It was now or never. I eased the door open and sank into the soft leather of the driving seat. In front of me, the controls spread out invitingly like the flight deck of a space rocket. Sticking out at right angles to the steering wheel, almost like a joystick, was the transmission lever itself. With the engine running, one pull and the car would almost literally become airborne.
Unaware of my presence, Béatrice was now ready to begin her routine. Adopting a kittenish pose, she draped her body across the bonnet and drew her lips into a little pout.
The effect was instantaneous. One by one, several grizzled journalists began to nudge each other and peel away from the German stand. Soon a small crowd had gathered, gawping, transfixed. As Béatrice continued to wriggle around on the bonnet, I spotted the photographer Christian had been talking to wrestle his way to the front and raise his camera. There was a loud crunch of phosphorous and the bulb exploded, blinding me with a searing flash.
It took several moments for my eyesight to recover, but when it did I had to blink three times to reassure myself I wasn’t seeing things. There in front of me, already sitting in the ignition, was the car key….
I swallowed hard. It was exactly the chance I’d been looking for. Now at last I could show the car off in all its glory.
Cautiously, I turned the key a quarter notch. No sooner had I done so than there was a squeal of rubber on glass and the wipers jerked to life. My shaking hands must have nudged the tiny windscreen wiper switch. While my heartbeat recovered from the shock, my eyes followed the wipers as they arced across the windscreen in a rhythmic pulse. It was hardly the spectacular display I’d been hoping for.
I now knew what I had to do. Steadying my nerves, I switched off the wipers, reached forward and turned the key one further click.
As if by magic, the back of the car rose on a cushion of air as the suspension stirred from its sleep. I felt myself float nearly a foot into the air, and my heart swelled with pride at this marvel of engineering.
Béatrice’s pout immediately faltered and she threw a confused glance over her shoulder at me. But I wasn’t bothered: the crowd gathered around were delighted by this new turn of events and burst into spontaneous applause. Even Ferdinand Porsche was looking over, annoyed by the competition.
Inside the cockpit, I was just about to congratulate myself on a job well done, when a warning light started to flash on the dashboard. Soon it was joined by another, this time beeping insistently.
If I was feeling pleased with myself before, I could now feel a prickle of fear tug at my collar. Something was definitely wrong. Urging myself to remain calm, I began pressing buttons faster and faster in the vague hope that one of them would cure the problem. They didn’t.
Suddenly I heard a loud click and froze. One of the buttons had triggered the child lock system, and now even the driver’s door refused to budge. Trouble was, I’d pressed so many buttons I didn’t know which one to unpress. I began urgently pulling at the door handle to override the locking system, but it was no use.
By now Christian had clambered up onto the plinth and was peering in through the windscreen. “Angelo? Is that you?” I saw him mouth.
I nodded furiously, but through the thick glass I could barely hear a word.
He tried saying something again, but he was drowned out by a brass band that had suddenly struck up the German national anthem over at the German stand.
Bewildered, I convinced myself that Christian was telling me to turn the key again. Of course! The warning light must be the battery. If it was running low, I would need to start the engine to restore the power. I reached for the key, and as I gave it one last turn, the car’s engine growled to life.
Suddenly I saw Christian’s eyes widen in alarm. He shook his head furiously, but it only made me more confused than ever. Sensing real danger now, I began frantically tugging at the door again, but as I did so, my elbow must have nudged the transmission lever and it shunted down into drive.
With a rasp of metal cogs, the gears engaged and the car surged forward. Terrified, I stamped on the brake as hard as I could, but it was too late….
For a moment Béatrice was surfing through empty space as the car launched itself off the plinth, scattering the press in all directions. A second later it plunged down onto the parquet floor, twisting off its fenders and splitting the radiator grille, before finally crunching into the next-door stand.
As the dust finally settled, the crowd peered over the upturned tables and stared, agog. Porsche himself was watching, utterly bemused. Even the brass band had stopped playing the German anthem and were gaping, openmouthed.
