The Mechanic



The Mechanic

By Geoff Le Pard

Dave Redwood was a great mechanic. If the government had any moving parts he could have got it working. I met Dave on my first day at secondary school, January 13th 1970. The era of stay-press trousers and cheesecloth shirts, Morecombe and Wise Christmas Specials and Jim’ll Fix It. He was fascinated by anything inanimate that spun, whizzed, thrusted or throbbed. Especially if it had stopped functioning as it was designed to do. The guy who set up eBay says he knew he was onto a winner when someone bought a broken light pointer for a dollar. The person, when asked, said he bought it so he could make it work. It had to be Dave. Except he’s never gone far out of South Hampshire so probably has never had a dollar.

As we grew up Dave and I remained close. He hardly ever spoke, smelt of cardboard and had a variety of acne that they copied for The Night of the Living Dead. But he always mended my bike when it broke down. For nothing. Of course, it would regularly break down soon after Dave’s ministrations but at least it worked for a while. If I had been a cynical child I might have suspected he was building in obsolescence. He wasn’t. He didn’t have the imagination.

Dave was a loyal friend, in a lugubrious, Basset Hound sort of way. As long as whatever we did was essentially passive and involved a lot of sitting, he was content. We once tried out for the Duke of Edinburgh’s bronze award; a total shambles. The hike took us as far as the bus stop, about 250 yards from the start, where he sat on his rucksack and pulled out a packet of Silk Cut. He was 14. The only things that triggered any sort of enthusiasm had plugs attached.

All boys I knew at that time had some ambition; a passion, which may have been secret or may have been overtly declared: like opening the batting for England (me), or eating more prunes than Nigel Stepney at one sitting (my elder brother), or seeing if Penelope Seaborough’s nipples really were orange (every boy in the fourth year when the rumour started). Except Dave. That is until he passed his sixteenth birthday. Then this idea took hold and began to inveigle itself into his very soul. Dave wanted his driving licence, to be followed shortly afterwards by his own car.

The tension, as his seventeenth approached, was unbearable. Some people become morose and introverted with the approach of a test. Not Dave. He discovered the soliloquy. If Shakespeare had been writing in Bournemouth in the late twentieth century, Dave would undoubtedly have featured as a tortured soul. He could deliver a treatise on the iniquities of pedestrian’s rights, as purveyed by the Highway Code, second to none. Which he did. Often.

It became manifest that he had to pass his test first time. For everyone’s sanity. Not to have passed would have been as mortifying for him as being caught voting Labour would have been for my father. The collective release of breath the day he achieved his aim caused a freak weather system to form, which created havoc with the shipping forecast for Wight and Portland.

Once he obtained this badge of honour, he fixed his beady, unblinking, sandy-lidded eyes on the second part of his ambition. The car. It dominated his thinking if not his conversation. And then his uncle Cedric died and the family decided Dave’s dream could be fulfilled with a carefully nurtured Ford. How propitious. How very fortunate. We often wondered why they never carried out an autopsy.

Still we humoured him, now he was the proud owner of four wheels. It became his oxygen, his Alpha and his Omega. And we benefited. We had a method of transport that was a mite more reliable than parents, the Hants and Dorset Bus Service and our bicycles.

He had been transformed overnight from a regular embarrassment into a critical part of our rather feeble social lives. The first pick for the team. Previously inaccessible parties became attainable. He enabled us to “offer a lift home”. It was fantastic. I’m not sure if he ever thought about girls either generally or specifically but we did. Constantly. And he was at his happiest if we offered a lift to someone who lived on the other side of the county. While he drove for miles on dark empty roads at whatever speed he chose, one or other of us would be attempting some gymnastic manoeuvres in the back that Olga Korbut would never have countenanced. Given the state of my back these days, she was right.

But there was a price to pay. Initially it took the form of interminable explanations of the inner workings of some critical mechanical organ. Then it was the Saturday mornings that were given over to holding a spanner or a wrench while he performed open-heart surgery on his baby. How we hankered for a return to innocent days of our pre motorized world. We began to dream of a time when Dave and his licence or his car might be decoupled. The chances were slim but we continued to hope...

