Authors: Aidan Chambers
When I mounted behind him he hooked a hand under my thigh and hitched me close to him.
‘If you stop short,’ I shouted above the revs, ‘I’ll do you a terrible damage.’
‘Joy at last!’ he shouted back over his shoulder. ‘Here we go. Hang on.’
Up London Road, a well-behaved right at the lights into Southbourne Grove, a flicking left into the stream of dual-carriageway on Prince Avenue, and then away in a dib-dab rib-throar blur up the Arterial, Londonwards.
I stopped glancing over B.’s shoulder at the speedometer when it touched seventy, and gave myself up to fate. If you’re going to die you might as well enjoy it.
At the Laynham junction we turned back, jog-trotted at thirty for a mile or so, then slipped into a cart track where we stopped a little way from the main road.
28/‘Do you always drive like that or only on Fridays?’ I said as we uncoupled from the Suzi’s vibrant intimacy.
‘Like what?’ he said all mock innocence.
‘Like dangerous. Like fast.’
‘I don’t drive fast!’
‘I hooted.
Emphatic, but laughing, he said, ‘I don’t! Well—okay, yes I do. But it never
feels
like fast.’
‘That’s just what it feels like to me. Like speeding.’
‘But that’s it, you see.’
‘What’s it I see?’
‘Ah shucks, I gonna have trouble with you tonight, kid!’
True; I was biley in the pit of my stomach because of last night. ‘Try me,’ I said.
He was latching our helmets to the bike by their chin-bars. ‘Fast is one thing,’ he said. ‘Speed is another.’
‘You’re right,’ I said. ‘You’ve got trouble.’
‘It’s hard to explain.’
‘Take your time, we’ve got all night.’
‘Yes,’ he said, ‘we have, haven’t we!’
I ignored him, settled myself side-saddle on the resting Suzi.
‘Didn’t you enjoy it?’ he said.
‘Loved it. But fast isn’t speed?’
He perched himself side-saddle on the Suzi’s other cheek.
‘It’s like this. Fast is something you do. Or something that happens to you.’
‘You go fast, or you’re driven fast?’
‘Right.’
‘So far so simple. But speed?’
‘Speed is.’
‘Is what?’
‘Just
is
.’
I let that gem settle a minute.
‘You know something?’ I said.
‘What?’
‘You’re weird. You are also crazy. And you are also wrong. For a start, look up speed in a dictionary.’
‘Forget the dictionary! I’m telling you how I feel.’ A touch of anger showed. ‘Do you want to know or don’t you?’
I said, ‘I want to know. Honest.’ And smiled.
He smiled back. ‘Fast is what you go to achieve speed.’
I turned that over.
‘Sorry,’ I said. ‘I need a bit more.’
He hitched his seat. ‘On a good road, like the Arterial . . .’
‘Yes?’
‘. . . I never feel I’m going fast. ‘What I feel is that speed is somewhere just ahead, and that I’m chasing it. Always it’s just out of reach. So I go faster and faster, trying to catch it. But because speed is always ahead, always the same distance in front of me, I never feel I’m going fast. Or getting faster.’
Silence. I scratched my cheek.
‘What would happen,’ I said, ‘if you ever caught it up?’
He shrugged, looking away. ‘I dream about that. It’s like being inside an invisible bubble, or maybe some kind of force field. And it could take me anywhere, anywhere at all, in a split second. It’s strange. I know I’m moving but there’s no effort, no noise or vibration or anything like that. And no danger either. The whole experience is marvellous. I don’t want to do anything but be inside that bubble of energy always. Forever.’
That put a stop on me. He turned, watching me to see every twitch of my reaction.
I shrugged. ‘Some dream!’
‘You’ve never had one like that?’
I shook my head.
‘I’ll tell you something else,’ he said. ‘The best part. When I wake up, I feel the dream is telling me it will soon really happen. I mean happen in real life. Wouldn’t that be something!’
I got off the Suzi and walked a pace or two.
‘You’re even weirder than I thought,’ I said, trying to laugh it off.
‘So who wants to be normal?’ he said.
29/Sauntering back, a gang of motorbikers overtook us, moving in for Friday manoeuvres. Southend: The Resort
for All Frissons. They swarmed; Barry accelerated to keep with them. Some had pillioned girlfriends who waved cheeky-cute as they came alongside. Some of the riders might have been girls as well, but there was no way of telling.
Ahead of them, the first of the gang to pass us, was a rider dressed in bright white leathers with black helmet, gloves and boots. He was so small I thought at first he was an under-age kid. Or a monkey. He was balancing with one foot on the saddle, the other stretched out behind him, like a circus stunt rider.
