“It’s just the same, but bigger,” he assured me. “And I’m sure you’ll thoroughly enjoy coming up against Paul again.” He saw my expression. “Yes I persuaded someone else to nominate Paul.”
“I’m going to lose for sure! He’s bound to have driven them before…” I groaned. “Please don’t be too disappointed if I don’t beat him!”
“Ah, but I think you’ll find that mine is the better car…” He said confidently. And then he smiled at me.
I rushed over to where the Beast was parked. “Paul! Have you heard?”
He straightened up and smiled. “Yes, I have.”
And then I just didn’t know what else to say, so I darted off again.
Rob leant through the window with a few instructions. As he had predicted, inside the cab was familiar enough. The gearbox was a Doug Nash with three gears – reverse, crawler and race mode. Straight line transmission through to a modified Ford Transit back axle. Amazing how it could take the 800 brake horsepower.
He patted the roof. “You’ll be starting at the back, so don’t be afraid to have a go at a few bumpers.” He looked ironically at me. “It’s the end of the season – so feel free to crash the car. As long as you promise to help me put it back together again! Off you go!”
Whoa! The comparative power. The sound of the engine. The vibrations that went through your arms from the steering wheel. I was scared of what would happen if I went for a hit. The car was so much heavier and with so much more power behind it, I didn’t want to misjudge it and send someone into the fence with myself straight after it. I made, what I could hear now in my head the race report referring to as five ‘safe and competent’ laps round the track concentrating on how to get it round the corners which seemed to come up a lot quicker than when I was in my usual car, and annoyingly also came up each time just as the engine was really beginning to make purchase on the speed front. And then I began to look around to see what everyone else was doing. One of the other novices helpfully turned themselves on their roof when trying out a hit that sent the other car into the fence. So a yellow flag came out and it gave me a breather to assess where I was in the race order and decide what to do next. Ok, just go for it. If I knew Rob, he’d rather see me attempt a dangerous exciting race that ended up trashing the car, than drive like his granny and bring it home boringly safe. When the green flag went down this time I just put my foot down which had alarmingly different results to what happened when I did that with my Ford Pinto engine. I ploughed my way through at least four cars ahead of me, more by accident than design, skidded alarmingly and way out of control round the next bend, wrestled it back in with my heart pumping, and did it all again, but a bit more under control. Finally I attempted a belter on Paul, kind of made it work, and came in fifth with Paul sixth.
“Well done,” Rob said with a smile, hauling me out. I was glad he did that as I didn’t want to admit to him that I felt weak from adrenaline, and I didn’t want him to see I was shaking. “That looked like fun! You nearly lost it on that first bend after you speeded up, but you got it back ok. Going to drive it in the Final then?”
How could I refuse?
There were other races in my own format first. And for us F2s the season didn’t finish until tomorrow so most of these still counted. So I had to concentrate. I went back to my car straight away as my first F2 race was in just ten minutes time.
Pete came over and put an arm round my shoulder. “How was that then?” He asked with a smile.
I glanced round to see where his Dad was before I answered. He wasn’t near enough to overhear. “Terrifying,” I whispered. “Look, I’m still shaking.” I held out my hands to show the fine finger tremble. “But exhilarating,” I added. “I’m glad I’m getting another chance to put right my mistakes…”
Having chosen to save my tyres for the winner takes all Wild Card race, and also the Shoot Out with the unusually large stash of prize money divided between the top spots, I was forced to drive conservatively in everything else, which meant that Paul, Pete and Horrocks, each came ahead of me on the podium in one race or another. When I pocketed the thousand pounds with ease, I saw Paul and Pete glance at each other as though to agree that’s that what they’d thought I was up to. I capped it off with top spot in the Shoot Out as well, so I wasn’t bothered about the others as long as I stayed ahead of Horrocks overall in the points.
