“Well, I’m from Social Services. The Day Centre asked me to call. When she didn’t turn up this morning they were a bit worried. In case she’d had a fall or anything, you know.”
The woman tutted. “She should have let you know. Fetching you out on a morning like this. Old people are inconsiderate, I think, don’t you?”
“It’s all right. I’m used to it. Going out, I mean.”
“Well, you needn’t bother again,” the woman said. “I keep an eye on her, you see. If she doesn’t take her milk in I go round. I’d get the doctor to her if there was any need.”
“That’s extremely kind of you. Look, here’s a card with the number of the Social Services Department, if you ever need it. You can give us a ring.”
“Okay,” the woman said. “My name’s Mrs. Johnson. Would you like a cup of tea, love?”
Isabel would: but I’d better be off, she thought.
“Wouldn’t be surprised if we have fog coming down.”
“Goodbye, Mrs. Johnson, and thank you very much.”
As she drove downhill towards the city centre, the promised fog began to gather. The traffic slowed to a crawl. I wish I had taken five minutes for that cup of tea, she thought. But she was impatient of lonely women. There must be something wrong with the heater. Her feet were frozen, and the Axons were still on her mind. And what in God’s name was that? A shape loomed across the windscreen, the same bloody cyclist, she could swear…she stabbed at the brake and heard a sickening crunch from behind her. Her seat belt bounced her back unhurt, her pulse racing. She closed her eyes. She was not at all surprised. She sat still, trying to calm herself, until a face appeared at the window mouthing was she all right Miss? The cyclist was unhurt. It was not a day for drama. Isabel and the man who had run into the back of her stood on the pavement and exchanged names and addresses. She inspected the damage, running her hand tenderly over the fractured paintwork. Considering the low speed of the other vehicle, it was a surprising mess. Her head ached insistently and she felt guilty. Earlier in the day, at least, her driving had been careless and impatient; her mind had been wandering, and most accidents, she told herself, are not entirely accidental. My humour drew the cyclist on; on a good day, I would have been elsewhere.
She drove very slowly and carefully to a public callbox, and rang the office. Someone has run into the back of me, I shall put the car into the garage now and come back by bus.
The garage couldn’t see their way to tackling it much before the weekend. But it’s only Monday, she said helpfully. Very true, the man said, but it was more than Monday, wasn’t it, it was the time of year. But it’s not a big job, she said, surely you can fit it in. Miss, said the man, wasn’t she aware that this was the holiday season? What holiday? You don’t mean that people have started their Christmas holidays already? She must understand, said the man, that this was a notoriously tricky few weeks, she would probably not credit, even if he were to tell her, the difficulties the festive season could cause. She could if she liked try Thatcher’s Motors at the top of the hill by the lights, but he personally was willing to bet any money that she would be wasting her time. Far be it from him to do Thatcher’s out of trade, and if she wanted to waste her time he supposed she was entitled, it being a free country, but he could assure her that they would quote her ten days, and would they say the same about the time of year? They most certainly would. Could he solve her problem, solve it he would. She could then again go to some cowboy who would do a botched job. Of course she could if she liked, he supposed it was her money, and that it was a free country. Cowboys were not subject to festive difficulties but what would you get? A botched job. He personally had seen some right messes. Still, it was her choice, entirely. If she wanted to leave it with him, he would see what he could do, and could he say fairer than that? Now, he would tell her what, if it had been a windscreen, he could probably, making no promises but probably, have let her have it by Thursday. It’s not, she said, so what’s the point? She had it there, he said. She had put her finger on it. He was taking it as what he supposed she might care to call a sort of illustration. The fact was, it was not a windscreen. It was Bodywork.
At the end of this conversation the feeling of heavy unreality inside her skull was much increased. She waited a long time for a bus, and as it crept along in the still thickening fog her mind emptied of her problems and professional duties and became blank and grey. When she arrived at the office she found she couldn’t get warm. People said she Might Have ’Flu Coming On. She put her head in her hands and rubbed her eyes. Her friend Jane said that they should go to the pub and get her a double Scotch and some cottage pie. All that, the Senior said glibly, the common cold, ’flu, hay-fever, it’s a form of suppressed weeping, you know. It was only when she got back from lunch, and felt no better, that she remembered that she had left Muriel Axon’s file on the back seat of the car. She telephoned the garage, but of course there was no answer.
I’ve driven up out of it, Colin thought, turning into Florence’s drive. The first part of the journey had been nerve-wracking. The dismal city centre jangled with noise, lights flickered in strange places, distances were unjudgeable. Faces distorted with apprehension flashed momentary and half-lit behind glass, locked into their metal shells, alien machines with mad demands.
“I can hardly believe it,” Colin said. “It’s clear up here and it’s not even raining. You should see it down the hill. It’s a nightmare. The hospitals will be full before tonight’s out.” He struggled out of his jacket and Florence took it from him. “Hot,” he explained. “Tension. They won’t slow down. How they can do it beats me.”
“Is that all you wear? Haven’t you a decent overcoat?”
“Yes. I forget it. I always wear my pullover.”
“You must take care of yourself,” Florence said. “I heard about the fog. It says on the wireless it’s all along the motorway as well. I just phoned Sylvia, to make sure the children had got home from school all right. I thought you’d want to know.”
“Bless you, Florence. That was thoughtful.”
“I’ve made some tea. It’s all ready for you.”
A sense of déjà vu took hold of him as he stood in the hall, and would not let him go. Perhaps it was the dislocation of the fog, and his confused state of mind. It could have been his mother waiting, himself a boy in a cap and blazer, algebra homework lying heavy on his stomach. In the hallway Florence had changed nothing, nothing had ever been changed as long as he could remember; the dust was moved, that was all, and came floating back, speckled, settling, spinning in the spring sunlight and drifting on the smoke of autumn garden fires. But the past had not been like that. It was negligence, not sentiment, that kept things in their place year after year. This was the paradox and danger of time-travel, altering the past to suit. His mother had never met him in the hall and settled him with something to eat. She would be lying on her bed with pins in her hair, or still doing the morning’s jobs (like cleaning the toilet), or reading a novel in which a governess was abducted into a harem. And Florence was older at forty than his mother would ever have chosen to be, solid and set in her barren maternity.
“What is it?” Florence said. She poured the tea and pushed a plate towards him.
“Ah, I was just thinking of Mum.”
“Mum? You never called her that. We never called her Mum.”
“No. It’s just a funny feeling, to come home, home from school, come in here. Being a man…in your own house…such incessant demands. I don’t feel always that I can meet them, nowadays.”
“We all get these fits of inadequacy,” Florence said.
“Is that what they are?”
“You feel you’re not doing what you should be doing.” She spooned some sugar into her tea. “You feel, surely there’s more to life than this. But there isn’t, and it passes off. It passes off.”