“You could be right, Molly, you could be right. Or, my attending to personal hygiene could be purely incidental!”
“I’m not buying it, Dave,” Molly answered him, laughing.
“Yes well I’ll be going for that shower now,” he told her. “So I don’t want to catch you peering around the corner taking shots of me in the nude, yet again!” He said this last bit loudly, expecting to generate some sort of buzz. But, unfortunately for Dave, it was only Guy Martin anybody was interested in at the present time.
In every direction, Molly’s camera was met with smiling faces. She just clicked away, capturing the natural expression of people thoroughly enjoying themselves. She lowered her camera, taking in the joyous, exuberant atmosphere for a moment, her own face smiling along with that of the others. When she’d initially been told about the charity fundraiser event, she’d envisioned nothing more than a glorified go-kart race, with a few men and their dogs turning out to watch a few clapped-out vans pottering around a track on a Sunday morning. She couldn’t conceive how the event would in fact turn out, with thousands in attendance and in what, from the looks of things, the enjoyment on people’s faces, would likely turn out to be a recurring event. She was proud of her father and Stan. Proud of everyone involved in making it happen.
“Excuse me!” shouted a voice from behind. “Excuse me? Miss?”
Molly turned, finding a man in an orange tabard waving to her, which she took to be a request to have a picture taken. She raised up her camera obligingly but, once in the viewfinder, she saw he hadn’t broken into a pose as expected. “Excuse me!” he repeated, waving his arms to get her attention still.
“Yes?” she said, bringing the camera down, shifting her focus.
“I saw you earlier talking to the two fellows with the inflatable sticks, and, well, are you Molly?”
“Oh no,” she said. “What sort of mischief have those two gotten themselves into now?”
“No, it’s nothing like that,” the marshal said, holding his hand out in front of him. “Look, I don’t want to panic you, but I need to tell you there’s been some sort of an accident.”
“What? What kind of accident? How do you mean?” Molly replied, her vague, somewhat-indulgent type of annoyance regarding her father and Stan’s shenanigans now shifting to alarm. “What’s happened??”
“I didn’t see it, I’m afraid. But he’s with the ambulance now. I was asked to come and fetch you.”
Molly hurried along, accompanied by the helpful marshal. “Ambulance? Is he okay?” she asked. But she didn’t wait for a response, having caught a glimpse of the paramedics further up the field. “I tried bloody telling him he should be taking it easier. He’s got a condition, you know. He’s ill. But my father doesn’t listen to anybody,” she told the marshal.
“I don’t know anything about that, I’m afraid,” the marshal told her, unsure what else to say.
“Excuse me,” she said, once they’d come up to the ambulance. There was a circle of curious onlookers gathered round, blocking the way. “Excuse me!” she said again, in a rather more forceful tone this time. “Please, let me through!”
And there was her father, head down, slumped up against the ambulance, one arm covering his face, a paramedic attending to him.
“Dad!” shouted Molly, relieved to see him standing, at least. “I told you to take it easy!” she scolded him as she moved in closer. “I told him,” she repeated, this time to the paramedic, the concern in her voice obvious, as she reached his side.
“You need to be careful,” Molly admonished her father dotingly, checking him over from head to toe, from stem to stern, despite the paramedic’s available presence. “You’re not indestructible, you know,” she carried on. “Have you broken anything?” she asked. “Has he broken anything?” she asked, turning to the paramedic, but didn’t wait for a response from her, instead continuing directly, saying to her father, “My god, Dad, you gave me a fright,” and leaning in and giving him a cuddle. “Dad? Dad, why are you not saying anything? Dad…?”
She pulled away his arm from his face.
The colour was gone from Frank’s face, save for his eyes, which were bloodshot, and his ashen cheeks were wet. He opened his mouth, but no words came out.
“Oh my god, Dad, what’s happened to you??”
“He’s fine, don’t worry,” the paramedic offered sympathetically. She smiled encouragingly. “All things considered,” she added.
“All things…? What does that mean?” Molly said, pressing and prodding on her father, searching for injuries. “I don’t understand. What’s happened to him?”
