I banged my head on the steering wheel and the horn sounded.
Withers was pulling at the locked door. My fingers scrabbled as indoor fireworks of pain flashed in my skull. Johns Hotchkiss was screaming, “Get your bony carcasses out of my car or I’ll sue—Dammit, I’ll sue anyway!” Withers banged my window with a club, no, it was his fist; the wife’s gemstone ring scratched the glass; the key somehow slid home into the ignition; the engine roared into life; the dashboard lit up with fairy lights; Chet Baker was singing “Let’s Get Lost”; Withers was hanging on to the door and banging; the Hotchkisses crouched in my headlamps like El Greco sinners; I put the Range Rover into first, but it shunted rather than moved because the hand brake was on; Aurora House lit up like the Close Encounters UFO; I flung away the sensation of having lived through this very moment many times before; I released the hand brake, bumped Withers; moved up to second; the Hotchkisses were not drowning but waving and there they went and we had lift-off!
I drove round the pond, away from the gates, because Mrs. Hotchkiss had left the Range Rover pointing that way. I checked the mirror—Withers and the Hotchkisses were sprinting after us like ruddy commandos. “I’m going to lure them away from the gates,” I blurted to Ernie, “to give you time to pick the lock. How long will you need? I reckon you’ll have forty-five seconds.”
Ernie hadn’t heard me.
“How long will you need to pick the lock?”
“You’ll have to ram the gates.”
“What?”
“Nice big Range Rover at fifty miles per hour should do the trick.”
“What? You said you could pick the lock in your sleep!”
“A state-of-the-art electric thing? No way!”
“I wouldn’t have locked up Noakes and stolen a car if I’d known you couldn’t pick the lock!”
“Aye, exactly, you’re nesh, so you needed encouragement.”
“Encouragement?” I yelled, scared, desperate, furious in equal thirds. The car tore through a shrubbery and the shrubbery tore back.
“How terribly thrilling!” exclaimed Veronica.
Ernie spoke as if discussing a DIY puzzler. “So long as the center pole isn’t sunk deep, the gates’ll just fly apart on impact.”
“And if it is sunk deep?”
Veronica revealed a manic streak. “Then we’ll fly apart on impact! So, foot to the floor, Mr. Cavendish!”
The gates flew at us, ten, eight, six car lengths away. Dad spoke from my pelvic floor. “Do you have any inkling of the trouble you’re in, boy?” So I obeyed my father, yes, I obeyed him and I slammed on the brakes. Mum hissed in my ear: “Sod it, our Timbo, what have you got to lose?” The thought that I had slammed not the brakes but the accelerator was the last—two car lengths, one, wham!
The vertical bars became diagonal ones.
The gates flew off their hinges.
My heart bungee-jumped from throat to bowel, back again, back again, and the Range Rover skidded all over the road, I gripped my intestines shut with all my might, the brakes screeched but I kept her out of the ditches, engine still running, windscreen still intact.
Dead stop.
Fog thickened and thinned in the headlight beams.
“We’re proud of you,” Veronica said, “aren’t we, Ernest?”
“Aye, pet, that we are!” Ernie slapped my back. I heard Withers barking doom and ire, close behind. Ernie wound down the window and howled back at Aurora House: “Waaaaaaazzzzzzoooooo-cccccckkk!” I touched the accelerator again. The tires scuffed gravel, the engine flowered, and Aurora House disappeared into the night. Ruddy hell, when your parents die they move in with you.
“Road map?” Ernie was ferreting through the glove compartment. His finds so far included sunglasses and Werner’s toffees.
“No need. I memorized our route. I know it like the back of my hand. Any escape is nine-tenths logistics.”
“Better steer clear of the motorways. They have cameras and whatnot nowadays.”
I contemplated my career change from publisher to car rustler. “I know.”
Veronica impersonated Mr. Meeks—brilliantly. “I know! I know!”
I told her it was an uncannily accurate impression.
A pause. “I didn’t say anything.”
Ernie turned round and yelled in surprise. When I looked in the mirror and saw Mr. Meeks twitching in the rearmost compartment of the vehicle, I nearly drove us off the road. “How—” I began. “When—who—”
“Mr. Meeks!” cooed Veronica. “What a nice surprise.”
“A surprise?” I said. “He’s broken the laws of ruddy physics!”
“We can’t very well do a U-ie back to Hull,” Ernie stated, “and it’s too cold to drop him off. He’d be an ice block by morning.”
“We’ve run away from Aurora House, Mr. Meeks,” Veronica explained.
“I know,” the sozzled old duffer bleated, “I know.”
“All for one and one for all, is it?”
Mr. Meeks leaked a giggle, sucked toffees, and hummed “The British Grenadiers” as the Range Rover wolfed down the northward miles.
A sign—PLEASE DRIVE CAREFULLY IN SCOTCH CROSS—shone in the headlights. Ernie had ended our route plan here with a big red X, and now I saw why. An all-night petrol station servicing an A-road—next door to a pub called the Hanged Edward. Midnight was long gone, but the lights were still on. “Park in the pub. I’ll go and get us a can of petrol so nobody’ll spot us. Then my vote’s for a swift pint to celebrate a job well done. Silly Johns left his jacket in the car, and in the jacket—tra-la.” Ernie flashed a wallet the size of my briefcase. “I’m sure he can stand us a round.”
“I know!” enthused Mr. Meeks. “I know!”
“A Drambuie and soda,” Veronica decided, “would hit the spot.”
Ernie was back in five minutes carrying the can. “No bother.” He siphoned the petrol into the tank, then the four of us walked across the car park to the Hanged Edward. “A crisp night,” remarked Ernie, offering his arm to Veronica. It was ruddy freezing, and I couldn’t stop shivering. “A beautiful moon, Ernest,” added Veronica, looping hers through his. “What a splendid night for an elopement!” She giggled like a sixteen-year-old. I screwed the lid down on my old demon, Jealousy. Mr. Meeks was wobbly, so I supported him as far as the door, where a blackboard advertised “The Massive Match!” In the warm cave inside, a crowd watched TV soccer in a distant fluorescent time zone. In the eighty-first minute England was a goal down to Scotland. Nobody even noticed us. England playing Scotland, abroad, in the deep midwinter—is it World Cup qualifier time again already? Talk about Rip van Ruddy Winkle.
I’m no fan of television pubs, but at least there was no thumpy-thumpy-thump acidic music, and that evening freedom was the sweetest commodity. A sheepdog made room for us on a fireside pew. Ernie ordered the drinks because he said my accent was too southern and they might spit in my glass. I had a double Kilmagoon and the most expensive cigar the bar could muster, Veronica ordered her Drambuie and soda, Mr. Meeks a ginger beer, and Ernie a pint of Angry Bastard bitter. The barman didn’t take his eyes off the TV—he got our drinks by sense of touch alone. Just as we took our seats in an alcove, a cyclone of despair swept through the bar. England had been awarded a penalty. Tribalism electrified the audience.
“I’d like to check my route. Ernie, the map if you will.”
“You had it last.”