The Journey by Steve Penticost
The sleek lines of the powerful car powered its way along the motorway, effortless speed at the touch of his foot. Other cars went backwards as he flashed by, a receding dot in his mirror. The engine, a throbbing bass note hum reverberated through his body a stark reminder that he wasn’t driving his Ford Focus. Straight line speed was fun at first, but he decided to leave the motorway and take the back route to the swanky hotel and spa that had been booked for his old school reunion. This would get tongues wagging he thought, turning up in this piece of Italian muscle. Shame he couldn’t rent a leggy blonde, but fantasy and budget can only go so far.
He would show them, boring old Nigel, safe in suburbia, measuring time as he weeded his garden and waved his wife off to Sainsbury’s.
The country road was more like it, a chance to see what this car could really do. Point and shoot driving, watching the lush undergrowth on the high bank reflect and dance in the metallic paint. Burst of sunshine sparkled as the high hedgerows gave way to sunshine. The speedo needle took little effort to react upwards, 40 to 80 in a heartbeat.
Revelling in this freedom he realised that road signs had disappeared, or at least any useful ones, homemade wooden signs merely indicating farms or invisible houses. He also noticed the sat nav had stopped working. He was lost.
His natural action was to go faster, surely a proper sign would appear any minute now, one with actual directions perhaps.
A crossroads appeared. He slowed and as he contemplated the choices, he noticed that an older gentleman was sitting on the verge by the side of the road, a walker perhaps, he could help surely.
He brought the car to a stop and leant out of the window.
`I say can you help me with directions?’ I’m trying to get to Hillview Hotel and Spa’
The old man looked at him and then the car.
`Nice car, bet its fast, yours?
Nigel smiled.
`Yes, he lied, I’m going to a reunion of old school friends, this will make their jaws drop?
` I sure it would have, he said.
`So do you know the way to the hotel? `Do I turn left or right here?’
The old man smiled, got up and walked round to the passenger side, he opened the door and got in.
` I’ll help you on your journey , he said, these twisty roads can be very dangerous. Only recently a man was killed going too fast, never saw the chap on his bicycle, hit him full on and then piled into a tree, nasty business’
Nigel looked at the old man and forced a concerned look on his face,
`Gosh that’s terrible, but it’s getting dark and I need to get a move on’
`It’s alright son, said the man, we have all the time in the world’
To Nigel’s surprise he closed the door and buckled up,
`I’ll come with you. he said, I’m here to help, just turn left here, it will only take a few minutes and then we’ll arrive at your final destination.’
Nigel smiled, what a friendly old chap these country folks
are he thought. Even if he is a little smelly. He put his foot on the accelerator and the car
roared back into life, eating up the tarmac as the sun went down and the light
faded into inky darkness.
Poor old Nigel. All the tragi-comedy of self delusion and the mystery of the kind old gentleman. I liked ’40-80 in a heartbeat.’ And the description of a man’s getting lost and therefore going even faster seemed strangely familiar…!
Key sentence – ‘He was lost’ – says it all. Nigel was lost in every sense of the word.
From Simon: A narrative whose strength lies in what isn’t said rather than what is. The first paragraph is an economical route into the story. We get the build-up of the flash car, and we also find out quite a lot about the character of its driver. Somehow, one never has high expectations of someone called Nigel, particularly a Nigel who hires an expensive car to impress his old friends at a school reunion. They think he’s boring and we, the readers, get a feeling they might be right. Then the tone of the piece changes. Nigel gets lost in his flash car and encounters ‘an older gentleman’. Already we’re suspicious In fiction, there’s often more to ‘older gentlemen’ than meets the eye. And when he starts talking about death in a car crash, we – well, I, anyway – get even more suspicious. Is the ‘older gentleman’ a symbolic figure? Might he actually be Death? We aren’t told. We are left tantalized and unsure. I couldn’t decide whether the piece was complete in itself or whether it was the opening to a longer story.
There is something otherworldly about that older gentleman. I wouldn’t let him get into my car.