fiction

Mixed Up Words and Sounds
by Tasmin Hartnell

Tasmin Hartnell

The hum of the engine dies away.

His rough hands slip across the worn surface of the steering wheel. His fingers itch for a cigarette. His dark eyes dart quickly around the interior of the car, a lazy metaphor for his life shabby, messy, discarded. He wonders, do other people feel like this? He feels disappointed and cheated, not by the world but by himself. He feels like he’s cheated himself out of a life.

He manages to locate a torn packet of Lambert and Butlers in the glove box. The lid flips up exposing the empty foil interior. Why has he let himself be convinced by the mythical idea that giving up is a good idea, the right thing? He’s a man that needs a cigarette, it’s an intrinsic ingredient in the stage-craft of his persona. Grumpy fuck with a fag.

He’s genuinely happy with that. And anyway he doesn’t want to live forever, he’s made a horrendous attempt at the thirty-three years he’s squirreled away under his belt as it is, any longer would just be some kind of punishment on everyone else around him.

He glances out of his window. Beads of condensation roll slowly down the smeared glass. He’s people watching, only there are no people around to watch. He finds himself staring blankly at the imposing metal security gates, high with barbed wire.

The world has changed around him, without his consent, almost without his notice. He recollects the school gates from his own dusty childhood being wooden things often left open. It’s not that it was a better time, or a simpler time, it’s just that it was different. The gates are there now to keep pedophiles and vandals with hoodies out.

The gates accuse him, they make him feel like a pedophile. Anyone passing his car now would think he was one. Somewhere a desk sergeant is being bothered by his particulars, tall, gawky, bearded, tramp in a half timbered Morris.

The noise erupts without warning, a million pairs of feet, a million decibels of inane chatter. Mobile phones, laughter, bike brakes. The gates part, and the first group of children slip out. Of course they're not children, they're young adults, teenagers, whatever the tag is these days. They're still children to him. Yet they know as much about the world, this world, their world as he does, maybe more.

He spots her only because she sees him first. The surprise on her face is palpable. She looks like she’s thinking about smiling, but she stops herself mid facial twitch.

He hasn’t seen her in months, not properly. On the few occasions he does see her she unnerves him, he doesn’t know what to say or do when he’s around her. She does, which only makes it worse.

He’s surprised at how small she is compared to her classmates, she looks even younger, only nine or ten. In reality she’s at least twelve now, he thinks. He’s fully aware what it means not to know, it makes him feel… at least something inside.

Nature hasn’t been kind; while her mother was some sort of rare and fragile beauty, she’s just pretty and robust. It’s all him, from the deep color of her eyes to the set of her pointed chin, it’s just him. The hair is different though, golden and curly.

He leans across and opens the passenger door. Mutely she gets inside, pushes her backpack across her lap, twisting the fabric of her grey knee length skirt.

The silence is choking and unbearable.

‘I usually get the bus.’ She speaks first, dissipating the awkward vacuum that exists within the stationary car.

‘Really?’ He frowns at his response. Words are his art, his discipline, but when he’s with her he can barely form sentences containing four or more words.

‘Yeah.’

It doesn’t help that she never really replies. How can you talk to someone who never talks to you? She’s polite, compared to him at least, but he knows deep down they don’t really have anything to say to each other.

‘I wanted to talk to you, mum and dad said I could pick you up today.’

‘Because you want to talk to me?’

She’s staring at him, right though him. He twists and turns against the gaffer tape holding his seat together.

‘Yeah.’ In his head he’s already made his escape, he’s half way home.

‘Are you leaving?’

‘No.’

‘Have you lost another job?’

‘No. And I don’t work like that.’

‘Are you ill?’

Her last question is directed at the empty packet of cigarettes lying crumpled across the dashboard.

‘No, I’m not ill. Actually, I’ve given up, smoking…I’m not smoking anymore…I’ve stopped.’ His words twist inside his mouth, half-truths strangled by his tongue.

‘That’s good.’ He expected more of a fanfare, but he knows she’s thinking it won’t last, that it’s just another thing he won’t be able to stick to.

‘I’ve stopped eating Jaffa Cakes.’ She addresses the bag on her lap. He finds himself smiling at her deliberate delivery.

‘The cravings are the hardest part.’

He’s not sure that serious nicotine withdrawal can really be compared to the desire for an orange flavored chocolate covered sponge cake, but who is he to say.

‘Try not to get hooked on Jammie Dodgers.’  

‘No, I won’t.’ She completely misses his pathetic attempt at humor, which in hindsight is probably all for the best.

‘I’m with someone.’ The words tumble out. Her body suddenly turns still and rigid.

‘You’re not back with Gisele are you?’

‘Definitely not.’ Gisele. She’d been the accounting director of a magazine he’d written briefly and woefully for some years back. It was what she saw in him that he still can’t grasp. She set herself goals. She brushed her hair and her teeth every morning. She had a flat and a stable income. She was the antithesis of him, everything he will never be.

‘This is someone new,’ His whole body feels hot and dry. ‘I’m sort of living with him.’ He waits for a reaction, but there’s predictably nothing. Maybe it's all of them, kids now, maybe they don't care about... well, anything. Maybe it's just her. Maybe it's just him.

‘Is he a writer, too?’

‘No, definitely not a writer.’

‘Does he know about me?’

He tries not to remember that conversation, and

nods nervously.

‘Do you want to meet him? You’ll like him. He wants to meet you.’

‘If you want me to, then I will.’

The weight lifts, and he feels himself smile, a real smile.

‘Good, good I do, I do.’

‘Can I go now?’

Their tenuous connection snaps, the familiar distance back into place, and he feels himself tensing up once again.  

‘Yeah, yes, of course. Do you want a lift?’

‘Have you been drinking?’

Her face might be that of a child, but her small dark eyes are old, and tired, and they age further still with her question.

He can’t bring himself to lie. And besides, he’s more than sure she’ll be able to smell it on his breath.

The shape of a bus passes by her side of the car, her eyes follow the outline.

‘No, I’ll get the bus.’