And when I still didn’t move, ‘Come here!’ He lifted it over my head and crowned me with this upturned fishbowl. Stood back and admired. ‘Beautiful,’ he said, and pushed down the visor. ‘Especially as it obscures your phizzog!’ He laughed like a kid with a new toy—which he was in a way I suppose.
‘What am I meant to do with this?’ I said, and the sound of my own voice wrapped in the helmet stunned my ears. I pushed up the visor. ‘I don’t have a bike, you idiot!’
‘Patience, patience. That’ll come in time.’ He took my hand and led me to a room behind the shop: the office and store for spare stock by the look of it, lit only by an air-vent window high up and a couple of electric lights. ‘Till then,’ he said, ‘we’ve places to go, and pillion people need protection. The law says so. Here—on the wall. A mirror. Take a glim at yourself.’
25/A headpiece hiding place.
Mask.
For a masque.
The faceless back of Barry’s head also within the frame.
Hidden out of frame an extension of two bodies overlapped in the glass.
Hands also, refracting what the mirror could not show. And could not say. The words are never there.
No words ever from its hard and absent surface.
But watch this space. We have ways of making it talk.
Yes in deed.
Yes.
26/And what a night then began for a quiet lad like me.
‘How about a ride?’ Barry said. ‘On the bike, I mean! Give that new helmet an airing. Celebrate your last night of freedom. Tomorrow you’ll be a working bloke. Yes?’
‘Okay.’
He geared us both in zazzy parkas kept ready behind the office door, and himself in zippy-zappy biker boots. Topped in our spaceman bubble hats we, thus accoutred against the excitements of speed, wheeled from its stable behind the shop his armed and gleaming mount, a Suzuki 250 with a thousand miles on its clock and the click of clear oil plucking in the knuckles of its joints.
‘Know the ropes?’ he asked.
‘First time.’
‘Remember: Don’t put your feet down. Whatever happens. Keep them on the rests. Relax. Lean with the bike. Don’t fight it. Just follow me. And hang on. Tight.’
27/A 250 is a maquette for a sculptor’s memorial to brazen speed. And riding pillion with Barry was giving a cuddle to a crazy while he had a bash at scaring death off the roads.
When I mounted behind him he hooked a hand under my thigh and hitched me close to him.
‘If you stop short,’ I shouted above the revs, ‘I’ll do you a terrible damage.’
‘Joy at last!’ he shouted back over his shoulder. ‘Here we go. Hang on.’
Up London Road, a well-behaved right at the lights into Southbourne Grove, a flicking left into the stream of dual-carriageway on Prince Avenue, and then away in a dib-dab rib-throar blur up the Arterial, Londonwards.
I stopped glancing over B.’s shoulder at the speedometer when it touched seventy, and gave myself up to fate. If you’re going to die you might as well enjoy it.
At the Laynham junction we turned back, jog-trotted at thirty for a mile or so, then slipped into a cart track where we stopped a little way from the main road.
28/‘Do you always drive like that or only on Fridays?’ I said as we uncoupled from the Suzi’s vibrant intimacy.
‘Like what?’ he said all mock innocence.
‘Like dangerous. Like fast.’
‘I don’t drive fast!’
‘I hooted.
Emphatic, but laughing, he said, ‘I don’t! Well—okay, yes I do. But it never feels like fast.’
‘That’s just what it feels like to me. Like speeding.’
‘But that’s it, you see.’
‘What’s it I see?’
‘Ah shucks, I gonna have trouble with you tonight, kid!’
True; I was biley in the pit of my stomach because of last night. ‘Try me,’ I said.
He was latching our helmets to the bike by their chin-bars. ‘Fast is one thing,’ he said. ‘Speed is another.’
‘You’re right,’ I said. ‘You’ve got trouble.’
‘It’s hard to explain.’
‘Take your time, we’ve got all night.’
‘Yes,’ he said, ‘we have, haven’t we!’
I ignored him, settled myself side-saddle on the resting Suzi.
‘Didn’t you enjoy it?’ he said.
‘Loved it. But fast isn’t speed?’
He perched himself side-saddle on the Suzi’s other cheek.
‘It’s like this. Fast is something you do. Or something that happens to you.’
‘You go fast, or you’re driven fast?’
‘Right.’
‘So far so simple. But speed?’
‘Speed is.’
‘Is what?’
‘Just is.’
I let that gem settle a minute.
‘You know something?’ I said.
‘What?’
