By Sam Smith
Published: February 21, 2008
Updated: October 27, 2008 PrintEmail
20) Taking
Wanting to hurry him, Julie walks along the path ahead of Michael. She is aware of him a grumpy two or three paces behind.
Tyres squeal. Brakes scream. A crunch of thin metal is followed by the snicker of falling glass.
Julie and Michael have turned. A red car, coming along Parkway, has driven into the side of an older blue car that was coming out of a side road. A little cloud of orange dust hangs over the fresh impact.
The man in the red car rapidly disentangles himself from his black seat belt and throws open his car door.
An old man in his doorway, a fat woman with a tartan shopping trolley, a bald-headed man about to get into his car — all have stopped to look.
The driver of the red car is a young man in dark suit trousers, striped shirt and tie.
"Why the fuck don't you look where you're going? You pulled straight out in front of me!" There is a womanish screech in his voice, the shout of a man making himself shout, anger as a personal policy decision.
The driver of the blue car sits holding his steering wheel. He is shaking his head as if to clear it, not in denial.
"You pulled straight out in front of me. Straight in front of me. Look at my car. Look at it!"
The driver of the blue car tries to open his door. It is stuck. The driver of the red car bends down and shouts through his window about him pulling straight out in front of him. The driver of the blue car flaps a hand at the shouting face and awkwardly clambers over to the passenger seat.
Other cars, their orange indicators carefully signalling, slowly pass the two buckled cars. A teenage cyclist smiles at the driver of the red car, who seems determined to go on shouting.
The driver of the blue car is pale. He holds flat-handed onto the roof of his car.
"Look. Look," the driver of the red car comes shouting towards him, "You pulled straight out in front of me."
"Come on," Julie tells Michael.
"Hang on."
"What? What did you say?" the driver of the red car shouts.
"I said I'm hurt!" the pale man shouts. He clings to his car as if the shout itself has enfeebled him, "You shook me up."
The old man in his doorway lifts a hand and goes indoors.
"You pulled straight in front of me!" the driver of the red car shouts.
"You were going too bloody fast!" the fat woman breaks into voice from beyond the damp morning grass, "Look at your bloody skid tracks. You all go too bloody fast up here!" The driver of the red car is looking at her terrified, defenceless outside his car.
"He pulled straight out in front of me," he says.
The grip of the pale driver slips and he jerks, his slack jowls wobbling like a fly shiver on a horse's flank. The bald man, reluctant to get involved, conscience-bound to offer help, closes his car door and starts hesitantly towards the two crashed cars.
"Come on," Julie says to Michael.
"Wait." Michael has a child's fascination with injured creatures, with the green liquid insides of caterpillars and dead things in general. Julie thinks this curiosity morbid and sinister.
The fat woman is now shouting about the driver of the red car not caring. The driver of the blue car has not fallen to the ground. The bald-headed man has decided to return to his own car. The fat woman's face is now purple with her shouting. Shouting is nothing new to her.
The drama of name-calling does not interest Michael. He turns away.
"Paul said I could have the money today," he skips to catch up with Julie, "For the school trip...."
"I don't have my purse...."
"Oh Mum...."
commentary .... Unlike her mother Julie did not enjoy the dramas of life. Such dramas manufactured yet more dramas. Like the two men in that car crash, a self-inflicted crisis, the one not looking and the other going too fast. They would go on to do battle with insurance counter claims.
As a buffeted cyclist Julie, anyway, had no high opinion of car drivers, watched them all playing to the dangerous theatre of their driving along, the man telling his wife what a good driver he was and them together tutting over all the other drivers in the rest of the world. The young bespectacled men with thin faces; or hamster cheeked, with dark glasses and striped shirts; and all of them in fast mass-produced cars; and all of them ready to self-righteously, because it was their right of way, trash themselves in their trash society.
These were image people, and fashions changed. Tin cars, tin lorries, tin buses. Tinned people on wheels. Julie still leant forward to look at the individuals inside their machines. The drivers, though, because they were a part of the collective moving dream, all they were aware of was the images moving past them. They had forgotten that it was real people inside the tins and they saw only the tins, only the packaging. And they saw sleek packaging, cheap packaging, stylish packaging, lumpy packaging — the people in their hurtling machines weren't visible anymore. Like the mortgaged brick boxes in which they lived — they had been sold the packaging.
True Stories
In 1988 101 Somerset children, aged 14 or under, were injured when the cars in which they were passengers crashed. This was an 18% increase on the 1987 figures.
At 4pm, on Friday 7th July 1989, in the Angel Place carpark, Bridgwater, three youths with Bros style haircuts knocked down 25 year old Mrs Gillian Howard, kicked her, and stole her purse.
38 year old John Michael Bayley told Sedgemoor Magistrates, in October 1989, that he used the cannabis that the police had found on him to combat his asthma.
In December 1989, just before 7 one evening, Rosemary and Phyllis Nation were standing and talking in King George Avenue, Bridgwater. Rosemary Nation had her young son in her arms and was carrying a torch. Kenneth Fairfax, of Mendip Road, Bridgwater, came towards them. Both sisters made room for 19 year old Kenneth Fairfax to pass. As he went by Kenneth Fairfax swore at them, held his fist up to Rosemary Nation, pushed her in the face, knocked her glasses and made her drop her torch. Kenneth Fairfax then ran off.
