CHAPTER 79

2001, en route to New Chelmsford

‘What in the name of the Lord are you doing, sir?’ cried Lincoln.

‘I’m trying to flippin’ steer the bleedin’ thing!’

Liam had two control sticks to work with. After zigzagging back and forth across the narrow main street, spilling giant bales of feed from the trailer behind them, Liam had the gist of how the control sticks worked – nearly. The left stick controlled the large tractor wheel on the left, and the right stick, the right wheel. To turn right, for example, he realized he had to pull back on the right and forward on the left. To go straight forward – both sticks forward.

By the time he’d finally figured this out, the small town of East Farnham was behind them, littered with the chaos, damage and debris of Liam’s learning curve. The tractor rolled down the dirt road out of the town, flanked on either side by orchards of plum trees.

‘Jay-zus, we did it!’ gasped Liam.

Lincoln and Sal clung on uncomfortably to the bucket seat inside the driver’s cabin. Bob was standing outside on the now-empty flatbed. Liam thrashed the tractor as fast as it would go – little more than the speed of an asthmatic jogger – for a half a mile before finally pulling over to one side of the dirt track.

Five minutes later they were on the move again, a great deal faster now that they’d detached the trailer.

‘So, which way?’ Liam shouted above the din of the rattling engine.

Bob pointed off the dirt track they were running along, across a paddock full of what looked like eugenically modified shire horses. ‘That way.’

‘Hold on!’ said Liam, pulling the left stick back a little. The tractor’s gigantic fat wheels rolled effortlessly over a wooden picket fence and across the paddock, scattering horses that seemed to stand almost as tall at the shoulder as Indian elephants.

‘Information: fifteen miles, one hundred and seventy-six yards in this direction.’

‘Right,’ said Liam, gripping both control sticks with white-knuckled concentration. ‘OK … fifteen miles.’

The tractor was romping along now, bouncing alarmingly on the uneven ground, swerving every now and then to avoid the unpredictable panicked movements of the shire horses flocking alongside it.

‘Whoa!’ Sal pointed through the cabin’s mud-spattered windscreen. ‘Mind the –’ The tractor rolled over a long wooden feeding trough, sending splinters of wood and cobs of maize into the air.

‘Never mind,’ said Sal.

Liam crashed out of the far side of the paddock and swerved right to avoid running into an open barn. A moment later they were rolling across a courtyard criss-crossed with laundry lines.

‘Watch out, look … kids!’

Several children playing amid fluttering bed sheets scattered in panic before them.

‘Oh Jay-zus! I’m sorry! I’m sorry!’ Liam bellowed through the open side window as they rumbled out of the far side, across someone’s vegetable garden and over a cheerfully coloured timber playhouse.

They were rolling across a vineyard a moment later, flattening row after row of budding grapevines. Sal pointed out a long line of greenhouses nestled between rows of vines. She noted the look of shock on an old man’s face as he stood in the doorway, watering can in one hand and pruning shears in the other. The tractor’s huge wheels churned a lane of soil mere inches away from him and the fragile framework of timber and glass.

‘Hey, Liam … you actually managed to miss something.’

His face was rigid with desperate concentration. ‘I’ve never driven anything before in me life!’

Branches of a vine thrashed against the windscreen, smearing it with grape juice.

‘Liam!’ said Sal.

He was squinting through the slime of juice and grime on the glass; too focused on seeing through it all to take heed of Sal.

‘LIAM!’

‘WHAT?’

Sal squeezed his shoulder gently. ‘Maybe someone else should be driving instead? Huh?’

‘Good God, yes!’ barked Lincoln, holding his head where he’d whacked it against the cabin’s low roof.

Liam nodded. ‘Uh … OK, yeah. That’s … probably … a good idea.’

He eased both throttle sticks back slowly, evenly, to prevent the tractor lurching one way or the other. Finally it came to a rest, the tractor’s idling engine grumbling irritably at the way it had just been treated.

Bob leaned over Liam’s shoulder. ‘Recommendation: I should drive this vehicle.’

Liam nodded eagerly, slowly easing his vice-like grip of the throttle sticks. ‘Uh, yeah … I think that might be best.’