Had Joe been in possession of a small bugle I’m sure he would have blown down it at this point.
‘Because I’ve had an idea.’
‘An idea.’ Oh dear.
‘Yes. A very sensible one. Change of job spec. I’ve decided the best thing will be if you become my chauffeur for a while. You wouldn’t mind that, would you? Sorry, chauffeuse. Whatever. The main point being that your car problem’s sorted.’
‘Sorted? How so?’
‘Today is your lucky day, Lucienne Aurora. Because I am going to let you drive my car.’
3
This is all my sister’s fault.
My sister is a very sociable woman. My sister has a network of friends that could form the basis of a global dot-com conglomerate, as long as the market for tea bags holds up. My sister has, in particular, a friend called Julia, who has a friend called Lily, who is French, and used to be her au pair. Lily (for reasons I really can’t fathom, given that she comes from balmy and beautiful Bordeaux) has lived in Cardiff ever since coming over for her nannying stint here, and is married to a man who teaches woodwork, called Malcolm. Their second child is due any day. Which is why she’s on maternity leave from her job. Which is why JDL, her employers, one of whose biggest clients is a chain of thrusting French hoteliers, have need of a French-speaking PA until she comes back. Hence me. Hence moi. Because I speak French too.
And I can certainly swear in it.
‘Merde!’ I exclaimed. ‘I can’t drive your Jag!’
‘Why ever not?’ asked Joe.
‘Because I can’t. It’s a ridiculous idea!’
‘Ridiculous why precisely?’
‘Because, well, because. Because I don’t want to. Because it’s way too big, for one thing. Because it would barely fit in my garage. Because I’d feel ridiculous sitting in it. Because it represents, oh, I don’t know. Because it’s your sort of car. Not - emphatically not - my sort of car. Because - because I’d feel, I don’t . know - twitched.’
‘Twitched?’
‘Yes, twitched. It’s—’
There was a titter. ‘Only a bloody car, Lu.’
‘We’ve been there,’ I snapped.
‘Exactly. And what a load of tosh you do talk. It’s not ridiculous at all. You’re just scared of it.’
I could almost hear his patronizing smirk.
‘What?’
‘But you don’t need to be.’
‘I am not. I just don’t happen to fancy—’
And then a snort. ‘Yes, you are. But, like I said, you don’t need to be. It’s a complete pussy. Drives itself virtually.’
‘So let it drive you, then.’
And a tut. ‘Now you’re being silly. Look, doesn’t it at least strike you as a sensible solution to our current problem?’
‘Our current problem? Oh, no. This is your current problem. My arms are both fully functional, remember?’
‘And currently in employment.’ He left a long enough pause here to make his point for him. ‘Which is why it makes sense for them to drive for me. And also means I’ll have you on hand, won’t I?’
‘On hand? On hand for what?’
‘On hand to translate, of course. Should the need arise. Anyway,’ he finished, ‘I’m going to get drunk now then try to get some sleep, so goodnight.’
‘Should you be drinking while you’re on those painkillers?’
‘You’re right, actually. I’d better stop taking them.’
Wednesday 25 April
Tell me. Did I dream yesterday?
Brring! Brring!
Did I?
Brring! Brring! Brring!
‘Did I?
Brrrrriiiinnnng!
Then I remember. No. I did not.
Or maybe, yes. Maybe I’m still dreaming. Maybe I’m having one of those fight-or-flight marathon nightmares, where car-eating gorgons take over the world. Maybe the brriiiing is the rasp of crushing-machine monster against chassis and the thump in my temple is the tyres blowing out. Or something like that. But, please, tell me I dreamt it. Please tell me my dear little car’s still outside. I pluck the receiver from its rest and try to pull it to my ear. But because I am left-handed and therefore unable to manage a telephone cord without deforming it into a mulish and argumentative two-inch-long swizzle, the whole phone, plus the latest Joanna Trollope, plus a blister pack of Ibuprofen, plus (oh, bugger!) a half-glass of cranberry juice all come too.
‘Right,’ Joe says. ‘You’re up. Good. Tell you what we’ll do. You go and take the Micra back to Wheels, then pick up a cab and come over to me. Then we’ll go and pick the Jag up and then you can drive us to work.’
