Paradise Postponed Read online

“I wish I were,” I said miserably. The adrenaline had drained away and now I felt pathetic like I had flu or something. I curled up with him on the bed. He smelt of the usual beer, fags and engine oil, but after that sickly perfume, it just seemed comfortingly familiar. He put his arms around me and yakked on about the engine exchange they were performing on this Stock car.

  “Fifty hours it takes,” he was saying.

  I listened in with vague interest, interrupting with the odd technical question. “So where’s this race then?” I asked at last.

  “Belle Vue,” he said enthusiastically. “I can’t wait to see how it’ll perform!”

  I realised I barely knew anything about Stock car racing. All of us at work followed the Grand Prix but none of them were into anything else. I’d only heard Belle Vue mentioned in connection with greyhounds and Speedway, though presumably not at the same time or it would be complete carnage.

  Quinn held out his still purple and glitter tipped hands to me. “Have you got any nail varnish remover? I’m getting the shit ripped out of me by Rob and his mates, and besides engine work doesn’t half chip it…”

  I rolled my eyes. “Why would I have any nail varnish remover? I’m a mechanic remember? It doesn’t go with perfect nails. Borrow Siân’s.”

  “She won’t let me have any more she says she’s sick of me nicking hers and it’s about time I got some of my own.”

  “Well for once I’ve got some sympathy with her, buy your own.”

  “But I got banned from Boots that time when I started that protest demonstration when they wouldn’t let me buy make-up. The mall security chucked me out!”

  “The corner shop has it,” I told him hard-heartedly as he looked appealingly at me. “If you’re so willing to ponce about in the stuff, I don’t see why you don’t want anyone to see you buying it!”

  Somehow I ended up returning home without establishing whether or not I was invited to go to Belle Vue with him and I decided that by hook or by crook I’d make sure I got to go along. I wasn’t going to allow him to have that amount of fun without me!

  Lying awake that night, listening to Nasim’s even breathing, I knew instinctively that everything at home had changed, and there’d be no going back. I felt depressed. It wasn’t an exciting change, it was the sensation of being on the edge of a slippery slope, a slow miserable death to everything that I held dear but hadn’t realised that I did until a few hours ago when it became clear that it was all about to be ripped out of my hands. I recalled Dad’s face earlier. He’d chosen her above me already. I could barely believe it. A few hours ago we hadn’t even known of her existence and now he was basically telling me it was put up with it or get out. My own Dad threatening me with chucking me out! Only a few months ago when I was ostentatiously reading the vacant accommodation adverts in the local paper to punish him, he was devastated and was clearly desperate for me to stay. Now he no longer needed me.

  I heard the front door close quietly and soft footsteps tip-toeing up the stairs. Jamie trying to creep in so that Dad wouldn’t know he’d stayed out till two am on a school night. I got up quietly and slipped into Jamie’s room. He started sharply and dramatically clutched his chest.

  “Fuck Eve, do you want me to die of a heart attack?”

  I sat on his bed and filled him in on the evil Pauline. His eyes widened but then he tried to tough it out. “Well good on the old bugger. Guess he thought he’d better get back in on the action before his balls shrivelled up and dropped off!”

  He was saying it to piss me off because he could knew I was upset. But I could see in the back of his eyes a flash of helpless fear. Jamie had never been able to deal with sudden changes. When he was young I used to try to shield him from them, but now it seemed we were both on our own with this one.

  Next morning I arrived at work a couple of minutes late again, due to a propensity in Nasim to be late for everything. I’d never noticed this before I lived with her. The men were hanging around waiting for me with ill-concealed suppressed excitement. I looked enquiringly at them.

  “The boss did some interviews on Saturday afternoon after you left,” Bolton informed me, his voice pregnant with ‘go on ask me then’.

  “Oh yes?” I left my tone annoyingly casual and reached for the work book to see what jobs we had on today.

  “And I think when you meet the successful candidate you’ll agree that the boss is still aiming for the female market,” he continued with sly meaning.

