Ostrich Boys (9 page)

“Hi, excuse me. Sorry to bother you, but we’re in a really big hurry.” Sim was using the same voice he used for teachers when he hadn’t done his homework. “We’ve only got a couple of minutes before our train and if we don’t get it we’re gonna be really stuck.”

The woman looked from Sim to me and Kenny. We both smiled our best, politest smiles. Luckily Kenny’s T-shirt didn’t scare her and she was kind enough to let the three of us push in front. We thanked her several times too many.

Sim tried it on the next people in line, a young guy and his girlfriend. But the guy didn’t even look at Sim when he said, “You’re not the only ones in a hurry, mate.” He couldn’t have been that much older than us, was even a bit shorter than Sim, and for a second I thought Sim was going to square up to him. I saw Sim’s eyes harden and thought, Oh God, here we go. I got ready to stand at his shoulder—whatever happened. I was never much good in a fight; it was just that my bulk sometimes put people off.

But Sim took a step back, saying, “Thanks for nothing,
mate
.” He stood to one side, weighing up the whole queue. And I was thinking, Is he going to fight them all?

“Excuse me!” he shouted. “Excuse me! Hello!” When they were all looking his way he said, “I know you’re all in a rush and fed up of queuing and everything, but my friends and I really are in a big hurry. If we don’t get the next train to Newcastle we’re gonna be in trouble—big-time. If you’d just let us get served next it’d be fantastic. We’d really appreciate it; you’d be doing us a massive favor.” He stood there with his face half needy, half demanding.

There was a bit of shuffling and bustle in the queue, shrugs and murmurs. There were still twenty-odd people in front of us, and to be fair maybe at least half of them seemed willing to let us push in. But not everybody was happy, or generous of spirit.

“I’ve been here half an hour already,” an old man in a flat cap whined. “I’ve not asked anyone if I could push in.”

“We’re
all
in a hurry. We’ve
all
got somewhere to be,” someone else said.

“The sign says you’ve got to wait in line.”

“Everybody will want to go in front of me if I let you.”

In the end one of the station staff called out from behind his window: “If everybody could just be patient we’ll get to you as soon as we can.”

Sim looked disgusted with the whole lot of them. He came back to stand with me and Kenny again. “How long we got?” he growled at me.

“Twenty minutes.”

“Great.” He ground his teeth, glared at as many people in the queue as he could, then stalked back out into the station. “Bunch of shitflickers,” he said, far too loud for our comfort zone.

Kenny and I were on the receiving end of evil stares and mutters from the rest of the queue. We kept our heads down, shuffled a couple of steps forward every time we got the chance. Didn’t even speak to each other, just kept checking our watches as the time ticked by. But it was pointless—there were still fifteen or so people in front of us.

“We’re going to miss it,” Kenny said.

“Yep,” I agreed. I was annoyed with Sim for wandering off; wondered where he’d got to. And I was tempted to leave Kenny with the excuse of going to look for him.

“So … should I still get a new ticket?”

“Depends how you feel,” I said. “If we try to sneak you
onto the next train, we might get as far as Newcastle without being caught—if we’re lucky. But then we’ve got the train to Carlisle
and
the train to Dumfries. Do you feel lucky three times over?”

“I want to go to Ross,” he said. “Whatever it takes. I don’t care what my mum says.”

“Even if we don’t get home until Monday?”

He hesitated, then: “Yeah. I mean, like Sim said: it’s worth an arse-kicking.”

He’d smashed the ball into my court. After the graffiti and urn-theft it would be ridiculous to worry about skipping school. I admit I was worried about staying out a second night without any money. But I reckoned if Kenny was prepared to deal with it, then I should be too. And Sim? It would probably cheer him up to know we were skipping school.

I pushed the worry about where on earth we were going to spend our two cashless nights right to the back of my mind. Same as when getting on the train back in Cleethorpes, there was an excitable bubbling of rebellion in my belly. “Okay. Then we should get that new ticket. Make sure there’s no other problems along the way.”

We waited as the last few minutes before that next train ticked by.

And that was when Sim burst back into the travel center. “Come on. We’re going.”

I thought he’d given up waiting. In fact the announcement
for our train sounded out over the loudspeaker—it was approaching platform five.

“Don’t worry about it,” I told him. “We’ll get the next one. We need Kenny’s ticket.”

“Forget the train,” Sim said. “I’ve got us a lift.”

