“When I got older, too old to need lulling to sleep, really, the trips went on. I think it was because they’d gone off sex. But I remember the smoky quiet inside the car, and looking up out of the window at the huge buildings with black eyes and frightening turrets. That’s what ordinary buildings looked like. And in the countryside the land rolled on for ever. Everything outside was terrifying and somehow that was reassuring. Any nightmare you could ever have was out there, externalised so that it could be dealt with.
“Great child psychology, but they never knew that. They were just out for a nice run while the roads were empty. Inside it was a haven and they were peaceful and still. My mam’s always smoked like a kipper, and when I was small, you could hear her lungs working, an almost inaudible wheeze. It sounded like someone gearing up to speak and changing their mind at the last minute. We’d drive on for hours on end, it seemed like, in this quiet, as if waiting for the next thing she’d say, but knowing it would never come until the morning, over breakfast, when life was back to normal.”
She looked at him for a moment, thought for a little while, and took the reins of the conversation over to tell him about her early years. About her mam and dad, and how her dad had died. About the mother-daughter fights which were mostly carried out in agonising silences. She could never associate silence with anything but suppressed anger. And yet it puzzled her that she had carried those silences on when she was at odds with Mark. And she explained that this night was quite different for her, in that she found the silence as they drove compelling, calm, healing, even. It was a new experience for her. She thanked Bob, said she was glad he was driving them.
She passed the Extra Strong Mints and hunted out a tape to play when they slipped past the range of the local radio station. When she opened her window a crack to smoke, there were thick snowflakes and the wind’s low moan. Quickly she shut it again and filled up the car interior with smoke. A new doubt crossed her.
“Do you think we’ll make it tonight?”
“I was hoping to get the traffic report on the radio before it went off. I’ve no idea. And the trouble is, in these conditions, none of this looks remotely familiar. I don’t know how far we’ve got to go.”
Sam sank back in her seat. She was beyond frustration or anger. There was a weird lucidity about her rising panic. It was there, along with the doubt in Bob’s capabilities for getting them home safe. But its rising was a slow, slow process. It seemed as if it would take as long to reach it catastrophic height as this snow would to cover and bury their car. Fighting the panic down was a sheer and stealthy battle, one as dogged as the car’s own unrelenting progress. We can’t be buried, she thought, diffidently, if we’re still moving. It’s as simple as that.
THE GALLERY SEEMED TO BE OPEN TILL QUITE LATE. IT’S SO CIVILISED AND so restful with it, Mark thought as he sat and just looked. Open all hours, free to get in.
The warehouse windows were black now and in response the colours here indoors were sharper. It’s like being inside my own body, he thought, oddly. Someone’s sorted this all out for me, he thought. Someone who knows me better than I do.
Iris and Peggy were looking at the prints and cards for sale at the other end. Everything seemed disordered. Mark couldn’t tell where the originals ended and the cheap reproductions began. It was, he decided, in the nature of this art, and was pleased with the thought.
Eventually they decided that it was time to leave. Puccini was playing while they had one last drink. They inhaled the smell of coffee, of pollen, of cigarette smoke, and prepared to store it, to meet the rare, frozen air outside.
Richard led them across the Mill’s car parks, over the roads to the bus stop. “We were daft, really, for coming. I hope they haven’t taken the buses off.” Leaving him and Mark to keep an eye out for their transport, Iris and Peggy popped into the off-license across the road.
“It’s coming!” Richard yelled as they appeared in the snow-clogged doorway, gripping carriers on their way out.
As they bustled on board, Peggy thrust a bottle-shaped parcel into Richard’s hand. “Whiskey,” she muttered, as he stared at the neat twist of paper covering it. “As a thank you.”
It took almost an hour to reach Headingley again. They sat on the front seat on the top deck and got through two bottles of red wine, passing them back and forth and slugging it back. Iris always kept a bottle opener in one of her capacious pockets.
Wine jolted in the bottle as it knocked against their teeth when the bus rode unsteadily over hills. Up here they had a cinema screen of a window, and Leeds was dark, inscrutable in the snow. They smiled drowsily, warmed by wine, and exchanged glances when Mark began to sing. He had a terrible voice and no one could quite tell what it was he sang. But they joined in anyway.
TWENTY TWO
SHOULD WE TAKE A LOOK AT THE INNER MAN?
Mark sits in another of Tony’s living rooms, slumped on a sofa. His feet worry at the woven mats and he weighs a glass of whisky in his hand.
He
