‘So,’ Anto said. ‘What are you waiting for, TC? Go and get us a bucket of washers.’
‘Me go? You go!’
‘Forget it, I’ll go,’ Liz said and would not hear then of them not letting her.
It was as she was making her way back, slowly (who knew there was so much weight in a bucket of washers?), that the word started going round that DeLorean and his wife had arrived — the secretary of state and his wife too — which would have accounted for the sudden competition again from noise without.
Liz set down the washers, with an inadvertent thump, between her and Anto. The Tellus carrier was moving again, past the doors section now, heading straight for them.
‘My palms are sweating,’ Liz said.
Said TC, ‘My cheeks are.’
‘What way’s that to talk?’ said Anto and seemed to shift uncomfortably inside his own overalls.
And then there it was in front of them and there they were at last, the three of them, hoisting the first of the black leather seats, their tools, the galvanised bucket of washers, and immersing themselves in the interior.
‘Wait a second… Wait a second.’
‘Watch! No, lift that… A bit higher… A bit higher… Whoa! Whoa! Whoa!’
‘Where’s this supposed to…?’
‘Look: down there. Remember?’
‘Do you want me to hold it for you?’
‘Quick, chuck us a couple more washers.’
‘The torque, the torque! Use the torque wrench!’
And, almost before they had time to think, they were out and the car had moved on. For the life of her she couldn’t remember the second seat even going in. A couple of minutes after that it was through the wheels section too and up on the ramp for fuelling. (One third of an imperial gallon those eight minutes amounted to. They would have been better off with a dropper than a pump.) There had been talk of Jackie Stewart or Stirling Moss coming to drive the first car out, or even — they should be so lucky — James Hunt. Instead that honour went to one of the test drivers, Barry, Liz thought it was you called him, who walked to the car like the astronauts at Cape Canaveral to their rockets, that same expression on his face of anticipation mixed with dread. As he got in, left side, to the driver’s seat, TC and Anto were running to help open the roller doors.
*
DeLorean stepped up to the microphone, to the right of the grandstand, as though — Randall had observed it before — he moved through a different medium, or was being shot on a different speed, to everyone around him. He had never looked more impressive, his hair spun, you would almost have thought, from the same guaranteed rust-free stuff that sheathed the cars that bore his name. And as for his jaw… it was his conductor’s baton, his wand, wherever it pointed there was a reaction, a jumping to attention, a rush of colour to the cheeks, an instant abashed smile.
‘Mister Secretary of State’ — forget the syllables now: every letter nearly was drawn out to a sentence in its own right — ‘Missis Atkins, Distinguished Guests, Members of the Local and International Press, Friends and Well-wishers…’ From somewhere at his back there came a muffled thud. His eyes flicked towards Don, then Randall, but he carried on without noticeable hesitation and only a fraction louder than before, ‘…Ladies and Gentlemen. Thirty years ago, when I was a young man just beginning to make my way in the automobile industry…’
Don being too close to the dignitaries and the cameras that were trained on them, and too far from the source of the thud (for that was what the rapid movement of the eyes had signified: go, one of you), Randall backed slowly towards the assembly shop and, avoiding the main doors, ducked inside. It took him several moments to make sense of what he was seeing.
The car was wedged at an angle between the door pillar and the wall. The test driver stood, hands gripping fistfuls of his hair, at the centre of a crowd of horrified workers.
‘The brakes just weren’t responding,’ he said.
‘But we tested them,’ said the man at his left shoulder, practically in tears. Randall was not far off joining him.
The test driver’s hands tightened their grip, pulling his features into a dreadful grimace. ‘They weren’t responding. I was pressing and pressing, and nothing… nothing at all.’
‘We’re fucked,’ somebody said. Randall glanced round at him. One of the union leaders. Always had a book with him at meetings. He was looking straight at Randall, who was thinking in that moment Don, and how to get him away from those cameras out front without alerting everyone that there was a problem.
Oh, Christ was there a problem.
‘Wait,’ he said and turned to the driver. ‘There are still a couple of those mules around, aren’t there? Steering wheels and all already inside? Go and get one of them. And, here’ — this to the workers gathered round looking instantly a little less horrified — ‘get the skins off this.’ He leaned over the hood to have a look at the damage. The licence plate at least was salvageable: DMC1. ‘And the licence plate too. Time and a half for everyone if you can get a car out of here in the next quarter of an hour!’
Liz was the first to respond. Not a flicker as she rushed past him. Too focused.
He slipped out the side door again.
DeLorean was still on his feet, still talking (he had only just left the fifties behind for the thrill that was his first Car of the Year, the 1960 Tempest), his instinct and his experience telling him that if something was not going right there was every chance it was going very wrong indeed, but telling him too that the best people to deal with it were almost certainly already on the other side of the doors. What else was all the training for?
Randall, ignoring the frown Jennings turned his way, placed himself in DeLorean’s line of vision. He showed him the fingers of both hands then of the left hand alone. As before there was barely a pause, although maybe a careful observer would have seen his jaw jut out a fraction further. Fifteen minutes? He could do that. And how. From the Tempest to the GTO — a generous word for Bill Collins, in absentia, who had been part of the Pontiac too, a nod to Ronnie and the Daytonas, who had taken ‘this modified little Pon-Pon’ to the top of the Pop Charts as well as the auto sales charts — from the GTO to the GM kiss-off (here lightly done: this was not a day for recrimination), to the Vision that had guided him this past seven years and more… Randall could have flashed him a half dozen more handfuls of fingers and the store would not have been exhausted.
On fourteen and a half minutes, though, the mechanism controlling the assembly shop doors kicked in.
‘But now, ladies and gentlemen’ — you would have thought, so seamless was the transition, that the opening of the doors had been timed to fit his words and not the other way about — ‘this is the moment they told us we would never live to see, the moment they told us we were mad to dare dream we would live to see, and the moment that, but for the faith of my wonderful wife Cristina’ — she pressed a knuckle beneath each eye in turn — ‘I might even have got to thinking once or twice myself I was mad to dream I would live to see.’ Never more impressive, never more vindicated. ‘I present to you all…’ A final dramatic pause, or a catch in the throat, ‘the DMC-12 sports car.’
Randall uncrossed his fingers to join in the applause, which grew as the doors opened wider then, as the nose appeared (complete with licence plate), lost the run of itself completely. People were whooping and hollering, Irish people, British people. The press were whooping and hollering loudest of all. The secretary of state put his hand to his tie, patting the knot, when it seemed from his expression as though what he wanted to do was yank the thing loose or tear it off altogether.