The Way Barred

by Dominique Kyle

  The Way Barred

  by

  Dominique Kyle

  ‘Not Quite Eden’ series – book 4

  The Way Barred © 2016 Dominique Kyle

  Cover Design © 2016 Dominique Kyle

  All Rights Reserved

  This is a work of fiction and although some real places and organisations are mentioned within the plot, the events and the characters are completely made up and are not based upon, nor intended to represent any real events or personalities.

  The gate closed behind us and two laps into the rolling start round the quarter mile oval, the heavens opened. Shit, I thought, this wasn’t forecast. Everyone had their dry set up, their dry weather tyres. There was a crack of thunder that could be heard even above the roaring of our engines. I hastily began to rethink the strategy for this race. The shale would be sodden in minutes in this deluge. I decided I needed to keep to the inside, keep it tight and see what happened. All the cars would be travelling round the inside line. After a few laps the shale would be shifted from it and a racing line would emerge. Once that racing line developed, anyone who got a tyre onto the outside shale would be dragged out of the line by the deep quagmire that would have developed on the outer limit.

  On the very first corner, many on the outside of the grid went flying out onto the fence, but I was far enough back in the order to pick my way through the inside and avoid the first bout of carnage. We carried on a couple more laps, avoiding the increasing numbers of cars backing and forwarding themselves out of the muck, and then they had to wave the yellow flag and keep us all driving slowly around in race order for a minute or two to let the cars spun out on the far side of the track to get out of the way onto the infield. That allowed everyone to bunch up and whoever was in the lead lost the momentum they’d built up. The bane of a leader’s race, the opportunity for those behind. I wiped at my goggles, they were splashed nearly to beyond my seeing anything through them. I got them cleaner by the re-start and off we went again, skidding through the mud and nearly horizontal rain. A loud crack and a flash of light somewhere that wasn’t a car hitting anything or blowing up. I kept moving up the order. Cars kept being sucked outwards too wide and I went through. I turfed a couple out of the way. But by now I just couldn’t see out of my goggles, they’d just filled with mud. I ripped them off and drove more cautiously, holding my left hand up in front of my eyes and screwing my eyes up against the filthy spray through the metal grid that replaced the windscreen.

  Another yellow flag was my saviour. I reached for the spare pair of goggles I had in the cab and pulled them on. As I looked around with suddenly clearer gaze I realised that I was now somehow up with the front runners. Only five ahead of me now. The green flag waved and I was ready on a hair trigger. The Silver roof holder, Horrocks attacked the newly crowned European Champion. The European holder recovered, but lost places in the time it took him to plough back into the racing line, and I’d already nipped past both of them on the inside. The Dutch guy ahead suddenly put a warning hand out of the window and slowed up, pulling over to let me past, clearly having some sort of engine trouble. The Scottish Championship holder, Patterson, was still about two car lengths ahead of me. We slewed round another tight corner and Patterson unluckily clipped a back marker that was trying to leave the track for the infield but had got caught up and slowed in the mud. Patterson spun away to a sudden halt with a punctured tyre. I was still just far enough behind Patterson to have the time to haul my wheel hard right and plough horribly round the outside and then yank my wheel back and with spinning wheels, flail my way back to the line. And then I was in the lead. I couldn’t see in my mirror because even that was covered in mud. It was hard to see anything really. A couple of laps to go. I drove as fast as I dared while keeping a carefully tight racing line. I wasn’t sure if Horrocks was coming up behind to heave me out of the way but somehow he never seemed to appear. I nipped between two wavering back markers and the black chequered flag waved wildly as I passed underneath it. I couldn’t believe it. Didn’t want to believe it until it was official. But I had very possibly just won the F2 Stocks World of Shale Championship. And if so, the first female ever to do so.

  I wasn’t really sure what was supposed to happen now. We slowed when it was safe to do so and the rain began to ease off. They ran the chequered flag out to me and handed it through the window.

  “What am I supposed to do with this?” I asked, pulling my goggles off and wiping at my face.