The Final in the F1s came along amidst all this. I was determined to make a good showing to do Rob proud, but I didn’t have a hope of being able to ever swop formats, as I’d never have the money to do it. With all the less able drivers sifted out, I didn’t think I had much chance of finishing as high in the rankings as last time. Still, this was the last race for this car today, so just go for it. That’s what Rob had said as he patted the roof again. Just go for it!
I plunged my way through, still finding it hard to judge how hard to hit, though the angle judgements were pretty much the same as in my own format. Sparks were flying out as metal crashed and scraped together. I was gaining better control on the corners. Then Paul decided to go for me and I was thrown dramatically out towards the fence. I fought my way back and muscled into the fray, struggling back up behind Paul again and returning the compliment. He did the same back. And in a fit of giddy end of term high spirits, I pounced again, really hard, and he flew out to the right. As I spotted him in my rear view mirror determinedly heading back I figured that this could only end with both of us in the fence upside down, so I remembered Rob’s claim that his was the better car and decided that the only way out of this was to decisively stay ahead and out of harm’s way. I put my foot down and hung on tightly.
I passed the chequers in seventh and Paul was in ninth.
“Very respectable,” Rob concluded as he helped me out again. He laughed at me. “You seemed to enjoy giving Paul his come-uppance!”
“I don’t think either of us wanted to knacker either our own or each other’s borrowed cars,” I reported. “Or we’d have gone in harder.”
He rolled his eyes. “These people with a conscience..!” He despaired.
At the end of the evening, Horrocks came over and stood by me. “I’ve had enough now, Eve. I’d really rather finish the season here. How about we shake on you taking the Silver roof tonight and not bother with Stoke tomorrow? It would take a miracle there tomorrow to upset the order, so it’s basically superfluous…”
“That’s ok by me,” I said in relief. “It means we can head home tonight.”
So we shook on it.
“And it means I can keep you away from Harry until next season now,” he added with a grin.
I pulled a ‘sorry’ face. “I’ll put a gag in it next year, I promise, Howoxth,” I said.
We’d be getting home awfully late, but Jo was pleased when she heard the news. We’d just about squeezed the shale car in the back of the Beast by removing its aerofoil and tyres and had been going to swop it out onto the trailer and dismantle the tarmac one to be put in the Beast, so that the men could go home while we hung around down South for an extra day. Now we could just shoot off.
On the way home, while Jo drove, I read out the article they’d written about me in the Saturday Guardian. I initially refused point blank when Nick had asked me to do interviews. But he’d reassured me that he didn’t mean TV ones, and then when I went on to have a rant about what the gutter press had done to me in the past, he also assured me that he meant the quality press.
“It depends which one decides to pick it up,” he explained. “Because Rotherham had a majority Labour Council, the Times were able to put the boot in and took it on as a bit of a project, but it looks like the Guardian might be sniffing around this one.”
“It’s totally corny,” I warned Jo and Cody in embarrassment. “They start out talking about me like some heroine from a trashy romance.”
“Don’t expect me to know what that’s like,” Jo shot back, “I’ve never read one.”
“Bet Cody has though?�
�� I suggested, glancing behind me. Cody just smiled coyly without admitting to anything.
“As I wait in the café for Eve McGinty, the young woman who went in to uncover the latest grooming gang scandal, I don’t know what to expect. All I know about her is that she has stormed the doors of the previously all male preserve of elite Formula Two Stock Car drivers and all but smashed them down. At the age of twenty I am given to understand that she is the current English Champion, European Champion, National Points Champion and World Champion.” I stopped and said to Jo. “See, no mention of World of Shale again! No-one has any idea what it is!”
“Carry on!” Cody urged.