We had to run to catch him up. Onto the busy station concourse and then dodging the crowds out through the barriers toward the car park.

“To Ross?” I said. “Sim? Sim!” I grabbed at his arm. “All the way to Ross?” It was too good to be true. “Or just as far as Dumfries?” Because even that would be brilliant.

He shook his head. “Blackpool.”

“Blackpool?”

Kenny was confused. “I didn’t know we went to Blackpool.”

“We don’t,” I told him. “Sim, what—?”

“It’s closer than here,” he said. “Think about it. We’ll be on the right side of the country, yeah? And can probably just get one train all the way to Dumfries—straight up the west coast.”

I wasn’t sure. Maybe he was right. Kenny had pulled the map out of my rucksack’s side pocket and was struggling with it as we walked, trying to find Blackpool.

Sim led us into the car park and toward two older lads standing smoking beside a big black taxicab. “Okay, we’re ready,” he greeted them. And pointing out me and Kenny: “These are my mates.”

The tall lad with the scruffy ponytail nodded at us. “Right. Better get moving, then.” He looked about nineteen, twenty; far too young to be a taxi driver. He flicked his cigarette away toward the tracks—toward the train that was just pulling into the station. It was the train we should have been on.

I stood there, incredulous. “We’re getting a taxi?”

Sim swung the door open like he was my chauffeur.

“Twenty-five pounds thirty-eight,” I reminded him.

“It’s not a proper taxi,” he said.

“Looks a hell of a lot like one to me.” He seemed far too pleased with himself.

“Stop fretting and get in, will you?”

Kenny yanked on my arm. “Blackpool’s here,” he said, crumpling up the map to point it out to me.

I nodded. “Yeah. I know.”

“But it’s nowhere near Ross.”

“Yeah,” I sighed. “I know.”

There were a couple of size-ten muddy footprints on the backseat of the taxi and crushed cigarette butts, scrunched-up crisp packets and several empty beer cans on the floor. The lanky, ponytailed lad shrugged a quick apology as he swept the cans and crisp packets into a plastic bag. “Bit of a party last night,” he said. He looked around for a litter bin, but it was obviously too far away for him, so he shoved the bag full of rubbish underneath the neighboring parked car instead. He winked at me.

“Sim,” I said, close to his ear. “Are you sure this—?”

But he was all grins and hustle. “Get in, get in.” He clicked his tongue; so pleased with himself.

The second lad held the door for us.

Still kind of unsure, I slid onto the backseat. Kenny climbed in next to me. He whispered, “Do we know them?”

“I don’t reckon so, no,” I said.

“So why …?”

“Exactly,” I agreed. I was hoping Sim knew more than he was letting on.

The one with the ponytail was driving. He was really tall, really thin, pale like he never saw the sun, and had really,
really
blue eyes. The stockier dark-haired lad climbed in the back with Kenny, Sim and me. He was a brick: oblong and hard. He had a pointy little goatee that could have been a paintbrush glued to his chin. He and Sim sat on the fold-down seats with their backs to the driver, heads resting against the Plexiglas partition, facing me and Kenny. Even with our rucksacks there was plenty of room. And, with more of a chug than a roar, we were headed for Blackpool.

We were well on our way west, halfway to Harrogate, before Sim told us what was going on. And by then it was too late to turn round. But by then I don’t think any of us wanted to.

Joe was the driver; he did most of the talking, in between puffs on a cigarette, either throwing glances over his shoulder or looking at us in his rearview mirror. He was cocky and loud, but in a funny way. He said they’d given a couple of their mates a lift to the station—ones who’d been in no fit state to find their own way after their party last night. He had a strong Liverpudlian accent, and because I’d never met anybody from Liverpool before, I thought he sounded like someone off the telly. Gus was the guy in the back with us. I didn’t know where he came from, he never said. He just
smoked. So it was Joe who told us they were sports science students who’d just finished their first year at York Uni, and said they were going to meet a friend in Blackpool who could offer them summer work at one of the amusement parks.

“How lucky was it I ran into you?” Sim shouted.

“Thought it was me who ran into you,” Joe replied.

The ride was noisy. The taxi wasn’t the quietest vehicle ever invented and we had to keep the windows down because of the heat. But Sim was glowing anyway. Not only with his own good fortune, but also with the newfound knowledge that you could go to university to study kicking a football about—it sounded like the perfect waste of time and energy to him. At last he had an ambition.

