A. Kennedy - All the Rage

He now had a presentable London postcode, loft extension, Polish au pair with a marine-biology degree — or zoology, something like that — and the ability to amplify his griefs at the hands of a rail network in crisis by writing about them — yet more suffering imposed on blameless middle classes — for a national daily paper. But none of his life’s securities meant that he wasn’t still ready to doubt the station signs. His current home and circumstances felt immediately unconvincing when he got stressed. There’d be this creep of ridiculous suspicion: maybe he wasn’t where he thought, maybe over the bridge would be that other, original shithole and his place in it waiting for him, irrevocable. He’d spin on his heel and here would be Mum in the loud-walled sitting room catching a breather before tea, hands worried nonetheless with knitting, or sewing, or Christ knew what — and odd, sweet ham for sandwiches, stuff you got out of a tin — and his dad back from the garage — and smoking on buses and trains, and ciggies being advertised on telly — ciggies everywhere — and cheap pullovers that sparked up blue with static when you peeled them off fast in the dark. You’d never get girls with a pullover like that.

Not with a pullover at all. Not to a satisfactory degree.

He was out, though, truly long gone and free and he hadn’t even once been forced, for professional reasons, to offer deferential and trustworthy smiles to strangers with broken cars and he didn’t need a girl, he had a wife.

I’m just stuck here at the moment, where nothing stops. It really does — nothing stays here and you have to breathe it in. I am inhaling the stink of nothing.

His imagination bridled before it could fully recall the scent of his own skin on Sunday mornings: shifting the covers and catching that mustiness, tiredness. He smelled of nothing. It was on him.

A long lie and a touch of sweat and Pauline already virtuously about in the garden, or the kitchen, or her church.

I always do think of it as her personal church, because she does, and who am I to disagree?

But there he would be, stagnant and upstairs and holding on around an hour, or maybe two, of peace.

Mark was very fond of peace. Increasingly.

Pauline was less inclined towards the tranquil.

Mercurial. Why I married her. I’m sure. At least partly that.

That and she thought she was pregnant. Turned out she was wrong. It’s a trait we share, our fondness for the wrong.

But I did also love the way she could kick off and stay off, generate these heartfelt torrents of fury. She has retained the capacity to be magnificent in that area and I continue to admire it.

I truly do.

It was plain that she wanted a row at the moment, was quietly and almost sexily brooding on the words she might say, were she not surrounded by a mass of other non-travelling travellers. She’d ask him again — rhetorical question — why he couldn’t have driven them over from London and right to the arse-end of Wales for no very good reason, other than to let her see her friends. She got this urge, once a year or so, to wear spotless wellingtons and padded faux-country coats with her friends, to drink red wine until it stained her mouth to an injury, also with her friends, to exert a vague authority over a herd of pye-dog children — long-haired and ill-mannered and airily illiterate — with her continual bloody friends who had produced said children without considering that parenthood would mean being broke and staying in the arse-end of Wales, while acting as if it was Italy and wandering hunch-backed streets in a migraine of drizzle.

He couldn’t have driven. It would have made him tired. Correction, it would have made him exhausted — there and back would have made him dead. This last week had wiped him out. He’d been a wreck by Wednesday, Kempson ranting and condemning them to additional white nights, threatening more redundancies while they sorted out urgent copy to go with urgent tits.

This week’s tits were wronged and glazed with anguish, always a favourite. They were classy tits, married to a Special Adviser tits, the prime minister’s full confidence still placed in their husband tits, late of Cheltenham Ladies’ College and rumours of early spliffs and precocious rapacities tits. They’d probably got an opinion on Gypsies, too. Or tax-avoidance. Austerity. The future of the euro. Frankly tragic that they had no power of speech. Infinitely disappointing that their owner did.

Christ!

So no stamina left for long-haul chauffeuring.

Sorry.

Sorry that you had your precious break, but now its even more precious afterglow has been destroyed by my boorish insistence on not having a heart attack.

So very sorry indeed.

An apology should have been unnecessary in a friendly world, but was offered in any case. The world wasn’t friendly.

Sorrysorrysorrysorry.

The usual rolling hiss. The sound of my head: like a detuned radio, or the drag of an old-time needle over old-time vinyl at the end of the record, once the music’s stopped.

Pauline should have known better than to ask. She was fully aware of Mark’s persistent, historic aversion to motor vehicles.

Grew up with five petrol-head brothers, didn’t I?

What sensible parent has that many kids? That many sons? That many of anything?

Mark had been the late and tender afterthought, putting an end to the line. No more soft-pawed fighting and solemnly blue jokes to share with Dad as if they were presents from an oncoming life.

Don’t tell your mother, and having a laugh and sipping from a fag round the back, leaned against the wall — all the Burroughs boys together.

He’d pretty much ruined things, because from the outset Mark had been a poor fit with his father and the boys. He’d known that he made them uncomfortable: kind, but stilted and uneasy.

I didn’t like what they liked.

While his siblings couldn’t wait to get dirty, he had always hated engines, tinkering, manual tasks of every kind. He would, as an adult, abandon some type of large Renault because it was actually on fire. Not overheating, but wildly ablaze due to unforgivable negligence on his part. He’d left it in a lay-by, run away.

Wasn’t even my car. Borrowed. And not returned.

If she’d known about this — it was before her time — he could imagine how Pauline would react, pronouncing the three syllables of typical as only she could. She needn’t be furious to make the word ring like a curse. Authentically injurious.

For now, she whipped a glance at him, gave it some strength. Mark was aware that the tall bloke in retro corduroy, or just very misguided corduroy, had read their little exchange — Pauline’s threat, Mark’s obeisance — and was smiling in response.

But you’re wrong, chum. My relationship is not the nightmare you assume. You have no reason to feel you are lucky and can be smug. You don’t understand.

There was something about kissing her while she tasted of contempt — there was a depth in that, an intoxication. You had to be careful in these areas and he wouldn’t recommend it for someone who flagged under tension, but if you could stand it. .

Wasted on him, the corduroy man. Moron.

Mark shifted in an intentionally obvious way to eye the moron’s female companion, give her some time. She was unimpressive.

‘Mark.’

Bite the tongue and don’t say ‘Yes, dear.’ It’s such a cliché.

‘Yes, darling.’

‘Go and find something out.’

‘Of course. I’ll go and find something out.’