She couldn’t really argue with that kind of weird logic, so they loaded up with snacks and hit the road.
They got to the car park at just after 3am. The night was cloudy, but their eyes adjusted to the dark quickly as they made their way along the forest track at the foot of the mountain. Anna was terrified: she was most definitely a city girl, and walking around in the middle of nowhere in the middle of the night was about the most ridiculous thing she could imagine. Anybody could be out here – what if they were set upon by some mad, axe-wielding sheep farmer? Who the hell would be there to help them out here? She kept going – she absolutely would not show Ben that she was scared. They came out of the forest and the mountain opened up before them. Ben kept stopping and reading out passages of the poem from his iPhone and Anna would stand there smiling and say “How lovely” or whatever, deep down wishing that she could get the fuck off this mountain.
As they climbed higher, they began to encounter patches of slushy ice and snow. Before long, the path was inundated with wet slipperiness. They slithered on, their trainers and jeans soaked and cold. The path became steeper – what Ben described as ‘the belly and chest of the mountain’ – and Anna was now seriously scared. She could no longer make out any path at all and had no idea how Ben was navigating over the snowscape. Suddenly the ground lit up around them and, upon turning, they saw the full moon finding a gap through the clouds and burnishing the snow-clad corrie with thousands of refracted stars. Neither of them spoke. All of her fears disappeared in that moment.
As quickly as it had appeared, the moon was shielded once more behind the gilt-edged cloud and then darkness returned.
By the time they reached the ‘shoulder’ of the mountain, the conditions were deteriorating rapidly: the wind up here was fierce, a sleety rain was beginning to fall and even Ben was finding it hard to keep to the path somewhere buried beneath the snow. He turned to her and, bringing his head close to her hoodie, said:
“Not today – we need to turn back. Getting to the top is optional; getting back down in one piece is compulsory.” He looked at her face, pulled the green snood that he always wore over his head and, pulling back her hoodie, quickly pulled it over hers. It was warm and smelled of him. They turned back and no sooner were they off the shoulder than things became easier again. They slid back down the mountain, talking of dry feet, car heaters, hot baths and thick duvets as dawn announced its damp grey arrival.
When they got back to the car, she changed in the back seat while he drove. He had a spare hoodie and some tracksuit bottoms in his bag, which she put on, ditching everything else but the snood. She’d climbed back into the front seat and dozed off almost immediately. She woke as the car emerged from the Blackwall Tunnel back into South London.
“Good morning, sleepy.” He looked tired, but he was smiling.
“Oh my god, we’re here! You should have woken me up, I could’ve driven a bit.”
“It’s fine – you looked too cute to disturb. Ummm, I might have some bad news…”
“Oh?”
“I think I might’ve got flashed.”
“Oh dear.” Anna stared ahead for a moment, then turned in her seat to face him and slowly unzipped the front of his hoodie and slid it off her left shoulder. “Well did you, or didn’t you?” she asked, looking directly at him with her head cocked to the side. He glanced over and she zipped herself back up.
“I don’t know. It’s hard to tell. It all happened so fast.”
The car rumbled quietly off the A102 and onto the A2, towards Blackheath.
“I think I might’ve got flashed.”
“Oh dear.” Anna turned to him again and once more slowly unzipped the top, this time sliding it off her right shoulder. “Well did you, or didn’t you?” This time when Ben glanced over, Anna was dragging her right index finger along her lower lip as her left hand zipped the top back up. Ben swallowed. He looked over again – Anna was looking down at his trousers with an eyebrow raised.
“Well hello.”
Back at the house, they’d managed to sneak upstairs without being noticed. They opted for her place. She let him have all his clothes back – except the snood, which stayed on for the duration.
The M25 is painfully slow and by the time she gets to the M40, she’s running considerably late. She laughs at the irony as she pushes the Lean, Green, Juggling Machine to 100mph to ensure she isn’t late for her speed awareness course. She makes it, just, though she almost disembowels her car on the huge speed ramps that litter the centre, like great concrete tasters of what is to come.
The course is run by a tall, clean-shaven, grey-haired man, clad in tweed. He looks and behaves more like an ex-policeman than any other ex-policeman she has ever encountered. The course facilitator is severe with attendees on arrival, but once he has laid down the ground rules and established his natural authority over each of them, he allows them to see his gentler, more humorous side. The message is simple: ‘Play by my rules and this whole experience needn’t be too painful – you might even learn something – but woe betide the guilty speeder who attempts to ruin this experience for the rest of the class. Justice will be swift for anyone who does not follow the rules; their card will be marked with non-attendance, they will lose the money they spent on coming to the course, they will gain the points they had hoped to divert from their license and this whole journey will have been for nothing.’
She looks around the room. Apart from a couple of boy racers, the majority of people on the course appear to be pensioners and they look either intimidated, entertained or bored. She wonders whether the high percentage of older people is due to a slowing down in reaction time to the big yellow boxes by the side of the road, or if there is a secret sect of pensioner petrol heads tearing up the highways and byways, in a race against time to get their bucket lists ticked.
The old man next to her is awkwardly hobbling about around his all-in-one desk chair, looking at the floor and muttering.
“Have you lost something?” she says. The old man doesn’t respond to her, but keeps looking and muttering.
“Excuse me, have you lost something?” she repeats a little louder.
“Oh hello, yes, my hearing aid – I can’t find my hearing aid,” he shouts back at her. She stands up and helps with the search, but there is clearly nothing to be seen on the floor in his vicinity.
“I’m sorry, I don’t think it’s here,” she says.
“I must’ve left it in the car,” he shouts, “thanks for your help, anyway.”
Mr Tweed begins to deliver his tedious wealth of knowledge, warming the class up with mortality rates in car accidents at different speeds, then tests their sense of injustice by moving on to the rise of the speed camera. He pauses once in a while to ask questions that no-one will know the answer to, or, in all likelihood, will remember once their penance has been served.
“How many speed cameras are there in the Thames Valley area?”
“Where do most car accidents happen?”
As is the way in such situations, a few participants are eager to please, enthusiastically answering, and then offering enlightened yips of surprise when Mr Tweed supplies the correct answer. Some even manage to dredge up a supplementary question to drag out the moment.
With the arrival of the multiple choice question slides and informative graphs, it becomes apparent that her desk neighbour, whose name is Ted, is not only aurally challenged, but also visually impaired to boot. Anna does her best to relay the questions and information on the screen to Ted by bellowing them into his ear. Ted periodically grunts his appreciation and writes down notes that seem to have no bearing on what she is saying – it seems more like a shopping list: milk, eggs, oil…
Half an hour in, the class is divided into groups in order to discuss reasons why people might ‘turn to speed’. Mr Tweed is attending to a group principally composed of eager beavers at the far end of the room when the classroom door opens and a young suited woman enters and, seeing a s
pare chair, sits down with Anna’s group of three.
“Hi guys, I’m Grace,” she says, interrupting a rounded woman called Beryl, who had been allowed to warble on about the state of the canal towpaths in Oxford because Anna didn’t care and Ted couldn’t hear. “Sorry I’m late,” whispers Grace conspiratorially to the group as she hangs her coat onto her chair, then, seemingly identifying Anna as an ally in the group, says to her, “what have I missed?”
“Well,” says Anna, “the man in tweed has asked us to discuss the reasons why people might ‘turn to speed’, as in drive rapidly, so Beryl here was just telling us about how, with all the rain that we’ve been having, St Edmunds towpath has got awfully mucky.”
Grace nods her head and says, “I see.”
“Apparently it’s got so bad,” continues Anna, “that you can’t walk along there unless you wear some stout walking boots or wellies – isn’t that right, Beryl?”
“What’s going on?” says Ted.
“That’s right,” says Beryl.
“We were just talking about canal towpaths and why people drive too fast, Ted,” Anna bellows in Ted’s ear.
“Going too bloody fast,” says Ted and chuckles.
“That’s right,” says Anna, “that’s right.”
