HesperidesI was going to say that this is a true story; but memory is unreliable; and the process of recall is more like that of dreaming than of reading in that desire repeatedly transforms one's recollections; and that memories are to be interpreted before they can be relied upon.Yet stories have their own validity. As long as you are content that this story may or may not be false memory, then it needs no further mediation. Think of two young men in a car. They are rather mentally immature, though perhaps no more so than other males of their age; they are undoubtedly mentally odder than many you'll have met. They would be in their late teens; I can be no more accurate than that; and there is about a year between them anyway. These are real young men, as I recall them, as they were; and they had so many boyish escapades I fear that any memory I have is at least slightly false or muddled. At some point, a day in the late 1960s, they were in a car, driving south on the M1; and I was, let us suppose, present in the back of that car. It was owned by the passenger. He couldn't drive, but he owned the car. It had been given to him by his father, an autodidactic motor mechanic who could make a rock mobile merely by oiling it and putting on trade plates. It was a present to encourage his son to learn to drive, an Austin Cambridge which someone had abandoned on an extant bomb site, where the New Covent Garden Market was being built. The Passenger's Father towed the unwanted car to his yard and worked at it for some time, using whatever came to hand: a bit from a lorry was sometimes compatible, and a bit from an old car might even be from an Austin. When all that could be done for it was done, it obtained its MOT by the usual method of being parked on the forecourt of an MOT-accredited garage for an hour or two. The Passenger's Father went back then and was so pleased to see the Garage Owner that he gave him some money for a drink. Having collected his certificate, he drove away. Sometimes, the process was more formal. On those days the Garage Owner would ask "Is it OK, Bert?", when the time had elapsed, and The Passenger's Father would utter the correct response "Oh yes." Very occasionally, The Passenger's Father would say "You'd better look at this one"; but this was not one of those occasions. When the car arrived at its new home in South London, driven there by The Passenger's Father, the Passenger was chided for having done nothing about learning to drive and what use was the bloody car to a non-driver. The Passenger shrugged and turned away, as carefree teenagers often do, and phoned The Driver. The Driver, who had celebrated passing his driving test by, reputedly, reaching 100 mph in Bromley High Street immediately after, though I cannot validate this claim, arrived in his father's car and thanked The Driver's Father, shaming The Passenger. Having approved the vehicle, he returned his father's car and walked back, explaining to The Passenger that, if he would only learn to drive, walking need not be undertaken in such circumstances. They insulted each other vigorously for a few minutes, just sufficient to renew their bond of friendship in the light of changed circumstances; and then they drove off and were not seen by their families for two days. It was during those two days, on a journey which took in London Airport, Stone Henge and the Isle of Purbeck, that an agreement was reached: The Driver would have use of the car, freeing him of the tyranny of having to ask his father for the use of his car, providing he would guarantee to drive The Passenger anywhere on demand. This was an agreement reached easily because The Driver's main passion was to drive and The Passenger's main passion was to go to places, any places. Also, on that initial journey, it was discovered that, if one put one's foot down on the floor between the driver's seat and the foot pedals, one was likely to put one's foot through the floor of the car. The Passenger's Father was consulted. He said that he had meant to mention that, but it had slipped his mind. The Austin Cambridge, he continued, was a very well-built car, with plenty of redundancy, and a little thing like rust in a main section of the chassis wouldn't threaten the structural integrity of the whole. He did, however, counsel caution with regard to an official inspection. All should be well if they didn't attract attention by driving fast. The solution was to construct a false chassis section of cat food tins. Coating the exposed parts of the tins in thick oil and driving the car along muddy roads on a wet day soon disguised the fake. A piece of hardboard beneath the carpet ensured that The Driver's foot did not do any damage. Even when the car was viewed from an inspection pit, the lie was not discovered. Obviously, the next thing to do was to spray paint the entire car matt black; but, once that was done, the chrome trim spoilt the effect; added to which, the blackness of the car drew attention to the rust on the trim. So they took the trim off. Those chrome parts which could not be removed were lightly shaded with the spray, as were the side and rear windows. The Driver had always wanted shaded windows. These changes would draw attention to the car during day time, but the boys tended to drive at nights, which otherwise were only good for sleeping; and at night a police car taking an interest could soon be lost because, once the lights were turned off on a country lane, this car became invisible. The rule, they agreed, was not to drive in daylight or on motorways. Through carelessness, they were frequently stopped by the police anyway, even at night; but they survived the interrogations and, as time passed, they became more reckless and drove on motorways and in daylight. So it was that one day they were driving southwards down the M1; in the early afternoon, I think... By then, various unnecessary parts had been removed from the car. Door handles, for instance, only weighed it down and impeded acceleration; as did the rear seat and its metal supports, easily replaced by a light wobbly wooden seat for anyone wishing to rest near the petrol tank whilst trying to avoid rolling into the boot. This had a limiting effect on the range of potential fellow passengers and they liked fellow passengers; but the added speed was welcome. When the vehicle was finally sold for £5 to a man they met at Scotch Corner, they retrieved the mole wrench which served as a moveable door handle and tool kit. I am, however, inclined to think that the only reason he bought the car was that he had spotted the tool and realised that it doubled the value of the property. The young men's behaviour at the time, palming it from the passenger door, trying to muffle the click of disengagement, into The Passenger's overcoat, suggests that they too suspected that he thought he had bought the most