John’s dad carried stretchers at the Somme. He had been swept up in a wave of frenzied patriotism, spurred by Kitchener’s rousing call and had signed up with so many of his generation to fight for king and country. His eyesight, however, was deemed not good enough for the infantry so, disappointed, he settled for the Royal Medical Corps. He was still doing his bit though, so he was told. The battle’s pointless destruction stirs horror in the British imagination and he was there, picking up its broken pieces. Two years of his life were spent scrambling across the earth’s ripped remains, salvaging those whose eyesight had been good enough but whose fortune had not. John told me about it over breakfast in the hostel, not that there was much to tell. His father never spoke about it.
John’s mother meanwhile had been studying in Cambridge. When she was there women couldn’t get actual degrees but they could just about study, so long as they asked for permission to go to lectures and were accompanied by a chaperone in public. The war changed all that, at least, the chaperone part. It was the Second World War that changed the degrees - the first weren’t handed out until 1948. It wasn’t until John’s mother was 90 that she was finally given the certificate she had earned seven decades before. She went on to live to 103 which John thought was easily surpassable.
“With modern healthcare,” he croaked from under his bucket hat as he spooned his cereal into his mouth, “I think I’ll live to 113.” At 89, John was doing a good job hopping about on his bike. Every year he liked to take a trip to Oxford or Cambridge, the latter being his alma mater, though he didn’t think he’d make it to both this year. At the time, I thought it impressive that he had the energy to stay in hostels. He certainly didn’t hold back on conversation, chatting away to anyone and everyone who cared to listen.
“You see I like to talk a great deal mainly because I’m a lonely old man, a ‘bachelor’ as they’d say in the old days. When I sleep badly though, I become a bit of an old curmudgeon. That’s a new word I discovered recently and it means grumpy old man…” he wittered away cheerfully, carried on the breeze of his thoughts, “Yesterday I was like that and I got in a bit of an argument with a perfectly nice girl about I can’t remember what now…” He went on for a while before spotting my open diary and hitchhiking board. I told him what I was doing.
“Hitchhiking, yes I must have done that once or twice in my youth, though I never practised it all that much…” Off he went again but after a while, he told me he lived in Halifax and that if I ever found myself in that neck of the woods he had a perfectly good spare room which I could borrow. I thanked him, took his number and told him I’d be there tomorrow.
I gathered my things and made my way into the morning. My immediate target was Cambridge. There’s no easy way to get there from Oxford, it involves plenty of wiggling along over-congested A roads but I was confident I could make it before my engagement at 7 o’clock that evening.
I realised I was retracing the steps of the fugitive Oxford scholars who founded Cambridge University some 800 years ago. I doubt they risked thumbing their way out of town given several of their comrades had been strung up and hanged. I was glad of the luxury of strolling through Oxford’s handsome suburbs. I made it to the ring road and found an unsatisfactory place to try my luck. In fact, I found 3 unsatisfactory places and my luck was clearly out. After half an hour at each, I began to get worried I wouldn’t make it for 7. I checked my phone incessantly calculating backup routes and journey times. Nevertheless, the most exhilarating journeys are those you’re sure you won’t make.
Eventually, I came to a quiet service station and stood outside the large window smiling as charmingly as I could to all the coffee drinkers inside. There was only one exit and I knew they’d all be driving straight past me. Making a good early impression was my best bet.
After a while, a van crawled towards me and pulled over. There were two bald men inside with expressionless faces. A chilling aura hung over them both like a mist. The passenger wound down the window and fixed me with black eyes.
“Where ya going mate?” he said slowly and deliberately, never once breaking his gaze.
“Err, well…” I stammered, suddenly both transfixed and terrified by his rocklike face, "Cambridge eventually. Why…err…Where are you going?”
He watched my every move. “Prison,” he replied coldly.
I laughed awkwardly hoping he was joking. His hard expression didn’t move. We stared at each other, my eyes clinging to his, unable to look anywhere else. His mate never once turned, his own gaze fixed on the road.
“Well…” he broke the silence almost casually. His voice was airy but razor-sharp, his words perfectly precise, “That’s a shame, isn’t it. We’re going the other way you see. Otherwise we could have given you a lift.” He raised his eyebrows, then slowly raised the window.
