Vail (4 page)

I tinkered and banged ineffectually while the conversation went on above me. I could see the receding curvature of the green van and Mira's pinpoint head poking out of the driver's window as reflected in the polished toe-cap of the policeman's left boot. Around it little dancing waves of air shimmered off the hot tarmac. In the toe-cap I saw the white blob of his helmet swell alarmingly as he bent on one knee and his brown moustached face appeared sideways underneath the rusting exhaust pipe, tinted goggles clinging to his helmet like limpets to a rock.

‘Where are you optimistically hoping to get in this?'

‘Lancaster.'

‘You're pointing the wrong way.'

‘We want to get on the M6.'

‘And then go north?' I nodded. ‘Think you'll make it?'

‘It's nothing serious. It seizes up with the heat.'

‘Have you got an MOT for this heap?'

I nodded again.

He gazed straight at me.

I started to edge towards his polished boot, making as if to get out, grunting and grimacing to suggest it was ten times harder than it was.

‘Okay, all right, forget it, but don't take all day. I don't want you here when I come back in an hour. One hour.'

‘No danger of that, officer.'

‘There'd better bloody not be, chum.'

I had paid the homage of obeisance and he went away satisfied, virility unbesmirched.

It would be about forty minutes later that we were on the M6 heading south. The engine gave out a pounding oily roar beneath me, shaking the steering wheel and making my fingers numb. Mira was in the back with Bev, who was lying down covered with a blanket. We didn't know what was wrong with her. She had been sickening for something for months now and the doctor had put her on the waiting-list for a specialist to examine her, though he couldn't promise anything or say when it was likely to be. He could get her into Fairfield Clinic right away, that same day, but there wasn't much chance of that; we were six weeks behind on the rent for our two-bedroom broom closet on Zuttor Estate as it was, and threatened with eviction, which was why we were hightailing it down the M6 in a clapped-out Bedford van with a faulty transmission.

Fortunately the policeman hadn't seen any of our papers (including the non-existent MOT certificate), and so wouldn't be able to recall our name when it came up on the list of corporation absconders.

That little piece of luck seemed a good omen. Almost but not quite made me forget how much I wanted a drink. I had a bottle stashed away somewhere but to have gone for it would have caused such a blazing row followed by a sulky black silence that I preferred to suffer stoically in the cause of peace. Another bonus was that the vibrating wheel successfully camouflaged the tremor in my hands.

Mira, feet straddled apart to steady herself, leaned over my shoulder to offer a thermos of coffee. I almost spilt it and still managed to dribble some of the coffee down my chin, caused by the thread inside the cup which interfered with the smooth purchase of my lips to the plastic rim.

‘What about petrol?'

‘What about it?' I said, handing the cup back.

‘Don't be like that.'

‘I'm not being like anything.'

‘Then just answer me in a civil manner.'

‘What do you want to know?'

‘What are we going to do about petrol? Have you any money? I haven't any money. I've got a couple of pounds to last us; get Bev something at a service station. I've no money for petrol.'

‘What do you have to get her? We've got food.'

‘Cheese and corned beef sandwiches and crisps aren't going to last forever. This is the only liquid we've got. We'll need drinks.'

‘For two pounds you'll be lucky to get two coffees and a glass of weak lemonade.'

‘Don't start, Jack. I'm not going through it all again, I warn you! You can piss off!'

‘We're all pissing off,' I said. ‘To the affluent slumbering south.'

‘That's if we make it.'

‘We'll make it.' My right foot was numb from the pressure of keeping the accelerator flat to the floor; even so we were hardly touching forty, and our speed was gradually falling mile by mile.

‘On fresh air?' Mira said sardonically.

When she was in this mood I could have belted her. ‘Don't worry about it. Leave it to me.'

‘Leave it to you,' Mira said. ‘Recipe for disaster. If I left it to you, Jack, Bev and me would be in the poorhouse and you'd be in prison.'

She snorted her famous laugh: harsh, derisory, acrimonious.

