Espedair Street

TEN

You can't even give the stuff away. Crazy Davey once tried to give away his Rolls Royce, just to prove a point.

It was the eve of the Three Chimneys tour (not that I knew that at the time). We were driving through the leafy lanes of Kent, just off the motorway, heading for Davey's mansion near Maidstone.

It was... summer of '80, I think. We were leaving for the States on the first leg of our new world tour the following week. Davey and I had been up in the East End of London, at a rented warehouse in Stepney where a frighteningly large number of roadies and technicians had been putting the finishing touches to the stage set we'd be using on the tour, including the Great Contra-Flow Smoke Curtain.

We'd had a final test of the whole rig the previous night, and it all worked; the Curtain itself, the lights and lasers and magnesium charges and smoke bombs... everything. We'd even bought a new sound system, perversely enough to keep Wes quiet. I told people the old one was bought by a quarry company in Aberdeen; they just pointed it at a granite rock face and played some Sex Pistols at maximum volume; much cheaper than dynamite.

If you ever saw that set, Smoke Curtain and all, you won't need me to tell you how good it was. If you didn't, well, tough; you never will. It was dismantled and never used again after one hot and humid night in Miami, just a month later.

'What do you want to do?' Davey said, shaking his head. He lit a cigarette, put the cigar lighter back in the dash. He was driving appallingly fast; he made Jasmine look safe for Christ's sake. I was just glad that he'd chosen the Roller for the trip up to London. It wasn't as fast or as flimsy as the 'only slightly rusty' Daytona he'd bought himself for Christmas.

Davey had started collecting cars. The Rolls hadn't been his first choice of limo; he'd wanted a Russian Zil ('You know; one of those big black bastards the Politburo boys hang out in'), but hadn't yet got his hands on one.

I took up all the tension I could on the seat belt and told myself Rollers were solidly enough built to let you crash in comfort. 'I mean,' Davey said, waving the cigarette round vaguely in my direction. 'So we've got some money; okay; a hell of a lot, as far as what we might have thought we'd ever get, yeah?'

'Yeah,' I said quickly, wondering if agreeing quickly would make Davey put both hands on the wheel again.

'But it's nothing really, I mean not compared to what some people have, like... Getty, or the Sultan of Brunei, or the... ah... the Saudis; you know, the royals. Even our royals have more, and, like, companies have even more. IBM; ATT; Exxon ... I mean, what they've got makes our... our money look like petty cash, am I right?' He looked round at me.

I nodded as quickly as possible, hoping he'd look back at the road. I certainly did. 'And countries,' Davey went on. 'Look what the States or the Russians spend on weapons, billions, isn't it?'

'Sure,' I said, watching the thirty-mile-an-hour limit signs of a village approach rapidly with a feeling of cautious relief. 'But that doesn't mean we couldn't do something.'

'What, though?' Davey said, braking as we passed the speed limit signs, so that we were only doing about fifty-five. 'I mean, we already donated that studio in Paisley. Probably the best thing we could have done, but what else could we do?'

The no-limit signs flashed by and the Roller lifted its snout as we accelerated again. I wondered again why the hell I'd agreed to let Davey drive me down to his place. Wanted to show me his new plane.

Jesus, what was I doing? Stay out of the plane, I told myself. I couldn't forget that trip down the Corinth canal in the unmarked plane. What would he try here? Flying through the Dartford Tunnel? Stay out of the plane.

I clutched the edges of my seat, considering whether it would be more or less terrifying if I closed my eyes. 'I don't know,' I said (my voice still sounded normal, don't ask me how). 'Maybe just... give it to the Labour Party, or something like that.'

Davey looked at me as though I was crazy, an opinion I was starting to share. I looked away and concentrated on the appallingly narrow road ahead, hoping he might take the hint and do the same thing. 'We do contribute,' he said. 'We're all fucking members. You made us all join when you won that forfeit game of Diplomacy in Geneva, remember?'

I remembered. I already gave lots of money to the Labour Party; I even gave lots of money to the Communist Party, even though I hadn't dared join (they still asked you about having been a member on the US visa application) .

'Yeah,' I said, 'but I mean give a lot to them, like... I don't know; ninety per cent; just keep back what we need to...'

'NINETY PER CENT?' Davey screamed. 'Are you insane?'

'Well, I don't know; that was just a f-figure off the...'

'You must be crazy, Dan; I mean, why the hell bother with all this if you're going to give it all away? I mean, okay, we get well paid; we know that. Sure; we get paid more than a nurse or a doctor and people, and sure that's a bit crazy, but we do work, for Christ's sake; we put in the hours, we sweat, man... and how long's it going to last, eh? You know what it's like; we've been flavour of the month for a few years, but how many people get that? Fuck all; that's how many. Very damn few indeed.' Davey took both hands off the wheel to gesture Italianately. I closed my eyes. 'Us; The Stones, Led Zep ... the Who, I guess... but how long's it going to last?' I dared to look; Davey had both hands on the wheel again. 'There aren't any guarantees, you know that. We could be nobodies... next month. Next year, anyway. No money... or bugger all money coming in, and with all our overheads, and tax to pay to... to wherever we're supposed to be living these days.' Davey shrugged. Another village swung into sight round a bend and Davey eased the brakes on again; hey, only fifty this time. We zipped past parked cars and bunches of kids leaving school.

'Oh, come on,' I said. 'Even if we didn't make another penny, none of us would be p-poor, ever. We might have to sell a house or two; you might have to get rid of the plane, but...'

