The Tropical Issue (12 page)

And right enough, that the wicker sledges were vanishing back to their stables, or perhaps, like Bessie, to the Great Old English Tit Wallow in the Sky.

There was no sign of Eduardo among the few guys still hanging about in boaters and boots, but I got out anyway, and so did everyone but Johnson. There was a short scene with Kim-Jim, who refused to get back into the car, being already worn and torn, so he claimed, below the minimum legal tread, and weeping mohair.

In fact, he had a point. No Demon car, we were quite sure, had followed us. And if Johnson had scared van Diemen off once, van Diemen wasn’t going to appear where Johnson was, even if he wanted a sledge ride.

One of the boatered brigade said he’d give my hat to Eduardo, and would we like a free ride, which Eduardo had set up before he had to go down to his house, because his mother-in-law was having a baby.

I kid you not. And I believed it. Even the inside of his hat pulsed with Portuguese sex.

I wasn’t sure whether I wanted a free ride, but Ferdy was all for it, and Kim-Jim didn’t seem to mind. It would take about twenty minutes, he said.

Really, the sledges were just wicker boxes, with a bench across and a well in front to put your feet in. I had seen one set off as we arrived, down a walled path that was too bloody narrow, to my way of thinking.

A couple of guys in boaters ran behind. Their job was to steer, shoving the sledge by its high wicker sides and its back, and hauling the slowing-rope, and sometimes hopping on to a runner, one foot paddling or dragging.

The road surface was paved with oval pebbles, set crossways to the path, and to begin with, ran along the high wall of the Belmonte Hotel, with no doorways or crossroads to bother about. Later, it got busier.

So we got into this sliding basket. A couple of guys trundled it into position, and Ferdy and I sat down, with Kim-Jim between us. Then Ferdy said, ‘Hang on. Always be nice to the Management,’ and getting out, went back to the Daimler.

The two sledge-hammers stood like Twaddle-Jim and Twiddle-John, looking offended. They had cardies over their white togs, and I didn’t blame them. Once the sun went down, it wasn’t hot any more: more like Rothesay.

Ferdy came back, with the lamplight on his bald head and sideburns and smiling like Jaws. He said, ‘Want to bet?’

I’ve lost money to Ferdy before. I looked at him.

Kim-Jim knew Ferdy as well. Every make-up man knows Ferdy. Kim-Jim said, ‘I’m your man. If you want to bet, name it.’

‘Us against Johnson and Milligan. A race to the bottom, five hundred dollars each side. Winning team takes all. Rita? You’re rolling.’

I might be rolling, but I wanted to know a bit more before I let Ferdy split the risk three ways. I twisted round.

Johnson, who was risking all his money solo, unless Lenny was rolling, was already toeing the line, Lenny with him. Except that he wasn’t using a sledge, but his folding wheelchair.

It gleamed in the half-dark, with his man Lenny’s hands on the back, and Johnson’s clasped on his lap like Mary Poppins. Fairy lights flashed on his glasses.

I weighed the odds, as Ferdy settled beside me.

Ours was the heavier vehicle, with three people in it, and two running behind it to help us.

Johnson’s had his own weight and Lenny’s, but had rubber wheels against runners, and would steer, of course, like a pram.

Our two guides knew the track, and their vehicle.

Johnson had just arrived. Johnson might act the Owner, but who was he? Just a scratchy rich crock and his nanny.

I said, ‘Count me in,’ and saw 17b’s bifocals flash, as if he was going to hand me a pencil.

Then there was a lot of shouting, and someone stood on a bench, produced a big, dirty hankie, and dropped it.

Kim-Jim, Ferdy and I linked arms and braced our feet in the trough of the basket. Behind us, our handlers flung themselves into a long, racing sprint, and hurled our basket off down the slope like a slalom start.

They were supposed to come with us.

Instead, with a bursting crack, the rope which linked the two runners frayed and parted. And the handlers, staggering back, cannoned into each other and sat, as the basket containing the three of us gathered speed and launched off downhill like a rocket.

A rocket on runners, with no means of braking or steering. And embarked on a long, swooping descent to sea level.

The sledge hopped and we yelled out, in triplicate. Fading behind us, the remaining sledge-hammers yelled too, in Portuguese. Birds twittered above us in the gloaming. Lights bobbed about us: garden lights, window lights, and a thickening layer of lamps far below us, as suburb ran into suburb and then into the middle of town and then into the sea.

