The Moon is a Backwards Fish

I had passed through Wincanton, seeing the time on the clock-tower as ten past eight, and walked out of the orange streetlights into the darkness. My eyes began to adjust to the dimness of the silver moonlight. I looked up at the skies, seeing the moon, almost full, behind faint scurrying clouds rushing onward to their appointments. It did not look as though they had the time to stop and rain on me. I turned as each car came up behind me, sticking out my thumb, but they too were chasing the clouds and hadn't the time to stop. I kept walking. I had been fifteen miles from home when I had jumped out of the car at Morrisons' car-park, saying "I'll see you back home in my own time".

Someone slowed as they past me, and I ran up, but saw it was a taxi. I told the driver I didn't have enough to pay him, but he said there was no need, he was going to Mere to collect a fare, and I was welcome to the ride. And so I settled into the passenger seat and told him I had left my partner sitting in her car screeching blue murder and shrieking like a fury. I said that I hadn't expected anyone to stop for me; people don't pick up hitchhikers as they used to. There are now too many horror stories.

He told me his one, from a few years back, when he had picked up someone from near Nottingham who wanted to go to Malmesbury, and the taxi driver had said he was welcome to ride with him to Melksham. At Melksham, the passenger refused to get out, and said he wanted to be taken to Malmesbury. (This was not a taxi trip, by the way, the man was working for a firm and collecting one of their cars for them). So, unable to persuade him to leave, and unable to make the detour to Melksham, the taxi driver had said "I'm going to find the police station", and even that had failed. And then, right around the next corner, chancing upon a police car, he flashed his lights and the policemen advised the passenger to get himself out, and they might not arrest him, depending on how he behaved himself.

I told him that I had always stopped for "platers", (men delivering vehicles on trade numberplates who had to make their own way to or from the ends of the journey,) but the last three such lifts had been strange, and I had realised that people were making up their own trade plates. They looked like platers until you started talking to them, and you realised they didn't know the platers' places for snacks or rests, and that they were just a little too scruffy for someone supposed to be working for reputable firms. But I didn't tell him about the stranger who insisted on showing me that he could stub out cigarettes on his bare skin without flinching.

Instead, I told him that my recent argument had been because my partner, struggling to get her new car, (old but new to her,) to start, had screamed in fury at me to shut up when I had started to suggest what the trick to it was. I had spent the last day learning for myself how to get it going after dealing with what had at first looked like a flat battery. So I had decided to leave her, (since the car had actually just started,) and walk home in peace and quiet. Just out of curiosity I began to hold out my thumb to see if anyone would stop to give me a lift. It looked to me as though people now preferred to keep the world safely outside the glass and not invite it into their own private space.

He told me another little story, which I will tell to you, because it fits in with what I had just said about living safely inside the glass. He and several other taxi drivers had been waiting outside the local railway station when a man came up and said he wanted to be driven to London. Suspicious, the drivers said why didn't he take the train? The man said he wanted to go to London, (over a hundred miles away), by car. One driver said the fare would be £250, and he wanted to see the money up front. The man showed him the money, but the driver, his bluff called, pleaded that he had a pre-booked appointment. The other drivers drifted away, and, as it was close to midnight, my taxi driver agreed to take the man to a hotel for the night. The next morning, picking up a fare from the same hotel, he learned that he had just missed a scene with the police. His late-night fare had locked himself in his hotel room and refused to allow anyone in. The police had managed to get him out. He had a fear of being in a place with too many strangers around. I understood then his reluctance to use the train, because the windows cannot be opened, neither can the doors unless the driver releases the locks, and the seats are crammed in side-by-side as if it were an aircraft.

We reached Mere, where he was picking up some customers from the pub, and I set off again into the chill of the night, passing out through the orange streetlights once more into the pale soft glint of moonlight on the damp hedges. I walked along, now only about seven miles from home, realising that this smaller back road was far less traveled than the road I had just come along. I was going to be very lucky to get a lift now. And yet I felt safe, secure, at home in the grey silver light. I like to rest my eyes sometimes, not by shutting them, but by dimming all the surrounding lights. Little Petal is the exact opposite, she wants all four overhead flourescent striplights on so that the room is brighter than it ever gets in daylight. That was one reason for my altering the sitting room so that she could have all her things in it, computer, sewing machine, books, television. I do not like watching the programs that she does, and I do not like to have my eyes getting worn out by too much light. And I do not like being on the end of the angry-mummy voice.

