CHAPTER 6
Peering into the bleak darkness and swirling snowflakes, Roger Smith was singing along to a Frederick Delius song as he navigated his massive eighteen-wheel truck along the narrow twists and turns of the high Scottish borders.
“I looked o’er my shoulder to see what I might see, / and there, I spied my true love come a-tripping down to me.”
Over Roger’s shoulder, though, there was nothing but blackness. In front lay a narrow, winding, and snow-covered road, so he stopped singing to concentrate on something he’d spotted ahead. He gently touched the brakes. The view in his mirrors turned bright red, and there, lit by the truck’s headlights, was someone waving at him to stop. Beside the figure was a small car covered in snow.
Roger stopped the truck with a hiss from the brakes, and a cloud of steam was swept away in the biting wind sweeping down the mountainside. He switched on the cab light and opened the side window as snowflakes swirled inside and stuck to his horn-rimmed spectacles. Then he adjusted his woollen beanie and peered down. “Problem?” he shouted.
The figure slipped, regained his balance, came closer, and looked up at Roger. “It’s broken down,” he said. “And there’s no phone signal.”
The sad-looking face peering up at him from inside a dark hood was that of a young man using his bare knuckle to wipe away snow that stuck to his eyelashes, as if he was crying.
“Oh, dear me,” Roger said. “Well, you can’t stay here all night in this weather. Come around the other side and hop up.”
He closed his window, stood up to open the passenger door, and pulled the young man inside. Wearing wet jeans and a flimsy nylon jacket, the boy was shivering. “I’m Roger,” he said. “And this here ship is Madge. What’s your name?”
“Kevin.”
“And where have you just come from, Kevin?”
“Edinburgh.”
Roger pulled his woollen beanie from his head and stared at him. It was a strange route to have taken. He took a quick look at the small snow-covered red car ahead. “Best leave it there in this weather, young man. I’ll take you down to Kirklee. You’ll get a phone signal down there and a garage.”
Kevin settled into the passenger seat of the enormous cab and said, “Thanks.” Then he looked down onto the roof of his car. Inside the truck, music filled the warm air and lights flashed, and in the huge outside mirrors, a sea of red light reflected off the snow. Kevin felt like he’d been rescued by Star Ship Enterprise, except the captain was an old man with glasses.
Delius’s recording of Brigg Fair had changed to A Song of Summer, which, to Roger, seemed grossly inappropriate, so he switched it off, replaced his hat, and set off once more. “Driven in weather like this before, young man?”
“No.” Kevin shook his head as they were heading off into the floodlit darkness and driving snow. It felt like gliding along in a low-flying aircraft. He glanced at his rescuer, the old man with glasses and a coloured hat pulled down over his ears. He was steering with one hand while adjusting a control somewhere with the other.
“Like my hat?” Roger asked as Kevin turned away to stare nervously ahead into the driving snow from a height well above the roof of his own little car.
Right then, a hat seemed unimportant to Kevin, but for Roger, it was an attempt to start a conversation of sorts. The boy’s knuckles seemed to be growing whiter by the minute as he gripped the arm rest. “My mother knitted it thirty years ago. They don’t make wool like they used to.”
He glanced at Kevin. “You pray to a god young man?”
Kevin seemed unsure whether he did or he didn’t.
“Never too late to start, young man, because this is the start of Clelland’s Hill. In this weather, it can get a bit tricky up here.”
Kevin could sense the gradient had changed. Roger had changed gear a few times, and they were now heading upwards into total blackness with the truck’s headlights picking out a blizzard of snowflakes coming straight at them.
Spaceship Madge lurched a bit to the right, but Roger made a gentle adjustment to the steering and glanced in his mirrors.
Kevin found his voice. “What can we do? Go back?”
“Go back? There’s no going back, young man. It’s like life itself. New experiences never did a man any harm, unless they’re fatal. Here we go . . . up a bit . . . up some more. Right, here’s the old devil coming up. Ninety degrees or as near as damn it. There, told you, didn’t I? Madge took it like I knew she would, and we’re around, but . . . ah . . . oh, dear me. See what I see?”
When Kevin opened his eyes, Roger had stopped Madge in a cloud of snow and steam about ten feet from a snowdrift that had formed right across the road to somewhere behind a sheer rock face on the left. Judged by the thick clouds of powdery snow flying off the top, it was already waist high and getting higher.
“Well,” Roger said, “that’s a pity. Just as I was thinking we’d made it.”
Kevin stared at the pile of snow. “Can we turn around?”
Roger was sitting with his hands behind his head. “You’ve got a thing about going back, young man. I couldn’t turn Madge round in this sheep track if it was a midsummer’s afternoon. Lady luck has just deserted us. We’re stuck. Good and proper. But at least we’re upright and not with the wheels in the air.”
Kevin bit his nails. “So what do we do?”
“We review the situation. That’s what we do. We conduct a calm assessment. Then we make a firm decision and stick to it.”
“How long will it last?”
