THE EGG MAN COMETH by Dave Wellings

The downstairs doorbell kept ringing. I was alone in the flat, taking a shower but above the hiss of the water and the drumming of rain, the doorbell persisted. My instinct was to ignore it. There are few greater pleasures than a hot shower after retreating from a wet day in London. There was a real possibility of the persistent bell pusher being a pedlar of double-glazing or religion but there was also an outside chance that my flat-mate had forgotten his key. It also occurred to me that Tony might have invited his latest girlfriend over and had then simply forgotten. This had already happened during the two weeks I had lived there although this would presumably be a replacement girlfriend. Reluctantly I turned off the shower, wrapped a towel around my waist and bounced bare-footed down the stairs to the entrance hall. The large Edwardian house had been converted into flats but the tiled hall and stained glass door had been retained. Profiled against the glass was a short, squat figure in a bowler hat. Not a new girlfriend then. Tony’s girlfriends tended to be tall, leggy and glamorous – inexplicably as Tony was none of these things. The bell continued to ring until the moment I swung the door open and confronted the intruder. For a moment, we stared at each other and then he said “Touché.”

I assumed he was referring to us both dripping water, it couldn’t have been to our appearance as I was half naked and tanned from Australia while he was adequately clothed for an English spring. He wore a black rubberised raincoat that reached down to his ankles, the sort of utility coat that had gone out of use in the 1950s but now seemed tailor-made for the day, if not for him. He also wore a black bowler hat, the brim of which was quickly filling with water from our leaking gutter.

“Can I help you?” I asked.

“Sean O’Connery lives here? I have it on some authority. Some authority!” He spoke through clamped jaws and almost shouted the last word.

I began to laugh. Some of Tony’s friends were drama students who would remain ‘in character’ for an assignment. Some had remained drama students for many years and, like Tony, were in their mid-twenties but the man in the bowler hat could have been in his mid-fifties, which would have been stretching it, even by their elastic standards. I realised the man was serious.

“Are you sure you have the right address?”

His response was to slide a manila folder from inside his raincoat but as he looked down to read from it, the moat of water around his hat cascaded over the brim and onto the folder. An expletive would have been justified. It would have been compulsory in Australia but the man merely waited for the water to drain off and then, through barely moving lips, intoned “Sean O’Connery, 184 Colney Hatch Lane, North 10. This is one-eighty-four? One Eight Four!”

“Yes but there’s no Sean here.”

It was a joke among the flat-dwellers that the three Australians on the ground floor were all named Bruce. In the early ‘seventies, half the Australians in London seemed to be named Bruce. On the upper floor there were three Davids, two Englishmen and me. and then there was Tony in the tiny attic. Tony shared our bathroom and kitchen and, whether we liked it or not, often shared our food. So far, he had not offered to share his girlfriends. I didn’t share any of this with the man in the bowler hat but he waited under the waterfall, willing me to change my mind. To get rid of him and to get out of the draughty doorway, I suggested that he leave a business card. He produced a printed card from inside the all-concealing raincoat and then with a final spillage from the nodded bowler, he turned and splashed his way back down the path.

I had forgotten the incident until much later that day. It was almost midnight when I heard Tony come bounding up the stairs. Long hair was in vogue and he shook the rain from his locks like a dog. He checked the effect of this in the small mirror by the kitchen door, and then he examined his teeth with an exaggerated smile. Tony rarely went anywhere without a toothbrush in his shirt pocket - our smile, he maintained, is our calling card. I took away his smile with the calling card from our visitor. It took away his colour too.

“What did you tell him?” he demanded, crumpling the card in his fist.

“I told him there was no one here named Sean.”

“Nothing else?”

“There was nothing else to tell.”

“Damn! Damn!” he muttered, “He’s found me again.”

“But it was just a bloke asking for Sean Somebody.”

“It wasn’t just some bloke,” Tony groaned, “It was the Egg Man.”

We were sitting on the edge of Tony’s bed – a king-size which almost filled the attic. By the window below the sloping roof there was a half-completed water colour on an easel and in one corner, an old electric oven with the door flung wide open to provide the only form of heating. Tony had dragged me up to his room, carefully closed the door and then begun to explain the enormity of his situation.