Inside the car, I slumped back and blinked in astonishment. Feeling something warm trickling down my forehead, I dabbed at it and found I was bleeding from a little cut from where my head had glanced off the steering wheel. Other than that I was OK.
So too, amazingly, was the car—apart from the small geyser of steam hissing from the radiator. Oh, and the puddle of oil oozing from a crack in the suspension.
What I didn’t know, however, was that directly above me there was a much bigger car, balanced on a taller plinth. And now it was starting to teeter….
My father, who had barged his way through the crowds to the front, saw the danger first and made a superhuman lunge to get me free. But it was too late….With a sickening shudder, the car above me lurched forward and toppled off its stand.
Directly underneath, my eyes bulged wildly as I saw the huge shape bearing down on me. Before Papa or Christian could do anything, the car nosedived straight onto the roof above me, crushing it like tinfoil.
What no one outside could have known, however, was that in the split second before impact I had had the sense to dive behind the rear seats. As I tried to squirm my way into the boot, one of my legs trailed behind me and missed being crushed flat by a hairsbreadth.
For a moment I sat, rigid with fear, in the boot compartment, straining to hear. Why was it so silent? Could it be I was dead already?
Suddenly I heard the sound of hammering and tugging at every door before the boot was prized open and a pair of arms hauled me out. Seconds later I was being crushed half senseless in the arms of my father, who was chanting prayers in some unintelligible dialect from his home village in Italy.
As he hugged me to him, squeezing out what little air was left inside me, I managed to catch a glimpse of the car over his shoulder.
Where once it had been lopsided, it was now as flat as a pancake.
Bertrand stood gloomily by the window of his office, a large paneled room full of somber furniture in the west wing of the factory. My father and I had come to see him in the aftermath of the previous morning’s events. Since my disaster with the car, I’d tried to apologize to Papa, but it was hopeless. He couldn’t bring himself to look at me, let alone talk.
On top of all this, the night before, my parents had had the worst row I’d ever heard. Their arguments often ended up with a plate crashing against the wall or a slammed door. But this was different. Maman had been shouting that I should never have gone to the motor show in the first place. Apparently, Crespin, my headmaster, had rung up to say I was suspended for skipping school. For my mother, this seemed to be far more of a disaster than what I’d done to the car.
My father had shouted back that he didn’t give two figs about the school—he’d never wanted me to go there in the first place. That made Maman retaliate that he should thank goodness that her father still paid the fees. She often liked to throw this at my father to humiliate him.
Shortly after, I heard the front door slam and then my mother crying softly. When I looked out the window, I saw Papa hurry onto the street, pulling on his jacket furiously. It wasn’t until the early hours of the morning that I heard him slip quietly back in.
Maybe, just maybe, everything would still be all right. If I apologized enough to Bertrand, explained that it had all been my fault, disaster could be averted.
As I stood waiting in his of
fice, I felt my neck prickle with tension where the coarse material of the collar rubbed. Whenever I was in trouble, I would always start tugging at my collar.
After a moment Bertrand turned, his hooded eyes heavy with sadness. “The board have called an emergency meeting.” He sighed.
“What kind of emergency?” I asked sheepishly.
“They’re thinking about sacking me,” my father explained grimly.
“Absolutely not!” Bertrand insisted. “But it may be a good idea if you take a little leave.” He rummaged in a drawer for his pipe and wedged it in his mouth without lighting it. “My house in the country is sitting empty. Take it for a few weeks’ holiday while I sort things out here.”
My father smiled ruefully and shook his head again. “I don’t think a holiday is what I need.”
“I’m serious,” Bertrand urged him. “You need the rest. Besides, Angelo would enjoy it.”
I wanted to say that I didn’t feel I deserved anything except a sound flogging from Crespin. But I thought better of it and kept silent.
“I wouldn’t know what to do with myself,” my father said eventually, with a shrug. “I’d die of boredom.”
