers.

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