Lace II (23 page)

“It has a very special feature.” He patted the hood. “It can maneuver sideways, crab-wise, for parking in town.” He ran his fingers lovingly over the black gloss gull-wing door and opened it for Lili. As she lowered herself into it, Lili thought, cars are really sexy for men. Women don’t understand this, because cars aren’t sexy for women, they’re just conveyors or status symbols.

“Not bad, is it?”

Lili recognized the Englishman’s understatement. She also
realized that she was falling in love with a man who was in love with a car.

They spent the next ten minutes growling round the laurel-edged drive and parking the Spear sideways. The car had a hydraulically-operated fifth wheel and computercontrolled four-wheel drive. Gregg was as proud as a new father.

“Would you like a quick spin? We’ve got a practice track.” Like a big black panther, the car swooped, swerved and slid around the small circuit, spurting gravel and rainwater under the wheels. Eventually, Gregg pulled the Spear up, neatly, in front of the workshop door.

Lili’s knees were trembling, and again she felt sick as Gregg helped her out and said as if to himself, “The big question is, will the Spear be ready for the Silverstone Five Hundred Kilometer Race? If she performs well at Silverstone, it’s been secretly agreed that we’ll be allowed to race her at Le Mans next month. So keep your fingers crossed.”

“Why is Le Mans so important?” asked Lili, stretching her bruised legs.

“Because it is one of the toughest possible tests of a car. Le Mans is a twenty-four-hour endurance race, it goes on day and night. We’ll need at least twelve pit stops to refuel and make minor adjustments,” Gregg explained. “I have two co-drivers and we take turns at the wheel. The car hardly ever stops for more than two minutes and it’s put under a fantastic strain. So you see,” he flicked a wisp of grass from the wing, “if the Spear finishes well at Le Mans, it will immediately be taken seriously by the racing world—and by the government.”

Back in the workshop, mechanics in grubby, once-white overalls were crawling around and under half-completed cars. Lili shook rain from her headscarf. “Why are you working on Sunday?”

“They’ll work around the clock if they have to, we’re in this business to win,” Gregg said as they passed a mechanic who was bolting a power tool to a workbench. “When I’m on the grid at Le Mans in the Spear, fifty people will have put us there, a lot of them volunteers.” They stepped over a pair of overalled legs sticking out from under a chassis. “The support team does everything, from handmaking the parts here to
buying my sandwiches at the track.” They passed a third pair of dirty overalls, bent over an engine. “The team will drive through the night to get us to the race. There’s never enough time, but they’ll even work on the dockside at Boulogne, if necessary.” Gregg stopped at the end of the workshop and looked fondly at a pimply lad in spectacles, who was filing down a bolt. “And most of them do it for love, because I can’t afford to pay them. Because they want to see Eagle on top again, just as it was when Pa was champion.” Gregg gently kicked a pair of overalled legs that stuck out from under yet another black chassis.

From beneath the chassis a voice said, “Psychologically, the first race is the hardest, Gregg.” The legs wriggled out. They belonged to a small, stout man with an amiable red face and a beaklike, Mr. Punch, nose. “Gad, it’s chilly under here, my feet are freezing. Let’s go up to the house for a glass of sherry, and you can introduce me to this charming young lady.” Sir Malcolm held out his blackened hand to Lili.

*   *   *

Inside, the mansion was almost colder and clammier than outside, thought Lili, as she reluctantly took off her white raincoat and enviously eyed the thick, shapeless, mauve knitted jacket worn by Gregg’s mother. As they sipped sherry, conversation centered around the Silverstone race circuit. There were constant telephone interruptions from drivers, sponsors, volunteers and, finally, a London newspaper that wanted a quick quote for the diary page on what Gregg wore in bed. Lady Eagleton’s serene gray eyes, a faded copy of her son’s, did not register annoyance. “In thirty years of marriage, I’ve learned never to come between a man and his car,” Lady Eagleton said to Lili as Gregg was called back to the workshop, his father again called to the telephone. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, my dear. Gregg seemed to be keener on engines than girls. I sometimes think that motor racing is a disease, not a sport.”

“Don’t you worry about him?” Lili tried to stop her teeth from chattering with cold. As it was June, the British considered it to be summer, no matter what the thermometer read.

“You learn to live with the worry. Eventually. My husband lived through a 180-mph crash.” Lady Eagleton shrugged.
“Gregg’s chances of dying on the circuit are one in seven. But they improve each year. I simply don’t allow myself to think about it.”

