Show Me the Sky - Nicholas Hogg [81]
And I walk past the rigmarole of arrival, already beyond passport control. I’m still waiting for a hand on my shoulder when I stroll the NOTHING TO DECLARE lane. But then I’m out, beyond the drawn lines. No one has challenged my entering the UK on a false passport. All Roberts had to do was inform customs of my landing, and the millisecond it took that tiny chip to fire my identity on to a computer screen, an official could have discreetly escorted me into some back office. With Roberts sat waiting, feet up on a desk, sipping a cup of tea.
Instead I squint in the winter sunshine of the Terminal 4 car park. Maybe he’s here, leaning against my car smoking a cigarette?
He’s not. All I find at my car is a ticket and leaflet warning about the overstay rates. Before I unlock the door, I stand and turn, see the planes circling to land, the planes lifting into the cloudless blue. And then again I scan the rows of cars, wonder if someone is sitting and watching, preparing to follow.
Out of the car park, following signs to the M25, I check the mirrors constantly, noting what vehicles stay on my tail for more than half a mile. But most of the traffic is heading the same direction anyway, and though it’s mid-morning, the roads choke, no room for overtaking. A red Saab and a white BMW have no choice besides sitting on my bumper. And when I turn on to the M25 the gridlock continues. Forget the London Eye, this is the world’s largest Ferris wheel, but without the view.
Then the flow of traffic accelerates, together, a group sigh for movement. I can feel tension ease from the shoulders of the other drivers. And when I’m not watching what’s behind me, I’m looking around my own car, acknowledging that it is my car, a two-week-old newspaper on the passenger seat, empty crisp packets tucked into the ashtray, a roll of mints. It is my car, but there’s no comfort in this fact.
And for a few seconds I see myself from the next lane. Walking in the outside lane. I’m walking alongside the car that I’m driving, watching myself focused on the cars in front, eyes forward, the fields and sky beyond blurred with speed. I’m walking along the outside lane watching myself drive.
Then I return, to the windscreen flecked with dirt and insects, brake lights and the backs of heads. I can feel the sweat on my palms, the pressure of the pedals against the soles of my feet. Now the countryside has stopped and the car is in motion, trees and pylons zipping past.
I take the slip road to the M1, merge with the rush of trucks, vans, buses and cars pointed north. And now, appropriately, the skies darken, clouds fatten with rain above a monochrome landscape. You can almost see the drivers lean forward, as though steeling themselves for a long climb, that this is the beginning of a great slope to the top of the country.
Each time I drive this stretch of motorway, I’m a passenger of my own memory, no will to think of anything but the back of the police car, my bandaged head, the two quiet officers who drove me home.
I pull into Watford Gap services, not for a break from driving, but a break from thinking, that hum of who you are that vibrates up from the tarmac, the bump of a cat’s eye or join in the road, through the rubber of the tires, along the steering column and into your loose hands, rested there like puppet hands on string.
Maybe I’m just jet-lagged, exhausted. I go into the café and buy a coffee, a sandwich to take away. I could sit down on a plastic seat, but I’m afraid of stopping. In the toilets I need courage to look in the mirror, to see myself fixed in space and time, the fear of a lasting moment.
A fine rain sweeps across the car park. Trucks rattle along the motorway. I’m looking around for someone who might be watching, waiting. Every second person