The paramedic looked at Frank, placing a comforting hand on his shoulder gently, and then looked back to Molly. “Nothing, physically,” she told Molly. “This gentleman is fine, as far as I’m aware. Again, all things considered.”
“I don’t understand!” shouted Molly. “Why do you keep saying that? What does that mean??”
Frank’s jaw was still held open. Somehow words issued forth, from someplace deep within, even though his mouth wasn’t moving. His voice was hoarse and dry. “Molly, it’s not me,” he said. “It’s Stan. They think… No, they don’t think… they know… he’s had a heart attack.”
Chapter
Nineteen
T he unseasonal warmth that’d so generously provided its blessing that afternoon inevitably yielded to the shortening winter’s evening, giving up the ghost. Darkness fell upon the inaugural Isle Le Mans TT, and, like the sun’s departing rays, those who’d been there mostly for the Family Fun Day eventually slipped away.
The day’s activities, however, were far from over and both the diminishing light and lack of Fun Fair noises brought about a sense of pure racing as the sound of screaming engines were now even more apparent and the headlights illuminating the tarmac rather captivating. The most stalwart amongst the race spectators could be found congregated near to the pit area, since it was a veritable hive of activity, especially as fatigue mixed with lack of daylight were not ingredients for incident-free racing. In fact, a steady stream of vehicles appeared with crash-related damage, with most being treated quickly with, say, a wheel & tyre assembly swopped out and perhaps a wing pulled out of the way to keep a wheel well clear. On occasion, however, a vehicle did not fare so well and had to be taken out of the game entirely.
Team Frank & Stan’s VW Transporter van was coping well, and aside from the unwanted advances it’d received earlier in the day from Napier & Thomas’ vehicle it had managed to remain relatively dent-free. The constant pressure from the circuit racing, however, was demanding on the tyres and the van had gone through more rubber than a discount prostitute at a rodeo cowboy convention.
♪Strangers in the night!♬ sang Dave at full velocity, and at full volume as well to keep himself awake. To the spectators, this also served as a strange sort of serenade, if a brief one as Team Frank & Stan’s van whizzed by, since Dave had the windows down so the cool evening air against his cheeks could help keep him alert. Having the windows down created a bit of drag on the vehicle, but it was a necessary trade-off.
The stopwatch fastened onto the dashboard counted down from two hours, with thirty-one minutes still remaining for Dave’s turn at the wheel. ♪Exchanging glances! Wondering in the–♬ —oh, shit!” he screamed, as the tyre wall side barrier appeared before him at once. “Come on Dave, keep your wits about you!” he shouted to himself, steering deftly away from the wall. The track in front, illuminated as it was only by headlights, was disconcerting, and especially so on a fairly circuitous track where the occasional sharp bend would come up somewhat unexpectedly.
Dave’s lap time had decreased dramatically under cover of darkness, but so did that of the other teams. Those who’d attempted to carry on at top speed as they had during the daylight hours found themselves coming to rather a bad end, with their vehicles quickly taken out of the action from resulting crashes, and with the drivers and crew joining the ranks of the observers and relegated to mere s
pectator status thereafter.
Dave struggled with the level of concentration required, and with his most recent near miss with the tyre wall, his lap time decreased even further out of caution. Of the original twenty-five vans on the starting grid, only sixteen remained, which made for a little more room to negotiate, at least. But Dave was beginning to get a bizarre nighttime version of snow blindness, with the track appearing as if he were driving in a long, black, endless tunnel, with only the odd flicker of another van’s headlights to break the unchanging effect. Cramps in his back were also becoming more frequent and, despite his best efforts, he felt himself leaning over the steering wheel.
“Twenty-seven minutes, Dave! You can do this!” he said, shouting to himself again. He eased his head out the window, like a dog taken out for a drive in the family car. The chilled air acted as an alarm clock but the effect was short-lived as he could only hold this pose briefly, it being too difficult to properly pilot the van in this position. Every time Dave passed the pit area on each lap, Monty would, without fail, scream and wave his arms in praise and encouragement. Good ol’ Monty.