No. No. No. No. No. I am NOT BLOODY UP.
‘Do you have any idea what time it is?’ I bark at him.
‘Yes,’ he sings. ‘Eight seventeen.’
Shit.
Eight forty-six.
I am going to wring bloody Pikachu’s fat little neck.
‘But, Mum, you have to.’
‘But I already told you. I can’t!’
‘But if you don’t someone will steal them.’
‘I’m quite sure they won’t.’
‘They will. Mum, you just don’t realize, do you? Dark Charmeleon is the rarest card in Britain! And I told Owen Davies that I’d swap my Fossil Dugtrio for his Charizard Shiny. Mum, you have to go and get them.’
‘Leo, I cannot drive to Swindon this morning. OK?’
‘But you must!’
‘Put your coat on.’
‘Mu-um!’
‘And pick up your PE bag.’
‘Mu-um!’
‘And what on earth is that disgusting blob on your sweatshirt? Come here. Look. I told you. I will ring the police and find out. Here. Take your lunch-box. And if they’ve found them I will ask them to send them to us—’
‘But that will take for ever!’
‘No, it won’t—’
‘It will!’
‘No, it won’t’
‘OK. Then you’ll have to buy me the Team Rocket Pack instead.’
‘The what?’
‘It’s only seven pounds forty-nine. You can get it in Smith’s. Or in that card shop in Llanishen. But you have to go in and get it this morning because Liam told me his mum is going in there today to get it for him and Richard said there was only one left. So you have to go as soon as you’ve taken me to school. Straight away. OK?’
‘Seven forty-nine! Leo, do not imagine for an instant—’
‘Hang on! Did you say the police, Mum? Really? Lush! Will they bring them back in a police car? Lush!’
Having collected Simeon from Del’s, dropped both the boys at school, driven across Cardiff to take the cake-shop Micra back to the car-rental office, waited for a taxi to take me back to Joe’s house, been driven to same (massive, mock-Tudor, burgeoning magnolia, etc.), waited outside for Joe to complete some sort of complicated manoeuvre involving a fax, an e-mail and a bacon sandwich, taken the taxi with him back to the other side of Cardiff, involved myself with the intricacies of a trouser pocket to which I had no right (or inclination) of egress for his wallet, we fetched up at Excelsior Cars (a showroom of some distinction with a lot of flagpoles outside), to pick up his Jaguar, at something approaching ten thirty. Sod this for a job.
The cut on Joe’s face had congealed overnight into something that looked less medically alarming, though it now lent his face an aura of latent aggression. Which obviously hadn’t gone unnoticed by the girl on the service desk when he queried two items on his terrifying bill.
Those sorted (expunged), we retraced our steps along the broad swathe of thick carpet that connected the showroom - all leathery hush and coffee-‘n’-biscotti style opulence - to the real world that existed beyond the ten-foot glass doors. Joe’s car, I saw immediately, had been brought round to meet us, and sat, quietly gleaming, in the watery sun.
We were wafted outside by the thick double doors. Joe aimed his key and it peeped at the pussy. The pussy peepe
d back at him. Peep peep! it went. We approached it (JDL 3 - tres pretentious) then walked along the length of its muscular black flanks. It was so long. So big. He opened the passenger door. Schlup! went the airlock. I grabbed my own handle. Plip! it went. He mouthed the word ‘harder’. I yanked harder on it. Glunk! went the handle. ‘No, harder,’ he said. I pulled harder still. At which point it hissed in resentful defeat. I got in. Smelt buffalo. Sank. Then found my eyes to be on exactly the same plane as the dashboard. But with my trembling feet floundering a good eight or so inches from the business end of the footwell.
We then spent some minutes adjusting for my complete inability to make the situation any easier by having the good grace to be six foot two. This involved twiddling with the seat height, the cushion height, the angle of the seat back, the position of the steering-wheel and the location of the remote-control door mirrors. It might also have involved making an allowance for the conjunction of Saturn and Uranus and, quite possibly, the Great Bear being up Orion’s Belt. What there should have been, and wasn’t, was a gin-and-tonic option, and a handy wipe-dispenser with which to mop my brow. So many variables. So little time. And we hadn’t even started on the driving bit yet.