I felt the tension slipping away with every inch it climbed. Once it was all the way up they rolled steadily forward. I looked around to see if anyone in the cafe had seen but no one appeared to. Prison? I wondered which. Either way, I was extremely relieved they weren’t going to Cambridge. If they had been, for some reason I know I would have got in the van. There had been something compelling about them. I’m glad I never found out what.
My bid paid off eventually. A couple picked me up shortly after saying they’d been watching me over their coffee. I looked perfectly nice they said so they thought they’d offer me a lift. It’s always worth smiling at people, you never know when it might pay off.
They were called Ian and Jane and they were as straight as they come. They even sat up dead straight. Jane in the passenger seat had her hands tucked neatly in her lap and wore an unremarkable, practical mackintosh. Ian drove carefully, two hands on the wheel. They were on their way back to Stafford from a holiday on the Isle of Wight. They didn’t much like the island and it had rained too. All in all, it had been a long drive for a crap holiday. I might have guessed as much from their bickering.
Ian was a retired fireman, he’d spent his whole life in the service, and Jane worked part-time in police training and recruitment. She gave me an account of the individual training requirements and induction processes, necessary diplomas and personal safety programmes before interrupting herself to scold her husband’s driving.
“Did you not seeee that car, Ian!” She snapped.
“Yes of course I saw it, Jane!” Ian retorted sardonically, “The other lane was clear.”
“Slow down for god sake! You’ll get us all killed. The junction’s just there. Aggghhh!” Jane folded her arms and looked out of the window crossly as Ian assured her he’d seen the junction and knew what he was doing.
We edged slowly off the motorway onto the slip road towards another service station. They had only been able to take me a few miles up the road but I was grateful to be out of Oxford anyway.
It took a while to get another ride. The nagging feeling that I might not make it for 7 slowly bubbled back up to the surface. There was no going back now, no train stations I could walk to or bus routes I could hop on. I was locked in, stuck in the Cherwell Valley services. Several people stopped to ask where I was going. Oddly, in all my time hitchhiking, that had only happened two or three times. That day it must have happened six times, all of them going somewhere else. My luck was clearly on the ebb.
It was nearing 2 o’clock when I was saved by a red Nissan Qashqai. The driver was a thick-set man with a pointy nose and fly-like sunglasses. He ushered me in and took a huge rip on a vape that looked like the hilt of a lightsaber. The cloud he blew was just as impressive.
“I’m Marcin,” he told me, pressing my hand with the bulk of a clammy palm. Like the exhausted Grego whom I’d met the day before, he was also from Chechen in Poland, and like him, he’d not planned on being in England long. Unlike him though, he was pleased with life and how it had turned out.
“I wanted to be here 3 months only,” he recalled, “So I got a job in Pret in London. But then after 3 months, they offered me a pay rise and now I’m still here 15 years later.”
That’s how they get you.
He no longer worked at Pret but was a quality control officer for a chain of Chinese noodle bars found in Moto service stations, hence why he was in Cherwell Valley.
He spent his evenings though a happy man, “dating lots of chicks” and kayaking. Both at once if he could manage it. He’d managed it last night and had been on a three-hour date with a “chick” just paddling down the Thames. He loved the fish-eyed view you get of the banks, the cacophony of flowers and reeds and willows looming over you. No better place for a date in Marcin’s eyes.
In fact, he loved all nature. Marcin was a survivalist, half willing, half fearing the day when he has to strike out into the wild and survive of his own accord, free from the monotonous drag of civilised life, supermarkets and the motorway service stations.
Really he wanted to move to Iceland or Canada. Like anyone with half a mind, he feared the coming climate crisis but out there nothing would touch him. The water ran clear there, he told me, so that’s where he wanted to go, but for now, at least he was sticking around in England. He could survive here for the time being. The water ran clear enough in the service station taps.
The afternoon was racing on and I still had a way to go. He dropped me outside Northampton and again shook my hand enthusiastically. “Well Nico,” he said, “It’s been a pleasure. And if you haven’t made it to Cambridge later I’m driving past at 10 pm.” He was collecting his ex-girlfriend, 15 years his junior, from Stansted airport. I didn’t ask why.
“Thanks,” I said, “But no thanks. I’ve got to be there by 7.”