by R J Bailey
‘Is that British humour?’
‘Best you’re going to get with me dressed like this. Come on.’
A cold dash of reality hit him and his shoulders went down. ‘It’ll be a fuckin’ miracle if this works.’
‘Trust me, I’m overdue in the miracle department.’
I released the handbrake, which didn’t cause the headlong rush for the door I had been hoping for, then took up position at the rear. All I had to do was start it moving, then I’d switch my position to the driver’s door.
We both put our backs to it, got as much purchase on the floor as we could and pushed. It was like trying to move the stable block itself. I just hoped the brakes hadn’t seized. Or the handbrake cable. For all I knew it hadn’t released at all.
‘Are you putting your back into it?’
‘Sure. Are you?’
I felt the sinews in my neck bulge out of my skin as I strained. ‘Jesus, why couldn’t I have got the captain of the school football team rather than the college dope dealer . . .’
‘I’m stronger than you.’
‘It’s not enough,’ I goaded.
He let out an almighty grunt and the Facel gave the barest of twitches. I scrabbled my bare feet until I had something like grip and leaned into the boot. The panel dented with a loud pop but I ignored it.
The car gave another grudging inch. ‘Keep pushing,’ I yelled, while I ran around to the open door on the offside. I flung myself at the intersection of door frame and roof and pushed. She was creaking now, finally accepting that she was going to have to move. ‘Keep going!’
The nose was out of the stable, the sun bouncing off the pocked brightwork. Then, the slope of ground in the small yard had me and I felt the machine begin to roll of its own accord, despite the shrieks and groans coming from the axles or wheel bearings or both. ‘OK, don’t stop, we need as much speed as we can get for this to work.’
I risked a glance at Myles. He had his hands splayed on the boot now and was almost horizontal, his face traffic-light red. A for effort.
I jumped in as best I could, all idea of modesty forgotten as the skirt flipped up to my waist. I slammed the door shut and got into position. Clutch down, second gear. I yanked at the wheel but it was like trying to move a supertanker. In dry dock. I bore down on one of the spokes with all my strength and the under-inflated tyres inched around as I rolled out off the brick frontage and on to grass. There was a scrape as I touched one of the low walls – another fifty grand off the value – but I was more or less on the dusty gravel-strewn path that led down to the house. I straightened her and, as I did so, felt the bodice of my dress rip.
A glance in the mirror. Myles was still there, his face set in a grimace, but the slab of a car had serious momentum now. I realised I was heading straight for a chateau in something that weighed two tons. Did the brakes even work? I daren’t try an exploratory jab, because it would cut my speed. We only had one go at this – we could barely push when it was on the level, let alone back uphill.
The rumbling of the tyres filled the cabin. I watched Myles stop and fall back, his outline blurred by the dust the old Dunlops were kicking up. The rear of the mansion was growing large in the windscreen.
‘Now!’ Myles’s yell drifted through the open window.
I waited another three seconds and let the clutch in. The Facel bucked like I had given it electro-convulsive therapy. A series of rattles came from under the bonnet, as if the V8 had been replaced by a collection of saucepans.
I dipped the clutch again. ‘Come on, you bitch,’ I said, thumping the dash.
I’d lost some edge, but there was still enough speed to make any other car catch. I must have got the wiring wrong. And I was running out of road. I could make out the details of the handles and the cracks in some of the panes on the French doors now.
Clutch up. Again, the sound of gargling metal from under the bonnet and then a juddering and a kind of harrumphing sound. Two out of eight cylinders, maybe. Three at most. I felt her slow slightly. I blipped the throttle. I heard One-Eyed Jack yell in my ear.
Don’t flood her.
Five, maybe six cylinders, but now the Facel was apparently having an epileptic fit, threatening to shake the teeth from my skull.
I’d left it too late.
You’ve left it too late.
Thanks, Jack. I hit the brakes and felt my foot go to the floor. I pumped as fast as I could and they began to bite. But not quickly enough. One last stamp on the flaccid pedal, then a splintering of glass, wood and metal as the Facel Vega hit the doors dead centre, the impact snapping me forward to head-butt the steering wheel and into oblivion.
