‘If this goes on much longer, we’ll miss the Marriage Course tonight,’ she said. ‘Miss the first session.’
Max didn’t respond.
She remembered their wedding.
One of the bridesmaids, a school friend called Lillian, had become dehydrated throughout the morning and, just as the vows were being exchanged, had fainted. Not uncommon, that. She went down stiffly; the sound of her coiffed head striking the floor resounded through the chapel like a thunderclap. A single flower, Ursula remembered, detached itself from her hair, completed a single revolution and came to rest in the nape of her neck. Ursula hid behind Max’s bulk as people clustered around the fallen girl. Max stood his ground, commanded the chapel, made everyone feel that things were under control, until the emergency passed and the ceremony recommenced. It was the sort of situation in which he thrived. He was a manager by training and by instinct, good under pressure; he was six foot two, and broad, imposing; he had the gift of leadership, she knew that; that had been part of what had attracted her to him. This was a man who, even as his own wedding was being disrupted by forces unseen, could be a rock in the storm. Or so she thought then. Mad Max. She turned the sky-blue lid of the bottle until it closed, and put it – empty and weightless, ridiculous – back into the glove compartment. Max was sitting motionless, looking out of the window.
That world outside the car: did it really exist? That seething landscape of machines, clouds of exhaust, distant fields and trees? The far-off city, in a corner of which the Marriage Course would already be under way? It seemed so remote from here in the Chrysler. Like sitting in a jeep on safari, looking out at another planet. She noticed the silhouettes of people in car windows. Some speaking on their phones, their faces lit up by the screens. Some gazing listlessly into space. One man eating from a packet propped on the steering wheel. There, a couple kissing, they were even kissing. An old lady reading. Some bicycles, like trophy bucks, on the back of a Volvo. A caravan. A lorry painted in supermarket livery – Waitrose? – with a homely slogan on the side that she couldn’t be bothered to read. A canoe, upended, on a roof. There was a white van beside them; she couldn’t see the driver. She flipped a switch. The doors of the Chrysler responded by locking, simultaneously, with a satisfying clunk. She closed her eyes.
No signal
But sleep evaded her. She readjusted her position again and again, but it only made matters worse. After some time, she opened her eyes and sat there looking at the cars, the road. The atmosphere in the car was heavy. A long time passed before she looked around. When she did, Max, lips pinched sourly, was doing his stress thing, picking at his nails with that horrid little penknife. Ursula felt briefly sorry for him; he looked even larger than usual, very cramped. He was grappling with something, she could feel it. Why wouldn’t he tell her what it was? She hadn’t asked him, granted; but she would never have needed to before. She looked at her watch. The course was well under way. The babysitter would have come to the house, waited for a while, gone home. Ursula would pay her anyway, keep her sweet, good babysitters were hard to come by. But for what? The end, she thought, must be nigh. Ah, it was stuffy in the car, there did not seem to be any oxygen. The only air available had been filtered through fabric, plastic, leather, circulated and recycled many times, polluted with air freshener. But she knew he wouldn’t open the windows, even if she asked him to.
Outside was an endless universe; inside everything was constricted. She looked at the kids in the mirror. Carly, bless her, had fallen asleep, the book tented on her tummy as if she was an old man at the beach. She looked flushed – not ill? Surely not. Bonnie was awake now, looking out of the window as if she had had been born in a state of stickiness and boredom. She had finished her crisps, and her face was smeared with orange food dye. In the half-light her mouth looked like a gash in the centre of a bruise. But she was quiet. With a bit of luck she’d nod off again.
Ursula looked away, looked down at her hands, at the dashboard, out of the window. In a silver car in the next lane – a Golf, perhaps, she thought – a man was looking at her. Immediately they both turned away. When she looked back he was hidden behind the headrest.
