The Wonderful World of Jane & Oliver Bloke

By Rorie Smith and S A Harrison

Roughly Oddbins O'Reilly is a Detective Inspector with the Colwyn Bay force. Dr Heinz Pumpernickel is his mysterious writing professor. Roughly produces stories for his writing course that include a description of life on a Cornish lighthouse, the truth about President Obama's dog and an alternative history of the world.

The Wonderful

• Language: English
• Publisher: Writesideleft
• Release date: Sep 30, 2023
• ISBN: 9781739699390

Rorie Smith

Rorie Smith is a former journalist. He is the author of four novels: Tombola; Counterpart; One Million Euro; Bordeaux, and Private Eye (all published by Tan Tan Books). He lives in Bordeaux, France but also calls the Rame Peninsular in Cornwall home.

Book preview

The Wonderful World of Jane & Oliver Bloke

Rorie Smith

Copyright © 2023: Rorie Smith

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the authors.

ISBN: TPB: 978-1-7396993-8-3

ISBN:eBook: 978-1-7396993-9-0

Compilation & Cover Design by S A Harrison

Published by WriteSideLeft UK

https://www.writesideleft.com

The essential detail of Lillian Alling’s long walk was taken from Lillian Alling: The Journey Home by Susan Smith-Josephy. With thanks.

I beg you do something.

Learn a dance step, something to justify your existence,

something that gives you the right to live in your own skin.

Learn to walk and to laugh.

Because it would be too senseless, after so many have died,

for you to do nothing with your life.

Charlotte Delbo, Auschwitz survivor

For Jeanne

CHAPTER ONE

Roughly told Tirana, when he came home from work one evening and was settled into an armchair with a bottle of beer, that he planned to write a book.

Tirana looked up and asked, ‘What’s it about, then?’ and Roughly replied, ‘It starts with first memories, when I am a nipper with Alfred and Rita in Hounslow. Then it recounts my life as a policeman in London and North Wales. After that I’m going to turn it into a spy thriller like James Bond. I’ve already asked my cousin Otis in Jamaica to check out a hotel where we can spring a honey-trap, because all spy thrillers need a honey-trap.’

Then he stopped and asked Tirana what she thought about that.

Tirana stood up and walked into the kitchen to check on the dinner. Otherwise she would have to tell Roughly that it sounded like a pile of old nonsense. She worked in the Wales Flower Shop in Colwyn Bay where the owner was a fellow with a front tooth missing who had also started to write a memoir. So he was at the same game as Roughly.

One afternoon the fellow had told Tirana the story of how he was vice-president of the Wales Flower Club in 1973 and they were playing a golf tournament in Llandrindod Wells which he won and afterwards they were having drinks and dinner to celebrate. But, because he had drunk so much, when he stood up to make his speech his trousers fell down. Even though that was many years ago he was still laughing about it today. So that is certainly a story he will put in the memoir.

After dinner Tirana told Roughly, ‘You need to take a course in book writing before you start. If not, people will say that it’s a good idea to write a book but behind your back they’ll say you don’t know what you’re talking about.’

So the next day Roughly walked into the University of Colwyn Bay and went up to the wooden counter until he was opposite a Wales Chapel Lady who was a dried-up and stick-thin party. He told her he had come to sign up for the course on book writing.

When she heard that she took a step back as if Roughly had said he’d stopped believing in God. Then she picked up the phone and was talking quickly in Welsh. At the same time she looked at Roughly slyly out of the corner of her eye. Then she put down the phone and did a great big sneeze into a handkerchief that was tucked up her sleeve. After that she opened a ledger and studied it. Roughly could see that it was an old-style ledger with all the entries in fountain pen. Finally she told Roughly, in her Wales Chapel Voice, ‘Climb the stairs to the top of the building and knock on a door marked Dr Heinz Williams-Jones, Writing Professor.’ Then she closed up the ledger and turned away.

Roughly climbed to the top of building, which was six floors up. It was really the attic, all musty and dusty. To the side was a wooden door with a brass plaque with ‘Dr Heinz Williams-Jones, Writing Professor’ written on it.

When he was at home Roughly was mild-mannered, but like all policemen he had only one way to knock on a door. So he gave a sharp copper-style rat-a-tat-tat, which would normally paralyse whoever was on the other side. But this time Roughly was the one who got the surprise because a loud voice, in an accent Roughly had never heard before, called out, ‘Come in before you break the bloody door down.’

Roughly opened the door to see Dr Heinz Williams-Jones.

Now we need to give a description of him. We can start by saying that there is a similarity to Albert Einstein in the famous photograph where he has his mouth open and is giving the manic stare. The difference is that Einstein is a diminutive shape while Heinz is the size of an angry bear. Heinz is also wearing a bright red sweater. He is seated in a wooden swivel chair. In front of him there is a wooden desk covered in papers and letters. An easel is set up facing the window and there is a paintbrush on a stand next to it.