'Yeah, exactly,' Davey said. 'So why not enjoy it now, while we can?'

'We could still have a damn good time on a hell of a lot less.'

'Yeah, and we could lose whatever the hell it is we've got that puts bums on seats and... and albums on turntables, because we'd know ninety per cent of everything we did was for somebody else.'

This struck me as an almost sensible comment. I looked, mildly surprised, at Davey as we cleared the speed limit and powered off again.

'Some people do it,' I said. 'They play for the love of it and they don't need all the money they make. They put it back.'

'That's them. We're us. I'm a middle-class kiddy, Danny boy. It would go against the grain. You do it; don't let me stop you. But don't be too surprised if you get no thanks. It isn't as easy to give money away as you think.'

'Hmm,' I said, in a sceptical tone of voice.

'You don't believe me, do you?' Balfour grinned. 'Okay; next village we get to, we'll try and give some away.'

'Davey,' I shook my head. 'Don't...'

'No; I'm serious. We'll try and give some away. We'll see who'll take it.'

'That's not what I meant; that isn't the sort of thing I...'

'It's the same principle.' Davey slowed the car again as a small village appeared over the summit of a small hill. 'Here; we'll try this place.' The Roller dropped below forty for about the first time since London. 'I know;' Davey said, grinning. 'I'll try and give the car away; that's putting my money where my mouth is, isn't it? Must be worth thirty K, minimum. I'll try to get rid of it.'

'Davey,' I said, tiredly.

'No, no.' He held up one hand, and put the cigarette out, blowing grey smoke at the windscreen. 'I insist.'

So we stopped in this little village somewhere north-west of Maidstone and got out — me still protesting: Jeez, you'd have thought it was my car — and Davey took the keys out of the ignition and went up to a man cutting his hedge in front of a smallish terrace house. 'Excuse me!' he said breezily. He brandished the keys with the RR tag and pointed at the car, standing at the kerb, door open. The man was about fifty, greying, heavily bespectacled; a soft, gentle-looking guy.

'Yes?'

'Would you like that car?' Davey said, pointing. The man looked surprised at first, then smiled.

'Oh,' he said slowly, looking at the Roller. 'Yes. It's very nice.'

'Would you like one of those?' Davey said.

'Oh, I suppose, yes, I would, but I don't know I could aff...'

'It's yours,' Balfour said, thrusting the keys at the chap. The man looked down at the keys. He laughed, shook his head, but didn't seem to know what to say. 'Go on,' Davey said. 'I'm serious; you can have it; I'm trying to give it away. Take them; we can complete the formalities later. Go on!' He pushed his hand with the palm-held keys spread on it towards the man, who actually backed off a little. The old guy smiled uncertainly and looked around; at me, at the car, up and down the road, at the nearby houses, including his own.

I leaned against the car, elbow on the warm bonnet. It was a mild summer evening, slightly hazy, and with the smell of woodsmoke on the gentlest of warm, lazy breezes. I heard the hooter of a train, in the far distance, and a dog barked. Balfour went on trying to get the guy to take the keys, but he wouldn't. He kept smiling and shaking his head and looking round. I wondered if he was looking for his wife or somebody, or just feeling embarrassed and hoping his neighbours weren't watching.

Finally, he said, 'You're from that programme, aren't you?' He laughed nervously and looked up and down the road again, shading his eyes at one point. He smiled at Davey. 'You are, aren't you? That... what d'you call it? Aren't you?' Davey looked back at me. I shrugged.

'You found us out, sir,' Davey said, smiling insincerely and taking out his wallet. He handed the guy a twenty-pound note.

'Thank you for taking part, though.' We left the guy looking puzzled and holding the twenty-quid note up to the light, shears still in one hand.

'A draw,' I said. 'You did get him to take some money; twenty notes, to be precise. And it was a rotten example anyway. Totally irrelevant.'

Davey was still beaming as we swung off the public road and into a poplar-lined gravel drive which led to a large house in the distance, past a small airstrip and a new concrete and steel hangar. 'Bullshit, Danny. He turned down thirty grand. Even if he had taken it, you think he wouldn't have stayed suspicious? I mean even after he'd got the log book in his name? Or if he did believe I'd done it, know what he'd think of me? Know what he'd think of the guy who'd been so kind and generous? He'd think "What a stupid bastard," that's what he'd think. Believe me.'

I toyed with the idea of making some remark on the lines of, If the guy with the hedge clippers hadn't believed him, why should I? but we were doing eighty up that narrow gravel drive, and there was a nasty-looking corner coming up Balfour had already braced himself for, so I just shut my eyes and dug my fingers into the leather under my thighs instead and waited for the sickening lurch of the four-wheel drift I knew was coming.

Musical beds, and starting to feel... not old, but that events in the lives of those I knew and used to know, were gathering pace ... starting to feel no longer young, I suppose.

Davey and Christine had gone to the Greek islands that spring, after the European tour ended. Inez and I joined them on Naxos for the second two weeks. We stayed at a villa on one of the less frequented lengths of coast; the house belonged to the promoter of the tour we'd just finished and had a jacuzzi and all the luxuries but, best of all, it didn't have a telephone.

The villa came complete with its own fast cruiser, but that wasn't good enough for our Davey; he'd got his pilot's licence justthe year before, and he'd always thought the ideal way to tour the islands — apart from taking a year or two and going by yacht — was to have a nice villa somewhere fairly central, and a seaplane.

