The Driver's Seat (6 page)

‘There’s
a big department store near the Post Office,’ Lise says. ‘You can get
everything you want there.’

‘My
nephew is arriving this evening.’

‘The
traffic!’ says Lise.

They
pass the Metropole Hotel. Lise says, ‘There’s a man in that hotel I’m trying to
avoid.’

‘Everything
is different,’ says the old lady.

‘A girl
isn’t made of cement,’ Lise says, ‘but everything is different now, it’s all
changed, believe me.’

At the
Post Office they pay the fare, each meticulously contributing the unfamiliar
coins to the impatient, mottled and hillocky palm of the driver’s hand, adding coins
little by little, until the total is reached and the amount of the tip equally
agreed between them and deposited; then they stand on the pavement in the
centre of the foreign city, in need of coffee and a sandwich, accustoming
themselves to the lay-out, the traffic crossings, the busy residents, the
ambling tourists and the worried tourists, and such of the unencumbered youth
who swing and thread through the crowds like antelopes whose heads, invisibly
antlered, are airborne high to sniff the prevailing winds, and who so appear to
own the terrain beneath their feet that they never look at it. Lise looks down
at her clothes as if wondering if she is ostentatious enough.

Then,
taking the old lady by the arm, she says, ‘Come and have a coffee. We’ll cross
by the lights.’

All
perky for the adventure, the old lady lets Lise guide her to the
street-crossing where they wait for the lights to change and where, while
waiting, the old lady gives a little gasp and a jerk of shock; she says, ‘You
left your passport in the taxi!’

‘Well,
I left it there for safety. Don’t worry,’ Lise says. ‘It’s taken care of.’

‘Oh, I
see.’ The old lady relaxes, and she crosses the road with Lise and the waiting
herd. ‘I am Mrs Fiedke,’ she says. ‘Mr Fiedke passed away fourteen years ago.

In the
bar they sit at a small round table, place their bags, Lise’s book and their
elbows on it and order each a coffee and a ham-and-tomato sandwich. Lise props
up her paperback book against her bag, as it were so that its bright cover is
addressed to whom it may concern. ‘Our home is in Nova Scotia,’ says Mrs
Fiedke, ‘where is yours?’

‘Nowhere
special,’ says Lise waving aside the triviality. ‘It’s written on the passport.
My name’s Lise.’ She takes her arms out of the sleeves of her striped cotton
coat and lets it fall behind her over the back of the chair. ‘Mr Fiedke left
everything to me and nothing to his sister,’ says the old lady, ‘but my nephew
gets everything when I’m gone. I would have liked to be a fly on the wall when
she heard.’

The
waiter comes with their coffee and sandwiches, moving the book while he sets
them down. Lise props it up again when he has gone. She looks around at the
other tables and at the people standing up at the bar, sipping coffee or
fruit-juice. She says, ‘I have to meet a friend, but he doesn’t seem to be
here.’

‘My
dear, I don’t want to detain you or take you out of your way.

‘Not at
all. Don’t think of it.’

‘It was
very kind of you to come along with me,’ says Mrs Fiedke, ‘as it’s so confusing
in a strange place. Very kind indeed.’

‘Why
shouldn’t I be kind?’ Lise says, smiling at her with a sudden gentleness.

‘Well,
I’ll be all right just here after we’ve finished our snack. I’ll just take a
look round and do a bit of shopping. I won’t keep you, my dear.’

‘You
can come shopping with me,’ Lise says, very genially. ‘Mrs Fiedke, it’s a
pleasure.’

‘How
very kind you are!’

‘One
should always be kind,’ Lise says, ‘in case it might be the last chance. One
might be killed crossing the street, or even on the pavement, any time, you
never know. So we should always be kind.’ She cuts her sandwich daintily and
puts a piece in her mouth.

Mrs
Fiedke says, ‘That’s a very, very beautiful thought. But you mustn’t think of
accidents. I can assure you, I’m terrified of traffic.’

‘So am I.
Terrified.’

‘Do you
drive an automobile?’ says the old lady.

‘I do,
but I’m afraid of traffic. You never know what crackpot’s going to be at the
wheel of another car.’

‘These
days,’ says Mrs Fiedke.

