The Spitfire didn’t move. Neither did I. It was rooted to a pole; I was stuck in a lay-by. The M11 wailed below and try as I did, I couldn't find a way onto it.
The Spitfire remained indifferent. Behind it small planes wobbled their way onto Duxford’s airstrip and others wobbled their way off it. Huge hangars loomed like cargo ships on the wide green.
I’d visited the museum with my parents, Grandparents and Great Uncle not so long before. We went to the American hangar and saw the fighter jets, reconnaissance planes, drones and missiles dangling in suspended animation. The hangar was pristine like all Norman Foster’s buildings. Over 50,000 Americans had donated to have it built and even the Saudis gave a million. It was full of heroic stories and quotes about war. A tour guide stood under a B17 and told us all about the great war hero General Jimmy Doolittle and his acts of derring-do. He didn’t tell us Jimmy Doolittle was the founding member of the museum. Either way, they’d done their best to make war beautiful and glorious.
After exhausting ourselves we’d sat for a cup of tea in the cafe, watching over the silent, wings. Conversation turned away from planes. Some say you can’t talk about war without talking about domestic minutiae. The seemingly insignificant interpersonal relationships are as important as the guns and bombs. Tolstoy knew that only too well as did his fellow Russian Vasily Grossman. In truth though that was not the intention behind Dad and Christopher’s conversation about village councils. How we got onto it I can’t remember. Christopher told us that his greatest achievement in all his years on the council had been getting a sign moved 50 meters up an Oxfordshire road. It had involved hours of meetings, consultations and inspections, the finale involving the local constabulary, a site safety inspector and the entire council convening by the sign. The highway maintenance man had driven four hours from Newport, South Wales to give his nod. 10 minutes later he was driving back. We wondered how General Jimmy Doolittle would have fared in a village council.
Dad then told us how, for exactly that reason, he had never wanted to be a councillor. The previous council's great achievement had been building a new speed chicane to slow the traffic coming into the village. After spending huge resources and years of agonising work, the brand-new bollard was unveiled…on a blind bend. Within two weeks there’d been multiple crashes and just as many complaints. The bollard was removed with remarkable speed and the council resigned en masse. As one of the few villagers not involved, Dad was begrudgingly elected shortly after.
No one wanted to pick me up and as I waited it became obvious no one would. I tried on the motorway junction itself but that was even more hopeless, there was far too much traffic and nowhere to stop.
I examined the detritus sprinkled on the verge. It looked like an ancient crime scene. There was a half-buried rubber glove and a face mask caught in a thorn. Papery cigarettes lurked in the grass and the leaves were a sickly blue, poisoned by car fumes. A few apples rotted by the curb.
Eventually, a dusty Subaru Outback pulled in. It was driven by a ratty man, the passenger was a car battery. He wasn’t going the right way. “If you’re going north, you wanna be in a lay-by on the M11 mate,” he told me. I told him no such thing existed and he drove away.
No one else stopped. Some men in a blue BMW flipped me off and a man in a van wound down the window and screamed at me. The piercing shriek whipped by.
I was trying to get to Halifax that day but I’d got onto the road late and I didn’t fancy my chances anymore. I’d been there an hour and a half, it was getting on for 4 and I didn’t have a tent if I got stuck. I wasn’t far from my parents so I threw in the towel and found a spot to hitch home.
Within minutes I was saved by a young woman in red trousers. Her name was Amy and she was a teacher.
“I could have taken you as far as St Ives,” she joked, “If you’d been there at 8 this morning.”
She said she was going back the next morning if I still wanted a ride. I did so we agreed to meet outside my door early the next day. That afternoon she took me right on to Saffron Walden and dropped me out by the Aldi. I thought I’d hitchhike to Thaxted, for no reason in particular other than I had a few hours to spare before dark. Maybe I could loop back through Ashdon and see the house I was born in.
No one picked me up from there either. Someone once told me the key to hitchhiking is looking like you don’t smell. It doesn’t matter if you do smell, but as long as you look like you don’t you’ll be alright. Maybe that day I looked like I smelt.
A woman walked past with a dog that wasn’t hers. Her hair was like a vase of dead flowers. I told her I’d been trying to go to Halifax but I’d given up. The name of Halifax made her face sadden by an inch and she looked at the ground. The terrier’s pink tongue hung out as it panted unaware of its walker’s trouble.