The first occasion when we thought we had evidence of miracles being performed was on Dave’s eighteenth birthday. Dave and I liked drinking. Where we lived, in the bowels of Hampshire, the pub was the only opportunity for a regular nightlife (unless you formed part of the elite group that had coloured coded Penelope Seaborough). There were ten pubs of varying styles, sizes and ambiences in Lymington stretching from Captain’s Quay to the A337. They were pretty evenly spaced and, at one time or another, we’d tried them all.

For Dave’s eighteenth we had this simple plan. Starting in the snug at the Green Man at the bottom of the High Street we would try to reach the Red Lion in one session. The one immutable rule was we had to have a different drink in each pub on the way. That and we must not use the gents in any of those establishments. Two rules.

There were four of us that November night. Dave and me, of course. Plus George and Alf.

George was already balding by eighteen, his round white face gloomily reflecting a hairless future. On a dark evening such as that one, he looked like a trainee Uncle Fester. He could also grunt in Haynes Manual-speak with Dave, which made him invaluable on what was going to be a long and inevitably emotional evening.

Alf was altogether more amiable. He had already had a girlfriend and was treated with appropriate veneration by the rest of us. The expression “Having a girlfriend” had been a source of heated, and inconclusive, debate between us. For instance, my attempts to include Marjorie Horley were discounted, I thought unfairly. To comply you had to have been on at least two dates. That involved spending at least one hour in the company of a girl on each occasion and for there to have been some flesh-on-flesh touching. On that basis, I reckoned I had passed the test. The fact that the only times I’d actually touched her were to carry her to the car after she was found totally bladdered on a sofa and then carry her to her front door before doing a very quick escape before the rebarbative Mrs Horley answered the bell. So, to destroy my application the other three came up with the three-part harmony of girlfriend lore: one, you had to ask said girl out (we spent an inconclusive six months on “out” but that’s a different and equally tedious story); two, she had to accept; three she actually had to turn up and stay for the allotted hour. Whilst snogging acquired brownie points, the ask/accept/out rule led sway.

But we all accepted that Alf was in a different league. And he was always keen to let slip a little advice for us novices. Mostly they were don’ts: “Don’t leave her alone and talk to your mates.” “Don’t read the NME when she’s telling you about how Pat or Nicola or someone has been mean to her by not noticing her new nail polish.” “Don’t enjoy farting.” “Don’t pretend you understand Whispering Bob on OGWT.” “Don’t rubbish Yes or The Moody Blues or suggest that reading the Melody Maker proves you have less of an IQ than a daffodil.”

We thought he was both heroic to endure such strictures and encyclopaedic so far as relationship manoeuvres were concerned. We each sat there, listening to the Sage, and absorbing his wisdom in our own specific ways. George’s fingers would play with some imagined clasp that formed a crucial part of the as yet unexplored and deeply mysterious female underwear. Dave, no doubt, wondered why anyone would suffer so, while he extracted small, but no doubt vital, pieces of his Ford Escort from under his fingernails.

As for me, well the thing I thought most difficult was what on earth did he find to talk about? Sport? Not in my experience. The relative merits of the Mexico RS2000 when compared with the Mustang? Well, I’d struggle to continue that chat up line for more than a minute. Was Frank Zappa an existentialist or a reductive realist? Who on earth would care? And anyway I made that last bit up. Women were a riddle, wrapped up in a mystery, inside a fortress of hooks and zips. Period. They were an enigma and a terror to me, even though I had been at a mixed school since I was eleven. My experiences of women were limited despite that. My mother was old by any standards and utterly asexual. My grandmother was an improbable shape and almost certainly of a different species. And the only other girls I came near at school were supremely arrogant and indifferent to my presence.

At thirteen, a girl called Dina had terrified me by pulling me into the girl’s toilets. From the look on her face it wasn’t because she liked me. I was horrified that there were no urinals in there and had nightmares that they trapped unwary males, like me, in the cubicles to carry out egregious and illegal (if, in some fascinating way, strangely exciting) experiments on us. The idea that they might go there to urinate and defecate, in a similar manner to we males, never occurred to me… and had I been asked if I thought they did, the clincher would have been the patent lack of porcelain.