‘You’re weird. You are also crazy. And you are also wrong. For a start, look up speed in a dictionary.’
‘Forget the dictionary! I’m telling you how I feel.’ A touch of anger showed. ‘Do you want to know or don’t you?’
I said, ‘I want to know. Honest.’ And smiled.
He smiled back. ‘Fast is what you go to achieve speed.’
I turned that over.
‘Sorry,’ I said. ‘I need a bit more.’
He hitched his seat. ‘On a good road, like the Arterial . . .’
‘Yes?’
‘. . . I never feel I’m going fast. ‘What I feel is that speed is somewhere just ahead, and that I’m chasing it. Always it’s just out of reach. So I go faster and faster, trying to catch it. But because speed is always ahead, always the same distance in front of me, I never feel I’m going fast. Or getting faster.’
Silence. I scratched my cheek.
‘What would happen,’ I said, ‘if you ever caught it up?’
He shrugged, looking away. ‘I dream about that. It’s like being inside an invisible bubble, or maybe some kind of force field. And it could take me anywhere, anywhere at all, in a split second. It’s strange. I know I’m moving but there’s no effort, no noise or vibration or anything like that. And no danger either. The whole experience is marvellous. I don’t want to do anything but be inside that bubble of energy always. Forever.’
That put a stop on me. He turned, watching me to see every twitch of my reaction.
I shrugged. ‘Some dream!’
‘You’ve never had one like that?’
I shook my head.
‘I’ll tell you something else,’ he said. ‘The best part. When I wake up, I feel the dream is telling me it will soon really happen. I mean happen in real life. Wouldn’t that be something!’
I got off the Suzi and walked a pace or two.
‘You’re even weirder than I thought,’ I said, trying to laugh it off.
‘So who wants to be normal?’ he said.
29/Sauntering back, a gang of motorbikers overtook us, moving in for Friday manoeuvres. Southend: The Resort for All Frissons. They swarmed; Barry accelerated to keep with them. Some had pillioned girlfriends who waved cheeky-cute as they came alongside. Some of the riders might have been girls as well, but there was no way of telling.
Ahead of them, the first of the gang to pass us, was a rider dressed in bright white leathers with black helmet, gloves and boots. He was so small I thought at first he was an under-age kid. Or a monkey. He was balancing with one foot on the saddle, the other stretched out behind him, like a circus stunt rider.
When he was past us, he dropped into his saddle, but facing backwards, hands held out to his sides. His pals, surging round us now, blared their horns, waved, cheered. Acknowledging this applause with a clenched fist, Monkey Boy swung his right leg over his rear wheel, sat side-saddle, left hand on the rev-grip. Thus perilously seated he overtook on the inside a holiday-packed car whose driver went into sh
ock and sent the car veering about in convulsive zig-zags as the tidal wave of bikes swallowed him up and swept on, leaving him bobbing like jetsam in their wake.
On we roared, Barry and me tucked into the middle.
‘Staying with them?’ I shouted into Barry’s helmet where his ear should be.
He nodded. ‘Good for a laugh,’ he shouted back.
And so Monkey Boy led the pack along Prince Avenue, round Priory Crescent into Eastern Avenue, then right into Bournemouth Park Road and on down Southchurch Avenue to a revving cheering stop in the car park on the sea-front at the end of Marine Parade, opposite the Kursaal’s casino-and-fun-fair glittergleam tat.
30/Everyone dehelmets.
‘What’s this then?’ says Monkey Boy approaching Barry and me. ‘Them’s not us.’ (Without his helmet he is indeed like a boyish monkey: big eyes and eye-circling hair.)
‘Who’s not?’ says a six-foot-three monolith bearing down on us from a bullish 500 Kawasaki. His ancient leathers, creased and greased, are sparkling with metal studs.
‘Them’s not us,’ says Monkey Boy.
The tribe gathers.
‘Right,’ says Monolith. Now we see him close he looks too old to be playing at motorbikes. In his late twenties for sure. And a face that’s had asphalt laid on it.
‘Where’d you come from?’ he says.
One of the tribe has a girl’s head. ‘They’ve been with us from just outside town,’ she says and performs a simper. ‘I thought that one—’ she points at me—’was the other one’s girl!’
A camped oo-hooing goes up.
‘Well,’ says Girl’s Head adding coals to this fire, ‘she could have been the way she was holding on.’
‘She?’ they cry, playing up.
‘Ooo no!’ Girl’s Head exclaims, exaggerating manufactured confusion at her intended mistake and clasping a hand over her mouth. ‘I mean he!’ And she all but collapses in supersonic giggles.