But we did, soon after. I turned the key in the ignition and the beast came to life. A deep, purring life with a low, feline bass note. I released the hand brake, and pressed my foot on the accelerator. It growled momentarily. And nothing happened. Nothing whatsoever.
‘Jesus Christ! You really can’t drive, can you?’
I couldn’t hear the engine any more. But it was, I knew, impossible to stall an automatic. So if this one had stalled, it had done so itself. I said so.
‘Nooooo,’ Joe replied, Slush-Puppy sweetly. ‘It hasn’t stalled. But it generally doesn’t go anywhere if you leave it in Park. There,’ he said, pointing his uninjured hand at it. ‘Drive. By there. Surprising though it may seem, Lu, it’s the one that says D.’
‘I’m not completely stupid,’ I snapped. ‘And look, this really has to be the first and last time you make any comments about my driving. Any at all! OK? OK? I am perfectly competent. I have a full UK licence. So I think I can manage to drive your bloody car!’
‘Fine,’ he said, nodding benignly. ‘Be my guest.’
By the time we were up and (to use the expression loosely) running, another big fat Jaguar had arrived on the forecourt. Its owner, a short man with a pink tie and sock-braces, had thoughtfully parked it right across the only bit of forecourt that was not already occupied by immaculate, close-coupled, fifty-thousand-pound cars. Thus I had two options. I could either reverse out on to the main road and die backwards now or do a three-point turn and die nose first later.
On the seventh of the turns in. (what eventually would turn out to be) my fifteen-point epic exit, it occurred to me that there was, in fact, another option. I could, if I so wished, stop the car, get out, slam the door and simply walk away. There was little chance in the future that I would ever run into any of the people who were currently witnessing my disgrace. Just as teachers did not discover wealth until they were offered lucrative early-retirement packages and index-linked pensions, so artists, with a few hyped-up Brit Art exceptions, did not generally achieve anything like wealth until they died. And even if unimaginable wealth did ever come my way, I would not, I decided with conviction at that moment, ever, ever purchase a Jaguar car. And what would it matter if I lost my job? I could get another. I could supply-teach French to appallingly behaved teenagers. Or, less dangerously, become a collier in the last South Wales mine. And sue him for mental cruelty or something. Oh, yes. I could certainly do that.
Once I had chewed all this over (at about the eleventh turn, I think) another thought occurred to me: that if I chose that course of action I would have to endure the rest of my life knowing that in a pub somewhere, not a million miles from my home in Cefn Melin, I would, should the conversation turn to women and their many shortcomings, be the butt - the sad butt - of some low-life man’s joke. The man beside me, perhaps. And then, in time, another. A real-life example. A misogynist’s dream anecdote. Proof that women, when it comes to it, just can’t do cars.
And I was not having that.
Thus (and ignoring Joe’s increasingly anxious directives) I finally turned the car round and lurched out into the road. To his credit he uttered not a word for ten yards. And when he did, it was in the faintest of whispers. ‘I have to tell you, Lu, that I am a really bad passenger. So if we go on like this you won’t have to worry about me making any comments about your driving. I will probably be incapable of coherent speech.’ And then he threw back his head - he was already sitting a good foot behind me, so it felt as if he was in the back anyway - and laughed. Laughed loudly and enthusiastically, with his plastered arm clutched to his chest. I would probably have chosen that moment to leave the vehicle entirely, were it not for the fact that he then gulped, gasped, said, ‘Jesus! My rib!’ went white and doubled over, breathing hard and fast, and with his jaws tightly clenched. Ho bloody ho. Ho bloody ho.
We drove on in silence for ten whole minutes.
Then he asked, ‘Mind if I smoke?’
We have somehow arrived in the centre of Cardiff. I say somehow, because apart from my vibrating-legs contribution, I didn’t seem to have a lot to do with it. I just sort of pointed and the car just, well, shot. That and the fact that we spent much of the journey rowing. Just because I wouldn’t let him smoke. What a baby.
‘Look,’ he whined, ‘the window’s open, isn’t it?’
‘Doesn’t make any difference.’
‘Of course it does. The smoke goes out of it.’