TWENTY-FOUR
Tuesday
‘I declare after all there is no enjoyment like reading! How much sooner one tires of any thing than of a book! – When I have a house of my own, I shall be miserable if I have not an excellent library.’
That’s from the Jane Austen book. Written before anyone had the internet.
Thursday
Putu let me ride out on a delivery with him. I had been asking him for days. He was going up to one of the really big villas the rich people rent. With servants and big pools and stuff. Dieter said I could go, but not to tell my dad, who was in town getting some more booze for the bar. But I had to wear a crash helmet. Even though Putu wore one on the back of his head and didn’t even do the straps up.
It was a SCARY ride, I had to hold on tight as he weaved in and out of the traffic. I thought we were going to die a couple of times he was SO CLOSE. But we made it. Mind you, it took about thirty minutes. The pizzas must have been cold by the time we got there.
I had to wait at the gate while he went in to deliver the two pizzas – an American Hot with extra pepperoni and a Four Seasons. He was counting the money as he came back. They have to pay in cash. They must be better pizzas than I thought because Putu said business is booming.
Friday
OK, so Sarah and Dad are definitely at it. I FaceTimed Laura yesterday and she kept going on about Dad and mentioning Sarah. She definitely thinks something is up. And she’s right. Last night I heard them through the walls . . . They thought they were being quiet but they kept laughing and then shushing. I don’t know how to write the appropriate noise. So gross. Imagine me with my fingers down my throat. Only not so happy as that.
She wasn’t there at breakfast, but I bet she soon will be here, buttering his toast. That might be what Mrs Rodak used to call a euphemism. (I wonder if she is still at the school? After that thing with Mr Horton.)
I might blackmail Sarah. Tell her that I’ll tell Laura about her and Dad if she makes me finish Pride & fucking Prejudice.
I keep wondering how Mum is doing.
TWENTY-FIVE
Normandy, France
I could only have been out for a few seconds. I felt Myles’s hands shaking me and his voice whining in my ear like a mosquito.
‘You OK? Sam, you OK? Speak to me.’
‘Don’t,’ I snapped. Except my thick tongue made it come out like some other word altogether. I pulled my head back from the wheel but kept both hands at ten to two. ‘Don’t ever shake someone who has hit their head.’
I released my right hand and touched my forehead. No blood but the brush of my fingertips felt like an explosion of needles. ‘Ow.’
‘What can I do?’
I focused on him, followed the flick of his eyes and realised my skirt was doing a very poor job of covering me and that my left breast had escaped from captivity and was running free. ‘You can turn around.’
He did so and I rearranged my clothing towards some sort of decorum. ‘OK.’
He crouched down next to me. ‘You feel all right?’
I wasn’t sure. There was a rumbling in my head I couldn’t place and a pain behind my eyes. The world seemed very bright all of a sudden. There would be a chance of concussion. ‘Just don’t let me go to sleep,’ I said, although the very word sounded inviting. ‘Anyway, I’m
in better shape than the wall.’
The French doors were like a couple of drunks hanging on to lampposts for support. Most of their panes of glass had gone. One of the curtains lay across the bonnet of the Facel. The car hadn’t ploughed very far into the room – the brakes must have finally bitten – and the doors had been wide enough that I hadn’t hit the brick walls on either side. So whoever the owner was wouldn’t come back to find that his restoration project was a total write-off. But that didn’t help me right now.
‘Give me a minute,’ I said. ‘I’ll get out slow.’
‘Sure. You know, Sam, I didn’t think you could do it.’
I didn’t need a told-you-so speech from the kid. ‘OK, no need to gloat. I’m the one with the bruised head. It was a long shot.’
‘What do you mean? You’re a fuckin’ genius.’
It was only then I appreciated the rumble wasn’t in my skull. It was coming up through my body, from the seat, and through my arms from the wheel.
The big Chrysler V8 was running.
