The Secret Intensity of Everyday Life (20 page)

‘Oh, yes. Yes.’

‘Who?’

‘Who?’

‘I mean, which of the girls in the class would you describe as Alice’s friends?’

He closes his eyes. They sting when he looks at her, because behind her is the bright glare of the bay window.

‘You know how girls are. They change friends daily. God only knows who it is today. Ask Alice.’

‘I have asked Alice.’

Her voice sounds odd. He knows he should open his eyes but he can’t. He wants to lay his head on the table.

‘You don’t have the first idea, do you?’

Oh, please. Take me away. Bury me.

‘You’ve been her form teacher for almost three terms and you don’t even know how unhappy she is.’

So much unhappiness. The blind leading the blind. Bury my heart at Portland Place.

‘She’s unhappy?’

‘Yes.’

‘We’re all unhappy.’

Did I say that aloud?

‘
What did you say
?’

He opens his eyes. His eyes sting so much. He can’t stop them watering. What might look to an outsider like tears start rolling down his cheeks.

I could have been Shakespeare. I could have been Milton.

‘I’m sorry,’ he says. ‘I’m sorry.’

She’s sitting down on a child-sized chair. No longer silhouetted by bright distance.

‘What’s the matter?’

‘I’m so sorry. I’ll stop in a minute.’

‘Would you rather talk about this later?’

Her voice is changed. She’s become hesitant, gentle. Unfortunately this has a loosening effect on the remains of his self-control. He bows his head and weeps freely.

‘This isn’t about Alice.’

He gives a small shake of his bowed head.

‘You’re unhappy.’

A small nod.

‘I’m sorry. I’ve chosen the wrong moment.’

She gives him a cotton handkerchief. He wipes away his tears. Humiliating, to cry in front of a parent. Pull yourself together.

He looks up, tries a smile. Now that she’s on his level he can see her face. A friendly face.

‘I’ll keep an eye on her today,’ he says. ‘I’ll let you know.’

‘Right.’

She stands.

‘My number’s on the school list. I’m usually out, but there’s an answering machine that has my mobile number.’

Now she’s leaving, and he hasn’t even stood up.

‘You’re right, Mr Strachan. We’re all unhappy.’

24

The satisfaction of driving a car on the public roads is that you know where you are. There’s the geography of it, to start with; you can say, without any ambiguity, that you’re proceeding west on the long straight of the A27, and therefore that you will arrive in a few short minutes at the Edenfield roundabout. This is a prediction that will come true. Roads are reliable, they behave as advertised. Important not to overlook the solace of this simple fact. After all, how many ventures in life promise one outcome and deliver another?

Then there’s the social justice of it. Those who drive on public roads submit themselves to the absolute authority of a set of laws. These laws admit no exception. They control the actions of rich and poor alike. They establish, in any situation of conflict, who is right and who is wrong. The driver who finds his road crossed by a broken white line as he approaches a junction must give way to the driver who has clear tarmac before him. The lesser road gives way to the greater. This means that even a mighty Range Rover, if on a minor road, must wait humbly for the passing of a puttering three-wheeler or groaning cyclist. On a roundabout, each line of traffic waits its turn to enter the system in an order understood by all. Where there are traffic lights, the red light has a power that approaches the divine. It has only to glare from beneath its beetling brow and everything that moves towards it ceases to move. No barrier descends. No policeman raises a white-cuffed arm. Simply a red light, and a body of collective knowledge. In our envious strife-torn world, this is a source of wonder; or would be, if we ever stopped to consider.