The four of us started at seven thirty and had made it to pub number five, the George, via pints of lager and best, double vodka and coke and (Alf’s choice) Tia Marias. The bar man in the Bunch of Grapes had to be persuaded to serve us with the four Tia Marias. He never treated me with anything other than suspicion after that.

We moved on to the Mouldy Duck. Things were getting fractious. “Let’s have Lager Tops.” George was always on the defensive.

“We’ve done them.” Dave was eying the optics.

“We’ve only done straight pints, though. Tops is different.”

So we spent twenty minutes on definitions. As usual. The barman, Wilmot, waited patiently. At that point in our lives he was the first male we had come across who sported a body piercing, a dainty little gold earring. We couldn’t decide so we left it to Wilmot (his view: each drink had to be completely different to any of the others). So it was scotch and ginger. Actually that was the last time I saw Wilmot. During the furnace-fired summer of 1976, while Lymington shimmered and the infamous Chapter Wars between Hampshire Hell’s Angels and Berkshire Bikers cleared the streets, he upset one unfeasibly muscled biker by asking if “he wanted ice with it” and was tossed, caber-style, through a window of the Duck. A shard of glass became embedded in his left testicle, which turned septic and had to be amputated. A similar problem had occurred to the pub owner’s boxer who was described by the vet as being a mono-orchid. Wilmot, who put a lot of store into his manly image, might just have carried off the humiliation of being compared to a lopsided canine. Until, that is, a rather dense regular unfortunately confused the human and hound diagnoses and described him as only having one tulip. It was too much. He moved to Stockbridge and set up a haberdashery.

By pub eight (the Lion and Sceptre) we had seen the back of a gin and bitters, port and lemon and were sipping Newcastle Browns. To our surprise, Dave’s dad appeared, looking distraught. George had, by then, been sick in the planter outside Collins and Sons, Solicitors and Commissioners for Oaths, while Alf had urinated in a handily placed wheelbarrow by Fat Keith’s Chippy.

“David, you must come now.” Even with my alcohol-induced cataracts, I could see Dave was incapable of any meaningful response, verbal or promenatory. “He’s a little squiffy, Mr Redmond.” Well, it left my brain like that but I think by the time it hit my lips it comprised mostly a series of S’s until I reached his name. “What?” He looked at me as one looks at ones shoes after treading in something faecal.

“David, you’ll need to drive the car. Mum needs to go to hospital. Granny’s had a nasty turn and Aunty Cecilia is already there.” This last piece of information caused Dave to start nodding and shaking as if he was crossing himself with his head. Looking back I think he was trying to say he couldn’t drive but he understood his Aunt couldn’t be left alone with his Gran. Or maybe he was just so out of it he had lost all muscle control.

Parents are, of course, wilfully blind when it suits them. You would think Mr Redmond knew his son well enough by then to realise he was too slewed to drive but I suppose (a) Dave was known never to speak to his parents (b) neither of them drank alcohol being Christian Scientists and (c) he hardly ever stood up anyway so seeing him slouched in a corner was pretty normal.

Somehow, he lurched upright, put the rest of his change on the table and turned to follow his father out into the night. No one but me seemed to bat an eyelid. Surely he wasn’t going to drive anywhere? We remaining triad sat wondering what to do. The challenge had rather lost its point without Dave even if we had his money. George was pretty nearly comatose as it was and Alf had started talking about why Pat didn’t appreciate him. So I phoned my Dad who agreed to pick us up and take us home.

All night I worried about Dave. At least I did in those intervals when I wasn’t trying to work out why the ceiling had come loose from the walls and was floating off into space. He had to be caught and breathalysed and that would mean he would lose his licence. Or he’d crash his precious car. And for Dave that would be worse than losing any combination of two or more vital organs. But for us… I didn’t dare to hope.

