FLUKE

Baden Baden, Germany

June, 1912

"I'm in love."

"Oh, Christ." Charlie dropped his head onto the gleaming bonnet of his car. "Here we go again."

"Here we go where again?"

"Otto's in love."

"I tell you, mein Englisches Arschloch, this is veritably the truth. Harry," The blonde man spun around, the tails of his driving coat flapping in the breeze. "Speak to this Philistine."

"Well, Charlie, you might want to look at it this way." Henry Talbot settled back on the camp chair Burton, Charlie's manservant had kindly organised, and pretended to concentrate on his cigarette. "You've been looking for reasons to disqualify Otto for years. Now's your chance."

"Was?" As always, the slightest threat to his racing was enough to pull Otto out of his dramatics. "What do you say? Wie so das?"

"Well, old chap, it's perfectly simple." Having squinted down the barrel end of his Woodbine cigarette and brushed off the loose tobacco strands, Henry set the tube between his lips and dug about for box of matches. "Disqualification for reasons of mental instability."

Charlie barked a laugh, straightening up from his crouch of despair over the bonnet of his Fiat racer. "I would enjoy reporting that!"

"Petty jealousies!" The German racer scoffed at them both. His feet planted squarely in the green turf, he dug his fists into the voluminous pockets of his coat and scowled down at the dark, long-legged Englishman. "You are still painful after the loss at the Voiturette, eh?"

"Sore, Otto. Sore. My god, how long have we been friends? Your English is as bad as when we met in '05."

"Pah! But always besser als your German, no, Harry? Mein Gott, to hear the beautiful language of Schiller and Silesius and Herder so maligned with your furchtbar English mangling..."

"Pax! Shut up, Otto, and let Talbot speak, for the love of Christ!"

"As I was about to say..." Coming up empty in his pockets, Henry nipped the cigarette from his lips. Jabbing it in Otto's direction, he kept his face and voice as serious as he dared against the bristling indignation of his friend. "In my opinion, our dear friend Otto Lauda should disqualify himself for reasons of insanity."

"Insanity? It is you who are mad, Harry, if you imagine that I should step aside to let amateurs like you and Charlie-"

"...because after all," Henry continued smoothly over Otto's spluttering. "What is the definition of insanity but performing the same actions over and over again and expecting a different result?"

As Otto crashed into astonished silence, Henry craned past him to the stocky figure of Burton in his tan overalls. "I say, Burton, you don't have a light, do you?"

"Right here, sir." His pale, frog-like face pressed into bland obedience, Charlie's manservant and general factotum appeared with a thin flame flickering above his thumb. Burton specialised in inscrutability but Henry thought he could detect a flicker of amusement in the small deep-set eyes.

"Excellent. Thanks."

Henry drew quickly on the flame until the first sting of nicotine flicked the back of his lungs. Turning back, he saw Charlie had stolen his campstool and was leaning back against the convenient oak tree.

The verbal sparring matches between Henry and Otto were a constant source of amusement for the other Englishman. More shy than the self-assured Henry, quieter than the exuberant Otto, he was content to settle in their shadows, tagging along with one or other them to whichever race next took their fancy.

The grin on his face left Henry in little doubt that Charlie planned to enjoy this particular encounter enormously.

"I do not understand you." Otto's voice, Henry thought, always went a timbre higher when he tried to sound dignified. "I tell you, my heart is stolen. Gestohlen. I will not sleep. I will not eat. It has never been thus."

"Well, with that statement I do agree. I don't think seasickness or even the plague has ever turned you away from your five o'clock küchen."

"I care nothing for such things." Otto tugged on his lapels and tilted his chin. "I am in love."

"Charlie."

"Yes, Harry, old boy?"

"Do you remember the name of that rather fetching widow down in Valciennes at Christmas time? The redhead, the one with the chateau covered in lilac and..."

"Diane du Pelletier." Charlie exhaled the name on a sigh. "Marvellous breasts. Like two winter peaches, just rising up under that black lace gown."

"That's the one." Henry flicked the first shadows of ash from his cigarette tip. It glimmered in the evening sunshine like a firecracker's sparks. He slipped the glowing tip back up to his mouth, hiding his grin with the carrying hand. "Fascinated by your... motor, wasn't she, Otto, old chap?"

"Needed a private tour, as I recall." Charlie's smirk was not so hidden. "At midnight, of all strange and unusual- hey!"

"Arschloch."

Otto flung his soft motoring cap - googles and all- at his friend's head. The heavy eyeglasses thudded in the close and dangerous vicinity of Charlie's sunburnt nose. The other man yelped, coming close to toppling off the flimsy stool in his own defence.

Otto sighed. He raced restless fingers through his sweat-darkened blonde hair until it stood on end like a bush. "Very well. I will admit, my history, it is not the story of a moral crusader-"

"Now that's an understatement."

"And as a sign of my friendship with you, Harry, I will not bring to mind the sister of that American idiot who lost so badly at cards. No, I will not even mention how I found her wandering the corridors, only three feet from your bedroom door at two o'clock in the morning and she wearing-"

"Speak now and be damned, or forever hold your peace."

"Also, I will be silent. But this, you must understand, is serious. She is an angel, ein Engel. I must speak with her. It is an imperative, verstehst du?"

"Then speak with her." Charlie, no longer in imminent danger of being brained by a pair of flying driver's goggles, stretched out on the campstool like a contented hound in sunshine. "But buck up about it, old chap, we have early dinner reservations in an hour."

"Ja. I will, of course. Ja..."

"Hold up." Seeing Otto Lauda, the irrespressible, uncrushable Otto, fidget with the pockets of his driving coat like a dithering schoolboy gave Henry a moment of pure glee. "You do know the girl's name, don't you, Otto?"

"Don't be stupid, Harry, of course Otto at least knows the name of..." Charlie, catching the black glare sent in his direction, trailed off into silence. He blinked. "Lord."

Otto swiped out with a Germanic curse that Henry didn't dare translate for the benefit of Burton. Besides, he was too busy laughing to concentrate on the nuances of changing from one language to another.

"Christ, Otto, only you!"

"Schweinhund!"

"You tumble into love and you don't know her name?"

"Dummkopf!"

"No, no, dear chap." Henry flicked the butt of his cigarette to the ground and kicked it under his heel. Otto, looking more and more like a demented hedgehog with his sweat-soaked blonde hair stuck up in spikes of frustration, glared at the lanky Englishman. "The only idiot in this particular situation is you. For God's sake man, she could be married. Or a lunatic."

"A nun- Ah! Watch it!" Charlie ducked a second time as the leather driving gloves were hurled in his direction. "Otto!"

"She is positively not a nun. And she is not married. She cannot be. Cannot." Bereft of all other throwing implements, Otto clenched his fists at his side. His moustache, beautifully trimmed, was tufts from being chewed into frustration. "For I am going to marry her myself."

Henry pealed out a laugh. "You? Married? Pull the other one, Lauda."

"I pull nothing. I do not," Otto spat the words from under his moustache with what little dignity a half-dressed driver could command. "Even grasp, hold or tug. Also, I have made up my mind. I am lost. Finished. Fertig, absolut fertig."

Charlie exchanged a glance with Henry, his eyebrows raised in question. Henry pursed his lips. He ran his fingers over his mouth, as though he missed the comfort of a cigarette to take the tension from the situation.

In front of his two friends, Otto Lauda slumped his shoulders. Without a glance for the snowy whiteness of his driving coat, he let his knees crumple under him and fell back against the idling body of the motor.

"Absolut fertig." He said again. Despite the forlorn note in his voice, the German driver's blue eyes were starry and hot. If he didn't suspect otherwise, Henry would have turned to Burton and told him to prepare Mr Lauda for a hell-dinger of a fever. The symptoms looked uncommonly close to the common cold.

Henry delivered up a fervent, private prayer that they were not quite so infectious.

"All right." Taking his cue from Otto, Henry Talbot slid down to the springy grass of their little nook. He stretched out his tired limbs and crossed his hands over his stomach. The shading of the tree was cast across his eyes and it made a pleasant change from the blistering sunshine of the racetrack. All the better to puzzle this through. "All right. You're in lust-"

"Love."

"I stand corrected. You do know best. Love, then. With a girl."

"Lady."

"So sure of that?"

"Charlie..."

"Pax, men. Pax. Otto's entitled to his opinions."

For want of anything better, Henry plucked a blade of grass from the ground and stuck the stem between his teeth. Sometimes, when confronted with the implausible, the only recourse a man could have was a run-down of known facts. "You're in love with a girl at dinner. At breakfast, the only love of your life was Freda there."

He plucked the grass from between his teeth and pointed to the sleek green Sunbeam racing car at Otto's back. Dark eyes gleamed with satiric amusement. "Otto, old chap, where in God's name did you find a woman to win and wife in between breakfast and dinner?"

