Moped

I interviewed him in the pub on a Saturday night at the end of
September. I wrote the answers on the back of a Tesco receipt using a
pen that I'd borrowed from the barman.

'So what first inspired you to ride a moped from Southampton to
Cambridge?'

He nodded as I asked the question and then took a thoughtful swig of
his pint.

'Love' he said. I hadn't expected that and he knew it. He laughed at my
raised eyebrows and open mouth, shaking his head at the wooden floor.
Then he tried again.

'I suppose the main reason for doing it was to see how long it might
take.'

'And how long was that?'

'Bloody ages. Days. We didn't really time it'

'But you said that was your main reason for attempting it, to see how
long it might take?'

'Hmm'

He leaned back and stretched his legs out. He was wearing a khaki
t-shirt with the words porn star across his chest in yellow and a
silhouette of a naked woman on his stomach. His jeans were fashionably
faded at the knees and down the middle of each leg. There was a hole on
the inside right thigh where frayed strands of denim loosely covered a
patch of pale and hairy skin. I watched as he took his baseball cap off
and ran his bony, long fingered hand through the thick soft tangles of
his hair. Replacing the cap, he caught my eye and grinned.

'So where did you hear about us then? In the papers?'

'I saw you on the news.'

'National?'

'Local, but they gave you ten minutes.'

He picked his pint up and brought it to his lips.

'Fair play.'

He gulped the rest of his beer with practised easiness and set the
glass back on to the table. I had written two words on my Tesco
receipt: love and timing. I crossed out love.

'You didn't make the journey alone did you? Who was your
companion?'

His facial features regrouped from grin to frown.

'He was my best friend'

'So tell me what happened, from the beginning of the idea to when you
arrived here, in Cambridge'

He pulled his chair closer to mine, rested his forearms on the table,
pushing the empty pint glass from one open hand to the other as he
began to explain how he had spent the last month. He had been visiting
his friend at university in Southampton, his best friend, Marvin.
Marvin had a knack of coming up with ridiculous ideas. Usually they
were just small ideas, put together in the mistiness that accompanied
the consumption of large amounts of alcohol. JP brought his hands
nearer together and stopped the glass. He looked up, furtively checked
around us, raised his eyebrows and leaned towards me until I could
smell the dried sweat on his hat as he lifted the peak slightly.

'They were shoddily made ideas that came apart at the seams and choked
you with their threads as you sucked thoughtfully on their promise.' He
said. I smiled and held his stare.

'Very poetic' He looked at the glass, relaxed back into his chair and
shrugged. Then he carried on setting the background for me. One
Saturday night led to the stealing of a teapot from the kitchen of a
bar in the town centre. It ended with a full body and cavity search at
the local police station. Marvin's ideas did not bear the recognised
safety mark of a well thought out plan. This time however, the aim of
his plans had changed.

It was a Friday afternoon and they were sitting in the kitchen in
Marvin's student halls contemplating what to drink before leaving the
flat that evening when the phone rang. It was Gill. She was at home in
Cambridge missing Marvin and waiting for him to come home. After a
twenty-minute conversation, he had pressed the tiny red receiver symbol
on his mobile phone and put it back in his pocket.

'Let's go and see Gill' he had said and left the room. JP sat looking
at the door. He assumed they were going to take the train or the bus or
hitchhike which were all rather irritating on a Friday night when you
just wanted to get drunk. Marvin returned to tell him that he had no
money but he did have a plan. It involved his neighbour, Eileen, who
had recently been given a moped by her parents. Eileen was in bed with
the flu.

At this point JP stopped. I had run out of room on the Tesco
receipt.

'Do you want me to go on?'

'Please. I'm just going to need something else to write on.'

I looked in my handbag for something suitable. There was another,
smaller receipt, so I took that out and decided to write smaller. JP
continued. He leaned back in his chair and squeezed his left hand into
his jeans pocket, sliding his lighter out against his thigh as he
spoke. I started writing on the new receipt, trying to keep the words
as neat as I could. He leant forward again, reached across the table
and flicked the lid of the cigarette packet open without picking it up.
It was empty. He leant back. His thumb rubbed the lighter as he spoke
and his feet drummed against the table leg.

