Contact

by Jonathan Buckley

  One reason I was slow to comprehend my own motive is that within a minute or two of having told Sam about Father Gorman’s commission, I’d clashed with him. And shortly after that, things took an even sharper turn for the worse.

  The situation changed when, apropos of absolutely nothing I’d been saying, Sam asked me: ‘What did you think of her? Sarah. I mean, I know you fancied her. Obviously you fancied her. But as a person – what did you think?’

  I was taken aback, not just by the suddenness with which he’d changed the subject, but by his manner. It was as though we were a couple of lads who’d been out on the town and now he was asking me what I’d thought of a girl we’d been chatting to. I told him that I didn’t want to talk about it.

  ‘You what?’ he screeched, as if I’d said something incredible. ‘You’re my dad and I’m asking you what you thought of my mum, and you’re telling me you don’t want to talk about it? After what we’ve just been doing?’

  My answer to this was that I had known Sarah, briefly, a long time ago, and no purpose would be served by going over what had happened between us.

  ‘Well,’ said Sam, ‘what happened between you and Sarah was me, wasn’t it? So I think I have a right to know.’

  ‘I don’t think you do,’ I said. ‘And please slow down,’ I added, because we were now travelling as fast as we had been on the way down. Sam decelerated by perhaps two miles per hour. ‘A little more,’ I said. This provoked a stamp on the brakes, and a brief episode of ostentatiously cautious driving. In the middle distance, ahead of us on the road, there was a livestock lorry. We were soon right behind it; when we came to a long corner at which it might have been possible to overtake, Sam made no attempt to pass. He stared dully at the rear of the lorry, in obedience to my tedious instructions. A protracted silence was broken by the ringing of my phone. I saw from the screen that it was Aileen, so of course I couldn’t answer it, because she’d have heard the noise of the Toyota and I’d have had to invent an explanation for where I was. I held the phone until it switched to the answering service, then repocketed it; Sam smirked.

  We drove on, not talking, stuck in the wake of the lorry. Then I looked in the wing mirror and saw a car, a silver open-top BMW, so close that most of its radiator grille was hidden. I’d been glancing in the mirror every minute or so, I suppose, and the road behind us had been empty last time I looked, so the car must have been doing quite a speed before it caught up with us. Its headlights flashed, and Sam put a hand out of the window and stuck up a finger. The car fell a little further back, flashed, and came up even closer than before. ‘Wanker,’ Sam grumbled. He prodded at the brakes, which prompted a long blast on the horn from the driver of the BMW. In the mirror I saw a hand making a motion as if slapping something aside. The BMW moved into the right-hand side of the road, preparing to overtake; Sam eased the Toyota a yard to the right, and peered round the lorry. ‘No fucking way, sunshine,’ he hissed, getting back in lane a few seconds before a van flew past in the opposite direction. Again the BMW sidled out; again Sam did the same. Headlights flashed; Sam touched the brakes; the BMW’s horn blared; I could see the driver’s face contorting with fury.

  We were on a long blind corner, on the flank of a hill, when the BMW came alongside. With one hand the driver was pressing the horn; with the other he was gesturing that we should get out of his way. Sam put his head out and shouted: ‘Cunt!’ At this the BMW driver seized the steering wheel in both hands, accelerated past, then turned sharply into the gap between us and the lorry, a gap that was barely larger than his car. We came into contact with the rear of the BMW, not as forcefully as had seemed inevitable, but with enough strength to shatter some glass. The BMW slewed to a stop at a right-angle to the road, and the driver got out.