Bertrand didn’t pursue it any further, and my heart sank. I dreaded to think what would happen to us now. I’d seen how Papa’s mood could become black when things were bad. But this was worse than anything before. I had to say something.
“Please,” I blurted. “This is all my fault.”
Bertrand shook his head solemnly. “No, Angelo. Our problems started long before yesterday morning.”
He rested his hand on my father’s shoulder. “Take the house. For me.”
“Maybe we should, Papa,” I ventured hopefully. I kept thinking that my mother would enjoy it. A holiday might make them get on again.
“Life is a pendulum swing,” Bertrand tried to reassure him. “The good thing about being at the bottom is that you know it can only go up.”
My father turned and stared mournfully at him. “Unless the clock has already stopped,” he muttered. Then he turned and walked quietly out of the room.
A few hours later my father and I sat silently in the Petit Chemin de Fer, the faded little café behind the workshop, as my mother sipped her tea. I watched her lips purse round the edge of the china cup—lips that I remembered once as soft and warm, now brittle and drawn. There was a trace of old lipstick round the edge of the cup and she grimaced and put it down.
“What will you do now?” she asked my father eventually.
He glanced out onto the street, looking haunted. “Bertrand has offered to let us stay in his house near Bordeaux for a few weeks to ride out the storm.”
“What about Angelo’s school?” Maman asked sharply.
“I’m not going back there,” I interrupted. “Why can’t I go to the local school like normal people?” The local school filled my mother with horror because we lived in one of the poorer districts of Paris. It had taken her nearly a year of petitioning to get me into a school in another, better-off area.
She turned to my father, her eyes steely with anger. “I will not have him going to a local school. I’ve spoken to Monsieur Crespin, and he’s agreed that Angelo can come back so long as he apologizes.”
“Never,” I hissed, earning a sharp scowl from my mother.
“You’ll do as you’re told,” she snapped.
I fell silent, my eyes drifting miserably to my undrunk chocolate.
“Maybe Bertrand’s right,” Maman sighed. “A spell apart might be good for all of us.”
Papa shot her a furious look. “Now isn’t the time to discuss this.”
“He needs to know,” she hissed.
“Know what?” I asked. I could feel my guts clenching with panic. I looked from one parent to the other, half confused, half dreading what I already suspected. “Wait…You’re splitting up?” I whispered, barely daring to say the words. “But you can’t…”
“Not splitting up,” my father tried to reassure me. “Just taking a break…to rethink our options.”
I could see that my parents were avoiding looking each other in the eye.
“This is because of the car—?” I blurted.
“No,” Papa tried to reassure me, but it was too late. I could feel my eyes brimming with hot tears. Humiliated by my childishness and blinded with anger at myself and my parents, I leaped to my feet, sending cutlery flying.
“Angelo!” my mother scolded me. “People are watching!”
“I don’t care!” I raged, inadvertently sweeping my cup of chocolate to the floor. It smashed to pieces, spraying dark ooze like mud up the window. My mother gasped, and even I was taken aback by my outburst.
But it was too late to back out now. I threw down my napkin and ran out of the café, leaving the rest of the customers speechless.
It was a full three hours later, long after my dinner had gone cold, that my father eased open the workshop door and found me hunched in the corner against one of the benches. He slumped down next to me, and for a while we sat in silence.
Eventually I heard him clear his throat. “Angelo—”
I interrupted before he could go any further. “Don’t try and say this isn’t my fault, because it is. If I hadn’t turned that key, none of this would have happened.”
“Life is always full of ifs,” he sighed. “I know you wanted things to be different…but not everything is within our control.”
“That car was.”
“Maybe,” he admitted. “But not what happened with your mother and me. I’m afraid that crashed and burned all by itself.”
I looked up at him, a sense of hopelessness engulfing me. “Is there really no chance…?”
He put his arm round me and smiled. “Let’s get through the next two weeks and see then.”
