The Way Barred

by Dominique Kyle

  Next day at work I cried into the engines again.

  “I wish she’d stop crying now Mum,” Jo said. “I thought it was all wrong when she wasn’t, and now I just want her to stop!”

  “I think she loved him a lot more than we all realised, darling,” Sue said to her. They were talking about me on the other side of that glass again. “I wasn’t that keen you know. It seemed all wrong and I was worried he was taking advantage of her youth. But finally I could see that he adored her and would do anything for her and I decided that we can’t choose who we love can we?”

  “She was so off-hand about him, Mum,” Jo said. “I thought it was just a bit of a fling.”

  “Well clearly it wasn’t,” Sue said. “And it’s going to take her a long time to get over this – on top of what happened with Pete before it.”

  “God, I still don’t understand why Pete did that!” Jo exclaimed disgustedly. “And then just when she’d got over him and was getting back to normal he sits down and cries and says he loves her really, and he was being a stupid insecure idiot when he thought she’d go off with Quinn!”

  “Yes that was a bit heart-breaking,” Sue agreed with a sigh.

  “All that pain he’d put her through,” Jo said crossly, “and months and months when he could have just reached out a hand to her and she’d have fallen back into his arms! And then he announces that once she’s finally walked away and it’s too late!”

  “That’s why of course,” Sue surmised. “He sensed she’d finally gone…”

  “And now he’s bloody well back with the Quinn girl just as Eve is free again! The timing stinks!”

  “She’s not free again, Jo,” Sue said gently. “She’s Tyler’s now. She’d never be able to go back to Pete after Tyler…”

  “Why not?” Jo said stubbornly.

  “Because much though I love Pete, no-one could go back to Pete after they’d been with Tyler. Tyler was just perfect for her.”

  “Apart from the wife and kids…” Jo muttered.

  “Well these things tend to work out in the end, perfect doesn’t mean the same as ‘ideal’.”

  “She told me that she was worried that she’d feel she’d missed out on the best bit – the setting up of her business from scratch and starting from nothing.”

  “Well it’s true it would have been like jumping a stage in life, but I’m sure he would have wanted her to have her own business and do her own thing, so she could have done that bit of it anyway.”

  Jo was silent.

  “What I’m trying to say, love, is that this is proper grief. Don’t imagine that her relationship with Tyler was superficial just because she was flippant in the way she spoke about him. It’s clear that this reaction is about as deep as it can go and you can’t rush her through it. It’s a terrible shock at the end of a year when she’d only just got over her last terrible shock, and what with Quinn’s mother dying so recently as well, and losing her mother so young, the loss is going to be hard to cope with. So I’m just saying that I wouldn’t be surprised after all this if she gives up on romance for a year or two and concentrates on her business.”

  “Well that’s ok by me,” Jo muttered. “People are so annoying when they’re in love!”

  “It’ll come to you one day,” Sue comforted her.

  “Well I don’t want it to. You can keep it!” Jo snapped and got up abruptly and slammed out.

  I looked up from where I’d had my head down on my arms on the kitchen table. “What was that reaction about?” I asked with a voice husky and hoarse from crying and rusty from lack of use.

  Sue didn’t say sarcastically, oh finally you’re speaking again are you? She smiled at me sweetly and said, “Jo thinks it’s impossible for her to fall in love…”

  “I used to think that as well,” I said. “But eventually I did – with Tyler.” I thought about Jo. “But it’s different with Jo. She’s afraid that if she falls in love she won’t be able to give them what they want – you know – a full relationship.”

  Sue frowned. “I’m not sure what you’re saying?”

  I wasn’t sure what I should say really. Jo probably would want me to keep my mouth shut. But it might really help if Sue understood better. “You know – sex. She’s asexual. Isn’t interested in sex?”

  “Maybe she’s just not found the right one,” Sue said delicately. Her tone of voice implied, you know – the right gender.

  “She’s tried both men and women Sue, she’s found she’s not interested in sex with either.”

  Sue looked taken aback, not shocked exactly. But as though her assumptions were being a bit brutally undermined. “I didn’t know,” she said at last.

  “She’s not gay,” I said. “But she’s not straight, and she’s not bi. She’s just asexual. You should Google it. I did. It was really interesting and after I read up on it, I had to agree with her that it seemed to fit.”

  “So...?” Sue came to a halt. She didn’t seem to know what she wanted to ask.

  “So it doesn’t mean that she won’t fall in love. But ideally it would be with some bloke who can’t get it up, or a woman who isn’t that interested in orgasms…”

  Sue was struggling.

  “Actually, if she knew I was saying all this to you she’d probably never forgive me…” I said. “I should never have said anything.” I suddenly felt as though I’d completely betrayed her and my eyes filled with tears.

  “Saying all what to you?” Paul’s voice made us both start as he came in from the boot room.

  Sue flushed, as though it was herself that the secret was about. “Um…” Sue looked over at me. “I’m not going to let on to her – honestly Eve. Once I’ve processed it I’ll be glad you’ve told me.”

  “Told you what?” Paul asked, looking between our two faces.