  He was a man in his late thirties, somewhat shorter than Sam but thick-set and broad-shouldered – he looked like someone who spent hours of each week in the gym. He had spiky hair that was unnaturally blond, and wore an expensive-looking black jacket over a brilliant white shirt, the top two or three buttons of which were undone. He was wearing sunglasses, which were removed as he bent down to survey the damage. The inspection completed, he stood up and scratched at his chin, frowning as if he’d been the victim of a serious act of vandalism. The frown was directed at Sam, who was now breezily inspecting the Toyota, which had thick steel bars across its front and was more or less in the same state as it had been before the collision. Waiting for Sam’s attention to come his way, the man adjusted his expression to one of lavish incredulity at Sam’s casual reaction to the mess he’d made. Meanwhile, the lorry had come to a halt a couple of hundred yards away, and the driver was walking towards us. Ignoring the driver of the BMW, Sam strolled down the lane to meet the lorry driver, crunching through the pieces of glass and plastic that littered the tarmac. They exchanged a few words; Sam made some reassuring gestures; the driver handed Sam a piece of paper before returning to his lorry and driving away.

  Having concluded his dealings with the lorry driver, Sam was walking back down the lane towards the Toyota, without so much as a glance for the BMW or its owner. Realising that Sam intended simply to leave, the BMW man darted forward and put himself between Sam and his vehicle, at a distance of maybe ten yards from where I was. I couldn’t hear what was being said, but it was clear that the man was insisting that Sam take a closer look at the damage that had been caused to his car. Sam shrugged, followed him, gave the dented stern of the BMW a cursory examination, shrugged again, and turned away. Before he’d taken more than a couple of steps, he’d been grabbed by the arm. Sam’s gaze travelled slowly from the man’s hand to his face, then he smiled and said something that resulted in the prompt removal of the hand. The man moved closer to his car, and urged Sam to look at the mess that had been made of the area around the rear light. Sam’s response was to raise a foot and tap at the cracked glass with the toe of a boot. Winding down my window, I heard: ‘What you going to do about it?’

  This made Sam laugh; turning away, he muttered: ‘Go fuck yourself.’

  The BMW driver’s face was now so strained with anger, it looked as if invisible hands were throttling him. He sprang forward, seized Sam by the shoulder, yanked him round and threw a punch – which missed by several inches, because Sam pulled his head back while the fist was in flight. After doing a sort of dance which I think was intended to make him look like a trained boxer, the man threw a second punch, which Sam similarly dodged. A third punch followed immediately; Sam dealt with it by seizing the wrist in mid-air and pulling the arm down slowly, like a stiff lever. As he did this he said something I couldn’t hear clearly, and produced a look that was so grim it would have made any rational person immediately reconsider his tactics. However, the moment his arm was released the man launched another punch, and this one, though Sam ducked away from it, caught him on the bicep. Rubbing the arm where he’d been hit, Sam looked up at the sky as though giving thought to what he should now do, then warned the man that if he didn’t go back to his car right now and get the fuck out of here, he’d be leaving the area in an ambulance. I heard this warning distinctly; it was uttered in a perfectly even voice, as though Sam were discussing a consequence as unavoidable as night following day.

  The man called Sam a cunt, but seemed to have understood that he’d pushed his luck as far as was wise. ‘OK,’ said Sam, with a dismissive wave of the hand, and he started to walk towards his side of the Toyota. He’d covered five yards when the man decided to follow. Sam wheeled about and shouted, as if dealing with a dog that was making a nuisance of itself: ‘You. Fuck. Off.’ He turned his back, whereupon the idiot hopped forward and shoved Sam between the shoulder blades.

  Sensing that the situation was in danger of deteriorating rapidly, I opened my door, but before I could get out, let alone tell anyone to calm down, the man shouted at me: ‘You keep out of it.’ Sam motioned that I should stay inside, and in the split second in which I was closing my door and not looking at the two of them, S
am struck out. I saw the man bend double with his hands to his face, and when he straightened up there was a streak of blood down the front of his shirt. He uncovered his face and stared at the blood in his palms, and as he was doing this he took another punch to the side of the head, which put him on the ground, on his back. As though waiting for a drunken friend to get to his feet, Sam propped himself against the Toyota, arms crossed, gazing at the fields beside the road. Slowly the man raised himself onto his knees. Sam had a fist cocked. The man raised his hands, cringing, which persuaded Sam to lower the fist. Upright now, the man pinched his front teeth and grimaced. Blood dribbled from his mouth. For a few seconds they stood facing each other. ‘Done?’ said Sam. The man tugged at the sleeves of his jacket, dusted them down, and kicked Sam in the crotch. The kick must have been painful, but Sam barely reacted. Instead he squinted, as if peering through fog at something apparently odd, before hitting the man with a punch to the jaw that was so strong it made him stagger sideways in four or five little steps, as if the ground had tilted thirty degrees; a fast punch to the nose sent him backwards. Sam shadowed him, leaning forward and mouthing a few quiet words, as if to enquire if everything was all right.

