Last Respects

'I hope you like Scotch Bitter!' Sandy said.
'Yeah! Of course' I replied impulsively, but thought 'what's Scotch
Bitter, beer with a chaser, an amalgam of spirits?' I didn't know. He
could have asked if I liked sheep pee, I would have said yes. This
chance to renew a friendship that had waned over the previous year
wasn't something I was going to foul up with an answer in the negative,
or a hesitation.

Sandy and I were old friends, we'd been through school together, played
together as kids. We had our fair share of childhood arguments, fights
and escapades but our friendship had never been seriously tested, one
way or the other. We'd drifted apart after taking our fifth-year exams.
The sixth year and 'A' levels had never been an option for me; my
parents subtly demanded that I get out into the working world A.S.A.P.
so I went to college to study an apprenticeship in mechanics. Sandy
stayed on at school, for him University beckoned. After that we didn't
see very much of each other; the college was twenty-odd miles away and
after travelling so far and then doing my homework, I'd be too tired to
bother going out in the evenings. We played telephone tennis for a
while, trying to arrange to get together but one or the other of us
would be busy doing something and we let the relationship slip. We'd
bumped into each other again, the first time for ages, in the village
library of all places; I'd rushed in to pay yet another fine for
returning my books late, Sandy was sitting at one of the tables doing
some research for a thesis. We arranged to meet the following Friday
for a drink and a longer chat.

My oldest memory of Sandy was as a seven-year-old kid who'd just moved
into the house next door to one of my cousins. We waited a week then
called round to ask him to play. Happy with his new-found friends, he
trotted along with us down to the playing fields where we beat him up,
our jeers sending him home on his own, sniffling bloody snot. This
bedraggled, whimpering little kid with his dishevelled mop of blond
hair, shirt tail hanging out the back of his short trousers, socks
shrugging around his ankles, his legs bruised and dirty from the
scuffle would, years later, become a role model for me, the only boy in
my year-group that I looked up to, admired. Sandford (Sandy) Wilson
would have been forty this year, if he hadn't wrapped his Honda 250
around a keep-left sign on a road leading into the village.

As we progressed and matured through secondary school I found myself in
constant competition with him, though the rivalry was decidedly
one-sided. He was more intelligent than me and I had to fight hard to
keep up. It was like chasing a setting sun, but I chased, boy did I
chase. I admired his choice in clothes, books, music, subjects to
study. I must have got on his nerves but he never complained. I now
realise that what I really admired was his extrovert nature, his ease
with life, his confidence, his approach and attitudes to his peers and
elders. Character traits that took me decades to develop, he already
had, in abundance. Whilst not actually being a confidante, he was the
closest I'd get to having to a soul-mate, until I met my wife. So many
of those 'first' experiences of childhood, the milestones that chart
our course through early life and that we all recall in later years,
all seem to include Sandy. It makes it very difficult to let the memory
of him fade, or the pain of his death diminish.

I remember one Friday evening finding a five-pound note flicking along
the pavement as Sandy, me and another pal, Fergie, wandered along the
High Street on our way to buy a chip supper. Being mature, sensible
kids, we coaxed a guy to buy some beer for us, in exchange for a packet
of cigarettes, and set off for Sandy's house with a couple of
party-sevens, our bags of chips forgotten. These large cans held seven
pints of beer and were obligatory at every party throughout our teenage
years. I guess they've been replaced by alco-pops and Ecstasy now. We
settled down in Sandy's front room, I popped a couple of holes in each
can and Sandy stuck a record on his mum and dad's radiogram. Genesis,
Yes or Uriah Heep, I suppose. Well on our way to getting plastered for
the first time, Sandy leapt up out of his armchair and snapped off the
light, a single oversized light bulb suspended from the ceiling. "Watch
this," he slurred, flicking the switch back off and on a few times in
quick succession. Nothing. The light bulb became a dim outline in the
suddenly dark room. "Oh yeah, I've seen this before," muttered Fergie,
as if he'd just woken from a deep sleep. We waited thirty or forty
seconds before the light bulb began to cast a deep purple glow, bathing
our faces in an eerie light and throwing ghostly shadows around the
room. We settled down in our chairs, gulping down more beer, fascinated
by the light bulb's bizarre display and enjoying a high that would
require something stronger these days. Once the beer had been drunk I
managed to struggle home and into bed without my parents seeing me in
my drunken state. I woke later, being tugged out bed by my dad and lead
sleepily to the bathroom. I'd puked up without realising.

As soon as we were old enough we pestered our parents into buying us
mopeds. At the time, if you were into bikes, your were either a Honda
50, a Yamaha FS1E or a Fantic Motor fan. Sandy plumped for the
four-stroke Honda, eschewing the drunken-waspish din emitted by the
Yahama and the under-powered and badly geared Fantic. I followed suit,
of course. And so began a love affair with motorbikes that still runs
deep, despite the fact that I haven't ridden for over twenty years. We
spent careless hours screaming around the countryside, once we'd
hacksawed the throttle-limiters off the carburettors.

So, bikes and alcohol: a dangerous combination.