When he was past us, he dropped into his saddle, but facing backwards, hands held out to his sides. His pals, surging round us now, blared their horns, waved, cheered. Acknowledging this applause with a clenched fist, Monkey Boy swung his right leg over his rear wheel, sat side-saddle, left hand on the rev-grip. Thus perilously seated he overtook on the inside a holiday-packed car whose driver went into shock and sent the car veering about in convulsive zig-zags as the tidal wave of bikes swallowed him up and swept on, leaving him bobbing like jetsam in their wake.
On we roared, Barry and me tucked into the middle.
‘Staying with them?’ I shouted into Barry’s helmet where his ear should be.
He nodded. ‘Good for a laugh,’ he shouted back.
And so Monkey Boy led the pack along Prince Avenue, round Priory Crescent into Eastern Avenue, then right into Bournemouth Park Road and on down Southchurch Avenue to a revving cheering stop in the car park on the sea-front at the end of Marine Parade, opposite the Kursaal’s casino-and-fun-fair glittergleam tat.
30/Everyone dehelmets.
‘What’s this then?’ says Monkey Boy approaching Barry and me. ‘Them’s not us.’ (Without his helmet he is indeed like a boyish monkey: big eyes and eye-circling hair.)
‘Who’s not?’ says a six-foot-three monolith bearing down on us from a bullish 500 Kawasaki. His ancient leathers, creased and greased, are sparkling with metal studs.
‘Them’s not us,’ says Monkey Boy.
The tribe gathers.
‘Right,’ says Monolith. Now we see him close he looks too old to be playing at motorbikes. In his late twenties for sure. And a face that’s had asphalt laid on it.
‘Where’d you come from?’ he says.
One of the tribe has a girl’s head. ‘They’ve been with us from just outside town,’ she says and performs a simper. ‘I thought that one—’ she points at me—’was the other one’s girl!’
A camped oo-hooing goes up.
‘Well,’ says Girl’s Head adding coals to this fire, ‘she could have been the way she was holding on.’
‘She?’
they cry, playing up.
‘Ooo no!’ Girl’s Head exclaims, exaggerating manufactured confusion at her intended mistake and clasping a hand over her mouth. ‘I mean
he!’
And she all but collapses in supersonic giggles.
After which begins a procession of catcalls.
‘Are we a little Southend pier then?’ says Monkey Boy sashaying the inner circle.
‘A bit first of May?’ says one with a doormat for hair.
‘A couple of bottle boys are we?’ says another with a surprising absence of earlobes, those he once possessed clearly having been lopped off in the not so long ago, for the scars glow red.
‘Now’s your chance, Riggsy,’ bellows Doormat, and a lamp-post of a lad, ugly and carroty, his head protruding from wrinkled new leathers his gangling body cannot fill, grins sheepish and says, fluting, ‘Pretty enough anyroad.’
They all hoot again and Carrot Top turns bright red at his daring.
Monolith has not moved or laughed or even smiled. ‘I said,’ he says, bunging the chorus, ‘where’d you come from?’
There is the zing of focused malice in the air.
‘Qwert yui op?’ says Barry.
31/Cheeky.
I am trembling in my parka.
ACTION REPLAY
I had not much liked the turn of events from the time we joined the growling throng. I am not keen on crowds. In fact, I think I must be a crowdophobe. (Did you know that in Norwegian the word for crowd is
kryda,
which means to
swarm
? Very appropriate in the circs. I learned this from Kari on one of the occasions soon to be recounted.)
My idea of hell is being forced to stand for all eternity in the middle of a football crowd which is incensed to the point of rioting because the game is so bad. I hate football; and football crowds I hate even more. They’re the perfect example of Robinson’s Law. This states that human idiocy multiplies in compound ratio to the number of people gathered together in one place for a common purpose.
I have to admit that standing there in the car park surrounded by this gang of uglies the thought did occur
that I might soon be provided with fresh evidence for a revised Robinson’s Law. My instinct was to turn tail and run. Fast. But as Monkey Boy lolloped around us and the spangled Monolith came to view the objects of the simian’s attention, my ever heroic new friend muttered, ‘Stand still and act dumb.’
So still and dumb I remained, though whether at B.’s command or out of paralysing fright I think it best for my ego’s sake not to examine too closely.
Luckily, however, the uglies were as taken aback as I myself by B.’s reply to Monolith’s insistent question.
32/’Qwert yui op?’ Barry repeats after a pause for effect.
‘Aaaah!’ says Girl’s Head, as she might had she just seen two cuddly babies. ‘They’re foreign. No wonder they’re funny.’
