“It happens, just in a way that doesn’t offend middle-class sensibilities so much,” he’d said. He’d wiped his own mouth with his own napkin and thrown it onto the table, sitting back.
“If you’ve done something to offend the paramilitaries over there, they make you an appointment to have your kneecaps done,” he’d gone on, ignoring her averted head. “You have to turn up or, when they find you, you’re dead. And trust me, they
“But—”
“But now,” Sean had overridden her protest, rolled right over it and crushed it and kept on coming. “Now, they call the ambulance for you first and make you wait, and when they hear the sirens approaching,
He’d turned back to my father who had listened to his quietly bitter outburst without expression. “So you can’t try and tell me that the occasional squaddie stepping out of line isn’t understandable, isn’t justified.”
“Torture is never justified,” my father had rapped back with the iron certainty of someone who had the moral high ground and wasn’t going to relinquish it.
Sean had shaken his head. “Wait until it’s your family who are under threat, sir,” he’d said. “Until then, it’s nothing more than an academic exercise to you.”
We’d left the following morning, although we’d been intending to stay until after lunch. I’d been so ashamed of the way my parents had behaved that I hadn’t seen them again until I was in hospital after my attack, two months later. I hadn’t had to worry about my father sniping at Sean by then.
He was long gone.
***
The Devil’s Bridge Club held their midweek meet at a pub just outside the tiny village of Watermillock, overlooking Ullswater. William hadn’t been thrilled when I’d called him and asked for a chance to try out, but he hadn’t shot me down in flames either. Maybe they were just expecting me to crash and burn all by myself.
I’d set off early to get up there, taking the back roads through Sedbergh and up to Kendal.
The FireBlade bounded effortlessly up the sharp incline out of the town. And when I hit the derestricted zone at the top and opened the throttle, the response was instant.
Still grinning inside my visor, I made short work of the fast open stretch of road that now by-passes Staveley, filtering down a line of slow-moving cars and flicking past a lumbering cattle truck.
At Troutbeck Bridge I turned off for Kirkstone Pass. The going was slower and trickier there, the steep gradients and acute bends making me feather the rear brake more to keep the FireBlade balanced. It was this kind of road where the lightweight little Suzuki always used to hold its own against the big bruisers and I felt a pang of regret that I didn’t have it with me now.
Mind you, the FireBlade certainly came into its own once I arrived at the Watermillock Arms pub. The Watermillock was a typical Lakeland slate building with a gravel car park by the side of it that led out onto a grassed area with benches. From there you could sit and bask in the heat and admire the majesty of Ullswater in front of you and the craggy magnificence of Helvellyn at your back. When I brought my drink back outside from the bar intending to do just that, I found the bike had already gathered a small cluster of admirers of its own.
They were all young men probably around Jamie’s age, wearing expensive-looking race leathers and skinned kneesliders. One even had the aerodynamic hump on his back, which I thought was a little over the top for road use.
“Hey, does your boyfriend know you’re out on his bike?” he called when he spotted me. The rest of them cackled. He was short and stocky and blond haired, with that kind of pink and white complexion that goes instantly ruddy when exposed to just about any kind of weather.
“Seriously, you never ride this, do you?” one of the others said, dubious. “I mean, not by yourself?”
“Oh no,” I said, sweetly sarcastic, “I usually push it, or if it’s raining I take it in a taxi.”
That loosened them up a bit. I found out part of the reason for their disbelief was that the one with the hump, whose name was Mark, was on a FireBlade himself, albeit an earlier model that was rather more scuffed around the edges. I gave him some stick for owning a girl’s bike – which he denied vehemently – and by the time the place began to busy up the group of us had fallen into easy conversation.
The Devil’s Bridge Club arrived together, almost in formation, making a show of it. Their bikes rolled into the car park and slotted into line one after another, with Daz in the lead on his Aprilia, Jamie and Paxo in the centre, and big William bringing up the rear on his lime green Kawasaki.
I don’t know if he was looking anyway, but Daz spotted me as soon as he got off the bike. He hooked his lid over the Aprilia’s mirror, rubbed a hand through his hair and sauntered over to us.
“You really up for it then, Charlie?” he said, challenge in his voice.
“Wouldn’t miss it,” I said.
Not to be outdone, Mark stepped forwards with his chin stuck out. “When do we start?”
I glanced at him. I don’t know why I should have been surprised that he was here to try out for the Devil’s Bridge Club as well. He was just the right cocky slightly aggressive type. So what did that say about me?
Daz nodded to him. “Patience,” he taunted, smiling. “We’re just waiting for one more, then we can get on with it.”
We didn’t have to wait long. Ten minutes later an old black Kawasaki GPZ900R swung into the car park and pulled up with a flourish next to the bench where we were lounging like geckos in the sunshine.
“Shit,” I muttered when the rider removed his helmet. “
