Lay-bys. Strange places. Worlds of their own, clinging to the road like parasites. And this was a big lay-by. One of those that’s basically a side road. It slid off with a huge, wide slip road and then ducked suddenly down a hill into a thicket, rejoining a few hundred meters on. Scraggy goat willow and hawthorn shrouded the way and a huge red lorry blocked the rest, its back was open and empty.
I hung around by the bus stop at the top. The cars flew past making the trees reel and my hair whip angrily across my face. It wasn’t long before a car pulled in. I picked up my bag as it did, feeling the rush of a new ride. But it wasn’t stopping for me. Instead, it burrowed into the lay-by and disappeared. I waited for it to come back. It never did.
I went back to the road and tried again. Nothing but wind and angry hair until finally, another pulled in. Again it disappeared. Again it didn’t come out. When it happened a third time I became intrigued.
I came up with two possible reasons. Perhaps all the drivers just needed a rest, that is after all what most lay-byes are for. Or perhaps – probably less likely – I’d stumbled across a dogging site.
The thought half amused me. I imagined venturing down to find a mass of pink middle-aged bodies frolicking in the bushes, keys in the ignition, headlights full beam. Surely not, but something was going on so I went down to find out.
I was disappointed. Nothing was happening. There was a long line of cars, 8 or 10 parked up on the verge. I walked along them, brandishing my sign clearly but discreetly in the hope one would offer me a lift but no one paid me any attention. They were all relatively young men, sitting on their own mostly staring at their phones – clearly resting. I got to the other end of the lay-by and climbed the incline back to the road.
The lay-by was a bad spot so I decided I’d have to walk to the nearest village some 40 minutes away. I suddenly remembered anxiously that I still had to get to Cambridge for 7 that evening so, with no other option, I leant into the bushes and trudged along the verge.
After about a mile I came to a smaller lay-by. There were a couple of cars parked up, a black Vauxhall was closest. Standing there, leaning with a stickman silhouette was a tall thin man casually smoking a cigarette. I recognised the car from the last lay-by. He looked like he was waiting for someone.
I called out asking if he was going to Bedford. No, he replied, but he was going to the next village and he’d take me there. He had pale skin, black jeans, black shoes and a black T-shirt. His eyes were like blunt needles. He stubbed his cigarette, it was hardly smoked, and we both got in. His name was Nathan. I was right, he had been in the last lay-by and he’d seen me and my sign go past. He’d been waiting for me.
“Oh,” he said nonchalantly replying to my inquiry, “The lay-by? It’s a cruiser lay-by.”
“What’s a cruiser lay-by?”
“It’s where you meet to…have fun.”
“Like dogging?”
“Dogging’s for straight people, cruising’s for gay people.”
It all made sense, the lines of men on their own.
“Do people meet there and go somewhere else?” I asked intrigued.
“No,” Nathan replied casually, “We tend to just do it in the lay-by. I don’t normally go there but I was early for work.”
He worked in a restaurant, he ran it in fact. It was an Italian joint in town but I didn’t get much more than that as by now we were in the village. I knew there’d been something funny about that lay-by.
“I’m just going to turn around in here,” he said under his breath, pulling up off the road into an empty car park behind some buildings. There was an abandoned car and weeds pushing through the concrete. We manoeuvred slowly. Strange place to turn around I thought, slightly on edge. After a moment of heavy silence, we drove back to the road. I thanked him and hopped out.
Time was getting on. I was 40 minutes from Bedford so needed a quick lift. I got one. The driver was a blonde woman, open, friendly and glad to pick me up. I told her about the lay-by and she chuckled. “It takes all sorts to make the world go round,” She said it without a hint of judgement. Her laugh revealed a deep appreciation of life’s eccentricities.
Back in the day, Becka had been as free as they come. She said that was a long time ago but she barely looked over 30. She was smooth-skinned with a youthful smile full of charm. She’d once gone down the coast of the States right along Mexico, bunked in a van with a bunch of surfers. If the surf was there they stayed. If not they moved on, following the curve of the waves. Nothing mattered then.
Then she had a daughter. Still, she felt she couldn’t be constrained so she bought a 4x4 and they raced across Europe. But somewhere along the way she realised it was no way to raise a child. Together they came home and the 4x4 was sold. Now her daughter was 18 and Becka had been a midwife ever since. She was on her way to a night shift in Bedford hospital.
Becka thought midwifery was a bit like hitchhiking: there was a uniqueness to every moment. “When you hand the parents their child for the first time,” she said reverently, “that moment will never be repeated. The four of you there will never be together again. It’s magical, seeing the look on their faces as you pass their baby into their arms.” Becka would never see the children again, never see what they’d grow into. Maybe they’d be criminals, she said, or maybe they’d be something great.
Not all of it was uplifting. Nothing exposed the invisible grip of chance more than holding the child of a destitute mother. Just that Saturday, she’d delivered a baby to a homeless woman. She was a sex worker and addicted to cocaine. The child was addicted already. It was sent straight to a foster home. “Babies are so innocent,” she looked over at me, “You’re so lucky to have parents who gave you what they did.”
