“I’m no good at all,” I repeated. “My bike beat you. You didn’t know how good it was.”
“Yes,” she snapped, with a brisk nod of her head.
“Like to have a ride on her—no catch?”
She glared, like a wildcat that’s just been offered a bit of fresh steak. She’d have liked to have said no. But she could never resist a bike, Keri. She pulled Mitzi upright with a heave of her broad shoulders. “You’ve scratched it.”
“One of your little mates made me crash.”
“Serve you right. How do you start it? No, you’re not riding pillion. Just show me how to start it.”
I tried showing her other things but she was already gone. Round the course again…
She came past the first time, cranking over so fast and hard I said good-bye to her and Mitzi both. Mitzi thought her last hour had come, too, the amount of bleeping she was putting up.
The second time, I just shut my eyes and waited for the scrunch of metal.
There was a snigger.
She’d idled up to me, so slowly I hadn’t heard a thing.
“Good bike. Touched a hundred and twenty down Vauxhall Bridge Road.”
“She can do more.”
“Not in this dump. I don’t want to wreck her. I like the way she chirrups. Like a pet canary.”
“Tried the radio?”
She played with the buttons. When she got Tokyo, her face lit up like a child’s. “She must be lonely, so far from home.” Talking about the bike as if it was a living thing; stroking the handlebars.
“Keep her,” I said. “As a present.”
She just stared.
“I’m no Racer,” I said, fiddling with the zip of my leathers.
“You’re not bad,” she said. “You might shape up.”
“I want you to have her.”
“Why, for Christ’s sake?”
“Because your bike’s a death trap. I don’t want you getting killed.”
“Naff off. What do you care about me?”
“I think I’ve fallen in love with you.”
She reached for another half-brick…
“Look,” I said, when she finally stopped. “Let’s go for a drink and talk things over. You ride Mitzi and I’ll ride yours.”
“I’ll come for the ride.”
We found a snack bar by the Lambeth Gate. Closing down, nearly empty. She bought her own Coke. “My old Dad always said, when somebody gives you something, they expect something back. …” But she kept on examining me, as if I was the Loch Ness Monster. “Ain’t you got no Est girls keen on you? You’re not bad looking.
“Neither are you.”
She twisted her face into a hideous mass of wrinkles. “Yeah, I use sump oil for foundation cream and gunk for mascara! Sorry, Kitson—love’s just not my zone—makes yer soft for racing. Feller starts hangin’ round the pits making goo-goo eyes, yer start worryin’ about crashing and spoiling yer looks, and yer dead. Push off, Kitson. I can’t do with yer hangin’ around.”
“Why don’t you push off with me?”
“Wotcher mean?”
“We could share the bike—see a few places. Birmingham, Leeds, Glasgow. Have a holiday. …”
“What the hell’s a holiday?” Her face set hard. “By the time I got back here, there’d be a new Champ. They’d’ve forgotten me.”
“You could make them remember you—if you had Mitzi.”
“I wouldn’t ride Mitzi—that’s cheating. Still, I’d like to see what she could do on a motorway. …”
“Come for a week,” I coaxed. “They won’t forget you in a week.”
She giggled. “Champ and ex-Champ vanish on dirty weekend. That’d make the telly-gogglers’ hair stand on end. They’d have to start preliminary heats all over again. And by the time they’d finished, I’d be back. Okay, I’ll come. But no beddy-beddy, right? I’m as tight as a GKN locknut.”
“Right!”
Chapter 11
I picked her up at ten; she wouldn’t start before. All Unnems were dopey in the mornings. I was starting to notice the effect myself. At Cambridge, my feet had hit the floor the moment my baby-blue eyes opened. Here there was a swamp time, between sleep and waking; a swamp in which you lay feeling you’d never move again. Once up, you felt better; by mid-morning, the feeling was gone.