As for the competition, the BBC-sponsored team were romping away, taking the lead, and The Stig, as it were, their chap in white overalls and helmet, was visibly quicker than anyone else on the track and a real class act. Those racers with an ego bigger than their ability attempting to match his speed, as previously described, led to their premature downfall. Also, and most unfortunately for Team Frank & Stan, Rodney Franks’ team were still circulating at a very respectable pace. Their BTCC driver was sublime, in point of fact, with his average lap time showing up at second place on the leaderboard and only a short measure behind The Stig. Happily, Team Frank & Stan’s own Guy Martin was a short distance behind, in third. Fortunately, as well, Dave and Monty were the equal of Napier and Thomas, and the result of this was that Team Frank & Stan showed up quite respectably in the top-five overall listings on the leaderboard.
“Twenty-one minutes! Dave, you’ve got this!” Dave shouted, rallying himself on as before. “C’mon, you can— oh, bugger!” were the last words he uttered, sadly, before the tyre wall he’d so expertly avoided on an earlier lap now captured its prize like a balding rubber harvester of vehicular souls.
There was no concern for his own safety as Dave jumped down from the van and out onto the track area, crouching by the front wing to assess the damage…
“We’ll have to get this towed away!” shouted the first marshal to arrive on the scene moments later, and started reaching for his radio, to that end, but Dave protested.
“I can still drive her! She’s all right!” he insisted.
The marshal lowered his radio, craning his neck up to look over Dave’s shoulder at the damage himself. “I’ll give you one chance before I have it towed,” he offered. “After that—”
Dave leapt back in the cab, reversed away from the tyre-wall would-be reaper, and spun the van’s tyres over the grass runoff area until he gained traction, finding purchase.
“She’s absolutely fine!” shouted Dave to the sceptical marshal as he sped the van away, offering a thumbs-up, and quickly returning to the race. “Running like a dream! Right as rain!” he carried on, more to himself now, since the marshal could no longer hear him. Truth be told, though, he was unsure if he’d even make it back the short distance to the pit.
Dave wrestled with the steering wheel, and if he hadn’t the good fortune, at least, of being less than a hundred metres from home, it soon became clear that their race would most certainly have been over if that were not the case.
He limped the injured van into the garage, where the team jumped into action. Dave exited the van, looking more wounded — in spirit, at least — than the vehicle. “I’m sorry. I only switched off for a second and then I was in those bloody tyres!” he told Guy and Monty as they rushed towards him. “I’ve bloody let you down! I’ve lost the race for us for sure! I’m sorry, lads. I’m so, so sorry.”
Guy and Monty immediately set upon him, slapping Dave’s back like they were trying to frantically dislodge something stuck in his throat. “Bollocks!” shouted Guy, patting away furiously. “Don’t you dare say you’ve cost us this race! That there could’ve happened to any of us out there! Any of us! You hear? It’s not easy, and if we have to retire from this race then so be it, but it won’t be from—”
An object on the periphery had suddenly caught Martin’s eye. “Something wicked this way comes,” he explained to the others, grimly. Then, turning to the source of the unpleasantness, “Oi!” he shouted, his usually amiable face contorting into a mask of anger. “Bugger off, you!”
Rodney Franks strolled in like he owned the place. Which, unfortunately, he did.
“Now, now, Mr Martin. I only wanted to pop down to see if I could possibly be of assistance in any way. That was quite a smash-up my friend Dave had out there, and —”
“I’m not your friend, Rodney…” Dave cut in… “in any way, shape, or form, and you know that full well,” he said.
“My goodness, Dave, I hate to say this,” Franks continued on, with his same too-familiar form of address. “But that crash seems to have done something horrendous to your face. Do you want me to call the paramedics over? Maybe they could dash you off to a surgeon? Before the damage is irreversible?”
“Piss off, Rodney,” growled Dave. “Your concern is touching, but the boys will have the van up and running in no time. And it’s only cosmetic damage, so don’t you worry. That’s the van, I mean. There’s nothing wrong with my face, you fecking tw–”
“He’s not worth it, Dave,” said Guy, holding Dave back to prevent a good pummelling upon Rodney Franks’ person.