I knew there was no use pushing the matter further—except maybe on one point.
“If you go, I’m coming with you,” I insisted.
My father studied me in the tiny sliver of moonlight that had found its way through a crack in the window. “Do I have a choice?”
I shook my head and he sighed ruefully. “Your mother will kill me…again.”
“Tell her I’ll go back to school as soon as we return.”
He glanced at me, raising a skeptical eyebrow. “You promise?”
“I said tell her I will. I didn’t say I’d actually do it.”
We stared at each other for a moment before sharing a conspiratorial smile….
It was true. I had no intention of returning to my school—after the fortnight at Bertrand’s house, or ever.
It was midnight when my father’s ancient motorbike rattled to a halt outside the gates of Bertrand’s holiday home, buried deep in the countryside of southwest France. Huddled in the sidecar, swathed in blankets to keep out the cold, my bones shaken almost into powder, I peered at the manor house looming out of the darkness. It was more like a château really, grim and forbidding in the moonlight, a crumbling old pile with rickety shutters, sitting in several acres of vineyards at the top of a gently sloping hill.
“It looks deserted,” I grumbled, trying to be heard over the exhaust backfiring. Just then I saw a light come on, and an elderly woman came to the door and gestured for us to go round to the side entrance. A second later my head was snapped back as my father released the clutch and we lurched off through the gate and across the gravel courtyard.
A bolt on the side door slid back with a rusty squeal to reveal the woman. She was broad-hipped and muscular, and closer inspection revealed that she was younger than I’d thought—maybe only in her forties. Her face had toughened like leather from what must have been years of hard toil, and her mouth was set in a stern grimace. A single curl of coarse black hair grew out of a mole on her chin.
Papa flashed her his brightest smile. “We had a few problems with the engine,” he explained.
“Sometimes it forgets to work,” I chimed in for good measure. But if I was hoping for a flicker of
warmth in return, I was to be disappointed.
The woman glanced dubiously at the motorbike, then at my grimy face staring out from the blankets and goggles. Then she jerked her head to the side to indicate that we should follow her.
“You’re Marguerite, Bertrand’s housekeeper?” my father asked politely.
She nodded, motioning for us to follow her along the corridor. I hung back for a moment with my father.
“Why won’t she speak to us?” I hissed suspiciously.
“I don’t think she can—Bertrand said that she’s been mute for years,” he replied, before setting off after her.
At the end of the hall, we took the wide stone staircase to the first floor, where Marguerite unlocked a door to reveal a sparsely furnished bedroom with floor-to-ceiling shutters and a fireplace that looked like it hadn’t been used for decades. She lit a candle, then left, still without saying a word.
A moment or two later, my father pulled the shutters back an inch and we watched her crunch her way across the forecourt and out of the main gates.
“We have the place to ourselves,” Papa sighed.
Five minutes later we were curled up together in the center of the bed, both still in our outdoor coats and swaddled in scarves. My teeth chattering, I could feel the cold slowly creeping into my bones from the rock-hard mattress underneath.
Maybe coming on “holiday” hadn’t been such a good idea after all.
The following morning I woke early, feeling damp and stiff. My father was still snoring loudly beside me, so I decided to slip out and explore the grounds.
Downstairs, I had to lean all my weight against the front door to get it to shift more than a few inches. When I finally managed to squeeze through the gap, I discovered that it had snowed in the night, settling in a drift against the door. Stepping gingerly across the thin layer of white, I peered around the courtyard and spotted some derelict outbuildings, overgrown with weeds; huddled in the corner was an old garage.
After I prized the door open, it seemed to take forever for my eyes to adjust to the darkness. But when they did, a smile slowly spread across my face. Lurking in the shadows in the corner was an ancient blue tractor. That wasn’t all. Behind it, buried under a mountain of tennis rackets and croquet mallets, was an old ride-on lawn mower.
The Tin Snail Page 3