The heat and fumes from the engine were making me dizzy. My hands were slippery on the wheel. A sign said: Holmes Chapel Services 3 miles. If Mira took Bev to the lavatory I could sneak a crafty swig and think up a way to get some petrol. Mira was right, we were nearly empty. She was humming a childhood song to comfort Bev. I vaguely recalled the words: ‘Thank you for the food we eat, thank you for the world so sweet …'

I parked some distance away from the main building to give them a longer walk and me more time. There were more wrecks and write-offs than I expected. The grass verges were strewn with old ripped tyres and bits of engines, the odd buckled door panel, smashed wing mirrors, and everywhere broken glass.

On the other side of the perimeter road there was an encampment of families living in junked vehicles and boarded-up caravans, kids running around with sooty faces from the oily fires which had black-bottomed pans and cooking pots slung over them from wires and metal brackets. Whatever they were cooking it smelled good.

I took a couple of hefty slugs and stowed the bottle away. I was past caring whether or not Mira caught a whiff of it on my breath. I stood in the sunshine feeling the tremor pass away from my hands and the backs of my knees, looking over the hot wavering roofs of cars to the Rolls and Mercs and BMWs behind electrified fencing in the VIP compound. Some of them came with motorcycle outriders dressed all in black, bulbous visored helmets reflecting the sun like the hard carapaces of shiny black beetles. George Lucas might have dreamed them up for
Star Wars VII
.

I tried to guess who the people travelling in the armoured limousines might be. TV personalities? Pop stars? Company
directors? Politicians? Deejays? Stockbrokers? Fashion designers? Advertising executives? Record company producers? Film people? Industrialists? Official receivers? Chat show hosts? Washing powder tycoons? Video pirates? Slum landlords? Oil magnates? Trade union leaders? Prostitutes? BBC chiefs? Jingle writers? International financiers? Swindlers? Merchant bankers? Bestselling novelists? Sports stars? Arms salesmen?

A tanned voluptuous blonde girl came out of the VIP building flanked by two swarthy men wearing dark glasses and tailored suits. She had on a low-cut dress with a silver fox fur draped across her shoulders and snaking through the scented crooks of her elbows.

I thought I recognised her as Selina Southorn, a video porn starlet who reputedly (I'd never seen any of her movies) could wink at the camera while at the same time extinguishing a candle from across the room. She was currently featured in a TV commercial, blowing kisses to promote the properties of patented self-sealing red rubber seals for kilner jars.

From the back of the van I took out an empty oil can and a length of rubber hose. Another advantage of being parked away from the main building was that there were fewer people about. Most cars had locks on their petrol caps, but I only needed to find one that hadn't, and after a bit of stealthy loping found a Lancia with corroded bodywork conveniently parked with its rear end next to a low wall which enabled me to siphon off a couple of gallons unobserved. I did two more trips and emptied the tank completely.

This stealing of non-renewable fossil fuel resources was a risky business. Nearly every day you read in the paper about somebody caught in illegal possession of oil, coal or gas; in fact the black economy thrived on these commodities. The usual sentence was a minimum of ten years hard, though some were summarily executed on the spot. Only a month or two ago a friend of mine on Zuttor had been lucky enough to escape a mob lynching for lifting a bottle of Calor.

‘It's like a refugee camp,' Mira said when she returned with
Bev. ‘People sprawled out in the corridors and all over the stairs. They ought to do something.'

‘What?' I said. ‘Gas them or put them in prison you mean?'

‘Don't ask me. The place reeks.'

I asked Bev how she was feeling. In fact she looked terrible. She had scratched the sores on her face and neck raw. The doctor had given Mira some yellow ointment to dab on which didn't do anything, not even stop the sores itching and weeping. Generally she looked pale and thin and washed out.

Mira noticed but offered no comment on the fuel gauge miraculously registering half-full and I didn't bother to explain. Near Crewe we passed a YOP (Young Offenders Party) in grey overalls digging up the hard shoulder in the hot sunshine. You could see the purple numbers tattooed on the backs of their shaved heads. Some of them, I suppose, were no more than twelve or thirteen, probably inside for chasing the dragon.

Mira said, ‘I'm sorry if I was a bit snappish earlier on,' placing her hand on my shoulder. She leaned her head closer and I was conscious of the fumes on my breath. ‘We should stick together, not fall out.'

I nodded without speaking, staring straight ahead through the windscreen spattered with the blood and guts of insects.

‘I'm worried about Bev.'

‘Me too.'