‘No, it doesn’t. It just swirls around then comes back in.’
‘So put the air con on, then.’ He started rootling in his pocket.
‘Look, I know you think I’m being unreasonable,’ I said reasonably, ‘but I’ve always had a real problem with people smoking in my car - ‘
‘Ah! But this is my car.’
‘- because it makes me feel sick.’
‘Well, I feel sick as well.’
‘Then smoking won’t help you, surely?’
‘Yes, it will.’
‘I’m sure it won’t. It’ll make you feel worse.’
‘Look, I’m feeling crappy enough. I certainly don’t need you to tell me how it’ll make me feel, thank you.’
‘I’m not! I just think that if this whole driving-you- around thing is going to work, then I’ve got to be honest with you. I really couldn’t do it if you smoked. That’s all.’
‘Hrrmmmmph.’
‘Pardon?’
‘Nothing. OK? Nothing.’
As parking is at a premium in the centre of Cardiff, Joe has done a deal with a guy at his accountants’. The deal is that he can use his spare parking space in return for unspecified accounting-related favours. His accountants are based in a street of late-Victorian buildings that were once homes but are now offices. And the parking is round the back, in one of those horrible narrow cobbled lanes that obviously worked well in a cart-based domestic scenario but has nothing to offer the twenty-first-century motorist apart from pranged exhaust pipes and lateral scrapes. Not that it seems to put anyone off. Also in residence are a small independent car-repair garage, an upholsterer’s, a purveyor of antique fireplaces, and a door in the wall that says ‘Bilbo - knock twice’. Consequently, in this genteel little alley, there exists all manner of active commerce and about eight billion vans. I know all this, incidentally, because we are creeping along it at one and a half miles an hour. (Or whatever the speed is that automatics do when you don’t have your foot on the brake or the accelerator.) And as if that were not enough to make the faint-hearted take up the cudgels for pedestrians, the car-parking space that Joe so obviously cherishes is at the very end, and is minuscule.
It has to be smaller than the car. Has to be. How the hell - how the hell - am I going to get into it? I do not need this stress. I do not need this stress.
I take a deep breath and smile confidently at him. ‘Right. That one there, then.’
‘That’s it. That’s the one. And you’ll need to reverse in.’
Oh, my God. Oh, my God. ‘Oh,’ I say lightly. ‘Can’t I drive straight in there?’
He shakes his head. ‘No, you can’t. Because of that Fiat parked over there.’
He points.
‘Oh.’ I do not need this stress. ‘Are you sure?’
‘Yes, I’m quite sure, Lu. Because if you try to drive into it forwards your offside wing will hit the wall. Unless, of course, you back up and straighten up a bit, and if you try to back up and straighten up a bit then you will find you have hit the Fiat instead.’
He affects a superior expression and waits.
‘Ri-ight,’ I say, nodding. ‘Ho-hum. So how am I supposed to reverse into it? How am I supposed to turn the car round?’
‘Simple. You drive into that space first.’
He points again. Uurgh.
‘That one opposite? But there’s a car in there already.’
‘Ye-es,’ he agrees. ‘But it’s only a small one, and if you pull up hard behind it you will find you will then be able to reverse into my space without any problem at all.’
I do not need this stress. Deep breath. Deep breath. Without any problem at all. I grip the wheel hard so he can’t see me trembling.
‘In here, then?’
‘That’s right. In you go.’
So I ease down the pedal. The car starts to creep forward. ‘Like this?’
‘Almost. But - um, whoa - you need to get further over. No, no. Further than that. No. Left hand down now. That’s it.’
I brake. ‘That’s it?’
‘Hardly. Don’t be such a wimp, Lu. You’ve got yards in front. Yards. That’s it, that’s it … Stop! Jesus.’
‘There’s no need to flap. I was stopping.’
He ploughs his hair with his hand. ‘OK. Into reverse, then. Into reverse.’ I get into reverse. ‘Right. Hard round. Watch your wing. That’s it. No. Noooo! No. No. No. You’ll have to come out and straighten up a bit—’
‘I can see that, thank you.’
‘All right, all right - God! Watch your wing, will you? God! You’ve got—’
One Day, Someday Page 3