Espedair Street

'Ka-pow!' was my considered comment, I seem to recall.

Then we screwed on the beach, and a couple of times back at the villa.

A storm passed over late in the night, coming from the north: thunder crashed and lightning flashed. She moved half-waking, made a small whimpering noise, and I held her still salty body close to me as the storm which had kept Davey and Inez in Piraeus moved above us.

'You want to call the next album what?'

'I want to call it "We'll Build You A New One, Mrs McNulty",' I told Davey. I looked at him briefly, then quickly looked back to the racetrack; Balfour had almost lapped me. I tried speeding up, but came off at a bend I'd misjudged twice already; the little plastic Scalextric car flew off the black track and flopped into the pile of three cars underneath; two of mine and one of Davey's. I reached for another car and slotted it into the track as Davey cackled (another half-lap gained).

'Mad,' Balfour told me, as his car swept past where we sat. 'You're mad. That is a crazy title. ARC'll never let us call an album that.'

I shrugged. 'I'll talk them round to it.' We were sitting in tall chairs which were perched on top of a large table at one end of what had been the mansion's dining room; it was a good fifty feet long, and Davey's model racing set filled most of it. He must have had about a hundred yards of track spaghettied throughout the room, and at least a dozen booster transformers connected to distant parts of the track, all controlled through the handsets via a small computer. The roadway swooped and zoomed amongst packing cases and stacks of ancient books and piles of old curtains and bedding.

Davey had positioned mirrors at various points throughout the room, so you could see places where the track disappeared from view, but it was tricky driving. When a car came off— which happened fairly often — you just pulled another one from a pile of boxes behind where you sat (on a very broad table) and slotted it into the system where the tracks passed directly in front of you.

The winner was the first person to notch up ten circuits on the automatic lap counter. I hadn't wanted to play — I knew Davey would win — but it was so damn impressive when you first walked into the room that it would have seemed churlish to decline the challenge. I loved it, actually; I kept rocking this way and that in the high-backed chairs we were sitting in, and nearly fell off the table several times.

'Ten,' Davey said, and let his car cruise to a stop in front of me, just beyond the lap counter. I was concentrating on the hill-climb section of the course, a good forty feet away in one corner of the room. Davey leaned forward in his seat to look at the lap counter .

'Yep,' he said. 'Ten.' He looked at me. 'You've got six.'

'Will you back me up with Tumber for that album title?' I asked him.

'No.'

'Aw, go on.' I got the car to the top of the sheet — and curtain-draped pile of packing cases and tea chests, despite a couple of places where I wagged the tail a bit, and started down the far side, slowing fractionally.

'No, it's a stupid title.'

'It's a great title. It'll intrigue people.'

'It's a stupid title and people'll just go "What?", and they'll forget it and they'll be too embarrassed to go into a record shop and ask for it.'

'Rubbish.'

'That's exactly what it is.' I took the car over a series of sinuous chicanes held up by strips of Meccano over an old iron and enamel bath full of water. I'd already lost two cars into the bath in hopelessly one-sided confrontations with Davey in the chicanes.

'We have to be adventurous. We need to keep surprising people.'

'Not with a title like that.'

'Look, just back me up with Tumber. I've already spoken to Chris; she'll go along with you. Wes doesn't care and Mickey won't argue.' Davey packed some grass into a small pipe, and watched me bring the car over a succession of humpbacks it was all too easy to go into mid-air from. The trick seemed to be to let the car take off, but land and re-slot before the next bend. I took it slowly, determined to get this car back. 'Tell you what,' Davey said. My heart sank. I knew that tone. I should have said, Never mind, there and then, but I didn't. 'Let's race for it. If you win, I'll be right there. I promise. I'll be even more enthusiastic than you for ... Mrs McNaughty or whatever the fuck it is.'

'McNulty; the name's McNulty. Don't pretend you've forgotten it. And no; you'll win the race. You've been practising; this is my first time.'

'I'll give you a start. Four laps. That what you lost by this time, and you're improving already, so it'll be fair.' As though to confirm this, I brought my car in, bringing my lap total to seven. I stopped the car on the starting grid in front of us. Davey lit the pipe, and said between sucks, 'Four laps; that's fair.'

'Make it five.'

He handed me the pipe, shaking his head. 'Drive a hard bargain,' he gasped. 'Okay.'

I sucked the smoke in, scalding my throat. I didn't like the way Balfour had agreed so readily. 'What,' I said, then coughed, 'what if you win?'

Davey shrugged, positioned his car and mine exactly on the starting grid. 'You come for a ride in the plane.'

'What, now?' We'd had a couple of bottles of wine with the meal Davey had slung together (he had a sort of cook/butler/general gofer who usually lived in the house, but he'd given the guy the week off), and we'd drunk a few Glenmorangies and smoked a few pipes too.

I'd been trying to put off going for a flight until tomorrow, after being reminded of the way Davey drove. I hoped it would be foggy tomorrow, or it would rain torrentially, or there'd be some unseasonal snow (unlikely in Kent in August, but I was clutching at straws). I certainly wasn't going up after Davey had been drinking and smoking.

'Yeah; now.' Balfour said.

I shook my head. 'No way.' I handed him back the pipe. We finished that, then he brought out a small leather case from his jacket, hanging over the back of the chair. Inside, there was a mirror, a razor blade, and a little snuff box. I regarded this lot dubiously.

Ten minutes later: ' Ah, what the hell; okay. Let's race!'

'Bastard!'

'Ten-eight. My race, I believe.'

'Bastard! You weren't even trying the first time!'

'Not really. Ha ha.'

'I'm still not going up in that plane with you. I'm too tall to die.'

'Na; I've gone off that idea myself. Let's get drunk instead.'

'Now that,' I said, crossing my arms, 'is more like it.'

It was late at night and we'd almost finished the bottle of Glenmorangie. I think it was still the first bottle but I wasn't sure. We were in a room that had been converted into a small private cinema, where Davey had been watching some stunningly tasteless Swedish porno movies and I'd been listening to the Pretenders on the headphones and building joints for something to keep my hands busy. After a while I realised I was dropping more dope into the darkness than I was managing to get into the numbers, so I stopped rolling and started smoking, blowing greyblue clouds into the path of the projector beam until Davey told me to stop and handed me a can of strong lager .

I remember drinking that, and then the room went dark; Davey dragged me, still smoking I think, and definitely giggling, from the seat. The mansion seemed very bright after the cinema; I grabbed a pith helmet from a bust in an alcove at the top of the stairs and pulled the hat down over my eyes as we marched arm in arm down the stairs. I stumbled about at the bottom, bumping into things I couldn't see and laughing, then Davey pulled me out into the fragrant air of a summer's night.