Royce had wandered on to watch a group of musicians under some palm trees surrounded by a huge group of onlookers. Royce was South African and so the pair from the Southern Hemisphere were combining forces to ‘introduce me’ to their part of the world, teasing me about the water going down the plug hole the ‘wrong’ way (they swore it did and I wasn’t sure if they were taking the piss or not and kept forgetting to look – thinking damn –forgot! every time I walked away from a sink), and pointing out the Southern Cross, warning that I must navigate by this constellation and not the North Star. But I didn’t know anything about navigation so it wasn’t much help. Nish said I’d love navigation if I got into it – all maths he said…
The musicians were mostly white with a couple of Australian Aborigines, playing on great long decorated wooden pipes all thumping, thudding, growling, rhythm. Nish stood smiling. “Bet I could do that,” he speculated. “I must have a go before we leave. Do you fancy having a go, Eve?”
Niall had already explained about Didgeridoos and the circular breathing and the continuous raspberry blowing to get the reverberating noise. Now he turned with great satisfaction to me and said, “Women aren’t allowed to play Didgeridoos – tribal tradition – only the men are. Women are only allowed to have the rhythm sticks…”
I looked witheringly at him. “And how do you think that came about then?” I observed sarcastically. “Only some really drunk male could have wondered what would happen if he blew an extended raspberry down a hollow log. You can imagine the scene – hey look at this guys! And then all the men hang out together blowing continuous raspberries and the women look at each other and say how about we go and do something useful like foraging for some food and bringing up some babies? And then one evening, the drunken men start badgering the women to have a go at blowing raspberries, and they look at each other, think let’s humour them and say how about this guys, how about we pick up these sticks and just clap them together a bit in time to your raspberries. And once they’ve done it for long enough to keep the chaps happy, then they look at each other and bugger off to do something useful like getting some sleep, cooking some food and pushing out some more babies. The only thing I’m surprised about,” I finished up blisteringly, “is that the same guys didn’t also come up with some instrument made from a gourd that you continuously fart into!”
Nish just fell around in hilarity. “When she puts it like that Niall, you have to admit that the women have a point!”
Niall just gave him a glare and walked off.
The whole Williams team were spread out over two hotels. The likes of me were in the basic accommodation, the top bods and superstars such as Massa were in luxury apartments in the five star building. Nish was in the better quality end of our budget place. We’d retired early to make sure we were fresh for tomorrow. The jet lag had been playing merry havoc with our sleep patterns. I was sitting on the edge of the bed wondering how I was going to make myself go to sleep when I felt so wired, when there was a quiet tap on the door. I opened it. Nish stepped swiftly in, shut the door sharply behind him and locked it. Then he pulled me to him and yanked my top off. I nearly stumbled over as he took me off balance. “God, Nish!” I protested. “Slow it down, mate. Is this a good idea?”
He backed off straight away, but slammed the flat of his hand explosively against the wall. “Blast it, Eve! Don’t tell me you’re going to turn me down, tonight of all nights!”
I bent over and picked my top up from the floor and put it back on. “No, Nish, don’t worry – you’ll get your shag. But we need to talk about a few things first… How about a cup of tea?”
“Ruddy tea?” He exploded.
“How much have you drunk today?” I asked calmly. “You need to get really well hydrated today because you’ll be losing so much moisture tomorrow during the race.”
Nish glanced briefly sideways at me then sighed and gave up. “Have you got any apple juice?”
I looked in the mini-fridge. There was a tiny carton of orange juice. I held it up to him. “This, or tea, or nuffin, mate,” I said.
He silently held his hand out for the carton, ripped the straw off the side and pierced it through the foil.
“I hope you made sure that no-one saw you come in here?” I established, sitting down on the edge of the bed.
“I’m not dumb,” he said irritably, sitting down on the one plastic chair in the room.
“Nish, you realise this will have to be the last time don’t you?” I said.
He glanced momentarily at me. “Why though?”
“Because they won’t let us work together if they find out, and I want to be your race engineer much more than I want to be your convenient shag,” I summed up bluntly.
He was silent and avoided my eyes.
“And we have to absolutely promise each other to never, and I mean never, not even to some future partner, ever admit that we’ve slept with each other. We have to keep that fiction up for the rest of our lives.” I looked intensely at him. “Agreed?”
He shrugged dismissively. “I don’t see why it matters…”
“It may not matter to you!” I snapped. “But it’ll ruin my career, ok?”
He looked under his brows at me, slightly disbelievingly.
“Classic double standards Nish. You’ll be the cheeky jack-the-lad, and I’ll be the female screwing her way into a job that she couldn’t get on merit…”
He sighed and threw himself back in the chair but found it too uncomfortable. “God, this is a shite room you’ve got, Eve,” he observed glancing around. He sucked the last gurgling mouthfuls from the carton then tossed it in the direction of the bin. It bounced off the edge. He came and joined me on the bed, flopping onto his back. I lay down beside him propped up on my stomach and looked sideways at him. “Go on, Nish,” I said. “Tell me what’s bothering you?”