“Maybe, maybe not,” Dave replied. “But there’s only one way to find out, isn’t there?”
Franks, of course, was there to gauge the severity and extent of the van’s damage. But his investigative efforts were stymied by Guy, Monty, and Dave, who together provided a united front against his advances, leaving him little choice but to reluctantly take his leave. “Just let me know if there’s any way I can help!” he called back over his shoulder, skipping off to return to whatever dark, fetid hole from whence he came.
Once Rodney was out of sight, Dave looked over his face in the van’s side-view mirror, just to make sure Franks wasn’t entirely taking the piss, but his face was fine, leading him to exclaim again, “Fecking tw–”
“Sorry, Dave,” came the voice of one of the mechanics from under the van. “The suspension’s well and truly knackered,” he continued, rolling himself out from underneath on a wheeled creeper. “I’ve not got the spare parts to fix this, so I’m afraid it’s game over.”
Dave wiped some moisture from his cheek that had collected there, and he closed his eyes. “Well that’s it, then.” He opened his eyes back up, facing Guy and Monty again. “I’m sorry,” he told them once more, and sighed a weary sigh. Guy held up his hand, pivoting it back-and-forth at the wrist, in a it-can’t-be-helped, mate motion.
For Guy Martin and the rest of the crew, it was a sense of loss from a racing perspective, which was bad enough in itself. But, for Dave and Monty, it was so much more than that. Yes, they were concerned for their jobs. Beyond that, however, and much more significantly, they’d seen how much everyone had put into making the TT Farm a reality. The farm would have been an immensely important part of the community, and a boon for the Isle of Man. And now those hopes were dashed, their dreams torn away, simply as the result of a minute, momentary lapse of attention and a bloody tyre wall got in the way of it all.
Dave and Monty trudged out of the garage, hearts heavy, coming to a rest by a perimeter wall, and joining several other figures there huddled together watching as the remaining vans hurtled by.
A friendly chap with overalls covered in oil leaned in closer to Dave. With the copious oil stains over him, he looked something like a surgeon who’d just lost a trauma patient. “Heya. How’s the van, then?” he asked, his sympatheti
c tone readily apparent. “I saw when you came off the track. You had quite a bump there.”
Dave appreciated the camaraderie. “Suspension’s buggered and we’re out of the race,” he commiserated. “We haven’t got the parts we need,” he told the fellow. “And you?”
“Engine blew. Hence, this,” the oil-covered chap replied with a shrug of acceptance, resigned to his fate, and motioning to his saturated uniform. “But there’s always next year, yeah?”
Dave raised his right arm up, firmly extending his middle finger as Rodney Franks’ van went past. He couldn’t see who was driving, Napier, Thomas, or the BTCC fella, but it didn’t matter. His hearty salute, childish as it may have been, provided him at least a fleeting reprieve from the grief he felt.
The men lined up were like jilted lovers, dumped by the exes, all with a story of woe to share and joined together by a sense of what could have been. After a bit of quiet contemplation, the oil-covered chap had a few words to say.
“What about our suspension?”
“How’s that?” asked Monty half-heartedly, as Dave still had his middle finger extended, but with a far-away look now in his eyes. “Your suspension ruined as well?”
“No, no,” the other fellow answered. “Just the opposite.”
Dave was suddenly paying attention again. The oil-covered chap continued…
“No, see, the engine in our van is in hundreds of pieces. It’s done for, and ain’t never comin’ back to life. But the suspension’s perfect. Not a scratch. And we’re driving a VW as well. Not the exact same model, mind you, but the undercarriages of these vehicles often share the same suspension, yeah? No guarantees, now, but you’re welcome to see if you can salvage what you—”
But Dave and Monty were already sprinting back to their garage to retrieve their mechanics that were, within seconds, lying under the oily chap’s van and picking away at it like tramps on a roasted chicken’s carcass.
“Well? How does it look…?” Dave was asking impatiently, after what seemed forever and a day, pacing about like an expectant father.
Frank 'n' Stan's Bucket List #3 Isle 'Le Mans' TT: Featuring Guy Martin Page 28