"Lunch and dinner." Charlie put in. He leant his elbows on his knees and bowed forward. His light blue eyes went pale with interest now the moment for funning was past. "Otto attacked lunch like a savage. And you had three portions of desert."

"It was a good desert." The German driver sighed, his own hands crossed over his stomach, enviably slim despite Charlie's accusations of gluttony. "But it is nothing. Nothing will be sweet again."

Henry caught Charlie's eyes, smothered his grin at their dramatic roll up to the heavens. Sensible and English and matter-of-fact to his toenails, Charlie had never learnt to be comfortable with Otto's European passions. Henry, possessing a mother who held both Italian and Irish blood, was more tolerant.

"She's a lady whose name is unknown, whose situation is unknown and whose face-"

"Is that of an angel-"

"Lord." Charlie muttered.

"- is also, as yet, unknown." Henry pulled out the grass stem and contemplated the green length. "So we are placed in a conundrum."

"A befuddlement." Charlie added.

"An enigma."

"A mystery upon a puzzle."

"A-"

"Das ist genug! Enough! You… you vultures!"

"I say, Charlie." Henry let out a lazy drawl. "I fancy Otto is upset."

"Upset?" Recovering like a bolt of lightning from his dejection, Otto sprang to his feet. The caped driving coat swirled around his feet like a duellist's cloak. "I? No! Me, I am angry, I am furious. My friends, my so-called companions, they treat my heart as a joke. Zur Hölle mit ihr! Me, I will go and find my angel and never, never I say, will I say that I know two such libertines, such fools, such… how you verdammte English say? Dead gooses!"

"Dead ducks." Henry offered. "And geese, not gooses, old boy."

"Geh zum Teufel, Arschgeige!"

"He has the words of a true poet, doesn't he, Charlie?"

"Hard to see how any woman can resist."

"Shakespeare in a driving coat." Henry rolled over onto his side. "Romeo in goggles."

"I despise you."

"My heart!" Charlie clutched his chest. "Talbot, how can we recover?"

"I despise you, both of you. I will spit on your graves. I will see your cars ground to matchsticks."

"Now, steady on, Otto. Keep it personal by all means but don't take your failures out on the chariots."

"They are rust-filled, inelegant, heavy carts and you, you dead ducklings, you Tollpatsche… clods! You, Harry, swine of the English, and you, Charlie, you… you automaton. You have lost my respect. My love. I tell you, I am alone and my heart, it is broken and I will never see you cross the finish line again, never!"

"Lord." There was a touch of awe in Charlie's epitaph of disgust. Leaning back on the stool, his arms folded across his chest, the brown Englishman blinked at his impassioned friend in astonishment. "I've never been called an automaton before."

"Then," Otto declared, ripping his hand from its vicious wrangling through the dishevelled blonde hair. "It has been waiting too long! Also!"

"All right." Since Charlie was sitting with his mouth gaping open and Burton had taken the opportunity of his masters' bickering to retreat and snatch a quick smoke of his own, Henry saw the only way to peace was the route familiar and liquid. "Otto, pax?"

"Geh zum…"

"Yes, yes, you may damn us both to the devil all evening long. But it has been a long day, a heavy race…"

"Of which, I, myself, am the victor."

Henry smothered a grin. The deepest throes of unrequited passion couldn't turn Otto from savouring his win like a peacock spreading his feathers. His friend was an unrepentant competitor. He even raced to finish his breakfast first.

"Well, in that case you can buy the first round. Because angels or devils or whatever heavenly bodies are hopping around this place be damned but I'm parched. Charlie, old boy, fancy a beer?"

The brown-haired Englishman perked up his head. "Gröstl's?"

"Why not? Otto? Drown your sorrows?"

The blonde moustache twitched, as though sniffing out the gentle mockery in Henry's bland question. "I will never eat again." He repeated, his voice rising up on his dignity. "But for our friendship, I will drink, ja."

"That's the spirit." Henry clapped Otto on his caped shoulder and winked across at Charlie Rodgers. "Everything for the greater good."

"And perhaps one slice of küchen." Otto rubbed his stomach, a frown of consideration dipping on his face. "For politeness, verstehtst du."

"Lord…" Charlie muttered from behind them and Henry had to fight back a laugh.

"Just for politeness." He assured his friend as they started the long saunter away from the racetrack to the comfortable shabbiness of Gröstl's rambling farmhouse inn.

Can I just have the Henry/Otto show running all day?

Hope you enjoyed it and thank you for reading!