He looked at Roughly, who was still standing in the doorway.

‘You got to be a copper. No one else is knocking in a door like that.’

Roughly laughed.

‘Well, I am certainly a copper but I am not investigating a crime. I have come about the book writing course.’

When he heard this, Heinz leant back in his chair and ran his hands through his unruly hair. After that he gave a slow belly-laugh and Roughly could see tears of laughter forming at the corners of his eyes. Soon they were running down the sides of his face as his whole frame shook. Then Heinz opened a drawer in the desk and brought out a bottle of Wales Brandy and a couple of glasses and told Roughly to sit down. Then he poured a tot for them both.

Roughly took that as a sign to open up the file he had brought with him and to start to read the first chapter, which recounted his earliest memories when he was kicking a football round the streets of Hounslow with the other nippers. Then he described how Alfred, his dad, got a watch from British Rail and how he was always consulting it, which is incidentally how Roughly received his name. But then Heinz put up his hand and cried, ‘Stop! All that is all very interesting but we need to talk first.’

They sipped their Wales Brandies and Heinz told Roughly he came to Colwyn Bay thirty years ago from Germany.

‘To begin with I was working in a bookshop in Prestatyn. But I always wanted to be a writer and because the damn bookshop was a bit slow I’d got time to do the writing. So I am clack-clack on the old typewriter in between serving the customers, who are mainly little old ladies looking for books by Agatha Christie and other people like that.’

Heinz told Roughly that he put the story of his life into the book.

‘I described how I grew up in a valley in the country in Bavaria, milking the cows morning and evening, and bringing in the harvest at the end of summer and frolicking with the maidens. Then I got a break when I heard that Wales was the land of milk and honey. So I left Germany and came to Prestatyn, where I fell in love with a Wales girl. She was called Williams-Jones and I am called Pumpernickel and because I wanted to be like the Wales guys we decided to turn tradition around. So when we became married I took the name Williams-Jones and I am putting that story in the book as well.

‘Now I am banging away on the typewriter and starting to get the swollen head. I am telling everybody coming into the bookshop that I will soon be a big-shot writer. When it is finished I am packaging it up and sending it to a publisher. And, oh boys, I am getting the clip round the ear because it comes back a few weeks later with a neat typewritten note which is reading, This book is a load of old Wales Sheep Poo and we has got no intention of publishing it.’

But, Heinz tells Roughly, he keeps on till in the end he’s sent it to every publisher in Wales and they have all sent it back.

‘Then my wife, who has a bit of money of her own, gives me some Wales Dollars, which is the currency they are using then, and a local printer prints the damn thing.

‘Now I am holding the first copy in my hand and I’m proud as punch. I’ve forgotten that every publisher in Wales has called it a load of old Wales Sheep Poo.’

Heinz describes how he hands out signed copies to friends.

‘They say, Thank you very much, Heinz, and put it on top of the fridge with all the other bits and bobs. But when I call back a week later to ask what they think about it, they stand there like goldfish with their mouths open because they have forgotten all about it. Then I discover I have less friends than I used to have because when I ping on a doorbell with a copy of the book there is no reply. A lot of the local Wales citizens are hiding behind the curtains till I have gone back up the garden path.’

In the end, Heinz said, his Wales wife told him that most people had got better things to do with their lives than read his book.

‘Then she is asking around and finding that a lot of other wives are in the same boat. They have got the spare room filled up with copies of their husband’s memoirs which detail how they were the first people in Caernarvon to put in central heating. Some of them are even turning that into a thriller as well.’

For a moment, Heinz says, he went into a quite a depression. Then he woke up one morning and it all came to him in a flash. He turned up at the University of Colwyn Bay and spoke to the guy who set up the courses. The guy mulled it over and then he said it was actually a good idea because he had been hit by a neighbour who was at the same scam.

‘He gave me this attic room where we are now. Anyone who comes into the university to ask about writing a book is sent to see me and I try to discourage them.’

Heinz filled up Roughly’s glass and pointed to a picture set up on his easel and said, ‘What you need to do is take up painting, like this.’ He took the painting off the easel and Roughly saw that it was a Wales landscape with a flock of sheep standing on a hillside in the rain. Then he put the picture back on the easel and opened a drawer and pulled out a tray full of objects. Roughly could see a small dog made out of matchsticks.

‘If you paint a picture or make a matchstick model your neighbours will be happy as anything,’ Heinz said. ‘They will put the picture on the wall and the matchstick dog on the sideboard and they will say Roughly did that and everyone will say well I never.’

After that Roughly drank up his tot of Wales Brandy and then went down the stairs