The need for excitement never left Becka though. Over the years she’d befriended an old man called Pete. He was now her adopted grandpa and next week she and her daughter were going to Turkey to stay with him. He was an old, blind gangster, retired from the game with not much other than an enormous stash of hidden money and a lifetime of stories. Becka said there was hardly a prison he’d not been in from Portland to Malta. She didn’t like to hear the stories though. They were hideous and unsanitised. Being a gangster’s not as glamorous as it sounds and running Milton Keynes for a few decades had produced its fair share of horror stories. Her daughter on the other hand loved them.
As we came into Bedford, Becka told me we meet every person for “a reason, a season or a lifetime.” She believed it strongly. Every person leaves something on your soul, however small. I agreed.
Within minutes of being dropped off, I was in a van with another Pete. He wasn’t a blind gangster but he could hardly have been more different from Becka. “I don’t drink and drive mate,” he assured me with a loud cockney accent, “I only ‘ad a couple.”
He’d been at the pub with his mates and they’d told him the pool finals were that night.
“You cunts!” he shouted, “Coulda told me sooner and I woulda booked an ‘otel!” Now he had to drive over an hour to get home, get changed and then get a taxi all the way back. His daughter had been on the phone as I got in. He was sweet talking her into ironing his shirt for him. He knew he had to be nice to her, not just to get his shirt ironed. “I’m gunna get home tonight pissed as a rat and be all clangin’ and bangin’. She’s gunna be so pissed off coz she’s got fuckin’ work in the morning!” He was obviously excited by the evening ahead, “I’m coming back in a mate’s taxi so I’ll ‘ave to be reasonably conservative. Then on Friday I can get down and ‘ave a few propa beers.”
He told me about his last big night, quickly qualifying that it hadn’t actually been that big. He’d been sober enough to order food and sober enough to remember it so it had been a quiet run really.
For all his drinking, Pete couldn’t stand drugs. He told me he’d kicked his son out of the house for doing cocaine. He’d come down to breakfast sneezing and Pete knew what was going on. Then once he found a load of empty bags in his room. He sent him to Cornwall to live with his mum until he’d sorted himself out.
“Beer’s my drug,” he announced proudly, “You don’t go breaking pill boxes for beer do ya?” I suggested his zero-drug tolerance was an overreaction. “To be fair, you might have some wacky backy on a night out. Fine. But you don’t wake up wanting a joint do ya?” He asked me directly. I said no.
Pete had been married for 25 years until he discovered his wife had been texting her ex for almost half of it. Since then he’d had another fiancée but that ended two months ago on holiday in Benidorm.
“Fuckin’ shittest ‘oliday ever. Complete waste of two and a half grand.”
“At least you got a tan,” I said trying to cheer him up.
“Didn’t even get that. I got food poisoning and spent three days on the fuckin’ crown.”
We were whizzing towards Cambourne, a town not far from Cambridge. Pete would interrupt his own stories to shout at oncoming drivers. I quickly discovered his biggest irritation was untidy vans. “Look at that!” He cried pointing at a van, “It’s a dashboard not a fuckin’ filing cabinet! Dirty cunts.”
He was easy-going company and had no shortage of amusing anecdotes all generously sprinkled with obscenities. He’d never hitchhiked himself but had his opinions nonetheless. People were too scared of strangers in Pete’s view. “You can’t be going being all scared of strangers. Fuck that! Nah, otherwise you’d just lock yourself in ya room and go fuck it to the world! Some are nice, some are arseholes. Simple as that. Is what it is.” He illustrated his point with a tale from his lorry driving days, “Driving lorries, you’d get some fucker who’s parked in two bays. You says to him ‘move you cunt’ and he goes ‘fuck off!’ So you go let down his tyres at night, ppsssss.” He mimed the act.
“Did that happen quite a lot?”
“Nah can’t say it did, to be honest mate.”
When Pete dropped me off I was within touching distance of Cambridge. I had 10 miles to go and one hour to do it. It was going to be tight.
An American guy called Jordan took me the final stretch. He was tall and fit, had a tight T and a shining head. He was a South Carolinian and a former military man. He’d been a disruptive kid, troubled as well and aged 16 when he joined his commander couldn’t sort him out. He asked what he wanted and Jordan told him he wanted to go to England. He was sent to Lakenheath and had been here ever since. As he told me we drove past the US Air Force Cemetery just outside Cambridge. The white marble monument glimmered through the trees. I asked what it had been like being in the military.
“It was…cool,” he replied hesitantly, recalling years of memories. I pressed him on the culture inside and what it was like living in an island within an island. “My dad always said cultures are like rivers and they are. You can say people from those cultures are like ‘this’ or ‘that’ and you’d probably be right. All cultures are a bit different and yours, like the flow of a river, affects your decisions and your thinking.” He was speaking considerately, “Being different is like being a drop in the river – it ain’t gunna affect the flow.” Again he stopped to think, the evening was setting outside. “The US and the UK have very different cultures and the US military is very different again. It’s been hard navigating all of them at times.”
Now he was happily enjoying life beyond the military. He was doing a master’s in business at the Open University and was often asked by schools to speak to kids about career advice.
“I was at a school the other day and all the kids said they wanted to go straight into work when they left. I think that’s a shame. It’s the travelling and the stuff beyond work that gives you life experience. Ultimately, it’s life experience that sets you apart.”
We came into Cambridge. The sun was setting and Jordan dropped me by Jesus Green. I crossed the river and struck out across town. It was nearing 7. Eventually, tired and filthy with fumes from two days on the road, I arrived. It was 6:50 – ten minutes to spare. Almost enough time to find a lay-by…