Grace smiles sympathetically, then says:
“Well I know why I ‘turned to speed’ – because it’s bloody great fun! I’m sure there’s plenty of people who’ll say they were late for work, or didn’t realise that the speed limit had changed, but deep down we all love to press that accelerator harder than we should, to feel the thrill of defiance pushing us back in our seats. In these small ways, people are able to cope with the mundanity of their ordered existences.”
“I’m Anna,” says Anna, holding out her hand, “it’s nice to meet you, Grace.”
At that moment, Mr Tweed walks past their group and does a quick double take when he sees Grace. A look of intense irritation sweeps across his face and, moving himself directly in front of Grace, he says aggressively:
“How did you get in?”
“Hi”, says Grace smiling sweetly, “I’m ever so sorry I was a little late – the traffic was terrible – but the door was open, so I just came and joined in. I hope I haven’t missed anything too important –”
“The door was not open – how did you get in?” Mr Tweed remains immoveable as old cobblestones.
“Oh, someone was coming out as I came in. I didn’t realise I couldn’t enter. I’m very sorry I was late – I came all the way from London –”
“Get out,” says Tweed.
“But I’ve said I’m sorry. The traffic was terrible. It wasn’t my fault –”
“Get out of my class,” he says again, pointing at the door.
“Please, if I don’t do this course, I’ll lose my job,” says Grace, making a last-ditch plea for mercy.
“You can come back and do the course again when you’ve learned the value of punctuality. Now, get out.”
“Very well.” Grace’s demeanour seems to change and now, in a voice devoid of emotion, she says, “May I have your name?”
“Erwyn Jones,” says Tweed, still pointing at the door. Without another word, Grace picks up her bag and takes her coat from her chair. Giving Anna a little wave goodbye, she walks out.
“Some people,” says Tweed, shaking his head and still looking mean. He then smiles and says, “OK, I’d like a volunteer from each group to come up and feedback your answers to the class.”
Anna looks out of the window at the grey afternoon, listening distractedly to Beryl attempting to communicate with Ted, and sees Grace walking back to her car – an olive green vintage sports car – waving one arm angrily, the other holding a mobile to her ear. What a shame.
*
Finally, the course finishes. It is getting dark and a steady deluge of rain is pouring down outside. Anna watches bemused as sensorily challenged Ted locates his vehicle, gets in and drives off; no doubt to go shopping. She gets in her car and checks her phone – still nothing from Ben. She calls his number – straight to answer. “Hello gorgeous, well, that was absolutely mind-numbing – you owe me big time Mister, I shall expect recompense for my 4 hours of utter boredom in the format of you buying me an unnecessarily expensive dinner, then taking me to see some ballet, or other visual arts I would otherwise not ordinarily be watching, then I want my back scrubbing in the bath, followed by a full body massage and then, and then…. and then I want snood time. Hmmm, I’ve missed you today. Where are you? Turn your phone on. I’m extremely annoyed.”
The rain continues to fall all the way back to London and then, as per usual, the traffic slows to a crawl on the M25 – an accident ahead. The signs are directing all traffic onto the hard shoulder. The jostling for position begins: indicators on, looking for gaps, watching the assholes racing down the emptying outside lane to get to the front. No kind souls today. She pushes; horns blare behind, she raises her finger and suddenly she thinks of the coiling mass of guppies, the frantic, single-minded primordial brew of selfish individuals; the desire to eat and eat until your stomach splits, whilst those around you starve…
The accident is a big one: she curses the rubberneckers in front of her, all the while inspecting the carnage from the corner of her eye as she creeps past. Three cars involved; it looks like a truck has ploughed through the middle. One car has come off much worse than the others; fire crews are trying to cut someone out of the crushed metal, plastic and glass. It must be a small person.
She accelerates away, glad to put the everyday horror behind her, pushing through the darkness towards home, her friends, Ben. As if summoned, her phone rings. She answers, switches it to speakerphone and balances it on her leg.
“Hello,” she says.
“Anna, it’s Hendo. Listen Anna, something’s happened – where are you?” He sounds strange, bunged up, like he has a cold.
“I’m just driving. I’m on the M25. Where’s Ben?”
