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
