“Your wife was that annoyed about the washing machine and the fridge that I bought her, well, you both, new ones,” Dave explained. “I sold your mower to put the proceeds towards it. But I forgot the mower was yours to begin with. Funny, when you—”
“Wait, so you bought the new ones?” Monty cut in. “But she said she inherited some…”
“Yeah,” remarked Dave.
“We’re a bunch of lying bastards,” Monty laughed.
The goat, sensing all was once again well, turned to look back over the field, and resumed its rumination and mastication.
“Do you ever think about me and you, Dave?” Monty cast out.
Dave pressed his lower lip out, like a fish. “Well I always thought you were happily married, Monty. But I’d be lying if I said the thought hadn’t crossed my mind. I’m only human, after all. You look like you’d be a very generous lover and I hope, one day, god willing, to find out for certain if my suspicions are correct.”
Monty turned into Dave, as if preparing to lay a kiss firmly upon cheek.
“Here, mate, I was only—” Dave protested.
“I meant about us in the TT, you twit,” Monty assured him, letting him off the hook. “Me and you. What we’ve experienced.”
“Not really, no,” replied Dave, stroking the goat with his foot.
“Oh,” said Monty, his spirits sinking, torpedoed suddenly, like the RMS Lusitania.
“Of course I do, you soppy sod! You made the TT for me, Monty,” Dave told him, with great sincerity. “Now, granted, I know I wouldn’t have won that TT with you on board, this last time… uh, no disrespect intended…”
“No offence taken,” Monty told him. “But, do continue,” he instructed, shaking an invisible sceptre.
“Sure, that TT trophy will keep me warm on cold winter nights,” continued Dave. “But it’s the experience, ultimately, the friendship and comradery that I’ll look back on fondly. Happy memories. And speaking of. You remember when I submitted that picture of you in your leathers to the calendar shoot in that gay porn magazine?”
“I do indeed,” Monty returned, his feathers not the least bit ruffled. “Bought a copy for myself, I did. And I was quite the celebrity for some time after that. I’m sure I still get the odd approving glance every now and then. In fact, now I think on it, the first time your dad met me, he did that I’m-sure-we’ve-met-before routine, as a matter of fact.”
“Cheeky!” answered Dave, approvingly. “Anyway, Monty. As lovely as this trip down memory lane is, my old son, you’ve still not explained to me why the tractor is covered over and why you look like a smurf?”
“A smurf?” asked Monty, cocking his head with interest.
“Yes, you’re covered in blue paint, or whatever that is,” said Dave with an up-and-down wave of his hand, highlighting said azure pigmentation.
“I always had a thing for her when I was younger, you know,” confessed Monty, by way of nothing, and suddenly examining his arms as if noticing the colouration there for the very first time.
“Who?”
“Her. In the Smurfs.”
“Smurfette? You worry me, Monty. Oh god, now I’m thinking about a young Monty and a very blue Smurfette, doing… doing unspeakable things. I think you may well have just ruined my childhood there, Monty…?”
Monty placed his cup on the grass and drew himself up, taking care not to upset the now sleeping goat. “Stand up and close your eyes, Dave,” he asked of Dave.
“This is like that night we had in London, all over again, isn’t it?” said Dave, but he did as instructed nonetheless.
Monty positioned Dave manually, as Dave was currently blinded on account of his eyes being tightly shut, turning him around and placing him several paces back from the tractor whose back tyre they’d just been leaning up against while seated.
“Okay,” Monty instructed. “Open your eyes.”
Dave put his hands on his hips, fully expecting to be underwhelmed by whatever Monty was about to show him, as Monty introduced the surprise as might a cheap game show host. Still, Dave was glad to be rid of the lingering images of a gaily frolicking Monty and Smurfette, playing out like a film reel on the back side of his eyelids.
“Holy shitsticks, Monty,” declared Dave once he’d indeed reopened his peepers. “I prepared myself to only pretend to be impressed, you know, like a parent at the school concert. But seriously, that there is a thing of absolute beauty.”