‘There’s
a department store not far from here,’ Lise says. ‘Want to come?’

They
eat their sandwich and drink their coffee. Lise then orders a rainbow ice while
Mrs Fiedke considers one way or another whether she really wants anything more,
and eventually declines.

‘Strange
voices,’ says the old lady looking round. ‘Look at the noise.’

‘Well,
if you know the language.’

‘Can
you speak the language?’

‘A bit.
I can speak four.’

Mrs
Fiedke marvels benevolently while Lise bashfully plays with crumbs on the
tablecloth. The waiter brings the rainbow ice and while Lise lifts the spoon to
start Mrs Fiedke says, ‘It matches with your outfit.’

Lise
laughs at this, longer than Mrs Fiedke had evidently expected. ‘Beautiful
colours,’ Mrs Fiedke offers, as one might offer a cough-sweet. Lise sits before
the brightly streaked ice-cream with her spoon in her hand and laughs on. Mrs
Fiedke looks frightened, and more frightened as the voices of the bar stop to
watch the laughing one; Mrs Fiedke shrinks into her old age, her face dry and
wrinkled, her eyes gone into a far retreat, not knowing what to do. Lise stops
suddenly and says, ‘That was funny.’

The man
behind the bar, having started coming over to their table to investigate a
potential disorder, stops and turns back, muttering something. A few young men
round the bar start up a mimic laugh-laugh-laugh but are stopped by the
barman.

‘When I
went to buy this dress,’ Lise says to Mrs Fiedke, ‘do you know what they
offered me first? A stainless dress. Can you believe it? A dress that won’t
hold the stain if you drop coffee or ice-cream on it. Some new synthetic
fabric. As if I would want a dress that doesn’t show the stains!’

Mrs
Fiedke, whose eager spirit is slowly returning from wherever it had been to
take cover from Lise’s laughter, looks at Lise’s dress and says, ‘Doesn’t hold
the stains? Very useful for travelling.’

‘Not
this dress,’ Lise says, working her way through the rainbow ice; ‘it was
another dress. I didn’t buy it, though. Very poor taste, I thought.’ She has
finished her ice. Again the two women fumble in their purses and at the same
time Lise gives an expert’s glance at the two small tickets, marked with the
price, that have been left on the table. Lise edges one of them aside. ‘That
one’s for the ice,’ she says, ‘and we share the other.’

‘The torment of it,’ Lise says.
‘Not knowing exactly where and when he’s going to turn up.

She
moves ahead of Mrs Fiedke up the escalator to the third floor of a department
store. It is ten minutes past four by the big clock, and they have had to wait
more than half an hour for it to open, both of them having forgotten about the
southern shopping hours, and in this interval have walked round the block
looking so earnestly for Lise’s friend that Mrs Fiedke has at some point lost
the signs of her initial bewilderment when this friend has been mentioned, and
now shows only the traces of enthusiastic cooperation in the search. As they
were waiting for the store to open, having passed the large iron-grated
shutters again and again in their ambles round the block, Mrs Fiedke started to
scan the passers-by.

‘Would
that be him, do you think? He looks very gaily dressed like yourself.’

‘No,
that’s not him.’

‘It’s
quite a problem, with all this choice. What about this one? No this one, I
mean, crossing in front of that car? Would he be too fat?’

‘No, it
isn’t him.’

‘It’s
very difficult, my dear, if you don’t know the cast of person. ‘‘He could be
driving a car,’ Lise had said when they at last found themselves outside the
shop at the moment the gates were being opened.

They go
up, now, to the third floor where the toilets are, skimming up with the
escalator from which they can look down to see the expanse of each floor as the
stairs depart from it. ‘Not a great many gentlemen,’ Mrs Fiedke remarks. ‘I
doubt if you’ll find your friend here.’

‘I doubt
it too,’ says Lise. ‘Although there are quite a few men employed here, aren’t
there?’

‘Oh,
would he be a shop assistant?’ Mrs Fiedke says.

‘It
depends,’ says Lise.

‘These
days,’ says Mrs Fiedke.