After which begins a procession of catcalls.
‘Are we a little Southend pier then?’ says Monkey Boy sashaying the inner circle.
‘A bit first of May?’ says one with a doormat for hair.
‘A couple of bottle boys are we?’ says another with a surprising absence of earlobes, those he once possessed clearly having been lopped off in the not so long ago, for the scars glow red.
‘Now’s your chance, Riggsy,’ bellows Doormat, and a lamp-post of a lad, ugly and carroty, his head protruding from wrinkled new leathers his gangling body cannot fill, grins sheepish and says, fluting, ‘Pretty enough anyroad.’
They all hoot again and Carrot Top turns bright red at his daring.
Monolith has not moved or laughed or even smiled. ‘I said,’ he says, bunging the chorus, ‘where’d you come from?’
There is the zing of focused malice in the air.
‘Qwert yui op?’ says Barry.
31/Cheeky.
I am trembling in my parka.
ACTION REPLAY
I had not much liked the turn of events from the time we joined the growling throng. I am not keen on crowds. In fact, I think I must be a crowdophobe. (Did you know that in Norwegian the word for crowd is kryda, which means to swarm? Very appropriate in the circs. I learned this from Kari on one of the occasions soon to be recounted.)
My idea of hell is being forced to stand for all eternity in the middle of a football crowd which is incensed to the point of rioting because the game is so bad. I hate football; and football crowds I hate even more. They’re the perfect example of Robinson’s Law. This states that human idiocy multiplies in compound ratio to the number of people gathered together in one place for a common purpose.
I have to admit that standing there in the car park surrounded by this gang of uglies the thought did occur that I might soon be provided with fresh evidence for a revised Robinson’s Law. My instinct was to turn tail and run. Fast. But as Monkey Boy lolloped around us and the spangled Monolith came to view the objects of the simian’s attention, my ever heroic new friend muttered, ‘Stand still and act dumb.’
So still and dumb I remained, though whether at B.’s command or out of paralysing fright I think it best for my ego’s sake not to examine too closely.
Luckily, however, the uglies were as taken aback as I myself by B.’s reply to Monolith’s insistent question.
32/’Qwert yui op?’ Barry repeats after a pause for effect.
‘Aaaah!’ says Girl’s Head, as she might had she just seen two cuddly babies. ‘They’re foreign. No wonder they’re funny.’
At this, most of the rest of the gang lose interest and drift off in the direction of the Kursaal.
‘Where you from?’ says Girl’s Head edging closer. ‘You French, are you?’
Monkey Boy slips alongside performing what he supposes is a Parisian sex-bomb’s mosey. ‘Parly voo franky?’ he says, fluttering his eyelids into B.’s face.
‘Qwert?’ says Barry, much puzzled.
God save us! I think, becoming religious of a sudden.
‘That’s not French,’ Carrot Top says. (Is the child educated?)
Girl’s Head puts her face close to Barry’s and pronounces with firm deliberation at point blank range, ‘Where? You? Come? From?’
The few remaining members of the gang shuffle in, the better to inspect us. The smell of their sweat and oil and faggy breath stings the nose and helps keep the mouth shut.
‘Hey,’ says Doormat full of sudden excitement, ‘maybe they’re Ruskies.’
‘Nit!’ says he without earlobes. ‘They’re not bloody Ruskies. Ruskies are big. Heavy. With fat noses.’
‘Fat noses!’ says Doormat. ‘Where’d you hear that rubbish?’
‘They have, I’m telling you. Them’s not Ruskies.’
‘They’re cuddly enough though, eh?’ says Girl’s Head. ‘D’you think they’re Eyeties? Supposed to be great lovers, Eyeties are.’
‘Don’t think so,’ says Carrot Top. ‘Eyeties put an a and an o on the end of everything and pinch your bottom. They haven’t done none of that.’ (So much for education.)
‘Youa speaka da Italiano?’ says Monkey Boy twisting his hands elaborately in the air.
‘Op?’ says Barry.
‘Well anyway,’ says Girl’s Head, ‘I think they’re cute.’
‘Wert quiop,’ says Barry. ‘It rop we qui?’
‘Where . . .?’ says Girl’s Head indicating Southend with a sweep of her arm . . . ‘You . . .?’ she points at Barry, taking the chance to rub her finger down his face and chest . . . ‘From?’
‘Ah!’ says Barry as if light is dawning. ‘Ert Olym Pia.’
