Read by Tom Sykes
The day the war broke out I was washin’ carrots. I was working next to Sal. She was wearin’ a read-my-tits T-shirt that said, ‘If you can read this, you’re almost close enough.’ That’s not a good position to be in when hostilities are imminent. I was standin’ at the racks with my scrubbin’ brush. That’s what we did at the London Carrot Washery. We washed carrots.
Anyway, there I was with my plastic apron, eye protectors, iPod and scrubbin’ brush, fingers frozen, standin’ in front of a half a ton of James’s Scarlet Intermediate, and forty-litres-a-minute of ice-cold water, when in came the boys from Big D’s, and they weren’t takin’ prisoners. One moment I was talkin’ to Sal (You should see her with that scrubbin’ brush. It brings tears to my eyes), and the next she was on her back, in the sluice, and this guy was takin’ a swing at me with an enormous, glistenin,’ freshly washed, Early Nantes (at least I hope that what it was).
You see there were just two carrot-washin’ companies left in the UK at that time: The London Carrot Washery, that was us, the Good Guys, and Big D’s, that was them, the Bad Guys. Well, there used to be more, but over the years one or other of us just ate them all up. No pun intended. Then we were at an impasse, splittin’ the market just about even, save for the odd supermarket, now and then, switchin’ over to get a better deal. We were runnin’ a few percent ahead at the time, having just signed on a shipload of Chinese tubers. I don’t mind tellin’ you, that Yangste mud takes some washin’ off.
Well for some reason Big D took that consignment as the last straw. He just threw all semblance of gentlemanly and businesslike conduct right out of the window. He piled the whole Big D workforce into the back of a juggernaut and set off down the M1 lookin’ fer trouble; lookin’ fer us. I don’t know what he had in his mind, but by the time they arrived, having been cooped up in the cold and dark of that trailer for who knows how many hours, and which was, I have to tell you, more than unusually cold on account of having a faulty refrigeration unit, they were ready for some action, if only to get the heat back into their bones.
Big D himself had travelled in the cab, with coffee in a thermos, and maybe somethin’ a good deal stronger in his hip flask. Consequently he was feelin’ mild and mellow after the journey, and was in the mood for talkin’. Of course, by then it was too late. As soon as he let slip the catches on those twin doors, the Big D workforce was out of that trailer like paratroopers out of a Hercules, and there was no period of free fall through which they might contemplate a more peaceable course of action. They just came howlin’ on in, down the racks, where we were standin’.
Well, when I saw him swing I naturally ducked and dived, which put me off balance somewhat, and the next thing I know I’m in the sluice alongside Sal. Damnit, that sluice water runs cold! It’s a wonder those carrots don’t just shrivel away to nothin’. There we were, scrabblin’ and a grabbin’, tryin’ to git a grip on somethin’ that might help us git ourselves the right way up, and out of there, and all the time I can feel us slippin’ and slidin’ our way down the shoot, where the dirty water goes. I’d best say here that on account of the temperature of that water there was more of Sal to git a grip on than there was of me, in respect of one or two anatomical arrangements. Just about as I was noticin’ that, we reached the drop. That’s where the sluice empties itself out through the wall of the buildin’, and into the old canal. There wasn’t nothin’ we could do about it, but just hang on to each other by whatever we could find.
It warn’t so bad after all. Hadn’t we been tellin’ them for years about that old canal, and the way it was siltin’ up, what with all the carrot soil we were washin’ down into it? Of course, they never did a damn thing about it. Sal and I just plopped right down, one on top of the other, onto a bed of soft wet soil, like two lovers hittin’ a feather mattress. It wasn’t even all that cold, once you were free of the sluice.
We could hear the sounds of mayhem up above, comin’ through the openin’ in the wall, like it was a hi-fi speaker, and we just looked at each other. Well, the sun was shinin’ and Sal looked for all the world like Miss Wet T Shirt 1998, and she still had her hand firmly wrapped round one little carrot, and the water not being so cold down here, it wasn’t so shrivelled after all. So we just stayed where we were for the afternoon, and passed the time as best we could.
Big D’s and the old London Carrot Washery have both been taken over, sold off, amalgamated, re-branded, restructured, re-launched and otherwise de-constructed and re-constructed a dozen times since then, but my gal Sal and I are still workin’, side by side, at the racks. Sometimes I catch her eye, when I’m recallin’ the afternoon of Big D’s Carrot Washery War, but it still makes my eyes water, when I see what she can do with that scrubbin’ brush.
© Brindley Hallam Dennis, 2008
Sal and Me, and Big D’s War was read by Tom Sykes at the Liars’ League War & Peace event on Tuesday November 11, 2008.
Brindley Hallam Dennis has lived in Cumbria for over 30 years. He has been writing fiction for about 10. Under a variety of names he has won prizes for both fiction and poetry, had a (short) play performed, and works at times as a garden labourer, university Creative Writing tutor, and bookseller.
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