“Are you referring to the calm assessment or the snowdrift?” Roger replied with his usual humour. “That drift could last till April.”
Then he opened the door, letting in a cloud of powdery snow, jumped down, and disappeared, leaving Kevin wondering where he’d gone.
He returned covered in snow, climbed back into his seat, turned the interior light off and said, “I’ve decided to reverse Madge about a hundred yards or so to the leeward side of a rock face. Then we can relax and sit it out until April . . . or May.”
Kevin watched him wipe wet snow from his glasses. Then he heard the engine growl, and the truck slowly moved backwards as Roger steered into almost complete darkness using just his mirrors. Kevin, looking in the mirrors, could only see red snow from the truck’s rear lights.
“There,” Roger said after a while. “Peace and quiet. Out of the wind here.” He pulled off the anorak, shook it, and hung it over the door to drip. Then he turned towards Kevin. “Comfortable, young man?”
“Yes. But there’s still no phone signal.”
“No. There’s mothing till we get down to Kirklee.”
Kevin looked aghast, as if his world had collapsed. “I thought maybe . . .”
“No chance, young man. This is sheep country, and sheep live without phones or satnavs. Don’t fret. I’ll make some tea. You won’t starve here, Kevin. I have a kettle, microwave, and a fridge with six ready-made fish pies. Although, by April, we might need to consider a different solution. How good are you at deer stalking?”
Over mugs of tea, they’d talked.
They discussed Kevin’s car and the satnav that had shown a shortcut leading to a narrow mountain road amongst heather and sheep, and Roger learned that the reason for Kevin’s three-hundred-mile trip to Edinburgh was to collect a package for his boss, a Mr. Khan from a travel agency called Faisal World Travel.
“In an old Volkswagen Golf that clearly wasn’t roadworthy?” Roger had asked. “I will never understand why people follow instructions from a machine. It’s like sheep following a farmer carrying a handful of straw. And who on God’s earth pays for a round trip of seven hundred miles to pick up a small parcel, young man. Come on. Tell Uncle Roger. Where did you start out from? I’m interested because we clearly share a common interest in transport. It might be the only interest, but it’s better than nothing.”
Kevin said he’d driven from Gloucester and was heading back there.
“What area of the city is that, Kevin? Sorry to ask, but you’ll find Uncle Roger’s a walking, talking atlas, far better than Google. Google’s only in business a short while. Uncle Roger’s been around for sixty-five years.”
“Park Road,” Kevin said.
“Ah, yes. Near the mosque, eh? Very multicultural, if I’m not mistaken. Arabs, Asians, Africans, and a broad mix of various shades of Islam with very little in the way of Christian, Buddhist, or Jew. Right?”
“There’s a church on the corner of Midland Road.”
“Ah yes, of course. But the nearest synagogue must be thirty miles away, and the nearest Buddhist temple is a hundred miles away. What religious faith do you adhere to, Kevin?”
“Nothing.”
“I see. A member of the growing band of agnostics. And where do you live?”
“Uh, I live in uh . . . a flat above Faisal World Travel.”
“Very convenient. And what’s your surname?”
“Uh . . . Welbeck. Kevin Welbeck.”
That’s when Roger noticed some uncertainty creeping in, but he kept going. “Mine’s Smith. Roger Smith. Nothing very imaginative, but that’s not my fault. You got any paperwork for your parcel collection, Kevin?”
“It was cash.”
“Oh, dear me,” Roger said. “Never get caught carrying unknown goods with no paperwork, Kevin Welbeck. What’s in the parcel?”
That produced another problem. Kevin didn’t know. He frowned and fidgeted.
“I assume it’s still in your car that’s sitting disabled up the road.”
“Yes.”
Roger’s growing sense of suspicion about Kevin, his car, and the parcel increased. “Always know exactly what you’re carrying, Kevin,” he said. “Be a courier but never be a mule, young man. Why did you start carrying parcels?”
Kevin muttered something inaudible about wanting something better, but Roger wasn’t impressed. “Better than what, Kevin? Have you ever tried using some imagination? Putting your brain to being creative?”
“Which part of my brain is that?” Kevin asked.
“The creative part, Kevin. The part that inspired inventors like Leonardo da Vinci, engineers like Isambard Kingdom Brunel, artists like Pablo Picasso, industrialists like Richard Arkwright, and the great composers like Aaron Copland and Frederick Delius. The part of the brain that separates man from the animals and makes a thinking man’s life worth living. Another mug of tea?”
“Thanks.”
As Roger threw tea bags, he went on, “It should be a doddle finding something better to do, Kevin. What else are you doing to pay your way?”
“Retail,” Kevin said, trying to use a sophisticated word. He’d normally have said “a shop,” but he should have known it still wouldn’t be enough.
“Radios and TVs? Greetings cards? Ironmongery? Gentlemen’s outfitters? Ladies underwear?”
“Food.”
“Cat food? Dog food? Sheep pellets? Human food?”