‘O-lim Peer?’ says Girl’s Head screwing up her face.
‘Qui!’ says Barry.
‘Where the hell’s that?’ says Doormat.
‘You wouldn’t know,’ says Earlobes. ‘You don’t even know where your own house is.’
Doormat thumps Earlobes brutally in the kidney. Earlobes guffaws, whether from disdain or pain I have no time to discover.
‘Well, wherever it is,’ says Girl’s Head, ‘I like them. They’re nice enough to keep.’
‘Here,’ says Carrot Top, ‘why don’t we show them a bit of Southend, eh?’
‘Take them a ride in the Kursaal,’ says Monkey Boy.
‘Yeah,’ says Girl’s Head stepping between Barry and me and commandeering Barry’s arm. ‘That’s a good idea. Bags I this one.’
Help, no! I am screaming inside my head.
‘Let’s go,’ says Monolith.
33/We are pressganged by camaraderie into the Kursaal, Barry erting and qwerting, ropping and opping, myself as silent as a display dummy and very nearly as stiff from fright. We are backslapped and play-punched, flirted with and teased; reasons are found for kissing us, hugging and gripping us.
At the entrance, the whole gusty party gathers again. We are swept along, taking the Kursaal’s fun-fair by noisy rough-house storm. Less mob-handed Friday evening pleasure-seekers scatter like
nervous sparrows from our parading bike-booted feet. Attendants yell distant warnings. Fathers and mothers, snatching aside their goggling children, glare and mutter dark imprecations and sometimes bandy words against a chorus of derision and backchat. Beer cans pass from hand to hand; footballed away when empty. Monkey Boy scampers about ahead, leading the pack, excited as a hyper-thyroid ten-year-old.
The roller-coasting Big Dipper, the Dodgems, the Octopus, assorted carousels and side-shows. We do them all in a kind of rowdy military operation before a different kind of military arrives. We pay for nothing, but take what we want and jeer at requests polite or rude for payment. We are cock of the walk, dive and run and jump and skid and turn turtle and have an all-round explosive good time. Monkey Boy, on the spinning Octopus, lights firework flares and fizzing crackers and hurls them into the watching crowd as if he were playing ducks-and-drakes on a pond of faces. The crowds scatter, which pleases him best of all; he whoops and yodels and bellows his satisfaction.
It is shortly afterwards that the other kind of military arrives.
‘The filth!’ shouts Monkey Boy. He sounds as if he has just caught sight of an indulgent favourite uncle.
There approach all of four Boys-in-Blue armed to the teeth with bare hands and flat caps and rolled up shirtsleeves. But they might as well have been an invasion force equipped with deathray guns or a battalion from the S.A.S. For at the sight of them our biker pals peel off in all directions at double pelt.
The cavalry to the rescue, I think; escape is nigh.
But no. Faithful to the last, Doormat, Earlobes, Girl’s Head and Monolith close ranks around Barry and myself and, with Carrot Top and Monkey Boy dancing rearguard attendance, they tug, push, nudge and scamper us away, out of the Kursaal, and tow us jubilantly pierwards along the bustling Golden Mile.
And so we process, celebratory, passing Dizzyland Children’s Playground (EAR PIERCING £2.50), The Forester’s Arms (Lunchtime Strippers), Happidrome, Las Vegas Amusements loud with thumping pop, The Falcon, Kentucky Fair, Ocean Fish Restaurant loud with frying fat and generous with vinegar, on by The Hope Hotel by when I feel we have lost all hope, Coney Island Leisure Centre, Monte Carlo Bingo, Garden Discount House (Closed), The Beachcomber, Harbour Lights Leisure Centre where leisure means hustle, and on beyond Louis Manzi Presents Talk of the South, Tots, The Mississippi, the Papillon (Southend’s Victorian Public House), Rose restaurant where Rose wouldn’t, Liberty Bell (Take Courage—and we need it, for we are almost breathless now), Clark’s Quality Fish Restaurant as loud and as generous as the Ocean, to Marine Sale Rooms and Olympia Entertainment Centre (Prize Bingo), where we scurry across the road, dodging with disdain the hooting cars, onto Western Esplanade, to the pierhead, where we collapse in a panting line along the protective rail in front of the window of the white-painted crenellated Waxworks Including Chamber of Horrors. We stare, gasping, at a perpetually horrified man being perpetually chopped in half by a perpetually swinging pendulum axe, and there enjoy hunter hunted gulps of laughter in which neither Barry nor I can help joining.