Joe shouted over his shoulder: “When you’re running around in a taxi you soon get used to picking up the waifs and strays.” He grinned at us in his mirror. “That’s what you keep saying, right, Gus?”

Gus nodded; sucked on his cigarette.

“We were desperate,” Sim said.

“You looked it,” Joe agreed.

“And I’m dead sorry, for … for acting up and that.”

“No worries. No harm done, was there, Gus?”

Gus shrugged; blew smoke.

Apparently, after Sim had gone storming out of the travel center, he’d had the idea of checking bus times, just to see if there was anything helpful going our way. But as he’d
followed the signs to the bus stands, head up, trying to work out where they were meant to be pointing, he’d walked straight into the car park and been knocked flat on his backside by Joe reversing. And Sim, being Sim, hadn’t taken it well. There’d been shouting and swearing and a kick aimed at the side door. Gus had been quick to want to calm Sim down. But luckily Joe had been quicker to hold Gus back.

Joe said, “After knocking Sim here on his arse and hearing about your ticket problems, we just reckoned the least we could do was offer you a lift.”

We were on the A59, a busy two-lane highway. There were mostly hedgerows and fields either side of us, occasional roundabouts to break the monotony. Kenny had the map open across his knees. He was watching for names on signposts, then following our progress. We passed one that read
NUNMONKTON 3
.

“Where are we?” I asked him.

“Only here. How long d’you think it’ll take us to get to Blackpool?”

I didn’t have a clue. I looked to Sim, but he was ignoring us.

“So whose is the taxi?” he asked Gus.

“Bit of a story, really,” Joe said. Our side of the road was blocked by roadworks and he slowed to join the queue of cars waiting at the temporary traffic lights. He pulled on the hand brake and twisted in his seat. “Suppose the cab’s mine now—more or less. My uncle moved to Australia. He was a
cabbie but got fed up with it. Got sick and tired of all the morons on a weekend who can’t handle their beer, puking up and fighting all the time. He had girls swinging their Gucci handbags at him, screaming and swearing, trying to dodge paying for trips to the KFC. And then there was this time he had his nose broken by some bloke after trying to kick him out for dropping his kebab all over the backseat.” He shook his head. “Crazy world. Pissed-up kebab-heads: they were driving him nuts, he said. So he decided he was off. Said it was okay to borrow his cab for a day or two, to move all my stuff to uni, but then decided to let me keep it anyway. Said he wasn’t coming back—no way.”

“What’s he doing in Australia?” I asked.

“You’ll laugh,” Joe said.

“What d’you mean?”

“He’s driving a taxi.”

We all laughed.

The light went green and Joe followed the rest of the traffic past the roadworks, shifting through the gears. “He says it’s different, though. Loves it out there. He’s somewhere out in the middle of nowhere and reckons he has more trouble with kangaroos than kebab-heads.”

“It must be great,” Kenny said. “Having your own taxi to drive around in.”

“We have a laugh, don’t we, Gus?”

Gus chuckled; smoke curled from his nostrils.

We chugged along; there was plenty of time to watch the
scenery slide by. The taxi was no hot rod and the glorious sunshine had brought out plenty of countryside day-trippers to clog up the way ahead. I couldn’t ignore that niggling, anxious part of me that was still worried about missing trains and being behind schedule. But maybe Sim was right and we could get a train up the west coast. Then again, maybe not. He was joking around with Joe; he didn’t seem worried. Even Kenny had relaxed. He still had the map open but had stopped noting every single signpost and place name. I guessed that, either consciously or not, we were all coming to the realization that this trip was going to take its own sweet time.

Joe plugged his iPod into the cab’s radio. Led Zeppelin—Gus’s favorite, apparently. He moved his lips to the lyrics, played a bit of air guitar.

Kenny wasn’t impressed. He rolled his eyes at me and Sim.

Ross had liked Led Zeppelin—he’d been into all that old-school rock stuff. David Bowie, Pink Floyd. He used to argue with Kenny about it because Kenny was the kind of person who thought anything that had been around longer than a few months, anything not bang-up-to-date “now,” was a waste of space. Kenny was keen to think of himself as a trendsetter. Ross reckoned anything any good had already been discovered, done or invented years ago. Which made Kenny call him a depressive. Which made Ross call Kenny a victim.