  “Another time, Paul,” Sue said abruptly signalling to him with her eyes to shut up now.

  “Tea or coffee?” He said turning his back on us and taking the kettle over to the tap to fill it.

  “Neither. Bed for me I think,” I said hoarsely, and left them to talk.

  Next day I announced I was going back to the flat. I could see Jo was relieved. She needed a break from me. She saw me at work all day, and she needed to be able to go home and get away from all the emotion.

  “Are you sure darling?” Sue asked. “You promise me you’ll eat and drink?”

  I nodded.

  So Sue dropped me back home and I noticed that Jo gave quite a perfunctory good-bye. I didn’t want Jo to be irritable with me. I couldn’t behave in a way that meant she was forced to keep her distance for her own sanity, because I needed her. I really needed her. I had to pull myself together at work, and keep it all for when I was alone in my room, because poor Quinn wouldn’t cope for long either, so soon after his own bereavement. I needed to button it up for everybody’s sake.

  When I got into my room I looked around it blindly. I had nothing of Tyler’s to remember him by, except the earrings, but they’d never belonged to him. I went over to my clothes and yanked my way through them. Nothing that I hadn’t washed since I’d seen him. Nothing that would smell of him. The red dress? No he’d barely touched me in it. He’d undressed me almost immediately in the bedroom. I tore back my bedclothes. They shocked me. The sheets and the pillows were covered in blood. It seemed appropriate though. Like a visible sign of my inner wounding. Like I really had bled my soul out that first terrible night. Would they smell of him though? No, I’d washed them hadn’t I, the next day after he’d stayed because they’d got stained? I pulled the bloodied ones off and put them to my nose anyway. No they smelt distinctly of Quinn, and our unwashed clothes that we’d been wearing that day at Belle Vue, motor oil and the dusty smell of shale. Profoundly upsetting rather than comforting. I took them straight out to the washing machine.

  Quinn came in from work just as I was switching it on, and he stopped short on seeing me. He smiled slightly. I could see he didn’t know what to say. I thought
, he knows absolutely nothing helps. He knows it because he’s not long been through it himself. Nothing anyone can say can ever make it better.

  “It’s nice to have you back,” he said at last. “The place didn’t feel right without you around.”

  I nodded slightly.

  “Did you go to the funeral on Thursday?” Then he stopped abruptly like he realised he’d asked a stupid question. “No, sorry, Rob said you didn’t.” He looked sympathetically at me. “I’m sorry you couldn’t go because of Jeanette. It would have helped you say good-bye instead of you being left hanging in limbo. At least I had lots of people to tell me how sorry they were about my mum and talk to me about her.”

  I stood there looking emptily at him and he walked over to me and put his arms around me and held me tightly for a moment. “If you ever need a hug, just come and ask me, won’t you?”

  Back in my room I couldn’t be bothered to re-make my bed. Quinn was right, I thought. I never saw Tyler’s body because it seemed to belong to Jeanette, I never went to the funeral because it seemed to belong to Jeanette, and I’ll never know where his ashes are scattered because Jeanette will have done it. There’s not even going to be a grave for me to visit. I don’t exist in any of this. And yet she was the one who didn’t want him and left him and wasn’t even married to him anymore, and I was the one who loved him. And I lay on top of my bare mattress and started crying again.

  Quinn was really sweet. He’d come over and sit beside me on the settee where I was curled staring vaguely into space, and he’d put his arm round me for a bit. Or give me a cuddle from behind as I sat at the table. Daisy put up with it, but I could see she didn’t like it. Why do I feel so alone? I thought. I suppose the difference was that when my mother died I still had my father to cuddle me. And when Quinn’s mother died he still had his girlfriend to cuddle him. But when the one who dies is the very one you used to go to for cuddles, where do you turn for comfort? Just once, when Daisy stayed over at her parents, Quinn came and got into bed with me and stayed all night. I didn’t stop him because I kind of needed it. But I knew it was wrong to let him. Daisy would go mental if she knew.

  There kept being a missed number on my phone which I didn’t recognise. Finally it rang at a time when I could answer, lunch time at work.

  It was a BriSCA representative. “As you’ll be aware, as the points table stands at the end of the season, Nathan Tyler qualified as the National Points Champion.”

  “Yes,” I said, my heart jolting painfully at the unexpected mention of his name.

  He cleared his throat, obviously aware that this would be a difficult topic for me. “Only, since his unfortunate passing, that leaves you as the National Points Champion…”

  I burst into tears. “I don’t want it!” I nearly shouted down the phone.

  Jo looked up sharply from where she was working on something in the corner.

  I walked swiftly outside and shivered in the cold. The poor man at the other end of the phone was hurrumphing awkwardly.

  “I know it’s not how anyone would want to gain a Championship,” he said, “but it’s not as though you were miles behind. If you’d driven those last few races instead of withdrawing, then you’d have won it.”

  “If I’d driven those last few races I’d still have won it because he was dead!” I snarled.

  “And if he’d been able to attend and competed against you, it was still a fifty fifty chance that you might have got it,” he said.

