also known as horny_dad or lexxjld on some sites
His tattoos swirled from the sleeves of his white teeshirt down his brown muscular arms. He looked tired and drawn as he leaned against the wall, listening to the foreman describing the next job. He didn't seem old enough to have an HGV licence, although I knew he was an experienced and reliable driver. I had never been on a trip with him -- he usually worked alone -- and it wasn't going to be easy, judging by the surly way in which he had greeted the announcement that from now on he was to have an assistant.
Without speaking Pete nodded curtly to the foreman and swung himself up into the cab. I walked round the front of the huge gleaming lorry and climbed into the passenger seat. The lights around the yard glinted in oily puddles, but the sun was beginning to break through the early morning mist. He pressed the starter; the engine roared into life, and the lorry slowly moved out of the yard into the dreary length of Commercial Road.
Neither of us spoke for a while. Few people were about at this time of the morning, just an occasional stray dog returning from a night's foraging in the city's dustbins. The road unrolled itself before us, lined with warehouses and factories, many now derelict. As we crossed the canal and turned right into the road leading out to the motorway he seemed to relax, settled down further in his seat, and ran his hand through his short fair hair.
"Well, it looks as if we're stuck with each other for now," he commented, glancing quickly round at me. "I'm used to being on my own -- I don't know why they've sent you on this trip. Just don't expect me to talk much, OK?" A sudden grin lit up his features as he changed gear down the motorway slip road. "Ah, well, it could have been worse, I suppose. They might have sent Jack out with me."
Jack was a legend at the depot. He had worked there longer than anyone could remember, becoming dirtier and dirtier each year, rarely sober, and with a vicious temper. Most of the lads were terrified of him.
"Don't get me wrong," Pete continued thoughtfully, "Jack's all right when you get to know him. He's had a difficult life. But I certainly wouldn't want him on a trip like this. Have you been to Italy before?"
"No, I've never been abroad," I answered, "I'm looking forward to it."
"A factory in Italy is just the same as one in England, but it's good to be out here away from the cities. Get my jumper for me, Tony, it's in the back."
I reached through the curtained area behind the seats and found his jumper. With great agility he managed to put it on without driving off the road.
"That's better, I don't like having the heater on, it sends me to sleep. Let's see if there's anything good on the radio." Loud rock music forestalled further conversation.
The sun was fully up now, driving the mist from the fields and hedges as we hurtled along. We stopped once for a cup of tea at a service area. Several good-looking lorry drivers greeted Pete, glancing curiously at me. I felt nervous and out of place. They all seemed at ease with each other, but treated me as an outsider.
The tea and hot sun sent me drifting off into a deep sleep. When I woke up we were at the docks. Pete was nowhere to be seen. After a while he came back and muttered something about "seeing to the paperwork'. We drove into the bowels of the boat, one of the last lorries in, and the boat sailed almost immediately.
Pete disappeared again, so I had some breakfast and began to wake up a bit. I went to the upper deck for some fresh air, watching the English coastline slip away into the mist. Suddenly I caught sight of Pete, apparently having an argument with a young sailor. I didn't want to get involved, and I thought Pete could probably take care of himself. As it happened, the argument soon came to an end, and the sailor smiled and waved to Pete as he set off down the steps.
The Belgian port loomed up, gantries black and menacing in the fog. I went back to the lorry. Pete got in, looking rather pleased with himself.
"Were you having trouble with that sailor?" I asked him. He shot a surprised look at me, then smiled.
"No, I often meet him on this trip. He doesn't have much to do while we're out at sea." He hesitated, then stretched out across the steering wheel, his chin on his hands, and stared at me. "There's a lot you don't know about, isn't there?"
This enigmatic question caught me off guard. What did he mean? I knew that I wasn't an experienced traveller like him, but it was a peculiar remark, all the same. It certainly did nothing to put me at ease, only made me feel more out of place. No appropriate answer came to mind, so I just kept quiet, watching the cargo doors of the boat opening.
Driving on the right was absolutely terrifying for me as passenger. I seemed far too close to the vehicles on the other side of the road, and when we overtook a slower lorry, the oncoming traffic hurtled straight for me. Pete was a good driver, though, and took no unnecessary risks. After a while I relaxed and started to notice the strange Flemish town names. My efforts at pronouncing them made Pete smile, and when I overheard two locals conversing in a shout outside a bar, my mimicry of them was so accurate that he nearly drove off the road, laughing so much.
"Come on, pack it in," he grinned at me, "you'll have no voice left if you go on like that!" Then, more thoughtfully, he added, "Perhaps this trip could be fun, after all."
As we drove along the Belgian motorway, he began to tell me a little about himself; his upbringing in an orphanage until he was fostered and then adopted by an elderly couple, his short spell in prison for an idiotic smash and grab raid which went wrong; his good fortune in getting his present job. He had a beautiful speaking voice, and sounded better educated than most of the other drivers. I caught myself fancying him, as I had sometimes in the past when I saw him stride past the office window.
"Don't be ridiculous, he's not interested in you," I thought to myself, and thrust from my mind the sudden image of him lying naked on the bed in his flat. I'd never been there, of course, but people said it was a small, comfortably furnished place overlooking the park. Hurriedly I hunted for another topic of conversation to put the disturbing visions from my mind.
"We must be getting near the border, mustn't we?" I cast about in my dimly remembered geography lessons for the relationship between the various north European countries. "Yes, we'll soon be in Germany, but the German customs people are very fussy with loads like this. It may take some time at the border post."
He was right. He disappeared into the customs office with a sheaf of documents, including my passport, and left me to my own devices. I couldn't leave the border area, of course, so I sat around, stood around, tried to read all the notices in French and German on the walls, and finally settled myself as comfortably as possible in a delapidated old armchair in a corner and fell sound asleep.
I woke with a terrible start, wondering where I was and what was happening. Looking up, I saw a German border guard in his uniform towering over my chair. He must have shouted at me, and that's what had woken me up, because he repeated something incomprehensible. "I'm sorry, I can't speak German," I muttered, feeling rather silly and wondering what I'd done to make him angry. Perhaps this was *his* chair?
"You are English." A statement, not a question.
