Ring Road: There’s no place like home. Ian Sansom

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СКАЧАТЬ him: she had him bang to rights. ‘The son of David Quinn?’

      ‘Yes,’ he agreed mournfully. He knew what was coming.

      ‘The seventh son of the seventh son?’

      What could he say? They were words that he hadn’t heard for twenty years and he could live without hearing for another twenty more. But he couldn’t deny it, although he’d hoped that perhaps he could have got away with it. He’d thought that if he stayed away long enough he might have become unrecognisable to the past, but it was not to be so; the past has a very long memory.

      For most of us, for those of us who return home out of necessity, or in mere shame or pity, rather than in triumph and trailing clouds of glory or with our reputations preceding us, the journey home is always a disappointment. For most of us there’s never going to be ticker tape and no free pint, no surprise pick-up at the station or the airport, and the best we can hope for is a mild handshake from our father and a teary hug from mum. Which is never enough.

      But Davey had wanted nothing more. He’d have been happy to creep back unannounced and unnoticed – a quick pat on the back, then pick up the car from the Short Stay car park and home for a nice cup of tea. That would have been just fine.

      They say that everybody wants secretly to be recognised, but Davey Quinn really had wanted to be left alone and it had suited him, the years of anonymity, it had given him space to breathe and to get to know himself. Living away, he thought he’d finally begun to grow into his face, the jut of his own chin, the set of his own nose, the furrows of his own brow: he felt pretty sure that they all reflected his new, different, more secure sense of himself. He thought that he’d found the perfect disguise.

      ‘You haven’t changed a bit,’ said Marie, hand on hip.

      ‘Really?’

      ‘You get back a lot?’

      ‘I haven’t been back in twenty years,’ he said.

      ‘Living in London?’

      ‘Yes,’ he agreed.

      ‘You’ll see a lot of changes.’

      ‘Uh-huh,’ he said. ‘Right.’

      ‘I’ll see what I can do about the luggage,’ said Marie, picking up her walkie-talkie.

      ‘Thanks,’ said Davey, turning to walk away.

      ‘Honest to God, you look just the same,’ repeated Marie.

      ‘Good,’ said Davey.

      ‘And that extra bit of weight suits you.’ And then she spoke into the walkie-talkie. ‘Maureen?’ she said. ‘You’ll never guess who I’ve got here.’

      There was a crackle.

      ‘David Quinn.’

      And then more crackle.

      ‘Yes. Him.’

      And then crackle again.

      ‘Maureen says welcome home. And Happy Christmas.’

      ‘Thanks,’ said Davey. ‘The same to you.’

      It was getting late and he caught a cab. The driver was humming along to a tune on the radio, a typical piece of bowel-softening Country and Western, sung in an accent yearning for America but tethered firmly here to home. Davey sat down heavily in the back, dazed, and stared out of the window.

      So this was it.

      Home.

      Marie was totally wrong. There weren’t a lot of changes. In fact, everything looked exactly the same: the same rolling hills, the same patches of fields and houses, the same roundabouts, the motorway. It was all just as he remembered it. A landscape doesn’t change that much in twenty years.

      Or the weather.

      It had been fine when they left the airport, but now the rain was sheeting down and about twenty miles along the motorway one of the windscreen wipers popped off – the whole arm, like someone had just reached down and plucked it away, like God Himself was plucking at an eyebrow.

      ‘Jesus!’ screamed the driver, having lost all vision through the windscreen in what seemed to be a massive and magic stream of liquid pouring down from the heavens, as if God, or Jesus, were now pissing directly on to the car, as if He were getting ready for an evening out, and they swerved across three lanes and pulled over on to the hard shoulder.

      ‘Did you see that?’

      ‘I did,’ said Davey.

      ‘Jesus Christ. Blinded me.’

      ‘You OK?’

      ‘Yeah, thanks. Yeah. I’m fine.’

      The car was rocking now, as lorries passed by, and then there was a sudden clap of thunder in the distance.

      ‘You wouldn’t be any good at repairs, would you?’ asked the driver, turning round.

      ‘No, not really,’ said Davey.

      ‘Would you mind having a look, though? It’s just, I don’t know anything about cars. And this asthma.’ The man coughed, in evidence. ‘It gets bad in the rain.’ He reached for a cigarette, put it in his mouth ready to light it and waited, his hand shaking slightly.

      ‘Right,’ said Davey, who did look as though he knew about cars and who felt sorry for the man, who reminded him of his father: it was the shakes, and the cigarette, and the thickset back of the neck; the profile of most men here over forty, actually. ‘I’ll just go ahead then, shall I?’

      ‘I’d be grateful, if you would.’

      Davey got out. The cars on the inside lane were inches from him, flank to flank, and the rain was busy pasting his clothes to him, and the wind was getting up, turning him instantly from safe passenger into a sailor rolling on the forecastle in the high seas.

      He checked first round the front. The whole of the wiper’s arm had gone – just the metal stump remained – so he then made his way round to the rear and started pulling off the back windscreen wiper, in the hope he might be able to use it as a replacement. He managed to cut his hands on the fittings and the spray from the road was whipping up his back, but in the end, with a twist and a wrench, he managed to get the wiper off. And in so doing he dropped the little plastic lugs that had held it in place – they rolled on to the road – so there he was, big Davey Quinn, not an hour back home, down on his knees, soaked to the skin in the pouring rain, reaching out a bloodied hand into a sea of oncoming traffic.

      It was no good. They were out too far and the traffic was too heavy. He gave up. He got back into the back seat, drenched, defeated, and dripping wet and blood.

      The driver was smoking. ‘Good swim?’ he asked, chuckling at his own joke. ‘No luck?’

      ‘No.’ Davey reached forward and gave the driver the back wiper. ‘Sorry about that.’

      ‘You’re СКАЧАТЬ