|
A short extract from my first novel One Hot Summer
This is the story of seventeen-year-old John Burton's transition to manhood in the long, hot British summer of 1976.
A few doors down from us lived the Morriseys. Their son, an only child like myself, went by the name of Graham. As I approached I could see his legs sticking out from under his car, which had two wheels up on ramps.
Graham was nineteen, with his own transport and a job at the local builder's merchant. I envied and despised him in pretty much equal measure.
As I drew closer he slid himself out from under the car. “Hiya, John. Tasty looking bird you got there.” Graham always spoke like a bit part actor in an episode of The Sweeney.
I looked at him lying on the ground, in his faded Wrangler's and grubby, pale blue singlet, his long black hair fanned out behind his head. And I wanted to kick his teeth in. “Thanks,” I said. Coming from Graham, ‘tasty looking bird’ was high praise.
Feeling the need to make further conversation, I steered things towards a safer subject. “How's she going?” I nodded in the direction of the car. I knew that Graham cared more about cars than anything else in the known universe; so I was on solid ground.
He sat up and half turned to admire his vehicle. “Great, thanks. She looks good doesn't she?”
‘She’, referred to a silver-grey MkII Cortina with a whiplash ariel, and a pair of Cibié spotlights of the type that could blister paint at 200 yards. Graham had tried to make his humble 1.3L resemble the Lotus version by painting a stripe down the side. This might have been convincing had his car not had too many doors and been the wrong colour. “Yes,” I lied, “really smart.”
“You can do us a favour,” he grinned. “I've just patched the silencer.” He motioned to a tin of Gun-Gum. “Can you hop in and start her up, so's I can see if she's still blowing?”
“Yeah, sure.” I tried to sound cool, but in truth I was almost as big a petrolhead as he was and I jumped at the chance. I clambered up into the ramped car.
The interior had undergone the same accessory shop augmentation as the outside. A bolt on rev-counter clung to the top of the dash, a Japanese radio cassette hung below it. Ugly black speakers adorned the rear shelf and the steering wheel had been replaced by a thick-rimmed, ten-inch sports number. Parking this thing must have been better for your biceps than lifting weights.
I turned the key and the engine coughed into life, like a smoker reaching for his first fix of the day. “Rev her a bit.” Came Graham's disembodied voice from somewhere beneath me. I pressed the throttle pedal and watched the needle of the little rev-counter flicker as the engine responded. “Okay, that'll do.”
I took my foot off the pedal. Graham slid out from underneath and twisted round to look up at me. “That's a top job,” he said, I reached for the ignition key. “No, don't switch off, we'll take her for a bit of a blast to make sure, budge over.”
I negotiated my way over the gear lever into the passenger seat. Graham stood up, added to the collection of stains on his vest by wiping his hands on it, and slid behind the wheel. His mother looked out of the house, attracted by the sound of the engine. “Just going for a test run round the block, Ma,” he called to her, and slipped the car into gear.
He reversed slowly off the ramps, then quickly back onto the road; with a whine of gears and a deft flick of the steering. Selecting first he accelerated rapidly away down the hill and I reached for my seatbelt. Graham didn't wear his, but I had been taught always to belt-up. In any case, there was no way I was going to die in a MkII Cortina. I'd sooner look like a weed.
His idea of ‘round the block’ was rather longer than mine. We headed down the High Street and onto the Coast Road. The breeze through the open windows carried the fresh smell of the sea into the car as we bowled along. Graham posted a cassette into the player and our ears were assaulted by noise.
“What's this?” I yelled above the din, pointing to the stereo.
“It's a bootleg tape of the Pistols' gig at Middlesbrough Town Hall, back in May.”
“Who?”
“The Sex Pistols.”
“Oh, right. Were you there?”
“Yeah! Great night. Never spat so much in my life.” He sounded really proud of this. “Mate of mine's got a short lease on a shop in Redcar. Gonna start selling all the punk gear.” I didn't see Redcar as the punk fashion capital of the north-east, but I said nothing.
“Few of us were thinking we might start a band,” Graham went on.
“Can you play?” I'd never had Graham down as musical either. This was certainly a day for revelations.
“No.” He laughed. “But that's the great thing about punk, you don't need to know how!”
At the far end, the Coast Road ended in a roundabout. As we approached my right foot reached for an imaginary brake pedal long before Graham lifted his tattered plimsoll from the throttle. We circumnavigated the traffic island with screeching tyres, as I gripped the edge of my seat, and headed back the way we had come. As we turned into Lancaster Drive he switched off the stereo, much to my relief, and listened to the car.
“That bloody silencer's gone again,” he said as we rolled to a stop. “Bastard!”
I slipped out of the car, made my excuses, and went home.
***
A day or two later I saw an apparition headed towards me as I walked down the street. It wore baggy black trousers, with various rents held together by safety pins, and a distressed T-shirt with the word ‘Destroy’ crudely painted on the front; a studded leather dog's collar was around its neck. From its head poked a dozen or so short spikes of peroxided blondehair.
“Hiya, John,” it spoke.
“Graham?” Recognition came slowly. “You went for it then?” I tried very hard not to laugh.
“Yeah, what d'ya think?”
“It's . . .” I groped for the mot juste. “It's different.”
“That's right, be your own man. Stand out from the crowd. Don't let the bastards grind you down.”
I was fascinated by the top of his head. “How do you get your hair like that?”
“Good innit?” He leaned conspiratorially forward. “Gum Arabic,” he whispered.
“Really?” If I didn't laugh soon I was going to burst.
“My ma hates it, she says either I wash my own pillow cases or I leave home.”
I had a vision then; of Graham waking up with a pillow firmly impaled on his glued spikes. I laughed out loud, fortunately he didn't know what at. “That's mothers for you,” he laughed back.
Later that day I saw him in his car. The Cortina now sported a green sun visor strip at the top of the windscreen, on which white vinyl letters were supposed to spell out ‘ANARCHY’, only he'd missed out the ‘H’ and it read ‘ANARCY’. Typical Graham, all the enthusiasm with none of the brains.
From then on Craig and I nicknamed him Sid Viscous.
*****
Extract from One Hot Summer Copyright (c) Ian Barker 2002
|
