Robert hart

The Tunnel of Death – Excerpt from Rebecca’s Secrets

Every year, at the start of the Christmas holidays, we challenged the Ropery Street kids to the Tunnel Race. It was the culmination of weeks of preparation that usually started just before Guy Fawkes Night.

During the build up to 5^th November, we’d try to set fire to each other’s bonfires. We’d set guards in the evenings and usually caught the other gang in the act, so most years the fires survived until the big night.

To keep us occupied during guard sessions, we’d build go-carts from bonfire wood.

There were always a few prams on the debris, and the Eric Street Engineers – Ronny and Larry would dismantle the axles and wheels.  Ronny would borrow tools from his dad, some pipe brackets and screws to fit the axles. Larry would pick out a good plank for a chassis and burn holes in the wood with a red-hot poker, so we could bolt on the wheels.

We’d nail on an orange box seat and fix some string to steer the front wheels and we’d have a two-man go-cart. I would sneak an oilcan from my Uncle Vinny’s bedroom and we’d grease everything that moved. After hours of discussion, we’d choose a name and paint it on the back. This year we called it the Dan Dare. I painted Dan Dare’s face – well, it was a red blob really, but we knew it was Dan Dare.

Eric Street and Ropery Street were a few hundred yards apart, but they were like two separate countries. Larry lived in Ropery Street but he played mostly with us, so he was part of the Eric Street gang. We were the cowboys and Ropery Street were the Indians. We were the English and they were the Germans.

When I got to Larry’s the rest of the gang was already there. We did some final work on the cart and set off for the tunnel. We had to get there early before the traffic built up.

Viv, Larry and I walked ahead. Errol and Davy followed ten yards behind. “Where were you yesterday,” Larry asked. “I called round.”

“You won’t believe it if I tell you.” I said. 

The dark happenings of the day before were lurking in a black cloud in my head. Ugly faces I wanted to forget would flash into sight as if lit by lightening. Frightening events rolled over and over like thunder. I was afraid to say anything. I didn’t want to make it real by talking about it. I didn’t want to disgust my friends or make them think badly of me. I knew I wouldn’t be able to forget the experience or dissipate my feelings, but I needed temporary relief. I needed a different story.

“What?” Viv asked.

“Secret.” I said, gesturing back towards Davy and Errol.

“Secret.” she said.

“I met my mother.”

“But she’s in America.” Viv said.

“No she’s not, stupid,” Larry said, “she came back on a boat.”

“She’s here.” I said. “And I met Jesus!”

“Liar!” Larry laughed.

“No, really!” I said.

Viv skipped ahead of me walking backwards. “Tell us. Tell us.”

I told them about coming home from school and having a laugh with Jesus on the bus, and how Sylvie jumped out of the fog. How she was drunk and smoked, and had this sneer on her face and yellow teeth and bad breath. How she took me to a pub full of gangsters and men who tried to grab me. I told them how she drank loads of gin and went on the stage and sang and the men tried to put their hands up her dress. How her foreign boyfriend got beaten up and robbed at the bar and how we had to escape and ran up the alley to their disgusting flat. How he made me drink a whole glass of whisky and eat red-hot curry and I was sick in the sink. I told them about the screaming in the night and how he beat her up for singing and then they did it right next-door and it was disgusting and how I escaped at dawn and ran all the way home in the freezing rain and told my Gran I never wanted to see her again.

I was lost inside the story. Viv and Larry had listened silent, wide-eyed, and… so had I. I had been listening to the story tell itself from my mouth – a story close to the truth, but like a play about someone else. I suddenly came back and saw two mates staring at me. I felt guilty for exaggerating and I knew they wouldn’t believe me.

“What?” I asked, fearing I might have said too much, that they might be disgusted.

“Blimey!” Larry said

“Bli-mey!” Viv said.

Davy and Errol caught up and crashed into us on purpose. We bundled for a while and continued towards the docks.

When we arrived. Larry’s cousin Tony Abrahams and three kids I didn’t know turned up jeering and cocky at the mouth of the tunnel. Their go-cart was decorated with skull and crossbones and called Black Death. It looked a lot better than ours.

Two boys rode each cart – the heaviest in the back for ballast and the lightest in the front for steering. Larry was a year older than me and big boned with steel hard stringy muscles. He was the most solid person I knew. He punched me in the face once and it felt like walking into a lamppost.

Larry sat behind me. Abrahams steered for his team with Nathan Isaacs – the stamp swapper for ballast. Once we were in our seats and at the start line we shouted in unison, 

“Ready, steady, go!”

The first section of the tunnel is a long downhill run. Errol and Davy pushed us, and in a few seconds, the Dan Dare was well up to speed. Ronny gave up first and then both the Ropery Street ground crew. But there was something about Davy that could make him explode with wild energy when he got excited. It was as if he switched on his booster rockets. While the others fell away panting, he just raced us faster and faster and when his feet couldn’t keep up, he yelled “Dan Dare, pilot of the future! Into the Tunnel of Death!” and gave one last shove. He jerked us off course a bit but gave us an early lead as we raced downhill into the tunnel. The Dan Dare had bigger wheels and a heavier chassis than Black Death. Gravity and all that grease worked to our advantage and we were soon 10 yards ahead.