Which was exactly what we had. Davey had hired a six-seat seaplane which we used to visit a different island every couple of days. This seemed like a rather frantic pace to me; I'd thought the whole idea of coming here was to get away from the pressure of tight schedules and being somewhere different every second night, but Davey didn't seem to see it that way.

So we flew as far afield as Crete, Rhodes, Thasos, and even, one day, Levkas, which is on the far side of the Greek mainland from Naxos, and a good couple of hours flying time away. I think the main reason Davey wanted to go there was so he'd have an excuse to fly down the Corinth canal (under the bridges, of course: 'You mad bastard; that's why you painted the registration number out this morning,' 'Don't worry; it's only emulsion; it'll wash off.').

Then one lunchtime, on Naxos, I got drunk and Inez didn't, and I fell asleep, and when I woke up there was nobody else about. I found a note on the kitchen table, in Inez' hand: Gone to Piraeus for fresh (cows) milk. Back for dinner.

I shook my head at the lack of an inverted comma, threw the note away and took a slice of melon from the fridge. I wandered through the dining room, dripping and scattering little black seeds. Luxury to be so messy without Inez there to shout at me. I sat on the terrace with my feet up on the rails and looked out over a small olive grove and the villa's cove of beach towards the bright blue sea; a haze was just starting to form. Tiny white specks, wavering on the uncertain surface, were ferries. It was at least six hours by ship to Piraeus, but the seaplane could be there and back in two.

It wasn't too terrible to be alone; in fact I thought it might be quite pleasant, just for a change. I went for a walk, to a little village on a hill, and sat drinking a cold beer or two under the shade of an ancient, gnarled tree, mirror shades gazing out to sea over the brilliant white jumble of buildings. In certain directions, all I could see was either white or blue; whitewashed stone or the sea-sky vault. Donkeys clopped and clattered up from the lower village, loaded with bottles and giant tin cans. A cat came and sat looking up at me; I ordered a little pastry for it.

The cat ate the pastry; I drank my beer and watched the donkeys pass, wondering what it must be like to live in a village like this... One of those places where nothing changes much, where time must seem like a standing wave, not something always at your back, the breaking surf, the breathtaking one-way ride to the dry, dead beach, Goodbye...

I'd heard that one of my prod flatmates had been killed in a car crash, last time I'd gone back to Paisley. I'd looked up one of my other flatmates, and we'd met for a drink. That was when he told me; it had happened two years ago. And I'd bumped into one of Jean Webb's aunts, in a Glasgow coffee shop where my ma and I were taking a time-out during a shopping expedition. The old woman came over to chat with my ma, and mentioned that Jean was married now; she and Gerald had a wee girl (I didn't catch the name); just toddling now; och, a bonnie wee thing.

Sitting there, mildly bored, listening to my ma and the other woman talk, I thought again about Jean Webb, and experienced a strange sense of loss, regret. Married; a mother. I'd have liked to have seen her again. But it had been a long time ago, and... I wasn't sure what it was; I felt a sense of something like incompleteness when I thought about her. It was as though she was somebody I should have known fully, perfectly, and then parted from, older and wiser, still good friends... instead, somehow, we had never got that far. I'd messed it up as usual, clumsy to the very core of my being. Would Gerald mind me looking them up? Did he think I was a first love, know I'd been a sort-of first lover? And was I jealous of him because of the child ?

Ah... better not to. Leave it. Leave them alone. As long as she was happy... I hoped she was happy.

Steamy Glasgow coffee shop on a rainy October weekday, wedged in with shopping bags; glare-white and azure view from a village on a hilltop, across the Cyclades in late spring.

You pays your money and toddles off home in both places.

I had a shower when I got back, then lay naked on a lounger on the terrace, drying in the sun and waiting for the drone of the seaplane's engine when it returned. I was reading Sense and Sensibility and thinking about mixing myself something long and cool and alcoholic, when Christine appeared out of the lounge.

'Oh,' she said.

I jumped a little, then put the opened book down across my groin.

'Sorry, I thought...' Or something very similar was what we both started to say.

'I didn't hear you come back' I said. Christine hesitated at the door, looking a little bleary-eyed, dishevelled, and confused and amused as well. She gave what might have been a shrug, then sat down on a hanging basket-chair, throwing me the towel that had been on its seat.

'Back from where?' she said, yawning and rubbing her eyes. 'I haven't been anywhere.'

'Didn't you go to Piraeus? I found a note.' I picked the towel off my legs and repositioned it modestly. 'About going for milk; Inez must have decided she needed cows' milk for something... I suppose just she and Davey must have gone. You been asleep?'

'Oh, it shows?' Christine smiled, and stretched, arching her back and neck and putting her arms out in front and above her. She was wearing a long white T -shirt. It rode up over her thighs; I found myself looking furtively at her blonde pubic hair. She pulled the T-shirt down, and I saw her looking at me. She cleared her throat while I blushed. 'God,' she said, laughing. 'We're all at it. Want a drink?' She got up.

I nodded. 'Anything. Beer.'

'Two beers,' Christine said, disappearing.

Oh, well, I thought, what with all this topless sunbathing and all, I guess I've seen more or less every bit of our Christine. I wondered what Jane Austen would have made of it all.

Christine came back, bikini bottom on too now, and we drank our beers, and waited for the seaplane, and gazed out into the hazy blue.

