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  Under the influence of the finest wine, Arthur was soon chatting happily to anyone who would listen and couldn’t resist reminding the head waiter that it was his son who owned the restaurant.

  ‘Don’t be silly, Arthur,’ said his wife. ‘He already knows that.’

  ‘Nice couple, your parents,’ the head waiter confided to his boss after he had served them with their coffee and supplied Arthur with a cigar. ‘What did your old man do before he retired? Banker, lawyer, schoolmaster?’

  ‘Oh no, nothing like that,’ said Mark quietly. ‘He spent the whole of his working life putting wheels on cars.’

  ‘But why would he waste his time doing that?’ asked the waiter incredulously.

  ‘Because he wasn’t lucky enough to have a father like mine,’ Mark replied.

  LUCKY DIP

  Deborah Moggach

  The point of raffles is that you never win. You don’t expect to, do you? It’s like The Pools; it happens to somebody else.

  In fact, by the end of the evening I’d forgotten I had even bought a ticket. This happened last January, at a Firestone Tyres dinner. I had gone with, a mate of mine, also in the motor trade. His girlfriend had tonsillitis, so he had asked me. to go instead and I thought: why not? During cocktails I had bought a ticket, they practically forced you. It was on behalf of something worthy – Distressed Morgan-Owners, or the Old Alvis Sanctuary, I didn’t really hear. I had forgotten all about the ticket, in the pocket of my hired DJ. When they read the number out it sounded unfamiliar, like a bus route you don’t take, and then – thump – I suddenly realised it was mine. First Prize.

  I had to walk up to the platform and meet an actress. You might have recognised her; she plays a vet’s assistant, on afternoon TV. People started clapping and she gave me my envelope. Just for a moment, the room echoed and the faces shrank. Fame at last. It was a holiday for two in Portugal.

  Chance. A hand gropes in a hat, the fingers touch a scrap of paper. I run a garage, you see – Paradise Motors. It’s in Paradise Mews, Cricklewood, hence the name. Victims of chance are our stock-in-trade. A chance collision, metal against metal, the crunch of two innocent little errands and bang. Usually I’m too busy to realise the randomness of it all, but sometimes I straighten up, oily and awe-struck.

  So an actress had groped in a hat and given me a week in the Algarve. Trouble was, the two.

  Now, a romantic holiday in Portugal is just the ticket if you’ve got somebody to be romantic with. Since my divorce I’d had one or two girlfriends but the whole thing had been vaguely unsatisfactory, probably due to me. I had been humiliated and, like a car-crash, if you’ve had one you drive more carefully for a while. Just slipping into the front seat, you’re aware of the possibilities. This makes for a tentative expedition.

  I couldn’t call them up again. ‘Remember me – Graham? How about a rekindling week at the Marichoro Apartments, courtesy of Sunspan Holidays?’ I didn’t even know their phone numbers unless I rang their parents, and I only knew one lot of those. The whole idea was pathetic. So was taking my sister, who was a chiropodist in Finchley and longing for a jaunt. Blokes were out, needless to say. I’d never live it down.

  Two dates were offered for this holiday – March and November. For the first few months I refused to panic. There was plenty of time. It seemed so far away that I was actually looking forward to it. Didn’t I deserve a break? Something, someone, somehow, would turn up.

  March came and went, blustery and cold. April, May, and then June, blustery and somehow colder. By August I was starting to get anxious.

  I couldn’t confide in Norm. He’s the bloke I work with, and he’s been married for thirty-three years. Besides, his wife’s got a hip problem and he spends his lunch-breaks doing the shopping. He’s very nice, but not the responsive type; in fact he collects tropical fish. He thinks I’m an intellectual because I read Dick Francis.

  Then there was Reg. He’s in the next premises and he does our panel-beating. Single-handed, he’s kept the property prices down in this locality; in fact, with a brisk west wind you can hear him in Swiss Cottage. Reg’s office is wallpapered with wet T-shirt calendars from sparking plug firms. He wasn’t the ideal person for a delicate conversation of this nature.

  I couldn’t possibly go on holiday by myself; not when it was a prize. They would be expecting a loving couple; the manager would greet us with a wink and bowl of fruit. I had been away alone, of course, but only to lowly-sexed locations like the Lake District. Portugal was sun and sand and sangria. I have been to Spain, you see.

  As the months dragged on I even considered, for a mad moment, giving it a miss altogether. There was a beauty club I had passed in the Tufnell Park Road, when I went to tow away a Toyota. It offered sun beds. I could take a week off and return to Paradise Motors mahogany and smug. I could play it mysterious and keep Reg on tenterhooks.

  However, there was my own self-esteem to think of. I did have some left. By this time I had forgotten that the whole thing was supposed to be pleasant. By now it was just something to be got through, willy-nilly. To tell the truth, by now anyone would do.

  Female customers were another possibility. The trouble with them was my invisibility. To most of them I was just some geezer in greasy overalls who presented them with a bill for about twice as much as they expected, because garage bills always are.

  There were some I liked, of course. There was one girl with a temperamental Metro – a contradiction in terms, with a Metro, but you hadn’t seen her clutch-abuse. She actually knew my name, Graham, and we’d had some interesting conversations about Alfred Hitchcock because she was a film buff. Then there was a saucy type in a 2CV, the lentil-eater’s car. Unlike our other 2CV customers, however, she wore short skirts and had a terrific pair of legs. But how could I manage the jump from ‘It’s passed its MOT’ to ‘What about a holiday for two in Portugal?’

  Anyway, they were mostly married. It was Postman Pat cassettes all over the floor and Mrs on their cheques. The only other possibility was a Ms Hodges, who drove an Escort XR3. But she had a carphone, which I somehow found deflating. I know most men wouldn’t, but there you go.

  Still, attraction was no longer my first priority. Not even a consideration, really. Anybody reasonably able-bodied, female gender, under sixty, would do. By the end of August Reg was getting leery. ‘Go on. Give us a butchers, you sly bugger.’

  And then, on August 21, Sharon came in with her Capri. It was a flash job – 2.8, alloy wheels, spoilers, two tone champagne/silver, the works. She had pranged its bonnet.

  ‘They shouldn’t have made it a one-way street’ she said irritably.

  I thought it was a surprising car for her to drive, but you get some funny matches, with motors. Like marriage, really.

  She dropped in the next day, on the off-chance it was ready (it wasn’t).

  ‘I only work up the road,’ she said. ‘At Hair Today. It’s no trouble.’

  I was under the hood of a Cavalier, wrestling with a brake pad. I came out and wiped my hands.

  ‘Fancy a lager?’ I asked. Suddenly summer had started, and I was sweltering.

  She nodded. It was lunchtime, and Norm had gone off to buy some pond weed. We sat down on a couple of oil drums. After we had opened the Heinekens, a silence fell. It always does just then, doesn’t it.

  ‘Been on your holidays yet?’ she asked, and then giggled. ‘Where I work, it’s what you get asked half the year. The other half it’s —’

  ‘What are you doing for Christmas?’

  She laughed. Like most hairdressers her own hair was a real mess – bleached bits growing out. She was very pretty, and sort of frayed around the edges in a vaguely promising way. Her slingbacks were trodden down at the back and she had a little crucifix around her neck; I remembered from my younger days that this was a good sign.

  Luckily I didn’t have to answer about the holidays because Reg came over to tell her how much it would cost to knock out the dents in her Capri, and sh