Authors: Iain Banks
There is rarely any traffic on the B-road: the odd car, a van or light truck or two (sometimes lost; twice in the last couple of years delivery trucks have stopped to ask me directions, confused by some sat-nav glitch; I’m not much help). I’m always convinced, when the people stop their car or van behind me, that they’re doing so only so that they can get out and beat me up or kidnap me or do something else terrible to me. Though so far this hasn’t actually happened.
Three times, a small herd of sheep have crossed the bridge, followed by a farmer on a quad bike. The sheep hesitate when they see me, then are forced onwards by the farmer. They flow, bleating, round me, trying to keep at least a metre or so away from me, scurrying at the last moment and sometimes jumping into the air, kicking their skinny rear legs. I have been nodded to by the same farmer man twice now, and nodded back. Frankly I’d always prefer to have the bridge entirely to myself but I get an odd thrill when I perform this minimum exchange of pleasantries.
I have fantasised about an attractive young farmer girl coming along on her quad bike, and the bike breaking down and needing a push to get it going or something, or her requiring some other sort of help that I am able to provide, and her giving me a lift, or the two of us just starting to talk and this leading to – well, in the wilder versions, going back to a rather implausibly clean and deserted farm where we literally roll in the hay or have a shag in a hot tub or whatever. However, these are just fantasies; a single, terse-seeming nod from a dour, taciturn male farmer is as warm as things get up here.
The traffic is what attracts me. I love to watch the steady rolling streams of it heading north and south. To the south the land drops away and curves slightly further eastward so that you can see less than a kilometre of the motorway, but to the north there is a straight nearly four kilometres long, heading very slightly downward to the floodplain of the river Bew and the flyover complex affording access to and from Bewford.
I find the sound of the traffic soothing. This is a busy stretch of motorway with only two lanes in each direction and at most times of the day the noise is almost continuous, with cars and light vehicles tearing past on the steel-grey tarmac below, the laden trucks labouring slowly and the unladen ones thundering quickly past underneath. Their engines create one wash of sound, their slipstreams a second and their tyres on the road surface another. It all makes a sort of throaty choir of white noise, roaring a long shout of nothing into the sky from the cutting through the land. Rain on the tarmac makes the tyres sound louder but softer at the same time.
Towards dusk the lights form twin bands of colour, white and red, glittering and beautiful. I used to be unable to stay late enough to see this for long because it never seemed wise to make the walk back across the moor in the dark. Now that I can drive I’ve brought the Volvo out here a couple of times at night, parking it and walking out into the middle of the bridge to watch the lights. It’s not quite the same, though; the walk is part of the experience, even though I find it stressful and don’t like having to walk through dirt or mud.
Being here at night is even more nerve-racking, though; the threat of people turning up to attack or kidnap me seems all the greater. I know the crime statistics indicate this is highly unlikely to happen, but I just can’t ever stop thinking about it. So mostly I come here in daylight.
Mist, fog and low cloud ought to make it barely worth coming, but it doesn’t always work that way. If it gets too dense you can see almost nothing – the vehicles appear directly below only briefly and disappear again – but, if there’s just enough, it can make the whole scene look serene and other-worldly. The traffic looks like it’s made up of ghost vehicles forever solidifying out of the atmosphere and rolling along an enchanted highway to somewhere exalted, exotic and fair.
The very best thing to see, though, is a random jam. A random jam is when the traffic backs up for what looks like no particular reason. Roadworks and crashes produce non-random, perfectly explicable jam-ups, but random jams seem to come out of nowhere. One moment the traffic is flowing normally, then the next it’s as though the liquid of the traffic suddenly sets, with the wave-front of halting vehicles propagating rapidly upstream. Later, after a few seconds or many minutes, as the traffic at the front of the queue breaks up like ice on some Alaskan river in spring, the flow resumes, and everything gets back to normal.
It’s fascinating, and oddly beautiful. Sometimes it leads to skids and shunts and road traffic accidents, when people don’t pay attention and fail to brake in time, and that isn’t so good, but generally this doesn’t happen and the random jam is like some strange, harmless, ephemeral work of art.
I rarely drive on the motorway and I’ve never been in a random jam. It must feel like any other except you never see what caused it, so a random jam can only really be appreciated by an external observer, like me on the bridge.
