He looked down at his feet. He was suddenly uncomfortable, as if only now remembering it was Annie, his daughter, who'd taken a lover and not me. If it had been me, it might have been easier for him to deal with. "Is there anything I can do? " he asked. "Anything for the children? Any message perhaps?"
"No," I said. "I can't think of anything that would make sense to them. I won't argue about custody or anything - I mean the mother always gets them anyway doesn't she? And I never wanted the little bastards in the first place. They were her idea."
I felt Phil's hand gripping my arm in warning. "He didn't mean that, mate," he said to Alan.
It was true. I hadn't meant it. Even from the outset, the children had always wielded an astonishing emotional power over me. Why had I said it then? To hurt him? To shock him? To shock me into waking up to the fact that it was all very, very real?
"Sorry Alan,… The kids couldn't hope for a better grandfather. You'll see they're okay?… "
I've always liked Parbold. In spite of the inevitable sprawl of boxy housing throughout the sixties and the seventies, it had retained a sense of character with its remaining old stone buildings, it's converted windmill and its permanent regatta of colourful barges on the canal. From the centre you could walk in any direction, and within five minutes find yourself in deepest countryside, among the meadows, wild commons and wooded glades marking the inland boundary of the Lancashire plain.
If your destination took you deeper inland, it meant climbing the long, unforgiving snake of a road up Parbold hill. It was no problem for a modern car, but in a Midget on a cold morning, or a clapped out van like Phil's it was more of an ordeal. We laboured up, eventually hitting bottom gear while trailing a noxious cloud of diesel, and we just about made it to the Wiggin Tree pub, on the summit. Here the road levelled out and Phil pulled in.
"Problem?" I asked
"Nothing a pint won't fix," he said.
It was quiet inside the Wiggin Tree, a calm relaxed air pervading the modern decor, quite unlike the last time I'd been in on a busy Saturday evening. We took a table overlooking a cornfield. It was swishing about in great lazy waves. The crop seemed ripe, its long ears of grain drooping sleepily. Already it was late August. Summer was coming to an end. Another month, I thought and there'd be Christmas cards in all the shops. This time last year, we'd just returned from holiday in Ibiza, two weeks with the children, sun and sand and warm seas, and Annie in a yellow bikini, looking as trim as she had when I'd first met her. A year! Suddenly I found myself thinking I would never take life for granted again. Nothing stayed the same. Even the firmest foundations crumbled and it was folly to attach ourselves to anything,… or to anyone.
"You must think I'm stupid," I said.
He shrugged, quaffed down half his pint, but said nothing.
"My dad said I should have kicked her out. I suppose I should. I've always been too easy going."
He shook his head. "He didn't mean it - he knows the score."
"Score?"
"It's all about children, isn't it? What's best for them. You don't want to kick them out. And like you said, the mother always gets the kids, so even if it's her who's been shagging around, she stays and you go. Simple. No offence."
"None taken," I said. "I mean, that's exactly what I thought."
Phil sat back and contemplated the rest of his pint.
"So how long were you at Standard's then?" I asked him.
"Twenty years," he replied. "I was a turner."
"A turner? You can name your price then these days."
He shrugged "A turner's a rare species all right, but there's no call for it any more."
"Isn't there?"
"Who'd want to hire a British turner when you can get it done for next to nothing in China? No, Tom. We're done making things in this country. I bet if you asked, not one of the buggers in this place could even tell you what a turner was."
"You’re probably right," I said. "Sad, isn’t it."
"Just fact," he said and then he stabbed the table with his finger as if to drive the point home. "No sense harping on about it though. Gotta face it. Gotta move on."
"True."
"You still at Derby's then? I heard they'd all but shut that place as well."
"They closed the machine shop years ago but there's still plenty of design work. It keeps me busy anyway. I heard you had a workshop or something."
"Just a side line. I salvaged a couple of machines when they were emptying Standard's - a Hardinge lathe and an old Cincinatti miller. I still do the odd freelance job - classic bike spares mainly."
