HIDDEN LOVE

The distance that stretched between Mark and his destination was three hundred miles, give or take. One long line broken by traffic and service stops. How many times had he driven the line? Millions. Well: three times a year for thirty years. Cars and travel, traffic and service stops, all were features of the world he'd been born into, to be expected, like the weather and divorce. On occasion the line would be slippery and slide under his wheels like a beautiful butter, and occasionally, even the service stations hit the mark. But each time he was faced with the driving, he would drag his feet, act like a child refusing to go, then go.

Up until lunch, Mark would make frequent stops. Early interruptions gave him a feeling he wasn't really driving to his mother's, but on an errand, picking up food supplies or DIY. During these early stops he'd sit and tap his fingers, drink coffee, watch the live motorway map on a TV screen. Then start to work out which services he'd stop at for lunch. Not that he knew one was better, but it was a game to play, a way of being almost half way, a way of breaking up the day.

A parrot in a beat-up cage hung in the cab of a fancy van. The beautiful bird was suspended by a wire between the front seats. It sat so still Mark though it might be stuffed, but then it flicked its head and strutted round on its perch. The service carpark hummed: not bee hive hum, but a large piston of people pumping back and forth, walking talking children running, everyone in pleated anoraks, coffees, cakes, burgers, chips. Since eating, Mark felt the crowd somehow thicker. At times he was a warrior, other times full of fever. Why should he put up with it? He'd been caught by three long traffic jams already this drive. Such a drag when you can see it forming, the slow moving to a stop – and it only takes three cars to start the rot. Mark was an expert. He could read the signs. One car slowed – red lights – another – red lights, then another, more red lights, more and more red lights lighting up like stars in a night sky suddenly colossally beautiful.

Mark closed the door to his car. His classic car – classic as in typical of a certain type. A old machine built to last, that had lasted – that Mark felt comfortable with – keeping it clean, patching-it-up every now and again when a seat split or a hose developed pin prick perforations.

Re-joining the motorway he flung himself in amongst the cars, lorries, coaches – WO! WAIT A MINUTE! A truck pulling a broken-down lorry careered passed Mark, thumping his car with air like a fist. His car was not under powered – even had a turbo – although a classic turbo, which rattled at times like the parrot's beak against the bars of his little cage.

A couple of minutes and Mark settled.

What if I had an affair? He pondered as he cruised. Mark would ask himself this question often – or something along those lines – when travelling north, kicking around the service stations, forgetful of his stare. No longer was there anyone there, back home, to combat such flirty thoughts. And the rush of the day kept him to a strict routine. But here on the road his mind wandered, along the byways, into bars and joints that might suit a stop-out in a worn-thin three piece.

'What–if ...?' He'd start. Bit like being in church. Sunday morning his mother would drag him from bed into bright sunlight and the roar of a cathedral. The congregation sang, filling the place with glory. But there was always a door that opened into darkness. While the rest were singing, heads held high, Mark would look at the floor and fiddling with his fingers, watch shoes in the darkness under the pews. His second thoughts skipped the wagging finger – he was already 'if': his head steeped inside a steamy dream scenario, Mark as the Lothario. Not a dirty mind, but playful. Wistful shadows that had been long cast arose again, and he'd feel once more the warmth and joy of their shapes against his body. Traffic on the motorway was moving. His car revved (like an old tiger) as he pulled out into the middle lane. The WHAT-IF started fighting with the IF. If anything was eternal, it was the bloody battle between the WHAT-IF and the IF. YES BUT, YES BUT, YES BUT. His stomach churned. He'd eaten food picked from a computer menu that looked at him as if he was stupid. Mark had felt the snarl and the growl, the glaze-over – eyes tipped to the ceiling – as he stood there flipping the selections, failing to collect the lunch he required: just select, it said. He'd found the picture – there it was, all he had to do was touch it – but his lunch didn't react. Was there something wrong with his finger? He asked the woman behind the counter for help, she ordered his lunch for him and he waited, watching her calm movements behind the counter, her young overworked complexion. Tow the line, his mother would say. No sign there of the cathedral and its darkened room? Mark recalled the doors opening wide at the end of a service and the congregation flocking back into the world, happy, smiling. Whatever you do, don't Upset The Applecart. That was her phrase. How could he?! He was thinking of the mess it would make on the tarmac: ripe red fruits smashing against cars and lorries, juice in torrents up and down the gutters, trickling from reach across the carriageways; fingers stretching out until they stopped.