Her sense of time was starting to skew. She hadn’t been watching the clock. Men had got out of their cars, craned their necks like meerkats, then got back in. Max had done this on three occasions, periscoping absurdly in an effort to catch sight of the obstruction. He had even asked another motorist if he had any idea what was going on. He hadn’t. Ursula wondered if his pride was preventing him from turning on the radio. Perhaps that was the cause of his stress. There he was, picking away, pick, pick, pick, pick, pick. He had across his chin and neck a dark smudge of bristle, now; amazing that men got that. Pick, pick, pick, pick, pick. It was as if she didn’t exist.
Max folded his penknife decisively and stashed it away in his pocket. ‘Big day at work tomorrow,’ he announced, scratching his neck. ‘Starting at the CCCS.’
‘The what?’
He sighed, still did not look at her. ‘Consumer Credit Counselling Service. You know, consumer debt. I’ve only mentioned it a million times. We’re starting a six-month analysis of their customer records system.’ He sat back, rubbed his eyes.
A strange quietude reigned in the vehicle. It was as if, Ursula thought, the car was newly inanimate. The growl of the beast had been silenced; the audacious roar of the technological age had stopped. Everything was dying around them.
More emergency vehicles howled past on the hard shoulder. A helicopter throbbed overhead. Max twisted and looked at the children, then fell heavily back into his seat. He rubbed his eyes again. Then he took his phone out of his pocket, unlocked it, held it at various angles of elevation. ‘I tell you what’s really stressing me out,’ he said, ‘is having somebody else’s kid in the car. That’s what’s really stressing me out.’
‘Don’t worry,’ Ursula began, ‘it can’t last for ever. I’m sure we’ve got off lightly compared to the people involved in whatever’s going on up there.’
‘That’s not the point, Ursula,’ said Max, opening the window – at last – and raising the phone into the night. ‘The point is that Bonnie’s parents are going to be worried sick. And there’s no fucking signal.’ He gave his phone a final flourish and put it awkwardly back in his pocket. Ursula gasped at the freshness of the air. The window hummed shut. There was a pause.
‘Isn’t it quiet in here,’ said Ursula, ‘without the noise of the engine?’
‘Hmmm.’
‘How much longer do you think we’ll be stuck here? We could be sat here all night.’
‘Possible. Unlikely.’
‘What would we do for food? And water? Shit, I’ve drunk all the water.’
‘There’ll be shops around here somewhere, if it comes to that. I’ll go and explore, if it comes to that.’
‘Do you think that Waitrose van would give us any water? And food?’
‘Don’t be stupid.’
‘Where will you go, then?’
‘I don’t know. I’ll find somewhere.’
‘What if the traffic moves while you’re away?’
‘I’ll only go if we’re stuck here all night.’
‘How will we know? There’ll be no way of knowing.’
‘We’ll know. We’ll make an educated guess. We’ll take a view.’
There was a pause.
‘What about the kids?’ said Ursula. ‘They’ll have to eat something at some point. They haven’t had any supper. They’ll be dehydrated.’
‘Hmmm.’
‘And James and Becky will be worried sick.’
‘Oh, stop going on about James and Becky.’
‘They’ll be worried. They might have called the police by now.’
‘I doubt it. I doubt their brains work fast enough.’
‘Max, please. I’d be worried sick if it was my child.’
‘Well, you’re not exactly known for your level-headedness.’
‘Perhaps
we should try and borrow someone’s phone.’
‘Whose phone?’
‘I don’t know. One of the people in the other cars. We could offer them a couple of quid.’
‘I’m not going to embarrass myself by begging,’ said Max. ‘Because that’s what it amounts to. Begging.’
‘It doesn’t. It’s paying for a favour.’
‘It’s begging.’
‘I’ll do it,’ said Ursula. ‘I don’t mind.’
‘You don’t mind begging?’
‘It’s not begging.’
‘I thought you had more self-respect than that.’
‘It’s not begging.’
‘I’m not having you embarrassing yourself.’
‘What difference does it make to you?’
‘We’re married. You’re my wife. What embarrasses you embarrasses me. I’m not having you beg.’