valuable item. It upset them to abandon their metal friend, but the hitching was fun; and there had been no choice. As the car reached 93 mph, the fastest it had ever travelled, parts of pistons went through the bonnet and they had been lucky not to have been hurt. The momentum of the now powerless car being just sufficient to bring them to a halt outside the cafeteria only added to their conviction that they had reached a turning point. They spent very little time weighing up what could be done with a mole wrench and the dregs of a tube of plastic padding and went looking for a buyer... On the day in question, the car was only doing about 80 mph. It had been to the Tamar Valley, once; Lands End, once; Aberystwyth, several times; numerous places in rural Wales, including an unmarked hill fort they stumbled on in the middle of Forestry Commission land, grown through by trees, where The Passenger had bored The Driver more than usually by relating long bits of an odd story by Arthur Machin; Leeds; Newcastle; Alnwick; Holy Island; Ipswich; Isle of Sheppey; Brighton; Bristol; Cardiff; Swansea; and Birmingham (once around the bullring and back because time was short); and it was only half way through its resurrected life. At least one weekend in 4 it got an outing and also had another life, with many journeys featuring The Driver but not The Passenger, which I know little of. Once the Driver had kept it to himself for some time, while The Passenger was following enthusiasms of his own, and had brought it back with the words "mobile fornicatorium" stencilled clearly in white on the matt black passenger door, easily visible from the Passenger's parents' house. This had not pleased The Passenger's Mother, but her sarcastic homily was borne by her son with the fortitude of one who knew, beyond doubt, that he was not quite ready to provide his own housing and that, once he kissed her goodbye and left, she would cease to be an annoyance. Nevertheless, by quick agreement, achieved by the threatened withdrawal of driving facilities, the name of the car, because a car has to have a name, became Hesperides. I can't tell you where they had been that special day, before the M1. Clearly they were heading homewards; but I remember that once, as they returned from Land's End, they reached London 4 hours before The Passenger was due to go to work and decided on a tour of Kent to pass the time; so all I know for certain is that they were going south. I am sure of that. When I think of it, it feels south, if you understand me. There is an elegiac air to their hysteria. Life will too soon become mundane unless they think of something. The hysteria smells somewhat of Newcastle Brown, but a greater influence is their certainty that they are immortal and admirable; that, as long as we are not engaging in anything as important as honesty, they are perfect specimens of humanity; that the startled looks of the indigenous Earth population, as a matt black Austin Cambridge hurtles past them, are really very amusing... That it might be only a matter of time before the police spotted them added to the excitement, promising the outrage that always followed adults spoiling their fun. "Fuck!" said The Driver. It is, after all, time that we heard their wise words. "Wha?" asked The Passenger. "My cigarettes are in the back. Hold the wheel." He let go the steering wheel, turned backwards and tried to lean over his seat to grub around in the capacious and empty rear of the vehicle. The Passenger grabbed the steering wheel and learned to steer. Then The Driver yelled "Put your foot down." The Passenger, his arse still in the passenger seat, stretched his leg and put his foot down, as The Driver's foot lifted from the pedal, and tried to drive the car from that position, slewing it towards and between the other vehicles near them, the first time he had ever driven. This allowed The Driver to get into the rear completely. I think I recall horns blaring. I gave him his cigarettes and The Driver returned, writhing over the back of his seat head first, something like a caterpillar, saying "I've just had an idea". He went head first down to the floor, and then rested his knees and feet on his seat. He took over the accelerator and brake. "I'll do these. You steer and tell me what you want. Sit low down in the seat so they can't see you're steering." And so they went many miles south, the car swerving and swaying, especially as it passed large vehicles, whose drivers may well have seen what was happening but possibly not believed it, an otherwise apparently driverless fast car with a single grinning calm passenger, telling each other how funny it was. In due course, The Passenger saw a wall of vehicles ahead, with no way through, and screamed for The Driver to drive conventionally; and so this experiment in culpable accidental homicide came to an end. On a later day, they toyed individually but simultaneously with the idea that they might be misguided, as they headed towards a vehicle on a Devon road one vehicle wide at a combined speed of something like 150 mph. Both drivers took in the situation and accelerated, perhaps to ensure death rather than injury. However, there being a very wide gate at the central point of the potential collision, now that they had accelerated, with the verge their side of it scoured flat for hundreds of yards before by some large agrarian force, The Driver was able to give the other vehicle space to pass and found space to come to a stop himself in order to say "That was fun" in a voice which, for some reason, belied the statement. Many years later, on another continent, he was driving at speed through a mountain range, when it occurred to him that he wanted to live more than he wanted to speed; and he slowed down for ever. The Passenger had a similar experience, but many years later still. He never learned to drive, and went years sometimes without entering a car; he rarely met anyone who drove quite as fast and, it must be said, as skilfully, as The Driver. But one day a work colleague, leaving for home at the same time as he, offered him a lift. Driving down Carshalton High Street, a narrow thoroughfare, as if it were a motorway, she asked "Can you see if I'm on the pavement? I've got the wrong glasses on." For the first time, he feared the consequences of being in a motor accident and since then has frequently suggested to his drivers that they slow down. A version of this story, under the title False Memory, was posted on the British & Irish Poets Email List in February 2000 Notes: Austin Cambridge - a solidly-built 4-door saloon car M1 - the first UK motorway which links London with the north of England MOT - a legally-required certificate of roadworthiness New Covent Garden Market - a fruit and vegetable wholesale market built just south of the River Thames Scotch Corner - service station on the M1 |