XOL 802
XOL 802 is a coming-of-age story that uses two voices: Andrew is six years old and we see his parents’ marriage break up, and a car crash (hence the number plate of the title) through his eyes. The other voice is the older, adult Andrew trying to make sense of all that happened. Has the family found peace?
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It is a grey Morris Minor. It’s our new car. Daddy says it’s ‘second-hand,’ but that means it’s old. Stuart and Marie from over the road, who Mummy lets me play with sometimes, have a proper new car: it has an ‘F’ on the number plate, but they aren’t allowed to touch it. Daddy lets me help him wash our car. We spend ages on it; I’m even told to ask Mummy for the hoover so we can clean inside as well. Daddy empties the ash-tray. Mummy says she hopes it’s the last time he needs to do that, ‘for Andrew’s sake, if not mine.’ I’m Andrew, and I’m six.
Mummy’s being sick a lot, especially around breakfast time. Daddy tells me it is nothing to worry about. He isn’t worried. He even went out and bought some cigars (which makes Mummy cross), and some people come round to smoke them and drink beer. I am sent to bed early, and I hear Mummy upstairs so it isn’t a party she’s allowed to go to either. The front door slams; then Mummy goes downstairs. She always does that: it’s her job to tidy up.
She catches me peering through the bannisters:
‘What are you doing?’
‘Is Daddy there?’
‘Daddy’s gone out. And you need to get back to bed.’
‘But I’m not tired!’
‘You don’t want to be up when Daddy gets back. Go on – bathroom first, don’t forget.’
‘I don’t need to!’
‘Go!’
I go. Daddy gets very cross if I wet the bed – now I am a big boy and go to school, I should be able to control myself. I am asleep when Daddy gets back.
In the morning, they don’t even get me up before Daddy goes to work, even though I am awake. Mummy and me do the packing. Stuart and Marie have already gone to Spain for their summer holidays, so I couldn’t play with them. We are going to Cornwall in our new, clean car. Daddy won’t smoke so I won’t cough. Mummy tells me we are going to a lovely white house that has its own jetty and beach. It’s got lovely gardens, and there is a big greenhouse which grows peaches. I thought peaches came in tins: Mummy laughs when I say that. I don’t mind, not really, as Mummy’s laugh is kind. But she doesn’t laugh much. Then she tells me I’m going to meet a very kind lady who owns this house: Auntie Betty. Except she isn’t my aunt: she’s Mummy’s aunt, so she must be very old.
But it’s a puzzle: Daddy always says he earns the money to pay for everything, so why is Mummy’s aunt giving us our holiday? But Mummy says I mustn’t talk to Daddy about it. I am sent to play in the garden, but I have lemonade and jam tarts on the lawn for my tea.
That night, I have to have a bath straight after supper, so I can’t talk to Daddy about anything. Anyway, he doesn’t want to listen to me as he is worried Mummy hasn’t done the packing properly. We are going to start very early tomorrow, so I am sent to bed early.
I can’t sleep. I hear them arguing.
‘As soon as you get a bun in the oven, it’s game over as far as your marital obligations are concerned!’ That’s Daddy, using his I’m-not-angry-yet voice.
‘That doesn’t give you the right to go to those sorts of clubs, and go with those sorts of girls! Why should I end up with the clap?’
‘They’re perfectly clean!’
‘How do you know?’
Then it all goes quiet while Daddy works out what to say next. We never interrupt him when he needs to think. I creep downstairs. Through the crack in the open doorway to the lounge, I can see Mummy’s back. Her shoulders are going up and down, but she isn’t crying, just breathing deeply. She is facing Daddy, but she’s different: she’s looking straight at him.
‘This is it, John. I’m a qualified teacher, so I can support two children. I’m not prepared to put up with your behaviour any more. You can sleep down here. And you can decide whether or not you want to come to Cornwall; but it’s adultery, John. I don’t care how you dress it up: your adultery.’ Daddy moves forwards. Normally, Mummy ducks, but instead she just speaks again: ‘And if you hit me, I’ll just take Andrew and we’ll go to Cornwall anyway – even if I have to walk the whole way.’
By the time she turns around to leave the lounge, I am scuttling upstairs back to my room. I toss and turn in bed for such a long time. In the end, I have to get up and go to the bathroom all by myself.
‘Isn’t that child asleep, yet?’ I hear when I come out of the bathroom: Daddy must have heard the toilet flush. Mummy doesn’t say anything, but she comes upstairs to tuck me in.
‘Mummy?’
‘Shh, love. You need to get to sleep. We’re off on holiday tomorrow.’
‘What’s “adultery?”’
Mummy gives me a curious look, a sort of smile; but she only says: ‘We’ll talk about that later. You get to sleep now.’