I wasn’t sure how I had knocked it into neutral. Maybe I hadn’t. Maybe the impact had done it for me. Either way, the engine was ticking over, relatively smoothly. I found the manual choke and eased it out a notch. This was the tricky bit. One stall and it was all over.
‘I’m sorry,’ I said, tapping the dash, ‘that I called you a bitch.’
I dipped the clutch, selected reverse and kept the revs reasonably high as I let my left foot lift up the pedal. I had no idea about the bite point of the clutch, but it didn’t snatch and let the power in smoothly. The car gave a shiver along its length, then extricated itself from the wreckage of the doors with a tinkling of glass that sounded like ice falling. The curtain drew out after me for a few yards, billowing like a sail, then gave up, recoiling from the bonnet.
When I was clear enough to turn and drive around the house, I shouted to Myles to get in.
‘What now?’ he asked, suddenly keen as a puppy dog.
‘Town.’
‘You OK to drive?’ He pointed to his own forehead. I glanced in the rear-view mirror. I looked like I was part Smurf – there was a blue-black bruise running just below my hairline. No wonder I had a headache.
‘Can you drive a stick shift?’
‘I can try. Can’t be that hard.’
Wrong answer. ‘Now probably isn’t the best time to learn.’
It was a little like manoeuvring a barge compared to a modern car. The power steering was light and not progressive, so it was very easy to overcompensate. What should have been a straight line became a sine wave as I tried to get a feel for her. Frisky was the best adjective I could come up with to describe her. I took her around the side of the house in second. The engine burbled with only the occasional hiccup. One cylinder had a slight misfire. Probably a plug, but I wasn’t about to try diagnostics. I got the Facel into third along the drive and it seemed to clear.
Maybe it needs higher revs to come on cam.
My mental One-Eyed Jack had lost me now, so I ignored the voice. I slowed for the gates. The pedal went far too close to the floor for my liking and the front end shook. It felt like it had bottle tops instead of drum brakes. No wonder I had hit the French doors. ‘Can you see if there’s an anchor in the back seat?’
Myles half turned before he realised I wasn’t entirely serious. ‘The brakes bad?’
‘You remember the gate code?’ I asked when we had finally pulled level with the black box on a stalk that held a keypad. I remembered stopping outside, but the time around the actual input numbers was another cerebral lacuna.
‘Ten sixty-six,’ he said.
I laughed. Fucking French, still gloating. ‘Of course it is.’
I punched it in and the gates swung towards us. I crept forward and pulled us to a halt with the nose sticking out in the road. I was sweating with the exertion of coping with the heavy steering and clutch, coupled with brakes that faded faster than a snowflake in hell. ‘Christ, no wonder Camus copped it.’
‘Who?’
‘Doesn’t matter. Is there a map in the glove compartment?’ I’d only been interested in a key when I had gone through it.
He popped the walnut flap and rifled through some papers.
‘Nothing?’
‘No map that I can see. An owner’s manual.’
I pulled out onto the road and accelerated gingerly up the hill. I eased the choke in a little. The gates swung closed behind me. I would imagine the chateau was glad to see the back of us.
‘Listen to this,’ he said. ‘It’s in the owner’s manual. In English. “Driving your Facel Vega. At high speed drivers are warned to be careful to hold the steering wheel with both hands except when shifting gears; to keep as close as possible to the centre of the road; not to overtake on the brow of a hill; to reduce speed over the brow of a hill as a car might have stopped on the far side; not to look at anything else but the road; not to change the radio programme; not to smoke”.’
‘I’ll bear all that in mind.’ Although I felt like lighting up just to spite the nannying tone. ‘Nothing useful?’
‘Some cash.’
Now he was talking. ‘How much?’
‘I don’t know. It’s foreign.’
Against all the advice of the owner’s manual I stole a glance at the money on his lap as we crested the hill. Nothing was coming my way. ‘Fuck.’
‘What?’
‘It’s probably as old as the car itself. Francs.’
‘No good?’
‘No good.’ Not unless we went to the central bank in Paris. And I wasn’t going to do that for the sake of a few euros.