I had not told the taxi driver that, as she had begun to screech, I had already moved to release the seat belt with one hand and open the door with the other, because I had recently sworn that I would not again sit in a car with her in such a mood. It had happened only a week before, when we had set off in her old car, (she driving,) to go and look at, and possibly buy, another car. She would have the newer car, with a nice turbo-diesel engine, while I would take over her older car as a replacement for my now-scrapped Rover. That is, if she didn't decide to give her old car to her daughter's partner so that he could use it.

Armed only with a scrappy piece of paper which didn't give any sequential directions to our destination, we entered Warminster. It was my fault, I was told, that she didn't have a map, because the laser printer at home had faded so much that what she had printed out was illegible. (Why does my printer work for me but not for her?) All she knew was that the place we had to get to was close to station road. So, I directed her to the station, but as we reached the traffic lights, we saw that temporary roadworks had closed off our route, and we would have to detour round the back of Warminster to get to it. I steered us around through the edge of town, sighting the railway line and saying we should take the next left, but, at a T-junction, Little Petal decided I was wrong, and turned right. When we left Warminster and got out into the open countryside she brought up the faded printer episode again.

I got us back into the town, found us the station, pointed out that this was obviously station road, even though there was not a street-name in sight, and suggested we park and walk around to look for the yard. She decided that there was no need, she knew where she was going, and within five minutes had got us lost again. She stopped the car in the middle of the road and screamed at the top of her voice that this was the worst place she had been to for signs and directions. A car behind us hooted, and she screamed again to "fuck off", and when I glanced round I saw that the door had opened and the driver was getting out. So I got out too, fearing a scene. She screamed at me to get back in the car and just sit there quietly while she made up her mind, but I closed my door and went to meet the other driver at the rear of our car.

He was the worst person I could have wanted to meet in such circumstances, short and wiry, with cropped hair and faded leathery skin, and cold pale darting little eyes which flicked up and down and left and right; "has he got a weapon somewhere, is he right or left-handed, does he look like he knows what he's doing, shall I hit or kick first?" I looked at him and saw a ferret in ready stance. I'm not scared of big people, because they're normally just trying to loom large above you and shoulder you backwards out of their way, but these shifty nifty darty little people are the real ones to beware of. If they have a bumper-sticker on their car, it might read, "My dog won't harm you, but I will".

He told me to get back in the car, and I went a little closer and said "I want to ask you a favour."

He said "what", and I said, lowering my voice and moving even closer, "would you kill her for me, please?"

He said "what?" again, and I told him that I had just about reached the end of my tether with her, but I couldn't kill her, I didn't know how, and I whispered "Could you just go up to her door and ask her to move, and when she starts screaming at you, just reach in and throttle her, or snap her neck, or something?"

I told him I would be a witness for him, and say he had acted in self-defense.

He backed away, and I followed. I said "Please?"

He reached his car. While he was scrambling back inside I scrabbled in my pocket and pulled out some money, (all my money), a ten pound and a five pound note. I said, holding them against his window, "I can pay you, please, I'm begging you."

I had to jump back out of the way as he reversed violently into a space between the parked cars and roared off back the way he, and we, had just come from. As I turned and put the money back in my pocket, I realised, guiltily, that it wasn't my money, it was actually her money, the change from a shopping errand I had run for her earlier.

I got back in the car, this time to receive a scolding from Little Petal for being a trouble-maker. How can I convince her that I am not? I do not hit people, unlike her. I try to talk my way out of things. I had told the taxi driver that I could not do the job he did, because I would not be able to handle the drunks sprawling and squabbling in the back of a taxi late at night, that I didn't know how to relate to people who were no longer running under normal operating system conditions, and I hated confrontations as much as I hated feeling angry eyes on the back of my neck.

I am worried that Little Petal cannot control herself. She has, in the past, struck out at me and, since I was not expecting it, managed to land a good crack to my jaw that dazed me. She later said she was sorry, she was drunk, she didn't mean it, she loved me and would never do it again, and I sometimes feel how strange that scene was, that if the players and parts had been reversed, I would have not been let off lightly. And it is strange to me that she always assumes that I will get into an argument with people, when she herself has commented on how peaceful and agreeable I remained after drinking one of our pubs completely out of bottles of Newcastle Brown Ale in a single evening.