Keri came out rubbing her eyes, a tight bundle under her arm that I stowed in the right-hand pannier. Her face looked like she’d been coal-mining all night, then lost her sack of coal. She took a last look round that dreary townscape, as if she might suddenly fall in love with it. She looked so lost I nearly scrubbed the whole expedition…
But she cheered up when I let her drive; got astride, rocked from side to side getting the balance of the bike. Worked her shapely bottom deep into the seat, like a cat making a nest. Grinned over her shoulder.
“What we waiting for, Kitson?”
We toured the London Wire, sussing out the gates till Keri found one manned by the ageing, dwindling British police.
“Right,” she said. “I can soft-soap my way through that lot. Paramils is impossible.”
And soft-soap them she did. It was the first I’d seen her do the famous Keri Roberts Act, as seen on TV. She pulled up at the gate, took off her helmet, shook her glorious hair loose, unzipped her leathers, and did her famous victory stretch and yawn, which made the most of her magnificent boobs.
The cops stared; then gaped.
“Hey, you’re the famous Keri Roberts. …” After that, it was all over, bar the shouting. And about ten minutes of signing autographs, flirting, and letting herself be generally mauled by the constabulary. I saw her mouth tighten once or twice, under the plastic gaiety. I felt like throwing up. When they’d finally stopped posing with her, using the security camera to take pinups, they let us go. On a week’s pass, to race in Glasgow. Having stuffed the pass down the front of her T-shirt…
We ripped away, leaving them beaming.
“God,” I yelled, “don’t you feel dirty?”
She braked so hard she nearly had us both over the handlebars. She thrust her face so close to mine, my visor steamed up.
“Look, you wanted to get out of that bloody gate; I got us out. If you don’t like the way I do it, you can take your bloody electric toaster and go.”
“Letting them maul you like that!”
“Look, this is your bike and my body. We didn’t do a swap.”
“Put your helmet back on,” I snapped, “before the psychopter spots you having a fit.”
Unfair. If there was a psychopter within miles, it wasn’t taking any notice of us.
The motorway was dreamy, climbing and swooping like a hawk. After the cramped deadliness of the back streets, it was paradise for Keri. She hunted down the Est cars, overtook them one after another. The occupants of vintage Rollses, open four-litre Bentleys, stared outraged. A few fought back sneakily, suddenly accelerating as we overtook them, or swerving out murderously into the fast lane. Keri overtook them on the inside, laughing, sticking up two fingers, happy and free. I could feel her happiness, through my hands clasped tightly round her leathered waist.
“D’you have to do that?” she snarled.
“I’m nervous,” I smiled.
The happiness didn’t last. I could see Ests reaching for their car phones, complaining to motorway control. Finally, north of Rugby, a cop bike flagged us down. Keri gave him her famous stretch-and-boobs routine. It nearly didn’t work. As he rode away he said, “Don’t annoy the cars. Control nearly sent Paramils, but I was nearer.”
“Lay off, will you?” I shouted at her, standing on the verge.
“Lay off what?”
“Burning off the Ests—flashing your body—fooling with the fuzz. D’you want a ride back to London in the Black Maria?”
“Look—I do what I want, see? If you’d wanted a well-mannered Est lady, you ought to’ve stuck with that… Vanessa.” She glared around, looking for something to throw.
“Look, Keri, there’s more to life than screwing people. …”
“Like what?”
“That’s what we’re going north to find out. Give yourself time. …”
“I could be dead tomorrow!”
“I’m afraid that’s not very likely now.”
She zipped up her leathers violently, catching one boob enough to make her wince. A tear trickled down one cheek. She wiped at it savagely with her gauntlet, leaving an oily smear. “I’m all confused. It’s so big outside London.”
“Maybe the bigness could be nice?”
She nodded wearily. “Okay. We’ll do it your way.”
Beyond Stafford, hills began to rear up to our right. At first, it was just estates and factories on higher ground. But the hills went on getting bigger and bigger, like tigers trapped under a net of Wires and perimeter lights and tower blocks. Then one suddenly thrust up a bare crest and roared of freedom. Its sides were dun, spotted and textured with gorse and heather. No more Wires, just old blackstone walls like tiger stripes, broken into gaps in places, with sheep as small as fleas scurrying from one field to another. The cloud shadows drifted freely over them, ignoring even the blackstone walls.