His inchoate motor racing career had been funded by various nefarious schemes. He had paid for a term at the International Racing Drivers School by buying old bangers, applying minimal cosmetic improvements and then selling them through the Evening News classifieds. His rationale was simple: buyers would assume a cheap car was an old banger so he charged a bomb. This worked in principle - if principle could ever be considered near Tony - but the profits were undermined by traffic fines. On one occasion when he was collecting an old Triumph Herald, the suspicions of a police patrol were raised by Tony wearing a thick woollen muffler around his face - on a very hot afternoon. The muffler had been necessary to mask the engine smoke billowing up from the hole in the floorboards. As the de-merit points on his driving licence began to mount, Tony addressed the problem: he acquired licences in other names. Before the days of centralised, computerised licensing authorities, it was possible to book a driving test at any one of the many testing centres around London, then, having passed the test, have a licence issued in whatever name was given – Peter O‘Toole, Michael O’Caine, Sean O’Connery, whomever. It was a short-term solution, of course, and to finance a competitive racing car he needed to think bigger.

The way to make money, he explained as he hung his socks over the oven door to dry, was to control the supply and demand of a product that everyone used - like beds. With untypical modesty, he decided that the London bed market might be beyond his scope so he moved back to his home town of Plymouth and attempted to corner the bed market there. He snapped up beds at auctions, at garage sales, he bought beds advertised in the newspaper and some that weren’t even for sale. He stored them in the garage, in the garden shed and in every room of his mother’s house until there was barely room for anyone to sleep. It would have been only a matter of time before he owned every spare bed in the area and could have named his price for them – but time wasn’t on Tony’s side. The bed market had remained stubbornly dormant and Tony had run out of capital.

Like principle, capital wasn’t a word I naturally associated with Tony: how, I asked, did he raise capital?

“How?” he repeated as though I had just arrived from Mars rather than Australia. “The banks are begging people to take out personal loans! I merely obliged them by taking out four.”

It was true that the leading banks were promoting their ‘finance products’ and their required proof of identity was fairly basic – a driver’s licence and any legal document showing a current address, such as a police summons. Tony had ample supplies of each and had no trouble raising the initial capital for his venture. Stock acquisition was pursued aggressively but with most of the money spent and no sign of enhanced bed prices, he was eventually forced to start selling. Flooding the area with second-hand beds would have depressed the market further so a trickle feed was employed to re-coup just enough cash to meet monthly payments to the banks. The slow turn over in beds caused many sleepless nights and the next motor racing season was already approaching. He decided to cut his losses, accept a blanket offer from a dealer and ‘invest’ the last of his money in a final term at the racing drivers’ school.

Graduates were automatically entered for an end-of-term Formula Ford race with considerable kudos and publicity going to the victor. It was an incestuous affair as the school was guaranteed a winner but Tony felt this could be the last chance to launch his motor racing career. Some of his classmates were from wealthy families while others enjoyed commercial sponsorship but those less fortunate saved money by living at the racing circuit in Norfolk. Tony moved in with a group of overseas hopefuls, sharing a World War Two Nissen hut. Two of the young Brazilians were already being mentioned as future Formula 1 drivers so Tony had no illusions about his chances of winning the graduation race. He actually led it for a brief glorious moment but a spin dropped him down the field before he recovered to finish sixth. “Encouraging” was the comment on his end-of-term report but it wasn’t enough: his money was spent, his hopes were dashed and his only assets were a king-size bed and an old van he had used for transporting the beds – appropriately, a Bedford.

Always on the look-out for cheap food, he stopped one day at a farm stall to buy eggs. He remarked on how cheap they were and was told that they were cheap because the farm wasn’t licensed by the Egg Marketing Board. The eggs did not bear the Board’s little ‘lion’ stamp but were fresh and of good quality. People in the city paid twice as much for eggs that were no better. Tony conceded the point and soon came to an arrangement to sell the farmer’s eggs in London.

A nation of shopkeepers had become a nation of mostly foreign shopkeepers with Cypriot, Maltese and Indian families striving to compete with the encroaching supermarkets. Any line that helped them to undercut prices of the major retailers was welcomed and Tony soon sold the unstamped eggs. He returned to Norfolk and this time filled the two tonne capacity of his van by collecting eggs from other unauthorised farms. His delivery round of corner stores grew and so did his profits; within a few months he had paid off his bank loans and made a down payment on a new, larger van. A van which would one day be the transporter for his own racing car - the dream was still alive.

With winter approaching, he moved out of the bleak Nissen hut to share a flat with artistic friends in Hampstead. He began painting watercolours again, something he had enjoyed during a brief period at Art College. His atmospheric paintings captured the action and drama of famous Formula 1 races with colourful reflections from wet tarmac under threatening skies. His life acquired some degree of balance, for after many precarious business ventures, he had finally established a reliable income stream from a legitimate business. Or so he thought.
He had just completed a delivery to one of his regular customers when he was accosted by an odd little man in a bowler hat.

“You supply eggs?” the man asked through clenched teeth. “Eggs!”

“Sure,” said the congenial Tony, “How many trays would you like?”

