Trilogy: The First Three Books in the Amber For Go Series

by Paul Harris

  The clatter of dominoes and bottles of light ale had gone forever, replaced by the dull thud of mobile phones and Perrier bottles. Gone was the horse racing on a Saturday afternoon and the warming insanity and spinning-top chatter of John McCririck. Now we had Sky TV and Elton Welsby.

  I’d put nearly twenty pounds in the Monopoly quiz machine and got nothing out of it, by the time Amos sauntered in. He was followed by Bird not five minutes later. Bird was clothed in his usual attire; a big woolly jumper, Chelsea boots, and ink stained jeans that had been freshly decorated that day in his Wapping print shop. Amos wore a suit; a proper one, complete with pin stripes; and a silk tie, paisley patterned. He looked like a stranger. I took a step back and eyed him, curiously, as he offered me a crisp. I declined and he stuffed a handful of them into his mouth.

  “So, what do you do then, Amos?” I asked, distinctly aware of what an odd triumvirate we must have appeared; me with my torn-up jeans, lumberjack shirt, and cement coated boots.

  He put his briefcase down, next to my hod in the corner and swallowed a mouthful of prawn flavoured cardboard. “Stocks ‘n’ shares.”

  He said it like you’d say, “cheese ‘n’ onion”. It had a certain ring to it; the words fitted together in a classic partnership. I nodded, and tried to look earnest, rather than doubtful. “You wouldn’t have thought it.”

  “Why not?” he smiled.

  It was a fair question and I was struggling to find an inoffensive reply. “You seem too reckless,” I stumbled, “What I mean is that…. I don’t really know why not.”

  He was smiling; I think my uneasiness amused him, and I could hardly blame him for that. There was a short period of silence that seemed much longer than it actually was.

  “I meant it as a compliment, by the way.”

  “Yeah, I know,” he laughed, “I suppose you think I’m loaded?”

  “Well, the stock market? You boys are supposed to be well caked up.”

  “Just because I’m a stockbroker; and I’m not a proper one anyways; it doesn’t mean I’m any good. In fact, I’m crap, and I want out. I’d rather do what you do.”

  I sniggered, involuntarily, and shook my head at him. “Nah, stay clean, mate!”

  “More freedom, less agg!”

  “More cuts and bruises, aches and pains.”

  “But, you’re not surrounded by tossers.”

  “Yeah, I am, they’re just a different class of tosser, that’s all.”

  “I like the way you lot just don’t give a shit.”

  “So, I got the better job now, have I?”

  “I reckon so,” he smiled.

  “Well, I’ll drink to that even if it is bollocks,” I said, and bought another round.

  We stayed at the bar, Bird sprawling like John Wayne, elbows hitched amongst the pumps. “Thought any more about our great crusade?” he asked me.

  “Sure,” I replied, “All week. Thought about transport? Like I said, I don’t mind driving it.” I caught Bird giving Amos a knowing glance and Amos reciprocating. “What? What’s the coup?” I demanded to know.

  “Transport’s sorted,” said Bird, wiping his lips with the cuff of his pullover.

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah,” interposed Amos, “we’re going on two wheels, not four.”

  “Well, six,” Bird corrected, with a complacent grin, “Six wheels, not four.”

  “Oh, God!” I mumbled, “Not bikes!”

  “Bikes?” growled Amos, “Bikes!”

  “Bicycles?” I conjectured, “Or motorbikes?”

  They both shook their heads, slowly, from side to side, almost with synchronicity, as if they’d been rehearsing for months for this very moment.

  “What then?”

  “Scooters!” said Amos, with a huge smile scattering freckles all over his face.

  There was a hush as the three of us imbibed simultaneously, and I dwelt on the idea. But, it wasn’t so much an idea as a plan now. “Scooters,” I eventually repeated as coolly as I could whilst feeling half thrilled and half scared shitless. “Nice idea.”

  “All mine,” beamed Amos.

  “It’s not so much an idea as a plan,” confirmed Bird.

  “We’ve found you a nice T5; it’s back at Bird’s.”