Still the hills grew, till their bareness had conquered all one side of the motorway. Open fields began to appear on our left as well.
When the last estate was only a distant sun-glitter through the smoke haze, we pulled into a lay-by. Huge concrete litter bins spilled waterfalls of gleaming Coke tins down the hillside. Endless robo-trucks passed us, blat, blat, blat, making the bike rock.
But even their fumes couldn’t block out the huge bracken-and-water smell of the hills. Keri had never smelled it before. I watched her nose working like a little animal’s. Her eyes looked alternately happy and puzzled.
And in the gaps between the robos came silences, when we could hear a sheep bleating half a mile away.
Still astride the bike, Keri took off her helmet and ran her fingers through her hair. “I never knew this was here.”
“You had maps at school. …”
“Only maps of London. Hardly went to school. Anyway, you can’t smell maps.” She sucked in great lungfuls of air, heedless of her sliding zip and my feelings. “A lot of people would like to come up here, if they knew. Things are so far apart… there’s room. …” She got off the bike, picked up a big stone, and threw it down the hillside, watching it leap and bound till it came to rest in a tinkling little stream. Then she gave me a sly look. “I suppose this is what you mean by the bigness being nice? You can think straight because there’s nothing happening.”
Famous last words. A green patrol car was coming up the hill, caught in the traffic stream. Something warned me to bend over and pretend to inspect the bike’s terminals.
Utterly predictable, the patrol car left-winkered, turned off from the traffic stream, crunched across the lay-by. Utterly predictable, two Paramils got out, one lying back to cover the other. How small they were; how neat. Khaki shirts beautifully ironed, brasses gleaming like silver, visors at that arrogant tilt, right thumbs stuck in their belts, handy for the blaster holsters which had their flaps casually undone… Smooth khaki faces. Did they ever have to shave? Khaki faces, exotic as oranges against that heather-covered hillside. The reality of those English hills fought against the reality of the Paramils, and the English hills began to win. I had a near-irresistible urge to shout, “What are you doing here?”
The front one held out his hand. I put our IDs into it, as humbly as I could manage. Then the gate pass. Keri had to fish it out of its last resting place. The Paramil watched her with unmoving celestial disgust.
“Why are the two of you riding on the same motorcycle?”
“It’s a two-seater.” I indicated the two seats with sarcastic swoops of my hand. The stroppy Tech note got into my voice. His calm black eyes noted it. I could have kicked myself; half of whatever safety margin we’d had was gone.
“Why have you stopped here? This is not an authorised parking place for motorcycles.”
“Engine’s overheating. We’ve had to let it cool.”
“You have broken down?” He sounded almost eager, moving in for the kill. Behind me, Keri gave a touch to the starter button. The bike whined emptily, sickeningly, twice. Then started.
I held out my hand for our IDs. The Paramils didn’t move, watching my face with calm interest. Half of me wanted to go down on my knees and plead; the other half wanted to hit him. The smooth brown face knew it all; went on waiting.
“Please!” I said.
He handed me the papers silently, turned back to his car.
We went on. The Ests didn’t bother to report us, now they were doing the overtaking. Lunchtime came. The Ests went to dine. Those juggernauts that still had drivers pulled obediently off the road, at the authorised place. Even the robos seemed to have vanished for a quick tweak-up of their electronics.
The empty road, the shadowed hills, drew us on. Mitzi’s faint whine just made the silence more profound. The motorway climbed, giving glimpses of further hills and further, an infinite blue lostness that blew our minds. I heard garbled noises: Keri singing inside her helmet.
It wasn’t the Paramils that stopped us in the end. Northeast, the sky darkened. The far sunlit hills glowed ghostly and glasslike, then began to vanish behind purple scarves of rain. I nudged Keri, pointed. She nodded, irritably, already on the lookout for shelter. But now we needed an authorised place, preferably complete with robo-caff… zilch.
