No one was paying much attention to Jeff, or the road. We were, all of us, lost in our own thoughts. Coming to terms with just what it was we had done, and were doing, and the realization that there was no going back. These were dark moments of doubt and regret, yet at the same time seductive and exciting. Like those first pioneers who had crossed the North American continent, we were setting out on a journey without the least idea of where it would take us and when, or if, we would ever be back. It was a journey into our collective future. A voyage into the unknown.
‘What’s wrong?’ I said. I was still perched uncomfortably on the engine cowling, Maurie in the passenger seat, and Luke and Dave on the settee in the back. I hoped I wasn’t going to spend the entire trip with a 1703cc engine thrumming away beneath my arse. It makes me shudder now to think that none of us wore seat belts. There weren’t any in the van, and in 1965 we simply never gave it a second thought. But if we’d had a collision, or even made an emergency stop, I’d have been head first through that windscreen.
‘I’ve missed the turn-off,’ Jeff said. We had come up through Busby and East Kilbride New Town. As a kid I had thought there was something almost futuristic about East Kilbride. Clusters of skyscraper apartments that I could see on the skyline across the fields. There was nothing like that where we lived, and I thought they looked exotic, like a page from a sci-fi comic pasted on the horizon. Of course, I had no idea then what soulless places new towns really were.
‘What road should we be on?’
‘The A776 to Hamilton, and then on to the A74.’
‘Well, what road are we on?’
‘The A726 to Strathaven,’ Jeff said. (Which is pronounced ‘Straven’, even though there’s an ‘ath’ in it. I’ve never known why.) ‘There’s an AA Book of the Road in the glove compartment. Get it out and tell me how we get on to the A74.’
I dug a big Reader’s Digest AA book out of the glove compartment and by the light of the courtesy lamp flicked through pages of maps until I found us. ‘Okay,’ I said. ‘We go straight through Strathaven and stay on the A726 till we see a turn-off for Lesmahagow. That’s the most direct route for getting on to the A74 now.’ Which is how I became our navigator for the journey. By accident and default.
We got safely on to the main road south in the end, and ploughed off into the dark of the night. I was aware of the shadows of treeless hills rising up around us, the old van labouring up inclines, and then gaining speed on the descent. Jeff seemed to be doing his best to run over the rabbits that kept darting across our path, as if it were some kind of a game.
There was a long, slow climb up and over Beattock Summit. I could feel the wind up there buffeting the high sides of our van, and saw Jeff fighting the wheel to keep us in our lane. No one spoke much during those first couple of hours. It was a time of reflection, of ugly reality setting in.
Then Dave’s voice piped up from the back. ‘Gonnae have tae stop for a pee soon.’
It was another fifteen minutes before we saw the lights of a transport café up ahead in the darkness, like an island of light floating in the black of the night. When I think of that night, I wonder what the odds were of our stopping at that café, at that moment. But I have since learned that fate, and Dave’s bladder, work in the strangest ways.
Tall, four-headed lamp posts spilled their yellow light on to a wide gravel parking area as we pulled off the road. There were several lorries, drawn up side by side, a van and a couple of private cars. We all climbed stiffly out into the cold wind that swept down from the hills above us, stamping the blood back into sleeping limbs, and went into the smoky warmth of the café. Some lorry drivers who clearly knew one another sat around a couple of Formica-topped tables that were marked with coffee rings and cigarette burns, and sticky with spilled sugar. A couple of other tables were occupied by solitary travellers, and an elderly woman behind the counter asked us in a velvety-rich smoker’s voice what we would like. We ordered coffees and Tunnock’s Tea Cakes, and took it in turns to use the toilet.
As I waited my turn I noticed a young man leaning against the far end of the counter, sucking on a cigarette and casting an interested eye in our direction. He wore jeans and Cuban-heeled boots, and a chequered shirt with its sleeves carefully folded up to the elbow, revealing tattoos on both forearms. He had the classic Elvis, or Teddy boy, haircut, heavily greased and swept back to a duck’s arse, a tall quiff trembling precariously over an exposed brow. A black leather bomber jacket was draped over the back of the chair behind him, and he had an air of such quiet self-confidence that you could only be impressed. He was skinny, and looked half-starved, but I thought he was cool. Especially the way he sucked his cheeks in when he pulled fiercely on his cigarette. He blew rings that hovered in the still air, and I wish now that I had never set eyes on him.
I spotted a public phone on the back wall, and asked the woman with the velvety voice for change so that I could make a call. I left the others gathered around the counter and headed for the phone. It was with an increased pulse rate that I pumped pennies into the slot and dialled. I didn’t press the A button until I heard her voice, having been ready to press B immediately and get my money back if her father answered.
‘Hi, it’s me.’ I wasn’t sure what kind of response I was going to get.
Jenny’s voice immediately dropped to conspiratorial. ‘Jack, where are you?’
‘Dunno for sure. Somewhere south of Beattock Summit.’
‘Your dad’s after you.’
‘What!’ The shock of her words made my face sting.
‘He’s with Maurie’s dad, in Maurie’s dad’s car. They left about half an hour ago to try and catch up with you.’
I had an absurd, fleeting vision of our two dads sitting in the dark in Maurie’s dad’s car with not a word to say to one another. Two more different people it would have been hard to imagine. The Jew and the atheist. To my knowledge they had never actually met. But I immediately refocused.
‘How did they find out? I mean, it’s not that late. They shouldn’t have found the notes yet.’
There was an ominous silence on the other end of the line.
‘Jenny?’
And she blurted it out. ‘It was me, Jack. I told them. Not long after you’d gone.’
‘Why, for God’s sake?’
‘Because it’s madness. You’ve no idea what you’re getting yourselves into. I thought maybe they could have stopped you.’
I swallowed a deep breath and raised my eyes to the nicotine-stained ceiling. ‘Jesus, Jenny! You shouldn’t have done that. Jesus!’ Thoughts were darting through my head like swallows on a summer’s evening, and I couldn’t keep track of any one of them.
‘Give it up, Jack. Come home.’
‘No!’ I almost shouted down the line at her. Then, more quietly, ‘Not sure I’m ever going to speak to you again, Jenny.’ And I hung up, breathing hard, pulse racing.
If the dads had left half an hour ago, they could only be about an hour behind us, if that. And given the speed of the van, it wouldn’t be long before they caught us. And what then? I conjured a horrible picture in my head of an argument at the roadside, and the humiliation of me and Maurie being dragged off by the ears to sit in the back seat of his dad’s car before being driven home in disgrace.
Luke and Dave and Maurie had carried their coffees to a table and were seated around it sipping their hot milky drinks and talking in low voices. I pulled up a chair and leaned into the table. They knew straight away from my demeanour that something was wrong.
‘Two of the dads are after us in a car.’
‘Christ! Whose dads?’ Dave said.