This trip, a new tack. The rain beat down. Last summer had been the hottest ever, now the rain beat down in fits and starts. If she was twenty (the woman he was to have an affair with) then, he being fifty, she'd be less than half his age. Mark could hear his mother: But she's less than half your age! Yet ... ten years on and he'd be sixty, she'd be thirty – she'd have grown closer – now she'd be only half his age? Ten more years: he'd be seventy and she'd be forty – less than half his age. Figures spun in his head like a devil's odometer. Mark pulled out into the middle lane. He swerved a little at the kink in his thoughts. A car trying to pass outside, SLOWED, FLASHED, the driver mouthing: Middle-lane hogger! Stupid ass driver! How could that be? The younger getting older, getting closer, getting elder? Mark thought of his children, all three of them, their birthdays passing year-in-year-out, each birthday seeming closer to a memory of himself. Everyone was catching – would catch him. Sat around a table in a restaurant: leaning, muttering, wondering, poking, picking, wishing, sighing.

Mark put his foot down, and down, down again, until he felt the car move as if animated, from the middle lane into the fast stream where real people drive their cars. Cars with real engines. With no concern for dark rooms or apple carts he sliced along through the air. Now he was speeding there was more drag and the raindrops splashed flatter on the body of his car. He was an arrow – and arrows either lie or fly – shot from a bow there was nothing for it, but to fly!

Place names passed, old, new, further, nearer. Cars on his inside grouped together as if under his wing, numbers swirled, as the world around him vibrated and the sturdy old classic headed straight towards its goal. At this rate he'd be there before the day became much older. Although, come to think of it (as several worrying rattles rattled), to be stopped by mechanical failure would be quite stupid. To be stopped by the police – that would be really stupid! Mark was struck by the thrill of speed but slowed and pulled over into the middle lane. He felt the lines curling back around him like vines catch small mammals in south American jungles.

Mark's mother still lived in the old house. He'd been born upstairs in the front bedroom. The wallpaper was no longer colourful, the woodwork was still brown, things stood their ground, where they'd been put down, many years ago. When he sat on the sofa he let out a sigh, remembering the old regime: don't touch, DON'T MOVE IT, leave alone, wash your hands, don't run. Not that his mother said those things anymore. She didn't have to.

The garden down the back steps was arriving in bloom. The rain had passed but some still sat like dew drops on the leaves. His mother still had the energy to get around her garden paths and carry out its upkeep. Rows and clumps of colour were way out of fashion with the rooms in the house. Stuff pushing through, tussocks, sprawling collections, singles stems, heads bowed in reverence towards spring. The garden was managed, Mark's mother told him, on the principle of taking plants out – not putting them in. So many had been planted over the years, that nature had truly taken control, all she had to do was dig a bit and pull out those that threatened the garden's diversity. That's gardening, she told Mark.

Mark loved his mother. Why would he drive the line three times a year, year in year out? In his teens he had developed a nervous condition, the kind that back then no one took any notice of. He'd fought his undiagnosed condition in his youth by adopting his mother's defiant attitude. These days she seemed to have let go of it in the garden, but still clung on inside the house.

Dave's in town. Mark's mother said. She had met Dave's mother out shopping, Dave's mother had told her Dave was here, for the first time in years – and at the same time as Mark. You should see Dave, Mark's mother said, he's quite the success you know. Dave was an old friend of Mark's. Dave's mother was an old friend of Mark's mother, from way back down the line back when Mark was about Fourteen. They'd always said they'd keep in contact: School friends are you're only real friends, Dave claimed, before he left the country.

