Jam (2 page)

‘Nobody's blaming anybody, Max. I was just saying.'

‘Saying what?'

‘Saying that we're both incommunicado, and we have someone else's child in our car. That's all.'

‘Just thank God it's asleep.'

‘Don't be so nasty.'

Max felt foolish and enraged, a trapped bull. He was a big man, and felt uncomfortable in cars, even a seven-seater. Nothing moved. The traffic around them fumed. There they were, in a little world of moulded plastic, padding, fabric, reinforced glass, a giant crash helmet. It was stuffy. It smelled of air freshener, the result of a recent valeting. Ursula hated that smell. The engine throbbed idly to itself as a succession of police cars caromed down the hard shoulder.

‘Shall I turn on the radio?' asked Ursula. ‘There might be something on about it.'

‘Please don't mention . . . that,' said Max. ‘That would be the final straw. We don't want to set Carly off again.'

‘What do you mean again?'

‘Again. First time, second time. Again.'

‘I want TV,' said Carly.

‘Not going to say I told you so,' said Max.

‘She said TV, not radio.'

‘One thing always leads to another with her, you know that.'

‘If you'd only let her watch another film, we'd be all right,' said Ursula.

‘She's watched one already. That's what we agreed.'

‘But these are exceptional circumstances.'

‘Rubbish. It's only a traffic jam.'

‘Fine. You deal with her then, if you're such a genius at childcare.'

‘Daddy, I want TV,' said Carly. ‘I want TV.'

‘You're not having any more TV,' Max said. ‘God, what was I thinking buying a car with TV screens in the headrests?'

‘It keeps her quiet,' said Ursula. ‘You've got to learn to relax.'

‘And have our daughter going to hell in a handbasket? That would be relaxing.'

‘It's a DVD, Max, not bloody heroin.'

‘I thought you wanted me to deal with it?'

‘I do want you to deal with it.'

‘I . . . want . . . T . . . V.'

‘For the last time, Carly, you're not having TV,' said Max.

‘Aaaw!'

‘You can't have TV now, darling,' said Ursula, ‘Daddy isn't in the mood.'

‘Not in the mood?' said Max.

‘I can have TV if I want to.'

‘No, you can't,' said Max. ‘Just read your book, OK?'

‘I don't want to read my pooey book.'

‘Carly, I've told you. Carly! Carly! Don't you dare throw that book! Carly! Right.' He took off his seat belt and turned to face her full on. Ursula shook her head gently, then froze under Max's glare. For a moment he was torn between directing his wrath at his daughter or at his wife. ‘You're not having TV,' he said, ‘and that's final. So do you want your book? Or not?'

‘Yes,' said Carly sullenly.

‘Good. Here it is. Now just be quiet and look at your book,' said Max.

‘I don't want my pooey book.'

‘Look, if I hear any more from you, I'm going to open the door and put you out there on the road all by yourself.'

‘Aaaw!'

‘Do you want to be put outside on the road all by yourself?'

‘No.'

‘Then not another peep out of you.' She fell into a dark silence. He glared at his wife.

‘What's the death stare for?' said Ursula.

‘It's not a death stare.'

‘Why are you so upset?'

‘It's nothing. All right? Nothing.'

Last week they had – on Ursula's insistence – finally signed up to the Marriage Course at the church in Onslow Square. For months, Max had resisted. Number one: he suspected it was run by those Alpha Course weirdos. Number two: it would involve revealing personal – and potentially compromising – details of their relationship to complete strangers. Number three: it was fundamentally cheesy.

But Ursula, having softened him up with the fact that the course included a candlelit dinner, had addressed each of his three points in turn. (She had grown used to this with Max.) Firstly, the website stated that there would be no prayers or dogma, and very few mentions of God. Secondly, it said that at no time would participants be required to reveal anything to other members of the group; they had only to reveal things to their spouse, and what could be embarrassing in that? Finally, although she could not deny that the thing would have its share of cheesy moments, wasn't that worth enduring for the sake of their relationship? They both wanted their marriage to work, and it had been under a lot of stress recently. Anyway, all vehicles need a regular service to keep them roadworthy. (A promotional video for the Marriage Course featured a couple taking a camper van to a garage.)

‘Bloody traffic,' said Max, ‘bloody bastarding M25 traffic on a Sunday evening. Should have known better. Bloody fucking bastard balls.'

‘I wonder where we are?' said Ursula.

‘No idea,' said Max. ‘That's freaking me out as well. I don't even know what junction we're at. We could be anywhere.'

‘Why don't you look on the satnav?'

‘Out of battery, isn't it? Or have you forgotten?'

‘Charge it up, then.'

‘What, and die of carbon monoxide poisoning?'

Max turned off the engine, and a profound silence fell. Their future seeped by degrees into the present.

‘It'll clear,' said Ursula. ‘Just relax until it clears. It's probably a minor incident.' She looked out of the window at the cars stretching into the distance. The end of the queue, where new cars were joining, was out of sight. All around had sprung up a densely populated autopolis. People, people, all nested in their own little cars. People, people, everywhere, and not a drop to drink. Actually, she was thirsty. The children would be OK, they had their beakers. She slid half a bottle of mineral water from the glove compartment, drank some and offered it to Max. He made a sardonic comment about the saliva at the bottom. She shrugged and finished it herself.

‘If this goes on much longer, we'll miss the Marriage Course tonight,' she said. ‘Miss the first session.'

Max didn't respond.

She remembered their wedding.

One of the bridesmaids, a school friend called Lillian, had become dehydrated throughout the morning and, just as the vows were being exchanged, had fainted. Not uncommon, that. She went down stiffly; the sound of her coiffed head striking the floor resounded through the chapel like a thunderclap. A single flower, Ursula remembered, detached itself from her hair, completed a single revolution and came to rest in the nape of her neck. Ursula hid behind Max's bulk as people clustered around the fallen girl. Max stood his ground, commanded the chapel, made everyone feel that things were under control, until the emergency passed and the ceremony recommenced. It was the sort of situation in which he thrived. He was a manager by training and by instinct, good under pressure; he was six foot two, and broad, imposing; he had the gift of leadership, she knew that; that had been part of what had attracted her to him. This was a man who, even as his own wedding was being
disrupted by forces unseen, could be a rock in the storm. Or so she thought then. Mad Max. She turned the sky-blue lid of the bottle until it closed, and put it – empty and weightless, ridiculous – back into the glove compartment. Max was sitting motionless, looking out of the window.

That world outside the car: did it really exist? That seething landscape of machines, clouds of exhaust, distant fields and trees? The far-off city, in a corner of which the Marriage Course would already be under way? It seemed so remote from here in the Chrysler. Like sitting in a jeep on safari, looking out at another planet. She noticed the silhouettes of people in car windows. Some speaking on their phones, their faces lit up by the screens. Some gazing listlessly into space. One man eating from a packet propped on the steering wheel. There, a couple kissing, they were even kissing. An old lady reading. Some bicycles, like trophy bucks, on the back of a Volvo. A caravan. A lorry painted in supermarket livery – Waitrose? – with a homely slogan on the side that she couldn't be bothered to read. A canoe, upended, on a roof. There was a white van beside them; she couldn't see the driver. She flipped a switch. The doors of the Chrysler responded by locking, simultaneously, with a satisfying clunk. She closed her eyes.

No signal

But sleep evaded her. She readjusted her position again and again, but it only made matters worse. After some time, she opened her eyes and sat there looking at the cars, the road. The atmosphere in the car was heavy. A long time passed before she looked around. When she did, Max, lips pinched sourly, was doing his stress thing, picking at his nails with that horrid little penknife. Ursula felt briefly sorry for him; he looked even larger than usual, very cramped. He was grappling with something, she could feel it. Why wouldn't he tell her what it was? She hadn't asked him, granted; but she would never have needed to before. She looked at her watch. The course was well under way. The babysitter would have come to the house, waited for a while, gone home. Ursula would pay her anyway, keep her sweet, good babysitters were hard to come by. But for what? The end, she thought, must be nigh. Ah, it was stuffy in the car, there did not seem to be any oxygen. The only air available had been filtered through fabric, plastic, leather, circulated and recycled many times, polluted with air freshener. But she knew he wouldn't open the windows, even if she asked him to.