Dave approached the tractor — which they’d only uncovered that week — and stroked the paintwork like that of a prized stallion. The once-rusting and grubby red paintwork was now a polished, vibrant blue, and with an unmistakably familiar yellow-custard splodge emblazoned across the front and with the number “42” featured in the middle — a memorial to their beloved sidecar.
Monty took his thumb and wiped a couple of watery drops from about his eyes at the sight of it again. “It’s a bit rough in parts, after a fashion, but it’s the first time I’ve used a spray gun, yeah?” he acknowledged modestly, managing a grin. “Oi. And look at the windscreen,” he said.
Dave welled up. He well and truly welled up. He couldn’t have welled up more if he were wearing wellies, such was the extent of his welling.
“You’ve put our name across the top of the windscreen, haven’t you?” said Dave, seeing, of course, that Monty had done just that.
Monty shrugged.
“Come here, you,” Dave sighed, wrapping his arms around Monty and holding him tight. Dave gently caressed the top of Monty’s head, and said, “You know, that tractor would probably have gone quicker than our first sidecar, Monty.”
“I miss it,” announced Monty, looking up with his capable eye.
Dave held the embrace for a few more seconds, before it became much too awkward to continue it. He let go of Monty and coughed, the cough resetting his ‘Man’ parameters neatly back into place. “Miss what?” he enquired. In a manly tone.
“Me and you in the TT, Dave,” explained Monty. “I thought I was happy without it in my life. But I think the injury has sorted itself, and I might just see about getting a ride with another outfit for the next go-round.”
Dave took a step back, crossing his arms across his chest in the process. “Another outfit, Monty? You’ll do no such thing!”
“What’s the alternative? You’ve already got a passenger, that idiot, McMullan. And you’re a TT winner now.”
“Harry McMullan can fuck right off!” Dave insisted. “I’ve not heard a bloody word from him since the TT, and I know he’ll only be keeping me warm in case he can’t get another rider. Plus, the guy’s a complete tool to start with.”
Monty didn’t say anything.
Dave moved closer to his partner-in-crime, for a second time, placing a hand on his friend’s shoulder. “Monty, if you’ll be my partner, once again, I’d have you back in a heartbeat. IN A FUCKING HEARTBEAT. You hear me, me lad?”
“You’ve won a TT, Dave,” Monty protested. “You can’t go from that… that grandeur… to simple mediocrity with me. I mean, keep in mind, most of the time we didn’t even know if we were quick enough to qualify,” he admonished him.
“I’m already a TT winner, Monty. I’ll not be any happier than I am about that now, even if I were to win another, or another still. It’s not about that for me. It’s sitting on our crappy sofa outside the awning, sharing a beer, chatting to any idiot passing by who’ll listen to us. That’s the TT for me. The thrill of finishing a race with you meant more to me than winning the bloody thing with that McMullan sod hanging about. I’d honestly enter this tractor if it meant I could race with you once more. I know it’d make Frank happy, he’d love to see us back together, and without being overly morbid… you know what I’m saying.”
“Oh, right, that’s gone and done it, then,” sobbed Monty, fanning his face. “Come here, you lot!”
For two big units, as they were, they certainly knew their way around a tender embrace.
“Her
e’s to Dave and Monty!” proclaimed Dave to the heavens. “TT teammates once more!”
“Teammates!” Monty joined in.
“Can you hear it, Monty??”
“Can I hear what?”
“’Ride of the Valkyrie!’ Can you hear it in your head??”
“I can hear it!” cried Monty. “I can really hear it!”
“To glory!” Dave shouted.
“To glory!” Monty exclaimed, and they both danced on the spot, stuck together like Chang and Eng, the famous Siamese twins.
“Ahem,” sputtered a hoarse, phlegm-less cough, interrupting, abruptly, the Bromance of the Ages.
Dave lifted his chin from Monty’s neck. “Can we help?” he asked, breaking free with a sigh.
The cough belonged to a stout middle-aged man with a furious expression. “I’ve just been up to the farm and the builders there said I’d find the boss down here. Is that you, Papa Smurf? Or you, Sandor Clegane?”
“Did he just refer to you as The Hound?” Monty asked of Dave.