  “You’ve already got them! We’re not renting?” My heart was pounding with excitement, but I tried to play it down. “What if I didn’t want to go on a bloody scooter?” I attempted to keep a poker face but broke into an enthusiastic chuckle instead.

  “I knew you would,” laughed Bird, “it’s in your blood. It’ll be ace, man. Just think, wumph, and we’re away.” He made a wumphing motion with his right hand, spearing it through the air until his fingertips struck the best bitter pump, and his scooter crash-landed.

  “I don’t think scooters go wumph,” I said, drily.

  “Sixty-five miles an hour,” said Amos, “How fast do you want to go? Any faster, and we’ll miss the countryside; we don’t want it all to pass us by in a blur, do we.”

  “You seen one tree, you seen ’em all,” I shrugged, “Fields full of sheep; big deal.”

  “Stop playing devil’s advocate,” said Bird, punching me playfully on the shoulder, “Miserable bugger!”

  “Oh, go on then,” I laughed, “How much do I owe you for my new wheels?”

  “A monkey,” said Amos, “but only if you can afford it; just pay me if and when you can; it don’t matter.”

  “It don’t matter?” I mocked, “You pay for it, then, Moneybags?”

  “Stockbroker, ain’t I?”

  “What’s a monkey, anyway?”

  They looked at each other and shook their heads, sympathetically, as if I was a toddler asking a childish question. “Ah! Northerners, eh?” Amos put an arm around me. “Three pints of lager, my son.”

  We got back to Bird’s heavily laden with foil trays steaming with the flavours of the East, some Kentucky Fried Chicken for Amos, and bottles brim-full of Belgian beer. I was hungry and wanted to eat but they insisted on dumping it all on the kitchen table and dragging me through the sodden grass and duckweed of Bird’s back garden to his rotting shed. There they introduced me to my new steed.

  “You need wheels!” I beamed with delight.

  “If you wanna make deals,” responded Amos, proudly.

  It was royal blue, and shone in the moonlight that crept through the broken wooden slats behind us. The experience was similar to that of a Christmas morning many years earlier when I’d received my first bicycle.

  “I confess to being no mechanical expert,” I faltered, “but it appears to be in bits.”

  “No worries,” said Bird, as he tapped out a vague tune on something that resembled a wheel arch, which was lying next to a wheel which, in it’s turn, was lying on his workbench next to what looked, rather suspiciously, like a Haynes manual. “It’ll be ticketyboo before you know it.”

  I looked at them both, doubtfully; disappointment beginning to rain down on me. “A monkey for a heap of spare parts? I hope a monkey’s slang for about a fiver.”

  “Stop moaning,” said Amos, “you’ll see.”

  Over the next couple of days, with much clanking and cursing, the project was undertaken with great gusto, and the bits and pieces of scrap metal became whole again. I was installed, due to my total lack of competence, as tea boy; and Amos as chief mechanic. Bird’s role was somewhat vague but seemed to take on something of a supervisory nature. He sat and smoked, and drank my lager, pointing out problems and mistakes as they occurred. Amos didn’t appear to be altogether grateful for these helpful hints but, as the hours and evenings passed by, his scowl slowly blossomed into a grin until, on the Tuesday night, he slung a handful of spanners onto the work bench amongst the empty coffee mugs and beer cans, and rubbed his hands together. He patted the saddle, and then gave the rear wheel a kick for good measure.

  “We have lift off!” he announced to an expectant world of two. The celebration was subdued but full of expectation
.

  The next day, the three of us all booked a long weekend off work; and two weeks later, we struck out on our first run; the full dress rehearsal; to Cornwall.

  “Sure we’ll make it?” I asked.

  The only response was a couple of withering looks.

  “There and back?”

  “Break a leg!” said Amos, and we were off, rolling down the hill towards the A3.

  Bird was leading and I wasn’t sure if that was a good idea or not, but he was following signs for Guildford and that seemed to be, more or less, the right direction. Cars were flying past us, beeping their horns, and so were articulated lorries. It seemed to be taking us an age to get not very far at all. My original concerns were beginning to seem justified as a Massey Ferguson tractor passed us as we laboured up a steep incline. On the crest of the hill, Amos drew up beside me, lifted his visor, and winked one of his watery eyes at me. That instilled me with a little more confidence as Amos always seemed to know what he was doing; he could assemble scooters and stuff like that.