“Anna, can you get off the motorway and call me back as soon as you’ve stopped?”
“Hendo, what’s going on? Is Ben OK?”
“Just call me back, will you?”
“OK, OK, I’ll call you in a minute.”
The line goes dead.
Numb.
The car passes over a rough patch of tarmac, momentarily changing the sound of the car’s motion before returning to smoothness. Headlight fractals appear behind in her cracked wing mirror. She pulls the snood up over her nose and breathes.
Shirt
Grace can feel her phone buzzing by her side which, in a way, is helpful, as it is distracting her from the intense pain in her head. She needs to answer it, but this clearly isn’t going to be possible with two people’s hands in her mouth. Why can’t they just rip your teeth out and replace them with something indestructible, like Kevlar or something, save all this unnecessary pain and suffering and time? Christ, the time that gets wasted! Good idea – mental note: Tell Jessie to have a look into the possibility of Kevlar teeth. Save some time.
She wonders if this will be one of those times when attempts to save time end up costing you more time, which reminds her that she’s got that bloody speed awareness course to attend on Monday next week – and if she doesn’t go this time, that’s her license gone. She remembers the moment again – that stupid old woman! Old people should have their licenses revoked as soon as they begin to show signs of creeping. It really wasn’t her fault this time. She’d been stuck behind this old bat doing 25mph in a 30 zone, flashing her lights and making it patently clear that she was in a hurry and needed to get past, but the crone just kept creeping. When she finally turned off – probably to pull over and die – giving Grace the opportunity to put her foot down, there was a camera waiting for her. It clearly wasn’t her fault, but nevertheless, she was the one who was going to have to pay the price. Christ, she would do anything to not have to go and listen to those patronising assholes tell her why going just five miles an hour
faster than the speed limit can increase the risk of fatality for a pedestrian more than fifty per cent. Maybe if you’re driving a piece-of-shit Korean import, but not for the driver of an Audi R8 Spyder that delivers over 500bhp; they should have different driving rules for people who can afford decent cars, because they perform differently.
Jesus, that’s fucking painful. She’s pretty sure that’s way over a seven on the Wong Baker scale or whatever you call it – apparently you can measure pain, whereby two is annoying, four is uncomfortable, six is horrible, eight is dreadful and ten is agonising. Well this tops a seven, easy. Maybe it wasn’t such a good idea to tell the dentist to skip the anaesthetic, but there was no way she was going to go in front of the board at ten with droopy lips and a dozy tongue. She will bear this. She will grip the armrests and list The Simpsons characters on the poster on the ceiling and she will bear this.
Stupid old woman! She wishes she could remember the number plate. She could trace that motor in a second, then send in the boys to put her out of her misery. Apparently the speed awareness course takes four hours. Four hours! She’ll need to sedate herself before she goes in; there’s no way she’ll be able to keep her opinions to herself for four hours. She needs to get cameras attached to the front of the Audi (and the Jag) in case this happens again, then at least she’ll have the satisfaction of knowing that the person responsible for inflicting suffering on her will be reaping tenfold the suffering in return.
Her phone’s vibrating against her leg again. Damn, that hurts! This dentist was meant to be good – why the hell does he have to jam that sharp metal point into her teeth so relentlessly? Whether or not she had any dental issues before she came in here, she’s going to have plenty by the time she leaves. What the hell is he doing – digging holes into her teeth so he can charge her for wedging them up with fillings? Dentists are a shadowy bunch. The whole water fluoridation controversy has got nothing to do with communists and sapping bodily fluids. Dentists simply invested heavily in an element, then claimed that adding it to water supplies would be invaluable in keeping the population’s teeth healthy, when in truth it probably crumbles your gnashers over time. Then all they had to do was put their feet up and wait for the profits and patients to come pouring in, as the gullible governments jumped double-quick to obey the word of the men in white coats. Funny how people trust men in white coats slightly more than men in suits. At the end of the day, they’re still only men. Until the entire upper echelons of suits and white coats have a majority population of women inside them, the developing world will continue to eat itself as it spins down ever-decreasing circles of economic chaos.
The Laundry Basket Page 4