He bit his lip and opened one eye at me. “I guess I’ve just got bad nerves. I’m worried I’ll mess up tomorrow. I mean, I’m the only new guy this season apart from the rookie Torro Rosso lad who won last year’s GP Two, aren’t I? And I’ve just had a whole year out without having been behind a real wheel while he’s going straight on through without a break!”
“Let’s look at this rationally,” I suggested.
He suppressed a smile. “Yes, let’s shall we? God, you’re hard work, Eve! We have to look at things rationally and schedule sex…”
“Firstly – you may have lost a year of driving, but it’s not held up your career any – this is where you hoped to be by now. Last year you’d have only been offered the sop of a few track test set-up drives as the reserve driver…”
He listened in silence with his eyes closed.
“Secondly – you made a good showing yesterday getting through to Qually Two, and making it to eleventh on the grid which means you set the fastest time of the drivers in that second drop zone. And remember – that was making it to eleventh on your first ever F1 appearance when a lot of new lads wouldn’t get past Qually One. Thirdly – tomorrow isn’t about getting on to the podium. No-one expects you to get onto the podium. Tomorrow is about showing Williams that the car is in a safe pair of hands. About getting round without crashing out or doing unnecessary damage, so the whole team can relax and trust you in the future. It’s about showing you can manage to make the tyres last. Every time you go over one of those kerbs you shorten the lifetime by several laps. Every time you stamp on those brakes too hard, you’re wearing out the brake discs and damaging the tyres, every time you have a wheel lock up, you damage the tyres. You have to drive clean and clever. The reason you’re considered a ‘budding Senna’ is because of your driving style, going through the corners without hammering those brakes, taking the smooth line, you’re good at finding the racing line and the best grip. If you can perfect your brake and tyre care by clever use of trajectory and gears, you’ll enable the Williams race team to use all sorts of strategies with you in the future which’ll give you the advantage. The guys wh
o chew their tyres up in a few laps are forced to do several pit stops even when it’s not the best strategy.”
He opened his eyes and looked at me. “I guess…” he sighed.
I met his gaze square on. “You’re a good driver, Nish,” I said confidently. “You just have to keep your head and drive intelligently. That’s all anyone wants of you tomorrow…”
He smiled slightly. “Ok, we’ve done the rational bit – can we get on with the physical bit now please?”
I knelt up and transferred myself so I was straddled over him. I pinned him down by leaning my hands on his shoulders and grinned at him. “So go on then, what do you want for your last ever encounter?”
His long dark eyelashes rested momentarily on his cheeks then he shot a sparkling naughty look at me. “Can I ask for anything?”
I smiled slowly. “You can ask for anything you want, but I’m not promising to do it, mind…”
“I want you to take all my clothes off and kiss me all over,” he announced.
I laughed. “Isn’t that a bit of a girly thing to want?”
“Don’t see why,” he defended. “I like it when you kiss me all over…”
I raised my eyebrows. “Why?”
He started to laugh himself. “Oh, Eve, you’re impossible!” He reached up, took hold of my shoulders and flipped me over, reversing our positions, sitting on top of me and pinning me down. “So what do you like?” He enquired with glinting suggestiveness.
I thought about it. Closed my eyes, opened them again and found him watching me closely. “Go on,” he dared me with a grin, sensing my reluctance to admit to anything.
“I like being bitten,” I confessed.
“Bitten?” He shook his head and laughed. “Bitten where?”
I frowned as I tried to work it out, it wasn’t something I’d ever asked for before. “Legs, arms, back, bum, shoulders,” I concluded. “Not on my front…”
He smiled provocatively and pulled his shirt off over his head. “So let’s see what we can do then, shall we?”
I eyed his chest and stomach muscles, defined like a Michelangelo statue. “The magazines would love to see you right now,” I commented dryly. They were taking any opportunity to catch him with his shirt off, using excuses such as a photograph being of him cooling down after a training session with a tee-shirt tossed casually round his neck.
“I’m not interested in what they think of me,” he dismissed with a smouldering look down at me. “Only what you think of me. Do you want to kiss each muscle in turn?”
“Might do,” I said coyly, looking sideways at him, “But that would be telling, wouldn’t it?”
We were into the last lap of the race. They had designated me to be the one to communicate with Nish over the radio, but Chris was telling me what to say. Williams had kept it a bit quiet about my proposed role in their team, so they were expecting a bit of a media storm to break out once my voice was heard over the radio. I hoped Niall wasn’t going to want us to celebrate on the beach, because I’d forgotten to tell Nish that I bruise easily and as a result I wouldn’t now be wanting to strip down to my high cut swimming cozzie. The live coverage kept zooming in on myself and Chris as we sat at the screens, and speculation was to be heard from the commentators, as they kept broadcasting snippets of what was going on between me and Nish. The chequered flag came down and finally Nish came through, safe and sound and in good style.
“Good job, Nish,” I concluded. “You were eleventh on the grid, and you’ve come through in ninth position, so that means you’ve made it into the points. See you back in the garage.”