  I just felt very weary all of a sudden. I leant against the corrugated iron wall of the workshop. “You think?”

  “We all thought that. No-one was willing to bet on who would take it. You’ve been driving really well this year, and beating him often enough to make the outcome uncertain. Who knows what would have happened if you hadn’t incurred that ban?”

  “Is that what everyone is saying?”

  “Yes,” he said firmly. “It is. So although we’d have had to do this anyway, however far the runner up was behind in the table – you can be sure that there won’t be a soul out there who’ll not think you’re a worthy inheritor of the title and that you deserve to hold it for the coming year…”

  I was silent.

  “So will you accept it? We’re not willing to give it to anyone else.”

  “Ok,” I said at last. “On one condition. That Tyler’s name is put as the winner on the cup for the coming year and that you present it to his wife and daughters at the NEC without any mention of myself, and you leave his name at the top of the year’s results table online.”

  He thought about it. “Yes that’s fair. That’s a really good idea in fact. But we’ll make sure we get the message out that it was you that suggested it, otherwise it may seem rather churlish of us.”

  “Ok,” I said feeling suddenly relieved. It hadn’t occurred to me that I would be forced to inherit the Silver roof. But this way, at least Tyler was honoured in it all.

  When I walked back inside, Jo was instantly on me. “What was that about?” She demanded.

  When I explained she nodded. “Dad said you’d get the Silver roof now but he didn’t like to mention it because he knew you’d be gutted.”

  I crouched down with my back against the cold iron wall and my arms around my knees. “So we’ll have both the Gold and the Silver in the garage at the same time after all,” I said sadly. “I just didn’t want to get it this way. And next year I’ll be gutted that I’m taking the Gold roof off Pete and not fighting Tyler for it.” My eyes filled with tears. “I wanted to be fighting it out with Tyler for years yet!”

  She came and crouched down beside me. “At least you’re talking about driving again. I was really scared that you were going to refuse to ever get in a Stock car again…”

  We sat in silence for a time.

  “You and Pete could do worse than both fight it out for the Silver next year. Us two against Dad and Pete. That would be fun!”

  I was silent.

  “I know it’s not the same,” she added sympathetically.

  “Nothing will be the same ever again,” I said with a sob.

  “You’re the new Tyler,” Jo said. “Everyone knows that. They’re just waiting for you to mature into your driving style and finally hone your skills, and then you’ll be dominating like he did.”

  “I don’t want to be the new Tyler. I want my Tyler back! I want to look across the grid and see my Tyler there determined to beat me and calling me a cheeky pup, but not really minding if I do beat him because he was a lovely kind generous soul…”

  “Was he?” She sounded a bit surprised. “Well I suppose I didn’t know him very well. He was so out of my league I never really dared talk to him when I was still driving because I thought he’d look down on me. I admit I was surprised at how much fun he was when he stayed over at our house, and how laid back and generous he was when he was helping us with your car.”

  I began to cry again.

  “Oh God,” she said getting up. “We knew this would upset you all over again! Don’t cry too much Eve or the men will get fed up of you!” And she walked off.

  I rubbed at my eyes and tried to pull myself together. I had to get used to it. Tyler was gone and for me, nothing at a Stock car race would ever feel quite the same. Everyone else was a bit sorry and sympathetic and shocked, but it wouldn’t change their life or their driving experience any. My life however had exploded into smithereens and nobody else would ever understand. Except perhaps his daughters. Poor little things.

  The next terrible thing to happen came via Quinn and Daisy. He was sitting at the table and I was on the settee, and he said to me, “Daisy and I have found ourselves a flat and we’re moving out next week. Obviously we’ve paid the rent here till Christmas but we want to be settled in there before then.”

  I twisted round and stared at him. “You and Daisy have found yourself a flat?” I echoed. “Just the two of you? And you’re leaving me here on my own?”

  I got up from the settee and
walked into the middle of the room and then just stood there, frozen, staring at him.

  He looked apologetic. “Well we’ve all got to move out by Christmas anyway, so it’s just a couple of weeks early.”

  He saw the shocked expression on my face. “Didn’t you know?” He faltered. “Surely you knew that we’ve been given notice to get out by Christmas?”

  I felt like the rest of the world that was left to me was just falling away from under my feet and I was just left hanging in space. “No!” I said.

  He looked taken aback, and then a bit ashamed. “Well I suppose it was back when I wasn’t speaking to you. I left the letter out on the table here for you to see. It was addressed to all of us…”

  “There’s always loads of crap on that table!” I protested. “I just sweep it all off without looking at it! How could you possibly think I’d notice it?”

  Quinn looked embarrassed. “I was just so angry with you at the time, I didn’t care! And then I just didn’t think about the fact you might not know.”

  “What am I going to do?” I was beside myself. “Quinn, how could you do this to me?”

  Quinn looked miserable. “I’m sorry Ginty. You really can’t come with us, not even to tide you over – it’s just a one room bedsit.”

  Daisy came out of her room. “What are you doing Adam?” She said accusingly. “How could it even cross your mind for you to offer for her to come with us?”