  “Do a lap of honour of course! Congratulations by the way!”

  My heart began to thump. Close to official then… I drove slowly round the track with the flag sticking out the window, its white chequers getting steadily filthier. But there was still scrutineering to go. Lots of titles were lost at the scrutineering stage. I knew that our team never tried to cheekily push the boundaries, but many titles were lost even on unintentional irregularities. Such as the famous illegal carburettor scandal where the World Championship was taken off the winner who protested it right to appeal swearing he hadn’t adapted it, and who wasn’t proved innocent until months later when the manufacturers confirmed there was a dodgy batch and several other drivers turned out to have them too. His title was never re-instated and he never got apologised to. They didn’t like admitting to mistakes.

  Jo Satterthwaite was waiting for me at the scrutineering with the tool kit. She hugged me. “I’m hoarse from screaming!” She told me in a voice that did sound unusually husky.

  “Sounds sexy,” I teased her. “Try and meet the man of your dreams in the next half an hour and go and chat him up!”

  She slapped me round the head which didn’t hurt any as I hadn’t taken my helmet off yet.

  “Oh yuk, disgusting,” I said gloomily as we were faced with taking the whole bloody engine apart covered in that muck.

  Only myself and my mechanic were allowed to do it, with the scrutineers watching and measuring all the bits as they came off. Extremely tiresome.

  Finally they pronounced everything legal and in order and allowed a grudging measure of congratulatory sentiments to pass their lips. Jo kissed me on the cheek. A rare gesture from the normally taciturn young woman, which she instantly regretted, wiping at the grit on her lips.

  “You’re so filthy!” she complained.

  “Yeah, that’s what your brother always used to say,” I said suggestively.

  She slapped me for a second time, and I only ducked fast enough for it to not quite hurt.

  “Ow!” I complained unnecessarily.

  Pete and Paul Satterthwaite were finally allowed to approach. They both threw their arms around me and kissed me, and then found out the same unfortunate fact as Jo, and backed off wiping themselves. “You need to go and wash your face before the presentation,” Paul warned me. “Because you’re going to get kissed a lot. A lot more than the men normally do…”

  I left them sorting out my poor dismantled car and pushed my way through to the toilets. Another race was in progress so hardly anyone noticed me pass. I scrubbed at my hands and then my face with the soap and hot water. At least there was soap this time, half the time the loos were scummy and the dispenser would have run out. I needed a pee. My pre-race glass of water drunk so long ago it was now wanting to race on out of me. I gingerly peeled the all in one fireproof racing overall off me, wriggling out of the arms and pulling it right down, trying to stop the dangling arms touching the revolting floor, but in the process getting mud all over the toilet seat and walls and also on my underwear. This race gear was so not designed for female plumbing.

  The Title Trophy Presentation. Out came the BriSCA presentation girls, glamorous and leggy in black and white chequered shorts and crop tops, and knee high, high heeled black boots carrying silver
and white laurels. I sighed. I’d been through all this before in January with the awkward presentation by one girl to another and the strained smiling. Horrocks had come second. Another Dutch guy, Toon, third. Suddenly a large six foot figure stepped out between the two girls, holding a gold laurel wreath. He was wearing tight red leather trousers, knee high, high heeled black boots and a tight black basque, laced up the front with black curly chest hair poking over the top and muscled arms bare.

  “Oh my God!” I uttered with foreboding. “Please tell me this isn’t happening!”

  Horrocks blinked at seeing the apparition close up. Toon got the giggles.

  “I think I want to die…” I muttered to Horrocks. “This is just typical!” I tried to suppress the red tide that was rushing up into my face but I knew that trying not to blush would just make it worse. “As long as he doesn’t burst into song…” I hissed to Horrocks.

  “I wish I hadn’t put my glasses back on!” Horrocks murmured sportingly back to me.

