Charlie and Me. Chapter 24
Charlie finally gets to drive her racecar, and acts a bit crabby. Rick gets nervous.
*****
The ’57 Bel Air had turned out to be a bit more of a project than we bargained for. It really had taken quite a while to get that one off the ground, what with all the scheming we’d been doing for our friends as well. Originally we intended for it to be a very fast version of a road car. Take the car, rip out its mechanicals, lighten it up a bit, then screw in a ludicrously big engine for Charlie to play with in the bath.
This idea evolved, and we pretty much lost control of things. The car became death on wheels. By the time we’d had a very highly specialised company near Woking do their stuff, there was hardly an original part of it left. I do know it had been barely worth buying the damned thing in the first place. The problem was that with the sort of power Charlie was demanding, the car would twist itself into a knot. So we resold it, but kept the already outrageous 454 cubic inch engine that the one previous careful lady owner had fitted to drive to church on Sundays. That too went eventually, sighing to itself with relief; it’d had a hard life of it at Charlie’s hands and leaden right foot.
The titanium tubeframe chassis for the racecar was lovingly hand woven by the Men of Woking. The replica bodyshell was absolutely standard in shape. No chopping, no sectioning. Charlie and I had insisted on this, except for a huge inlet scoop on the bonnet to feed air to the carburettors. Charlie had kindly suggested that I had a rhinoplasty and we use the offcuts for the airscoop. She is such a charmer, isn’t she?
The bodywork consisted of lots of panels of fibreglass and carbon fibre composite, nearly all of which could be removed for easier access to the mechanicals. We kept the original doorhandles and tail lights for authenticity. The brakelights worked too. I insisted on that. I felt it was a nice touch given Charlie would be trying to anchor up from the best part of 300 mph if things went to plan.
I won’t bore you with the technical details, but I will tell you the enormous alloy-block 601 cubic inch V8 race engine, with the nitrous oxide injection that Charlie craved, made Nora look like a clapped-out Skoda. Just looking at the motor in the Bel Air could frighten me. Charlie on the other hand was in her element. She loved it. Quite an unusual engagement ring. Except we were married by now. That’s romance for you.
Charlie had put in some wildly out-of-shape shakedown sessions on a disused airfield near the engineering place at Woking, first using the 454 engine that she regarded as a slightly ladyboy source of power. Then she had several goes with the monster motor, and things got even more unpredictable. She’d idle the car back to the waiting Men of Woking, leap out, and start yelling. She’s really very good at yelling.
‘Fuck me! I’ve driven sodding Citroens that handle better than this fucking thing! It’s all over the fucking shop. It’s like a fucking shopping trolley with a fucked wheel. Why won’t it go in a fucking straight line? Is that too much too ask for, given that’s what this fucker is designed for and supposed to do for a fucking living? It’s supposed to run in a fucking straight line! Make it do that you fuckwits! I don’t mind a fucking fight on my hands, but I do fucking mind fighting something that doesn’t do its fucking job!’
The Men of Woking would trailer the car back to their place, scratch their heads a bit, and do some more sums.
Charlie was at last racing the Bel Air for the first time, and she eased our recently acquired motorhome into a space next to the other recently acquired motorhome that was housing our four mechanically talented but somewhat hairy-arsed and flatulent pitcrew. There was no way Charlie and I were sharing accommodation with that lot, and anyway she and I had planned some pre-race stress relief and we didn’t want an audience.
As she backed in, the driver of an unrelated vehicle next door had the, and I quote, ‘fucking temerity’ to sound his horn. Charlie rightly prides herself on her driving skills so any implied criticism tends to send her off on one. You know how irascible she can be. She opened her window and really laid into this guy.
‘Fuck you, you shithead! I know exactly where the corners of this fucker are. Just because you have the fucking spatial abilities of a fucking toddler and don’t know where the edges are on the piece of crap you drive, don’t you honk at me!’ She gave him the Agincourt archer salute.
It’s rather unsettling and very sad that her spatial skills can be so sharply honed while her detection of emotional boundaries can sometimes be beyond her reach. She was also a bit nervous to be fair. I knew this. On the way to the strip, we had stopped to pick up supplies for us and the pitcrew. There was a bit of unpleasantness in the supermarket. I was dithering about near the fish counter when Charlie’s anger boiled over.
‘For fuck’s sake, get a grip you fucking idiot, these are grown men we’re feeding here, not ponces like you. They do not even fucking think in terms of fucking fish, unless it comes deep-fried in fucking batter. And they sure aren’t having a guilt trip over how it was raised. They’ve never heard of fucking Quorn, which is a fucking concept that doesn’t fucking work because it doesn’t taste like fucking meat.
