O god. Pause. Stop the car. No; drive, just drive, carry on, carry on, and carry on, carry on and carry on — does Alison have a lap? Does Alison have a lap!! Does Mrs Bryson? What? Have a lap? does Mrs Bryson have a lap? Who the fuck cares if she has a lap for christ sake who wants to nestle in there! Not him anyway. Not fucking Pat Doyle and that’s for fucking definite. And from now on it’s definate. It is definately the case that Patrick Doyle MA (HONS) has definately no plans for nestling in the lap of the married person Mirs Bryson who occasionally seems to be giving him the eye which is absolutely not true the woman just likes him in a maternal sort of big sisterish aunti routine that is hopeless nowadays, hopeless. That rain lashing down. But also a nip in the air this evening; if the rain stops you could imagine it frosting up. It would be very fine to talk Alison into going away with him to somewhere like England, tonight; to walk into the arts centre and get her into a corner and ask if she fancies a drive down to East Anglia, they could spend the night at Eric’s place until come morning with the blue skies they could travel south to Dover. And thence Calais; and on to the Mediterranean for some sun and warm seawater and maybe across to Spain, pausing among the Basques, maybe to Aragon to see where auld Goya was born. But no, it was time to return home, time to return home. The rain is falling and the windscreen wipers swish swish, swish swish, and occasionally, quite occasionally, the sensation that evil entities are abroad, that this very evening is an evening when malevolent creatures stalk the highways. It is a night for the warm fireside and the music playing in a friendly fashion, a nice well-known symphony or a nice homely play on radio. Maybe Alison is in trouble. Maybe she is walking home right at this moment, the bus left her off at the wrong street accidentally and she is having to hasten along, not wanting to go too quickly lest she draws attention to herself but hold; and she isni sure — is that the sound of soft, soft footfalls, the soft foot falling, the lurking evildoer, a sinister shape at the closemouth, in the yellowing glare of the old gaslamp, waiting there, waiting there, and then the echoing clip clip clip of her highheels as she turns the corner. Alison! For fuck sake watch yourself! There’s danger up there for christ sake danger ahead, Alison! And the screeching tyres of the highspeed motor car swerving corners and hitting pavements at ninety-nine miles per hour in his lastditch attempt to get there and fucking rescue the heroine, the hero, Master Patrick Doyle. And yet a lassie like Alison who regards herself as more than a match for anybody, male or female, this can be the kind of lassie who ends up in trouble — challenging herself to walk down the darkest alleys at as slow a pace as possible in order to prove the point, just to show she’s got her head screwed on the right way and is well up to taking care of herself which is how come
It was high time he had a new motor car altogether. With a new motor car things would be better. Because if Alison had, by some weird stretch of the imagination, agreed to a drive to East Anglia it was fucking all too probable the engine would explode before reaching the damn border. It wasni only the doors that were going bad, so too were these other things, they were going bad as well. Different noises were becoming audible, getting made to become audible, the kind of noises that made you shut your eyes in immediate reaction. You heard them when turning a corner too fast or when sometimes he coasted to a stop with the engine switched off, that distant gentle thudding. Sometimes he wakened in the middle of the night with this really horrible feeling, a cold dankness smothering him, then gradually piecing it all together he would become aware of the motor car, it was that that was causing it, the motor car. Hopeless. A hopeless fucking vehicle. A no-longer-good vehicle. If it ever had been good. He had bought it privately through the newspaper car-sales pages. And if certain facts are indeed admitted, he probably only did it that way to impress the da and big brother. He usually
who cares.
The rain looked to have become a slush. An ice-rain, piling up on the lower parts of the windscreen, getting packed by the wipers. He was sitting forwards on the edge of the seat, head craned near to the windscreen, gaping into the glare. This ice-rain — sleet. It was sleet. Sleet a-falling. Not a night for driving. Definitely. Especially down that deathtrap of an A74 with all these bends and roadworks and these big picketmurdering artic lorries right up your arse. One time Patrick helped Gavin out as co-driver doing a fair-sized flitting for one of his neighbours and they hired an oldish three-ton van from a guy Gavin knew. It was a terrible drive. The van was overloaded and you felt the thing swaying as if about to topple over when the camber was out. And nobody gave you any fucking quarter either. These drivers, some of them are crazy. And then when they’re sitting behind you! having to hit up to eighty just to keep your nose in front. Terrible. And in bad weather even worse.
The sleet storm could mean that the arts centre mob would remain where they were until late, having poked their heads out and seen the state of it.
We’ll give it another half hour, says Desmond, and just see if it goes off.
Good idea, says Alison and back they all trudge, not especially wanting to return but better that than braving the wintry elementals. They will have had enough of each other by this time, stifled yawns and so forth, the occasional surreptitious glance to see if any acquaintances from other walks of life are in the vicinity.
With the new car he would certainly opt for a stereo hi-fi radio and cassette; whizzing along there listening to music or talks or taped radio drama, relaxing, tapping the fingers on the wheel the way you see other folk do when they’re stopped at traffic lights, and that pleasant look of soporicity, soporificity, a Latin root; sopor — sleep. Those drivers whose gazes are aye vacant. Pamp pamp, pamp pamp. Toot toooooot! O pardon me Charlie I was listening to the fucking in-car entertainment. Taking your mind away from itself, allowing the being to relax; thus driving becomes a pleasurable activity, something akin to smoking dope, the pipe of peace, slowly but surely the company lulled into slumber, the eyelids drooping, drooping, them trying o so hard to stay awake but no, they drift, drifting off into sleep, a pleasant soporicity, soporificity. The type of thing he never achieves. His fucking mind is always going this way or that way and he just never is able to get down and relax somewhere. Or even just becoming so totally exhausted that you collapse, that would suit him, just to collapse, after a momentous mental or spiritual task. Such as playing the pipes. Through that sort of act, attaining that sort of peace. But it all sounds so hopeless. It makes you turn from the actual thought; something you do not want to admit of — but it has to be faced, and with a smile! A brave smile. But get rid of the distancing. Stop trying to widen the gulf between yourself and the playing. You must approach it as arranged. Twenty minutes before the hour of ten. That remains the time. For sitting down and playing the pipes. I know, yes, but these things must be faced, the very notion itself being that wee bit, just that toty wee bit somehow well foolish, foolish, aye, that’s it out now, okay: