Journey in the Rain

Rain Journey
by
Kim West

It was an atrocious evening to be starting out on this journey. She had
been determined to get home, but the weather conditions stacked the
odds highly against her arriving before morning. However, she was
feeling strong and calm, and her inspiration remained as a firm clear
picture of the house by the river. The new house. In her mind she
opened up the old grey door and ran inside, shaking off her wet coat
and dropping her umbrella. It was warm and everyone was asleep, but
expecting her. She smiled and sighed. It's the house of dreams. There's
Alice's dream of flying over the hills and spreading silky webs through
the trees. There are Ben's dreams of battling through a swamp with the
giant blade of his cutlass glinting in the moonlight. There's David's
dream of floating along the river watching the fish world. Her home.
300 miles to travel. Motorway miles with the rain slashing at the
windscreen.
"Everything seems so extreme" she reflected. "This weather is just part
of it all. All our struggles with the house move and then dad falling
ill. Each one enough in its own right, but here they are enmeshed
feelings, old and new fears and anxieties, lying down with excitement
and crossed over with love. A picture of house beside a gushing river
where salmon leap. A house of stone and sturdy in its craftsmanship,
with her beautiful green Rayburn at the core, breathing its warm air
through old dusty corners and filling it all up with life. This old
family home revived as past and present memories join hands to
celebrate these days.
"Dad's face was so frightened. Sitting there in his hospital bed, all
tamed and timid. Wrap him up. Take him home with me." She murmured,
cutting into her reveries. But he wouldn't be coming. She knew that.
Not yet.
Her car was being buffeted by the wind and she had to hold on hard to
wheel at times in order to secure a stable route. Three high lorries
rolled by at death defying speeds and she was bounced sideways and
completely blinded by their spume.
"They must be travelling at least 80 mph I'm already faster than I can
cope with myself and they've overtaken me." She shouted to the air,
flicking up her hand in exasperation.
As the screen eventually clears a little she puts on a tape. Those
women's voices so defiant. Sisters of Funk. Their rawness makes her
strong again. She puts her foot down. The mountains call. She is back
with her secret thoughts. That most personal world that she carries
with her. Her beliefs and loves. They enclose her securing her journey
home. In a few miles she will stop and pull into a service station to
fill up the tank and stretch her legs. But now she has a moment for
quiet prayer which she can project on ahead of her, as she launches
into the chorus line:
"Guide me safely home."

Later, in the service cafeteria she finds a harshly lit world with only
one or two mostly pre-occupied and weary travellers dispersed. It is
the witching hour, when mortals sleep and only the dispossessed venture
in little cars on motorways in the wildness of the rain. She herself is
greeted by a cheerful and suddenly loud black woman, into whose arms
she would gladly have fallen.
"What can I get for you?"
She orders a coffee and a sandwich and now the woman is laughing
because she can't seem to work the till. All fingers and thumbs, she
shrieks to the young woman in the kitchen. There's more laughter as
this woman comes to have a try.
Neither of them can make it open, so then a slim young man comes out
and smartly presses the correct button.
"Voila!" he chimes efficiently and the till pops open. He returns to
the kitchen and the two women slap one another and mimic his
self-conscious walk.
"Don't mind us love, we're all mad here." splutters the young woman
from the kitchen, in between stifled shrieks. She smiles
sympathetically, whilst wondering if it's a show that they've planned
specially for her. Whose idea was it? How did they know she would come?
Or do they wait until they see new car headlights burst into the
boredom of their long drag of a motorway night and quickly bustle
around to set something up? Perhaps there is a repertoire of these
cameos.
She imagines them planning:
"Go on Tony, you mince off like that and we'll fall about. That'll
cheer her up."

Her coffee is nearly cold by now, but will do. Her sandwich is a little
soggy, but never mind. The two women have disappeared, but now and
again there are loud squawks from the kitchen and once a terrible
crash, as some pots go flying. This is followed by a long silence, then
by fresh peels of laughter.
"What on earth are they doing in there, rehearsing for the next show?"
she thinks and she notes out of the corner of her eye that a somber
man, seated a few tables up, has somehow managed to miss it all with
his head in his paper. A couple of lorry drivers, acting as clacks are
now yelling encouragement and leaning back on their chairs, trying to
get a view of the kitchen.
She gets up to order another coffee, but nobody comes to the counter.
It's so noisy in the kitchen now that she gives up all hope. She
considers knocking at the kitchen door, or popping her head through the
hatch and demanding hot coffee, but she really feels too overwhelmed.
Leaving the bedlam behind, she buys a bar of chocolate and a can for
later, uses the toilet, fills up with petrol.
Homeward.

The wipers swish the rain into whirling patterns.
This way,
That way,
Homewards.
The spray from passing vehicles periodically swamps her screen, but the
brave wipers persist, until they clear into a steady rhythm
again.
This way,
That way,
Homewards.
In her head the mantra persists, as radio's dull tones battle for
supremacy against road rumble and wind splash. She hums to the tunes
and joins in the choruses. As large motorway signs flash by, she knows
she need not look and she wonders if the service cafeteria is still a
mad house. Her journey takes her to the motorway's end and beyond, off
main roads to lanes and down through the village to their special
corner by the bridge. The rented house on the far side and the house
they were restoring on the nearside.
Homeward.
Sometimes things seemed to be so difficult. There were so many tasks.
For instance, tomorrow she would need to dedicate long hours to
scrubbing up floorboards. There were cracks to fill on the ceilings.
This sort of work seemed to be never ending, so that at times their
house of dreams had become a real den of nightmares. David with such
tolerance came home from work ate his meal and returned to the house
over the bridge to continue the restoration. It was indeed a long job
and they had lived in the limbo house for some time holding their
breath, waiting before they could release all their energies into their
house of dreams. Waiting for paperwork. Waiting for decisions. The
dream of moving to Scotland to start from scratch had proved to be
testing to the very core.
"This journey is another limbo" she murmured. No matter how fast she
drove, there would still be a long tunnel of travel ahead. Perhaps she
should stop and sleep.
The car ahead of her suddenly put on its hazard warning light so that
she had to snap herself free of her thoughts of home and needed all her
wits to brake in time. The car ahead was moving very slowly and coming
to a jerky halt. She moved to overtake. She could not see the driver
and the rain had become demon-like, battering down and bouncing
fiercely back off the road surface again. She decided that she would
have to stop and help, but felt very wary.
"If there are two people they'll be alright. If it's a man I'll go
ahead and ring for help. If it's a woman I'll give her a lift." She
rehearsed. These decisions popped into her head as she grabbed her
coat. But as she turned to open her car door, she saw that someone was
getting out of the car. She could not tell whether it was a man or a
woman. Suddenly someone was knocking at her window. It was a man. She
stared at him. The rain ran freely down the windowpane between them.
His features blurred.
How could she ever excuse herself for this? She was terrified. But he
was most probably harmless. She saw him turn away. She opened the
window a little and called.
"I will telephone for help for you at the next service station."
"Thank you but there must be a rescue telephone much nearer. I will
walk."
He looked offended, but seemed to have realized the nature of the
threat he might be posing. She was most uncomfortable with the axiom
that a Good Samaritan could be a fool.
"Come on!" she called "I'll take you"
He turned
"Are you sure?"
"Yes.Come on!" she screamed, quickly winding up the window. She felt so
angry. Her face was dripped. This was a man on his own. A man of her
father's age. What a decision to make. She whispered a quick prayer, as
the door handle turned and the man bundled in, bringing with him a
hurricane.
"May God preserve me."
Her car door swung back and he grappled with it and slammed it
shut.
"Bob Stroud" he said, as he thrust out a friendly hand to shake
hers.
"The rain has got into my engine. It's happened once before but this
weather is something else. Thank you so much."
His clothes were steaming. Her passenger seat would be uninhabitable
for weeks. She battled to clear the windscreen and pulled off.
"I'll have to take you to the service station. I won't be able to get
you back here, will I?"
"Oh God you're right."
Cocooned thus together, the smell of his sodden clothes suffocatingly
filled all the spaces in her car and she herself began to feel wet in
sympathy. Her hand was damp from shaking his and her face was splashed
from opening the window. Her foot went straight down to the floor. A
most reckless spirit had filled her. The car roared through the deluge
as she connected to her son Ben's dream of swashbuckling through the
swamp. The car became her cutlass and she hacked through the water. The
man was talking but she could not respond. She was driving too
fast.
A voice inside her screamed out through this mania.
"Slow down, he's not going to murder you. His car has simply broken
down and you have kindly given him a lift."
The man was still nervously chattering on and on as his white knuckles
gripped the dashboard. She didn't care. Suddenly a service station was
upon them and the man was out of her car and was waving and she was
gone with her foot hard down again until she was utterly clear. She
began to slow down and take very deep breaths to calm herself. Her
visitor's smell was still there. He had not harmed her. She leaned over
and locked the passenger door. At last the rain was easing. She looked
at her watch.
"It's half past three. I must have been mad. I should never have picked
him up." Her hand dropped to feel the seat.
"It's soaking"
She ploughed on and on, as intermittent lights flashed over from the
opposite carriage way and the rain began to ease. She remembered her
chocolate bar and can and reached to take them off the back seat.
Chocolate Comfort and Fizzy Refresher
"I wonder what dad would say. He'd never forgive me, would he?" she
murmured

There is a sort of delirium that sets in after this length of driving.
With the scare she'd had and the awesome weather now lifting, she began
to feel light headed, almost not noticing that the sign for Carlisle
was looming ahead and that home was a hour away. Her manoeuvres were
now automatic.