‘They want real grownup food like I eat. That means red meat, and lots of it. Do you think that tomorrow morning they’ll want fucking cereal? Because if you do think that, let me fucking disabuse you. They are going to want a fucking enormous big boys’ breakfast, with mugs of tea so fucking strong you can trot a mouse across the top. Not fucking organic muesli and fucking soya milk!
‘I’m going to make sure that all fucking well happens. Because those guys are the only thing standing between me and death. They get it wrong, I’m fucking dead. So I’m going to keep them fucking happy. Fucking sharpen up and help me live a bit longer, you fucking moron. Go and get a few more of those disposable barbecues while I get the meat in.’
We were attracting a lot of attention from other shoppers at this point.
‘You’re scared, aren’t you?’ I asked quietly.
‘Course I’m fucking scared. It keeps me sharp. You’ve driven that fucking car! Weren’t you fucking scared? But where’s the fun otherwise, you fuckwit?’
‘I thought it was just me who was scared.’
She quietened down, and the crowd turned away.
‘You live your whole life scared, Rick. The racing will take me about six seconds of being badly scared to fucking death, but I’ll be having a good time. I don’t have the strength to live in fear. You do. I don’t have your strength.’
‘I’ll go and score some more barbecues.’
Unlike most people, Charlie and I quite like queuing in a supermarket. It offers unrivalled and yet often unfathomable insights into the lives of others. I was miles away just watching what was happening.
Charlie was still jumpy. On the rare occasions when she’s nervous, it can be best to ignore her till she slides back into something resembling normality. She started the slide.
‘Who the fuck buys 76 quid’s worth of cakes and chocolate?’ asked Charlie.
I awoke from my reverie. ‘Someone with a secret hankering after their dentist? More interestingly, what drives a woman by the Krispy Kreme cabinet to tears?’
Charlie followed my gaze. The woman by the Krispy Kreme cabinet was alternately looking at text messages, frantically dialling numbers, shaking her head in disbelief, and weeping.
‘Search me. It seems a bit of an overblown reaction to the fucking lack of availability of doughnuts with chocolate sprinkles. So maybe a lovers’ tiff.’
‘Maybe.’ I looked around. ‘Hey, Charlie, look at the shopping going through checkout 8.’
The shopping in question consisted entirely of oven chips, potato wedges, pizzas, pies of various descriptions, cheese, butter, lard, cans of stew, burgers, chicken nuggets, and other ready meals. Not a shred of greenery in sight. Charlie eyed up the purchaser.
‘Fuck me, look at the size of her. What a bargearse.’ That’s a medical term for spherical. She was as wide as she was tall. ‘Small objects are attracted to her. She must have her own event horizon.’
‘Charlie, the milk of human kindness runs deep within your veins. Your tolerance of the rest of humanity shames us all.’
‘Fuck off. And who buys lard these days?’
‘She does. Quite a bit of it, I’d hazard. She’s certainly a whole lot of woman. A whole lot of two women, truth be told. Maybe even three. And anyway, you buy lard, you reckon it’s good for frying eggs. I’m surprised you aren’t also slagging her off for buying oven chips, which you describe, and I quote, as ‘those good for nothing fucking tasteless bits of oily cardboard.’ She can’t win here, can she?’
‘Fuck off. I was going to get round to the oven chips. They aren’t just bargearsey, they show a slack approach to cooking. But if I was her, at that size, I’d be forgetting chips and heading for the salad aisle.’
‘That’s a bit uncharitable. With your garbage-crusher metabolism, you could eat all that at one go and still look like a goddess.’
‘Yeah, but she does that and she doesn’t. Fuck me she’s got two toddlers as well.’
‘I know what you’re thinking.’
‘Do you? What I’m thinking is how did her husband/boyfriend find it?’
‘Same way most blokes do, I suppose. Point in the right general direction and ask for guidance if we miss. Though you’re right; the logistics are troublesome to contemplate. Perhaps... No I’m not going there. We have to assume there were at least two lucky hits.’
At the next checkout to us was a man buying a large sack of dried dogfood, a bottle of sesame oil, some soy sauce, straight-to-wok noodles, shallots, garlic, root ginger, and a twelve-pack of condoms. I nodded at him. ‘Obviously he has a dog who is very understanding when there’s a Chinese dinner on offer. Oh no! Those are flavoured condoms. That’s gross.’
‘You are a very bad person.’ said Charlie.
‘You taught me everything I know. Hey, have you noticed in the snack chiller they now do lasagne sandwiches?’