  I shot him a sideways look and found him grinning meaningfully at me. I glanced at Dewhurst and he was smirking too. A female, I thought. Entwistle’s gone and hired another woman. I wasn’t sure what I felt about that. On the one hand I should be celebrating some back-up, but on the other hand this woman would be immediately senior to me and she might be a real bitch, and I’d got used to being the only female around, and all the attention that entailed.

  “Entwistle’s starting the new mechanic later today, to work alongside Bowker for a couple of months before he leaves.”

  “And the Senior Mechanic?” I enquired.

  Dewhurst smiled.

  “Congratulations, boss,” I reached out and shook his hand, then saluted him jokingly.

  Not that there’d ever been much doubt about that. If Entwistle had appointed anyone else, Dewhurst would have immediately left.

  I went about my work coolly, but I couldn’t help but be on edge. The men were obviously determined not to miss a thing and there was never more than one of them at a time inside the shed, the rest of them making excuses to hang around outside on the look-out like a row of chirpy meerkats. I’m telling you right now that men are just as bad as women for nosiness and gossip and I don’t know how they get away with making out that it’s only females that indulge in it.

  Round about morning tea break a ripple ran round the yard. I was bent over an engine, having decided to just finish something off before answering the call of “Cuppa, Ginty?” from Dewhurst. I sensed that all eyes would be on me, so I stayed steadfastly hidden under the bonnet pretending to fiddle around in the depths. I could hear Entwistle introducing the other three and I steeled myself.

  “Ah, and this is our newest recruit, Eve McGinty. A very promising young mechanic.”

  I snarled to myself a bit. This new person was already immediately higher up the ranks than me, and Entwistle didn’t have to rub that in and make it sound like I was to be lorded over and condescended to. I slowly straightened up and reluctantly turned round, wiping my hands on a rag as I did so to give me something to be doing with them.

  “Hello Eve,” the successful candidate said brightly. He smiled at me with sparkling bright blue eyes and a flash of immaculately white teeth. I successfully managed to hide the grinding of my own. So this was what the men had been dying to see. My first meeting with the most gorgeous man I’d ever seen outside of the cinema! I suddenly got what all their references to targeting the female market had meant. I raised my eyebrows politely. It was not for nothing that I’d sworn at the age of five never to show my true feelings again on my first day at school when those mocking green eyes had laughed at me for crying when he’d pushed me off the swing and scuffed my new red shoes. No, I was master of the stony expression and the mask of cool.

  “This is Luke Trevelyn,” Entwistle introduced. Even he was smiling in a meaningful way at me.

  “Morning,” I said coldly.

  The guy was irritatingly good-looking and boy did he know it. Bright blond wavy shoulder length hair, leather jacket, jeans far too tight for a respectable sperm count, six foot, broad shouldered, and the face of a Greek god. I wondered how he’d manage to bend over an engine in those jeans without rendering his voice an octave higher.

  He reached out a hand but I ignored it, implying with a wave of the oily rag that I was too greased up to shake. Entwistle still hovered expectantly with his prize but I glanced stubbornly over at Dewhurst. “Did you mention a cuppa?” I called. Then having successfully established that
I was less than impressed by the guy, I turned back to him. “Nice to meet you,” I said coolly, in a tone of voice that implied that in fact I had little interest in the matter, and walked off towards the shed.

  Inside the shed however, the men were all too ready to twit me over him. Bolton was certain he’d seen through my careful charade. “The women’ll be queuing up to get serviced by him, don’t you think?” His eyes were gleaming at me.

  I found myself responding aggressively. “Seems a bit of an arrogant self-satisfied shite to me,” I condemned. “How old is he?”

  “Twenty-two I believe,” Dewhurst chipped in.

  “What’s he getting paid?” I asked suspiciously.

  Dewhurst named a figure, “though of course that’s confidential and I haven’t told you that,” he added.