A great spur of the Pennines thrust across our path. The motorway cut a nick straight through it. As we approached, the nick widened into an immense cutting, its sides crumbled and tumbled in red, riven blocks of sandstone. Keri must’ve spotted something: as the first huge drops of rain splattered and snaked across my visor, she turned across the hard shoulder onto turf that rutted smoothly under our wheels. We shot into a cleft in the rock, behind a line of boulders fallen like dominoes that totally cut us off from the motorway.
At the back was a cave. We ran into it, shouting, as the thunderstorm struck. Inside, there was a rusty shovel, plastic bags. Workmen must have used it before us, many years ago, when the motorway was being built.
It was some storm: the savage, exciting kick of lightning; the heavy hand of thunder, pressing down on the rock, pressing us deeper into the cave. The rain coming down in rods, running in curving streams off Mitzi’s handlebars. Making privacy. Nobody had been here in fifty years. Who’d come in the next fifty?
Keri and I. Alone.
Part of my mind was still trying to fret. Suppose Mitzi got struck by lightning? Suppose damp got into the electrics? But the great smell of greenery calmed me, even if it was just the newly ripped grass in Mitzi’s tire treads.
Drips of water, working down through the roof,
tapped smartly on our helmets, driving us deeper into the dark. There, Keri settled in stillness, ignoring the drips on her helmet, face dim and unreadable in the green storm light.
“You okay?” I asked, finding the silence unbearable.
She didn’t answer at first; then she said in a dreamy voice, “I like it here.”
“Yeah, snug. Want a fag?”
“No. I want to smell things.”
“Suit yourself.” I lit up, to show I was independent minded. Blew smoke rings. “Make a good camp this. Deep enough. Bit noisy when the lorries start again. And a bit hard to lie on.” I picked stones from under my backside and threw them outside, narrowly, but carefully, missing the bike.
“Sit still, can’t you?” She took off her helmet, lay back on a rock pile, held her mouth open, so that drips from the roof fell into it. Then she reached out and stroked the cave walls, found a little tuft of fern growing miraculously in a dark cranny. Pulled off one fern leaf, held it against the rain light, unfolding its tight curl lovingly, stroking it. I listened to her breathing; she had an odd little quiver at the end of each breath. The whole world was full of her breathing.
&
nbsp; Then I suddenly and ridiculously got jealous. “What’s up wi’ you—having a fit?”
“It’s all so… old.”
“This motorway was only built fifty years ago.”
“I mean the rocks, you soulless Tech. It makes everything in London seem so… plastic.”
“The atoms in plastic are as old as the atoms in rock!”
She sat up abruptly. “Might as well go—the rain’s stopping.” As she pushed her way angrily past, it entered my thick skull that I’d missed some kind of chance with her.
“What do you want? We can stay here the night if you like.”
“No. This place is spoiled now.” But she sat down again; picked up a stray Coke tin and threw it outside. It hit one end of Mitzi’s handlebars and flew wildly in the air.
“Hey, mind my bike!”
Silence.
“Hey, I could find you a better cave than this.”
“Where?” She was dead serious; turned toward me, so that her face was plunged in darkness, but the edges of her hair were lit up by the returning sunlight outside.
“North.”
“Glasgow?”
“Further north than Glasgow.”
“There’s nothing past Glasgow.”
“Yeah, bags and bags of nothing. No estates, no Paramils, not even roads, much. Just mountains. We could camp.”
“What’s camping?”
I explained. “We can buy a tent and stuff in Glasgow.”
“No, nearer! I want to camp tonight. I might even think of holding your hand, Kitson.”
“We’ll try Carlisle.” Half of me was crazy to get her alone.
The other, deeper half was remembering that Scott-Astbury made his big mistake in the Scottish Highlands.
Chapter 12
Carlisle lay sleeping, if not dying, among its darkening hills. Carlisle wasn’t needed anymore. The surrounding farms were automated. Robo-trucks reached Glasgow without an overnight stop. Long before we reached the Carlisle Wire, we passed through whole suburbs reduced to low mounds under grass, their crumbling tarmac streets leading nowhere, except to solitary lampposts.
Futuretrack 5 Page 11