So thinks Henry Broad, who has put his foot down with Jack’s teacher, touching sixty as he passes the Glynde turning. The tension generated in him by the encounter is fading, soothed by the orderly justice of the highway. Not that it was much of an encounter. The fellow looked totally out of his depth. Though God knows, teaching English to well-spoken eleven-year-olds has to be classed as the shallow end if anything is. Laura would have handled it all differently. She would have asked his opinion, discussed Jack’s progress, slipped in a gentle criticism at the right moment. He had meant to do something of the sort himself. It was the waiting that screwed it. He hates to be kept waiting. Can’t help, childish though it is, feeling that the one keeping him waiting is exerting power over him. Saying in effect, my time is more valuable than yours. And then this pale-faced youth appeared, clearly just out of bed.

Oh, well. At least it did me some good.

The car in front is going slowly, for no obvious reason. A small red Honda, driven by a small man with big ears. Why do slow drivers always have big ears? He has a stretch of open road before him, and he’s idling along at forty.

Henry checks his mirror: the line of cars is bunching up behind him. He looks ahead. Just enough room to get past if he goes now, and goes fast.

Tick-tick-tick goes the indicator. Growl of the engine as he drops two gears. Kick down on the accelerator for the gratifying surge of power. Exactly as he pulls out he sees a white van hurtling towards him, out of nowhere. Too late to get back in. Strain the Golf to eighty, ninety, hug the white line, force the wheel at the first opportunity, cut back into his own lane. The white van flashes past. The red Honda brakes hard. Henry doesn’t look in his rear-view mirror, choosing not to witness the anger of Big Ears. Instead, to justify his rash overtaking, to escape that accusing glare, he accelerates again, and speeds away down the open road.

Heart hammering, aware he’s driving badly, Henry slows right down at the approach to the Edenfield roundabout, under the brow of Mount Caburn. A long line of container lorries is winding its way round the island, across his road, down through Edenfield village to the ferry port at Newhaven. They drive nose to tail, no doubt all hurrying to catch the same sailing. He sits tense, almost crouching, riding the clutch, hopping forward in little surges, probing for a gap. The truck drivers high above him pay no attention, heaving their great sixteen-axled rigs round the curves.

He glances in his mirror and sees, as he knew he would, the red Honda pulling up behind him. He avoids eye contact with the driver, or any other details that will give him human form. He feels the skin on the back of his neck prickle under the scrutiny of the small man with the big ears. Naturally Big Ears hates him. He will pursue him with the relentless tenacity of the wronged, and will attempt to corner him and shame him in a public place. Henry imagines but does not meet those baleful eyes. Then at last he sees a gap open up between the lorries, a small gap, but enough. He thrusts the Golf onto the roundabout, earning a loud blast from an offended truck horn, but what does he care? The truck is going to France. Let him carry his disapprobation across the sea to a foreign land.

Ahead, of course, how predictable, the red lights of the railway crossing are flicking from side to side, and the striped barriers are starting their descent. Enraged by the unfairness of it, Henry causes the Golf to give one savage leap forward, and judders the car over the railway lines at seventy miles an hour, bare seconds ahead of the dropping barriers.

As he hurtles up onto the dual carriageway he hears the train go by, and knows that his nemesis is barred from following him by the beeping barrier and the noisy train. He imagines the small angry man spitting his rage onto the plastic fascia of his Japanese dashboard. Let him spit. He has no name, no face, and now he’s dwindling in the rear-view mirror, and now he’s gone from sight.

Henry joins the steadily moving stream of cars coming off the Lewes roundabout, and so dives into the orange twilight of the tunnel. The morning rush hour is tailing off. The traffic moves smoothly through the town. Over the river, past Safeway, past the bottom of School Hill, and the Friends Meeting House, and the Chinese restaurant, to the sharp left turn down to the station car park.

A woman in an Audi is pulled up by the barrier, fumbling in her handbag for the necessary coins. Henry draws up behind her and watches with growing astonishment as she searches the inner recesses of her purse. How much looking does it take to identify and select a few coins? Then to his greater astonishment he sees her get out, point her key fob at the car to lock it, leaving it blocking the entrance to the car park, and without so much as a backward look, head off into the station. Henry can’t believe she’s doing it. He pulls out his own handful of coins to see if he can supply the £2.30 needed to raise the barrier, and sees at once that he only has the coins for his own needs. Two pounds thirty! Who dreamed up such an eccentric figure? No change given, declares the notice on the yellow pillar.
No change given.
God help us all.