The night, and my reverie, was interrupted by pops and crackles. I saw, in the sky a couple or more miles away, floating up over the station where the taxi drivers queued for pick-ups, fireworks burst like gems against the dark velvet of a jewelers back-cloth. Pale quartz followed deep ruby, amethyst and topaz shone together, emeralds danced with sapphires. Then, spikes of flowers sprang upwards, flashing snowdrop-white and primrose-yellow and speedwell-blue glittering in the darkness.

I stopped walking to watch, but found that my feet were painful if I stood, and so I walked along slowly, looking out to my right and tapping with my left foot when I needed to veer away from the verge. The first car I had seen since leaving Mere came up from behind me and ignored my outstretched thumb. As it rushed past me, it scared away the fireworks, and so I set off once again towards my home, and went back once again towards the past.

So we found, and bought, the new car, and drove it home, there to find that we couldn't get the boot to open. It had been troublesome when she had viewed the car, and the owner had admitted that it was a tricky lock, but he made it work. Sadly, although he had shown Little Petal what the problem was, she had forgotten what he had shown her. I said I would try to sort it out, but the next morning, an even more unacceptable problem occurred; the car would not start when she wanted to go to work. She carried on using her old car and I spent a couple of days sorting out a poor battery lead and a suspect central-locking system.

My feet by now were burning, and my cheeks were cold and clammy. I had not anticipated such an evening, and only had on thin socks and a thin fleece. I tried jogging for a while on a long gentle downhill stretch, but after half a mile realised that I had blisters forming on the balls of my feet as well as on the heels, and slowed to a purposeful hobble. The moon above me shone sympathetically down and whispered that it would be alright when I got home. I looked at the pale shape, almost the full letter of an O, and knew that it still had some nights left before all became dark again. I taught myself a long time ago how to remember what the sequence of the moon was, starting from a new crescent that grew into a capital letter D, then to the O, and then shrinking to an old crescent like a capital letter C. The moon, I remember, is a fish, backwards, not a Cod, but reversed.

I settled into a rhythm that gave me the least pain, and swung my arms around, laughing in the clear silvery light. I began to see an idea forming, an idea about the closed lives that we all seemed to be leading. It was a development of the idea that formed in my mind as I listened to the taxi driver. Why did people no longer stop to pick up hitch hikers, or go out to the village pub or the pictures? Why, when they had finished working or shopping, did they rush back into their cars and then into their homes? Being out in the open air, outside the glass windows, had given me this inspiration. It is the result of the world around us expanding. More and more information floods into us through the news, through the web sites; through the television. And the instinctive response to this crowding is either to rage and push it away to give you room to breathe, or to withdraw into somewhere safe, where you cannot be pressed unless you allow it, and you can always turn to the off-switch to shut off the horror stories of senseless killings and starving millions, gloomy visions and missing billions. It is reality-management.

My eyes were wide open now, seeing the dark shapes stuck fast together by their shadows. My ears too had risen and unfurled, despite the chilly wind, hearing the furtive rustles in the twigs as little things realised that there was a bigger thing nearby and tried to keep a respectful distance. Two cars came quickly past to spoil my vision, and didn't stop. I was only a mile and a half from home, passing the staggered crossroads where the Mandrake used to grow, when a car came creeping along towards me, and I recognised the quiet rattle of a diesel engine.

It stopped opposite me, and I walked around behind it and opened the passenger door. I said cheerfully as I settled into the seat, "well, thank you, my feet have said they've made their point, so let's go home in comfort." The dashboard clock showed ten to ten, the correct time, because I had set it when I solved the battery problem. I had walked and been carried for about an hour and three-quarters, and the shimmering moonlight had been my friend for that time.

She had, she told me, driven to and fro between Wincanton and home three times, not knowing which road I would be on. I didn't say to her that the first, not the last choice, ought to have been the most direct route. Instead, I said that I had fully expected her to have gone home and unpacked everything. it usually calms her down, unpacking and putting away the shopping.

But she said that she couldn't, she hadn't brought her house key with her.

I really did not know that when I, cat-like, slipped out of the car and into the friendly night at Morrisons. I really, really, didn't. But that will never be believed.