Box Hill

by Adam Mars-Jones

  An eighteenth birthday didn’t mean then what it means now — it didn’t mean that what I’d been doing with Ray was legal, or would have been if only we’d done it indoors and not on the shaggy side of Box Hill. But it meant that as of today I could vote, the next time there was voting to be done, and as an adult, an adult citizen, it seemed fair that I could decide what to do with the rest of my special day. I couldn’t just stay out, though, without sending word. I told Ray I’d need to talk to Ted. We set off towards Box Hill village to find him. The actual village, where the pub was. I was sweaty, so I took off my jacket and tried to drape it over my shoulder from a thumb like Ray was doing, but either the jacket or the thumb wasn’t up to the job, and it kept sliding off. So I bundled it up and tucked it awkwardly under one arm.

  Ted had been my ride to Box Hill, a biker that the younger of my two sisters, that’s Joyce, had broken up with. But somehow the family hadn’t managed to get rid of him. He’d turn up at odd hours, and Mum would always give him something to eat, even if Joyce was doing her routine of looking straight through him, not looking up from her magazine when he stood up and said goodbye.

  I hope Ted wasn’t waiting for Joyce to change her mind. She’s a great one for changing her mind, is Joyce, but one thing she never does is to change it back. Volunteering to take me to Box Hill, to give me a treat and look after me on my birthday, might get him in good with my dad, but it wasn’t going to cut any ice with Joyce. In any case, Ted might have thought he was pining for Joyce, but it was beginning to look like a straightforward sulk.

  Ted was one of those steady drinkers who don’t much show the effects. I’m not even sure he would have been able to control his machine if he was sober. People didn’t take drink-driving very seriously then. People in general, I don’t mean just bikers. On the other hand, the drinking hours were tightly restricted in those days, especially on a Sunday.

  I wasn’t at all a drinker, but when I was with my sisters’ friends everything seemed to be governed by the two great shouts of ‘They’re open!’ and ‘Who’s getting them in?’ The five hours on a Sunday between afternoon closing and evening opening were desert hours for them, a nightmare of parching between the two bouts of authorised trough-wallowing.

  I’d left Ted in the Hand in Hand on Box Hill Road towards Headley Reservoir before last orders at two, and I knew he’d be thinking of buying some cans so as to last through the dry middle of the day. That was his way. Then he’d start again at seven o’clock opening. I’d told him I was going for a walk, take a look-see. Apart from anything else, I was hungry, and I knew from experience that Ted only thought of eating when there was absolutely no more drink to be had. I hadn’t been willing to wait, and I knew there was a Wimpy bar on the other side of the road, towards the panorama, where I could get a hamburger and a glass of lemonade.

  I wasn’t that keen on having Ted drive me home sloshed, which he wouldn’t want to do till evening closing anyway, but back then I hadn’t had a choice. And now I did.

  When Ray and I found Ted outside the Hand in Hand, his bike was on its side stand and he was lying on it after a fashion, with his eyes closed and his feet up on the handle bars. A beer can was loosely held by one sleeping hand against his grubby T-shirt. Earlier in the day I might have thought he looked quite cool like that, even though he was sending out snores that had a little bit of burp in them every now and then.

  I had a new standard of cool demeanour now, one that neither burped nor snored. When he opened his eyes and saw Ray, Ted struggled to his feet. For a moment the bike wobbled on its stand, and I thought one of them was going to fall — maybe even both. I hope I wouldn’t have laughed if that had happened, but my allegiance was no longer with him, and I couldn’t have guaranteed it. Only the beer can fell to earth, and he shot it one agonised look. Though anyone who knew him would have realised that awake, asleep or in between his body didn’t have the power to drop a container with any alcoholic liquid left in it.

  Ted drew himself up to try and look taller. Ray made everyone want to be at their best, to live up to him. To come up to his level. I could only hope that Ted’s eyes weren’t following Ray’s zip down his body, the way mine did if I didn’t keep them under orders, to see that it carried on a few inches further than most people would have thought was strictly necessary. Luckily if Ted was looking anyone up and down it was me, and not Ray.