‘It’s not begging.’
‘You’ll make a fool of yourself.’
‘Why do you care what I do? I’m not embarrassed by what you do. When you make a fool of yourself, I don’t feel embarrassed.’
‘That’s because I don’t tend to make a fool of myself,’ said Max. ‘Maybe I should make a fool of myself for once, just so you can see what it’s like.’
‘Ha ha ha,’ said Ursula. ‘What about the other day, when you told that poor guy on the Tube to turn his music down? That was embarrassing.’
‘Why should I be embarrassed by that? I didn’t find it embarrassing. He should have been embarrassed by that, not me. Stupid twat.’
‘All he was doing was minding his own business, listening to his iPod, and you had to go and bloody interfere. The poor sod thought you were about to mug him.’
‘He was being anti-social. It was disturbing everyone in the entire carriage.’
‘It wasn’t disturbing me.’
‘That’s because your head’s in the clouds half the time.’
‘It was embarrassing, Max. You were embarrassing.’
Max sighed. ‘You can’t do any better than that?’
‘What about when you served dessert wine with the fish when Bob and Laura came round? Or when you fucked the tyre up by clipping that wall on the way to Surrey? That was expensive as well as embarrassing.’
‘Why was that embarrassing? That wasn’t embarrassing.’
‘It was embarrassing because of your careless driving. Your carelessness was an embarrassment.’
‘You know full well my driving had nothing to do with it. That wall was nigh on invisible, by the side of the road like that. Behind the turn. Under the bush. We could have sued.’
‘This is so typical, Max. You just can’t ever accept that you’ve made a mistake.’
‘I’m perfectly willing to admit when I’ve made a mistake. But I don’t see why I should say I’ve made a mistake when I haven’t made a mistake.’
There was an acrimonious pause.
‘You know what is really embarrassing, Max?’
‘I’ve got a feeling you’re going to tell me.’
‘The fact that you’ve never once in your life admitted that you’ve done something wrong. And it’s even more embarrassing that you never get embarrassed when you make a fuck-up. That I find truly embarrassing. And so would you, if you had even a modicum of self-awareness. Which you don’t.’
Max, as their conversation gathered animosity and momentum, had started to feel like a spectator. Here was the globe, scarred by war, fouled by inequality, blemished by the ugliness of industry, modernity, technology, and the cruelness of nature underlying it all; here were the little chips of land called Britain; here was the seething bearpit of London; here was the M25, cobbled with vehicles; here was the jam; here, his own car; beside him was his wife; behind him two children. Here was the magic tree, dangling from the mirror. Here was the logo, coined in the centre of the steering wheel. Here was the car seat. Here was his body. And within that he crouched, confused and tiny and alone, looking out.
Why was he behaving like this? He, who prided himself on his high-mindedness? And how could he explain this visceral hatred he felt towards his wife? He had long admitted, to himself at least, that he no longer wanted her. They shared the bonds of circumstance – they had a joint mortgage, joint car, joint child – and once, before the darkening mists of time descended, they had experienced something that could be called love. But now it was duty, nothing else. It came in two parts. Number one: he had promised never to leave her. Number two: the responsibility for Carly was on his shoulders. His own father had worn his responsibilities lightly, and shrugged them off the first time they were tested. And the decades that followed had proved beyond doubt his mistake. Max would never do the same. Number three: despite everything, he was determined to be a good man.
What would Ursula say if he were to just turn away and pull out a book? He should do it. He should simply pull out a paperback and begin to read. But he didn’t have a paperback. Either way, he wished he was the sort of man who, cognisant of his wife’s anger, could concentrate on a paperback. He had tried it in the past, not with a paperback but with a magazine, managed it for one sentence, for two. But he had never even made it to the end of the paragraph. No, his emotions were not his own.