  I was fuming. It was twice what I was getting and he wasn’t that much older than me! But I knew better than to say that aloud. I knocked back the rest of my tea and buggered off to the toilet where to my own severe annoyance I found myself checking how I looked in the mirror and finding myself relieved that the pale complexion and dark shadows under my eyes from last night’s sleeplessness had been replaced by the bike ride to work and the brisk cool air today with attractive roses in my cheeks and sparkling eyes. Sparkling with annoyance I told myself, but found myself feeling around in my pocket for my stick of plain pharmaceutical lip salve to moisten my lips a bit, and caught myself planning to bring a more glam coloured lip gloss tomorrow.

  Dammit. I’d only just managed to carve out a comfortable niche in the garage, and now work was going to get a whole lot more stressful again.

  Driving home I figured I might just go and call on Rajesh to chivvy him along a bit. I’d winkled his address out of Nasim but I didn’t really know the area and hadn’t thought to look it up on Googlemaps before I left work so I circled aimlessly around for a bit until just by chance I happened upon his street and lo and behold, even more miraculously, I spied my quarry walking along that very road.

  I drew the bike up beside him and let the engine turn quietly over while I flipped up my visor. When he realised who it was he looked wary.

  “Hi Rajesh,” I greeted him in a friendly manner. “Do you want a lift over to mine to see your fiancée?”

  He looked uncomfortable and shook his head.

  “She’s sitting around planning every detail of this midnight flit you’re both planning to Gretna,” I baited. “So maybe you’d like to come over and add some of your own ideas in before you have no say in the matter…”

  Rajesh licked his luscious full lips uneasily, and his big dark eyes slid away from mine.

  “Unless, of course you’re thinking better of the whole affair and you’d rather call the whole thing off, in which case it would be kinder if you let her down sooner rather than later while she’s still got a chance of getting back with her family and you still have all your limbs, your beautiful looks and more importantly a complete set of wedding tackle-”

  As if on cue, as I trailed off on these threatening words, three figures rounded the corner with sharp purpose. We both recognised them at about the same moment that with a shock of anger they recognised us and advanced on us with grim intent. In a dramatic novel, the hero would probably have been described as ‘blanching’ but Rajesh was the wrong colour for that. Instead, while I was definitely going white as a sheet, Rajesh was staring frozenly at them as though he was in some kind of nightmare and he was finding his limbs had all suddenly turned to concrete. I recovered myself.

  “Get on!” I shouted at him, flipping down the visor.

  He stared blankly at me.

  “Get on the fucking bike!” I yelled, revving up.

  Suddenly the spell was broken and Rajesh leapt up behind me with a rapidity and competence that led me to believe that he must have been on a bike before at some time and the second I was sure his hands had taken a good grip on the cissy bar behind him, I gunned us away. Tariq, the cousin and some other friend or relative of theirs were nearly upon us, and when they saw us shooting off they leapt into the road in the path of my bike. I accelerated at them and as they lunged, trying to take us out, I swerved at the last minute around them and straight into the path of an oncoming car. The driver of the car put a hand on the horn and kept it there in a continuous blaring blast and slammed on his brakes. I continued accelerating and yanked the bike almost by sheer force of will up the pavement the other side where with a bone jolting thud we screeched a landing and a dangerous skidding turn and shot off diagonally across the corner of the small grassy children’s park where some of the women screamed and grabbed their toddlers up, while behind us I could hear the driver with his window wound down hurling abuse at Tariq and co. With another violent double thud as the tyres hit the tarmac I negotiated us successfully off the further pavement and into a gap in the traffic on the road the other side. I moderated our speed.

  “Shit,” Rajesh uttered with feeling.

  “Fuck,” I agreed. I was thanking a god I didn’t believe in that Rajesh knew how to ride a bike. I had felt him riding it with me and balancing his own weight and the weight of the bike with some skill. If it had been Nasim up there behind me we’d have come off for sure as she always leant the wrong way. But now we had to get home without being stopped for having a pillion up without a lid on. And I was the one who’d be getting fined, not him.

  After I’d drawn us up in my drive and we’d both got our feet safely on the ground, I suddenly came over all weak and I found my fingers had a slight tremble. Rajesh didn’t look in all that much better a state.

