The Vale - Part One (a)

 

‘I tell you what, this stereo is quality. The base on this tune, man, the whole damn motor’s banging!’ Dan yelled, nodding his head to the beat, pushing his lips forward as if ready to eat the world.

 

The air in the car hung with the sickly scent of a Halford’s air freshener, the nylon upholstery fabric and stale cigarette smoke. 

 

Chris shifted in the passenger seat, ‘Getting sick of it actually, this song gets played to fucking death on the radio.’

 

A voice piped up incongruously from the back. ‘Dirty Cash?’ 

 

Chris glanced across at Dan, smirked and shook his head. ‘Clue’s is the lyric, Adam.’

 

Dan wound down the window, stuck his head out and yelled, ‘Dirty Cash!’ He burst out laughing as he raised the window again.

 

‘I can feel it. I can feel it deep inside my body,’ said Adam, leaning his neck forward between the front seats to make himself heard. ‘In here, in my solar plexus.’

 

‘Your what? Adam, what are you on about man, what the fuck’s a bloody….sober plectrum?’ Dan shouted above the sound of the music, the howl of the engine but his voice was high and sort of weak. 

 

We burst out laughing, our laughter furrowed deep into the white noise, the inexplicable bubble of the four of us, tearing through the night, spinning through the universe. There was nothing else like this, this unearthly space, like our own planet, protected by a halo of speed and steel and all our combined energies. It was all ours.

 

It felt as if each time we did this, the intensity was greater, the insanity stretched wider. I thought it couldn’t get any better, but somehow it always did until it felt as if there was nowhere left to go. We were exactly where we were supposed to be, removed from everything, from the poverty of our parents, from failure, responsibility and the confines of our physical environment. We were absolutely free, flying in a capsule, untouchable, there was a delicious sense of chaos alongside a deep sense of peace.

 

‘Solar Plexus! It’s here,’ shouted Adam, tapping the space between his chest and his belly, his chubby white fist pumping the brown leather of his jacket.

 

‘But what does that do, Adam?’ I said.

 

He paused, ‘Stuff, it oversees important stuff to do with your body, your organs.’

 

 

‘He doesn’t know,’ said Chris, looking back at me. His voice, obnoxious, mocking. ‘He doesn’t fucking know! Some doctor you’ll be. You’re not touching me when you get out of university.’

 

Adam shook his head, ‘I don’t want to be a doctor. I’m going to be a physiotherapist.’

 

‘Running on the pitch rubbing Spinks’s calf muscles, while he lays on the pitch crying like a baby.’ 

 

Dan laughed. ‘Sounds dodgy to me, that.’

 

‘Shut it, you two,’ I said, ‘He’s a West Brom fan, he won’t be touching the likes of Spinks. Anyway, at least he knows what he wants to do, unlike us…bunch of losers.’

 

‘I know exactly what I want to do,’ said Dan, ‘I want to break the fucking sound barrier!’ He turned up the music so that none of us could speak and put his foot down.

 

We were already well above the speed limit, touching sixty in a forty zone but Dan kept his driving erratic; accelerating to make as much noise as possible, prompting anyone who happened to be around to stop and stare, then slowing a little, scanning around for police.

 

We were the best, the best at what we did and we hid in plain sight. A transient vehicle holding a bunch of lads, nothing more than a blur, a local legend, at least that’s how we liked to think of ourselves. A noise people heard from the safety of their homes, above the din of their televisions or just as they were dropping off to sleep. Dan’s engine was the last thing they heard as they entered the dream world and for us, we were living in a dream, anything was possible.

 

The arrangement suited me perfectly. I was shyish, I felt so exposed walking into pubs, talking to girls, I would blush and stutter my words but in one of the cars with Dan driving, there were no such threats. I was present, seen, I scored the points, racing around looking cool but I was well out of range of the perceived personal scrutiny which made my skin crawl.

 

‘Are you proud of me lads?’ said Dan, grinning as he looked up in the rearview mirror, catching my eye.

 

‘What?’ I said, screwing up my face and pointing at my ears, prompting him to turn down the music.

 

‘Are you proud?’ he shouted.

 

‘We’ve peaked,’ said Chris dryly, ‘I don’t think we can get any higher. That’s the trouble with being top of the league, there’s nowhere else to go but down.’

 

‘Nah, we’re on the up. Your going down Chris, you need to stop thieving, wheeling and dealing, you need to knuckle down, buckle up, stop mucking up, fucking other people up.’ Dan fancied himself as some sort of musical artist, occasionally bursting into a lame rap.

