The Good Samaritan

By Trevor Lloyd

Teddy Lane was an anti-social slob until an accident on his motorbike made him different.  Only his social worker  and neighbour saw the early effects of this change into model citizenship however events caused him to take action.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Trevor Lloyd
• Release date: Apr 21, 2016
• ISBN: 9781533717665

Book preview

The Good Samaritan

by

T. S. Lloyd

For the twelve learned and intrepid men who walked on the Moon.

Dramatis Personae

Alton Reid - Surgeon at Richmond Royal Hospital

Annabelle Shaw - Sister of Lydia Blythe

Belinda Howard - Accident caller

Bernard Walsham - Prime Minister

Daniel Hong - Peoples Republic of China Embassy Minister

Derek Sutton - Junior Technician Cheltenham GCHQ 

Edward Lane - Scientist

Francis Naismith - Retired Naval Captain

Hwa Peng - Embassy Sous Chef

Jason Freeth - First Secretary to Prime Minister

John Ames MD - Surgeon’s Assistant

Ken Lewis - Fuel Tanker Driver

Kevin Albright - Supermarket manager

Leonard Ray - Crick Institute Chief Scientist

Lotus Peng - Wash up assistant

Mary Teal - Social Worker

Mat Peng - Embassy Chef

Paul Mower - Surgeon Dorset General Hospital

Reginald James - Neighbour

Sandra Heeley - Whistleblower

Chapter One

06/08/2025

He belched, yawned and broke wind.  Teddy Lane was uncaring as he opened his eyes to reveal the dirty window panes of his ground floor bedroom.  Through it he could barely make out the overgrown front garden and four black bags, ripped open by street vermin over the month.  They hadn’t been collected because the occupant had never bothered to find out the collection day and piled everything in those bags anyway, bottles included.

He had been living in social housing for most of his life, his mum a single parent and part-time char lady at a bingo hall (no questions asked) had disowned him as a drunkard tyke since he took to drink it was a habit that he had never relinquished.  He had even received a caution from the police for aggravated assault just for playing music to cheer himself up.

The episode had begun as a drinking spree which had migrated from his local pub the Barley Mow where he’d eventually thrown up on his own doorstep at 1.40 a.m. and played music until 3.30 a.m. then some idiot had set out to spoil his enjoyment and knocked on his front door.

The appearance of his upstairs neighbour with a cardigan over his pyjamas complete with slippers on his feet avoiding his vomit painted a picture of everything that was bad with Teddy’s world, the people in it.

Red haired and ascetic the aggrieved tenant remonstrated with the drunkard.

You’ve woken me up and half the neighbourhood as well, turn that racket down.

Okay Mr. James I will, he smiled through missing teeth and slammed the door shut.

Turning down the music he waited for his neighbour to climb the stairs before turning it up again.

The knock on his front door was doubly insistent this time and Lane threw it open, his mood swing was evident, it was his interfering neighbour again,Wha’ dew yew want naw?

I am calling the police if you don’t pack it in.

Teddy put his face closer to Reginald James’ visage and spat, Get knotted, and shoved his neighbour on to the vomit covered step.  Then he kicked him for good measure.  After that he giggled and closed the door before dancing on the spot.

Someone must have noticed this attack on a middle aged man and called the police.

When his door shook with repeated thumping for a third time he picked up a truncheon, something he had stolen from a police officer during a mob riot at a football match, and opened his door again and swung his weapon downwards at the uniformed police officer who stood on his doorstep, and connecting with his collar bone.  There was an audible crack and he sunk to the floor.  His partner jumped over the writhing body of his sergeant and tasered Lane.

What a rush, he thought fleetingly before he collapsed in abject pain to the floor.

He came to in the Black Maria and was manhandled out of the van immediately through the back corridor of the police station with handcuffs pinching his wrists behind his back.  When the custody sergeant took his details he was asked to give a sample of urine, blood and a mouth swab, these he refused to do and this was duly recorded on his file.

A brief was called in to be present at the interview and he was adept at explaining that Lane hadn’t been arrested because no one had read him his rights and as a result a caution was given with a recommendation that he be appointed a Social Services visiting order.

She was due to call today he remembered, a social worker identified as Ms. Teal.  He rose out of bed reluctantly to a staccato of knocking on his front door and opened it, wearing nothing but a tee shirt and underpants.  His long grubby hair had grown past his shoulders and he was bewhiskered and unwashed, he looked the epitome of grunge.

Mary Teal was bid to enter and she announced on her way in, I suppose you knew that this home visit was scheduled for 11 a.m. didn’t you Mr. Lane?