How long could he live with this conflict inside? How many more nights would he have to endure before he could lay his head on the pillow knowing that he would sleep easily, and through the night? Ursula was talking to him now. He could hear her as if from a great distance, as if through a wall of water. She was trying to return them to the conflict. To their natural state. Had she really suggested that they borrow a phone from a stranger? Why was he so resistant to the idea? Was it simply because Ursula had come up with it? Perhaps his reaction had been knee-jerk. Perhaps it demonstrated his lack of trust in humanity. He had to admit, if only to himself, that should some poor soul knock on the window of his Chrysler asking to borrow something – a phone perhaps, or something equivalent given the fact that his phone does not have a signal – that he would, out of hand, refuse. And that Ursula, in contrast, would be magnanimous. Perhaps she was, as he had suspected all along, simply the better human being.
Now that he had started a confession, he might as well admit, to himself at least, that he was quite relieved to have missed the marriage guidance session. Would it be going too far to suggest that he was glad of this traffic jam? Perhaps. But only just. Either way, his chances of avoiding the next one were slim.
And of course, he was aware that underpinning it all was a single issue. No, not a single issue; a single woman. That was wrong – the games words play! A married woman. She was on his mind all the time, from the moment his eyes peeled open in the morning until they lowered at night. And throughout the night. He confessed to himself that he missed her terribly, even though they had met, in secret, only last week. And the married woman’s name – the name that was driving him crazy – was Nicole.
Night had fallen profoundly now. All ambiguity had faded from the sky. Ursula rested her head against the window, feeling numb and dead like a puppet.
Waitrose Jim
Max slammed the car door behind him and looked around. He was trembling. He took a deep breath; the night air had cooled, it entered his lungs like a balm. Another deep breath, a third, and he was better composed. He made his way along the long lines of traffic, negotiating wing mirrors and half-open doors with awkward rotations of his hips. Most of the engines were quiet now, and the few that still grumbled were sending wispy smoke signals into the atmosphere. He glanced into cars as he passed them, hoping for a friendly face. Everybody seemed to be groping their way towards sleep. Many dozed already; many gazed listlessly into space, trying to make themselves vulnerable to sleep’s approach. All were emotionless. He walked on.
At times like these, it was his habit to remind himself of his wedding speech, as if to conjure up the love that had expressed itself then. He still knew parts of it by heart: how they had met through a mutual friend, all those
years ago. How he had fallen head-over-heels almost overnight, how he had even given up a trip to Spain with the lads for her. They had loved it, the wedding guests. And now he tried to remember it, as if, like some ancient amulet, the recollection of that previous man’s emotions could ease his suffering now.
The previous night, Carly had been unable to sleep. After more than an hour of comforting – for Ursula had given up – he had lain beside her on her bed, his hand on her fragile shoulder, and waited as the room darkened, its shadows multiplying into a smothering thicket, and her breath slowed into that particular rhythm of sleep. And he had been struck, all at once, by the imperfections of the days of his life, of everyone’s lives, all sullied by concerns about the past, about the future, insecurities and angers and unrequited passions, while the moon shone on and the breeze passed unheard above the trees overhead. And he had remembered the members of his family who were gone, realised how rarely he thought of them now. And he had thought that his heart would break.
Night clung to his shirt in the sour streetlight. The people in their vehicles seemed so remote; they might as well be waxwork dummies, seated there for effect. He was just about to return to the car, when he caught somebody’s eye. It was a delivery man, clad in a uniform, skirting the Waitrose van. The man paused, looked about to bolt, then smiled weakly. Perhaps it was his obvious consternation that infused Max with a sudden courage.
‘Awful, isn’t it?’ said Max. ‘I’ve never seen anything like it.’
The man nodded, sweeping his eyes along the cars and into the distance. ‘We’re all going to be late now, like,’ he said. ‘Thousands of us. Hundreds of thousands, like. Think there’s a million here?’
‘No. Not a million.’
‘Think it’s solid the entire way round the M25? The whole sort of ring?’
‘Doubt it.’ Max sighed. ‘The volume of frustration that’s building up, it’s enough to fuel a rocket to the moon.’
Jam Page 2