  I began to loathe dual carriageways: you’re tootling along at, what seems like, walking pace, and all manner of vehicular traffic is zipping past you at a hundred miles an hour, blowing you all over the road. If I’d have been leading, instead of Bird, I’d have taken country lanes, even if it had meant that the journey would have taken far longer.

  The whole experience was starting to drain me of my enthusiasm and I was vaguely toying with the idea of turning back; rerouting my whole life; going back to Rory, on my hands and knees, with a hundred pounds between my teeth; phoning Moke, whilst still on my hands and knees; but, before I had time to consider that option too deeply, we arrived at Guildford. There was a sign for a cathedral and I scanned the horizon for a steeple or a dome of some kind, but all I saw were electricity pylons and television transmitters.

  Bird led us off the A3 and onto a roundabout. I was elated as we eased onto a country lane. We seemed to be heading Northbound, but it didn’t matter; this was how I’d imagined the trip to be, full of rural beauty.

  Bird was fidgeting in his saddle, looking left and right; examining everything: the ivy coated cottages and bright white painted bungalows; row and rows of neatly trimmed conifers; burnt out arable and children on tricycles; until he found what he was looking for, and led us into a pub car park.

  The Hunters Lodge was neat and trim with a large, and particularly full, car park. There were immaculate hanging baskets, full of colour and life, setting off the cream coloured walls that had a conspicuous absence of peeling paint.

  We parked our scooters and removed our helmets. “I need a piss,” explained Bird.

  “We’ll never even get as far as Hampshire today at this rate,” complained Amos.

  Personally, I was grateful for the break and followed Bird towards the door. “No bikers or coach parties,” I said, pausing on the doorstep, and pointing out a handwritten notice that was taped to the window.

  “Well, we’re not a coach party, are we?” retorted Amos, somewhat bitterly.

  “No, but…”

  “Or bikers?” he snapped.

  I shrugged, submissively.

  “You wearing leathers?” he demanded.

  “No.”

  “Long greasy hair?”

  “Suppose not.”

  “Well, who’s the biker then?” and, with that, he barged his way in through the door.

  It was nice; not like one of our usual haunts; you felt scared to touch anything just in case it broke. Children in dickie bows and dungarees chased one another around racks of wine. Waiters in dickie bows chased one another across the stone-tiled floors, and around solid pine tables where the high and mighty, and overly pretentious, were seated, eating and talking, and eyeing us with grave doubt on their faces.

  Viennese waltzes, Rachmaninov, and Doris Day were being piped to the diners and sprinkled over them like soothing medication. The walls were littered with hanging blackboards presenting trendily chalk-scrawled quotes like, “Wine provokes the desire but it takes away the performance”. Speak for yourself, William.

  We tip-toed to the bar, where middle-aged men were sipping glasses of red wine beneath silver wigs and discussing Chelsea’s six-two victory over Sunderland. I’d never seen that before in my life: men drinking wine at the bar; it amazed me; I was in total awe of them; I loved it. I squeezed myself into a corner, beside a glass-fronted display cabinet chock-full of black forest gateaux, cheesecakes, and trifles. The men at the bar looked at us, but their looks didn’t linger; they knew all about passing trade.

  Amos and Bird had a pint each. I ordered a glass of Rioja. They looked at me as if I had lost my mind. Bird went to the toilet. We had another drink, and then another. We were now over the limit but scootering was far more pleasant after that. That’s the secret; it’s the same with all things; one mustn’t take it too seriously.

  From then on, the time passed far more quickly and we seemed to eat up the tarmac, occasionally calling in at a large, rambling, handsome inn or a small quaint country pub, depending on a particular mood, in order to take advantage of their conveniences. The more often we stopped to relieve ourselves, the more we drank, and the sooner we had to stop again. But, paradoxically, the longer the journey took, the quicker it seemed to pass.