“If Frank and Stan aren’t about, then, yes, we’re in charge, I guess you could say,” replied Dave, batting away the newcomer’s presumed insult. “I’m sensing a little hostility here?” noted Dave amiably, though taking a protective stance in front of Monty.
“I’m Roger,” explained Roger. “I’ve just been driving past on my way to Peel and I couldn’t help notice that the buildingworks have begun!”
Dave looked at Monty, and then back to Roger. “Roger that, Roger,” he said in his best American accent, unable to resist. “Yeah, erm, thanks for the update? I wondered what all the men in high-viz jackets were doing? Be sure to pop by again with any further updates,” he told Roger with a playful sort of sarcasm.
Roger’s eyes narrowed. “How are they building?”
“Shovels, diggers, and I think one of them has a saw?” presented Monty sagely.
Roger didn’t reply immediately, rather, taking a moment, like so many good men before him, to ascertain where Monty’s line of sight was focussed. “Is he taking the piss?” he asked of Dave, eventually, once he’d given up what he decided was a useless endeavour vis-à-vis Monty’s eyes. “How the hell have you managed to get the builders in? I was only here a few weeks ago and there’s not a chance in hell you could’ve had it removed by now!” he scolded them sternly.
Dave stared at this Roger fellow blankly. Then he turned to Monty. Monty, in turn, looked to the sleeping goat. The goat, as it was still sleeping, could offer up no opinion on the matter.
“I’m sorry. Removed what?” Dave enquired, finally.
“Asbestos!”
“Bless you,” came Monty’s automatic reply.
Dave held his palms aloft in submission. “Okay, soldier,” he said. “Let’s begin again. And you are?”
Roger’s angry, stubble-chin-featured expression didn’t soften, but he did explain…
“Right. I was here to do a full asbestos survey on this place and the barns only a few weeks prior. I haven’t heard anything back since then. You could have hired a competitor of ours, but that seems unlikely, as there aren’t many asbestos-removal companies over here at all that could handle a job of this scale. And so finding one willing and able to take the project on, having them perform their own survey, procuring them for the job, and having the work done and completed, or in the process of completion, could not possibly have been done in the span of a few weeks. And yet here we are, renovations well underway. Hence, my great concern.”
“Frank and Stan had you do an asbestos survey. Which came up positive. And then let the workmen in?” asked Dave. “I’m not buying it,” he said, shaking his head. “That doesn’t sound like our Frank and Stan at all.”
“Believe what you want, but it’s true. Four days, me and the boys spent attending to it,” countered Roger. “Here, I’ll even show you the report,” he suggested, with frustration in his voice becoming more apparent. He took his phone out of his pocket and used the flattened tip from one of his strangely nail-less fingers to scroll through until he found what he was looking for. “Here!” he announced, poking the screen of his phone with a dull meaty thud.
Dave and Monty moved in like two dogs eating spaghetti in a Disney cartoon, though it was unclear, at the moment, who was to be Lady and who The Tramp.
“I’m going to overlook, for a moment…” gasped Dave… “the amount of zeros on the estimate part of this report.”
Dave took the liberty of prodding the screen on Roger’s phone, scrolling through himself. “Hold on,” he said, finding something. “This wasn’t given to Frank and Stan at all. It was given… to one Rodney Franks.”
“Our nemesis!” exclaimed Monty.
Roger looked up and to the left, searching to recall. Asbestos, he never forgot. But he wasn’t the best with names. “Was that who I spoke with? Smarmy little git with a face you wouldn’t get fed up of punching?”
“That would be Rodney Franks,” confirmed Monty.
“There’s lots of asbestos, is there?” asked Dave, but it was a question that required no explanation, since the number of zeroes on the estimate had already provided him with the answer.
“Loads of it,” Roger replied, happy to hammer the point home. “Loads and loads of it, I’m afraid. The place is full of it. In the wall panels near the chimney stack, in the interior tiles, in the soffits, with the pipework. I could go on.”
“We need to get them builders out of there… Monty?” Papa Smurf was dispatched, double-quick, to clear out the building.
“On it!” said Monty, before only the back of him was visible.
Watching Monty recede into the distance, Dave leaned against the tractor, taking care not to kick the goat that slept throughout what was to follow.
