Thunder Road Read Free Page B

were doing a slow stock take on the shelves, so they were free agents. There was something about their oh-so-casual manner that said, ‘This work is meaningless’ … or maybe even, ‘I don’t really need this’.
    In part I agreed … it was crap work. But I needed it.
    Their talk went along these lines.
    Richard (reading from a sheath of notes): ‘Latch locks, galvanised , assorted, do we have a tally yet?’
    Jason: ‘Wait varlet, tally approaching. I make it seventeen – that’s a one followed by a seven.’
    Richard: ‘Are we talking assorted?’
    Jason: ‘We are. I’m not paid to particularise.’
    Richard: ‘Remember Mr Bartram in history last year? “Selwood, the significant cognitive shift I am waiting for is when you learn to move from the particular to the general.”’
    Jason: ‘I can’t see Mr Bartram working in a hardware shop sorting
galvanised
latches obviously.’
    Richard (mimicking): ‘Obviousleh.’
    Jason: ‘Obviousleh. Yeh! Ho ho ho!’
    Richard: ‘Bismark
galvanised
Europe with a complex system of alliances.’
    Jason: ‘Napoleon marched to Moscow for a
galvanised
clasp.’
    At this point they would both laugh loudly. Even that sounded as if it had been learned at school. The braying, in-group laugh. It really got up my nose.
    We had lunch in shifts. Richard and Jason went first, Karen and I second. On my first weekend shift I looked forward to it because I hadn’t had a chance to talk to her. When I came back from the Vietnamese bakery, she was sitting at the lunch table eating a packed lunch. Her nose was buried in some big, fat book. I wanted to break through, but she was sort of self-contained and aloof.
    There may have been a chance, but I had left it too late. Awkwardness had arrived and the moment was gone, so I sat at my end of the table, eating my lunch in tense silence. The time began to drag and soon I couldn’t bear it. I went downstairs and lurked out the back, feeling a failure, having to eat my lunch among the rolls of wire netting and pallets of cobble-stones. Thought I might as well just go back to work.
    The afternoon dragged after that. Gone was the possibility of making new friends. They were just three more rich kids doing a bit of work for fun money, so far up themselves it was unreal. Sometimes Jason or Richard would come over and ask where something was, and I would just point and go on with what I was doing. I thought, ‘Fuck you! Why should I bother?’
    By five o’clock I could tell that even my quiet hostility wasthe basis of ‘Oh so amusing’ jokes. At the end of the day we all left out the back way together without exchanging so much as a glance.

    Back at Mrs Jacques’ I wanted to have a shower but Sergei was in having a bath. I could hear him singing ‘Deep River’ through the wall. You could tell he was listening to the fake low tones of his own voice. No sign of Devon. He hadn’t come home the night before, so I figured he had forgotten his promise to take me to Thunder Road.
    The phone rang, for Sergei, so while he stood in the hall, nattering away wrapped in a towel, I got my shower. At last, a chance to wash off all the filth and tiredness of the day. I emerged feeling fired up so I put on clean clothes, scrabbled together a few bucks and set out. I had gone about 50 metres when Devon’s exhaust note sounded at the end of the street. He swung over to the wrong side of the road and threw open the passenger’s door.
    ‘Planning to shoot through without me, eh?’
    ‘I thought you’d forgotten.’
    ‘As if … get in man!’
    I was surprised to see that the back of his car was full of clothes: he usually kept it spotless.
    ‘What’ve you been doing, man?’
    Tapping the side of his nose with his finger, he flicked a glance at me. ‘I’ve got involved with this lady. It’s complicated.’
    ‘What’s the story? Is she married?’
    ‘Not when I’m with her.’
    It was a bit like that with Devon. The only things that mattered were