At this, most of the rest of the gang lose interest and drift off in the direction of the Kursaal.
‘Where you from?’ says Girl’s Head edging closer. ‘You French, are you?’
Monkey Boy slips alongside performing what he supposes is a Parisian sex-bomb’s mosey. ‘Parly voo franky?’ he says, fluttering his eyelids into B.’s face.
‘Qwert?’ says Barry, much puzzled.
God save us! I think, becoming religious of a sudden.
‘That’s not French,’ Carrot Top says. (Is the child educated?)
Girl’s Head puts her face close to Barry’s and pronounces with firm deliberation at point blank range, ‘Where? You? Come? From?’
The few remaining members of the gang shuffle in, the better to inspect us. The smell of their sweat and oil and faggy breath stings the nose and helps keep the mouth shut.
‘Hey,’ says Doormat full of sudden excitement, ‘maybe they’re Ruskies.’
‘Nit!’ says he without earlobes. ‘They’re not bloody Ruskies. Ruskies are big. Heavy. With fat noses.’
‘Fat noses!’ says Doormat. ‘Where’d you hear that rubbish?’
‘They have, I’m telling you. Them’s not Ruskies.’
‘They’re cuddly enough though, eh?’ says Girl’s Head. ‘D’you think they’re Eyeties? Supposed to be great lovers, Eyeties are.’
‘Don’t think so,’ says Carrot Top. ‘Eyeties put an
a
and an o on the end of everything and pinch your bottom. They haven’t done none of that.’ (So much for education.)
‘Youa speaka da Italiano?’ says Monkey Boy twisting his hands elaborately in the air.
‘Op?’ says Barry.
‘Well anyway,’ says Girl’s Head, ‘I think they’re cute.’
‘Wert quiop,’ says Barry. ‘It rop we qui?’
‘Where . . .?’ says Girl’s Head indicating Southend with a sweep of her arm . . . ‘You . . .?’ she points at Barry, taking the chance to rub her finger down his face and chest . . . ‘From?’
‘Ah!’ says Barry as if light is dawning. ‘Ert Olym Pia.’
‘O-lim Peer?’ says Girl’s Head screwing up her face.
‘Qui!’ says Barry.
‘Where the hell’s that?’ says Doormat.
‘You wouldn’t know,’ says Earlobes. ‘You don’t even know where your own house is.’
Doormat thumps Earlobes brutally in the kidney. Earlobes guffaws, whether from disdain or pain I have no time to discover.
‘Well, wherever it is,’ says Girl’s Head, ‘I like them. They’re nice enough to keep.’
‘Here,’ says Carrot Top, ‘why don’t we show them a bit of Southend, eh?’
‘Take them a ride in the Kursaal,’ says Monkey Boy.
‘Yeah,’ says Girl’s Head stepping between Barry and me and commandeering Barry’s arm. ‘That’s a good idea. Bags I this one.’
Help, no! I am screaming inside my head.
‘Let’s go,’ says Monolith.
33/We are pressganged by camaraderie into the Kursaal, Barry erting and qwerting, ropping and opping, myself as silent as a display dummy and very nearly as stiff from fright. We are backslapped and play-punched, flirted with and teased; reasons are found for kissing us, hugging and gripping us.
At the entrance, the whole gusty party gathers again. We are swept along, taking the Kursaal’s fun-fair by noisy rough-house storm. Less mob-handed Friday evening pleasure-seekers scatter like nervous sparrows from our parading bike-booted feet. Attendants yell distant warnings. Fathers and mothers, snatching aside their goggling children, glare and mutter dark imprecations and sometimes bandy words against a chorus of derision and backchat. Beer cans pass from hand to hand; footballed away when empty. Monkey Boy scampers about ahead, leading the pack, excited as a hyper-thyroid ten-year-old.
The roller-coasting Big Dipper, the Dodgems, the Octopus, assorted carousels and side-shows. We do them all in a kind of rowdy military operation before a different kind of military arrives. We pay for nothing, but take what we want and jeer at requests polite or rude for payment. We are cock of the walk, dive and run and jump
and skid and turn turtle and have an all-round explosive good time. Monkey Boy, on the spinning Octopus, lights firework flares and fizzing crackers and hurls them into the watching crowd as if he were playing ducks-and-drakes on a pond of faces. The crowds scatter, which pleases him best of all; he whoops and yodels and bellows his satisfaction.
It is shortly afterwards that the other kind of military arrives.
‘The filth!’ shouts Monkey Boy. He sounds as if he has just caught sight of an indulgent favourite uncle.