  ‘What’s up, kid?’ he asked, in a flat tone of voice. I suppose he was waiting for clues, willing to acknowledge me if I was making impressive friends, but ready to disown me in a flash if I’d done something wrong.

  I told him he didn’t need to worry about giving me a ride home. He tried to sound sober despite his drinking, and parental although he didn’t know how, and the net result was to make his voice unrecognizable. ‘I’m not worried,’ he growled carefully, ‘but there are people who will be. I hope you’ve thought of them.’ It was downright embarrassing to remember that I had wanted him as part of the family. God help me, I’d thought Joyce could do a lot worse. I’d thought she was being hard on him.

  ‘Tell Dad I’ve met a friend and I’ll be staying with him.’ Ray hadn’t said in so many words that I’d be staying over, and I shot him an anxious glance, but he didn’t react at all, so I got a little extra confidence from that. I introduced the two of them, and Ted made a bit of a mess of shaking hands. When his siesta had overtaken him, he’d still had the ring-pull from his beer can wedged past the knuckle of his middle finger, right hand. With the little curl of soft metal still attached to the ring, it looked like a piece of costume jewellery or a down-and-out’s rather pathetic knuckleduster.

  Ted held out his hand to shake, and then noticed the ring. He pulled abruptly back to wrestle it off his finger. He felt foolish for a moment. He even blushed, not that anyone but me would notice beneath the ale-flush. Then he scowled, so he looked downright unfriendly when his hand was finally free of ornament and he could safely offer it to be shaken.

  If somebody had held up a mirror on front of me at that moment, I would immediately have realised I had nothing to offer Ray. Ray had no possible need of this blob. But luckily I was looking at Ted, and the part of me that was doomed to make unflattering comparisons, that was already holding everything and everybody up to this amazing Ray and finding them wanting, had something else to work on. I decided that Ted’s hair was greasy, and sideboards made his face look fat. Everyone wore sideboards in those days, even me, even Ray, though his were neat, and the strong symmetry of his face would have been able to ride out the fashions of any decade.

  I noticed that even Ted’s leathers looked sorry for themselves, scuffed and faded, while Ray’s looked as if they’d just been oiled. Not new or anything, just beautifully broken in and cared for.

  I knew perfectly well that Ted wanted a private word with me about the change of plan. He kept jerking his head, to mean I should come aside for a while, but when I didn’t budge it made him look as if there was something wrong with his neck. Nerves. I wasn’t nervy at all. It felt wonderful just standing next to Ray, standing doing nothing, and watching the way the world changed round him.

  Finally Ted had exhausted his options, and he asked me: ‘Are you sure you know what you’re doing?’ To which the honest answer could only be No. It was because I didn’t know what I was doing that I needed to go along with Ray, wherever it was that he was going. And of course I said Yes.

  Thinking about it, Ted’s part in all this was pretty small. He didn’t need to look so solemn. All he had to do was make a phone call. He didn’t even need to speak to my dad direct, he was only passing a message along. Strange to think that as late as 1975 my parents didn’t have the phone. Marjorie next door would take the message, and it was Marjorie who would trot across to tell my dad I wasn’t coming home. Marjorie was still mobile in 1975, still sighted and able to get around. In 1975 there were still a few people called Marjorie. A few Ediths, a few Ivys.


  Ted was in the clear. Ted could drink as late as he liked. I’d worn Ted’s spare helmet on the way to Box Hill, and now he swung it rather sullenly towards me. He almost threw it. Perhaps he was offended by Ray’s keeping his gloves on when they shook hands, or embarrassed by the whole kerfuffle of the business with the ring-pull, the ring-pull he’d thrown to the ground like a man in a silly strop breaking off an engagement.

  The helmet I was to wear had a shabby, second-hand look. Almost a junk-shop look. It was easy to believe that it had fallen off a bar-stool more than once, just like the man who was lending it to me. I hoped I’d never find out how much or how little protection it had to offer, after so many tavern impacts. Even before I needed to put it on I could tell that it smelled of beer. Perhaps he drank out of it, for a bet, or not needing even that much of an excuse. Perhaps that was his secret sense of himself, as a sort of Viking. Ted the biking Viking.

