“Good for you,” I responded, smiling.
“So‘re you sure you and he aren’t the slightest bit together?” Sahmir changed tack suddenly, his eyes sparkling with amusement. “I can’t imagine a world without you two sparring somewhere in the background…”
Malaysia was back to back with Japan. Nish and I went on early to meet up with Miriam. She gave us a guided tour round Tokyo, and then took us back to her parents’ home in a small charming town out in the country. Once there, she wandered us through beautiful parks and ornamental temples, and little boys kept recognising Nish and running up for autographs or selfies, and Miriam would translate for us. And then the family entertained us with a traditional meal, all seated on low stools on the floor with a long low table, using chopsticks. And after the meal, Miriam and Nish played a beautiful piece of music together on their violin and saxophone, and then Nish sang a hauntingly soaring song with his lovely voice, and finally Miriam went out for a while and came back in dressed in a fabulous traditional kimono and did a slow, stylised fan dance while singing a song in a thin sweet voice. She sang it first in Japanese, and then again translated into English. She said they were three Haiku. One was so poignant it made me want to cry.
My sister was married when she was only fifteen,
But she never sent a letter.
I’m so glad I live now, I thought. Now is the only time to be a girl…
I leant over to Nish. “She’s so sweet and gorgeous, isn’t she?” I whispered.
He had been watching her, his eyes all gentle and smiling. He glanced at me and looked a bit embarrassed. If only Quinn would look at me like that, I thought. Then I might be convinced to risk it.
All eyes turned expectantly then on me. “Me?” I denied in a panic. “Tell them I’m useless at everything, Miriam – honestly! I can’t sing and I don’t even remember any nursery rhymes. Sorry!” They carried on staring at me.
“I can do a pretty good impression of a car alarm going off,” I proffered in desperation. Nish snorted. “Yeah, thanks for your support Nish,” I hissed sideways.
Miriam said something to the rest of her family and they laughed. She beckoned me out. I followed her reluctantly. Turned out she was intending to dress me up in another kimono. Beautiful green silk all embroidered with pink and yellow flowers. It took some time and she put a pink flower in my hair. She giggled and taught me to put my hands together and make a deep bow. Then she led me back in and I meekly performed my part. Her parents oohed and aahed and smiled delightedly, and Nish smiled too. “So cute!” Miriam giggled to Nish. Then she handed me a fan and made me follow her around the room, doing all the fan actions while she sang again. No point in being embarrassed, I thought. It’s only Nish, and he doesn’t care. Quite enjoyed myself actually. Although later that evening I did steal his phone when he left it lying on the table to ensure he’d taken no potential blackmail photos with it. If he tweeted a picture of that, then he was so dead.
When I got back to Wantage there was another basket of flowers lying all brown and dead on my doorstep. Dumb or what? I thought. He still can’t be bothered to check my race schedules to find out if I’m actually around or not. I kicked them to one side, went into my flat and slammed the door.
It was three days later when he turned up. Just as well he’d given me a bit of time to get over the long haul flight or he wouldn’t have got such a civil reception. As it was, the doorbell went at nine o’clock at night and I figured there was only one person it could be, so was mentally prepared when I opened it.
He actually looked normal for once. Torn oily jeans and dirty trainers, faded tee-shirt, scruffy old leather jacket. He leant in the doorway and looked silently at me. I waited. Finally he said, “Sorry, Eve, I’ve been a complete idiot, haven’t I?”
“Have you ever heard me disagree with that sentiment?” I responded dryly.
He smiled slightly. “Can we go out for a ride on the bike?”
“I s’pose,” I said reluctantly. The bike had once been his, so he probably had a yen to get back on it. “But you’ll have to drive it, because you’re too big to go pillion now, and I’m worried I’ll misjudge a corner with your weight up behind.”
He looked pleased. “Just like the old days,” he remarked.