It’s dark when Daddy carries me to the car. I have the whole of the back seat to myself, like a big, red, bumpy mattress. Mummy just puts a cushion under my head, kisses me and says ‘sweet dreams.’ She’s already told me that, if I really can’t get back to sleep, I can count the stars. It’s very quiet, nobody else is up. I hear Daddy say ‘Damn!’ when the car won’t start. After four goes, we drive away from town, up and over the railway bridge, past the school where the big boys and girls have their lessons. I see the trees gently waving their leaves, and street lamps shining bright, but I can’t see many stars – perhaps once we leave the buildings behind …
When I wake up, Mummy tells me we are crossing the Severn bridge to get back into England. I haven’t known we’d been to Wales. I want to ask why we went to Wales, but I’m hungry and Daddy wants to keep driving. I also need the toilet. The big roads, the ones Daddy calls motorways, have finished; so we stop by a farmer’s gate. I have to be taken into the field. Mummy crouches down as well. Daddy goes off by himself. We have a proper breakfast, with Daddy cooking on the paraffin heater. Even Mummy ate something, after warning Daddy if she says to stop the car, he isn’t to argue. He looks at her, but doesn’t say anything.
After breakfast, Mummy says that, as I’m awake, why don’t I sit in the front while she snoozes in the back? Daddy thinks this is a good idea, as he knows the way. He has a list of numbers and towns on a piece of paper. Then Daddy yawns.
‘Are you sure you’re going to be alright, dear?’ Mummy says – she isn’t snoozing yet.
‘Of course, I’m alright! I don’t need a woman driving me, that’s for sure!’ Daddy puts the car in gear and we shoot off. Mummy passes me the cushion so I can put under me to see out better. But I’m a big boy, and can see out anyway. I just hold it on my lap.
We almost get to Taunton. We can only think Daddy doesn’t see the tractor at the crossroads. Mummy says she’s glad I don’t remember the crash, and she was asleep, lying down, so she’s thrown against the back of the front seats. Still holding the cushion, I slide off the seat into the space underneath Mummy’s glove box. After it gets all quiet, I wriggle up so I can sit back on the seat and see what’s happened. There’s no windscreen anymore and the car is all dented.
‘Daddy, what have you done? You’ll have to get a new one.’
Then I notice the blood dripping onto the cushion.
***
Even decades later, the rest of that day has become a series of blurry photos in my mind. Mum took over – a few bruises and two black eyes were her legacy. Witnesses to the crash had called the police. I know the police were there, along with the other emergency services, because I still remember standing, or maybe sitting, beside a sergeant before I was put into an ambulance. It’s those stripes I recall, not the face. The blood on the cushion had come from a cut, one of several, from flying windscreen glass. I still have the scar. I had concussion, too. Dad was worst off. Dislocated hip, broken bones, bruised ribs. Of course, if he’d been prepared to rest up after breakfast, or even let Mum drive, it wouldn’t have happened – probably.
After I was discharged, with several stitches on my chin and around my jaw, it took two more days for us to get down to Cornwall. We left the car at the breaker’s yard, and Dad in hospital. He said he didn’t see the point in Mum and me sitting there at visiting time with long faces. Anyway, Great-Auntie Betty took one look at Mum’s black eyes and jumped to the wrong conclusion: Dad never hit her where it might show.
The whole story came tumbling out over the next few days, but never in my hearing. Auntie Betty’s solicitor issued divorce proceedings. I just had the best holiday.
Auntie Betty might have lived a decade for every year I’d been alive, plus one; but, for a seventy-year-old woman, she was quite capable of teaching me how to play tennis. She insisted that I also needed to know how to ride, to swim, to fish: and to taste proper, home-grown peaches straight from the greenhouse, with the furry skin still on. They were, and are, delicious. Most of these activities could take place at Rosmerrin, the holiday home that became just ‘home,’ but the riding had to be done at the farm. Morwen the stable-girl, who was all of thirteen at the time, was my first calf love: ‘You been havin’ an ’ard time of it, bain’t yer?’ she’d said as she lifted me onto my first pony. Within weeks we’d go off trekking, usually with her annoying little sister tagging along on an even smaller pony.
Now, I’m a solicitor. Mum is retired, having taught me and my little sister Katie at the local primary, before we were both shipped off to Truro for our secondary education. Auntie Betty made it to ninety-five: stopped by a massive coronary. It was, everyone agreed, the best way for her to go, no lingering on with her mind active and her body refusing to do as it was told. Rosmerrin, the “holiday” home, now has a granny annex for Mum. Katie’s a GP in Falmouth, but I’m still here, on the south Cornish coast, married to Morwen’s little sister, and we have two grown-up sons of our own.
And Dad? He still lives in that little house in that little town. He was never charged with anything, not even for causing the car crash, so he can tell his tale that it was all our fault: his wife and son deserted him in his hour of need. Left him to nurse his wounds in hospital. Besides, he never wanted to go to Cornwall – but that doesn’t wash down here.