KING OF THE ROAD BY ROSE BOUCHERON The flames leaped. To some it was an end, to others a beginning. For all, it held the primeval fascination of fire. THE great yellow bulldozer rolled and danced its way along the high road like some great animal on a circus roundabout. It had the same kind of garish glamour. Passers by watched it, mesmerized, as it turned into the avenue, a quiet, tree-lined road, one of the last outposts of Victorian suburbia. The houses sat quietly in their gardens, making no fuss, well behaved, orderly. There was no sign of life just a rolling yellow bulldozer making its way up the avenue. At the corner, it turned sharply into a driveway through high white gates of imposing design. Down the gravel drive it swayed, up on to the back lawn, and for sheer devilment, across a circular rose-bed filled with red roses in full bloom. Finally, like a runaway, the driver pulled the bulldozer to a halt by a small summerhouse. A young man rose from the seat, bare to his waist, his body sunburned, a thin sliver chain around his neck. He jumped down from the driver’s cabin, a cigarette in his mouth. Hands on hips, he surveyed the old house without interest. There was a large builder’s lorry outside the front porch, and two men were working on the roof. “Whaf yer doing up there?” the driver called to the two men. “It’s the lead, d’ y’ see,” an Irish voice tilled bark. “Every pipe in the place is made of lead. ”The men prised the soft pale green pipes away from the red brick wall. “Ye could put ye fingers in them, they’re that soft,” one of them said. “How long will yer be gettin’ ‘em off, then, Paddy?” the driver called back. “Should be through by dinner-time,” one of the men said. “Anything around?” the driver asked, walking through the front door. The black and white tiled floor, muddy with a hundred dirty footprints, led through to the drawing-room, the great high windows bare without curtains, and out into a conservatory. In the kitchen, the fitments had gone. Just the dresser remained, naked without its complement of cups and saucers. The driver opened a drawer automatically, then unscrewed one hook from a shelf and put it in his trouser pocket. Presently, he took a comb from his back pocket, and beding his knees, peered through the glass on the dresser door to catch a reflection of himself. His hair was long, halfway to his shoulders, waved and curled. The sideburns were long and curly, too. He looked this way and that, then shook his head so that the curls tumbled with a natural effect. Satisfied, he left the kitchen and walked over to the dining-room, examining the built-in shelves, the fireplace. Unmoved, he went up the stairs two at a time, peering into every bedroom. In the master room, he walked over to the window, and stood looking out at the scene below. Leaping up the next flight, he flung himself into the maid’s room, and then the playroom. There was a white-painted fixture in the playroom which had once held books and toys. He tried to move it with strong brown hands, then stood back and kicked it. Flakes of glossy white paint fell to the floor. He pitted his young man’s strength against it and tried to prise it from the wall. It moved slightly, but still resisted. He looked around the room for something to use as a lever. Finding nothing, he lit a cigarette and stared at it for a moment or two. Then, taking the stairs three at a time, he raced out of the house, ran across to his machine and found a crowbar. Up the stairs again three at the time. He set to, prising the fixture from the wall, puffing and straining through the cigarette hanging from his mouth. Presently, with a wrenching, cracking sound, it crunched away from the plaster and paper. He stood back as it fell to the floor, looked at it triumphantly, spat, then kicked it with his shoe. It lay on the floor at his feet, beaten. He hitched up his jeans, and went downstairs again and climbed back into his cab. “Going up tonight, is it?” he called to one of the men. “Yes, it is that,” the man’ replied. A film company are doing it. ‘Twill be a sight. Seems they’re making a film about a burnin’ house” - “Oh, yeah,” the bulldozer driver said. He would bring his bird. She’d like to see that. He hitched his trousers again and combed his hair. Yes, she liked a fire, his bird. His bird. He hadn’t stopped thinking about her since last night. “Will ye be back tomorrer, Roy?” one of the men said. “Yeah,” Roy called “It’ll be as flat a pancake this time tomorrer.” He set the machine in motion, and it shook its way across the front lawns to the wooden verandah, which lay facing the sun, entwined with wistaria. The scent was strong and heavy, and Roy sniffed. Stopping the machine, he got down and went over to the cascading flowers. He took one of the big drooping clusters into his calloused hand and smelled it. He picked it off the stem, and held it in front of him, dangling it. A pretty thing; mauve, he liked mauve. He dropped it to the ground and walked back to the machine. Reversing the bulldozer, he drove it across the lawn to the small wooden gazebo. Round, latticed, it sat there, a relic of many a dalliance on a hot summer afternoon. He looked at it dispassionately and drove the bulldozer full tilt into and over it. It crumpled like paper, and he turned round in his seat to see the result of his handiwork. Absorbed, he returned over it again and left it a heap of matchwood. Then he drove straight across the lawn again, leaving deep scars in the velvety turf, out into the drive, through the white gates, up the avenue and into the road. All the young girls and the business men watched him, the bare-chested driver at the wheel of the great yellow monster. He moved along with power, bigger, higher than anything else on the road, a monster, a moving monster. He tossed his cigarette into the gutter, his hand on the great gear lever, king of the road... That evening, he stood beside his bird, the silver chain glinting round his neck, half hidden by the collar of his leather jacket with the death’s head picked out on the back in sliver metal studs. In front of him, the flames shot high into the sky. The noise and smell were sickening. Flames leaped through the open windows, the glass crackled and melted. The window flames caught fire, and like blazing beacons fell to the ground. Sparks showered everywhere like golden rain, and the whirr of film cameras clicked behind them. A knot of sightseers watched, fascinated. They had come to see the fire and it was beyond their wildest expectations. When the roof began to fall, there were cries and a small scream. Ray held on to his bird, looking down at her more than at the fire. She wore a new dress. It was very short and he could see the gleam of her nylon-clad kneecaps in the rosy glow of the fire. The dress was white, bound with black braid. Her hair reached to below her shoulders, like thin bleached string, and long thick eyelashes fluttered on her cheeks. They were false, spiky eyelashes which made her eyes dark, mysterious. Her mouth was a blob of white lipstick, her skin un-painted and un-powdered. He buried his face in her hair. “Like it, doll?” he asked. She nodded. “Smashin’!” Beside them were an elderly couple, the woman almost in tears. “Come on, dear,” the man said, “there’s no point in upsetting yourself. It’s very sad, very sad.” He put his arm round her shoulders and led her away through the crowd. Beyond them, a young married couple, holding the hand of a small child, looked triumphantly at the now blackening shell, flames dying down, the charred bits of wood falling everywhere, the smoke hanging like a pall above them. “Good thing, too,” the young woman said. “It’s about time these empty old places were pulled down. I should think they’d get at least ten houses up here.” “A block of flats, I heard,” her husband said. “I shouldn’t mind one of them.” A young couple standing by. the boy about eighteen, the girl in a blazer, Iooked at the empty shell and drew closer together. “I loved this old house,” the girl said, her eyes bright with unshed tears. “I always passed it on my way to school. It’s a part of my chuldhood.” The boy nodded. “Shame to think of all these lovely old houses being pulled down. By the time we’re old enough to get married, darling, there’ll be none these Victorian houses left.” She looked at him in the dark, shyly. Roy slid his hand a little higher above his bird’s waist. “Like it?” he asked. “Smashin’!” she said. ‘l’ll have this as flat as a pancake tomorrer,” he said, “you see. My old machine will make short work of this.” “You’ll never know it had been there – Will yer, Roy?” She turned the gum over from one side of her mouth to the other. “Will yer, really? Smashin’!” THE END © Rose Boucheron 1966