We hadn’t yet invented the brake, so we relied on Larry dragging his feet to control the speed. This worked fine at lower speeds. Hot shoe leather burned and nails sparked against the asphalt enhancing the illusion of speed. But as we flew faster and faster, the slightest contact between shoe and ground sent his legs flying dangerously, so we pulled in arms and legs and held on tight to the steering ropes. 

The Ropery kids had hand brakes on both back wheels – wooden levers bolted to either side of their orange box. The ballast rider could pull one end of the lever and the other rubbed against the wheel. This gave them control at much higher speeds than our crude method and it was beginning to pay off. Black Death was rapidly catching up and about to overtake us. Abrahams made Messerschmitt engine noises. Isaacs shouted, “Bandits at 5 O’clock!” and machine-gunned us, “Uh-uh-uh-uh-uh-uh-uh-uh!”

For a moment they were the enemy. I didn’t see Abrahams and Isaacs, I saw Dez slapping my mother’s face. I saw Frank beating her by the roadside. I saw Malinski cuffing kids in the playground. I didn’t hear the yells of kids, but the screams of women and babies.

We were halfway down the slope and going flat out and they were gaining on us. We had no chance. Our wheels wobbled. Larry and I knew what was next. With equal measure of fear and determination, I pulled hard on the steering rope and I locked my skinny legs against the amplifying wobble, but in a moment I lost control and we were snaking wildly from kerb to kerb. 

Just as Ropery Street drew level, we slewed across in front of them. Our back wheels clipped their front wheels and they turned sharply – too sharply. Their cart veered off to the right and scudded to a halt against the kerb. The two Luftwaffe pilots were flicked off, and rolled for another ten yards to stop in a heap of bloody knees, elbows and curses in the gutter.

We didn’t fare much better. We slammed front-on into the kerb, somersaulted over the front wheels and smashed against the tunnel wall bashing our heads together on landing. Dazed and disoriented I saw two policemen towering above me. I heard a baby’s cry echoing in the distance. I felt my face swollen like a melon, my body sore and wet with blood. The cops leered down like phantoms, swimming in and out of my tears. They spoke like the Lone Ranger.

“Well look at all this rubbish on our nice clean highway!”

“Trailer trash. Throw him in the car and we’ll take him to the dump.”

It was Wayne and Earl. When I named them, they disappeared and my mind cleared. Larry’s weight crushed me back to gravity and my leg, jammed in the steering mechanism of the cart, brought me back to pain – real pain.

Larry moaned and rolled to the pavement. I rolled the other way and freed my trapped leg. There was a raw weal where it had been pinched between the steering arm and the chassis, but no blood. I was OK, but Larry’s head was bloody and he lay still, moaning. Then he went quiet. I crawled over to him and pulled his head around to see if he was OK. He had a gash over his eyebrow and blood covered half his face. His eyes were closed, his mouth dropped loose.

He was dead! I killed him! It was all my fault. I lost control of the cart. I’ve killed my best mate. Wayne and Earl returned. “We’ll take him, Son. He can take a ride with us. In the trunk.”

“Larry!” My scream echoed through the tunnel. “Laaaaary!”

He twitched. His eyes flicked open and he sat up.

“Did we win?” His only concern was who was in front. He scanned the accident scene, worked out the slope of the road. Black Death was about ten yards uphill

“Victoreeee!” He whooped, “Dan Dare beats the Black Death!”

It was only on the long walk back, dragging our busted carts that we noticed the blood soaking our jumpers.

Lorries thundered by as we meandered up the road, singing and shouting “Victoreeee!” Larry missed his footing, tripped off the pavement and veered into the road, as a coal lorry clattered up the hill. Without thinking, I reached out and pulled him back and the lorry missed by inches.

“Thanks, mate!” he said with a big grin, and threw his arm over my shoulder. We staggered and tripped our way back to Larry’s.

“Hear about the old tramp?” Larry asked.

“What?”

“That smelly Old William bloke. He’s dead.”

“What!”

“Joan told me. Yesterday. They dragged him out of the cut. Said it was the fog. He couldn’t see a blind thing. Walked right into the Grand Union.”

Poor William. I didn’t say goodbye to him, nobody did. We walked on in silence for a while.

“’ere, Tommy you crying?”

“No – got dust in my eyes.”

 “Well,” Larry said, “You found your mum.”

“Yea, and now she can get lost again.”

“You can’t mean that. She’s your mum.”

“No, she made her choices. She chose not to be my mum or anybody’s mum. She left me and she left my sisters. Now it’s my turn to choose.”

“What you gonna do?”

“I’m going to leave her. Leave her under the floor.”

“What?”

“I’m going to find my sister. That’s what.”

“Blimey!”

I wanted to get home to see Granddad. When I walked in, I wanted him to say, “My Tommy, you’ve been in the wars.” and then I’d tell him all about the race. And then I’d ask him to help me find my sister.