The best one I ever saw was the first, when I was only ten and had just started venturing as far over the moor as the motorway and the bridge. It started to the north, at the far end of the straight before the Bewford turn-off, and I watched the traffic congeal all the way up to where I stood until it passed beneath me and went on out the other side of the bridge. When I looked back to where it had begun it was already clearing, and the wave of spreading-out, accelerating vehicles came rolling up the hill as quickly as the original jam.
I remember laughing.
Random jams only ever occur when traffic is heavy and bunched up. I think they’re triggered when something seemingly trivial takes place, like somebody changing lanes suddenly, and the person behind brakes, then the person behind them brakes a little harder, and so on, until people further back are having to slow to a crawl and then a stop, while people changing lanes to avoid it just spread the blockage further.
Ideally, to study the phenomenon under controlled conditions, you’d want to start one of your own. I have toyed with the idea of dropping something from the bridge – a plastic bag full of leaves, maybe, so it wouldn’t cause any damage if it hit a vehicle – but that would still be dangerous and irresponsible, plus I’d be frightened I’d be caught and imprisoned.
Lastly, it has occurred to me that the person who initiates a random jam probably never knows what chaos they’ve caused behind them. I’ve seen six random jams over the last eight years – three in the last eighteen months as I’ve adjusted the times of my walks to make witnessing them more likely – and it took me a while before I realised that they might stand as a symbol for life in general; trivial actions leading to proliferating consequences that affect hundreds of others, but which we never know about.
I can be slow that way.
‘Yeah, Kit, mate, hi. How you doin’? Just having a cup of tea, yeah?’
I am standing stirring a mug of tea with the tea bag lying steaming on the draining board right beside the mug, so I’m not sure Haze’s statement needs even the most cursory acknowledgement. I think I’ll risk it and say nothing.
Everybody has finished their breakfast, including Guy, though he had only about half the eggy mug and complained there was too much tomato sauce (that’s a first). I’ve eaten the sausage Haze left, the bits of bacon Alison removed from her bacon roll – mostly fat, but well crisped; the best bit if you ask me – three half-slices of toast off various plates and assorted other bits and pieces. I was able to do this quickly while clearing up after everybody had left the kitchen, and obviously I watch people carefully to make sure they haven’t sneezed over their food, or are inclined to spray saliva when they talk, or insert something into their mouth and then put it back on their plate, uneaten but contaminated.
I’m not really comfortable eating in front of people at the best of times, but this sort of scavenging-eating – even though it’s really just about not wasting food – can look a bit sad; people think you’re destitute, or – God help us – have Eating Issues. And I draw the line at finishing the contents of Guy’s eggy mug.
Anyway, thanks to Haze, now I’ve lost count of how many rotations and contra-rotations I’ve performed with the spoon to stir the milk and sugar in. Oh well; I was probably about there anyway. ‘Hi, Haze,’ I say. He’s dressed in his jeans and the same Therapy? T-shirt.
‘Yeah,’ he says. ‘Just thinking; what time did Pris head off to see this, um, what’s-his-name?’
‘Rick.’
‘Yeah, him.’
I think back. ‘About eight-fifteen, eight-thirty?’
‘Right, right, yeah. She say what time she’d be back?’
‘No. I think we’re all meeting up for lunch.’
‘Right. Yeah, I see.’ His face scrunches up. ‘Don’t see that lasting, really, do you?’
I stare at him. Eventually I shrug. Then I drink my tea; sometimes it’s good to have a prop.
‘Always a bad sign, when you sleep apart, isn’t it? Well,’ he says, scratching his head through his thin brown hair, ‘you wouldn’t … But it is, know what I mean?’
‘Aha.’
‘Yeah,’ he says, grinning now. ‘Yeah,’ he repeats. He takes a deep breath. ‘So, this tape, eh?’
‘Aha. Yes. The tape.’
‘Yeah; the tape.’
‘Is it a sex tape?’ I ask him.
Haze’s eyes widen and his mouth opens. ‘Oh, yeah, totally.’ Then he laughs loudly and shakes his head. ‘Nah, not really. But there is, ah … embarrassing stuff on there. Would hurt me a lot if it, you know, came out.’ His nose wrinkles. ‘Others are all right; they’re, you know, secure. Career. Money. That sort of boring, conformist shit.’ He shrugs. ‘I’m … I’m sort of, a bit more … out there, you know? Bit exposed, yeah? Result of living on the edge a bit. Certain …’ He waggles one hand. ‘Certain sensitivities with … certain people around me about, you know, activities … exposed positions, that sort of thing.’ He nods.
‘I see.’ (I don’t.)