The slithering clack of the runners below us picked up speed. Became higher, and louder, and vibrated itself into a roar over the steep, polished cobbles. The wall beside me dropped away, and the wall beside Ferdy began, very fast, to become taller and blacker as we shot towards it.

I threw my arms round Kim-Jim’s neck and flung myself to the rim of the sledge, dragging him with me. The runner under me scraped and groaned and flung off some angry red sparks before veering off with a whine to my side.

The black wall flicked over and past Ferdy’s shoulder, and I heard a creaking bump and Ferdy’s curse as his corner hit it. The sledge lurched, slewed, lurched, slithered and then gathered speed again, sliding this time half sideways. The cobbles flew past like the ice at Cortina, and I changed my mind about jumping out.

My teeth and kidneys knocked together and separated. My patchwork was full of clutching hands and my hands were full of Kim-Jim and Ferdy as we squashed together like the Three Muscatelles, panicking. Somewhere behind me, a hollow voice observed, ‘Rita!’

God. I looked round.

God in a wheelchair, bouncing over the cobbles dragging Lenny behind it, his heels grinding into the paving. God with a stick in his hand, aiming to throw it to me.

Dog. Johnson’s stick. I caught it, just as Kim-Jim beside me yelled,
‘
Ferdy
!’

A corner was coming.

A sharp corner. A steep corner. And unless we all piled on Ferdy, we were about to climb the next house on my side.

We all leaned on Ferdy. The sledge began to slew his way, complaining. The corner began to unwind.

Halfway round, on Ferdy’s side, a car was standing.

I screamed. Ferdy roared. Kim-Jim, with incredible presence of mind, snatched the stick from me and passed it to Ferdy, at the same time leaping on top of me.

The sledge, instead of making straight for the back of the car, made to crash into its side and would have done but for Ferdy, who fended it off with the stick crook.

We ground into the car, and off it again, gathering speed. We hardly noticed, because suddenly Ferdy rose up rigid like Adam going to God, while our grasping hands combed down his cashmere. Kim-Jim seized his ankles and hung on while Ferdy went on saluting and rising, and saying solemn words in an unusual voice.

Then there was a clatter and Ferdy collapsed on the wicker and slid back gasping and gulping beside us.

His stick had caught in the parked car’s door handle.

What’s more, the idiot had let it go. ‘Unless,’ he was croaking, rubbing his shoulder, ‘you want a bloody runaway car behind us as well? Just say so. I can go back and fix it.’

The sledge, redirected, ran towards the entrance of the house on my right, up a step and away again. Through the half-open door you could see an old Singer sewing machine on the floor, with a lot of men sitting sewing around it.

Their legs were crossed. They couldn’t get up in time to do anything.

A dog appeared and got out of it, fast. We jarred over a sewage cover, met a pot-hole, and skimmed a row of fluttering cords, guarding a ditch repair. Houses appeared on both sides below us, with doorways and people.

The road got steeper. On Ferdy’s side, two fat women came out of a house and began to walk down the road, carrying shopping baskets. They stopped to talk to a man pushing a bicycle, with a spade over his shoulder. I screamed, and they turned round slowly, still talking.

I saw the whites of their eyes as we came hurtling towards them. The women leaped for the doorway. The man had more presence of mind, or his bike wasn’t paid for. He swung down his spade, and as we came towards him, bashed it hard at the wicker side nearest him.

Ferdy yelled, and the sledge swung out to the middle again. A crossroads was coming. Beyond it, the incline became a drop, running down between street lights and lit windows and people. As the crossroads approached, a car drove sedately over, from my side to Ferdy’s. A bus followed.

I wondered what God was doing, and looked behind. Much further back than before, the wheelchair flashed chromium as it passed windows. From the same light I saw Johnson still in it, with Lenny freewheeling behind. They were coming quite fast, and Johnson had a coil of rope in his lap.

The crossroads got closer.

Rope. He could fling it to us, and pull us out one by one, breaking our spines on the cobbles.

He could pass us, and cordon the road, catching the rope on the front runners and tipping us all out to fracture our skulls.

He could lassoo the rods joining basket to runners except that he hadn’t the weight now to brake us. We should just pull him down after us until he skied up our backs.