“I stand up as she comes in and pauses to look around for me. And I am shocked at how small and slight she is, and how young she looks. Now I understand how she could pass for a fourteen year old, which had been a factor that had been bothering me. How did she get away with it? I ask her that as soon as we’ve settled with our coffees. She looks blankly at me. ‘People see what they expect to see,’ she answers, as though that’s obvious. I ask her to show me the cigarette burns on her arm. ‘Why?’ She asks aggressively. Yes, why do I want to see the visible outward signs of the abuse? Suddenly I have no idea why I asked it. But she rolls her sleeve up anyway, and with no expression on her face, shows me the mess he’s made of her arm. Then her eyes begin to narrow when I ask how extensive a network she discovered once she started the investigation, and they begin to glitter dangerously when I ask her what her initial motivation was to go in undercover posing as a fourteen year old. And the core of steel that runs through this deceptively delicate looking frame is suddenly revealed.”
Jo laughed. “He can say that again!”
“And the more she explains what was going on in her home town, and why everyone was looking the other way, the more I realise how much us liberal lefties are part of the problem. This is our worst nightmare. We want to condemn abuse, we want to denounce the systematic oppression of women and protest gender inequality, but these grooming gang cases combine child sexual exploitation together with one of our biggest left leaning bête noires – we want to believe that multiculturalism works – we are terrified of appearing to be racist or non-inclusive at any level whatsoever. We can make fun of the Anglican Church, we can denounce the Catholic Church for their own misogynistic church set up and extensive child abuse scandals, but woe betide us if we dare to say a word against any other religion. It’s not the fear of jihad if we speak out, no it’s the fear of our own selves, that we dared to even think such a thing. We are caught between a heartfelt belief that all humanity is equal and deserves the same rights, and an instinct towards cultural relativity. We mustn’t be seen to believe that we in the West are right. So as long as the abuse takes place in an Islamic country far away, then we can soothe ourselves with the belief that it’s up to their own parliaments to decide their own values. But when it appears on our own doorsteps, and Sharia law courts are set up at the end of our streets…then the dichotomy in our own values become stretched to breaking point. Sometimes it is just a lot easier to bury one’s head in the sand.”
I put the paper down on my lap. “Basically, he barely quotes a thing I said to him. It’s just a load of philosophy. I don’t know why he bothered to come all the way up to interview me. He asked me loads of questions, made me talk for ages, and then doesn’t even mention a word I said!”
“So is that it then?” Jo asked.
“Bit more woffle then something about me not having such finer points of conscience, which sounds a bit back handed to me, and then ‘Eve McGinty believes that no woman in this country should suffer any form of prejudice or abuse and she doesn’t believe that a blind eye should be turned to it just because either the girls or the perpetrators come from differing cultural backgrounds with different social values.’”
I tossed the paper down and Cody picked it up and settled down to read it all over again. Good luck to her, I thought. I couldn’t really get what he was harping on about. Of course women shouldn’t be abused! Why would anyone think any different?
We dropped Cody off at home, and turned back into the Satterthwaite’s yard at getting on for one am.
“We’ll unload tomorrow,” Jo yawned. As we got out and bent over the trailer to unhitch it we suddenly leapt back as the most enormous bang I’ve ever heard exploded somewhere close, echoing round the moors.
“Fuck! What was that?” Jo exclaimed.
My heart was exploding in my chest and we were both shaking. My ears were ringing. We stared around. We could see nothing. My brain was running through possible explanations. I was terrified momentarily that Paul and Pete had just had a terrible crash in the Beast on the hill coming up to the house. The horses were whinnying and smashing their hoofs against the stalls. Sue ran out of the house. She was in her pyjamas, with a coat thrown over the top and her bare feet shoved into some plastic clogs.
“What’s happened?” She shouted.
“We don’t know, Mum!” Jo shouted back.
We all stood in a huddle staring around us.
And then, quite suddenly, light began to flicker at the far end. Red and yellow glowing. And then flames began to leap high out of the stable roof.
“Shit!” Jo said, staring in frozen horror.
And then we all began to run towards the stables.
“Do we just let them all out?” Jo yelled breathlessly at her Mum.