"Ever done a re-bore on an engine?"
He laughed. "That bloody old Midget?"
I nodded.
He thought for a while. "Buy yourself a kit, then give me a bell."
"Thanks I owe you one."
"No, Tom. I owe you one."
"Me?"
"Our Ellie and your Dad." He shrugged and gulped down the rest of his pint. "Ellie was in a mess," he said. "I did what I could, but she was impossible to deal with. Now, your dad and her,… ." he tapped the side of his head and lowered his voice. "They've been to the same places, in here, you know? It makes a difference. All I'm saying is you could have made it difficult - an old chap like that, and you his only son,… "
I'd missed my mother every day of the past twenty years but Eleanor was still the best thing that had happened to my father.
"Come on, Phil. Eleanor's all right."
"She's much better these days," he said. "But she'll never be all right." He looked at me as if he was about to say more, then thought twice and sighed.
"What?"
"Nah,… it’s now’t to do with me, sorry mate."
"What is it?"
"Well, Ellie’s my sister. I’ll never speak ill of her and I’ll wipe the floor with any man that does, but when she was sick,… it used to,… well, she could be a bit on the kinky side."
"Eleanor?"
"I just wondered,… if she was past all that."
"Well, I’m perhaps not the best person to ask, Phil. But my dad’s definitely not the kinky type,… and, well it’s not straight forward - the pills he’s taking, I mean just to stop his arms from falling out the end of his sleeves,… "
"You mean?"
"I don't know much about their relationship, only that it works. I suppose when I look at them, I see more a father and a doting daughter, maybe the daughter he never had, I don’t know."
"So you reckon she must be, well, through all that other stuff then."
"I’m sure she is, Phil."
While I was pondering on what he’d said, a waitress came up to our table. She smiled, took our glasses and wanted to know if we fancied anything to eat. She was young and blonde, the same shade of purest platinum as Annie, but her name-tag read: Rachel.
"Rachel," I said.
"Yes?" she asked.
I looked up, startled. "Sorry. Nothing. It was just the name. Such a pretty name. Rachel."
She gave me another smile, though not as wide and went on her way.
Phil smirked."So, who's Rachel, then?"
I shook my head. "It was just some girl I used to know at school."
"She must have been quite a girl."
"To tell the truth, I hardly knew her."
Sure, I'd hardly known her, not really known her, but once more I was feeling the white heat of her presence and feeling again the ominous stirrings of everything she had ever meant to me. My life was falling apart before my eyes and I was thinking of Rachel. It was insane! I had no time for this.
Chapter 5
She came back to me as I lay in bed that night. She was a head shorter than me, slight of frame and with short black hair combed in sweeping waves. She was wearing a navy blue skirt, cut to just above the knee as was the fashion then. Also she had on a regulation school blouse, sky blue with seventies style flared lapels, and a blue and gold striped tie done up into a fat knot. But it was her expressiveness more than anyth
ing that so captivated me - the tilt of her head, the slightly exaggerated movement of her hands as she spoke, and the nervous way she used to balance on the sides of her feet,…
It was a dream I'd had before, the first time when I was fifteen years old. In the dream I was conscious of her, of all these mannerisms, as I followed her along a corridor at school. We were making our way between classes, a weekly ritual,… that particular corridor, that particular class, the same time every week. The clamour of voices, the damp, dusty smell, the anxious feel of it,… all came back, bubbling up from the dark lake of my subconscious.
The dream was a reflection of reality, but in that reality I had always lost sight of her in the crowd and my chance of glory, of recognition, of hope borne afloat on the chance of a smile, had always evaporated. But in my dream, the sweaty crush of school blazers parted suddenly to reveal her leaning against the wall. As I drew level I realised her eyes were tracking me. She was waiting,… for me. And when I came to her, she fixed me with a steady gaze, bringing me to a standstill.
"I want to be with you," she said.