  We were barely the other side of Basingstoke when something akin to an earthquake struck me and only me. Amos and Bird sailed on, obliviously. I was heading sideways, meanwhile, towards the gorse-riddled roadside. I closed my eyes and braced myself for the impact, but it didn’t materialise. When I opened my eyes again, all was well. The Vespa had straightened itself up without any human interference and was rolling along quite amiably. I wasn’t sure where I stood on the issue of my scooter taking matters into its own hands. I tucked my head into my aching chest and bent into the wind in an effort to catch up with the other two.

  A few miles further on, it happened again. This time, I had to drop one of my feet onto the moving road to prevent myself from falling off. I swerved across the road and into the path of an oncoming petrol tanker. Its horn deafened me and sent a battering ram through my senses as my life flashed through my mind. It missed me and I bumped across the grass verge on the opposite side of the road, clinging to the handlebars and trying, desperately, to steer away from the drainage ditch that seemed to be summoning me like a Greek siren.

  There was a whirring sound, and my scooter, suddenly, chugged back into life as if nothing had happened. Once more, I found myself back on the road and in hot pursuit of Bird and Amos.

  I caught them at the next stop. They’d had half a pint each by the time I got there and were sitting in the window peering along the road at me like a couple of Cheshire cats. “What happened?” asked Bird.

  “Couldn’t wait, eh?” I cast them a reproachful look each.

  “Desperate, mate.”

  I got myself a glass of wine, sat down, and related my late experiences. “Lucky to be alive,” I concluded.

  “Drama queen,” said Bird.

  Amos was slightly more sympathetic. “I’ll have a look when we get home.”

  “If I get home,” I retorted, apprehensively.

  Bird snorted; Amos stubbed his cigarette out and pulled his crash helmet over his head; so did Bird. They went out and I heard them revving their engines and calling out to me. “Come on, you tosser!” They were out of the carpark and away down the road by the time I’d been to the toilet and got back on my scooter. I took a couple of laps around the pub, as a test drive, before venturing forth. It ran as smoothly as it had done on the London end of the A3 earlier in the day. I revved, and was away gain, on the open road, racing after the two small dots on the horizon. I heard a loud clang, metal beating against metal; a hugely disturbing sound; but, there was no shaking or shuddering, no near misses with ditches or verges or tankers, just horrible noises.

  All the way to Torquay, which we had designated as our first staging post, the clanging followed me. Every four or fiv
e miles, there was a seat-staining thud and the handlebars would attempt to wrestle themselves from my white-knuckle grip and I would have to wrestle them back again. I began to accept that my scooter was possessed by Satan, but, at least, now it had refrained from launching me towards any more roadside objects.

  We stopped just outside Torbay and stood, like spacemen on an alien planet, looking out with awe at the bay; at the bright blue, crisp, clean sea and the scuffed ring of sand at its edge. Amos promised to service my Vespa the following morning before we set off for a campsite that Bird knew of in Par. He said there was a big factory there that pumped out all sorts of shit into the sea, but apart from that…

  Amos and I had glanced at each other with suspicion. “Apart from that, what?”

  “Apart from that, it’s okay.”

  “You sure?”

  “No, but it’s cheap.”

  We rolled down the hill into Torquay, cruising along Union Street, slipping the length of Temperance Street twice, looking for a pub or even an off license. There was nothing, just houses, until we got nearer to the main shopping area, where there was more of a hubbub about; an off season hubbub; but a decent hubbub nevertheless.

  We parked up outside a likely looking place and, as we took our helmets off, a rather portly old man with a shiny bald head pounced upon us with a flier in his hand. “Disco tonight, lads?”

  “Maybe,” replied Bird, “Got any vacancies upstairs?”

  “Yeah, come in. Have a drink?”

  The old man ushered us through the open door and then slipped behind the bar at which a rum bunch of sea salts and elderly tourists were gathered, disgorging tales of misspent youth and ill-spent fortunes. He took a large red-bound guest book from beneath the counter. “I need names and a night’s money in advance,” he said, bluntly, but politely enough for us.