Piling into the smoky pub that Friday, rain dripping off our Belstaffs
and helmets onto the cheap, scratched tables and grimy carpet, a row of
sodden bikes parked in the car park outside, all leaning elegantly in
the same direction, I discovered 'Scotch' was a brand name for a beer.
For Sandy and his sixth-form mates, this country pub had become a
'regular' being remote and infrequently visited by the local bobbies,
who had more pressing business in the pubs of the local towns. The
landlord didn't ask too many questions or study faces too closely and,
so long as the lads stayed relatively quiet, he was more than happy to
serve them their pints of 'Scotch'. We talked bikes and music and bikes
and girls and bikes. I told him what it was like at college, he talked
about his exams and which universities he was aiming for. But a chasm
had opened between us. His and his friends academic education began to
show and, as we nursed our beer, the conversations became more and more
intellectual and I found myself drowned by their knowledge and
confidence. I was completely out of my depth and it showed. I made my
excuses and left early. I looked back as I left the bar, Sandy was
watching me leave. Could I detect a sadness in his eyes or was it a
reflection of my feelings? I never saw him again.

Months later, I returned home from college in a miserable mood; I'd had
a run in with one of the lecturers about something or other. I forget
what.

"I've got some bad news, Simon," my mum said, hardly giving me time to
get through the back door, anxiety etched into her face. I stood
open-mouthed trying to guess what she was about to say. "It's Sandy,
he's been killed in an accident on his motorbike."

I don't know how you're supposed to react to such news, what you're
supposed to feel. I didn't feel anything at first, as the news sank in.
I guess it's what people mean when they say they're 'numb with shock'.
I'd never had anyone close die on me before. My grandparents on my
dad's side were both dead, but that had happened when I was too young
to understand, before I was born in the case of my grandfather. News of
my grandmother's death was just words and the fact that we wouldn't
have to spend every other weekend visiting her. It sounds callous, but
I was only six at the time.

Now I stood and cried, helmet still held at my side by a hand blackened
with engine oil, my mum trying to hug me, but having an awkward time of
it.

"What happened?" I asked, once I'd calmed down a little.

"He'd been drinking and he hit a traffic sign. He died on the way to
the hospital."

I washed and changed and walked up to his house. It was one of the
longest walks I've ever taken, though he lived less than a quarter of a
mile away from my home. Fergie had just arrived too and we were lead
through the kitchen and into the lounge by Sandy's mum. She'd aged
terribly; the last twenty-four hours must have been too awful to
contemplate. She seemed much smaller than I remembered her. Sandy's dad
stood stoically by the fireplace, his hands held clasped behind his
back, rising and falling on the balls of his stockinged feet.

"I don't know what to say, except I'm so sorry."

"There's nothing to say lad, you just being here is enough." A faint
smile pulled at the corners of his taut, bloodless lips.

Sandy's mum and dad left the room and I stared at Fergie. He shrugged,
remained silent. I looked around the room where we had got so merrily
drunk all those years ago. In most houses in the village, this would
have been the front room, the 'best' room, but this room undoubtedly
belonged to Sandy. Everywhere there were reminders of his life, rows of
books by authors I'd heard of but never read, LPs covering all his
tastes in music from the Beatles and Bob Dylan through to Holst's The
Planets. A bright red electric guitar leant on a stand in the corner of
the room, an untidy stack of sheet music on a box by its side. The
room's most precious content was so obviously missing, it hurt just to
be standing there.

"I didn't know he played the guitar," my voice little more than a
croak, strangled by the tears I fought to hold back.
"They say he was over the limit, but I don't believe it. Sandy wouldn't
drink and ride." There was a note of pleading in Fergie's voice.
"Dunno, mate," I said. "But they can easily tell these days."
"But&;#8230;" Fergie began, closed his mouth abruptly as Sandy's dad
came back into the room.

"Would you like to see his bike?"

"Yeah," we both answered, more as a way of getting out of the room than
any morbid fascination in Sandy's crumbled motorbike.

Whereas the number of friends I had had diminished after leaving
school, Sandy's had grown in leaps and bounds. The funeral for the
young man was something the village had never seen before and probably
never since. In addition to all his school friends and those of the
music club he'd started attending, the road which circled the church,
was rimmed by hundreds of motorbikes. News of Sandy's death seemed to
have hit a collective nerve in the consciousness of the various
motorcycle groups around the county. I guess some of the bikers
attended the funeral more for the spectacle, but the majority were
there to pay their respects. After the service in a packed church and
the pitiful scene of Sandy's mum and dad following the coffin, the
streets reverberated to the sound of gunned engines. The procession of
bikes which followed the hearse stretched for miles and later,
shuffling around the courtyard of the crematorium, we had a laugh about
people in the villages we'd passed through, bolting their doors and
locking up their daughters, fearing the sight of so many long haired
and greasy bikers. Sandy would have found it amusing.

Often I catch myself wondering what he would have made of his life,
which held so much promise. What career he would have chosen, which
music would he like, would he have been a 'Blur' or 'Oasis' man?

The keep-left sign still stands and the apex of the junction and,
though it's not the one Sandy demolished, it serves as a reminder that
our lives are balanced on a razor's edge and that simple decisions and
stupid mistakes can so easily topple us into disaster.