Lise
stands in the ladies’ room combing her hair while she waits for Mrs Fiedke. She
stands at the basin where she has washed her hands, and, watching herself with
tight lips in the glass, back-combs the white streak, and with great absorption
places it across the darker locks on the crown of her head. At the basins on
either side of her two other absorbed young women are touching up their hair
and faces. Lise wets the tip of a finger and smooths her eyebrows. The women on
either side collect their belongings and leave. Another woman, matronly with
her shopping, bustles in and swings into one of the lavatory cubicles. Mrs
Fiedke’s cubicle still remains shut. Lise has finished tidying herself up; she
waits. Eventually she knocks on Mrs Fiedke’s door. ‘Are you all right?’

She
says again, ‘Are you all right?’ And again she knocks. ‘Mrs Fiedke, are you all
right?’

The
latest comer now bursts out of her cubicle and makes for the wash-basin. Lise
says to her, while rattling the handle of Mrs Fiedke’s door, ‘There’s an old
lady locked in here and I can’t hear a sound. Something must have happened.’
And she calls again, ‘Are you all right, Mrs Fiedke?’

‘Who is
she?’ says the other woman.

‘I don’t
know.’

‘But
you’re with her, aren’t you?’ The matron takes a good look at Lise.

‘I’ll
go and get someone,’ Lise says, and she shakes the handle one more time. ‘Mrs
Fiedke! Mrs Fiedke!’ She presses her ear to the door. ‘No sound,’ she says, ‘none
at all.’ Then she grabs her bag and her book from the wash-stand and dashes out
of the ladies’ room leaving the other woman listening and rattling at the door
of Mrs Fiedke’s cubicle.

Outside,
the first department is laid out with sports equipment. Lise walks straight
through, stopping only to touch one of a pair of skis, feeling and stroking the
wood. A salesman approaches, but Lise has walked on, picking her way among the
more populated area of School Clothing. Here she hovers over a pair of small,
red fur-lined gloves laid out on the counter. The girl behind the counter
stands ready to serve. Lise looks up at her. ‘For my niece,’ she says. ‘But I
can’t remember the size. I think I won’t risk it, thank you.’ She moves across
the department floor to Toys, where she spends some time examining a nylon dog
which, at the flick of a switch attached to its lead, barks, trots, wags its
tail and sits. Through Linen, to the down escalator goes Lise, scanning each
approaching floor in her descent, but not hovering on any landing until she
reaches the ground floor. Here she buys a silk scarf patterned in black and
white. At a gadgets counter a salesman is demonstrating a cheap electric
food-blender. Lise buys one of these, staring at the salesman when he attempts
to include personal charm in his side of the bargain. He is a thin, pale man of
early middle age, eager-eyed. ‘Are you on holiday?’ he says. ‘American?
Swedish?’ Lise says, ‘I’m in a hurry.’ Resigned to his mistake, the salesman
wraps her parcel, takes her money, rings up the till and gives her the change.
Lise then takes the wide staircase leading to the basement. Here she buys a
plastic zipper-bag in which she places her packages. She stops at the Records
and Record-Players department and loiters with the small group that has
gathered to hear a new pop-group disc. She holds her paperback well in
evidence, her hand-bag and the new zipper-bag slung over her left arm just
above the wrist, and her hands holding up the book in front of her chest like
an identification notice carried by a displaced person.

Come on over to my place

For a sandwich, both of you,

Any time …

The
disc comes to an end. A girl with long brown pigtails is hopping about in front
of Lise, continuing the rhythm with her elbows, her blue-jeans, and apparently
her mind, as a newly beheaded chicken continues for a brief time, now
squawklessly, its panic career. Mrs Fiedke comes up behind Lise and touches her
arm. Lise says, turning to smile at her, ‘Look at this idiot girl. She can’t
stop dancing.’

‘I
think I fell asleep for a moment,’ Mrs Fiedke says. ‘It wasn’t a bad turn. I
just dropped off. Such kind people. They wanted to put me in a taxi. But why
should I go back to the hotel? My poor nephew won’t be there till 9 o’clock
tonight or maybe later; he must have missed the earlier plane. The porter was
so kind, ringing up to find out the time of the next plane. All that.’

‘Look
at her,’ Lise says in a murmur. ‘Just look at her. No, wait! —She’ll start
again when the man puts on the next record.’