Charlie was really calming down now. I‘ve learned through hard experience that saying ‘Calm down’ to anyone who is angry, let alone Charlie, is a big mistake. It makes them angrier. You have to just try and talk them out of it. Let them get it on their own terms. It was working. Charlie had even stopped swearing. Phew.
‘Get in! What a great idea. It would save us having to make our own makeshift snacks after the pub on a Friday night. You know, where we find something damp in the fridge and slap it between slices of dry days-old bread with loads of mayonnaise and chilli sauce. I, errr, have sometimes had to scrape the mould off the bread.’
‘If you think you’re alone in doing that, then you’re wrong. It doesn’t seem to have done us any harm. Unless you’re going to claim your hangovers are the result of mould poisoning. Tell you what, let’s play the Announcement Game.’
You know what it’s like in a supermarket. Lots of bland messages over the PA. ‘Would a member of produce please attend customer services, customer waiting.’ That sort of thing. Charlie and I play the Announcement Game where we imagine hijacking the system and telling it like it really is.
‘OK. Hmm. This is a staff announcement. Would the charisma-lite deputy manager please note that we all hate you and think you’re a workshy waste of space.’
I laughed out loud, to a certain amount of consternation from our fellow shoppers. Face it, you don’t hear a lot of laughter in supermarkets.
‘Hell, Charlie, that’s truly inspired. I’m not sure I can follow that one.’
‘Take a go at it.’
‘OK. Err. Would customers please note that our security staff are armed and operate a shoot first ask questions later policy when it comes to shoplifters.’
Charlie giggled. She may be the only person I know who can giggle convincingly. Oh no, that’s not right; Treeza packs a pretty mean giggle too. ‘Not bad, cowboy.’
I should point out that Charlie can also convincingly chuckle, guffaw, snort, and laugh. She has the dirtiest laugh in the world. It makes me want to pounce on her.
We finally got to the checkout. About four behind us in the queue was a mother with a child aged about eight. He had a terrible hacking cough.
‘Hey, Charlie, have you ever noticed how many children there are in supermarkets...’
‘Too many,’ said the harassed looking woman at our till.
‘Not bad, not bad at all,’ said Charlie, nodding approval.
‘... how many children there are in supermarkets who sound as if they have a forty-a-day habit?’
‘Let’s hope it’s nothing too trivial,’ said the woman, still swiping our items.
‘That was good too. Bad day?’
‘You wouldn’t believe it.’
‘I might. I once worked in a supermarket.’
‘Well it wasn’t this one.’
‘How do you know?’
The woman glanced at Charlie’s forearms. ‘No signs of self harm.’
‘Not bad. Not bad.’
In another life I think the woman at the checkout would have been our kinda person.
Charlie had indeed had a Saturday job in a supermarket when she was 16. According to her, the queue of single men and the occasional woman extended halfway down the aisle, even when the other checkouts were free. Front of store runners would come up to the queue.
‘Excuse me sir, would you like to come down to another checkout?’
‘No. Bugger off.’
That’s possible I suppose, but I simply don’t believe that she got tips. I think she’s making that up. I don’t believe the story about the riot police kettling the crowd till she went off shift either. It made me laugh though.
An amusing incident as Charlie drove us off. A woman had parked in one of the ‘parent and child’ bays. These are wider than normal bays, and have additional space either side for pushchairs and prams. Nevertheless, as she backed out she managed to hit, surreally, a Belisha beacon, because she was actually reversing onto a pedestrian crossing. Since her car was French and apparently pressed out of stiffened tissue paper, the resulting damage was like something you see in the circus ring. Charlie was still calm, but she groaned.
‘Fuck, reversing onto a crossing; no wonder women drivers have such a bad reputation. And I could get this fucking thing in and out of there first pop without hitting anything.’
She could too. She’s good. Why she insists on racing only in a straight line escapes me. She’d be good at roundyround if she could keep her aggression under control. I think I just answered my own question.
In the paddock at the strip we found the converted horsebox full of spare parts, arcane tools, and a worryingly untested brand spanking new spare race engine just in case Charlie made a proper mess of things. Attached to this was the new trailer, and next to the trailer was the Bel Air. This top-end drag racing lark was turning into a very expensive way of spending our time. It made the affair with Len’s garage look like loose change you find in your pockets as you do your washing. It’s just as well Charlie and I are unexpectedly well off. The carburettors on the spare motor cost nearly as much as the deposit on the first flat I bought.
Our pitcrew was swarming over the car. Erk had done well. He led us to some folks who really knew what they were doing.
‘Everything OK?’
‘Yeah, had to swap the magneto, but she fired up fine. Let’s give it another go.’ The noise of the engine was astounding. Charlie grinned.