By Sam Smith
Published: February 21, 2008
Updated: October 27, 2008 PrintEmail
32) Raining
The rain is remorseless in its singleminded descent. The police car's black windscreen wipers slash rapidly back and forth. Little but the golden rain and the rebounding spray can be seen in the headlights.
Paul feels large sitting in the back of the car.
"Glad I'm not on my bike," he says.
Paul has been talking since they left Taunton. They have gone slower as the rain has increased. Neither of the police officers now responds, both are sitting forward straining against their wide seat belts.
"Think we should stop?" the PC passenger asks.
"Slow moving heavy showers, forecast said," the driver replies, "If we keep on we'll come out the other side. If we stop we could be sat here all night."
Paul looks forward with them into the golden bars of rain and at the little bit of solid black road. His mind, smiling, re-runs the conversation they've had since leaving the hospital, his telling them what happened to him Monday night, even the fight after the station, and then this afternoon....
"Still," the driver said, "weather's been nice." Then they drove into this rain.
They all three have been laughing. Paul wants to say something else now about this rain, but the words won't come. The stitches took a long time and began to hurt. He was given another injection.
The two policemen came to interview him there in the curtained cubicle, but they knew little more than he did. The gang who'd cut Paul were apparently off a coach on its way back to Bristol. The coach's hirers hadn't been traced yet. A bossy nurse told the policemen to give Paul a lift back to Bridgwater.
Paul doesn't know either of these policemen. Not that that matters: Paul has struck up a journey's length friendship with policemen before. Even when it had been the arresting officer travelling with him. Those policemen didn't take the crime personally; and in a society like ours with no values there are no real rules to break. Save one — don't get caught. And if you are caught then no-one who's honest really blames you. There but for the grace.... policemen too. So together, officer and culprit, they go joking through the process, both at that moment victims of the system. Most policework, like nursing, involves looking up the arsehole of humanity: no need to make it worse with acrimony or ill-manners.
The car's radio crackles and crackles.
"Don't think your luck's rubbed off on us?" the PC passenger turns to Paul. The seat creaks. "We all about to get fried by lightning?"
"Perfect end to a perfect two days," Paul grins. His arm is in a purply-pink foam sling. The golden rain beats on the roof of the car, hisses into the road all around, rolls transparently down the black side windows.
"I'm not sure any more that I exist," Paul frowns hearing himself say this. The PC passenger looks to the driver, who concentrates on the golden aura before the slashing wipers.
"You've got a past," PC passenger looks through Paul's eyes to somewhere inside him. The truth is not there.
"Maybe I imagined it."
"You've got children. You said that's why you wanted to get home."
"I could be imagining them."
Paul is surprised that this sober policeman is taking his words seriously. He wants out from this dialogue.
"I'm real," PC passenger says, his eyes two gravity holes, "I can soon verify you've got children."
"What, though, if I'm imagining you saying that?"
"Pain's always real. I could hit your arm."
The driver is acutely aware of this conversation. The hissing rain encloses it.
"Believe me," Paul finds his grin again, "pain can be dreamlike."
I want more than reality, Paul listens to his mind saying. What is this life that we are so misled? I want to defy the process of continuity, to not be just another nameless son, just another nameless father, just another nameless corpse. I will not be the victim of my own body.
The radio crackles, bursts into voice, "...and high tide. Flash flooding..."
"Always floods in Bridgwater," Paul says while they try to listen. "Fires and floods. Town's history is full of it. Hot and wet."
In the hospital he thought it had been the bruises and the bloodletting that had given him the lethargic headache. Then the lightning had spoken otherwise. Now he feels liberated, exalted.
The PC passenger talks into the radio asking for a response. The radio crackles.
"Ground's baked hard," the driver says. "All this'll run straight off and into the rivers. Tomorrow, if we get more, it'll soak in. Be alright then."
In the car's headlights the rain is fierce and golden.
"Need a boat," Paul says. "Though being Bridgwater it always misses the boat. The year the Severn Tunnel was finished Bridgwater decided to renovate their docks. When the trains got going, that was when Bridgwater decided to connect itself, by canal, to the South coast. Like the power station now. All that's obsolete, and Bridgwater starts building another one. Funny 'ol place Bridgwater...."
The rain stops. The road is black and gleaming before them. Silver cat's eyes curve out of sight. The driver sits back and speeds up. The wiper blades squeak. The driver turns them off.
Like a heap of yellow light black night is swept before the car. The radio speaks crisply inside the car of a flood in Durleigh requiring all emergency services. The PC passenger asks Paul where he lives.
"Sydenham. But you can drop me at Taunton Road roundabout. I'll walk from there."
"You sure?"
Reality is always somewhere else, is happening to somebody else. What happens to him is contrived, is artificial.
"It's my arm," his voice says, "not my leg."
"Thanks."
"Always floods in Bridgwater," Paul says. The police car is low and fast under the polished orange lights. "Think they'd have learnt by now."
He climbs out and stands unaided on the wet pavement. He stoops to wave goodbye with his wrong arm, and the police car is gone, leaving him partially bent over.
Aware of his walking he starts walking. His posture and his gait are affected by the strapped arm. The town is orange and gleaming, its bricks dark and damp. A solo drunk, his trousers rolled up to his knees, runs back and forth through a long puddle, scattering sprays of liquid tangerine glass as he goes. The drunk chuckles to himself, and grunting runs again. There are no other noises. Paul walks, cumbersomely.
Inside the brick houses, behind the glass sheets, slabs of bodies are stuck together this hot meaty night. He turns his whole head. A shadow is gone from the corner of his eye as quickly as a spider. In the full wide river is the brazen moon. Turning Paul looks up, the moon and he with battered heads staring sadly at one another.
"Is that it?"
True Stories
Dorothy Davies, of Chamberlain Avenue, Bridgwater, used a matchstick to stop the meter disc of her electricity meter. Dorothy Davis, mother of five, told magistrates, in October 1989, that the family was short of cash because her husband was a taxi driver and work was slack. 38 year old Dorothy Davis was given a 2 year conditional discharge.
In November 1989 17 year old Jody McKay, of King George Avenue, Bridgwater, punched Phillip Bolton in the face, knocking him to the floor. 19 year old Jonathan Fairfax, of York Road, Bridgwater, then joined with Jody McKay in kicking Phillip Bolton in the face and chest. On admission to hospital Phillip Bolton's face was found to be broken in three places.
In December 1989 a young seal swam into the 709 foot cooling water intake inside Hinkley B Nuclear Power Station. Hinkley B workers hauled him out of the forebay area with a cargo net. The seal was later released into the sea apparently unharmed.
Christopher Beeson's 21 year old daughter, Lesley, was declared officially exempt from paying poll tax because of her mental handicap. Christopher Beeson, of Bagborough Drive, Bridgwater, filled in the initial form and put a tick in the box indicating the reason for Lesley's exemption. A month later Christopher Beeson received a second form warning him of a £60 fine should the form not be completed. When he took the completed form to the council offices he was told that the first form had been found. Lesley Beeson then received four demands for overdue payment of her poll tax, and one more for a reduced amount. When, finally, Christopher Beeson convinced the council that his daughter was wholly exempt they, in July 1990, sent him a demand for his poll tax. He had already paid it.