He could lassoo the rods and anchor the rope to a lamppost. The lamppost might hold, but the basket would still tip us all out and likely kill us.

The junction was nearly on us. You could see it quite clearly, from the lights of a car about to cross our bows from my side.

We couldn’t turn, the other road was too narrow. ‘Yell!’ said Ferdy. We yelled.

The car was an old Peugeot. It entered the crossroads just as we did. It slammed on its brakes. The bumpers raked all along my side of the basket. The man inside, I could see, was hysterical.

Then we were over the junction, and plunging down on the far side.

I looked back, once, at the Peugeot. And so saw the wheelchair, damn him, adroitly avoiding the car, turn safely as we couldn’t turn. Turn into the nice, level sideroad and trundle off, leaving us to dive straight on and brave the chute Godless.

Twenty minutes, that ride is supposed to take. I wake up at night sometimes still, thinking of it. Just as, at work on a film, you learn what people are like under pressure, so I learned that much more about Kim-Jim and Ferdy.

That they were quick-witted, both of them. Steering by shifting their weight, they learned to make for anything that would slow the sledge without tipping us over.

A pail of water. A litter of cardboard and cabbage leaves. We made a few mistakes. We hooked the chair of a man being shaved outside a barber’s shop, and we upset a lot of light empty crates that weren’t empty, but had these fed up ducks in them.

The cobbles behind us filled with complaining fat beaks like a football crowd. We had two in beside us, and a shaving brush.

Ferdy was as fit as a ballet master. It was he who stood up and snatched two umbrellas, from where they hung upside down on an awning, with the sledge swerving beneath him. Until they blew out, they slowed us a fraction. Then he hooked a pail of cement with one handle, but that just spun us into the side, upsetting a man with a basket of cabbages. People were shouting by now, all up and down the Rua, and kids raced after us, throwing things, till we left them far behind, still running and squealing.

A
guardia
jumped in front of us at one point, blowing a whistle, and jumped quickly off in a flash of blue-grey, which was a pity, as he would have slowed us a lot.

A constant hooting behind us made me turn round. It came from a lorry.

It wasn’t trying to pass. It was offering to throw us rope, out of each window.

The sledge swooped and curved. People scattered below us, dragging bikes and trolleys and babies out of the way. Beyond that were trees, and a major crossing, and the river. Beyond that, in fact, was disaster.

I turned my back on it, and knelt on the bucketing seat, and prepared to catch one of the ropes. Ferdy on his side did the same. Kim-Jim, his teeth clenched under his granny glasses, took our clothes in two powerful handfuls and grimly hung on to us.

The driver leaned out of his side of the lorry and flung the end of a huge rope to me. I caught it, and he let it uncoil itself.

On the other side of the lorry, the passenger leaned out and flung the end of a new coil to Ferdy. Ferdy caught it. The passenger, still in his peaked cap, was Lenny.

The two ropes began to unfold and Ferdy and I, balancing each other, bent to tie the free ends to the sledge stanchions.

For, while a sudden roping would have tipped us out on our heads, the lorry could match our speed, and then pull us up slowly.

It was brilliant.

I finished tying my rope at the same moment as Ferdy. At the same moment Kim-Jim swallowed and said, ‘Folks. It’s too late.’

And it was.

Ahead lay this big junction, swarming with vehicles. Swarming with whistle-blowing guys in white helmets and crossbelts who were having no effect at all on the traffic, which was on its way home to Mama and didn’t want to know about sledges.

And if that wasn’t enough, there was a lorry stalled on the junction before us.

A big lorry. The biggest I’d seen in Madeira, stationary, with its back to us, filling the whole of what I later believed to be the Rua do Bom Jesus.

‘Bom Jesus!’ in fact was what Ferdy said, or something very like it. There was no time for the coils of rope behind us to take the strain slowly. Even if the lorry behind us reversed, it would do nothing but send us flying into that great solid back of plate metal.

We hurtled down to the crossroads, and this huge bloody truck sitting there, blocking our path.

The truck got bigger and bigger. And longer. And higher.

The truck heaved itself up until the stars and the lights were blocked out, and we swooped screaming downhill the last yards into blackness.

Just before we arrived it got to its full height. It discharged its cargo. A curtain of green sugar cane dropped from its inside and spread, sliding and squelching on the roadway in front of us.