She closed her eyes at one point, and put her head back on the lounger. I studied her face, thinking she looked older than my usual mental image of her. There were little lines at the corners of her eyes, and between her dark eyebrows.

She opened her eyes, looking at me.

'Can't seem to stay awake,' she said, though she didn't sound drowsy.

'I have that effect on most people,' I said grinning.

'No, I'm just tired. Very, very tired.' She stared at her empty beer bottle and turned it this way and that in her hand.

'It was a tough tour,' I said. She just nodded her head after a while, then brought the bottle up to her lips and blew across the hole, producing a low, faltering note.

The plane didn't come back that afternoon. We drank a few more beers, played some tapes we'd brought with us, had a couple of games of cards.

The evening came on, and it started to get dark. If the plane didn't come in the next half hour or so, it wouldn't come at all; even Davey had drawn the line at night landings on the water. We waited, while the sun's glow faded and Venus, and then the stars, slowly brightened... but; no plane.

'Think they've flown back to Britain for pasteurised?' I said. Christine had an angora jumper on now, though her long brown legs were still bare. She shook her head slowly.

'Probably a break-down.'

'We should have had a radio we could call them up on,' I said.

'Hmm,' Christine said. She got up. 'Let's eat. Want to walk to that little place we were in the first night you were here? Along the coast? You know; Thingy-os or whatever. It's a bit of a walk, but...'

Stuffed peppers, red mullet; bitter coffee and incredibly sticky sweets. The gods were smiling on us that night; not a single noisy German youth in earshot. The restaurant had champagne, too. We ate our fill, and wandered back along the shore path and across the beaches, clutching a last bottle of champagne and talking and belching.

Christine yawned, stood on the beach and looked up at the clear sky. I stopped too. She took a slow drink from the bottle, then handed it to me. 'What's that?' she said, pointing.

'What's what?' I looked.

'That; there; beside those stars. Across from the moon and down a bit. Moving. Is that a plane? A UFO? What is it?'

I saw what she meant eventually, after she'd got me to kneel down and she'd crouched behind me, arm over my shoulder, so I could follow the line of her arm. 'Oh, that,' I said. 'It'll be a satellite.'

'Really? I didn't know you could see them. Are you kidding me on?'

'No; it's a satellite.'

'Hmm.' Christine shook her head. 'Never knew that...' She took the bottle back, yawned and drank. 'So fucking tired, Weird.'

'Come on,' I said, holding out my hand. 'We'll get you back to your bed.'

She shook her head, sat down heavily on the sand. She looked towards the quietly breaking waves. 'Do you know what we've been doing the past two weeks, Weird?' she said. I squatted beside her.

'Just relaxing?' I suggested.

Christine took a deep breath. 'Trying to get Davey off smack, finally, for good... at last... one last...' She looked round at me. 'Did you know he'd been taking it?'

'There's a lot of things I don't know,' I said; one of the stock, off-the-peg answers it helps to carry around with you if you're as naturally conversationally clumsy and awkward as me. In fact, I'd guessed Davey was on something, but I hadn't been sure. Like I still wasn't sure whether Christine knew about what had happened between Davey and Inez. Inez and Davey had both been vague on that point.

So it all came out then, sitting on that dark beach, on golden sand and before a blue sea, both of which had lost their colours till the dawn; all the hurt and tension and the fear poured out of Christine, and I sat there and just listened.

How he'd started, how he'd controlled it at first; the talk of only weak people really needing it but he was living on a high all the time anyway; H just intensified it, and how he got his greatest kicks out of playing on stage; nothing could match that, and how for the past few months, including during the tour, she'd been trying to get him to stop, and thought he had, then found he hadn't, and discovered things about herself and about him she hadn't known; that she felt responsible for him, that he could, nevertheless, infuriate her to the point of hate and rage; that he could use the drug to hurt her; taking it to spite her when she annoyed him; and encountering the user's duplicity and illogic; I've given it up; I've virtually given it up; I'll give it up tomorrow; hey look I went a day without any so I deserve some as a reward...

She'd talked and shouted and screamed, she'd hit him, threatened to break his fingers, shop him to the police, she'd searched all his clothes and possessions and thrown the stuff out when she found any; finally, she just hadn't let him out of her sight for the last couple of weeks of the tour (I had noticed they'd seemed very close in one way and very distant with each other in another way, towards the close of the tour), and the same for the first two weeks here, on Naxos.

And so she was tired, not just because Davey was one of those people who didn't seem to need very much sleep, and she didn't dare go to sleep before him, but because of the tension, the concentration... And so, also, she'd needed to tell it all to somebody.

We sat there and drank most of the champagne, and watched another few satellites drift slowly overhead; and there were a couple of shooting stars too, thin bright silent lines that disappeared before you had a chance to look at them.

'Anyway... ' Christine said, 'I think he's over it.'

She looked at the brushing line of white where the waves hit the beach. 'I hope he's over it.'

I couldn't think of anything to say. I put my arm around her, patted her shoulder. 'Weird,' she said, closing one eye and looking at me from very close range, 'I'm going for a swim.'

'Oh?' I said, as she peeled off her jeans and jumper.

'Coming in?' she asked. She took off a T-shirt under the jumper, snagging it round her head for a moment and giving me a chance to ogle her breasts in the moonlight and think, Oh God, I'd love to screw you, Christine. 'Oh, fuck,' she grunted, finally hauling the T -shirt off. She stood in her bikini bottom, looking down at me. 'Well?'

