The Pimlico Kid. Barry Walsh

for both of us, but he doesn’t mean it.

      ‘I’d love to have a car, to be a chauffeur, like your dad … to drive all the time.’

      ‘Where would you go?’

      ‘Oh, all over, everywhere.’

      She leans closer. ‘Would you take me with you?’

      A weird fluttering fills my chest. Something has changed, like the moment in cowboy films when the hero and heroine first notice each other. I can see her face so clearly: the little mole beside her nose and the tiny bleached hairs above her lips. I’m not sure what to say but I know what I want to do: for the first time in my life, I want to kiss someone.

      ‘Well?’ she says.

      ‘Oh yes, yes, I’d take you.’

      ‘Where?’

      ‘Well, to Cumberland … maybe. It’s a long way. We’d have to take food and things for the journey.’

      Her face comes closer. ‘What’s it like?’

      ‘It’s smashing. Near my Aunt’s, there’s a big river where we fish for trout, but we only ever catch eels. There are caves in the riverbank, where my cousin smokes a tuppenny loose. My aunt has a Morris Minor and drives us to the Lake District where there are huge mountains and er … lakes. In Carlisle Castle, one dungeon has a licking stone.’

      ‘A what?’

      ‘It’s a curvy-shaped bit of wall made smooth by prisoners licking water that seeped through from the moat. And we go to the seaside at Silloth, where there are huge sand dunes to jump from, and the best ice cream: it’s Italian. And there’s a funfair with flick-ball machines; if you get three balls in the holes, you get one cigarette. And my aunt never stops baking, there are always cakes and different kinds of tart at teatime, and lemon curd, although they call it lemon cheese up there. Her kitchen table is as big as our kitchen.’

      I’m out of breath. She’s looking at me and I want to tell her more to keep her looking.

      ‘Sounds wonderful.’ She puts a hand on mine. ‘Shall we go then, one day?’

      I have to swallow to start breathing again. ‘Yes.’ Then, instead of telling her how I feel, all I manage is, ‘It does rain a lot though. And we never get brown like you do in Somerset.’

      ‘Would you take me to Somerset too?’

      ‘Oh I would, yes.’

      ‘Then I could show you our village, Lower Sinton. My Nan runs the post office but it’s not like the one here; it sells sweets and food and newspapers. There are haystacks in the fields where hares hide, but I’ve never seen them. The man next door has ponies and we get free rides. In a cottage on the edge of the village there’s an old woman called Miss Walthough. She looks a bit like a witch but she isn’t, although she does know about potions for curing sick animals, and she grows the best raspberries for miles around. We’ve also got a river; it runs across the fields behind Nan’s garden. There are all kinds of beautiful stones in it and you can wade across, except in winter when it’s too deep.’

      Her face is so close. Talking has made her breathless too. Embarrassed, she shifts forward on the seat. I’m afraid that she’s getting up to go, but she’s pushing down with her feet to sit further back. Now the sunlight can reach her hair through the rear window and her face shines like it’s a Technicolor close-up of the heroine in a Western. I move closer. She looks away but slides her hand over mine. To the sound of our breathing, we stare ahead. Through the windscreen, the roads of Cumberland and Somerset stretch before us in a sunny world in which I will drive a sports car with Sarah beside me, and she’ll put her head on my shoulder. After several minutes I say, ‘I can’t wait to be able to drive.’

      The door opens with a rich click. Mr Richards ducks his head inside. ‘All done, time to lock up.’ His eyes narrow and he sniffs. ‘What is that? It’s not fish is it?’

      I haven’t noticed the smell until now. The whiting has soaked through its paper wrapping and there’s a damp patch on the beige carpet. The Bournvita will be OK but I fear for the flavour of Ada’s Weights.

      I snatch up the string bag and stammer, ‘It’s for Mrs Holt.’

      ‘Well, whoever it’s for you can take it out of my car.’ He holds the door wide open and for a moment it feels as if he’s my chauffeur.

      I step past him. ‘Thank you.’ I’m only being polite but Mr Richards doesn’t see it that way and he’s about to say so, when Sarah stops him. ‘Dad, please … it’s all right.’

      I walk away.

      Sarah calls out, ‘Bye.’

      I wave and keep going. I turn the street corner and start running as if I could keep it up for ever.

      Strength, Thrift and Gigli

      Dad breaks clocks. Every now and again, a snap and a metallic uncoiling signal the end of another innocent Westclox. Death follows a brief whirring of detached innards failing to turn the luminous hands. This is when Mum starts shouting.

      This evening she has caught Dad as his hand settles nonchalantly on the mantelpiece. She reaches around him to snatch the clock and hold it safely against her stomach. He throws up his hands and smiles.

      ‘I’ll wind it,’ she says.

      He winks at John and me. ‘Fair enough, Maureen.’

      She lifts the winder’s butterfly top and turns it with the tips of her fingers to demonstrate how it should be done: a gentle ratcheting that doesn’t go too far. Showing him, for the hundredth time, how every task in hand needs careful attention.

      She sets it back on the mantelpiece. ‘Now leave it, I’ll bring it when I come to bed.’ During the day it’s a kitchen clock, at night it sits on the table by their bed.

      Dad is nothing if not thorough, but he can’t resist the final turn that destroys the heads of already embedded screws, or the last twist of the tap that chews up washers. At Christmas, he literally blows up balloons. John and I have hidden the bicycle pump since the time he continued pumping a rock-hard tyre after a squeeze convinced him that it was well short of its right pressure. The bang from the exploding inner tube lifted Chris from his slumbers on Ada’s windowsill and dumped him spitting and wailing in our backyard.

      Accuracy isn’t his strong point either but we love watching him miss at the coconut shy at Battersea Funfair just to see the vertical ripples that roll around the canvas marquee wall after each thump of a wayward wooden ball.

      To placate Mum, he picks up the dinner plates from the table and slides them into the sink with enough noise to get her to bar him from clearing the rest. He stands back, eyeing the clock furtively, his big fingers twitching. Mum catches John grinning.

      ‘It’s not funny. Your father’s lack of self-control wastes our hard-earned money.’

      We stay quiet because she’s taken the deep breath that means she hasn’t finished. Dad, too, is paying close attention; he’s heard what she’s about to say before but he’s going to have to hear it again.

      ‘Nothing is safe when he gets his hands on it.’ She catches Dad winking at us. ‘What is wrong with you? It’s not as if you don’t know your own strength, you do …’

      John and I struggle not to laugh. She takes a threatening step towards us but weakens when she realizes that Dad, too, is choking back laughter.

      She returns to the sink. ‘I give up.’

      ‘That’s the way he is,’ Aunt Winnie told us when Mum wasn’t around. ‘Easygoing chap, your Dad, but when something gets in his way, he has to push.’ With a phlegmy chuckle, she added, ‘Then it’s best to back off, ask the Colquhoun brothers.’

      The