'Would you like another drink?' I interrupted.

'Carlsberg please.' He grinned and gave me a five-pound note.

'It's ok, I'll pay for the drinks.'

'Will you get me some change for the fag machine while you're up there
then?'

When I came back with the drinks there was a pale blue paper napkin
laid like a placemat on the table in front of my chair.

'In case you run out of room' He said as I handed him five pound coins.
He went to get cigarettes and I put the receipt on top of the napkin
ready to record what happened after they had decided to stop for
petrol. Already it bore the words 'Lucia Foster Welch, Marina, SFC.' He
strolled back to the table and sat down. I watched his eyes flickering
in the orange glow from his lighter as he began a cigarette. He looked
up at me, smiled and sucked hard on the butt, blowing a smoke ring with
a slow click of his jaw. He coughed, took another drag and began the
next part of the story. I wrote down key words, enough to piece it all
together when I got home later that night, but nothing to distract me
from what was unfolding as he spoke.

'Is he really a homeless now? I used to watch him on Top of the
Pops.'

JP nodded as he took a mouthful of his beer. A very thin line of white
outlined his top lip and he wiped it away with the back of his hand.
His voice was steady, a lullaby below the harshness of the men at the
bar and the squeaky giggling of their women, it blended the room
together.

'Was that when Eileen realised it was missing?' I asked, crossing
through a word on the half full receipt.

'Yes. And that's when Vanessa showed up.' JP's fingers were resting
against the side of his glass tapping it gently. From the expression he
had moulded with his facial features I decided to write Vanessa in
capitals. I traced the letters again, so thick with ink that it smudged
the price promise behind. There was no ink left in the pen. JP pulled
it from my hand and shook it firmly; he drew a line on the pale blue
napkin.

'I'll get you another pen.'

Returning from the bar, JP was holding a new pen in his right hand
which he put down by my glass and a small, white suede glove with white
fur around the wrist.

'The barman asked if this was yours?'

'No, mine are black leather' I opened my handbag to prove it.

'Oh' he stroked the glove between his hands, 'Vanessa had white
gloves'

He settled back into the chair opposite. As he spoke he placed the
glove gently on to the table as if putting a baby down to sleep. I
wrote his words with the new pen, looking up to see him smooth the
wrinkles out of the glove. He was concentrating on the whiteness as he
talked. Then he picked up the old pen from the table and began to mark
out lines on the suede, the pen began to work again, the lines
thickened. It was the outline of her hair and eyes. He looked up and
saw me watching him, he stopped mid word.

'Who's that?'

'Vanessa' He put the pen down and folded the glove, pushing it across
the table towards me. He had nearly finished his beer. He carried on
with the story, chuckling manically as he remembered an outfit he had
worn in a Shakespearian play. He adjusted his cap with one hand as he
sipped from his glass using the other. The clock on the wall adjusted
itself to read ten forty five. The story was coming to its end. I
looked down at the smudgy biro record of it in my hand. 'Lucia Foster
Welch, Marina, SFC, psychology, bum, vagrant, rock star, white stripes,
shoes, breast, tea, Oxfam, Vanessa, spoilt bastard, King Lear, socks,
no kids, no objection, chicken vindaloo'

'And all that was to see how long it would take you to get from
Southampton to Cambridge on a moped? You're telling me it had nothing
to do with love?'

He drained his pint and swirled the dregs in lazy circles around the
bottom of his glass.

'I never said it had nothing to do with love'

He stopped swirling and raised his huge brown eyes to mine. Then he
pushed his chair back from the table and stretched himself into
standing. His denim jacket bore the imprint of his torso. He picked it
up and pushed his arms through the sleeves and turned the collar up. I
gathered the pair of annotated receipts, pale blue paper napkin and the
white glove into my handbag and fussed myself into my coat,
unnecessarily checking that I hadn't left anything behind. He shook my
hand and grinned. Then he turned and with a few long strides into the
crowd he was gone. I stood staring after him. He was right. It was me
who had crossed out love.