The real story of Patrick Winningoes-12

https://www.amazon.it/real-story-Patrick-Winningoes-Salvatore-ebook/dp/B0B244SFNQ/ 

The past Monday, the 12th November 1979, it was very early when Mr. Winningoes had come to pick us up at home, meaning that the results of the analyses had fully satisfied him in that week end.

George and I had spoken of the events of the preceding Friday for a long time.  We tried particularly to guess what kind of job would eventually have to begin, since Mr. Winningoes had not mentioned it at all. For how much we spoke of it, however, we didn't succeed in finding a satisfactory explanation.  The most probable prognostications seemed to lead us at jobs like: cook, waiter, butcher or grocer generally; and either assistant of infancy or geriatric. But the most probable reasons were also met with some element of illogical meanings.

 

George, briefly, suggested that the strange man had to be either crazy or, at least, a sort of an eccentric and sclerotic subject. Between parenthesis he made me observing, to retry his own theory, that Mr Winningoes had not even mentioned the job related with Mr Joking and though he had told us that his agency was entrusted for getting manpower to the enterprise. I returned that it would have been up to us to tell him we were sent by Mr Joking and if we had not done it, for distrust or for our own comfort, could not complain of it. I didn't really complain of it because I was sure that I could never get an advance of 100 pounds from any other employer in the world.

He returned beating me point by point. With particular respect to the money got as advance, he sustained that those banknotes must have been either false or fruit of sinister business. Neither I could change his mind on the point, the fact that I easily succeeded on changing all my banknotes, in five different occasions. I was sure of my opinion. I had already had on my hands some false banknotes and I knew well, more than one way, to identify them.

 

The notes that nice fellow of Winningoes had given to us were good. They were fresh of bank, because I had realized that they had never circulated before, and rustled and played to gold as they say. If that man was so eccentric (and so rich) to be amused by paying advances to poor, foreign, jobless men, well, good for me that, by the way, I was enumerated between those poor chaps.

And, finally, if George, had also to be right and that man was crazy, in that case,  he would not be certain the first one, in London.

 

Mr Winningoes hadn't rung the bell, but he beat at one of the big windows of the room. As he could have known, at that time, that those were the windows of the room we occupied in the house, I wondered only more afterwards.  That morning, we were so much in excitement, that I only worried about to wake George and prepare me in my best hurry. We were finally going to begin our work. And with perspectives of significant and easy earnings. To the devil George’s pessimism and fears!

 

On the other side of the road we immediately noticed a green van, where our new employer, impatiently, drummed God only knows what rhythm, with the long and thin fingers. His look was fixed on nothingness and perhaps he was following his more intimate thoughts. He didn't notice us, in fact, until I reached the opposite guide’s side beating him slightly on the glass. He got shaken by that and lengthened with agility to open us the door. Outside it was prickly cold and was the only sign of the early time, since the sky, as in the previous days, was a grey, homogeneous cover of clouds that only the night would have obstructed to our eyes keeping the city under an opaque and thick grey light, rather similar to those days when the sky, in the Mediterranean countries, announces the rain in the winter time.

 

-« Hello! Is it everything all right?» - Mr Winningoes began happily as soon as we had taken seat in the van. He didn't seem to expect any answer while turning the starting key, may be getting back at the thoughts brusquely interrupted a little before.

- «Good morning»– we both answered.

-«You can put it behind» – he told me, pointing out with the finger my white-green trip bag I had instead placed at my feet. I put it beyond the frontal seat. I wanted to do the same with  George’s bag but he had already fell asleep, reclined between the door and the seat with his bag on his womb.

-« There is a beautiful warm here inside »- I happily commented.

-«Yes, it is true» - he plainly responded; and immediately add with fatherly tone, after peering at George with the tail’s eye :”You did not make too late yesterday night, did you ?” -.

 

- «No, no, we didn’t » - I responded laughing. -« He is always very asleep, but only early in the morning»-.

 

In the meantime I noticed we had reached Edgware rd, suddenly  proceeding toward the Maida Vale street (the second is the continuation of the other in the northwest direction).

 

Then the van turned in to Shirland rd, after in to Elgin rd, emerging finally at the Harrow rd (an immense artery of London traffic that crosses the city from the important railway station of Paddington up to Wembley Park). As we had crossed this last road for a brief line, toward north, our guide promptly reversed the direction and, through a tangled net of roads and little streets, took the direction more and more toward southwest, passing for Notting Hill Gate, Holland Park rd, up to Hammersmith rd.

 

- “Where have you said we are going to?” - I asked pretending he had said something about.

 

-” To the south of the river Thames” - he answered vaguely. -” We will cross the river from the bridge of Chiswick, since Hammersmith’s is temporarily closed to traffic. You know the bridge of Hammersmith, don’t you?.”

 

- “' For sure!” - I exclaimed  – It’s a very nice bridge!!!'” -.