  Ray said nothing while we walked the few hundred yards to where he’d left his bike. I can’t think of a word to describe the way he walked: ‘stroll’ is all wrong, unless you add in a huge assurance, an authority that radiated from him with every casual step. Kings don’t stroll. I could feel myself scurrying after him on legs that seemed stumpier than ever before, anxious to keep up but dreading the inevitable moment when he would turn to me and say, ‘You didn’t really think you were coming home with me, did you? Try looking in a mirror sometime, when you’re feeling strong.’ That had to be his game, his way of getting kicks. Building up my dreams to send them crashing down. But I knew that whatever happened I wasn’t going to go back to Ted and to Isleworth with my tail between my legs. I’d sleep on Box Hill if I had to. Curl up in a bush.

  Ray had left his helmet hanging from a handlebar of his machine. We all of us had less reason to expect our possessions to be pinched in those days, but even then I found Ray’s confidence that nothing of his would be taken or tampered with extraordinary. It was as if he could fill things with a protective charge, and needn’t worry that anything would happen to them while he was away.

  For the first time I had a mystifying glimpse of Ray’s glove ritual: the thin ones peeled off and tucked carefully in the pocket of the jacket he was carrying, the thicker gloves — gauntlets, almost — retrieved from the helmet where he had so trustingly or defiantly left them. His helmet, quite unlike mine (Ted’s), gleamed softly and held no dents.

  I didn’t know much about bikes then, and I don’t know much more now, but even at first glance Ray’s machine, a black Norton Commando, put the Japanese bike on which I’d arrived at Box Hill to shame. Which was strange, since Ted’s Yamaha, his pride and joy, was only a couple of months old, in the earliest stages of neglect, while the Norton was far from new. But there was a symmetry between the man and what he rode, between both men and what they rode. Ray’s bike was as classic as he was — they were versions of the same superlative, he in confidence and leather, the Norton in power and chrome.

  If you’re a glasses-wearer, putting on a crash helmet presents quite a problem, particularly if it’s full-face. If you wear glasses with wire stems, the sort that wind around your ears, I don’t see how it’s even possible. Even with my rigid stems I had to remember to take the glasses off — I laid them on the grass for a moment — before putting the helmet on, and only then to push the earpieces awkwardly into place.

  Before I took my glasses off I had time to notice that the interior of Ted’s spare helmet, which it had once seemed such a privilege to wear, the fibre-glass shell of it, was matted with hairs, some mid-length and brown, which might have been anybody’s, which might have been mine from the ride down, and some long and blonde, with a flip at the end, which might have been Joyce’s. All girls’ hair had that flip. Girls’ hair in those days had learned lessons from the Partridge Family, from Abba, from Suzi Quatro. ‘Charlie’s Angels’ were just around the corner, preparing to undertake their first missions.

  While I fiddled with the chinstrap Ray walked round the bike. It puzzled me that he kicked at the tyres and leaned over with a frown to inspect the brakes. Over time I learned that he did these checks every time he returned to the bike after a lapse of more than a few minutes. He was always scrupulous about safety, in a way that was far from common at the time.

  Back then, though, I didn’t understand that what Ray was doing was admirably safety-conscious. In my uncertain state I worried that he had particular reasons for fearing a punctured tyre or disabled brakes. For the first time it struck me that he might be special in the world, not just special to me, special because I’d never met anyone remotely like him. I wondered if he was someone famous I hadn’t recognised, someone who was at risk of sabotage if he mixed with ordinary people. Ordinary people at a bikers’ meeting place near Leatherhead on the Sunday of a Bank Holiday weekend.

  I must have looked pitiful to him when he finished with his checks and turned round. I’d struggled into my jacket again, and I finally had the helmet on. I was hearing my own breathing even with the visor up, sweating so that my glasses started to fog, and I was afraid beer was condensing in my squashed hair. I was numbly convinced that he would choose the most painful possible moment to say that he’d changed his mind, and that I’d have to struggle in humiliation with the strap all over again. Instead he handed his own jacket to me, saying I might be warm now, but I’d need it later on.