Mira was usually a sensible level-headed person, which made this a startling, even shocking, admission on her part. I laughed.

‘It's a kids' complaint, not the bubonic plague,' I said. ‘A good doctor will sort her out in no time once we get to London. A dose of antibiotics and some proper nursing care.' I believed this at the time; the thought that Bev might die had never entered my head.

Mira's arm stiffened and withdrew. ‘I can smell whisky. Where did you get the money for booze?'

‘I borrowed it.'

‘Liar. Who'd lend you money?'

‘I sold my binoculars.'

‘How much for?'

‘Nine pounds.'

‘Nine?
Nine?
They cost you forty-five!' She snorted. ‘To one of your drinking pals, I suppose.'

I kept tight hold of the wheel, my foot aching from the constant pressure of keeping the pedal flat down to the floor; even so our speed was edging lower by imperceptible degrees as the engine overheated. How far to the next service station?

‘Was it?'

‘Was it what?'

‘To one of your boozing cronies?'

‘Does it matter? I got nine pounds for them.'

‘And spent it all on whisky. You knew we needed that money. You bloody lousy stinking sod. You selfish unfeeling bastard, – '

‘I thought we were going to stick together and not fall out.'

‘Your own daughter is seriously ill and you go and spend money on drink, – you weak thoughtless pig. No thought for Bev!'

‘Nine pounds wouldn't have paid for a bedpan in Fairfield Clinic.'

‘It would have bought food and petrol!'

‘We're on the road, aren't we? The van is moving, isn't it?'

Her voice went flat and hard. ‘I'm finished with you, Jack. That is it. Finished.'

‘Shall I drop you here or at the next service stat?'

‘You're so bloody clever, aren't you? Jack bloody know-it-all Vail.'

The conversation went on, desultorily, in this vein for a few more miles while our speed died away until we were nudging no more than 20 mph. A convoy of army lorries and armoured half-tracks, lights blazing, overtook us, sturdy bronzed young men in voluminous camouflage drill noting our snail's progress with patronising indifference on their torpid moon-round beef-fed faces. A machine-gun was set up in the back of one of the lorries, manned by a red-headed soldier with a fledgling moustache making practice sweeps across the three lanes of the motorway.

There was no alternative: we would have to stop to allow the
belching green bastard time to cool down. The inside of the cab was like an oven; stripped down as I was to my T-shirt, sweat bathed my chest and ran down from my arm-pits.

I climbed out of my seat and went to have a look at Bev. She was sleeping soundly, her livid suppurating face in repose. Her eyelids were like two raw peeled slugs. At least we couldn't argue, Mira and me, without disturbing her.

‘Are you coming outside?'

‘No,' Mira said. ‘I'll stay here and watch her.' Her eyes were like slits under her streaky gold dark-brown hair which was parted and swept back as if formed into a bow-wave by her wide forehead. ‘Try not to finish the bottle. I don't think I could drive this thing,' she said as I opened the side door and stepped outside.

I walked along the hard shoulder to a concrete culvert built into the embankment. It was cooler here, shielded from the sun, and I was hidden from the motorway. The bottom of the culvert was dry, brittle sticks and bleached stones and gravel piled up into little hillocks by the passage of water. Lower down these dry runnels disappeared into an iron grille which led to a drainage conduit under the motorway itself.

After the third swallow I began to feel blearily benign and lulled by the smear of traffic sliding past. I didn't give a shit what Mira thought and loved her with all my heart. She blamed me for our predicament, which hurt me deeply, because she was right. I felt stricken and ashamed by the knowledge and bitterly defiant, – more, angry, incensed, choked up to boiling point. Worst of all I had lost her respect. I saw myself through her eyes and could hardly bear the agony. Why were women so strong? Their abiding strength was an affront, a perpetual sneer. What had they to be so damned complacent about? True enough, they shouldered all the burdens, took all the crass crap of men with a gently patient smile, were battered and bruised into submission,
and yet were not defeated!
Not only not defeated, but triumphant, victorious. Could you beat that? Could you credit it? What hope was there for the male gender when faced with an indefatigable, accusing, reproachful, infinitely pliant and forbearing enemy
such as that? How could you possibly win? Where was the justice in that? Justice? Don't make me laugh.