“I would like you to stop supplying eggs, Sir, that’s what I would like. Your eggs are not stamped with the little lion of the Egg Marketing Board because they do not meet the Board’s requirements. It’s illegal to sell eggs without the Board’s little lion.”

“And they’re not going to take it lion down.” Tony quipped cheerfully.

“It’s not a joking matter, Sir. First offence incurs a fine of five hundred pounds; second offence attracts a fine of one thousand pounds and six months in prison. In prison, Sir!”

It was a bad moment for Tony; he had paid a deposit on one of the revolutionary, wedge-shaped Lotus 61 racing cars. He needed only a few more months of profitable egg sales to raise enough money to take delivery of the ultimate Formula Ford championship challenger. Paying thousand pound fines wasn’t an option, and he didn’t dare ask what a third or fourth offence would cost.

“Can’t we come to some arrangement?” he asked, fingering his recently acquired loot.

“Bribing an inspector of the Egg Marketing Board is a criminal offence. I shall need some details,” the Egg Man said, taking a notebook from his pocket, “Some details!”

At that point, Tony noticed a blue delivery van double-parked while the driver was attending to business in the store. A teenage driver’s mate sat in the passenger seat, reading a comic.

“Wait here, I’ll get my licence,” Tony told the Egg Man and he walked to the blue van and jumped into the driver’s seat.

“Wotcha doin’?” the startled youth cried as the van took off around the corner.

“Just moving it out of the way,” said Tony, guessing correctly that the Egg Man would have noted the registration number. A jog around the block brought Tony back to his own van, parked further down the street – but it had been a close shave.

Further close encounters occurred over the coming months as the Egg Man popped up unexpectedly at cafes and corner stores. Sometimes he would appear from behind a tower of toilet rolls, like a Russian spy – or the bowler hat would rise like a spectral dome above a shelf of cat food, the Egg Man intent on serving a summons. One by one, the retailers were warned off and Tony’s outlets eventually dried up - but not before he had taken delivery of a brand new Lotus.

Finally free to indulge his motor racing ambition, he soon forgot his days as an egg salesman. The Egg Man, however, did not forget. With bulldog tenacity the man traced Tony to his Hampstead address and on one traumatic afternoon actually breached the inner sanctum of his flat. A girlfriend arriving for an assignation had innocently opened the door for the Egg Man and invited him inside. Tony escaped in his underpants through a bathroom window and spent a chilly night in his van, sleeping next to the racing car. In the Lotus position.
A change of address appeared to have shaken off the bowlered harrier – until I had delivered the bad news. I could understand Tony’s dismay.

“I’ll have to leave the country,” he groaned, removing his dried socks from the oven door. “I hear the light in Australia is good for artists…”

I didn’t think he was serious.

I was working as a freelance reporter for motor sport magazines and a serendipitous meeting with Tony at Silverstone had led to me moving into the vacant room below his. It hadn’t taken me long to realise that his temperament was better suited to art than to racing. To my untrained eye, he painted with real talent but he lacked the cool aggression of a racer. He either tried too hard when he was near the lead or became dispirited when he wasn’t. I wasn’t so bold as to tell him this but as a fruitless and expensive season drew to a close, I suspected he had reached the same conclusion.

An unexpected resolution came the next weekend. I was in the kitchen making tea when Tony descended from his attic, breathless and half-naked.

“Got any yoghurt?” he asked, searching the communal fridge, “She’s hungry and she’s a health freak.”

“Take her a carrot,” I suggested.

“Good thinking,” said Tony, missing the irony.

“Shouldn’t you be resting? You’re racing tomorrow.”

“I’m selling the car after tomorrow’s race,” he said, “Some spotty-faced kid with a rich daddy is buying it.” And with that he quickly examined his teeth in the mirror and took the carrot back to his attic, intent on other things.

The race at Brands Hatch was the final round of the Formula Ford Championship. It was fiercely contested by all the leading contenders, so much so that there was a pile-up in the first corner and several cars were eliminated before the race was over. Tony drove conservatively, anxious to preserve his already-committed car so he was surprised to find himself promoted to third place. It was his first – his only – points-scoring position of the year and I was genuinely pleased for him. I was writing my report at the end of the meeting and giving Tony an honourable mention when he rushed into the Press box.

“You’ll have to collect my trophy,” he said, wild-eyed.

“Why me?” I laughed, “This is your big moment.”

“I can’t go; he’s here, waiting for my name to be announced.”

“Who is?” Then I saw the man in the bowler hat, waiting patiently at the foot of the podium.

“Keep the trophy till we meet in Australia,” Tony called out, retreating into the crowd and then with a wave he was gone.

I’ve been back in Australia for many years but I still have that trophy for third place. It’s a tiny thing – I use it as an egg cup.

Dave Wellings © 2007.