Image: © Pixabay License. Source
Author: Andreia Abreu Remigio
My factory-fresh yellow 2003 Toyota Sienta, specially imported from Japan for me, wasn’t what you’d expect a single, childless woman in her late twenties to drive. Who’d have thought a quirky people carrier could be so charming? It could seat seven people, the seats were beige and soft, and I couldn’t hear the engine issues over Michael Bublé’s new album.
I was excited at the prospect of riding my new toy up to Liverpool to present my new findings at the annual psycholinguistics conference. The last few years had been long though, the setbacks numerous. A never-ending cycle of research and publication that didn’t leave much time for anything else.
Around noon I stopped at a petrol station near Birmingham. While waiting in the queue with my Tesco meal deal, a big meaty and balding man turned around.
“Going north, love?”
I looked around to make sure he wasn’t speaking to someone else. “Uh, yeah.”
“Can you take me? I’m trying to get to Manchester.”
I don’t know why but I said yes—a young woman giving an older male hitchhiker a lift was like poking a sleeping bear. But he looked kind. He was a small, ball-shaped man with a gap between his front teeth. He was wearing a cowboy hat and he looked like my estranged father. I decided to take it as a good sign. So we walked back to my car and drove on. The day was relentlessly hot, as every day had been since June. The asphalt on the motorway still glistened from the morning’s rain.
“Where in Manchester should I drop you off?”
“Anywhere in the city centre, love. I’m going to the Manchester Jazz Festival.”
“How nice,” I said with a wistful smile. “I wish I could go with you, I love music.”
“I don’t like jazz that much, but it pays well.”
“Oh! Are you playing at the festival?”
I had my eyes focused on the road, but I heard him inhale deeply. He didn’t answer. I decided to drop the conversation, aware that he might not want to talk the two whole hours to Manchester. A silent hitchhiker type.
“Are you a writer?” he asked after a long silence. “You ask a lot of questions.”
I chuckled. “Sorry. No, I am not.” I hesitated. “Linguistics scholar.”
“What’s that for?” he asked, genuinely curious.
“Well, I study speech. I’m interested in how people talk. I’m driving to a conference actually.”
“Why do you like jazz, then? No speech in jazz now, innit?”
“You’re right. Jazz is not my favourite kind of music. I’m more into pop. I was just listening to Michael Bublé.”
He nodded slowly and I could make out a tiny smile from the corner of my eye. It was like he was digesting this new bit of information along with the rest of his sandwich.
“My daughter quite liked Bublé.”
I smiled politely. Noticing the past tense, I was now unsure how to continue the small talk, and I could feel a little tightness in my throat. Suddenly the sky started to darken with low heavy clouds that had appeared out of nowhere, like summoned by our interaction. The bright shimmer of earlier disappeared, giving way to good old English gloom. Michael Bublé would’ve hated it.
“You really like this car, huh?” he said, more statement than question. He patted with his meaty hand the dashboard, which was hot to the touch. A fatherly quality test.
“I do. Bit daft, really. I’ve never cared about vehicles, but I fell in love with Japanese cars last year while I was on holiday,” I said, tapping my fingers on the steering wheel. “Loads of these in the streets of Nagasaki.”
“Nagasaki! Bloody hell. I lived in Tokyo in the 70s for a while, Angela Carter-style. They had just opened the first Shinkansen line. Everyone moved like they had somewhere better to be.”
I laughed, and his chuckle turned into a dry cough.
“My father was into cars,” I confided quietly. “He loved music too. We would listen to his Queen and Dire Straits tapes in the garage, me singing, him playing an air guitar. He wanted to be in a band. But he went into accounting instead.”
He didn’t say anything back. The silence stretched as long as the clouds in the sky. I flipped on the wipers, but it wasn’t raining yet, so they just made an unpleasant squeaky sound against the glass.
“Did you ever want to play music?” he ventured after a while.
“I did, actually. I used to sing. But you know how it is… Time came to choose a grown-up career,” I said, half-answering his question, half-convincing myself that the psycholinguistics conference was the best place to be today. “The PhD just kind of fell into my lap when I graduated. I thought that was serious enough of a job. I wasn’t any good at singing anyway, I think.”
I could feel him looking at me. He nodded like he believed me. “Still sing in the shower?”
“Singing in the shower is for weird, happy people.”
“Fair enough.”
We drove in silence again for a while. The clouds followed us like a persistent question mark. Somewhere around Stoke-on-Trent, the rain finally started, soft at first and then drumming on the roof. My wipers struggled to keep up.
“How long you been in linguistics?” he asked suddenly.
“Seven years. Give or take. I just finished a postdoc in London. Now I’m teaching and doing research.”
“And you still like it?”
His question made me pause. “Yes,” I said slowly. “But… Yeah. Sometimes I wonder if I took the quiet path. You know? The one where you don’t have to risk embarrassing yourself. Robert Frost probably wouldn’t be proud of me.”
“Nothing wrong with quiet,” he said. “But risk’s where the music is. As long as you don’t have any regrets. But then again, everyone does. Even musicians. We all choose our soundtracks, love. Some keep us safe; others set us free.”
I tightened my grip on the steering wheel. Something in his words caught at me.
When we finally rolled into the outer edges of Manchester, the traffic picked up. Busier streets, people scurrying under umbrellas. Couldn’t make out rain drops from sweat. I rolled down the window. The air smelled like wet tar and the heat made it hard to breathe.
“Drop you off at the square. Is that okay?”
“It’s perfect, love.”
I slowed down and pulled to the side of the road. His hand was on the car door handle, but he paused before stepping out.
“Are you going to analyse our conversation?” he asked, a smirk on his face.
“You wish!”
“Do you miss it?”
“Miss what?”
“Forget it. Just remember one thing, love: it’s never too late in the day for a tune. If you fancy some music after your big serious conference, come and have a listen. Name’s Ron Brown by the way.”
“Joanna Davies.”
“Sounds like a celebrity’s name,” he said, smiling. “Cheers.”
He gave me a nod of thanks and I was too surprised to say anything before he disappeared into the crowd, his cowboy hat bobbing between the hoods of rain jackets and ponchos.
As I drove away, I turned the radio on and “Why Worry” was on. At the next red light, something strange happened. I started to hum along. By the time I hit the main road, I was proper singing. As Ron’s shadow lingered in the passenger seat, I thought about my father, how he wouldn’t have wanted me to make the same mistakes he did. Maybe the conference was my own accounting hell.
I made a full circle at the next roundabout.