‘Bus!’ They latched arms so close that heads touched, laughing till the tears froze.
‘We’ve got to move,’ Lance said, ‘and the bikes won’t do it. They’ve hudged closer since we stopped. They know it’s all up with them, poor things.’ He cried bitter tears. ‘We’ll have to go from one to another with a gun to blow their brains out, so they won’t suffer too much.’ He sniffed, back into manhood. ‘My old man’ll have to open the stall in Uttoxeter market on his own tomorrow.’
‘What we need,’ Wayne said, ‘is a nice big van to get us out of this freezing shit.’
They thought on the matter.
‘You might as well wish for the moon,’ Garry said. ‘We can’t even see the road. In the meantime, though, is there any more gut rot? No? We’ll have to start on the petrol, then. A cup o’ four-star, anybody?’ He unscrewed the cap, dipped a finger, held it to the wind, and licked. ‘The bastards would water tit milk if it came out of a can.’
‘A bad year,’ Lance said. ‘Our Ken works down the pit, and when he got his NUM diary not long ago it told you the best years for wine. But after that Scargill strike it didn’t tell you any more. Nobody could afford even vinegar. A real fucking killpig of a strike that was. He had to sell his car. But everybody was getting rid of theirs as well, so he only got fifty quid for it.’
‘He shouldn’t have come out,’ Wayne said.
‘He had to, didn’t he, bighead?’
‘Well, you don’t have to do everything people tell you to, do you?’
‘Yeh, but we shouldn’t have come out tonight, should we? But we did, and in this bleeding weather as well. Who would believe it?’
‘I wonder what the forecast is?’ Wayne said. ‘My leg’s like a bit of old pitprop. Fancy coming for a spin on a rotten night like this.’
‘No time’s perfect.’ Lance looked around the back of the van, barely able to stand against the peltering snow. ‘If we push out into it we won’t last five minutes. Maybe we can get this thing going.’
Garry considered it for the extended time of one second. ‘It’s been dumped. Somebody nicked it and flogged it along the road till the petrol ran out.’
‘Got any tools?’
‘Tools? You’re off your fucking cowpat. I wouldn’t know what to do with ’em.’
Lance cleared the snow from the handle, wrenched the door open, and clambered in. ‘At least we’ll get our arses out of the snow.’
‘Eh,’ Garry exclaimed, ‘lad’s clever. He’ll get his fucking O Levels next.’
‘He might even learn to walk,’ Wayne said. ‘I hear they teach you at night school. You only have to totter twenty-five yards in the test.’
‘Then he’ll meet another little walker,’ Garry went on, ‘one with tits, and happen after a while they’ll get wed, and have a gaggle of little snotty-nosed walkers. They’ll go by us long-haired greasy biking bastards with their little piggy noses stuck in the air. Walkers! I hate ’em, nearly as much as buses and taxis and cars.’
Lance pulled wires from behind the dashboard. A smoky roar blurted from the engine, lights dimly yellow on the snow. ‘Get in, for fuck’s sake, but kick a bit of that white stuff from around the wheels first.’
Tyres scuffed and spun. ‘Push, you idle bastards.’
‘Ah,’ said Garry, ‘push! That’s different. Bikers might not be able to walk, but they can push all right. Come on, let’s get this wagon moving.’
While Lance coughed himself breathless, Garry took a turn in the cabin and kept the engine lively, got them a few feet forward. ‘One more heave-ho, and we’re in the clear.’ He roared the power to encourage, till hot gas from the exhaust set the pushers screaming that they would kill him if he didn’t stop choking them alive. ‘It’s warming you up. Make you drunk quicker than booze.’ He put on all systems in well-timed operation, the van swaying onto the road.
Garry stayed at the controls. ‘Come on, my beauty, don’t let us down.’ He slid the doors back. ‘Shake the snow off your boots before you get into my nice van, you flea-bitten deadbeats.’ He weaved, threading the drifts at a crawl.
Lance noticed a decrease in the snow, a slight drop in the wind. ‘We’re on the move. Maybe God won’t let us snuff it, after all.’
Wayne laughed. ‘God? Did you hear that, lads? God! God’s dead, you daft get. I knocked him flying at a Belisha beacon last week. His fucking pension book went all over the shop. You should have seen the look on his face. A wonderful sight. Eh, we’re going quicker, do you notice?’
‘Eight miles an hour,’ Garry said. ‘It’ll take us all week to find a phone box.’
‘We’ll get the Chief Constable to send us a chopper,’ Lance said. ‘Ask him to take us back to Chesterfield.’
‘I want a nice cosy boozer.’ Garry kicked the clutch, and rattled the gears from slot to slot. ‘We can play darts on the landlord’s poxy face. It’ll warm us up a bit.’ Smoke and rubber reeked as the wheels spun. He pulled a spade from the space behind. ‘Get digging for victory. That’ll warm you up.’
They scooped snow aside with a stiffbacked motoring atlas, kicked and breasted it till the shovel hit tarmac. ‘Push again,’ Lance shouted, red-raw hands taking the wheel.
‘I feel knackered,’ Wayne said. ‘I won’t be able to kick a pub to pieces, even if we find one.’
‘It’s nearly-stopped snowing,’ Garry told him. ‘And then it’ll fucking well freeze.’
‘We’re getting there. If anybody spots a light,’ Wayne said, ‘let me know through the intercom.’
‘You won’t see any lights around these parts,’ Lance told him. ‘They shut ’em off in case anybody knocks at the door to ask for a cup of water.’
Garry laughed, head back. ‘Do you remember when we ripped a door off that hotel in Paxton and chucked it over the bar? And that old bastard saying we ought to be called up into the army? I sent my pint o’ slurry over him. He said we ought to be flogged!’
Lance banged his fist against the windscreen. ‘But nobody would buy us, I told him. You wouldn’t even get ten pence for us.’
‘Then we slung a few chairs into the saloon, just to show willing. Posh punters didn’t know what was happening. They thought the fucking revolution had started.’ Wayne passed his fag packet. ‘At least we can have our last puff before we die.’
‘We had to run, though,’ Lance said.
‘Of course we had to run. Twenty to one, wasn’t it? You don’t fight twenty to fucking one.’
‘I wonder what’s in the back of this van?’ Lance said. ‘Why don’t somebody take a look?’
‘Boxes,’ Garry shouted. ‘They’re full of fifty-pound notes with the ink still wet. No, it looks like hi-fi stuff.’
‘We’ll have a shufti when we’re in the clear. Then we can set it going and have a dance, a bit of old ragtime.’ Songs went through Lance’s mind ten a minute, but they hardly ever finished. ‘Dance with the snowflakes, more like.’
‘The battery wouldn’t last. Still, we’re moving, aren’t we? What’s that light over there?’
‘You need glasses.’ Lance waved cigarette smoke away. ‘It’s a farm, and they’ve already got their shotguns trained on us, you can bet.’