“No, not at all,” I corrected abruptly. “We never rode on a bike together in the old days. A couple of times when we were sixteen, and the odd occasion when I helped you deliver Mariah home when she was tiny, and that was it.”
“Well, we can start a new tradition then,” he suggested.
I shrugged unenthusiastically.
“Dress really warm,” he advised. “Duvet jacket if you’ve got one, we’re going to see the Draconids.”
“The what?”
“You’ll see,” he promised mysteriously.
He drove us out along winding backroads and then we started climbing upwards into more and more open territory and heading along the edge of the downs. He drew us up in a small empty car park on the ridge and we got off. Our breath wreathed mistily around us. Early October and a sudden sensation of autumn in the air. He took my gloved hand in his and walked me up a footpath and out onto the open ridgeway, keeping us climbing until we had an uninterrupted view of the sky. He took out his phone and held it up, turning around slowly in a circle. He had one of those apps that show what constellation you’re looking at when you point it upwards.
“Ah, there,” he uttered finally, in apparent satisfaction.
“What are you looking for?” I asked curiously.
“Draco the Dragon,” Quinn answered. “See, here in the north?” He held up his phone so I could peer at the graphics. And there was the serpent’s head sketched out. I looked past the phone up at the sky and could just about spot what was so clear on the phone.
“It’s a good dark night for it,” Quinn said, sounding pleased. “And the Draconids are conveniently early in the evening, most others are best just before dawn which is a bit of a pain…”
“I still don’t know what you’re talking about, Quinn,” I said puzzled.
Then suddenly there was a burning streak of light across the sky, a trail of white like a firework.
“That’s what I’m talking about,” Quinn said, as I drew in a sudden awed breath.
“Shooting stars?” I interpreted.
The Draconid meteorite storm,” he explained. “It’s usually a bit of a lazy one, but this year it’s predicted to be about to put on a rather good show…”
“Wow!” I exclaimed as another shot over our heads.
“I often go out to see the meteorite showers,” Quinn shared with me. “There’s the Perseids in August, the Orionids in late October. Sometimes the moon is too bright and then it’s not worth bothering.”
I had no idea he was into that sort of thing. I ‘d assumed he didn’t have a contemplative bone in his body. He always come across to me as all restless action and yakkety yak.
Suddenly they were coming thick and fast. Whoosh. Whoosh. All from a similar central point. I twisted my head this way and that. We kept pointing them out, and missing seeing each other’s.
“I’m getting neck-ache!” I complained.
Quinn bent and picked up the small rucksack he’d brought with him.
“I’ve got a picnic blanket,” he informed me. “I generally lie down and look up from the ground.” He spread it out, and while he was at it, he pulled out a half bottle of Islay whisky. “And I brought you this,” he added. Islay’s quite a smoky peaty one, but I was getting to like those.
We lay flat on our backs and stared up at the sky. He’d also brought a small pair of binoculars, and started helping me decipher what I was seeing. Up until now I’d only ever been able to identify Orion and the Plough, with the new addition of the Southern Hemisphere’s Southern Cross. We alternated taking slugs from the bottle of Islay. It was too strong a flavour to need much at a time. Eventually I wouldn’t allow him to have any more as he can’t hold his drink and
I didn’t want to feel unsafe up behind him as we drove back down those steep winding roads.
Finally he put his arm around me. I let him. In fact I curled up against him and put my head into his shoulder, partly for warmth, and partly because it felt good. He pressed his face into my hair and said nothing. I closed my eyes and waited. Still he said nothing.
“You let me down the first time, big time, Quinn,” I ended up being the one to start it. “And then Pete let me down in a spectacularly painful fashion, and then Tyler died on me. I can’t go through this again…”
“I’m so sorry.” There was a husky catch in his voice. “What if I promise never to let you down again?”
“What if you can’t help yourself?” I said tersely.
He was silent again. “What would you count as me letting you down?” He asked at last.