'I don't have any Ys on,' I told her .

'Weird, I've already... oh, suit yourself.' She padded down the sand to the water. 'It's still quite warm,' she said. 'Come on in.'

I shook my head. She waded in a little further until the small waves were breaking around her knees, then stopped, turned round to me and stepped out of the bikini bottom. She threw it up the beach to me. 'Does that make you feel any better?' she said, then turned and ran and dived forward.

I stood up, watching the splashes of her easy-looking crawl draw slowly away. I stripped too, and laid both lots of clothes neatly on the beach.

My crawl is spectacular but inefficient; Christine swam rings round me. I had my feet tickled and my bum pinched, water splashed at me, and I lost the race back to shore.

We lay there, side by side on the sand and breathing hard. I lay looking up at the stars and the chip of moon, and shivered a little. I wanted to turn over and kiss Christine, but I knew I wouldn't. These things don't happen that way with me. Besides, I tried to tell myself; it would be too tidy, and too much like a deliberate revenge, to form the fourth side of this eternal square on another beach, before another line of surf, under the high-tech lights of passing spy satellites...

Forget about it.

I wondered where Davey and Inez were: in bed, in Athens, or an island between here and there? Or had they really given up their little affair, and were they chastely apart, separate rooms while the plane was repaired ?

Jesus, I thought, for all I know they're both at the bottom of the Aegean. But that didn't bear thinking about.

Christine gave a big, sort of whistling sigh at my side. I tipped my head a little, to see her staring up at the stars again. I let my gaze wander down her body, over nipples and belly and mons and thighs and knees, and I thought what a damn shame it was that it seemed so important that I be the woman's friend, and be thought trustworthy and kind and somebody she could talk to, when what I really wanted to do was throw myself on top of her and cover her in kisses and be covered in hers and pull her legs apart and have her pull me inside her and... oh, dear God; that didn't bear thinking about either.

I looked back up into the sky again. The stars in the north were gone; cloud must be moving in.

'You pointing out any particular star, Weird?' Christine asked lazily.

'What?' I said, mystified. My arms were both down at my sides; what was she talking about?

Christine showed me. Her hand was wet, warm/cold. She propped herself up on her other elbow and said, 'Well ... what are we going to do with you, Weird?'

'Do you' — I cleared my throat — 'want a suggestion?'

She brought her head down to mine, but as I reached up with my hands and opened my mouth, she kissed me briefly on the nose and pulled away again. I opened my eyes to see her holding the champagne bottle. She sloshed what was left of it around in the bottom of the bottle, stroking me gently with her other hand. 'You ever had a champagne head-job, Weird?'

'A champagne hedgehog?' I said, mishearing.

'Head job... I mean, blow job,' she said, laughing. I shook my head. She put the bottle to her lips and threw her head back. Her cheeks bulged as she put the empty bottle down, held up one finger and said, 'Mmm mm m-mmm mm.' Which I think was meant to be, 'Don't go away now.' Then she lowered her head.

'Ka-pow!' was my considered comment, I seem to recall.

Then we screwed on the beach, and a couple of times back at the villa.

A storm passed over late in the night, coming from the north: thunder crashed and lightning flashed. She moved half-waking, made a small whimpering noise, and I held her still salty body close to me as the storm which had kept Davey and Inez in Piraeus moved above us.

'You want to call the next album what?'

'I want to call it "We'll Build You A New One, Mrs McNulty",' I told Davey. I looked at him briefly, then quickly looked back to the racetrack; Balfour had almost lapped me. I tried speeding up, but came off at a bend I'd misjudged twice already; the little plastic Scalextric car flew off the black track and flopped into the pile of three cars underneath; two of mine and one of Davey's. I reached for another car and slotted it into the track as Davey cackled (another half-lap gained).

'Mad,' Balfour told me, as his car swept past where we sat. 'You're mad. That is a crazy title. ARC'll never let us call an album that.'

I shrugged. 'I'll talk them round to it.' We were sitting in tall chairs which were perched on top of a large table at one end of what had been the mansion's dining room; it was a good fifty feet long, and Davey's model racing set filled most of it. He must have had about a hundred yards of track spaghettied throughout the room, and at least a dozen booster transformers connected to distant parts of the track, all controlled through the handsets via a small computer. The roadway swooped and zoomed amongst packing cases and stacks of ancient books and piles of old curtains and bedding.

Davey had positioned mirrors at various points throughout the room, so you could see places where the track disappeared from view, but it was tricky driving. When a car came off— which happened fairly often — you just pulled another one from a pile of boxes behind where you sat (on a very broad table) and slotted it into the system where the tracks passed directly in front of you.

The winner was the first person to notch up ten circuits on the automatic lap counter. I hadn't wanted to play — I knew Davey would win — but it was so damn impressive when you first walked into the room that it would have seemed churlish to decline the challenge. I loved it, actually; I kept rocking this way and that in the high-backed chairs we were sitting in, and nearly fell off the table several times.

'Ten,' Davey said, and let his car cruise to a stop in front of me, just beyond the lap counter. I was concentrating on the hill-climb section of the course, a good forty feet away in one corner of the room. Davey leaned forward in his seat to look at the lap counter .

'Yep,' he said. 'Ten.' He looked at me. 'You've got six.'

'Will you back me up with Tumber for that album title?' I asked him.

'No.'