Outside was an endless universe; inside everything was constricted. She looked at the kids in the mirror. Carly, bless her, had fallen asleep, the book tented on her tummy as if she was an old man at the beach. She looked flushed – not ill? Surely not. Bonnie was awake now, looking out of the window as if she had had been born in a state of stickiness and boredom. She had finished her crisps, and her face was smeared with orange
food dye. In the half-light her mouth looked like a gash in the centre of a bruise. But she was quiet. With a bit of luck she'd nod off again.

Ursula looked away, looked down at her hands, at the dashboard, out of the window. In a silver car in the next lane – a Golf, perhaps, she thought – a man was looking at her. Immediately they both turned away. When she looked back he was hidden behind the headrest.

Her sense of time was starting to skew. She hadn't been watching the clock. Men had got out of their cars, craned their necks like meerkats, then got back in. Max had done this on three occasions, periscoping absurdly in an effort to catch sight of the obstruction. He had even asked another motorist if he had any idea what was going on. He hadn't. Ursula wondered if his pride was preventing him from turning on the radio. Perhaps that was the cause of his stress. There he was, picking away, pick, pick, pick, pick, pick. He had across his chin and neck a dark smudge of bristle, now; amazing that men got that. Pick, pick, pick, pick, pick. It was as if she didn't exist.

Max folded his penknife decisively and stashed it away in his pocket. ‘Big day at work tomorrow,' he announced, scratching his neck. ‘Starting at the CCCS.'

‘The what?'

He sighed, still did not look at her. ‘Consumer Credit Counselling Service. You know, consumer debt. I've only mentioned it a million times. We're starting a six-month analysis of their customer records system.' He sat back, rubbed his eyes.

A strange quietude reigned in the vehicle. It was as if, Ursula thought, the car was newly inanimate. The growl of the beast had been silenced; the audacious roar of the technological age had stopped. Everything was dying around them.

More emergency vehicles howled past on the hard shoulder. A helicopter throbbed overhead. Max twisted and looked at the
children, then fell heavily back into his seat. He rubbed his eyes again. Then he took his phone out of his pocket, unlocked it, held it at various angles of elevation. ‘I tell you what's really stressing me out,' he said, ‘is having somebody else's kid in the car. That's what's really stressing me out.'

‘Don't worry,' Ursula began, ‘it can't last for ever. I'm sure we've got off lightly compared to the people involved in whatever's going on up there.'

‘That's not the point, Ursula,' said Max, opening the window – at last – and raising the phone into the night. ‘The point is that Bonnie's parents are going to be worried sick. And there's no fucking signal.' He gave his phone a final flourish and put it awkwardly back in his pocket. Ursula gasped at the freshness of the air. The window hummed shut. There was a pause.

‘Isn't it quiet in here,' said Ursula, ‘without the noise of the engine?'

‘Hmmm.'

‘How much longer do you think we'll be stuck here? We could be sat here all night.'

‘Possible. Unlikely.'

‘What would we do for food? And water? Shit, I've drunk all the water.'

‘There'll be shops around here somewhere, if it comes to that. I'll go and explore, if it comes to that.'

‘Do you think that Waitrose van would give us any water? And food?'

‘Don't be stupid.'

‘Where will you go, then?'

‘I don't know. I'll find somewhere.'

‘What if the traffic moves while you're away?'

‘I'll only go if we're stuck here all night.'

‘How will we know? There'll be no way of knowing.'

‘We'll know. We'll make an educated guess. We'll take a view.'

There was a pause.

‘What about the kids?' said Ursula. ‘They'll have to eat something at some point. They haven't had any supper. They'll be dehydrated.'

‘Hmmm.'

‘And James and Becky will be worried sick.'

‘Oh, stop going on about James and Becky.'

‘They'll be worried. They might have called the police by now.'