 

Chris shook his head, ‘Shut up man, you sound gay!’

 

‘What the fuck? How is that gay, it’s art.’

 

‘Just shut up and drive.’

 

‘You shut up,’ Dan suddenly lifted his head towards the mirrors. ‘Oh no, you are kidding me!’ he shouted, ‘Guess who's behind us.’

 

I turned around so that my chin was touching Adam’s shoulder. It was Wardle in his Ford Sierra, with his boys, driving inches from the rear of our vehicle. ‘I thought he would’ve just accepted defeat and gone home to watch Prisoner Cell, check out what Bee Smith is up to.’

 

‘He can’t give it up can he.’

 

‘He wants to get his ring back,’ said Adam.

 

Dan tapped the face of the bulbous gold sovereign ring on the steering wheel and accelerated. ‘He’ll never get this back. I won it fair and square. It’s heavy, you know. I could sell that.’

 

‘You can’t sell it,’ I said, ‘it’s symbolic.’

 

‘It’s tight as fuck. I forced it onto my finger and I don’t think I can ever get it off.’

 

‘He’s coming up beside us!’ Chris shouted as he raised his middle finger to the other lads in the Sierra who wound down their window and shouted something incomprehensible.

 

‘Watch this, we’ll leave the losers for dust now,’ said Dan, ‘you watch. And they’re just going to lose all over again.’

 

Adam shifted in his seat. ‘Can’t we just go home. I’ve got work at the shop in the morning.’

 

‘Floor it!’ Chris shouted as he gripped the grab handle above his head.

 

‘Sorry Adam, mate, I will take you home, I promise, just not yet,’ Dan put his foot down, right down. The floor of the vehicle shuddered beneath our feet. Kelly, who was seated next to me and was intoxicated, had been silent for the last fifteen minutes, suddenly let out a faint squeal and fell forward slightly. I placed my arms around her waist and pulled her back into the seat. She felt light, unsubstantial, like somebody who didn’t love herself enough or perhaps she didn’t really want to be real.

 

The Sierra accelerated too and hovered next to us, labouring, edging forward and then falling back a few feet until headlights appeared in the distance, approaching in the opposite direction and Wardle was forced to slip back and tuck in behind. Dan laughed, ‘Loser, loser,’ he chanted but the car tail-gated us. I turned my head and could clearly see Wardle, shiny eyed, goading and determined.

 

‘It’s dangerous what he’s doing, don’t rise to it, Dan. We’ve already won the race, there's no need for another go now,’ Adam said in a whiny tone which suggested he’d already conceded that his plea would be ignored.

 

‘Nah if he wants round two, I’ll give it to him. Tosser!’ A few passing cars slowed down almost to a standstill as Dan drove on unhindered by the rules of civilised people. ‘Quite like this car, you know. Everything about it feels….up for it, hungry. I think I might keep it.’

 

I leaned forward so he could hear me, ‘But it’s red, you said red was unlucky.’

 

‘That’s what my mum says. The thing is though, it wasn’t unlucky was it, not for me, not tonight. We’ve won the big one, the fucking Sovereign Strip, man, I’m still taking it in. In this car too. You know when we took it, I wasn’t sure, I don’t know, it didn’t feel right, it felt like a dad poser’s car but now it just feels like it’s part of me, it belongs to me, this beast. I’ve always liked a Golf. I’d prefer a GTI though. I wonder who owns it.’

 

‘You do,’ said Chris. ‘You’ve given it the big wings. Hey lads, look at him now. I’m sick of this bollocks.. Let’s just lose him.’

 

Dan glanced in the mirror. ‘Don’t make me do this Wardle.’

 

‘Whatever you need to do, just do it. Put him back in his place for fuck’s sake..cheek of it!’

 

They continued on the straight road but Dan had formulated a plan in his mind. ‘I’m going off piste,’ he said.

 

‘What?’

 

‘I’m going off piste!’ Dan said and began to accelerate sharply. 

 

Wardle was close behind but suddenly Dan touched the brakes then pulled hard on the steering wheel, taking a very sharp left turn off the main road into an unlit lane which narrowed into a single track lane. The car wobbled from side to side for a few seconds. I felt my stomach lurch and found myself pressing the palm of my hand across my abdomen while holding Kelly’s bony arm in the fingers of my other hand. Adam sat up then threw himself back in his seat with a heavy sigh as if resigned to whatever was about to happen.