'Aw, go on.' I got the car to the top of the sheet — and curtain-draped pile of packing cases and tea chests, despite a couple of places where I wagged the tail a bit, and started down the far side, slowing fractionally.

'No, it's a stupid title.'

'It's a great title. It'll intrigue people.'

'It's a stupid title and people'll just go "What?", and they'll forget it and they'll be too embarrassed to go into a record shop and ask for it.'

'Rubbish.'

'That's exactly what it is.' I took the car over a series of sinuous chicanes held up by strips of Meccano over an old iron and enamel bath full of water. I'd already lost two cars into the bath in hopelessly one-sided confrontations with Davey in the chicanes.

'We have to be adventurous. We need to keep surprising people.'

'Not with a title like that.'

'Look, just back me up with Tumber. I've already spoken to Chris; she'll go along with you. Wes doesn't care and Mickey won't argue.' Davey packed some grass into a small pipe, and watched me bring the car over a succession of humpbacks it was all too easy to go into mid-air from. The trick seemed to be to let the car take off, but land and re-slot before the next bend. I took it slowly, determined to get this car back. 'Tell you what,' Davey said. My heart sank. I knew that tone. I should have said, Never mind, there and then, but I didn't. 'Let's race for it. If you win, I'll be right there. I promise. I'll be even more enthusiastic than you for ... Mrs McNaughty or whatever the fuck it is.'

'McNulty; the name's McNulty. Don't pretend you've forgotten it. And no; you'll win the race. You've been practising; this is my first time.'

'I'll give you a start. Four laps. That what you lost by this time, and you're improving already, so it'll be fair.' As though to confirm this, I brought my car in, bringing my lap total to seven. I stopped the car on the starting grid in front of us. Davey lit the pipe, and said between sucks, 'Four laps; that's fair.'

'Make it five.'

He handed me the pipe, shaking his head. 'Drive a hard bargain,' he gasped. 'Okay.'

I sucked the smoke in, scalding my throat. I didn't like the way Balfour had agreed so readily. 'What,' I said, then coughed, 'what if you win?'

Davey shrugged, positioned his car and mine exactly on the starting grid. 'You come for a ride in the plane.'

'What, now?' We'd had a couple of bottles of wine with the meal Davey had slung together (he had a sort of cook/butler/general gofer who usually lived in the house, but he'd given the guy the week off), and we'd drunk a few Glenmorangies and smoked a few pipes too.

I'd been trying to put off going for a flight until tomorrow, after being reminded of the way Davey drove. I hoped it would be foggy tomorrow, or it would rain torrentially, or there'd be some unseasonal snow (unlikely in Kent in August, but I was clutching at straws). I certainly wasn't going up after Davey had been drinking and smoking.

'Yeah; now.' Balfour said.

I shook my head. 'No way.' I handed him back the pipe. We finished that, then he brought out a small leather case from his jacket, hanging over the back of the chair. Inside, there was a mirror, a razor blade, and a little snuff box. I regarded this lot dubiously.

Ten minutes later: ' Ah, what the hell; okay. Let's race!'

'Bastard!'

'Ten-eight. My race, I believe.'

'Bastard! You weren't even trying the first time!'

'Not really. Ha ha.'

'I'm still not going up in that plane with you. I'm too tall to die.'

'Na; I've gone off that idea myself. Let's get drunk instead.'

'Now that,' I said, crossing my arms, 'is more like it.'

It was late at night and we'd almost finished the bottle of Glenmorangie. I think it was still the first bottle but I wasn't sure. We were in a room that had been converted into a small private cinema, where Davey had been watching some stunningly tasteless Swedish porno movies and I'd been listening to the Pretenders on the headphones and building joints for something to keep my hands busy. After a while I realised I was dropping more dope into the darkness than I was managing to get into the numbers, so I stopped rolling and started smoking, blowing greyblue clouds into the path of the projector beam until Davey told me to stop and handed me a can of strong lager .

I remember drinking that, and then the room went dark; Davey dragged me, still smoking I think, and definitely giggling, from the seat. The mansion seemed very bright after the cinema; I grabbed a pith helmet from a bust in an alcove at the top of the stairs and pulled the hat down over my eyes as we marched arm in arm down the stairs. I stumbled about at the bottom, bumping into things I couldn't see and laughing, then Davey pulled me out into the fragrant air of a summer's night.

'Now what?' I said, craning my head back and trying to see out of the bottom of the pith helmet.

'Drive around the estate,' Davey said, shoving me into the back of the Roller. 'The three chimneys tour. I've only done it twice and I want to see if I can improve my time.'

'Three chi... oh hell, whatever,' I breathed, collapsing back in the seat and staring out the rear window at the darkness. 'Wake me up when we get back.'

The Roller purred, and we set off. I lay looking at the ceiling for a while, and must have been dozing at least when we stopped. I looked over the back of the front seat to see we were parked on grass in front of a large dark building, and Balfour was preparing a couple of very hefty lines of coke on a mirror balanced on the tray of the Roller's opened glove box. I pushed the helmet back, ogled the lines of white crystals and said, 'That it? We done it yet?'

'Not yet,' Davey said, snorting one line through a section of plastic straw and then handing me the straw and mirror as he sat sniffing and snorting and breathing hard, staring at the tall building in front of us. 'And don't spill it, he said.

Unnecessarily; I'd already disposed of the stuff, though I'd done the lot up one nostril and was feeling oddly imbalanced as a result. I lay back down again to wait for the effect, but Balfour dragged me out of the car and we stumbled across the grass to open a large door and then crash around a bit inside the unlit building, our only illumination coming from a torch Balfour held. I cracked my head on something and was very glad of the pith helmet.