“The gate’s open for your Dad to come in,” Sue said quickly. “They’ll run out on to the road! And the paddock’s too close, the flames will just make them bolt and smash their way out.”
We were already at the first loose box and she was slamming the bolts open. “Get them across to the barn and they won’t be able to hear or see the flames – you two take Apple Pie – throw a jumper over his eyes if necessary!”
He was big, enormous, her biggest horse, which was why she’d put Quinn on him. Jo and I grabbed his halter on either side and led him out.
“Keep him calm!” Sue yelled as she threw open the door of the next box.
“God, how can we do that when we’re shitting ourselves?” Jo exclaimed to me.
But somehow we got him nearly to the barn without him pulling away, and then the Beast turned into the yard.
“Thank God!” Jo said.
Paul and Pete leapt out. Pete looked shocked. Paul looked grim.
“Quick Dad,” Jo yelled. “We’ve only got two out so far!”
The men ran towards the stables where the flames were now roaring ominously and Sue was hauling another terrified horse out of the entrance.
I threw open the barn door and Jo ran the big sweating eye rolling animal inside. I pulled out my phone and dialled 999. “Fire,” I said swiftly. “Quickly!”
“And Police!” Jo shouted across.
I stared at her.
“Well who the hell do you think blew the stables up?” Jo said angrily. “It wasn’t the faeries was it?”
A trickle of cold horror and dismay began to run through me. Please no, please may this not be my fault.
Pete came into the barn with the horse he’d retrieved off his mum while she went back in to the stables for the next. “It’s already an inferno,” he reported in appalled tones. “What on earth caused that?”
“Why don’t you just hazard a guess?” Jo said grimly, her eyes flickering towards myself.
Paul appeared at the door with another. “Has anyone called the fire brigade?” He asked straight away.
“Yes, Eve has,” Jo told him. “Do we tie them up or let them loose? Which is worse? They could cut their legs to pieces on all the metalwork in here if they panic!”
Sue arrived with a snorting, rearing, kicking charge. She was hanging on with all her strength. “He’s just hysterical,” she panted. “Someone close the doors so he can’t see or hear it anymore.”
I looked around each horse in turn. Horse? Where was Horse? None of them were Horse… I ran out of the barn and across the yar
d towards the raging blaze. It was leaping through the roof. It was roaring. Sparks were flying upwards and being carried away on the breeze, bits of hay and straw. Small explosions suddenly going off as flammable things inside went up. I could hear her screaming. Thudding desperately on the walls of her stall. Why hadn’t Sue just opened her door? I plunged into the entrance of the stables and stared around. The light was so bright it was imprinting on my eyes so that everywhere I looked I could just see spots of red. And the heat was a furnace on my face. She was at the far end, I knew that. The end the fire had started. Between me and that end was a wall of flame. I looked round for a bucket of water to douse my clothes in. How I wished I was still in my fire retardant driving clothes! Horse’s screams were so appalling I just went for it. And as I did so, someone grabbed me by my waist and dragged me forcibly out.
“No!” It was Pete. He had both arms clamped around me, hauling me back and out of the way. “No Eve it’s not worth it! You’ll kill yourself!”
I yelled and fought him desperately. “It’s Horse! I have to let Horse out!”
He fought me to the ground and held me there, arms clamped around my waist and chest, grimly stopping me wriggling out of his grasp. I began to sob desperately. Suddenly Paul was there.
“It’s Baby,” Pete explained breathlessly to him. “She’s still in there. But sorry Dad – I had to stop Eve going back in for her – I know it sounds awful. But it’s not worth Eve killing herself for a horse! And Baby’s stopped screaming now. If she’s not yet dead then she’s better off dead.”
There was a heavy silence. Paul closed his eyes briefly. “I know you’re right Pete,” he said after a moment. “But did it have to be Baby?”
I was half lying along the cold ground, half being held up against Pete, sobbing wracking sobs that felt like they’d rip my heart and lungs out.
Purgatory Is a Place Too Page 36