She was a hurried and red faced brunette with hair braided into a neat pony tail and at twenty seven her case load was enormous.

Her questionnaire spelt out his whole life:

ASSESSMENT FORM   AF 10

NAME: Teddy Lane

DATE: 6/8/2025

D.O.B. 16/06/2003

STATUS: Single

DEPENDANTS: None

SAVINGS: None

ETHNICITY: White, UK

EDUCATION: No Qualifications

PROSPECTS (use space provided)

Early visits reveal an educationally challenged client with learning difficulties.  Requiring home visits and minimal care for purpose of magistrates’ rule and caution for aggravated assault.

OBSERVATIONS (use space provided)

As an under achiever Teddy is incommunicable and socially inactive as he does not comprehend his obligations and his accommodation is largely uncared for.

He is in rent arrears and I will attempt to get Mr Lane to pay a minimum amount with his housing officer (rent arrears) to clear his debt.

She took out her smart phone and took pictures of his living environment.  On visiting his bedroom she noticed the unmade bed, its statement echoed Tracey Emin’s Turner Prize winning attempt sans prophylactics. Clothes were strewn on the floor even though there was an integral walk in wardrobe space behind the cupboard door which at that moment supported an avalanche of dirty laundry.

Empty cans of cheap supermarket lager littered the living room floor and she noticed that the television was set to Station X; the porn channel.

Lane scratched his beer belly which was quite developed for a twenty two year old male.

Do you ever go out drinking since your police caution Mr. Lane? she enquired.

Why? replied Teddy overreacting.

Because I need to paint a complete picture of you, I’m trying to keep you off the streets on condition of your behaviour; you don’t want to become a homeless person do you Mr. Teal, she explained dogmatically.

He attempted to explain, I’ve been barred from the Barley Mow for mouvin’ off the landlord, it’s no bovver.

She waved a hand unconsciously in front of her face due to his halitosis and asked him to confirm his date of birth.

2003, June 16th.

As it is August now I’ll pop round every month until next year.

Teddy Lane had been a June baby and he had been born at the wrong end of the school calendar. This meant that he started out as the youngest pupil at the start of his school term in September.  At four years old he had been a slow learner and had failed to achieve that most rudimentary step, the ability to read and write.

Without a proper family home he failed miserably. His mother fighting with boyfriends and experiencing the crisis and drama of making ends meet had little sympathy or time to devote to her unwanted sprog as she called him.  His failure to read bothered him and subsequently he was ostracised to a trendy hub for dyslexics’.  Angry and diminutive in size he was always involved in school scraps and later fist fights.  Early truancy and spates of shop lifting barely kept him at home and he was near to being made a ward of court by his fourteenth year; until a histrionic display by his mother in court saved the day.  They both buckled down to keeping their noses clean and for his remaining four years he was cared for at school with free meals and an accent on sports until he was given a school learning certificate which loosely stated that he was educated at Ealing School and Sixth Form College, where he achieved precisely nothing, in short he was illiterate and innumerate.

Right Mr. Lane I’ll call again on the sixth of September and I hope to have some good news for you concerning your rent arrears by then.  She nodded positively to elicit some response but there was little or no comprehension of her meaning, O.K.

She picked up her bag and questionnaire folder before leaving, I’ll see myself out, bye bye Mr. Lane.

Chapter Two

07/08/2025

By his eighteenth birthday Teddy’s mother had arranged to put him on the housing list and there at No. 6 Malling Terrace he had stayed, signing on with barely a squiggle to his name and attending numerous and often defunct job clubs.  His Curriculum Vitae was a framed record of his nihilistic life with nothing accomplished and the reliance of job references from former members of staff who were hard put to remember him because he had achieved barely anything. At five foot nine his stocky frame, dark greasy locks, hazel eyes and the set of his mouth revealed no glimmer of compassion or bonhomie.  He fed himself from unwashed crockery and watched television until he felt like going to bed because he had no concern beyond his day to day existence.

The next morning Teddy went out to his jungle of a rear garden and opened the door to his brick built shed, it was sizable enough to keep various gardening tools and a lawn mower in.  The planners for the housing project had allotment gardening in mind for its intended inhabitants.  Dwellers were encouraged to grow root vegetables to help sustain them.  This was lost on Teddy who used it to store his Norton Commando that someone had sold him at the Barley Mow in lieu of a debt.  He wore blue denim jeans and black side zipped boots and for upper body protection he dressed in a black leather jacket and gloves which had been bartered for at the rag market down town.  He manoeuvred his motorbike out slowly and wheeled it through the shrinking and overgrown path which was overrun