  “I think I might have that cup of tea now,” he said as he got off.

  “I think I might have something a bit stronger,” I said, kicking the stand out.

  He gave a slightly shaky laugh.

  I yanked off my lid and walked to the front door, fumbling for my key.

  “I think I might stay at my parent’s tonight,” He commented. “They’ve obviously found out where I live.”

  When I opened the door and Nasim sitting at the computer saw who was framed in the doorway behind me, she squealed with joy and leapt up.

  “I’ll go and put that kettle on shall I?” I said mildly as she threw herself into his arms. While the kettle boiled I went upstairs and rescued the bottle of Jack Daniels from under the bed where I kept it hidden from Jamie’s incursions and took some medicinal gulps straight from it. Then I went downstairs and made three innocent looking mugs of tea, with an extra couple of centimetres of dosage mine. I ventured out to plonk the two mugs in front of the lovebirds but sensing a bit of an atmosphere I quickly retreated back to the kitchen to start the evening meal. Nasim and I had agreed to make a curry every night until we got through all the recipes we’d wanted to try off the internet. It wasn’t as much fun without Nasim here to support me through the process, but still it was easy-peasy to follow the recipe and soon I had a big fragrant simmering pot of the stuff on the hob, and was wondering how many portions of rice to measure out.

  I walked out into the living room to find out whether Rajesh would be staying for the meal or not and was surprised to find that he appeared to have already left and Nasim was lying silent and motionless on the settee in the gathering darkness. I hadn’t heard him go, but then I’d had Radio One up loud so as not to overhear anything personal from them. I went back into the kitchen, turned the gas down low under the pan, switched the radio off and snapped on a lamp back in the living room.

  “What’s up Nasim?” I asked sympathetically.

  A low sob escaped her. He’s dumped her, I thought. The utter bastard.

  “He says his family doesn’t want him to marry me,” she began to cry in earnest. “I said that neither did mine but I was willing to face that and that in the end they’d all come round to it, but then he said that his Grandfather had been killed in the War of Partition and that his family just wouldn’t ever accept a Pakistani into the family!”

  I sat down tentatively o
n the edge of the settee not sure what I should do to comfort her without saying the wrong thing but she sorted it out for me by throwing herself into my arms just as she had on the first day, crying her eyes out while uttering almost incomprehensible bewailments.

  I was dying to tell her that he’d been a complete bastard from start to finish but of course I couldn’t, so I just patted her awkwardly and handed her tissues at regular intervals.

  Eventually we heard Dad’s car drawing up outside. “I need to go out and move my bike,” I explained. I’d left it in the middle of the drive. “And then I need to finish tea.”

  She hurriedly got up and made for the stairs, presumably to avoid seeing Dad. “I’m not hungry,” she declared as she left, her voice hoarse from all the crying.

  Great, I thought. All that slaving over a hot stove and I could see myself being the only one to end up eating it.

  But there I was wrong. Both Dad and Jamie were sitting up to the table half an hour later. Dad eyed the curry as though it might bite him, but after a couple of mouthfuls he relaxed and made complimentary remarks about it. In Nasim’s absence I’d got away with only putting half as much chilli powder in it. Jamie too was tucking in with gratifying gusto and for once was making no attempt to insist on taking it into the living room to eat while watching TV.

  “Where’s Nasim?” Dad enquired.

  “Not hungry,” I said.

  In the absence of Nasim, Dad seemed to suddenly get all patriarchal and started to ask Jamie how his life was going. Sally? School? Exam prep? Didn’t his job at the farm usually start about now?

  Jamie was mainly monosyllabic, especially to anything about Sally and school, but the query about his job at the farm he just brushed off irritably and said ‘he couldn’t be arsed’. Dad wasn’t amused. “So what are you going to do for money? It doesn’t just drop in your lap you know, you have to work for it and I’m not subsidising you to sit around on your backside all day. What are you planning to do after your exams this year? What college course will you be taking?”