  Quinn’s green eyes glimmered wickedly at me and without any shame whatsoever. He leaned forward, placed the wreath over my neck and very deliberately kissed me on the cheek with lips that were scarlet with excess lipstick, leaving, I was certain, a perfect heart shaped lipstick mark like a brand. The heavy trophy was then thrust into my hands which meant I couldn’t wipe it off.

  Cameras snapped. The ITV cameras rolled while the cameraman shook with laughter. (Beardy Roger in attendance I surmised). Oh this was going to go so viral, I snarled in my head. And there’d be a photo in next month’s Unloaded 7.3 mag, on the BriSCA F2 website, in the next race meet’s programme, this would forever be the image associated with the first female World of Shale Champion ever. Blah! Bloody Quinn!

  In the cab of the ‘Beast’, the big transporter vehicle the Satterthwaites used to carry us and the cars to and from speedway tracks, they were having a heated discussion as we drove home.

  “All that effort and it doesn’t even properly change the colour of your roof,” Jo complained.

  “Yes it’s a shame that they don’t put more emphasis on the title as it’s basically the Shale driver’s equivalent of the World Championship,” Pete agreed.

  “But what colour would it have to be?” I joked, “Dirty brown?”

  “We wouldn’t have to repaint yours right now then,” Jo teased.

  “She gets some flashing amber lights and a couple of two inch gold stripes though…” Peter reminded us.

  “Third in the European Championship, and now this,” Jo said approvingly. “They can’t ignore her now, can they? What else can we shoehorn her into before the end of the season?”

  “Yours or ours, Eve?” Paul asked when we got to the turn in the road.

  “Yours,” I said. I couldn’t rob my team of their evening of celebration with me, even though I felt weirdly unelated. A few months ago I’d have been ecstatic and Pete would have had his arm round me telling me how proud he was of me, and we’d have gone to his room and had private special celebrations in bed that night and my world would have seemed complete and my cup would have felt overflowing with joy. This should have been one of the happiest and most triumphant moments of my life and instead I felt dull and lifeless.

  By now it was late, but Sue was waiting with a meal and although she knew the outcome because she’d been texted, now she wanted to know all the exciting details. I let her husband and offspring fill her in, just adding in the odd extra.

  “If there hadn’t been a second yellow flag to allow me to get a clean pair of goggles on I wouldn’t have won as I was having to drive one handed to shield my eyes to see out through the torrent of mud! It was a bit of a fluke.”

  “No it wasn’t,” Jo said loyally. “You were one of the few who didn’t put a wheel wrong!”

  Paul glanced at me. “Jo’s right. There’s always a huge dose of chance in Stock car racing, but you drove with your head, and made all the right decisions in the split seconds where they were needed. So you deserved that win, Eve. Don’t play it down.”

  Praise from Paul always had an impact on me. He was very even handed with both criticism and praise, and used them both rather sparingly, so when either came you knew that what he said was worth listening to.

  I excused myself from the table to take a shower. Work tomorrow, so we couldn’t afford to stay up late. Afterwards I went back down to the kitchen to get a hot drink. My hand went to the lift the latch on the internal door, then hovered indecisively as I heard my name mentioned. I knew I shouldn’t listen in, but who can resist finding out what people really think of you when you’re not in the room?

  “Eve doesn’t seem that over the moon about the title,” Jo said. “I thought she’d be leaping around like a triumphant puppy.”

  “The insouciance of youth,” Paul said. “She’s taking it all in her stride, unaware that some drivers bust a gut for years trying to achieve anything remotely close to her stats.”

  “I don’t think it’s that at all,” Sue argued. “I’m still quite concerned about her. It’s been four months since Pete finished with her and she’s never bounced back. I can see that she’s trying not to let it show but sometimes I still catch a look of naked grief on her face when she glances at Pete and you’d have thought it should have been easing off by now. When Pete told me that he was sure she’d move on and it was better to put an end to it earlier rather than later to limit the damage to all concerned I could understand his reasoning. I assumed she was too young for it to be all that serious.”

  “You and Dad were only nineteen weren’t you when you got together? And you’ve lasted,” Jo pointed out.

  “True,” Paul agreed.

