Chapter 104: Is Go-ey Still Going?

Barnstaple to Taunton

An alder tree offered the only cover from the rain. Alone at the top of the lay-by, it protruded from the tree line as if, by fate or design, it had grown to shelter hitchhikers heading east on the A361.

It was a large lay-by, almost 100m long. Beyond it, the road sloped wide down the hill. A van indicated and spluttered past my shelter, wheels hissing on the wet road, engine wheezing. The driver looked troubled and paid me no attention. I carried on thumbing as it limped to a halt further down.

I watched the driver get out and burrow his head under the bonnet. 10 minutes later I heard a clunk and turned to see him waving at me. I left the dry sanctuary of the alder tree and ran towards him.

“Glad the van’s all right,” I said as I climbed in, glad also to be escaping the rain.

“So am I,” George replied, “It just went into limbo. Done it the other day so I’ll have to take it to the garage. Should be all right for now though.”

The van was big and spacious. The back was lined with cream wooden panels which gave it a light, somewhat Scandinavian air, an unusual thing for a van. George was a friendly man, with an open, easy temperament, immediately enjoyable company. His van seemed a nice metaphor - the inside at least, I can’t comment on the engine.

Given the wood panels, it was unsurprising that George was a carpenter. His job took him all over the country and carpentry had taken him all over the world. He’d lived in New Zealand for a while. That’s why he picked me up. Over there he hitchhiked all the time, barely waiting more than 10 minutes for a lift. He loved it. He told me he preferred New Zealand to Australia even though he’d lived in Aus for longer, but that was only because of the pay. Carpenters got double in Aus.

George thought that Australia was stricter on health and safety than the UK but he told me the site he worked on was anything but.

“The bloke who ran the site, Mark he was called, didn’t care about anything,” George explained cheerfully, “Like, there was a guy who drove a forklift right, and everyone called him Go-ey. One day a colleague asked me if I knew what Go-ey got up to when he’d go to his car for his breaks. He was doing meth! That’s why they called him Go-ey, coz he was going all the time!”

Go-ey would get to work at 6 am and work til 8 at night. He’d go straight to the pub, then back to work first thing. He worked hard to fund the habit until he’d crash and you wouldn’t see him for a few days. Then he’d be back to do it all again. “Once I knew, I couldn’t unsee it. The bloke was gurning his face off all the time! Mark didn’t mind though because he was a good worker and all. Besides, he was on coke anyway. And the bloke who told me about Go-ey… he was definitely on something too.”

I told someone about Go-ey a few weeks after meeting George. This person had lived in Australia too and worked on construction sites. “Funny you say that,” he laughed, pulling up his trouser to reveal a scar on his ankle, “Got this from a forklift driver who was off his head on Benzos…”

It was obviously an occupational hazard.

I wondered if Go-ey was still going. George was pretty sure he was. He followed him on Instagram and he seemed to be all right but for how much longer, George was doubtful. Go-ey was going on 50 and had been at it since he was 25. Apparently, his dad was the local chief of police as well.

George and I talked about Australia’s meth problem. He said it was everywhere. He heard of someone whose sister did it once and got schizophrenia. He wasn’t sure how true that was but then there were billboards everywhere saying ‘Not Even Once’.

I told him a story about a man I met in Nepal. He was called Peter and we drank beers in his cafe which was due to open the very next day. Peter was English by birth but had lived in Australia since he was 12. With his long bleach-blond hair, he looked more Australian than English. I remember the deep hollows of his eyes.

He told me that as a young man he set up an art gallery. It was successful. One of the artists he exhibited went on to be one of the country’s best-known. He also ended up with a CD of Genesis’ long-lost radio recordings, given to him by the son of the sound engineer. They took Peter Gabriel to court and won a hundred grand.

Then he closed the gallery.

We were sitting on the deck overlooking Lake Pokhara. Peter was hunched over, carefully emptying the contents of a cigarette onto the plastic tabletop.

I asked what he did after the gallery.

“I became a drug dealer,” he said nonchalantly.

“Wow,” I said. I was 18 and I’d never met anyone so interesting before, “What drugs did you deal?”

“Meth mostly,” he replied as he emptied the last of the tobacco from what was now just a white tube of paper, “Though I dealt everything except opioids - you know, heroin. You didn’t want to be involved in that. I used to deal with the Chinese triads mainly, they were much more reliable than the biker gangs.”

Peter ran an open house policy. Customers would come to his house, buy his meth and join his bender. On a good day, he could make five or six thousand dollars. “A day,” he reiterated as he mixed the flakes of tobacco with the tiny balls of Nepalese hash before painstakingly funnelling it all back into the empty cigarette.

“Were you into it yourself?” I asked.

“Oh yeah,” he replied, “Big time. You’d party for five or six days straight, then you’d sleep for two days, get up and do it all again. Did that for five years without coming down once.”

Then he got caught. The police raided the party and found all his stash. They also found cash, which fortunately for Peter meant he could wriggle through some legal loophole and get off with nothing but a fine. He left the country and came to Nepal. Apart from the occasional tab of acid or bump of ketamine, there were no hard drugs there.

He scratched his arm and lit his cigarette, drawing on it so hard it whistled. I had never heard a cigarette whistle. I haven’t since.

He said that if he ever went back to Australia, he knew he’d get stuck on the hamster wheel. There was a tension in the way he said it. It was clear it was still tugging, willing him back.

George and I crested a hill and all of Devon lay before us. Rain was still hitting the windscreen but the breaks of blue in the distance gave me hope.

We wondered if Peter was still going. But we could only wonder.