“Middle Eastern, Indian, and Pakistani. We have a halal butchery.”
“How long have you worked there?”
“Six years.”
“You started when you were twelve?”
“When I was at school.”
“I thought everyone went to university and came out with bits of paper saying they were qualified tennis club managers or media barons and then went to work in McDonald’s to pay off their student debts.”
“Yeh.”
A short silence descended as Roger tried working Kevin out. He didn’t want to pry too much, but things bothered him. He was nicely spoken and polite, but something didn’t feel right.
Kevin broke the silence. “Where had you come from then? Before you found me?”
“Guthrie’s farm. Up in the hills. Thirty pallets of sheep pellets picked up in Carlisle. I’m heading back for another load to take south.”
And so, conversation moved on with Roger offering a few secrets of his own as he tried to unpick Kevin. He talked about his long dead father and mother and then about music and books. “Read much, Kevin?”
“No, not much.”
Perhaps that wasn’t surprising. Most kids didn’t read these days. They played on phones or got their education from YouTube clips. He reached inside a locker and pulled out a book on regulations for drivers, statutory limits, and eye tests. He put it down in case Kevin picked it up and flipped through it. He didn’t, so he moved on to supermarkets and too much consumer choice. “Shampoo,” he said. “Rows and rows, shelves and shelves. Every darned colour, smell, flavour you can imagine. Thick hair, thin hair, dry hair, greasy hair, dandruff, essence of this, extract of that. And all I want is a drop of shampoo for my hair. Look at it?” He’d pulled off his woolly hat. “Does it look like I’m fussy?”
Kevin smiled and shook his head, so Roger sprung another question. “You do have a driving licence, don’t you, Kevin?”
Kevin turned away. “Sorry,” he said, still looking the other way.
“Sorry? Why?”
He half turned back. “I thought you might want to see my driving licence.”
“Why should I do that? It’s none of my business.”
“The name in my licence is different.”
“So what is it?”
“I don’t like it.”
“I don’t like Roger, but I’m stuck with it.”
“I mean Welbeck.”
“I’m confused. Explain.”
“Welbeck’s my mum’s name.”
“Your father’s then?”
“I only have a mum.”
“Well, bless my soul. I only know one man who managed that before, and he claimed he’s the son of God.”
“Very funny.”
“Then explain.”
“It’s none of your business.”
“True. So why tell me you’re fatherless?”
“I don’t know.”
“I see. Have you got a girlfriend, Kevin?”
“I did once.”
“What happened?”
“She dumped me.”
“Shame. Maybe she’d have offered some good advice on the future of the transport industry.”
“I doubt it. She worked in KFC on Park Road.”
“Be thankful for being dumped then, Kevin.”
Kevin made a sound that could have been a laugh, so Roger looked away. There was a sort of vulnerable innocence about Kevin, which he couldn’t help but like, so he cast his mind back to when he was Kevin’s age.
At eighteen, he’d been living at home with his mother and father in Yeovil, helping out on Court’s farm, bringing cows in, feeding hens, mucking out the stable, generally trying to be useful but feeling insecure, lost, lacking in confidence, not knowing anything and shy whenever Mr. Court’s daughter tried talking to him. He’d been tongue tied and self-conscious in the company of Mr. Court and older men who seemed to know so much more than he did, even if it was only that the tractor could be fixed with a piece of dry twig broken off the sycamore tree.
Kevin, Roger concluded, was not unlike himself at age eighteen. Perhaps Kevin was merely worried about being stuck in the middle of nowhere with an old guy who talked too much and wore army boots, a thirty-year-old hand-knitted beanie, and glasses. Perhaps Kevin was thinking that if he’d not turned up when he did, he’d have frozen to death with his hands stuck in the ten-to-two position on the steering wheel of the Golf with his bleached skeleton to be found next April. Perhaps it was just that the January payment on his car was due in two days’ time. Perhaps he had no licence and no insurance. Whatever it was, the poor boy looked worried to death, as if he’d just collected a million pounds worth of crack cocaine from Edinburgh, had a customer threatening him if he didn’t deliver the stuff urgently, and it was now sat in the trunk of the Golf half buried in snow. That thought made Roger take another look at Kevin’s somewhat sad-looking face and feel a sort of compassion. He opened another locker and showed Kevin his collection of novels.
“There you go, young Kevin. If you get bored with me, try one of these. Nice covers, highly acclaimed authors, rave reviews, some Pulitzer and Booker prize winners, and all well-suited to an avid reader willing to learn something new and get a new perspective on life. And when you’ve finished all those, try listening to some music written by composers of the past before radio and TV and digital buttons, when music was the only entertainment available. Do you like Vaughan Williams or William Walton, Kevin? Could you identify a composition by one of your very own local composers—Herbert Howells of Lydney or Edward Elgar from just over the boundary? Would you have recognised the piece by Frederick Delius I was playing when I saved you from freezing to death?”
When Roger finally crept behind the curtain to catch some sleep, Kevin was reading The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck.