I sat down on the bench, paint flaking from the wood and covered with the scars of years of graffiti. I turned up the collar of my coat, tightened the scarf around my neck and pulled out a tatty packet of cigarettes from my pocket. Only two left. I lit one, my hands shaking from the cold, my breath turning from frosty condensation to the thick tar smoke. Behind me, the hill climbed, funneling between two great belts of trees to a single gate. In front of me, it fell away to the busy jumble of the road.
I was here to think. I always came here to think. If I wanted to read, or write, or pretend to think, I would be up on the hill behind me, on the shoulder of the local Downs, sitting laconic under the green canopy of a small copse, or sitting cross-legged and facing the brutal wind that charged into you at the summit. All very wild and weather beaten, very Shelley, very Wuthering. But if I wanted to do any serious thinking, when my mind was genuinely troubled and not simply looking for angst to complain about, I would come to this noisy, choking, stinking spot. As the cars passed me, the passengers in the front seat would stare and gawp at my useless figure, their heads turning quickly as they sped away.
My hands still shook when I lifted the cigarette to my lips.
When I had first met her, I was attracting a large crowd. In fact I was singing, very loudly and very badly. I had consumed an indescribable amount of alcohol, accidentally insulted a very understanding and polite family who had just left a restaurant together, eaten some revolting takeaway food, been thrown out of the most notoriously violent pub in the town (for my own safety) and now I was slumped against a shop window which would not stop moving. My hat was placed between my knees; people had started to throw money into it, mistaking me for a beggar. It was this charity that had given me the mistaken idea that I could be some sort of street entertainer, and so I had started to sing. A few moments later, I was sick into my hat.
It was as the crowd was dispersing that she appeared. I remember because she seemed to be clearer in my pathetic drunk eyesight; to be sharper in focus than everyone else. She’d knelt down in front of me and put her nose right to mine and held my head in her hands. I still tried to save some sort of respectability by begging her not to look into my hat. But her face, now so clear that I could make out the shadowy lines of her cheek bones showed only concern, her brow furrowed, and before I knew what was going on, I was being hoisted to my feet and my arm clamped around a pair of iron shoulders. Her eyes were so big, so brown, so damn beautiful. My mind drifted onto the food I had eaten an hour or so earlier. A mistake. I passed out.
“Are you alright?”
My brain cavity throbbed and pulsed, twitching and writhing in agony. It felt like a huge weight in contrast to the rest of me that felt light and airy, as though I could float on a strong breeze. I could feel every pump of the blood from my heart as it entered my skull. I moaned, languidly.
‘No, no, no, no… I’m really not alright, not… ’
I felt a sharp kick, like the flat of someone’s boot, and I rolled over an edge into a void of utter darkness. I didn’t even have time to scream or to brace myself. I dropped a short way and hit icy cold water hard on my side, falling like a stone in more or less the position I had been lying in. The air was sucked out of my lungs and as I desperately kicked my legs out to swim, my bare feet scraped against some sharp pebbles on the river bed. My chest ached and my head was catatonic with pain. I surfaced noisily, punching and slapping the water around me, my eyes clamped shut, my mouth filled with silt. I struggled to the reeds on the shore and looked around desperately. There was a small bridge not far above me. The river was not wide, but fell in steps over small weirs and through islands of pebbles – by design or grace, where I had fallen was quite deep. I glanced back to the bridge again, scraping my wet hair back away from my eyes. I had seen someone before, or I thought I had as I was thrashing about, but now they were gone. I grasped and tore at the reeds trying to get ashore, kicking and fussing, but they broke in my hands. Finally, real fear crept into my bones and I stood perfectly still in the freezing water lapping around my waist. The roar of the current, although gentle, seemed deafening. Ripples emanated from my stomach, disturbed only by the course of the stream. I strained to listen for voices or movement.
“Need help?”
I swung around. A soft hand, glowing in the pale moonlight was reaching out over the bank of the river. She was there again with a huge smile on her face, halfway between amusement and malevolence, brown hair bunched to the back of her head with a fringe parted to one side and tucked into her ears. She was wearing an informal dress; it looked like quite a thick material and didn’t really show her figure. Her legs were bare and on her feet were a pair of unlaced Doc Marten boots. She was crouched to the ground and my eyes went between her knees to her thighs and to the faintest glimpse of a pair of white knickers. I didn’t accept her hand, but instead backed away down into the river again. The water rose to swirl over my stomach.
‘What the hell is going on?’
I plunged my hands into the water to my pockets, looking for my wallet and my phone. My trouser pockets. That’s when I realized my coat was missing.
‘Where’s all my stuff?’
She nodded behind her.
“On the grass, don’t panic. I’ve thought of everything.” She smiled again and reached her hand out. “Come on you fucking plank or you’ll catch your death.”
I eyed her dubiously. “Get the fuck away from me!” My voice was broken as I said this. It was halfway between shock and a desire to burst out laughing.
“Language, boy.” She held out her hand again. “I’m not leaving you to freeze your arse off all night, even if you might want to.” Her voice was stern, like a parent might be with a misbehaving child.
I waded towards her and grabbed her hand. Any temptations I had about pulling her in with me and making an escape were quickly dashed. Her grip was like a vice and she hauled me through the reeds and I struggled onto the grass. The night was warm, but the whispering breeze was exaggerated in my clinging, wet clothes. I felt a shiver. I also realized that my headache had disappeared, although I was still winded and breathless from the fall. She threw me my coat and stood with her hands on her hips.
“Are ya feeling better now, aye?”
I wrapped my coat around me, still shivering, still dripping, and said nothing.
“Are ya not talking to me now?”
I looked past her to our surroundings. We were in a small field. The river seemed to run through it. In the distance, I could make out the dim gloom of the Downs, rolling away towards the town. More immediately, a small hedge showed the line of a road and a car parked in a lay-by; the headlights were off but the engine growled away quietly. Both the driver and passenger doors were open.
“Oh come on. We’ve come this far and you’re not even going to tell me your name? Am I going to have to tell my friends about the drunk I picked up with the beautiful voice, who remained enigmatic and silent?”
‘Where am I?’
“Oh jesus… You’re in Wonderland, Alice. You’ve missed the White Rabbit, but you’re just in time for the Evil Queen of Hearts”. She grinned and took a step forward, reaching for something inside her DM’s. I look a fearful step back.
“Will you relax for Christ’ sakes? Here, this is yours. Unless you want it back in the river?” She handed me my phone. My wallet and keys were still in the coat pockets.
“I couldn’t get your hat back I’m afraid, but I don’t think you’d want it anyway.” I eyed my phone, taking the cover off and checking for the SIM card. It was still there. She chuckled to herself and tilted her head. “You’re going to have to trust me sooner or later, or else it is a long walk home.”
‘You threw me in a river.’
She tapped her nose.
“Ah, but what is the river called?”
‘I don’t know…! …where the hell am I?’
She sighed and rolled her eyes. “Over there is the town centre. Over there is London. Over there is probably Paris. And up there…” She looked up and pointed. “Up there is heaven.”
I frowned at her.
“Orrrr… Jupiter I suppose. Would you like a lift?”
‘Adrian’. I offered my damp hand to shake.
“Chloe”. She returned the handshake.
I sat down on the grass. She did the same. I was still suspicious. I would do anything to not have to get in that car with her until the last possible moment. I wasn’t sure if she was alone or not.
‘This is going to seem like an obvious question…’
She arched her eyebrows.
‘But why did you kidnap me and dump me in a stream?’
She smiled and shrugged.
‘No. Seriously. Why?’
“Because… you look like you needed help”
I frowned.
‘Wouldn’t it have been easier to call a cab? Or an ambulance?’
“Mmmm… perhaps. But far less fun.”
‘So… your idea of fun is picking up drunk men and dunking them in rivers?’
“That’s feminism for ya…”
I looked away. Her voice softened to the same tone that I had first heard slumped against the shop window.
“Look. I just wanted to help you out. You were probably going to be mugged - or worse - in your state. I couldn’t call a cab because none of them would have taken you. I couldn’t call an ambulance because you weren’t technically ill, just paralytic. You didn’t appear to have any friends with you and the best I could get out of you conversation wise was a load of nonsense about not being able to look at food ever again. So I brought you here.”
I looked up at the stars. My head began to spin. I blinked and decided not to attempt anything like that for a few hours yet.
“I come here a lot in the summer evenings. To chill out, y’know?”
I drew the coat over my shoulders and shivered.
‘Yes’, I answered, wiping my eyes. The water still dripped from my hair and ran down my face. ‘I’m beginning to see.’
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The cigarette smoke stung my eyes as it ran to the filter and stopped. I leant forward and stubbed it out against the legs of the bench. Reclining back in the seat, I stared at the traffic running left to right and right to left, looking a small, green Peugeot.
It wasn’t a normal way to meet someone, but then I’ve never seemed to do anything by halves. I remembered that, at this point, soaking wet and miles from the town centre, I almost trusted her. I mean, I knew nothing about her, but I finally realised that I wasn’t going to be buried alongside the small stream, or tied up in the car and torched along with it. Her intentions, however warped, seemed benign. She had a pleasant demeanor; none of her body language was especially aggressive, but she had innate self-confidence. Assured, rather than arrogant and insecure. I felt comfortable in her presence, as if we shared some sort of past that none of us knew about. In some dusty library somewhere, two halves of the same book had been written but not yet joined together as one story. All these feelings came together to make me realize that, yes, maybe I can trust you. I took another thoughtful drag, blowing smoke into the still, freezing air.
As I sat, an occupant of a passing car shouted some abuse at me. Someone in the front hung out of the passenger window just to shout something. At the speed they were traveling, it sounded nothing to me, except a smear of words that were catapulted away. I gave them a fairly worthless ‘V’ sign as they disappeared down the road and out of sight.
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“You’re still confused aren’t you?” She sounded slightly ashamed as well as exasperated. We were trudging slowly towards her car. I still had no shoes on and I winced and stumbled through the field, treading on a sharp stone here, a thistle there. My coat rested on my damp shoulders, although I was starting to dry out in the humid night. It was long past three. We reached the stile between two high stone walls. She started to climb over but stopped halfway, straddling it.
“You know, we should do this again sometime”
I looked at her incredulously.
‘Will you forgive me if I turn you down on that offer?’
“I might. I might just drag you back there and sling you in again though.”
To my surprise I laughed, and not simply a nervous laugh at a threat either. I still felt slightly drunk. My head swam and my stomach growled. More than anything, I just felt weak. The joints of my legs seemed to be loosely attached. Although I wasn’t cold, I still felt myself shaking occasionally, or a single shiver would dance down my spine making me spasm briefly.
“Your choice.” She swung her leg over the stile and jumped down to the road to her car. The car was empty, no huge burly men hiding in the back. Breathing a sigh of relief, I climbed over gingerly, and followed her, tiptoeing on the sharp gravel. An empty box of tissues lay by the passenger door and the car stank of vomit. The air fans were set to maximum, presumably to get rid of the foul, stale odour. I felt sheepish. Our eyes met in mutual understanding and horror.
‘I’m really sorry’
“It’s okay. Just please keep your window open.”
I climbed into the passenger seat, taking care to put my shoes on before I allowed my bare feet to touch the damp carpets. I had just reached over to close the door when she flicked the headlights on and buried the throttle. The front wheels span on the gravel and the acceleration slammed the door shut, flinging me back in the seat where I had been leaning forwards. She charged up the single lane, the long grass at the side of the road waving to us in the headlights, hissing through the open windows of the car. Tearing towards the junction that led out to the main road she slammed the brakes hard, throwing me forward against the glove box. I still hadn’t even been able to put on my seatbelt yet. The car briefly skidded before stopping just before the white line. She flicked the indicator left, towards home.
I looked at her in profile as she turned left and right, looking for traffic. Both left and right routes were blind – you couldn’t see anything coming until it was more or less on top of you. Despite the time of night, this road was still relatively busy, especially with large goods vehicles going to and fro, delivering whilst the town was quiet. She nudged the car forwards slightly, still leaning to see if she could pull out. And again. And again. The car was illuminated by the bright flashing lights of a truck, its horn blaring just as she was about to lift her foot off of the clutch. The car jerked forward to a stalled stop and rolled backwards.
To this day, I don’t know what made me decide to do this, but as she was reaching to start the ignition, I flicked the indicator switch to signal right. I didn’t want to go home. I didn’t want to be dropped off and trudge into my home, dumping my soggy clothes into the bathroom and just go to bed. The only thing I knew about this girl was her name, and that she had deliberately stuffed my barely conscious vomiting self into a car to throw me off of a bridge. But she hadn’t taken my wallet, although to be fair it was empty. My shoes were sitting in the back seat. Had I stayed where I was, and assuming I wasn’t beaten senseless or suffered an inglorious death from swallowing my tongue, I would have probably ended up in a police cell and then having a gruesome date with the stomach pump. Instead, I found myself in the seemingly capable hands of an inventive and pretty young girl.
She grunted in annoyance seeing the signal for right and flicked it back to left. I darted my hand to it and flicked it to right again. She turned to look at me.
“Are you trying to annoy me?”
‘Take me for a drive’
“Where?”
‘I don’t care where, just take me somewhere.’
She narrowed her eyes at me.
“But you’re all wet. Don’t you want to get back? At least get changed?”
‘Nope’
She frowned.
“Are you mad?”
‘No more than you’. I grinned at her. She stared ahead for a moment, resting both her hands on top of the steering wheel. I admired her side profile again, but I felt a tang of fear, fear that she was going to simply drive me home and abandon me with nothing more than a memory and (probably) the flu. Seconds ticked by like minutes. Finally she turned to look at me, her face like stone in deep thought. Her eyes that had been looking through me now registered with mine and flashed wide open; a pout slowly turned into a smile and then that grin again. Nodding her head, she left the signal on and turned right instead.
About half an hour later we were speeding along the winding country lanes leading away from the town and out of the county. Pairs of red lights would briefly appear in front every now and then before being overtaken by us. The needle rarely fell below 70.
I was naked. Halfway into the journey she had said that I couldn’t possibly sit there soaking, and dampening her seats. So we pulled over and I stripped. She took my shirt and my trousers and trapped them in the back windows, so that they flapped about behind the car. I sat in the front seat, self conscious and awkward, not only because of the sheer speed at which she seemed to be able to get this small car to go.
I always found myself looking over to her, admiring her profile again and again. She looked determined when she drove, her face was etched with concentration, both hands on the wheel, leaning over before a corner to anticipate the lurch of the car. Every now and then I would catch a glance over to me and a small smile would curl the corners of her mouth and she would gently bite her bottom lip. We said nothing to each other because we didn’t need to. We just enjoyed the ride.
‘You know… this isn’t really very fair.’
She looked at me questioningly.
“What isn’t?”
‘Well…’ I looked down at myself and then looked at her.
She shook her head.
“Cheeky fucker…”
She waited until the road straightened out. Reaching over, she undid her seatbelt and jammed her foot on the throttle, using it to lever herself out of the seat. Tugging the dress up over her backside, she lifted it over her head, throwing it into the back seats. The car was close to 90 when she saw the sign illuminated by the headlights, warning of a corner approaching. Slamming the brakes on hard, she flung the steering wheel violently, throwing me against the door, my head and neck hanging out of the window. The car screeched and understeered onto the grass verge, before veering onto the other side of the road. She got the car under control, dropping down a gear, the car filling with the smell of burning rubber. Steering it back onto the right side of the road, she waited for another long straight before removing her panties. Throwing them over her shoulder nonchalantly, they were caught by the wind and flew straight out of her window.
“Fuck!” She thumped the steering wheel and craned her head out of the car. “Happy now…?”
‘Yes’. I smiled, and reclined in the seat. ‘Much better’
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The last cigarette burned away to nothing. I stubbed it out on the bench and threw it into the grass. The traffic was becoming denser as the late afternoon rush-hour approached. I checked my watch. It was getting unbearably cold. I shifted my feet and shook my legs to try to keep warm, and buried my hands into my coat pockets. The wind was starting to pick up.
I don’t remember much more about that journey, except a feeling of total freedom. Only by the early light of a summer dawn did she finally pull up to a sign pointing towards the town and actually follow it. I knew then that this was the end. I had to enjoy this moment that may not happen again. I had to enjoy this person I may never see again. I exorcised all memory and all thought away from my mind to leave it open for this one single moment. I remember I didn’t even want to think about how we had met, a few hours before. I just wanted to live, breathe and think for the moment. I remember closing my eyes and sinking further into my seat.
I remember feeling saddened as we approached the town. I had tried to ignore the signs counting down the miles to home. If I saw one coming, I would turn away. But soon it became impossible to ignore the signs of civilisation. Buildings instead of farmhouses popping up here and there; the dull rumble of activity from the early risers, the chirp of birds as dark arrows against the pale blue sky. Once the sun finally rose it bathed the area in a sort of dull hangover, as if it too had spent the night awake and no longer had the energy for a proper dawn. With the sun rising, everything seemed to fall into a sickly shadow. My mouth was dry.
She pulled up in front of my house, after I had given her longer than necessary directions. I collected my clothes from the back of the car and dressed slowly, wincing at the dank squelch as I pulled my wet trousers over my dry legs. I opened the door slowly and clambered out, turning to poke my head inside the window. Our eyes met and then both looked away shyly. Everything that had happened had been a different world to this one now, the familiarity of the average suburban neighbourhood. Suddenly we seemed to be aware of this. A spell had finally been broken. There was silence.
‘Well. It’s been fun’. I struggled with the words, but I just wanted to hear one of us say something.
“It has. And I got you back safely. I hope you trust me now.”
‘Yeah… I do. And you were right about another thing as well’
“Oh…?”
I nodded as she arched her brow once more.
‘We should do this again sometime. Only this time, you can go in the fucking river and I’ll drive’.
She didn’t laugh or smile but instead looked away, releasing the handbrake and starting the engine.
“You’ll have to catch me first, sweetheart”
I just removed my head from the window in time as, with a deafening squeal from the wheels, she sped away.
I waved her away as she became a speck, imagining her still sitting in the car naked as the day she had been born. I turned away and climbed the stairs to my apartment. I had a heavy heart. As soon as I got inside, I rushed to the nearest window to see if she was there. I hoped beyond hope that she had turned the car around and was waiting outside, or even that she would be walking towards the door to come and see me. But she wasn’t. I waited and the car never reappeared.
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I stood up, brushing the flakes of paint from the bottom of my coat. The small Peugeot pulled up at the bottom of the hill below the bench where I had sat. From here, above her, I could see her legs wrapped up in the denim of her jeans, and the hem of her jacket. I climbed down carefully and tapped on the glass on the passenger door. She wound the window down and I poked my head inside, folding my arms and resting them on the door.
‘You took your time’.
“The captor never catches their victim in time sweetie. You should know that more than anyone. That’s how people end up in rivers and in the company of crazy young women instead of in their nice warm beds.”
She beamed her toothy grin back at me.
‘Very profound…’ I sighed and rolled my eyes.
She gave me a glare and jerked the car forwards, almost knocking me off of my feet.
“Well…? Are you going my way?”
I nodded, grabbing the door handle and climbing inside before she could change her mind.
‘Aren’t I always?’