That was a sensible question. There was a long pause while I tried to identify my feelings. “Cheating on me. Lying to me. Disappearing off without communicating with me. Not supporting me emotionally when I need it. Defending yourself from being vulnerable with me. Putting on an act with me…”
He listened without comment.
“If we got together, Quinn,” I laid out inflexibly. “I’d want you to be the real ordinary you when you’re with me. The guy with oil on his face and big hands who can look into a car engine and see instantly what’s wrong. Not the poncing Puss in Boots, out to create a stir. I don’t care what you do when you’re not with me. You can go to as many of those dumb parties as you like but I won’t be coming with you. You can do what you need to do to get noticed and get ahead, but I’m not being your side-kick in any of it. I’ll turn up to the really important stuff, but otherwise you leave me out of it, and you don’t talk about our private relationship to anyone! Especially not the media. Understood?”
“Yes,” he said steadily. “I understand.”
“And I don’t get music. I just don’t get it. I’m sorry. But you need to understand that it’ll always be a closed book to me, so there’s no use hoping that you’ll be able to educate me. You’ll have to be resigned to the fact that there’s a really important part of your life that you can’t ever share with me. You’ll have to get your needs met in that area elsewhere.”
“Ok.” He sighed slightly.
“How about you?” I prompted. “What would you want from me?”
“Nothing,” he said huskily. “I just love you so much I feel like my world would end if you weren’t in it. I finally realised that I couldn’t bear it any longer. I had to try one more time before you went off into the sunset forever with someone else…”
My heart skipped a sudden beat. “So if you truly feel like that, why have you been so rotten to me this last year?” I queried with a slight quiver in my voice that I couldn’t conceal.
I felt Quinn wriggle uncomfortably. Finally he admitted, “I knew my life would have to change if I wanted you and I didn’t know if I was ready. I was enjoying myself too much. And you remember what happened with Daisy..?”
I didn’t know actually, but I could readily guess.
“I ended up feeling like I was in a straitjacket.” He sighed. “It suited me for a bit, not having to make any effort – you know – having Daisy ‘on tap’ as you rudely referred to it. But the very bits of me that Daisy admired were all the bits you don’t care for. And finally I couldn’t keep the pretence up with her any more. Not that I realised just how much I was pretending at the start. But she fell in love with the public face, and eventually I just longed to be able to take the mask off.”
I listened in the darkness without interrupting, flashes of light still dashing in and out of the periphery of my vision.
“And I kept tussling with myself because I was afraid that a relationship with you would eventually just turn into a different sort of straitjacket.” He fell silent. “But whenever I caught a glimpse of you in the background of the F1 coverage on TV, I felt like I’d been stabbed in the guts. And now they have that clip of you every time in the credits at the end, looking up from your screen and smiling into the camera when Nish did that first overtaking move. And I wait for it every time and then I switch off and feel a bit sick because I’m certain you’re going to go off with Nish, and I couldn’t bear that, even though I know he’s so much more decent a guy than me, and is a much better prospect for you. He’s a sure fire bet and I’m just a chancer. Who knows if I’m going to make it or not? He already has…”
I didn’t rush to reassure him. “Nish is very happy with Miriam,” I pointed out. “He gets that soppy look on his face whenever he looks at her.”
“Yeah, bloody annoying isn’t it?” Quinn agreed. “But it won’t last.”
“Don’t be mean, Quinn, she’s a little sweetie,” I rebuked. “Why wouldn’t it last?”
He said nothing.
“Nish’s Mum hates me, Sappho treats me like dirt, and his older brother looks through me,” I pointed out at last. “They’re a whole stratosphere above the likes of us, Quinn. Me and Nish wouldn’t work out either.”
“It’s just I know what you’re like about drivers…” Quinn sniffed.
“You know I’m famed for only going out with World Champions,” I teased him. “So Nish has got a fair bit of time to wait yet!”
We lay there a while longer, staring up at the heavenly firework show, then I said, “I’m tired Quinn, and I’m in work tomorrow.”