'Careful!' Balfour said, and opened a door; I clambered up into what felt like a car interior, still too stupefied to work out what was going on. I lay back across a couple of seats and closed my eyes.

The realisation hit at exactly the same time as the coke, and at the same time as a powerful engine — much louder than the Roller's whispering motor — burst into life. I clawed and fought my way upright as we bumped across the grass; I slipped on something and fell to a thrumming floor, my helmet coming off and rolling away in the darkness. I felt for it, retrieved it, jammed it back on and headed forward to where I could dimly see Davey strapping himself in, lit by the lights from the dials and controls on the dash in front of him.

'We are!' I howled, hardly able to believe it was really happening, that even Balfour would be so insane. 'You — We — This really is...' I spluttered, then was thrown back as we accelerated. Balfour clicked lights on, and I saw the airstrip in front of us. 'No!' I shouted.

'Shut up and sit down,' Davey said calmly, peering at some dials. We leapt forward again, heading down the field. I looked for a door handle.

'You're mad,' I told him. 'Stop this! You bastard! Let me out!'

'Will you stop shouting?' Davey said, and pressed a stop-watch into my shaking hands. 'How can I concentrate when you're shouting like that?' The plane powered down the grass, bucking and heaving on the uneven ground.

I gave up looking for a handle in the darkness — I could never find the door handles in cars, so I knew I'd no chance in a plane and threw myself over the seat at Balfour. I managed to get one hand to his throat. 'Let me out, you mad son of a bitch! I'll kill you! I'm not kidding; I'll kill you now; I'm not letting you take me up in this thing!'

'Look, stop being melodramatic, will you?' Davey said reasonably, and detached my hand from his neck without looking at me. 'I'm about to take off; you're distracting me, know what I mean?'

'Take off?' I screamed, and threw myself back into what I imagined was the comparative safety of the rear seats. I lay there quivering, backside stuck in the air, hands over the pith helmet, but the plane didn't tip back and soar; it slowed, and made a sudden turn which pressed me (still whimpering) hard against one side. Then the engine roared, I was thrown against the backs of the seats, and the bucking and heaving increased dramatically in both frequency and amplification. 'What... what happened?' I shrieked over the racket.

'Oh, I wasn't really taking off before; I was just taxiing to the end of the field,' Davey explained in a reasonable voice.

'Bastard!' I scrambled to my feet and threw myself forward again, grabbing at the back of Balfour's head and just missing.

I saw him flinch and duck and heard him say, 'Now I'm taking off.'

'Aargh!' I shouted. The aircraft's nose reared up; a line of lights beneath us fell away, the blurred ground disappeared, some trees flicked into and out of sight just like that, and I was thrown back again as we climbed.

I froze. I went into some sort of temporary catatonic state, my hands clawed round the back of the seat beside the pilot, my eyes fixed staring straight ahead, my body — even my heart, it seemed stopped, fixed, stalled.

'Hey, you dropped the watch; here.' Balfour reached over to me and pressed the watch into my stiffened fingers. I was staring into the starless dark beyond the steeply tipped windscreen, my teeth vibrating in time to the labouring engine. Davey adjusted some controls. 'Sit down, Danny. You'll be more comfortable.'

I found my way into the co-pilot's seat. I got the harness on somehow. I could see lines of light beneath us; the sodium yellow of streets in towns and villages, and the tiny white spears and dim rubies of a motorway. I stared, transfixed. Then I looked over at Balfour. He was smiling, looking quite relaxed and happy. If I could have made it out over the engine, I bet I'd have heard him humming to himself.

He'd had less than I had, I told myself. He wasn't drinking as much as me and he had less dope and it doesn't affect your reaction time so much anyway and besides the coke should counteract it a bit... shouldn't it? I stared at the stop-watch in my hand as we swept out across a stretch of darkness I suspected was water, heading for an isolated bunch of bright lights in the distance.

'You all right?' Davey asked me.

'Ha ha! Fine!' I said. I looked at the stop-watch again. Then I dropped it and put both hands round Balfour's throat. He looked mildly surprised but didn't take his hands off the controls in front of him. 'Take us down. I may still kill you, but take us down right now; hear?'

Davey tutted. 'Look, you've dropped the watch again. I'll need you to work it in a few minutes. Will you behave yourself? You're getting excited; I knew I shouldn't have given you so much cocaine.' He shook his head; I could feel his neck move in my hands.

I realised I was dealing with a complete madman impervious to any reasoning or threats, and let go of his neck. I resigned myself to my death and picked up the stop-watch again. 'Fair enough. Just say when.'

'That's more like it.'

'But if we ever do get down intact, I'm still going to kill you.'

'There you go again,' he told me, settling himself in his seat and staring forward. 'Just calm down. Get that watch ready.' I stared forward as well.

We were approaching what looked like a huge factory of some sort; a gigantic building lit from inside, its many outbuildings blazing yellow under sodium lights; from the centre of the building a huge chimney rose, hundreds of feet high and lined with levels of red lights like vast necklaces of LEDs. We were flying just under the level of its summit. Smoke twisted lazily from it, and ghostly white steam drifted from bits of the brightly lit buildings beneath. We were flying straight at the chimney stack.

'What the hell,' I breathed, 'is that?'