As I switched off my microphone, my phone pinged. I’d changed my sim card when I arrived in the country, and only the Williams team knew it. I got down from the high stool and glanced down at the text. It was from Heskett back in England. Well done Eve. That was excellent. Now make your choice. Aware that there were cameras everywhere, and that they’d be acutely interested in broadcasting my every move, I kept my face expressionless. If they happened to be choosing to broadcast a screen with me on it, Heskett could be watching me receiving this text live. I knew exactly what he was saying. He couldn’t possibly know. No-one could possibly know for sure given how secretive we’d been, but he was making it clear that I had to sort it out, or make sure nothing developed in the future. Nish’s race engineer, or Nish’s love interest, but not both.
Nish drove back up and the pit team ran out to him. He was surrounded by congratulations on completing his first race in such fine style. He walked back into the garage and was variously high fived or back clapped or even hugged. His head was turning and his eyes searching for me. They lit up as he spotted me and he strode over and swept me up by the waist and went to kiss me on the lips. I ducked my head so his lips hit my cheek instead and smiled formally at him. “Congratulations on completing your first Formula One race,” I said politely.
His eyes raked my face for a moment, and then without missing a beat, he put me down, smiled at me in a somewhat distant manner and then looked past me at the next man coming forward to greet to him, and walked away from me to speak to him. My stomach twisted in relief. He’d got the message and dealt so professionally with it that no telephoto lens could have ever de-coded it. I picked up a clip board that was nothing whatsoever to do with me, just to make it look like I was busy with something, and glanced down at the figures that were rapidly blurring with the tears that were starting. Then I retreated to the toilet, safe from prying eyes, to take a moment to compose myself. That was it then. The choice was made.
Bahrain, China, Russia. As a person who’d only left the country for the first time two years ago, four such disparate countries in a matter of eight weeks was leaving me almost dizzy. But there wasn’t time to be thinking about anything – everything was full on from one race to the next. Thankfully someone else dealt with visas and suchlike because I wouldn’t have known where to start.
Chris remained cool with me. That was ok. It probably helped me stay distant and professional. I floated around in some strange in-between position in the team. Royce scooped me up of an evening if he and Niall and Nish were off out in a jolly party somewhere. I got the impression he felt quietly sorry for me. But most of the time, when he wasn’t actively training, or doing something with the team to prepare for the test drives, qualifying rounds or races, Nish was taken up with a constant round of carefully orchestrated media appearances and profile raising events for Williams. He had to be an ambassador for Martini too, since they were one of Williams’ main sponsors, and was forced to learn to mix cocktails and man the bar as a publicity stunt and other dumb stuff. What Martini thought about him being famously teetotal, I don’t know. Not ideal. And then he had to be seen attending endless exclusive social events, where Motorsport top bods and drivers schmoozed celebrities, billionaires, business leaders, industry bosses and minor European royalty. With his own social background, plus his years on the GP3 and GP2 circuits, he appeared to fit in seamlessly with that crowd, and didn’t seem to find it a strain. Mainly I hung out with the Pit Team guys who I already knew pretty well, picked the brains of the aerodynamics support who I already had a passing acquaintance with, or stood politely with the various engineers, keeping my mouth politically shut, and trying to look intelligent.
I noticed that when Chris was talking to Nish and getting him to look at some data on a screen, Nish would rest a hand on my shoulder to lean over to look, and give a discreet supportive squeeze just before letting go, without glancing at me. Sometimes when I could see him getting stressed, I’d rest my hand lightly on his arm for a moment when sitting or standing beside him. That was the extent of our private communication. I remained the voice on the radio, but I was only passing on what Chris told me to, and Chris wasn’t making any effort to include me in the decision making. In the media I was the mysterious woman who voice was never to be heard except over the radio. Claire Williams had been asked about me in interviews but I wasn’t allowed near a mic
rophone myself. I was grateful for that. It kept the pressure right off me and allowed me to exist in a Williams’ team bubble where I was safe. Back in Grove I was included in the multi-disciplinary ‘envisioning’ meetings where blue-sky thinking was thrown around to conjure up new engineering ideas and plans for the following year’s designs to meet the constantly changing criteria for the race-cars on the circuit.
Heskett jerked his head to follow me into his office after one of them. He closed the door. “How’s things?” He asked.
“Fine,” I replied politely.
“You’ve never uttered a word in any of these meetings,” he observed. “The reason you’ve been included is because your manager rang us up at the end of your internship and suggested we needed to keep you in the design loop as you might have some good ideas up your sleeve, and not just leave you isolated in the hands-on race role. So I’m a bit surprised at your complete silence – you’re not usually backward in coming forward…”
“Manager?” I frowned. He must mean Paul. So Paul had intervened again had he? To make sure I still had a chance to pursue my design dreams?
Heskett raised his eyebrows at me for an answer.
“Alan’s told me to zip it,” I explained, doing the zip across the lips sign. Today in the meeting I’d parted my lips to say something and he’d noticed straight away and with a quick frown had immediately done the movement across his mouth.
“Hmmm…” Heskett looked across the desk at me. I had a feeling he’d noticed Alan doing that. “Ok,” he said mildly. “Well, later in the year when people have got to know your capabilities better, maybe you can start putting in your pennyworth.”
The Way Back (Not Quite Eden Book 6) Page 30
