For the first time he came close to smiling at me, even if it was a bleak sort of smile, and he asked with a shake of his head, ‘What am I going to do with you?’
I know there are some questions that don’t expect an answer, but I couldn’t let this be one of them. ‘Whatever you want.’ I wasn’t sure I’d managed to say it out loud so I said it again, just in case the first time was in my head, because this was my chance and I needed him to hear. ‘Whatever you want to do.’
He said, ‘Is there someone you need to phone?’ He didn’t leave one of those meaningful pauses, the sort people in soap operas leave, to show that this is a significant moment. He came straight out with it. No hesitation. I still don’t understand how anyone could be so decisive. Ray just made up his mind there and then.
I honestly didn’t get it. ‘What, now?’ I wasn’t playing hard to get. I can’t even imagine playing hard to get. I was just being slow, as usual.
‘To say you won’t be going to where you’re meant to be.’ For the first time I noticed that he had a leather jacket with him as well as his one-piece. It was rolled up against the tree as a manly sort of cushion. Now he picked it up and slung it over his shoulder, using his thumb as the hook from which it hung.
Where I was meant to be, later on, was at home in Isleworth. My little Mum was in hospital and we didn’t yet know what was wrong with her. Dad was very upset about it, but I didn’t know if there was a medical reason for that. He always seemed embarrassed about questions of female health, which was mad seeing he was a pharmacist, but he was also eleven years older than Mum and a man of that generation. It was natural to him. Pharmacists aren’t doctors, they just have to be able to read doctors’ handwriting. They don’t deal directly with people’s bodies, and if they’re shy and retiring to start with there’s no necessary reason they can’t stay that way.
Mum had only been in hospital a few days, but Dad had been rotten to live with since then. She ran the shop, worked the till, and dealt with most things apart from actually making up the prescriptions. But that wasn’t what was bothering him, the running of the shop.
An eighteenth birthday didn’t mean then what it means now — it didn’t mean that what I’d been doing with Ray was legal, or would have been if only we’d done it indoors and not on the shaggy side of Box Hill. But it meant that as of today I could vote, the next time there was voting to be done, and as an adult, an adult citizen, it seemed fair that I could decide what to do with the rest of my special day. I couldn’t just stay out, though, without sending word. I told Ray I’d need to talk to Ted. We set off towards Box Hill village to find him. The actual village, where the pub was. I was sweaty, so I took off my jacket and tried to drape it over my shoulder from a thumb like Ray was doing, but either the jacket or the thumb wasn’t up to the job, and it kept sliding off. So I bundled it up and tucked it awkwardly under one arm.
Ted had been my ride to Box Hill, a biker that the younger of my two sisters, that’s Joyce, had broken up with. But somehow the family hadn’t managed to get rid of him. He’d turn up at odd hours, and Mum would always give him something to eat, even if Joyce was doing her routine of looking straight through him, not looking up from her magazine when he stood up and said goodbye.
I hope Ted wasn’t waiting for Joyce to change her mind. She’s a great one for changing her mind, is Joyce, but one thing she never does is to change it back. Volunteering to take me to Box Hill, to give me a treat and look after me on my birthday, might get him in good with my dad, but it wasn’t going to cut any ice with Joyce. In any case, Ted might have thought he was pining for Joyce, but it was beginning to look like a straightforward sulk.
Ted was one of those steady drinkers who don’t much show the effects. I’m not even sure he would have been able to control his machine if he was sober. People didn’t take drink-driving very seriously then. People in general, I don’t mean just bikers. On the other hand, the drinking hours were tightly restricted in those days, especially on a Sunday.
I wasn’t at all a drinker, but when I was with my sisters’ friends everything seemed to be governed by the two great shouts of ‘They’re open!’ and ‘Who’s getting them in?’ The five hours on a Sunday between afternoon closing and evening opening were desert hours for them, a nightmare of parching between the two bouts of authorised trough-wallowing.
I’d left Ted in the Hand in Hand on Box Hill Road towards Headley Reservoir before last orders at two, and I knew he’d be thinking of buying some cans so as to last through the dry middle of the day. That was his way. Then he’d start again at seven o’clock opening. I’d told him I was going for a walk, take a look-see. Apart from anything else, I was hungry, and I knew from experience that Ted only thought of eating when there was absolutely no more drink to be had. I hadn’t been willing to wait, and I knew there was a Wimpy bar on the other side of the road, towards the panorama, where I could get a hamburger and a glass of lemonade.
I wasn’t that keen on having Ted drive me home sloshed, which he wouldn’t want to do till evening closing anyway, but back then I hadn’t had a choice. And now I did.
When Ray and I found Ted outside the Hand in Hand, his bike was on its side stand and he was lying on it after a fashion, with his eyes closed and his feet up on the handle bars. A beer can was loosely held by one sleeping hand against his grubby T-shirt. Earlier in the day I might have thought he looked quite cool like that, even though he was sending out snores that had a little bit of burp in them every now and then.
I had a new standard of cool demeanour now, one that neither burped nor snored. When he opened his eyes and saw Ray, Ted struggled to his feet. For a moment the bike wobbled on its stand, and I thought one of them was going to fall — maybe even both. I hope I wouldn’t have laughed if that had happened, but my allegiance was no longer with him, and I couldn’t have guaranteed it. Only the beer can fell to earth, and he shot it one agonised look. Though anyone who knew him would have realised that awake, asleep or in between his body didn’t have the power to drop a container with any alcoholic liquid left in it.
Ted drew himself up to try and look taller. Ray made everyone want to be at their best, to live up to him. To come up to his level. I could only hope that Ted’s eyes weren’t following Ray’s zip down his body, the way mine did if I didn’t keep them under orders, to see that it carried on a few inches further than most people would have thought was strictly necessary. Luckily if Ted was looking anyone up and down it was me, and not Ray.
‘What’s up, kid?’ he asked, in a flat tone of voice. I suppose he was waiting for clues, willing to acknowledge me if I was making impressive friends, but ready to disown me in a flash if I’d done something wrong.
I told him he didn’t need to worry about giving me a ride home. He tried to sound sober despite his drinking, and parental although he didn’t know how, and the net result was to make his voice unrecognizable. ‘I’m not worried,’ he growled carefully, ‘but there are people who will be. I hope you’ve thought of them.’ It was downright embarrassing to remember that I had wanted him as part of the family. God help me, I’d thought Joyce could do a lot worse. I’d thought she was being hard on him.