*   *   *

“WHAT DID YOU SAY?” Silverstone was the noisiest place ever, Lili thought, as Gregg, in baggy white fireproof suit, climbed into the driving seat of the Spear. The Silverstone circuit looked like a cross between a filling station and a supermarket, set in a dusty, urban park. Behind the teeming crowds that streamed on both sides of the wide tarmac track, the dazzling billboards howled their messages, like bright washing-powder packets. Every racing car, every racer, every mechanic, every ice cream van was also plastered with advertising.

Lili could not imagine a more total assault on her senses than this riot of noise, color, and stink, as Gregg shouted, “I’LL SEE YOU IN THREE HOURS.” His lips poked through the balaclava which protected his face from fire. Then Gregg turned to his crew and Lili knew she was forgotten.

Two minutes later, Gregg settled his helmet over his head, and the white overalled team pushed the Spear toward the starting grid.

The Spear, with most of the cars, roared off behind the pace car, then belched flame at a corner. “IS THAT NORMAL, JOHN?” Lili asked Gregg’s psychological advisor, a lean, bearded man with a mid-Atlantic accent.

“YES. DON’T WORRY, IT’S GOING GREAT, EVEN BETTER THAN AT LAST WEEK’S TESTING.” He led her up to a glass box above the pits, where the noise level was lower. “We shouldn’t have any trouble this time.”

Lili did not understand why the car had previously given trouble. After all, it was an expensive car and, for the past few weeks, sixteen mechanics had crawled all over it, testing every nut and bolt, nurturing the car in every way short of breast-feeding it. She had not wanted to ask stupid questions of Gregg, but she didn’t mind looking dumb in front of this kindly, ginger-headed viking. So Lili asked, “Why do so many things go wrong with these cars?”

John tried to explain in words of one syllable, such as could be understood even by a woman. “A racing car is a sophisticated,
complex mechanism. It always performs at the absolute limit of its capability. A lot of our problems are due to things like stress, high temperatures, and fuel management microprocessors. Any human error is on top of that.” He turned, as a Lancia limped into the pit next door with a plume of acrid, black smoke rising from its exhaust pipe. The mechanics scrambled to their posts like fighter pilots. John nodded. “That Lancia went out on the track as perfect and precisely assembled as the team could manage, but it is being driven at speeds up to two hundred miles an hour for hundreds, perhaps thousands, of miles nonstop. Like a racehorse, the entire machine is designed for performance and nothing else. In order to get the speed that’s necessary to win, the car has to be constantly pushed to its limit. So, inevitably, you get trouble.”

As the lead car passed the pits in a blur of green and orange, Lili asked the last of the questions that she’d been dying to ask for weeks. “What makes a good driver, John?”

He wiped his hands on a rag. “Hair-trigger reactions, concentration and control. It’s a young man’s game; a driver starts to slow down when he’s about thirty, but you also need an older man’s mature judgment and steady nerves. While those guys are burning around the track, their minds are running like computers, and their bodies are sensing feedback through the car’s level of performance and its speed. And of course, they’re violently competitive blokes, so they’re always revising their own tactics to beat the rest of the field.”

“And does the biggest daredevil win?”

“There aren’t any daredevils on that track. A good driver never takes an unnecessary risk. They aren’t foolhardy boy-racers, they’re cool professionals with a deep respect for danger; they don’t fool around.” He handed Lili a pair of black ear-protectors and they turned back to the pit where Lili sat for two and a half hours, deafened by the snapping exhaust roars as she inhaled the stink of hot rubber and fuel fumes. The howl of engines drowned the loudspeaker commentary as the cars spread out round the circuit. The noise was all-enveloping, relentless, and extremely exhausting like a discotheque under gunfire.

“Gregg’s just made the fastest lap speed ever recorded by a
trial car in its first big race.” John yelled in Lili’s ear, “ONLY ANOTHER TEN LAPS TO GO.” Lili felt her headache lessen, as the cars snarled into the last half-hour of the race.

Suddenly, Gregg’s team grabbed their tools and looked expectantly to the left.

The Spear appeared, cruised silently down the pit lane, then stopped.

Mechanics crowded round the back of the car as Gregg climbed out of the gull-wing door.