He was waiting for me on the platform the next morning. We caught the same train to school. Perhaps he looked a little bit paler than usual, maybe his eyes were a little deeper set but he was the same calm unsyllabic self. It took ages to get the truth out of him. Mostly because I was so ill that I couldn’t frame a coherent question for two days. I seemed to have got stuck saying S all the time.

It turned out that he’d been sitting in his dad’s car, outside his family house, waiting for his mum to come out. He felt a bit sleepy so had crawled over into the far back (it was an estate) for a couple of minutes shut eye and hadn’t woken up until morning. In the meantime his mother came out with her bag and coat and climbed into the passenger side. While she waited for her son to appear her neighbour, a Mr Jerry-something, rushed out and saw her sitting there, clutching her bag like an evacuee. His wife followed, heavily and uncomfortably pregnant. Well, Dave’s absence was beginning to irritate Mrs Redmond any way so when it became clear that they all needed the hospital for a variety of reasons, it took no time for the neighbour to agree to drive the two women. The absence of Dave seemed by then to be an incidental benefit.

When Dave came to, the car was in the hospital car park so he just climbed out and walked to the station where we met. And you may ask why his father hadn’t driven his mother? It was Wednesday and he couldn’t miss The Generation Game.

Dave was bright; there isn’t a doubt. He easily persuaded the Hobbits that run the engineering department at Cambridge that he was suitable material for their particular form of grooming while I went west to study Law in Bristol. I did think we might lose touch but Dave proved to be a regular and resilient, if terminally ponderous, correspondent.

The second opportunity to separate the inseparable came after we had started at college. I still don’t know who’s idea the journey was. Mine probably. I’ve always let my enthusiasms get the better of me. At some point in that first year we agreed on a holiday in the summer vac. We would take Dave’s pride and joy, the Ford Anglia, and visit all our new found friends round England. Why I thought the idea perfect, given I should have remembered those bleak days in Dave’s car when all I would hear about was the latest pancreatic complication and how he had fixed it, I don’t know. But at the time there were some many obvious pluses: I couldn’t drive, Dave could and he had a car. I wanted to see these wonderfully diverse, erudite, beautiful people again and again and Dave could and would ferry me. The fact that he might have to meet them, that they might get to meet him and they might begin to question their budding friendship with someone prepared to spend two solid weeks in the company of a pustulent troll, this didn’t occur to me until it was too late.

It was, therefore, with something less than the holiday spirit that I met up with Dave at his parent’s house in Sopley one bright Friday evening in July. We would set off the next day. For Coventry where he had some engineering friends doing work experience at some large company. They lived in a bedsit in Rugby where we were to stay, but our rendezvous was in the Company’s staff sports club for no better reason that the 20p pint of Best they served. And to me, in my somewhat misanthropic mood, that seemed like a very good reason.

Dave however was energized, buzzing. Don’t mistake that for any sort of articulacy; conversations with Dave have always been pretty one sided. No, Dave had prepared for our epic trek in his particularly gnomic style.

Dave was a music aficionado of sorts; anything post 1960 and especially of the Rock genre. Back then, in those drab mid 1970s, he could complete the NME crossword in less than twenty minutes. His knowledge of Ronnie Van Zant’s inside leg measurement and whether Greg Allman had an inside leg was second to none. I was, frankly, a severe disappointment to Dave is this area. To me the Carpenters were the Twentieth Century’s equivalent of the Strauss family, I wept unashamedly at Gilbert O’Sullivan’s “Claire” and I thought it the height of rebellion to get tickets to Mud’s Christmas Extravaganza at the Gaumont in Southampton.

To avoid arguments between us Dave had prepared the music for the journey, which was a mix of ghastly, cacophonous crap, frankly. Iggy Pop and Alice Cooper seemed to me in need of medical help, the Mahavisnu Orchestra were short of a few quavers and The Velvet Underground needed therapy not a recording contract. And to show he was all heart he added, at the end of each tape, one track of my sophisticated RomPop as he later dubbed it.

Dave’s tapes were long and cheap. They always jammed. Not once in the 1272 miles we travelled that summer did we reach one of “my tracks”. We were sure never to arrive at that point before the ultra light C120 developed its own inguinal hernia and I had to spend thirty minutes or so winding its intestines back into place. Meanwhile another tape was selected and the aural terrorism continued.