‘Yeah,’ he says, frowning. ‘Anyway, so …’ He has started gently, rhythmically, bouncing one fist off the shoulder of one of the kitchen seats as he talks. He’s not looking at me now; he’s looking at the table. ‘It’s just, I’ve, like – oh, man, it’s really annoying,’ he says through a laugh, ‘ – but I’ve only gone and come out and left home without me wallet, haven’t I?’ He reaches round and pats a hip pocket. His gaze flicks to me and then away again. ‘Well, I mean, I’ve got the actual
wallet
, but I forgot to bring, like, dosh, and my card, you know what I mean?’
I feel like the Terminator sometimes. I can almost see the lines of potential dialogue scrolling down in front of me.
‘Fuck off, asshole’ and ‘Uzi nine millimetre’ both being inappropriate, I decide to go with:
‘Oh dear.’
‘Yeah, I know!’ Haze says, nodding vigorously. ‘So I just, like, wondered if you could, you know, like, spot me for a shekel or two, know what I mean, mate?’
‘Lend you some money?’
‘I’ll give you a cheque and everything. I always carry a spare cheque in my wallet, so that’s not a problem, I mean, it really isn’t. Yeah, so, that’d be great. Hundred would … Hundred would do. Shit, man, really hate having to ask you. This is so embarrassing, but …’ He looks back at the kitchen door and drops his voice a little. ‘You’re sort of the man of the house now, aren’t you?’ He looks at me, smiles and shrugs.
I shake my head. ‘I don’t think I have much cash, Haze, sorry.’
His face falls. ‘Oh.’
‘Maybe a fiver in change, if that.’
‘Well, that would—’
‘But’ – I look up at the ceiling, to give the appearance of thinking; there’s a new stain there, I’m fairly sure – ‘I’ll need a pound coin for the shopping trolley,’ I tell him. ‘And then, later in the week, if I have to take Guy to the hospital, there’s the parking. You have to pay, now.’
‘Oh. Oh, right. Yeah, I see. Well, okay. Yeah, right, yeah; bummer, eh? Never mind. Thanks.’ He pats the seat-back as though congratulating or commiserating with it, then starts to retreat to the door. ‘Yeah, well, so; if you could get any money when you’re out, or anything, then, you’ll, you know …’ He looks at me with an expectant expression on his face. I smile at him. ‘Right,’ he says. ‘Yeah; right. Okay then. Like, later, crocodile.’ He leaves.
I have a biscuit with the tea. There’s a syrupy residue of partially dissolved sugar left in the bottom of the mug.
I knew I hadn’t stirred it enough.
‘Where now?’
‘Aldi.’
‘I thought we’d been there.’
‘No, we haven’t.’
‘You sure? Where did we go first?’
‘That was Lidl.’
‘Ah.’
‘They share seventy-five per cent of the letters in their names.’
‘Yeah, that’ll be it. Why are we going to Aldi?’
‘For bread.’
‘We got bread in Sainsbury’s.’
‘That was brown wholemeal, for me. We still need plain white, for Guy.’
Hol nods behind me. ‘There’s some right there.’
I don’t even need to look. ‘Yes, but it’s not on special offer.’
Hol squints. ‘Doesn’t exactly look expensive.’ She has a pained expression on her face. I have come to recognise this look, over the years. Not just on Holly, either.
‘Yes,’ I tell her, ‘but it’s still not on special offer. It’s twenty pence cheaper in Aldi this week.’
‘Twenty pee? Is it even worth it? How far is it to Aldi?’
‘It’s one point four kilometres. Given that the car’s engine is already warmed up, our additional fuel consumption, even allowing for the extra eight hundred metres added to our journey from Aldi to home, compared to from here to home—’
‘No need to show your working, Kit,’ Holly says, holding one palm up to me.
‘It’s worth it,’ I confirm, cutting to the chase.
‘Okay.’ Hol sighs. She looks down the aisle. ‘Any particular checkout? Do you have a strategy for that too?’
‘One of the self-checkouts.’ I nod. ‘There’s a single queue; more efficient. Why we have a basket.’
The other reason I like to exit via the self-checkout lanes is that I don’t have my own proper bank card yet and so I have to use Guy’s debit card to pay for the groceries – I usually get some cashback from the first supermarket I visit, to pay for any subsequent smaller orders – and it’s less stressful using a machine to enter the PIN than looking into the eyes of a checkout staff member when technically it’s not actually your name on the card you’re using. That makes me sweat and sometimes fumble or even temporarily forget the PIN.