The Backseat

When travelling as a passenger in a car, I love to look out at right angles to our direction and watch the verge flying by. My favourite version of this is when passing a long slatted fence, so light bursts through the gaps in a juddering pattern, its pace changing with the speed of the car. To me, it was somehow otherworldly, or even extra-terrestrial: like the flashing lights of a UFO. When the sun was setting behind such a fence, popping spots were left in the corners of my eyes as I watched the stroboscopic image magically pass me by. Staring out at the hypnotic roadside was also a form of escapism when I was a boy. On long journeys I could either pass the time, or else use the distraction from my parents’ conversation.

Occasionally, they’d cut through my daydreaming with who-knows-how-many repeats of my name, only to ask if I’d done my homework or some such. I would have to turn away from those mesmerising oscillating lights, or that racing kerb, to see my father staring at me in the rear view mirror. He always adjusted it just so; he could see my face clearly where I sat in my favoured seat: the passenger side, behind my mother, the better to see my spellbinding rushing roadside. My father wouldn't break from meeting my eyes, as though he could sense the road ahead in another way. Even if my mother was talking to me, or I was talking to her, his eyes would be on mine. His eyes, locked into mine, were inscrutable, unknowable chips of hard light against his softening skin. So I’d back out of the exchange as soon as I could, returning to my twisted position, gripping the door handle with both hands the better to orientate myself to that flickering peep into elsewhere.

When my little sister was born, I had to shift over to the seat behind the driver’s seat, my father’s position, since my sister’s car seat was best kept behind my mother so she could settle her in before getting in the car herself, always on the passenger side. The car seat was an obstacle to my reverie in motion and I had to settle for the ticking by of white lines on dark grey tarmac, or at night, more excitingly, the glimmers of cat’s eyes glancing up at me before going dark as they looked back to the driver behind. On this side I could hear my father’s mutterings more clearly, his mutterings to other drivers, to himself, perhaps to his own demons, I couldn't know. On this side, my father could see my reflection in his wing mirror, through two panes of glass, so although I was closer I felt further.

After my father’s brother’s wedding he drove us home; I think back now and realise he must have been drunk, drunk on the free wine laid on by the brother, my uncle whose success grinded on my father’s self-worth, who’s supposed higher standing had imprisoned my father in a lifetime of jealously. My father’s brother had been evacuated, out to West Sussex, during the war, to a home where he was worshipped and praised by the childless couple and sent to a wonderful school. My father, being older, had stayed in London amid the rubble, the sirens, the banality of mere existence. So at the wedding, my father drank his share, the share he missed out on when they were boys: an accident of his earlier birth. On that journey home the lines darted by faster than usual, the pairs of cat’s eyes had but a glimpse before moving on. My mother sat silent, pursed lips and one hand reaching behind to grasp one edge of the car seat with my sister asleep in it. My father’s muttering was as intense as I’d heard it, cursing his brother and bemoaning his luck.

Since that night, after the wedding, on those near silent roads, I gained back my old seat, and again I sat behind my mother, watching the grassy margin racing by, or the fence uprights snipping the light into vertical bars, but never was I glad, and again my father would stare at me in his rear view mirror, but now with watery eyes, all creased at their edges like the leather across the top of a tired pair of shoes.

- with thanks to http://barbaraprojects.com/ for the inspiration from March's Thing