‘Bummer.’ Before I could say anything, he wound down the window and flung it out. I watched the bills flutter like demented bats in our slipstream.
‘What did you do that for?’
‘You said they were no good.’
‘For our purposes, right now. You could have just put them back.’
He jutted out his lower lip and folded his arms.
‘Next time you want to see what it feels like to throw money away, ask me first.’
‘Yes, Mommy.’
I glared at him. His real mommy was somewhere, probably many miles away, with a very clever maniac whom I suspected intended to do her harm. Why else take her? Money. That was usually the reason. He wanted the cash she had hidden away in Luxembourg. But why not wait until we were a little closer to Luxembourg City to make his move? Still, he could well be there by now, walking into a strongroom while we thrashed around trying to reclaim a little bit of modern life. Clothes, money, phone, that sort of thing. Underwear. Shoes would be good, too. My soles were stinging from pushing on that gravelly path.
I pulled over a little to let an Audi pass, which it did with a leonine growl. It was a lovely road, wide enough for three cars abreast, lined by plane trees, with plenty of blind brows and bends to add a little excitement. It was the kind of route I could drive for hours. In something less lethal than the Facel Vega, that is.
I could sense the other drivers admiring the sleek lines of the car as they approached us. I once said cruising round London in a Rolls-Royce Ghost was like driving with your bollocks hanging out. I felt like I had my tits out too. Which, given the dress, wasn’t all that far from the truth. If the police stopped us my best hope was to claim we had run away from the circus. Anyone would fall for that one.
But there was one big problem with the Facel. Once seen, not forgotten. And I knew of one man who had admired its lines who would remember that the last time he saw this car it was under canvas.
‘Berlot, three kilometres,’ said Myles, reading off a sign. ‘Is that where we’re going?’
‘We’ll see what Berlot has to offer.’
Not a lot was the answer. There was no proper post office from where I might have been able to make a reverse charge call and the linear main street had a high proportion of antique shops, all of which were closed. Which didn’t matter, because we certainly
weren’t in the market for the kitchen dressers that dominated most window displays.
I saw the bank coming up on the left and stomped on the brake pedal well in advance, but even so overshot the mark by a few yards. I was going to end up with a right thigh like one of Popeye’s arms at this rate.
‘Wait here,’ I instructed Myles. ‘I want you to get in the driver’s seat.’
‘I told you, I don’t do stick shifts.’
‘I don’t want you to. I don’t want you to touch anything. But I have to leave it running. If it sounds like it might stall – you know, begins to run rough – pull this out. Just a gnat’s.’
‘A gnat’s?’
‘A gnat’s cock.’ I realised I was speaking like One-Eyed Jack. ‘A tiny amount. OK? Pull it out too much and it’ll flood the carb. And don’t touch anything else.’
‘Or speak to strangers?’
‘Especially that.’
They didn’t so much raise their eyebrows in the bank as crank them up by crane. I waited in the queue, acting as if I didn’t look like the survivor of a particularly bad road accident, and when I went to the cashier’s window I tried to use all my best charm and bad French. She was a middle-aged woman with a chilly, businesslike attitude. Her hair was dyed ginger – at least I guessed it was, I’d never seen a natural colour quite like it – and coiffured into an elaborate helmet.
I explained that we had been robbed. No, I hadn’t been to the police. It happened while we were asleep, so we had no description to give them.
What exactly did I want? Could she contact my bank and transfer me some money, I suggested. I had a sort code and an account number. I could remember that OK.
She looked as if I had asked her to cook and eat her own children.
C’est impossible, apparently. But perhaps if I let her have my passport.
No passport.
Or driving licence.
Nope.
No proof of identity at all? she asked.
I explained I seemed to be all out of recent utility bills, credit cards or Oyster cards. She couldn’t help then. After all, how could she be sure I was who I said I was? I had to appreciate the need for security. There was more along those lines before she told me the local police station was in the next village. I asked where the nearest British consulate was located. Le Havre. I did a quick mental calculation. A ninety-minute drive? A little less, she suggested. Not by Facel Vega, I thought. I’d have to start braking somewhere around Caen.