“So that tosspot, Rodney Franks — and I’m being exceptionally kind here when I use the term tosspot — knew the place was full of asbestos but did nothing about it?” he asked.
Roger shrugged his shoulders. “I wouldn’t know what this Rodney Franks character did or didn’t do. All I know is what I see before me now. To be fair, your builders up there would have realised the place was covered in asbestos? Though of course that’s not an excuse for this unsavoury Franks… tosspot,” he said, adopting Dave’s polite euphemism.
“I didn’t get a good look at the quote for the work,” grimaced Dave. “May I see that again, please? Also, how long d’ya reckon it’ll take to fix all of this properly?”
Roger looked up to the farm using his finger like a laser pointer. A dull, stubby laser pointer. But still. “It’s a big job,” he said. “No two ways about it. I couldn’t be one-hundred percent, but with enough men on… maybe three or four weeks? The other problem is that we might need to now rip out any work the builders have already done in order to get into it. This is the quote,” advised Roger, pinching the screen to zoom in, as if the figure required any additional emphasis.
Dave stared down on the phone for what seemed an age. He scratched his head, when it didn’t need scratching, more of a distraction than anything else, because he presently felt like drop-kicking the sleeping goat into the neighbouring field. He licked his lips as the moisture in his mouth evaporated.
“This,” Dave ventured eventually, with a series of rapid raps on the viewscreen as if he were tapping out the distress-call letters S.O.S. in Morse code. “This… oh shit. This is a nightmare.”
Dave slid down the tractor tyre, sitting on the grass, as before, but with his knees pulled into his chest this time.
“We were going to do great things here, Roger,” he told Roger in a faraway sort of melancholy despair. “This was going to be a community farm and a hostel to help those that need helping,” he went on. “And not just that. This was my dream job. I was going to be working with my closest friends, in the great outdoors, looking at that view,” moaned Dave, too drained of energy, currently, to even point. “And now… That doesn’t look like it’s going to happen now. Not anymore. Fuuu…” he said,
expelling the last of the air in his lungs, and not even bothering to finish the expletive.
Roger the surveyor’s initial vexation subsided and, given the circumstances, he felt compelled to comfort Dave in some small way. “Eh, it’ll be fine,” he said, patting the top of Dave’s head with one of his raw, un-taloned hands. It was all he could think to do.
“S’alright,” Dave whimpered miserably.
“I should, you know, ah…” Roger told Dave, taking a few steps back in retreat. “Well, then, em… phone me if you need me?”
Monty sprinted back down the field, a streak of blue, like a young Sonic the Hedgehog. Or, rather, a getting-on-in-years and slightly-out-of-shape Sonic. Nevertheless, Monty could still introduce a bit of speed to the equation when the situation called for it.
“They’re all out of the house and the barn, but they told me they still want to be paid!” Monty gasped, bent over to catch his breath before a sitting Dave.
Roger took his leave, with a now-sympathetic expression on his weathered face. “I can get the boys around to start straight away!” he shouted, from a safe distance away.
Monty knelt next to Dave. “It’ll be fine, Dave. We’ve overcome worse than this,” he said, immediately sensing the profoundness of his friend’s despair. “We’ll have a word with Frank and Stan, and I’m sure they’ll sort it out and everything will work out just fine. Besides, they’ve got the money from the charity trust people, haven’t they?”
Monty felt a strange urge to pat Dave on the top of the head. He wasn’t sure from whence the impulse came, but before he could act on it, Dave shook his head and replied…
“They get that at the end, when the building work is complete. That money is to pay for beds, computers, ovens, and all that sort of stuff. I’m not exactly sure who’s funding things at the moment, but I’m guessing some of it is coming from the existing charity. But, knowing Frank and Stan, I’m pretty sure most of it, at present, will be coming from their own pockets.”
“Come on, Dave, we’re all about the glass being half-full, here, aren’t we?” Monty came back, trying his best to raise Dave’s spirits. “Keep your pecker up, mate!”
Frank 'n' Stan's Bucket List #3 Isle 'Le Mans' TT: Featuring Guy Martin Page 10