CAR RATS IN ARMS
Maurice was the brother with the name my mother wanted. “Maurice Chevalier was so ’andsome,” she would say in her lovely Italian accent. Maurice was the first in the family to “go on the road.” He was a car rat as well; he still is mentally retarded, in an “I don’t know what to buy next” way. He lives happily in Whickham, with his two children, a Porsche convertible, and a 1965 Karmann Ghia—I think one of the prettiest little VWs. His two human children, Mark and Michael, are helplessly like their dad and uncle: car crazy. They say we don’t have branches on our family tree, just wing mirrors. When we gather at pubs, we tend to look more like an assembly line than a family.
Back in ’65, Maurice was the first one to be able to buy something new, a Lambretta scooter. He was a bellboy at the County Hotel in Newcastle. He was apprenticed to become a bellman. Tips flowed in, and he poured them into his piggy bank. After about six months, he was off—he’d heard there were rich pickings to be had bellboying in Jersey. I missed him. He was my younger brother; there was nothing to kick (the cat had left months ago).
He returned a year and a half later. And outside was parked a Triumph Spitfire hardtop, white and gorgeous. It was his. Maurice was dressed smartly and had them proper driving gloves on, the kind that look like someone’s just knitted the back of your hand.
“Wanna come for a drive?”
“Oh yeah!” I said. That’s hard to say with your tongue hanging out. It was a beautiful little car—until some little shit scratched it or kicked one of the panels in a fit of envy. You had to be careful in the northeast in those days.
Later on, I bought a Ford Anglia 100E, with that daft wrong-way-’round back screen. Maurice had moved back to Newcastle and was courting.
“A woman,” he told me.
He sold the Spitfire for a profit and he bought my Anglia. Now this car went from 0 to 60 mph in the time it takes to spit-roast a fair-size bullock. That didn’t faze my bro. If it wasn’t fast, he’d make it look like it was fast. Money no object. He went out and bought a tin of matte-black paint and some yellow electrician’s tape. Oh yeah, and a paintbrush.
But he didn’t actually prepare the car, he just painted over the top of the blue bodywork (some of it missing, I may add—these were the days of the great rust epidemics that swept the length and breadth of Britain). He had that maniacal Johnson look in his eye. He was creating something beautiful. It was a masterpiece. Why was he lucky to be the only person in the world to think of it?
“Wait for the paint to dry? Wait for the paint to dry?! That’s for suckers, that’s for people with too much time on their hands. This is the sixties: peace, love, and shagging.” (Well, once you got out of Gateshead.) “This car’s going to be Psychedelic Moody Maurice’s Manwagon.” Oh shit. While he’s up there talking to Zeus and the other lads up there, asking for tips, his friend Dennis arrives. Dennis is an apprentice plasterer and perfect for the job of helping Maurice put on the stripes.
Dennis always looked a happy man, mainly because his teeth were too big for his mouth, or perhaps because he’d just come from the pub. There they were, Maurice at the front, Dennis at the back.
“Right, Dennis, I’m pulling back the tape now . . . Dennis, Dennis, where the frig are you?”
“I’m here, but I can’t hear you for the traffic.”
(They were doing this on the street and quite a crowd had gathered—there wasn’t much telly then.) Ah yes, the tape. At last they cotton on to the fact that they’re both doing the same job. They pull; they tease; the language was a pretty color purple.
“Done!” went the cry. We stood back to look. Hmm!
“Your line’s not straight, mate,” said Maurice.
“Looks straight to me,” Dennis said.
What they’d tried to do was make it look like a race car with two stripes down the hood, over the roof, and down the boot. Electrician’s tape is known for being bendy, and if you pull it, it gets skinnier and doesn’t stick very well. It looked what it was: an absolute cock-up.
“Ah fuck it,” Maurice said. “C’mon, Dennis, I’ll drive you to the pub.”
Dennis: “I’m not going in that piece of shit!”
What happened next is legend in Dunston. Dennis did get in the car, and Maurice got in, feeling pretty down. His grand plan had failed. He was as low as a lollipop lady’s libido. He started the car, put it into first gear, and drove off. Then his head disappeared, the car swerved and came to a sudden stop. I ran over.
“What the hell?”
There was Maurice, still sitting in his seat. The seat was sitting on the road. The great rust epidemic had claimed another victim in Newcastle. But although the floor had fallen out of Maurice’s cars, his life was pretty solid.