Westbound, by Graham Pickles
An original novel extract set in the twentieth century.
Colin had begged for a fortnight to go on one of the night runs, and when his mother finally said yes he had expected it to be the best night of his life. By midnight, somewhere on the A66 with the wipers going and the cab smelling of diesel and cold tea, he was no longer sure.
Uncle Ray did not talk. He drove with both hands on the wheel and his eyes on the road, and when Colin asked him questions he answered in single words or not at all. He had not been like this at Christmas. At Christmas he had done card tricks and let Colin win at draughts.
Just past Bowes he turned off the main road without indicating. The lane was narrow, walled with stone, and the lorry’s sides brushed the hawthorn with a sound like fingernails. There were no lights anywhere. Colin looked at the map on the dashboard and could not find where they were.
‘Where are we going?’
‘Pick-up.’
‘It’s not on the sheet.’
‘No,’ said Uncle Ray. ‘It isn’t.’
They stopped in a farmyard that had no farmhouse lights, only a single bulb over a barn door. A man came out, an old man in a cap, and he and Uncle Ray stood together in the rain and spoke too low to hear. Then the two of them carried something out of the barn between them. It was long and heavy and wrapped in tarpaulin, and they had to stop twice to change their grip. Colin heard it slide into the trailer behind him and felt the whole cab sink on its springs.
Uncle Ray climbed back in. His hands were wet and there was mud on his cuffs. He did not look at Colin.
‘What was that?’
‘You’ll see.’
For the next two hours Colin did not sleep. He watched his uncle’s face in the green glow of the dials and thought about the newspaper his mother kept by the bread bin, about the things that happened to boys who went off with people. He thought about the shape of the tarpaulin. He told himself he was being stupid, and then he thought about it again.
It was getting light when they pulled into Uncle Ray’s yard in Darlington. Uncle Ray switched off the engine, sat for a moment with his hands on the wheel, and then said, ‘Right. Come and help me.’
Colin’s legs were shaking as he climbed down. His uncle undid the ropes and folded back the tarpaulin, and underneath, red and chrome and streaked with years of barn dust, was a motorbike.
Colin knew it at once. He had seen it in every photograph on his mother’s mantelpiece, with his father astride it, grinning, before the accident.
‘Took me two years to find it,’ said Uncle Ray. His voice was rough. ‘Old Metcalfe wouldn’t sell to anyone. Wanted a look at you first. Saw you in the cab and said you had the look of him.’ He cleared his throat and looked away at the sky. ‘Your dad and me were going to do it up together. I thought maybe you and me could.’
“Uncle Ray is presented as a sinister and threatening man.”
To what extent do you agree with this view?
You should write about:
You must refer to the language used in the text to support your answer.
120 exam-style questions on Eduqas GCSE English Language 1.3 Critical reading and comprehension, covering 1.3.1 Identifying and interpreting themes, ideas and information, 1.3.2 Reading in different ways for different purposes, 1.3.4 Supporting a point of view with textual evidence, and 1.3.6 Reflecting critically and evaluatively on text. Each one has a worked solution and a mark scheme showing where the marks go.