Ten minutes later Gregg noticed Lili. He stomped over to her, resigned exasperation on his face. “Bloody gearbox blew up,” he yelled. Then Jack, the mechanic, who was doing calculations on a clipboard, held his thumb up. Slowly, Gregg grinned, as a TV sports reporter shoved a microphone under his nose. “So it’s Le Mans next stop, Gregg, for the twenty-four-hour endurance race?”

“Yes, that’s always been my ambition.”

“Are you going to celebrate this evening? Lili’s giving a surprise party for you, isn’t she?”

“If so, you’ve just spoiled the surprise, mate.”

*   *   *

“I don’t understand why we had to come, Angelface, especially when no one invited us.” Maggie Harris looked round at the noisy party. The fresh-faced young racing crowd all wore Armani jeans and Cerruti silk shirts, with acquiescent Farrah Fawcett Majors clones hanging on their arms. Nothing to worry about there, Maggie thought, as she dismissed her opposition with one flick of her eyelashes and glanced down at her white satin jumpsuit. From armpit to ankles, on either side, the suit had a two-inch gap, crisscrossed by white leather thongs over her naked flesh.

Maggie stamped one of her silver cowboy boots. “I don’t know any of these boy racers, Angelface, and neither do you.” She turned on her silver heels. “Let’s go. I feel uncomfortable. It’s not as if you were singing.”

As she started to elbow her way through the ebullient crowd, Angelface grabbed her by the shoulder. “Oh, no, you don’t! I expect my old lady to stick beside me, even when I’m gatecrashing.” His face had the taut, sunken-cheek look of a sixties-generation rock star. Angelface Harris was tough, as
only twenty years of rock’n’roll tours can toughen you, thought Maggie, as the famous blue eyes glared from the halo of wild black hair. His voice was a deceptively mild, throaty growl as he said, “Shut up, darling, and have fun.”

“Take your hands off me!” Maggie gave a quick look around the room and decided not to cause a scene; it was too early and too crowded. Besides, even if he was a promiscuous bastard, even if he was getting a bit over the hill, Angelface was still the best-looking man in the room, and if she stormed out … well, she wouldn’t want him to stay behind, not with all this spare talent, fresh from the hairdresser, and him in his best leathers. Angelface’s studded black leather suit was molded to his body and wrinkled around the joints like an iguana skin.

“You stay here and behave yourself,” Angelface growled to Maggie, “I’ll get us a couple of drinks.”

He plunged into the crowd toward the bar, where Lili was greeting her guests. Angelface shoved his way past everyone until he stood in front of Lili.

He adopted his standard, lights-up pose—legs straddled, head on one side, hands clutching the neck of his leather jacket, which was unzipped to the waist. Lili blinked, with the usual puzzled look of a hostess who can’t recognize her friends when they’re cleaned up. “Er, hello.”

Angelface continued to give her the old, jean-creaming, lovable, lopsided grin, the look that had launched forty albums.

“Why are you staring at me?” Lili stepped back, and her pink taffeta dress rustled. “Did my teeth just fall out? What’s wrong with my face?”

“Abs … olute … ly nothing.” Angelface pitched his sixties cockney-sparrow charm, then started to croon softly, in a camped-up voice. “You must have been a beautiful baby…”

Everyone stopped pretending that they were not looking, and the party turned into an audience. Again Angelface pitched the crooked smile at Lili.

“When you were only startin’

to go to kindergarten,

I bet you drove the little boys wild…”

He put his arms around Lili’s shoulers, crushing her taffeta ruffles, and together they faced the crowd, moving rhythmically together, Lili smiling, but still puzzled. She hadn’t realized that Gregg knew this famous rock star.

At this point, Maggie started to shove through the crowd, muttering, “So that’s the reason we came, he’s got the hots for that stuck-up bitch.”

She reached her husband as Angelface finished the song to a spattering of laughter and applause. Angelface introduced her to Lili in a silky, amiable voice which Maggie correctly interpreted as a threat.

“Pleased to meet you, I’m sure, Lili.” She smiled brightly, then whispered in Angelface’s ear. “Let’s get out of here—and I mean it. Now.”

Angelface ostentatiously kissed Lili good-bye and swaggered down the staircase, his tiny, blond wife hanging grimly on to his black leather arm.

“If my wife acted like that, I’d send her back to the works for modifications,” Gregg whispered to Lili. “If looks could kill, you’d be six feet under by now.” Lili shrugged her golden shoulders, and turned back to her guests.