 

- “And also very old ,” – he added -” They are now restoring it “- concluded finally with indifferent tone.

 

Passed that we had to the south side of the river our van was  soon running along the huge Richmond Park, one of the big green bellows in London. The transit of men and vehicles was scarce, which meant that probably it was not eight o’clock yet. I recalled a vision I had one day, in the peak hours, when London workers return to their houses: I was upstairs,  in a double decker bus, and I imagined those numerous passers-by disappearing in to the Underground were swallowed by a voracious Minotaur.

That morning, instead, the red buses, with their mighty tonnage, almost seemed to fly in the empty roads still shrouded in the fog.

 

Before falling asleep, in front of my eyes, I could see a kaleidoscopic series of colored neon signs running each other: Barclays, Take Courage, Old Inn, Midlands, Guinness, Shovels Ale, Marks and Spencer, Lloyds, Tesco, becoming progressively confused with the buildings on which they were posted, forming some funny and unlikely architectural figures untied to the edges of a fast oil river, crossed by a phosphorescent wake, on whose trace, our green van seemed, rather, a winged hull.

As I woke up, I felt a diffused numbness all over my limbs. George was still sleeping, stretched to the van-door, with the hands on his bag, still in his womb. I felt, impelling, the need to stretch my legs.

 

- “Where are we?” – said George confused, opening his eyes, as I called him insistently.

- “ You sleep like a log! Let me go down, please.” -I counter said, pushing him gently outside.

 

I followed him, in his agile leap on the gravelly ground. There was a light perfumed breeze in the air. We were amazed by the surrounding space. The van had halted its march at the feet of a groove of cypresses, trough which boughs, on the left, we could see glimpses of a red bricks building, approached by a wind mew, that cut in two sides a wide and green lawn. It was from that direction that we saw Mr. Winningoes arriving.

- “Welcome to Heavengate” - He said coming to meet us.

He wore a celestial, very elegant suit. Only when I saw his dark sun glasses, I took notice of the long shades of the cypresses at our feet.

- “You will have time to admire the beauties of my park. Now be pleased to come with me. I will show the house and the immediate proximities to you. Then, after lunch, we will talk of business” -. This way saying we all soon moved through the same path he had come from, on the opposite direction.

His annotation about business brought me brusquely at  reality.

Coming up I asked him the place we were in, but he seemed not to hear my question.
I looked at George with interrogative air. Instead of answering,  he shrugged on his shoulders, as to mean: “I told you.”

After a long bend the little street sloped up straightly towards the building. Seen  frontally, it now appeared to be made of three parts. That central part, raised over three plans taller than  the lateral wings. Three high windows, one for each floor, accented its slender seize. On the top thin, triangulated laces, made it look like the bell tower of a middle-aged church. The lateral  sides departing from the centre, widened in perfect symmetry, such to give the building a solid and stately aspect. Three steps led to the ample atrium from the path. The two sides corridors were closed by bright glass door.

- «You can put your bags there, for the moment» - told us Mr Winningoes, pointing out two  wicker armchairs that towered the sides of the entry – "we will take first a quick look around the house.”

 

After a short while, the man led us outside that sort of long veranda which ran around the whole building, as we were going to discover. Some narrow, gravel driveways, consented to approach a wide spread garden, delimited, on the opposite side from a tall metallic net, wrapped densely by climbing greens.

From that colored sea a thousand scents of delight inebriated and gratified all my senses. It was as if they invited my mind to fly, decomposing each other in those endless tonalities, shattering in that surreal geometry on shapeless sights of beautiful colors. I heard our guide, lowered on some rare flower, explaining to George, who followed him with attention, its origins, by means of scientific, Latin definitions.

 

And again the desire to flow conquered me and I still immerged in that colored and flagrant sea, forgetful of every rational thought, free and fluid, in that magic world of impalpable stuff.
If only I had succeeded on abandoning myself, definitely on the wings of those feelings, would I have got lost in the space and in the endless time, or I would have been able to find again the way to come back? When I gathered from the ground some seeds, as Mr Winningoes was miming with the arms the landing of an airplane, I thought for an instant that he was somehow, taking a fool of me.

Instead, through the climbing greens, beyond the garden, he was showing to George a wide, flat open space explaining to him that it was dealt with a private or personal airport.

He drove us soon after on the other side of the house. That side of the garden was different from that opposite one. There were some plants of sunflower, that dominated the space with their yellow sheets and several other green plants, with webbed and rough leaves, fixed at the stem in opposite and crossed series.

 

- “Helianthus annuus and Cannabis Indica” - he was pointing out to a very careful George. On the first I didn't pay so much attention to those names. Still I was rather surprised by the knowledge of the scientific definitions that the man had shown to possess on the flowers. Then I heard suddenly a sound of bells, playing somewhere in the meander of my memoirs. But certainly! What a fool! Cannabis indica. Damn to Latin Language! I took one of the so many driveways of the garden and I drew near with interesting look.