The Railway Corner pub was stuck into a cliff, by the railway, on the corner. No one had ever mentioned the obvious name of the pub before. The Railway Corner had always loomed rather mysteriously, hewn out of rock, unexpected. Inside there were candles on the tables held fast by mountains of tricked wax, although electric light seemed to have taken over, at last. Probably to do with insurance, Dave said. They sat with their drinks, it was like old days, although now legal. They talked about the old days, mainly about women. In the old days the word 'women' was never used, too grown-up, too tall. And 'girl' was far too small. Dave had been divorced once, Mark twice. Dave had lived with several partners in a variety of places. Mark had lived with several partners, all in the same place. The Railway Corner had high ceilings. The pub was a cave they'd knocked out to make it into a bar. A window high at the back glimpsed out over the top of the cliff. Managing a legal company had taken Dave to many places abroad. He told Mark of hot sun and the occasional–hard to find–alcoholic drink. Plains of grass and wild flowers. Wooded mountain regions where birds hover and glide looking down to glimpse what was hidden inside. Mark had stayed put. He'd ploughed his time into Carpet Sales, expanding into General Floor Coverings. When Dave couldn't remember a face, Mark would say: You know who I mean, she drove a red Mini, a blue VW, an orange Capri – remember?! When Mark couldn't place someone, Dave would say: You know! he lived in that small town with the market in the middle? In the tumbledown house with the damp and the dogs by the canal. Her dad was a millionaire! They owned all that land, the glorious green grass and aged trees. There was a swing tied to a bough in the middle of the wood like it had been left out from a fairy tale.

Dave told Mark he'd met a woman. What a great place. The wide open plain and a town towering high into the sky. He told how the original settlers had built them like that so they could see their enemies coming. She lived in the tall town; you could see the buildings for miles around. For a while Dave had an office in the town, but had moved on with work. He returned once, unexpectedly, stole up to her office, knocked, threw open the door: and there she was. Still, the two of them: like a house on fire! But she was married now, two kids and a house away from the plain in a nearby village. Dave recalled the village included a river and woodlands where the native people used to hunt.

Mark said he too had met a woman. He told Dave how they'd almost had an affair. She was much younger. She was free, but he was married, (just about). She drove a little blue Ford. After his second divorce they'd met again, quite by chance, in one of Mark's carpet stores – one incorporating a new range of general floor coverings. Mark was staggered to meet her. He had to take a seat by the tills, as if he were finalising a transaction. She told Mark that she was married now, two kids and a horse. He said: You mean a house? She said Yes, one of those too.

After more drinks and further talk of far away lands, cars – some legal stuff, fluctuation in the floor covering market, Dave's next destination – they left.

Out in the mild night, moss and flowers flourished in cliffside crags. Cars on the road streamed passed. Dave said his goodbyes, drew a deep breath of night air on which he could just smell wild jasmine, or perhaps the honey was hog weed? Mark walked towards his mother's house. Dave in the opposite direction, towards his mother's house. Mark looked at the cars as they piled passed. He looked into each one, noting the driver, the make, model, colour. In the old days, if he fancied a woman, he'd know her car and watch out for it, hoping to catch her driving by. So many models filled Mark's childhood roads. He recalled a story about an executioner who travelled in a beat-up white Cadillac. As the weather was very hot in that particular place, there were many white cars, so the executioner's Cadillac fitted-in perfectly when he drove into town. Mark walked on passed the shops, a methodist chapel, silver birches standing parallel to telegraph poles, an overhanging glass office block. He felt relaxed. He realised, as he walked, his driving up-and-down, to-and-from his mother's three times a year was a burden, but he could always just look a little further, or change the topic, walk away–for just a few seconds–and he'd be okay.

Ian Bishop teaches philosophy and English in Kent UK. His recent work has been published by Inlandia Literary Review, Adelaide Literary Magazine, Eunoia Review, forthcoming in Confluence Magazine.