  Perhaps he was embarrassed by the naffness of my attempt at a leather jacket — naff was a word then in its prime. Princess Anne must take a lot of the credit for popularising it, at least as a verb. She used it as a swear-word that didn’t offend reporters too much if they overheard it. ‘Naff off’, she’d tell them. A disappointing horse at a gymkhana might be naffing hopeless. It was like the posh tea that the Queen drinks, the tea with the Royal Warrant. By appointment. Princess Anne gave ‘naff off’ and ‘naffing’ the Royal Warrant.

  I saw for the first time how truly naff my jacket was. The hide was like animal cardboard, not like skin at all. And perhaps Ray was ashamed of me and wanted to cover up my mistake, but that doesn’t really ring true. He couldn’t be dragged down by other people’s choices, however poor they were. It didn’t work that way. Ray had image and to spare. The tendency was all in the other direction — for him to pull other people up, somehow.

  Ray hadn’t been wearing the jacket he handed me, just using it as a pillow, so it didn’t smell intensely of him. I pulled it on with a sort of reverence all the same, not minding that it was much too long and wouldn’t close properly round my tummy. The weight of the thing was astounding. I felt as if I was wearing an old-fashioned diving-suit, the sort in the Tintin books.

  Ray helped me to turn back the sleeves so that my hands struggled back into the light again, but he accepted the inevitable when it came to the zip. It wasn’t going to close. His breath was minty. He met my eyes and said again, ‘What am I going to do with you?’ This time, though, there wasn’t a flicker of uncertainty in his voice. It sounded as if knew perfectly well what he was going to do. He said it in the way that people say, ‘Have I got news for you.’ Not really a question.

  I was tempted to make a run for it then, before I disappointed him the way I knew I was bound to do. Of course he’d come after me and grab the jacket back, but maybe I’d be able to sneak the dress gloves out of its pocket, the gloves with the warmth still lingering from his fingers. The ones he was wearing when he let me try to please him.

  He started the bike, springing up and bearing smoothly down on its kick-start in a single economical motion. You could hardly even call it a kick. The engine roared into throaty life. If everyone could kick-start a bike as smoothly as Ray, electric start would never have caught on.

  I couldn’t believe how noisy the Norton was. It wasn’t yet dark, not by a long way, it was only late afternoon, but he turned the headlight on. He must have been one of the first people to do that, to ride with his beam on night and day. Of course no
t every machine back then had electrics powerful enough to sustain a permanent beam. The Norton did. His helmet was open-faced, unlike mine, and I could see the set of his mouth as well as his eyes when he nodded me to get on behind him.

  Short legs aren’t well suited to being slung over high objects, but I managed to lever myself into the saddle eventually. As I tried to get comfortable, I saw my knees for the first time since I’d met Ray. Of course the trousers were bagged and deeply marked with grass stains, and I understood why Ted hadn’t been able to take his eyes off me long enough to notice Ray’s unorthodox zip. My knees had already given him the gist of the story.

  There were more adjustments to be made to the bike. With my weight on it the mirrors were misaligned, and Ray spent a few seconds while the engine warmed up setting them properly for the new load. The new load being me. Even so the bike vibrated so much that the mirrors trembled, and the information they passed to Ray must have shimmered.

  I’d only travelled a few dozen miles on motorcycles in my life, and I found it hard to relax the way a good pillion should. Ray’s height meant I couldn’t see the road over his shoulders. He kept on turning his head round, which I found disconcerting, particularly as thanks to my full-face helmet I prodded his back with my chin every time he braked. Crazily, I kept thinking, every time he turned round, that he must just have noticed me stowing away on his bike where I so obviously didn’t belong, and would pull over to push me off. If he even bothered to stop.

  Later I learned that he practised the Police Motorcycle Method of riding, and these were his ‘observations’. He was no boy racer, no kind of speed merchant. He really cared about safety. Once again he was ahead of his time. In those days the motorcycle riding test was pretty rudimentary, from what people told me, a very basic assessment of skills. I mean, Ted passed first time, didn’t he? That’s evidence enough. A chap would come out of the test office, ask you to ride round the block a few times, then lunge at you for you to do your emergency stop. If you were still upright and you hadn’t run over him, then you had passed. There was none of the modern stuff, an examiner following you on his own machine, giving instructions to you through a headset that links your helmets.