Show Me the Sky - Nicholas Hogg [49]
Before a greeting the man talked himself through the manoeuvres of pulling off the exit road.
‘First, mirror, accelerate, second, third, lane clear.’
He spoke the instructions with a flourish. Jimmy watched his jerky and mouse-like movements, leaning over the wheel and too close to the windscreen. They lurched on to the inside lane and slowed the car behind. It flashed angrily.
‘Bloody lunatics,’ he said. ‘People drive much too fast these days.’ As the car overtook he shouted, ‘Do you want to go to hospital? Moron.’ The words reverberated in the little Metro. ‘Now then, where did you say you were going?’
‘London,’ Jimmy answered as he spoke over him.
‘Was it London?’
‘Yeah, to see me auntie.’
Jimmy squirmed in his seat and looked at the car. Empty except for a pack of mints where a radio should have been. The driver was still hunched over the wheel when he turned to look at Jimmy properly. He smiled as though through an injury that hurt.
‘An auntie in London, I see, no problem, although I’m from Wales I know England very well. I’m visiting my sister in Kent this week.’
He spoke quickly and fired pieces of spit like fluff. He had broken veins in his nose and cheeks. His top lip would sometimes stick to his teeth, and he had a cut from shaving that morning. Jimmy liked nothing about him. He drove and moved, checked the rear-view mirror nervously every few seconds and never stopped correcting the line of the car, even if it was centred in the lane.
‘You know there are cheap fares for budget travellers on buses and trains these days. Though I bet they’re still expensive for a young man like yourself. What do you actually do anyway?’
Jimmy lied. ‘I’m a trainee mechanic.’
‘Oh wonderful, I’ll have no bother if we break down then. Yes, a practical skill, a trade, that’s the right way to go, isn’t it?’ He paused and tilted his head as though balancing the next question to be spoken.
‘I used to hitch myself when I was younger, North Wales, the Peak District, a bit of adventure. Though I wouldn’t do it now, much too dangerous.’
He paused and repeated the last words. ‘Much too dangerous.’ Then he began a monologue on various subjects including weather and winter, global warming, no more good butchers in his village, the decline of school uniforms.
‘What’s your job?’ Jimmy stopped him abruptly.
‘Sorry?’
‘Your job?’
‘Oh, I’m a teacher, well, headmaster in fact. A primary school in North Wales.’
Jimmy looked at his thin and bony hands, small on a small steering wheel. They crested the brow of a long hill. Cars passed continuously in the outside lanes. The wipers squeaked, frantically keeping the spray from the screen.
‘Well, I’m not becoming part of that mess.’
The traffic was massed and illuminated, backed close like some terrific singular vehicle that grew by the moment.
‘Right, what we’ll do is turn off at the next junction and take a little short cut I know. It’s pointless sitting in this.’
He inched forward in the haze of brake-light red. Jimmy sat like a mute. He wiped the passenger window with his sleeve and looked out to the ploughed fields. A whole farm was enveloped in the falling rain. The teacher turned off the motorway and drove under drops of falling sky that drummed hard on the Metro roof. Something in the sound scaled down the space.
‘Plenty of traffic here too, mate,’ said Jimmy, trying to break the curious intimacy.
‘Yes, yes,’ he agreed with enthusiasm. ‘Not such a secret short cut after all.’
He was smiling like an excited imp. All around the car it seemed they were submerged in a world cursed by a constant deluge. It was deafening and the teacher had to shout. ‘I do believe I know another short cut.’
He turned right on to a road that streamed with water. It was cast in a gothic gloom and they passed under wintered chestnuts, black boughs stencilled on the leaden sky. Slowing down to almost walking pace, the teacher drove on through the daytime dark and asked Jimmy if he could believe it was midday.
He did not answer.
When they