Sara Baume - Spill Simmer Falter Wither

All I know of maintaining cars is the very little my father taught me for my driving test. I know to check and occasionally replenish the oil. I know my front left tyre is going bald because the impact of a mighty pothole several weeks ago threw the tracking of the wheels into misalignment. And I know my bulbs are blinking out, first the indicators and soon the brake lights, one by one by one. But I don’t understand about the dip and cough, and I am waiting for the day the car fails altogether.

See the funeral home with crucifix-shaped windows. See the tile warehouses and fireplace showrooms. See the homemade signpost hammered into the mud of a roadside flowerbed. COLIN & MARIE’S WEDDING it says, the words underscored by an arrow. Do you think Colin and Marie are really inviting us to their wedding? I’ve never been to a wedding before. You’re gnawing loudly on your most recent stick. Ten minutes ago it was the shape of a flamingo’s long neck with a bump for the head and a curve for the beak. Now it’s splinters flittered across the rag rug. I say your name again but you are not listening.

A yellow circle slides into my dream, a face appears pressed against the window. It’s an old woman’s face, her bottom lip’s crusted with cold sores and her nostrils are prickled with echoing pores. Dandruff falls from her scalp onto her shoulders. It shows up like glitter through the dark, as if she is sporting a sequinned mantle.

Now I try to open my eyes, and they’re already open. The yellow circle is a torch beam and the old woman is real; we are touching noses through the glass. Now she raises a bony knuckle and knocks.

You wake up too, we wake up together. You’re in my lap and yipping. I push you onto the passenger seat, grope for the leash, twine the handle loop around the headrest and clip the other end to your collar. All the while, the old woman is scouring the car with her yellow circle. It sears my leaden eyes as I roll the window down.

‘What are ya at?’ she says. ‘What are ya doing parked up here?’

There are two bungalows a couple of hundred yards up the road from our gateway. They seem suddenly much closer than they seemed when I parked. You’re stomping all over the gingernuts. Calm down.

‘I was just on my way home,’ I say, quietly.

‘What’s that? Speak up!’ The old woman says, as though she’s a school teacher and I’m the mumbling boy at the back of the class. I picture her as a school teacher back in the days when they were still allowed to use a cane. I picture the pigment restored to her hair, the dandruff twisted back into a face-stretching bun.

Now I don’t know why I said that.

‘I was just on my way home,’ I say, ever-so-slightly less quietly.

‘You’re not broke down or anything?’ Now she’s narrowing her eyes.

I wonder how long she watched us for and from where she’s mustered the courage for confrontation. Is there a contingent of grandsons crouched in the ditch behind her, clutching broom handles and shoe horns and hurleys? Is this why you’re ballistic?

‘No,’ I say. I’m dazzled and blinking. I’m tired and meek.

‘Then you can’t sleep here,’ the old woman says, ‘you’re not welcome here.’

She steps back and signals with a swatting hand for me to pull the car out. I fumble my bedding into the back seat, push my toes down to the caps of my boots, wind the handle which raises the window up. The woman stays as she is and continues to shine her torch into my eyes, watching. Why isn’t she afraid? I’m twice her size and you are fierce, and of course there are no crouching grandsons in the ditch. But she can see you’re fastened I suppose, and perhaps I’m not so big now as I was when we set out. For just a second, I feel intoxicatingly reckless. I want to let you out of the car with your mouth unshackled so you can maim the rude old woman. Maybe I even want to maim her myself. But I don’t, of course I don’t. I’m not the kind of person who is able to do things, remember? I’m not the kind of person who could go to Colin and Marie’s wedding, even if I was really invited. Instead I rev and shunt until the car’s back on the road again. I suppose Colin and Marie are all married and done with now. Instead I drive away.

After a while you remember the gingernuts beneath your feet and stick your nose into the trampled packet. Why did I tell her we were on our way home? I wonder if it’s because now I want it to be true.

On a long corner, at last, the car fails.

I get out and push it to the ditch. Now we sit and wait. I don’t understand why, but after an elapse of exactly eleven minutes, it simply starts again, miraculous.

I sleep through the dawn. I never do that. I wake to the sound of inclement grumbling.

It takes my mind several seconds to catch up with my ears. For several seconds I’m waking up in my father’s house again. I’m watching the slothful light spear through my bedroom window between the leaves and stems and flowers of the rejuvenated toadflax. It idles about the rugs and cushion covers, the coal bucket and kindling basket. It illuminates the dust, speck by speck. Now I remember I’m under a duvet in the driver’s seat and we’re parked in a lay-by which seems much larger this morning than it did last night. There’s a gurgling lullaby rising from somewhere. I pull myself up, look beyond the car over a fence and through the trees to a river. Yes, I remember the river. The river’s why I stopped here, to fill my drums and slosh out my underwear. It’s much fatter and slower than the stream in the ring fort’s wood. Even through the windscreen, I can see fins breaching the ripples like tiny sharks.

There’s a blanket of deciduous debris trodden into the surface of the lay-by. I can single out ash leaves, horse chestnut and sycamore. I can see keys, conkers and samaras. Over the fence beneath the trees, there’s a conclave of rusted appliances. A chrome microwave, a hairdryer, an electric keyboard and a toaster. They’re huddling together beneath a sign that reads NO DUMPING: CCTV IN OPERATION. On the other side of the lay-by, there’s a picnic bench and a padlocked chip van. Last night, through the dark, the chip van looked like a portable billboard, a long skip, the rear end of a transportation truck. The lay-by is set back just off the main road and there’s already a trickle of rush-hour traffic. Now I see how I’ve been careless. I feel a flush of danger, like acid reflux in my head. I need a cigarette.

The inclement grumbling is you, of course it’s you. Across the lay-by, a clapped-out Volvo has pulled in and parked alongside the chip van. A man in blue jeans gets out. He pays no attention to the presence of our car. He takes a signboard from the Volvo’s boot and pitches it amongst the trodden leaves. HOT DRINKS MINERALS, it reads, CHIPS CURRY BURGERS BREAKFAST ROLLS. Now he props the van’s awning out, fiddles with the padlock, pulls the door and disappears inside.

Swiftly, swiftly, swiftly, I untangle myself from the duvet, clip on your leash and we tumble from the car. You tow me to the ditch and obligingly piss, now I loop the leash into the lever of the door’s lock. With my hands my own again, I fiddle my loose tobacco into the shape of a smoke. I tidy our night things away, making ready for the road, for another day’s driving. The leeway of danger’s befuddled my head, and my heart’s in my ears again, beating down the sound of your warning growl. My pillow’s only half squashed beneath the dash when, all of a sudden, you yelp and jolt toward something behind me I can’t see. Now your leash is drawn into a trip wire, and as I spin around, I fall hard onto the concrete.