  “She was a tough little cookie when she arrived with us,” Sue observed, “and then she seemed to just unfurl all her petals and was so charming and loving I could hardly believe all those revelations about her history, but since Pete hurt her so much she’s gone back into a shell.”

  “You said he was afraid she’d go off with Quinn and he couldn’t compete?” Jo established. “Well I’ve worked with her every day for nearly a year now, and I really can’t see it myself. If she mentions Quinn at all, then it’s quite dismissively. But if I mention Pete suddenly she sort of flinches her face away and she often sits and stares at Pete’s hand like a dog longing for a pat. I find it quite painful actually.”

  I felt so humiliated, I turned and crept away.

  I lay in their spare room and tried not to cry. I thought I’d been managing it really well, but here they were talking about naked grief and likening me to a pathetic rejected dog! Gone back into a shell? Yes, but it was egg shell thin around the soft yolky centre, threatening to crack open and spill. This was the kick up the arse I needed. No more grief. No more allowing my feelings to show. I had to pull myself together and try to remember how to be inviolate to feelings again, just like I used to be.

  I walked into the flat after work and threw my bag down onto one of the two armchairs. It was only then that I noticed Quinn lying in a huddle on the settee.

  “Quinn? What’s the matter?” I asked sharply.

  He sniffled, and I instantly tensed right up. Had his mother died? Had his best friend Kes attempted suicide again?

  I sat down by him. “Quinn?”

  He half straightened up, pushing his mass of long dark wavy hair out of his face, but keeping his head turned away in obvious embarrassment at being caught out like this.

  “You’re gonna think I’m stupid, but the mutt’s died…”

  “Oh, I’m so sorry,” I said sympathetically. I didn’t feel very sympathetic, but rationally, I knew that they’d had that dog since Quinn was about six, and it was bound to affect them. I knew that a sympathetic tone was considered mandatory under these circumstances.

  “What happened?” I asked dutifully.

  “Tumour in his guts. Wasted away. Vet said it was kindest to put him down.” Quinn was jerkily abrupt.

  Shit, I thought. And with his mother still
undergoing cancer treatment herself, at this very moment in hospital having both breasts removed… I could see what the underlying issue was now. Don’t mention his mother, I thought. Whatever you do, don’t blurt out ‘and by the way how’s your mother doing?’

  I patted his hand. “Shall I get Dubetskoi?”

  He smiled through his tears. “Go on then!”

  I came back and handed him his dirty old teddy and he tucked it safely away under his arm.

  “Thanks for dressing up for me on Sunday,” I changed the subject.

  He suddenly threw off his melancholy and grinned at me with glinting eyes. “Since all the blokes get a gorgeous leggy pin up when they win, I thought you deserved one too!”

  “Don’t flatter yourself,” I slapped him down acerbically.

  “I was tempted to sing,” he admitted. “But you had that look in your eye that told me I wouldn’t be forgiven…”

  “Too right,” I said acidly. “Did you see Toon’s face?” I started to laugh. “The Dutch drivers aren’t used to you yet!”

  “Oh well, you just have to win a few more titles and get a few more girls involved in the sport and I can get some useful pocket money as the first ever BriSCA presentation bloke…”

  “BriSCA presentation Tranny more like,” I rolled my eyes. “I notice that ever since that Police Officer told you he preferred you in the red lipstick, you’ve swopped over from purple…”

  “I think I’ve exhausted the undead look,” he lisped. “Vamp is so last month!”

  “Where’s Daisy?” I asked, ignoring him. “I want her to help me write a business plan.”

  Our flatmate Daisy was a couple of years older than us and worked in the business management and development section of a bank. When she came in later, I broached her about it.

  “Thing is, Daisy, I promised myself I would start seriously thinking about setting up my business when I won my first title. I didn’t expect it to be so soon, but by the end of this year I might have been able to increase my street cred on the oval circuit enough to think about launching next season so I need to send out feelers. It’s only the middle of September now, so there’s plenty of time to have it really well thought out.”