Back at the flat I realised he’d have to stay over.
“Can I come in with you?” He asked, in unusually diffident tones for him.
I looked him sternly in the eye. “Only if you promise not to make any sort of move on me. I haven’t agreed to anything at all yet.”
He hung his head like a little boy being told off. “Just a normal cuddle like in the old days?” He bargained.
He got his cuddle.
He hung around another day, and took me out for a drink and a meal at a nearby village gastro pub. It had a great reputation locally, and almost inevitably I saw two guys from Williams there with their wives. I smiled and had a brief word with them before retreating back to our table. Word would have flown round the factory before the end of work tomorrow, I surmised. Still, it wouldn’t do me any harm. At last they might shut up with the speculation about me and Nish that had set off at full tilt again after his deliberate publicity stunt at that party.
“What are you thinking about?” Quinn asked after I’d been silent for a while.
“I’m thinking about all the smug ‘I told you so’s that will be echoing around our home town,” I admitted with fiercely pursed lips. “They’ve been predicting we’ll get together since we were about fourteen, and I do so hate to prove them right!”
Quinn smiled slightly. “Yeah, but they’ll be glad the drama’s finally over – you know – after just a mere eight or nine years or so, they’ll just breathe a sigh of relief…”
“Not promising nuffin yet,” I warned severely.
He smiled slightly, his green eyes warm on my face, and wisely kept his mouth shut for once.
In the US, Nish spotted me in the queue to clear customs. We weren’t always travelling out to race weekends on the same plane, and if we ever were, he would always be in first class and I would be with the plebs in standard, so we wouldn’t see each other. He wandered over.
“So are you and Quinn together yet or not?” He queried. “I couldn’t tell from what Quinn said.”
I thought carefully. “Not,” I decided at last. “But I’m allowing him to discuss the possibility without launching any heavy objects at his head, so I guess he can consider that progress.”
Nish grinned. “So it’s watch this space, is it?”
I glanced at him and sniffed. “Maybe…”
The fixture at Austin in Texas, one of the few anticlockwise circuits, was back to back with Brazil. Nish and I weren’t coming home in between. We stayed on in Austin for a couple of days afterwards, expecting to travel down to Brazil on the Wednesday.
On the Monday, there was a knock on my hotel door. I expected Nish or some other Williams connection so was a trifle gobsmacked to find Quinn standing there.
“I see you’re looking like a complete tart as usual,” I observed dryly.
He smiled winningly at me. “I know the only thing that turns you on is the smell of engine oil but I’m out here on some promotional business for Full Frontal and I can’t go around looking like I’ve just pulled my head out from under some bonnet just to please you, can I?”
I sniffed. “So you were out here anyway?” I established.
He winked at me. “I kinda created some urgent promotional opportunities,” he admitted. “But as Austin’s official slogan is The Live Music Capital of the World and it’s got more music venues per capita than any other U.S. city, I managed to convince the rest of the band, and I’ve made some good connections already so it’s nearly true…” He wandered into my room as I stepped aside. “Might have got us a foot in the door at the South by South West, and bagged us an appearance on the Austin City Limits.” I had no idea what he was talking about, but nodded politely.
“Then I had a fancy to come down to the Brazil gig with you,” he suggested.
“Well, don’t be getting in Nish’s hair till after the race, will you?” I warned snappishly. “He won’t want to drink, and he won’t want any late nights. Don’t expect him to relax until after the race on Sunday and all the post-race interviews are in the bag. Then you can take him out and party.”
“And you as well?” He bargained, his green eyes sparkling and trying to flirt with mine.
I shook my head. “You, me and Nish in the same room won’t play well,” I predicted darkly.
“What do you mean by that?” Quinn asked, a swift shadow passing over his face.
I wasn’t exactly sure. I shrugged. But I had a feeling that if we all went somewhere together, then inevitably I’d be leaving again with Nish.
The Way Back Page 38