They were just words, but they might have been the most precious words, had she ever really spoken them. Of course it was just a dream and I remember the first time its cruel authenticity had me waking, delirious with a fragile joy, which imploded into a terrible despair. Even now, waking that morning, twenty five years later, it's taste was fresh and it frightened me that a fantasy from so long ago could still wield such power.
I was still aware of her presence as I coaxed the Midget into work that morning. Why was she haunting me now? Was it simply my mind retreating away from the shock of Annie? Was it something about the car? Something about the smell of it, a mixture of hot oil and musty carpets,… . stirring old memories?
Like my father had said, I'd driven a Midget before. At eighteen, it was about the only sport's car I'd been able to afford. I'd seen one advertised in the Clarion - a '67 registration, a classic or so the greasy little man had said, after he'd taken my three hundred quid.
"Needs a bit of work, like," he'd added.
I'd noticed that. But it had sounded like a dream and its racing green paint had sparkled seductively beneath the feeble strip-light in his garage. I hadn't even thought to check the insurance premiums before I'd bought the bloody thing - only to find out on later enquiry that even third-party cover was more than I'd paid for the car and quite beyond my means as an apprenticed technician at Derby's Diesels.
The only time I'd ever driven it was on a brief, un-insured cruise down Langholm Avenue. The plan had been quite simple, though criminal in its recklessness: I'd see Rachel; she would be coming out of the house as I drove by; the top would be down and I'd cut a heroic figure in my flying jacket. I'd slow down, gunning the engine provocatively; she'd turn at the throaty sound of it and give me that look, that quizzical look; then she'd recognise me and her expression would change - eyes dancing, a little flirtatious: "I want to be with you," she'd say.
I didn't see her of course. Then, at the roaring junction with the A6 on the edge of town, the throttle jammed wide open and the car nearly rammed me into the side of a wagon. I'd had the sense to slip the clutch and cut the engine, but it had been a near thing and my father had gone berserk when I'd finally got it home.
It had sat on the drive for months after that, gathering grime and dripping oil, a constant reminder of the hopelessness of everything, and rather than save up to pay the insurance premium, I just sold it, then got on with my life.
It came as a shock remembering all of this now.
Today's Midget was a later marque, and in better condition. Its original black wrap-around bumpers had been stripped off at some stage and replaced with more traditional chrome. It had a neat grille from off some original sixties scrapper and I had a feeling the car had been loved, but had fallen recently on hard times. It was green, like the other and I'd bought it on impulse after seeing it on the forecourt of a second hand dealer's in Preston. Perhaps it had been a hunger for nostalgia that had attracted me - but I wasn't aware I'd been thinking of Rachel.
Pulling into my slot outside the office, some wag shouted across an insult about the car having shrunk in the wash. "Bloody classic, this mate," I retorted while carefully smoothing down the broad band of sticky tape that was holding the rag-top together. I'd have to get a new one before winter set in, I thought.
Once inside the air conditioned sterility of the open plan office, I logged onto my computer, checked my e-mails, then loaded up the latest version of the design I was working on - a simple valve for a marine engine, but Rachel was still with me and I found it impossible to concentrate. I made coffee and sipped at it while gazing without seeing at my computer screen. Then I tried quite deliberately to remember what I could of her, before realising most of it was irrelevant.
In the seventies, when I'd known, or rather not known her, the technology for a quartz watch had been beyond us, and indeed most of what I took for granted now was science fiction back then: E-mail, Pentium processors and personal telephones so small you could lose them amongst the small change in your pocket. For all the vividness of my memories, they were of events that had taken place a long time ago. A generation had passed. She would be in her forties now, maybe fat, wrinkled and grey. I was being haunted by a fantasy that was a quarter of a century out of date. It was meaningless. And it was maddening.
In the seventies, I'd been like the other lads,… shoulder length hair and flared trousers. Nowadays, the hair is disappearing over the top of my head, and the eyes are dim without my specs - yet inside I feel the same as I imagine I did then. How would I feel though, I wondered, if I actually saw Rachel today? I didn't suppose for a moment she'd recognise me, but would I recognise her? And if I did see her, or more importantly saw the change in her, would I be able at last to rid myself of this strange feeling?