 

‘It’s a bit black down here,’ I said but we were going too fast for talking. It seemed as if the faster we went, the thicker the atmosphere in the car.

 

The scant number of dwellings, little lights behind drawn curtains, fizzled out and disappeared. We were travelling along a channel cut through woodland. Not beautiful ancient woodland, more a crowded collection of skinny trees, birches perhaps, naked and dripping with dew. Dan switched on the main beamers. There must have been two miles of the same view. Kelly had fallen fast asleep but was making strange snaffling noises.

 

‘How’s my girl, is she alive?’

 

I squeezed her arm gently. ‘She’s warm but she’s definitely not conscious.’

 

‘What?’

 

‘She’s unconscious!’ I shouted.

 

‘She’s had too much Thunderbird, blue label stuff, she got excited when her man won, that’s all. She’s proud of me. I don’t even know why she’s in the car though, she should have gone home with her mate.’

 

‘Her mate with the big teeth?’

 

‘That’s the one, Chris….Melanie with the big teeth.’ Dan was making regular glances in the rear-view mirror. ‘He’s not even followed us,’ he said with a laugh, slapping the steering wheel hard with both hands. ‘I’m just going to make sure we’ve definitely, definitely lost him.

 

‘Who?’ said Adam, out of nowhere.

 

‘Who?’ said Chris, ‘Wardle, keep up, you dickhead!’

 

Dan rubbed some snot from his nose with the back of his hand. ‘He’s away with the fairies.’

 

We came to a crossroads. The road signs had changed to those small black and white ones which inhabit the countryside once you get far enough away from suburbia. ‘Turn right,’ said Chris, ‘it’ll take us to the Fairmile then we can switch back through the industrial estate and all bail out.’

 

‘The Fairmile! Bloody hell, I love driving on the Fairmile,’ Dan was excited now, ‘I haven’t been down there since I had that purple Renault 5. You’re a bloody genius, Chris, that’s why I always let you sit in the front. We’ll just have a quick ride up there, maybe two or three goes up and down, and then we’ll go home.’

 

‘The night is young,’ said Chris, ‘don’t listen to boring fuckers who want to go home already.’

 

‘She loves me, this car. I want to let go of the reins, let the car stretch her neck, open her lungs before I dump her. I don’t want to though. I think I love her. Perhaps I’ll hide her somewhere and go back to her in a day or two.’

 

‘Like a dead body,’ said Chris.

 

I glanced across at Adam searching for reassurance that our mate Chris was messed up in the head but he was staring out of the window, looking tired and pensive. ‘What, what the fuck is wrong with you, Chris?’ I said under my breath.

 

It was more built up as we approached the Fairmile, massive houses with double garages and metal gates. The road opened up again to two lanes, there were cat's eyes in the centre and it was very straight, not flat though, it had a beautiful rise where you could see the estate and the lights of the city in the distance. 

 

I felt my body pressing back into the seat as we ascended. Adam wasn’t happy, he was sitting with his arms crossed and kept fidgeting, moving his legs and huffing and puffing. 

 

Chris sat up in his seat and removed a lighter from his back pocket. He was about to light a cigarette but Dan grabbed his wrist. ‘What are you doing, man?’

 

‘What do you think I’m doing, I’m having a fag!’

 

‘Don’t! Don’t light up, not yet. Wait til we’ve gone down the hill. I don’t want a lit ciggy rolling around in the footwell, it’s all, it’s all clean and pristine in here. I don’t want any burn holes. Anyway, you can light one for me too in a minute.’

 

‘Okay. Hurry up then, get down the fucking hill!’

 

‘Gas or no gas?’

 

‘Just give her some gas at the top, then put her in fifth, let go, no brakes.’

 

We had just begun our descent and we were gathering speed when Kelly let out a horrendous retching sound and began to vomit into her lap. I immediately let go of her arm and moved closer to Adam.

 

Chris leant forward. ‘Eurgh! That better not have gone on my jacket!’

 

‘Fucking hell, Kelly!’ Dan shouted and he glanced back to look at his girlfriend. ‘Stupid bitch..’

 

That was the last thing I remember of real life on the 23rd November 1988. I remember flying up and up into the sky and floating among the stars. There was a sense of my body being restricted as if in a box. After that I was pushed down into a sort of protective cell. There was no sound except for a reassuring whooshing sound which appeared to come from inside me and I was weightless, floating. It was very familiar, somewhere I’d been before, more than once and again, I was with my brother.

 

‘