The Audi lady will be on her way to the newspaper kiosk for change. Had she not locked her car, he would release the hand brake and roll it out of the way himself. The nerve of the woman! No word to him, not even so much as a guilty apologetic glance. And now she’s gone, disappeared into the station building. He has no option but to sit and wait.

By now the brief moment of calm he experienced on the long straight is no more than a memory. He feels like a prisoner, hemmed in by walls of anger, tension and guilt. Without any words having passed between them, without even eye contact, he has entered into brief but intense relationships with three other people: Big Ears, a truck driver, and the Audi lady. All three have generated frustration and conflict. Just when he could have done with a quiet journey up to town he is subjected to this sequence of aggravations. Anyone could be forgiven for seeing something deliberate in it all. It has the look of a plot. After all, what are the odds on meeting, in one morning journey to the station, a big-eared driver in a trance, an unending convoy of container lorries, a train, and a woman with no coins in her purse? Who is the mastermind behind this complex operation, designed to destroy his sanity? God? Aidan Massey?

The Audi lady is returning. She avoids his outraged eyes. How many other drivers’ mornings has she wrecked? He glances in his mirror.

No, no surprise. A twisted smile at the sadism of fate forms on Henry’s lips as he sees the red Honda roll to a gentle stop behind him. He watches as the driver’s door opens and the man with the big ears gets out. He fixes his attention on the man’s feet, as if by such a childish stratagem he can render himself invisible, or at the very least insignificant. Then he takes his eyes off the mirror altogether and stares ahead at nothing.

He hears the footsteps of nemesis approaching his car door. He doesn’t turn, or move in any way. Nemesis walks on past him without stopping. He is making for the Audi lady, who has just reached her car. Big Ears will vent his anger on her, and so the storm will pass him by.

But no, it seems nemesis wants only to be helpful. He is offering the Audi lady some coins. The Audi lady smiles, grateful and apologetic. She shows her own handful of change, obtained along with today’s
Daily Mail
. Nemesis turns back to his car. Only now does Henry Broad, looking up with a rapid and evasive glance, see that he is the rector of Edenfield, Miles Salmon.

Henry and the rector sit together on the train to Victoria. Henry is not a churchgoer, and knows Mr Salmon by sight only. The rector knows him as the owner of the fine property called River Farm. He says nothing about the incident on the A27. Henry, feeling the need to clear the air, gives him an opening.

‘I’ve just dropped the children off at school. You must have been driving from Edenfield to Lewes at about the same time.’

‘I suppose I must.’

‘Dangerous stretch of road.’

‘Yes. I always take it slowly.’

Is it possible he noticed nothing? Of course he is a man of God, maybe he’s already forgiven and forgotten.

‘Your wife phoned me yesterday evening,’ says the rector. ‘Hoping to trace a villager from the past.’

This means nothing to Henry.

‘Something she found in the library at Edenfield Place.’

‘Oh, yes.’

Henry remembers what Laura told him. Some letters. An affair.

‘Poor old Billy,’ he says.

‘Yes. We hear there are financial problems. There are rumours that the estate’s to be sold. I do hope not. We should hate to have some Arab prince living there.’

How about that? The old boy’s a racist.

‘You don’t like Arabs?’

‘Oh, no. It’s not that. It’s the wealth that’s the difficulty. Some member of the Saudi royal family bought the Calthorpe estate, I’m told, and they never go there. Stands empty, year in, year out. I would hate to see Edenfield Place empty. We villagers are rather proud of it.’

We villagers. We churchgoers. We real inhabitants.

‘Laura and I still feel like newcomers. Eight years now. But that doesn’t make us real villagers.’