"Got that document ready, Tom?"
"Document?"
It was Stavros, the section head.
"We talked about it last week? The departmental reshuffle? We need your thoughts on the way ahead."
"Sure, only I'm a bit tied up on this valve right now. We got the prototype back and the flow's not right. I'll need to reshape the inlet."
As I spoke, I was aware of Stavros' eyes glazing over. He wasn't technically minded and even though without the valve, a two million pound contract was as good as dead, he didn't seem interested. "Can't Joss do that?" he asked a little wearily.
"By the time I've explained it to Joss, I could have done it myself."
"Well, I really need your input for this afternoon's session, Tom."
I couldn't do both at the same time and he wouldn't actually say he thought the technical work on the valve was less important. It was one of those lose-lose situations with which all office drones,… even technical ones are familiar. Dutifully, I zapped the valve model and opened M.S. Word, loading a document I'd begun only last week,… already a lifetime ago.
"The Way Ahead," I read. But what about my own way ahead? Bugger Derby's: Where did Tom Norton go from here? While I pondered on it, Charlie Wheeler returned from the purchasing office. He was a sour faced engineer of some thirty years experience. "That's it," he said, addressing no one in particular. "The design office is moving to Paris. Administration's going to Dartford. They're shutting us down - three month's for the lot of us."
He was a gossip, a man for a good rumour and we didn't take much notice because we'd heard this sort of thing from him before.
I gave a cynical sneer. "Who says?"
"It's all round Purchasing. They're having a session this afternoon. Haven't you seen the bloody Jag outside? Old Whacker 'imself's come to make the announcement."
Whacker was the Chief Executive, not his real name of course but it's what everyone called him on account of his stern headmaster's demeanour. He dropped in from time to time, but mostly he plied his mysterious trade from a poky little office with a posh address in London.
"T
hat can't be right," I said "Stavros' just asked me to finish this thing on the way ahead. Why would he be wasting his time with that if they were shutting us down?"
Charlie gave me a grin and shook his head at my innocence - with only twenty five years service, I was still a bit green. "That's local, Tom. That's trivial. What I'm talking about comes from headquarters. Stavros probably knows as much about this as we do."
Stavros returned an hour later, somewhat pale faced. With an effort he heaved his well padded frame onto a desk at the head of the office. It was a peculiar sight, one without precedent, him stood up there like a reluctant schoolmaster, waving his arms for silence and I felt at once it's import, felt at once the shock-wave of doom even before he opened his mouth.
Charlie winked at me, then nudged my elbow. "What did I tell you, lad? It's tickets to a dance."
"A dance? "
"A redun-dance. "
Chapter 6
I'd been at Derby's since leaving school - seen it through many changes and felt a part not so much of the place, which was without exception ugly and dirty, but more of the people who worked there. Derby's had taken me as a youth with a couple of 'O' levels, trained me as an engineer and paid for my degree. Now they didn't want me any more - the world had changed, become more dynamic. Old Whacker would keep his office in London and his Jaguar. So far as we could work out, the Dartford factory would survive, for now, but it was the Job Centre for the rest us.
There'd been a time at Derby's when nothing changed for decades. People did the same jobs, only getting promotion when the bloke above them either retired or dropped dead. The design office had been in the same place for thirty years, its brass door handles worn smooth by the palms of a generation of engineers - but now, suddenly, it was moving to Paris.
They say it's rare to find anyone in the same job for longer than five years these days, but it's not true. I knew lots. I was one. Derby's was the ladder I'd chosen as I picked my way through life, along with hundreds of other lads in and around Middleton. Derby's and Annie. They were the two immutable markers by which I had navigated every course. Now both had gone and in the space of an afternoon, I found myself completely adrift, searching for something safe, something sure, yet still I seemed unable to come up with anything more tangible than memories of the time when I'd first set out this way at seventeen, a time when I'd been mulling over the collapsed hopes of Langholm Avenue, and Rachel.
The Road From Langholm Avenue Page 3