Clare’s 15 1/2-year-old grandson lived up there with his mum. She was desperate to see him, as was the whole family, but the mum shielded him away and had manipulated the young boy to hate all his father’s family. Clare’s son, Tim, was frantically trying to be a good dad but what could he do when he wasn’t allowed to see him?
It all started with a car and a puppy. She explained the incident wildly, and it made no sense. She was obviously grieving the loss. The upshot had been that the mother had taken away the boy and denied Tim the right to see him anymore. Now all letters went unanswered, all texts weren’t received. Even presents like money or a new phone were met with total silence. “She’s very manipulative,” I was told, “she twists all our words. She wants us completely removed from his life.” Clare looked at the pavement again. “Some people think when he’s 16 he’ll grow out of it and come and find us.” She stressed again he was 15 1/2.
It had been a difficult few years for Clare. Her husband had died suddenly four years ago and she’d spent covid all alone. Her other grandkids lived in Montreal so she barely saw them either.
“Well anyway,” she concluded after a while, “Tim always said Halifax was a bit grey in the winter. It can be quite depressing around there. That’s what he always used to say when Ollie went to live there.” She bid me a morose farewell and shuffled up the hill, the terrier pattering on ahead.
I gave up trying to go to Thaxted and decided to walk home. It was only a few miles. I cut down into Saffron Walden passing the warehouse where I’d spent a cold January shifting boxes of furniture. I thought back to my curling breath above the rows of cardboard crates. It had been a tough job and poorly organised. People were never there long. Workers came and went, sometimes they’d be there a week or two, sometimes a month. Others were gone after a shift. The only one who stayed was the foreman, Mark. He was a stocky red-faced man, blown tight as a tractor’s tyre and worked easily as hard. He was the first one in the warehouse and was the last one out, usually at 3 or 4 in the morning, sometimes later. The strangest thing was he hated it.
I’d met a Spaniard there, a small wiry man, tough as the earth and just as strong. He would lug those boxes late into the night and never once complained. Like most, he wasn’t there long. I can’t remember his name but I remember he told me he’d been a sniper in Syria. He’d stalk onto the hillsides with his spotter and take out bad guys. His longest confirmed kill was a mile he said. Either he or his spotter obviously cocked up because eventually he got stabbed in a hand-to-hand scrap. Not like a sniper to get stabbed I thought. He recalled being mortar bombed on patrol once too. His best mate was just in front of him, the guy he’d spent the whole war with. He took a direct hit and was blown to smithereens. He spoke about it easily, as if it had been as simple as chucking furniture in a van. Maybe it had been or perhaps he made the whole thing up, I’ll never know.
I walked on into town past my old primary school. Whenever I see it I think of the smell of linoleum and floor polish and I’m right there on my first day of school. I went into the market square and saw someone I knew across the street. He worked in the local curry house. We’d been there a couple of weeks before and I remembered his name.
“Johnny!” I called out. He looked over and gave a smile of faint recognition and together we continued walking. I thanked him for a delicious curry the other night and he asked what I was doing. I told him I was hitchhiking but he didn’t get it, his English wasn’t great. He thought I was a parking inspector.
I told him I was soon to be working for a clothes company. “Ahhh!” He held up a finger excitedly, “Bangladeshi garments are very famous.” I nodded. “If you want to do business in clothes… you come with me. Very good opportunity. I give you lots of opportunities.” He looked at me seriously and lowered his voice, letting me into a deep secret, “You come with me you get very rich… I get rich too. We both get rich! Everybody needs money, my friend. Yes…very good opportunity for you.”
He got me to take his number so we could make business plans. I promised I’d be back in his restaurant soon too. Then we stopped walking and he took my hand in a firm handshake. Looking me intently in the eyes he said sternly, “Take this seriously, my friend. Take this very seriously.”
I walked on out of town into the Audley End estate that flanks the western edge. By the old brick gatehouse, two young dads were stepping back onto the road in their wellies.
“Yeah to be honest mate, I used to smoke quite a lot of weed,” said one to the other.
“Yeah interesting mate. I never smoked much myself but I’ve done a couple of different drugs,” the other had a posher accent than his mate’s, “But I’ve always been very cautious, you know?”
Their toddlers sucked their thumbs obliviously as they rattled on down the road in their pushchairs.
The evening was making itself comfortable by the time I got home. I realised I was lucky: the only time I’d been caught out and failed to get a lift, I’d been near home. I was tired and too tired to worry that I’d not made it to Halifax. After all, you don’t have to be hitchhiking to meet interesting people.