Free The Printer's Devil by Chico Kidd Page A

reckon if I could shift the lid, I might find something.’
    ‘Shift the lid? Are you barmy? Who do you think you are, Burke and Hare? Even supposing you could move it.’
    ‘I don’t expect to find a body in there. That’s just the marker, the monument.’
    ‘You are barmy.’
    ‘Coming with me?’
    ‘I’ve got the Summers & Benson catalogue to shoot this week.’
    ‘Can’t you-’
    “No, I can’t,’ said Kim, a little irritably. ‘You know it’s important, and it’s going to take till at least Thursday. Fenstanton will have to wait till the weekend.’
    Alan had his own commitments, not least of them being deadlines. On Monday he had to travel into town to see a client - who insisted on calling his new range of cooking pots for the EEC market, on which Alan was currently working, the ‘pan-European’ catalogue: an expression which sent Alan into barely controlled hysterics whenever Stephen uttered it.
    It was rarely that Alan used the Tube, living, as Kim and he did, at the far end of John Betjeman’s beloved
    Metropolitan line. Most of his clients were based out of London and he would chug gently to their offices in his ancient Beetle, being overtaken by Metros, Golfs, and even the occasional milk-float. He didn’t mind. When he had left - or, to be honest, been sacked from - from his last job four years before, he had shed the habit and the trappings of speed; had relinquished a shiny new BMW with hardly a qualm, and still counted himself extraordinarily lucky to be doing what he did, which - apart from the routine side of it - was basically getting paid for having fun.
    For the first half of his journey the train swayed past fields and trees, a tamed and domesticated landscape and exciting no poetry in a present-day author, but a landscape nevertheless. The Times crossword had, unusually, defeated him, so he stared out of the window at the litter-strewn track.
    Gradually the train filled up, enabling him to play ‘what do they do for a living’ until the game palled -which was only about ten minutes, because he had no way of finding out whether he was right or not, and was coming up with the answer ‘tart’ rather too often to be likely.
    ‘What newspaper do they read’ was better: he could still spot a Guardian at ten paces, even though many had defected to the Independent, but he quickly became depressed at the preponderance of tabloids.
    He was staring past the right ear (which had no fewer than seven earrings in it) of the girl opposite him -blonde, pasty make-up, short skirt, and reading an unidentifiable tabloid - when he was struck by a very odd thought, one which was quite unlike the occasional whimsy which made its home in Alan Bellman’s head.
    It’s no wonder women get attacked, he thought. Don’t they all look like victims? Who was it called them frails? Was it Mickey Spillane? Look at them, with their silly vacant little faces and their wide vulnerable eyes and their pouty little mouths. Look at their fat little hands that couldn’t even lift their own typewriters. Look at the clothes they wear and their tottery spindly spiky shoes. Above all, look! Look at the absolutely dumb vacuous expressions on their faces. It’s all saying: I’m weak and vulnerable, I need to be protected. But they go out into the world giving off signals like a wounded antelope to a lion, and then they bleat when they get attacked. And it’s all due to an attitude. They walk like victims, even sit like victims with their knees clamped together, cringing into their seats.
    This was such an alien thought to Alan that he was past wonder at its invasion of his mind, although even in its grip he was aware of exceptions, Kim for one. Nobody could have called Kim frail, though she was slight and not tall: She stood and walked as though she were the hero in her story. If anyone had attacked Kim, Alan would have laid odds on him ending up with broken bones. She exuded a competence which was greater than