We had to go to Stoke first for a reason I’ve long since forgotten. We were hurtling down the M6 back towards Coventry with Dave happily twiddling with some unlikely mix of Lynard Skinnard and the Doors when we suddenly lost all power and ground to a halt on the hard shoulder. If it had been my car, I’d have thumped the steering column and cried but Dave beamed. It meant he could tinker. What a treat.

The wind whipped and slashed its way along the carriageway so, having dutifully climbed out and suggested we call the AA, to which the response was silence, I climbed back in, pulled a sleeping bag around my shoulders and dreamt of home.

He was still at it twenty minutes later when a police car drew up. I thought I’d better join in, if only to translate. The policeman was old, fat and not a people-person.

“What you doing, lads?” He spoke in a soft Brummie accent.

Dave stayed hunkered down, examining the spleen or flood plain or whatever was in there. “I’ve checked the carb, the ‘lectrics and sparks. Just having a go at the alti and the starter; that sticks on these buggers.”

Blow me, a whole speech. The PC looked at me: “Knows what he’s doing, does he?”

“Oh yes officer he’s really very good. You know…”

Constable whatever tapped Dave on the back. “This aint a garage, young’un. I’m calling a pick up.”

Dave shot up. Like a meercat on guard. “No need. I’ll sort it in a jiff.”

The PC ignored him and spoke into his radio. “Hi. Control. This is 209, two miles from junction 7, south bound.”

“Hi Rog. What you got?”

Rog looked at the two of us. “The Righteous Brothers have broken down and need a pick up pronto, Mabel.”

“Right ho.”

PC Rog looked at the engine. “You’ve about twenty minutes and then it’s 100 little green drinking tokens to get you to a garage.”

Dave had gone white. He turned back to his task with a renewed vigour.

“You going to help him or are you here just to add glamour?”

I got back in the car. I watched. Dave never surfaced, determined to defeat the powers of darkness rapidly approaching. I was torn. Half of me didn’t want to lost about two thirds of our kitty before we’d properly started. The other half imagined the mileage I might get if he couldn’t fix his precious baby.

Schadenfreude won. A battered tow-truck pulled up in front of us and reversed back. An equally unprepossessing youth climbed out. Probably younger that our mature 19 years. Dave stood to greet the visitor from the Dark Side.

“Wassup?”

Dave started to list what he’d checked, adding to the items he’d mentioned to Rog. The youth stooped and glanced under the bonnet. Rog and I stood back and waited. It wasn’t long coming.

“There’s yer problem.” He pointed to the top of the engine; a dark rectangular hole, with oil suppurating out of the wound, was plain for us all to see. Somewhere deep below, in the thin light from the summer sky a piston head glinted. He looked at Dave. “There’s a technical expression for that, yer know.” He paused. “Yer buggered.”

He turned away and started the manoeuvring that would eventually lead to the Anglia being lifted up behind his truck. I went and got my bag and climbed up into the truck’s warm, moist cabin. It smelt of something familiar and unpleasant, like an incontinent cat. PC Rog sighed and touched Dave on the arm tenderly, nodding gently. He walked pensively back to his car, shaking his head.

Dave stood transfixed, staring at the hole, his reputation and his self-confidence all suffering the same technical problem as his car. The youth stood to one side, hook in hand, head bowed, silently expressing his condolences. I watched in the overlarge rear view mirror as Dave shut the casket lid on the corpse of his once lively four-stroke and stepped back.

I leant back against the black cracked plastic of the seating and stretched my legs. I had been smiling but as I reflected on Dave’s bereavement I realised how inappropriate my response had been. I began, slowly and quietly at first, but with increasing volume and gusto, to sing. A song appropriate to the occasion:

“I’ll say goodbye to Love,

No one ever cared if I should live or die,

Time and time again…”

Perhaps I would enjoy this holiday after all.

................
................

In order to avoid copyright disputes, this page is only a partial summary.

Google Online Preview   Download