  By now the man’s face was daubed with blood from nose to his chin, and he was having to hold onto his car to stay upright. Sam seemed to take pity on him. Holding him by the shoulders, he shifted him so that he was sitting on the top edge of the nearside rear door, with his feet braced on the road. The man was too dazed to resist being manoeuvred in this way. Sam searched the pockets of the man’s jacket and took out a mobile phone, which he lobbed onto a front seat. He pointed to where the phone had landed, and gave him a pat on the back. Looking down, the man nodded as he massaged his jaw; then Sam pushed him firmly on the chest, toppling him backwards into the car. A foot remained resting, motionless, on the door. Sam knocked the foot off and sauntered towards the back of the pickup. When he reappeared he had a wrench in his hand and was striding towards the BMW.

  Terrified by what I thought he was going to do, I flung open the door and yelled ‘Stop!’, but he took no notice of me. He looked into the car, holding the wrench by his side, then he went to the front and, with one sharp and precise blow, as if striking a gong lightly, he shattered the windscreen. That done, he returned to the Toyota, glancing to left and right as he strolled, wholly at ease on this fine afternoon, in this fine little corner of England. Having tossed the wrench into the back, he knelt by the verge to wipe the blood from his hands; unhurriedly, as though washing himself in the morning, he swept his hands back and forth through the grass. While doing this he noticed that a car was now coming towards us. As casually as a person going to greet the postman, Sam stood up and walked a few yards down the road, taking up position in front and to the side of the BMW. The car stopped and the driver wound down his window; Sam stooped to talk to him, placing a hand on the roof and standing in such a way as to limit the view of the scene. Assured that everything was under control, the driver drove away, with a small wave for Sam and another for me.

  Sam waited until he was out of sight, then went to the back of the Toyota again and reappeared with a large white water canister, which he emptied over the rear seat of the BMW. For a moment a hand appeared, trying to grab onto the door. Sam walked off, returned the canister to its place, and swung himself into the driver’s seat. As we pulled away, the man was struggling to sit up; blood was coming out of a gash across his nose. ‘What a fucking plonker,’ Sam muttered, and that was all he said until we were back in town. I said nothing; I wanted to get away from him as soon as possible, and a variety of consequences were running through my mind. His face was clenched, but once or twice I thought I detected a sign of self-annoyance in his eyes. He dropped me back at Bluewater. ‘See you,’ he said as I got out, and within seconds he was gone.

  Aileen wasn’t yet home when I arrived. This episode would have repercussions, I was certain, so I had to have some sort of story ready. I told Aileen that I’d been a witness to a road rage incident, and the police might be in touch. I played it down, and skimped on the details. It wasn’t possible to tell the truth at the moment. I was praying that I would never have to.

  8

  The police were soon in touch. Fortunately I was the one who took the call, and to avoid complications I arranged to be interviewed at the station rather than at home.

  Two officers led me to the interview room. My anxiety, I thought, must have been conspicuous, especially after their opening enquiry: they asked if I could confirm that the incident had happened as Mr Williams and I were returning from the cemetery where his mother was buried. The next question, I was sure, would be something along the lines of: ‘Mr Williams says you’re his father – is this correct?’ In turmoil, despite the officers’ sympathetic manner, I answered that this was indeed the case. Then I volunteered that Mr Williams’ mother was a friend of mine from many years ago. This must have accorded with what Sam had told them, because the discussion now moved on to the fight itself.