'Kingsnorth power station,' Davey said, still aiming us straight for the vast concrete tower. 'Ready with the watch?'

I watched the chimney get closer and closer. We weren't climbing over it; we were at least fifty feet beneath the summit, and on a collision course. I pressed back in my seat, eyes goggling. 'I said, ready with the watch?' Davey said, annoyed.

'Yes,' I croaked weakly. I closed my eyes as the chimney, almost filling the screen in front of me now, came up to splash us like a midgie against a flyswat.

'Now!' Davey yelled. I felt my thumb press down on the watch; the plane flipped on one side, I was forced hard down into my seat and the engine roared. When my eyes opened again we were back on an even keel and the power station was behind us. We were heading across darkness for another distant set of lights and another red-speckled tower. The light-bright field and flickering flares of a big oil refinery glittered away to one side. I couldn't swallow and my eyes were stuck. Everything had dried up.

'One down,' Davey said happily, and nudged me, grinning. 'Watch going all right?' I nodded dumbly and stared with appalled fascination at the next power station, as it drifted slowly closer.

We rounded that chimney too, then another. I found my eyes kept closing of their own accord whenever those massive concrete barrels filled my sight. Each time we banked, I was pressed into my seat, and we passed the smoke stack. I had no idea just how close we were coming each time, but I swear I heard our engine echoing off the concrete on the third pass.

We headed back for Kingsnorth and finally swung round it again; I clicked the watch off as we dropped suddenly, sickeningly towards the dark waters of the Medway.

'Got to do a bit of low-level stuff now,' Davey explained. 'Just in case we've been spotted on anybody's radar; don't want them to know where we land, do we?'

I closed my eyes. We rose, fell, my stomach going light then becoming very heavy in turns. I felt sick. We banked left, right, left again, then kept on doing that, and rising and falling as well.

I waited to die; I waited for a gasp or a shout from Balfour, for a shudder as we clipped trees and then nose-dived; for the bright flash of pain and flame, for oblivion, and as I waited I tried to tell myself it wasn't really happening and I was just having the most awful nightmare of my life, in bed, in our hotel in London, beside Inez, or Christine, or better yet between the two of them... any second now I'd wake and I'd be all right. I told myself even Balfour wasn't this crazy, not to really do this, not really...

Unless he'd taken my brief liaison with Christine harder than I'd thought; shit, I hadn't thought of that! Was that it? Was he going to nose-dive now and kill us both, or throw me out over a sewage farm, or did he just not care whether we crashed or not? Jesus; I'd thought it was all settled; Davey and Christine were back together, Davey had stopped the smack, Inez and I were going out again, even if things weren't totally back to normal yet ... He couldn't have been lying about not being angry, could he?

Meanwhile I was pulled this way and that; left and right and down and up, as if I was being tipped forward, thrown back, and stood on one side and then the other...

I opened my eyes, looked out. What could I see?

Just lights.

What could I feel? Like I was being tipped one way and the other, like I was being thrown forward and angled back.

Suddenly I remembered what Balfour had bought along with the plane to help him learn how to fly. I leaned over to him with my fists clenched and screamed, 'You son of a bitch!' at him. I unclipped the harness and got shakily to my feet as we flew along a light-lined valley. I moved to the door, trying to keep my feet as the cabin rolled and dipped. 'You total bastard!' I shouted. 'You can stop that now; turn it off! I've worked it out, asshole!' Balfour was twisting in his seat to look at me every few seconds or so, his face puzzled and worried. He shouted something to me but I couldn't hear for the noise of the 'engine'.

I found the door handle eventually. I waited for Davey to turn round again and then gave him the finger. 'Bastard!' I yelled again. 'You can stop it now; I know. Very convincing, and I was suitably scared, but I know it's a goddamn ...' I pulled on the handle and yanked the door open.

I didn't get to say 'simulator' because next thing I knew I was hanging half out of the plane holding precariously on to the door handle with one hand and staring down through a hard bellowing wash of air at dark fields tearing by a hundred feet below. Something white fell out of the door and went fluttering and tumbling away, falling behind us and then disappearing in a stand of trees. I didn't even have the breath to shout or scream. The plane tipped on one side and I fell back into the cabin again, hauling the door closed behind me. I lay across the seats once more, quivering with aftershocks of utter, mortal terror.

'Danny,' Balfour said in an exasperated voice. 'That was silly, and you just lost my log book, for Christ's sake. I'll have to start a new one now. I mean, what if somebody finds it and connects it with the Three Chimneys tour? I could be in serious trouble, Daniel... Jesus, man, you're more trouble than I thought. Just sit there and don't move until we land, okay?' He sounded quite upset. He belched, and I heard him muttering to himself.

I lay across the seats, paralysed and dumb and quietly pissing my pants.

Balfour must have seen the funny side of it all as he came in to land, because he was laughing so much as we taxied in he missed the hangar and crashed the aircraft into the Roller, breaking the prop, decapitating the silver lady and severely denting the motor's bonnet.

'Oh, shitbags,' he said, as the engine died and splinters of the propellor fell back and thumped on the roof of the plane's cabin.

I might have laughed then, but I was hanging out the door again by that time, and laughing as you throw up is as technically difficult as it is respiratorially unwise.

I'd dropped the stop-watch out the door when I opened it in midair, too, so Davey never did find out if he'd beaten his own record for the power station circuit.

It was the last time he made that journey.

Five weeks later, involuntarily true to my word, in Miami, I really did kill him.