One for the Road: Car chronicles, part II

LAST week’s column was like an episode of ‘Eastenders’, wasn’t it?

If I do say so myself, I played the classic soap opera cliffhanger to a tee.

So, in a similar spirit, let’s do a quick recap.

First I lured you in with my trust-winning, coming-of-age confessions.

Then, if you recall, came the dramatic driving force – as per me and aul boy butting heads over our once amicable, now increasingly volatile van-sharing arrangements.

Then, just when you thought the resolution was around the corner, bang! It was over. Until next time, folks. The ‘Herald nation left in agonising suspense all week.

But now it’s time for that itch to be scratched.

The time has come to answer the big, torturously tantalising, all-important question…

No, not ‘Who has Phil Mitchell bottled down the boozer this week?’ – but something even more exciting: ‘I wonder if that wee over-sharing man-child that writes the column for the ‘Herald managed to get himself sorted with a set of wheels or not’.

And the answer, sweet audience whom I hold in the palm of my hand, is…

Doof, doof, du du du du, doof-doof…

(Adverts end. Music fades. A car horn sounds. Emmet steals a sharp, expectant glance out the window, slips on his shoes and steps out to meet a stocky, bespectacled man waiting at the bottom of the driveway.)

“Yes Martin,” says Emmet, reaching out a hand – one moistened by his embarrassment of having had to ask the stranger he is considering buying a car off to come and collect him from his parent’s house.

“Emmet. How’s it going lad? The back of me wagon didn’t like that gully. Bounced straight aff her,” laughs Martin, pointing to the rear of his people carrier.

“Aww Jeez, sure I know all about it,” bluffs Emmet.

The first five minutes of the drive manifest the fear that the 28-year-old reporter – who is utterly clueless about cars – dreaded most: Martin is most definitely not.

So, when the rustically spoken Martin mentions his son having a weakness for any lump of scrap made in Japan during the 1990s, Emmet, who has no progeny, seizes his chance to steer the conversation to the subject of child-rearing; reasoning that, although just as uninformed on this topic as he was on the last, at least betraying his ignorance about bringing up young ‘uns is unlikely to end in him paying a thousand pound over market value for his first car.

“Aye, he’s at the age now that he is going out,” said Martin. “As a parent, ye be a wee bit worried at this stage. When they start having a drink and they’re out running about and all.”

“Sure that’s probably natural enough, Martin,” says Emmet, warming to the chat and forgetting that he is only one mention of a timing belt away from a panic attack.

But the chat continues to flow all the way to Eric’s abode.

“And the state the NHS is in.”

“Just don’t get sick.”

“But at least we don’t have to pay for it like they do in America. Two thousand dollars for a scan.”

“A scan-delous, more like it.”

“Hi, wait until ye see the craic when these cars of Elon Musk’s start going up in flames. They’re full of lithium – and it burns hot!”

“I see he’s into the rockets, too.”

(The two men arrive at a house in a village a few mile outside Omagh, where Emmet is handed two sets of keys to a red 2015 Vauxhall Astra.)

“Have a look around her,” says Martin.

Emmet does a lap of the car, looking at everything but seeing nothing. He then sticks his head through the driver’s door and begins touching things at random and making noises he hopes are neither insulting nor overly complimentary.

“Can I take her for a spin?” asks Emmet. “No bother,” replies Martin, before climbing into the passenger seat.

(Fifteen minutes pass. The car pulls back into the driveway, purring like a contented cat.)

After some incomprehensible petrol-head patois from Martin, Emmet swallows hard, looks at the stolid man before him, then instinctively crouches down.

“Right. £2,400.”

“Don’t know if I can do two-four. Hmmm… What about two-six?”

“Am I sensing a two-five split? Ye’ll do £2,450. Ye will aye.”

“Right, that’s as low as I’ll go. Two-four it is.”

Emmet straightens up and the two men go sort finances, paperwork, and talk cars, politics and cats.

Then, before getting into the car, Emmet asks, “Any chance of a luckspenny. It’s just, I’m superstitious.”

Martin eyes at him suspiciously.

“Right nuff?” he asks.

“Aye.”

Twenty pound is pulled from a wallet and handed across the top of the door.

For the first half of the journey home, Emmet is elated with his new car.

But as he nears his house, his happiness is tinged with guilt.

“I done him out of twenty quid. I don’t believe in superstition. Shame on me.”

But as Emmet pulls up his steep driveway, cranks the handbrake tight and goes to get out, the car rolls back as though it has no brakes at all.

“Martin, you dog.”

And with that discovery, he allows gravity to guide him down onto the new footpath, where parks his new car – and his luckspenny guilt is gone.

Clear of conscience, one dirty move having cancelled out the other, he goes back to feeling elated once again.

And Martin, rid of his car and a couple of grand to the good, is probably feeling pretty pleased, too.