  The crash, I told them, had been the other driver’s fault entirely; Mr Williams could not have done anything to prevent it. I described in detail how the collision had occurred; I drew a diagram. And how about the altercation that had followed? Without compromising myself I could tell them that Mr Williams had not started the brawl. The other man – his name was Terry Fenway, they told me – had seemed hell-bent on having a fight, whereas Mr Williams had made several attempts to deter him. I told them that Mr Fenway had struck Mr Williams first, and Mr Williams had not retaliated. One of the officers made a note of this, before remarking that there was a notable difference between the injuries sustained by Mr Fenway and the injuries sustained by Mr Williams. Mr Williams, in fact, would appear to have emerged unscathed; Mr Fenway, by contrast, had sustained a broken nose and extensive bruising. Did I have any comment to make on this discrepancy? Mr Fenway, I said, had been extremely aggressive from the outset, but most of his punches had missed; Mr Williams, on the other hand, had not missed. I was asked about the blow that had cracked Mr Fenway’s nose; I hadn’t had a clear view, I answered – and managed to persuade myself that this was broadly true.

  Mr Williams had admitted that he’d smashed the windscreen of the BMW, they told me. His action, they proposed, was an act of criminal damage. I said that I had tried to dissuade him, but Mr Fenway’s actions had so enraged Mr Williams that he was in no frame of mind to listen to me. Would I say, they asked, that Mr Williams’ assault on Mr Fenway was as excessive as his vandalism of Mr Fenway’s car? This was the trickiest part of the interview. Of course I thought that Sam had lost control, but if I were to say as much, and thus incriminate him, who was to know what he might do? It was highly likely, I thought, that at the very least he would retaliate by telling his story to Aileen, and I couldn’t run the risk of that, so I repeated that Mr Fenway had attacked Mr Williams, who had restrained himself for longer than most people would have found possible. For how long, they asked me, did Mr Williams continue hitting Mr Fenway once he’d decided he had no option but to use physical force? Only a few seconds, I replied – which made one of the policemen raise an eyebrow, though I’d given them an honest answer. And that, more or less, was the end of the conversation. When I left the police station I was convinced that worse was soon to come.

  I now had a spasm of anxiety every time the phone rang. It was only a matter of time, I was sure, before the police or Sam called me. But the half-hour at the station turned out to be the end of my involvement in whatever investigation there was. Neither did any insurer contact me. It wasn’t long, however, before Sam reappeared.

  Early on a Saturday afternoon, a fortnight after the crash, I took a call from Geoff Collingwood, the manager on the North Street branch. There had been an incident. A man had come into the showroom an hour ago, ‘a scruffy individual’, said Geoff. When Geoff had asked if he could be of assistance, the man had said he was just looking; he made some remark about the price of everything, but he
wasn’t abusive, not at first. Geoff left him alone. Two women – a mother and daughter – were also looking around. The man said something to the daughter to which she took exception; he then seemed to try to make out that it had been intended as a joke. The mother, sensing that there’d been an unpleasant exchange with the man, asked questions of her daughter, after which she informed Geoff that one of his customers had been making objectionable comments. She pointed out the offender. Geoff told him that a complaint had been made. The man seemed to find this both surprising and interesting; he requested further information. ‘You know perfectly well what we’re talking about,’ said the older woman. ‘I’m afraid I don’t,’ said the man, the soul of innocent politeness. The mother said that she had no intention of repeating verbatim what he’d said to her, but was astonished that he should pretend to have no idea what this was about. ‘Not the slightest,’ Sam sighed. It had come to something, he said, as he prepared to leave, that a man could not compliment a woman on her appearance without being accused of making a nuisance of himself. He smiled sadly, as if grievously disappointed that he could have been so slandered, and took his leave. At the door he stopped and beckoned Geoff to come over. Looking steadily at the women, as if intending that they should suspect that they were the subject of whatever he was saying, he said: ‘Do me a favour. Tell Mr Pattison I dropped by, will you? Tell him today, there’s a good chap.’ Having given him an intimidating little tap on the shoulder with a rolled-up newspaper, he swaggered off.