‘Do you think the lark has ascended yet?’
‘Oh, come on, Sean! Of course it has! We must have driven fifty miles since you switched the radio off. We’re coming up to the A30 turn-off.’
‘Lark Ascending IS a long piece, Kate.’
‘H’mm. But not that long.’
‘You’re damn right. Not that long. Listen! The bloody thing’s still playing. …….. Something must have happened.’
‘A gremlin in the studio, I expect.’
‘I was thinking something more apocalyptic. Like an insurrectionist cabal has taken over the airwaves.’
‘Oh, come on down from wherever it is, Sean. This is the UK. Classic FM.’
‘Try another station, then.’
‘H’mmm. Radio 1 seems to have gone off the air.’
‘Well, that’s no bad thing.’
‘No Radio 2, either.……. Or Radio 3’
‘Retune the radio.’
‘I did. There’s nothing.’
‘Told you! Something serious is going down. Classic signs of a coup, take control of the media, confuse the people, overthrow the administration.’
‘Oh some on, Sean.’
‘You must have noticed, Kate, that the traffic is light for this time of day. When was the last time we passed another car? Something bad is happening. Trust me!’
‘I was on the phone to Amy, so I probably wasn’t paying attention. You know how she goes on. But now you mention it, the phone signal did keep cutting out.’
‘Doesn’t it usually cut out a lot on this stretch?’
‘And the Internet’s dead. …… What’s happening, Sean?’
‘Whatever is happening is Big!’
‘What do we do?’
‘Well, we can’t just stop, can we? We have to get somewhere. We’d better keep going.’
The A30 continues to be eerily quiet. Nothing is travelling either way for as far as. ………. I can’t explain why, but instead of carrying on towards Cornwall, we turn off and find ourselves in a place called Broadwoodwidger. We park up to look around. Why? Are we being drawn by a malevolent force into a doomsday scenario? Broadwoodwidger? Is that really what the place is called? Whatever, it appears to have been evacuated.
I’m not sure how, but Kate and I get separated. One minute she is there, the next she is not. While puzzling how she could have come up with this vanishing trick, I stumble upon a hidden hall. It is in semi-darkness. I venture inside. A black and white film is playing on a large screen. The film appears to be about a fellow abandoned in an alien landscape. It is in a language I do not recognise and there are no subtitles. I cannot make out a thing besides the film playing, but as I become accustomed to the low light, I begin to scan the audience. To my alarm, these people seem familiar. I seem to recognise each one of them. A selection of faces from years gone by. Some have aged as you would expect, others are exactly as I remember them.
The entire episode is so out of context that I feel I must be dreaming. I take a moment to check in with reason. For what it’s worth, reason suggests it isn’t a dream. Reason explains that I can feel surfaces. I can move objects. I can feel my heartbeat. That’s for sure. It is going nine to the dozen. My chest tightens and I have difficulty breathing.
I note the detachment about those present. None of the assembled has any connection with any of the others. Each is in his own private universe. I am the only link. These people would not know one another. I know or have known each of them in different areas and at different times in my life. Some I have met through jobs, some through recreational pursuits, and others through transactions of one kind or another.
I spot Bob Scouler, the nerdy systems programmer I worked with at International Adhesives and Sealants, before the toxicity of their products caused a major scandal. Bob is wearing the grey serge suit I remember, along with the familiar Tattersall check shirt and paisley tie. His neat central parting, sides hanging just over the tip of his ears, is from the same era, a well-dated look even then look. Bob might have just stepped out of the office. He has not aged a day. How can this be? I half expect him to start talking about his Morris Marina (brown with a black vinyl roof). Next to him is Razor, my son Damien’s former drug dealer. Did Damien still owe him money, I wonder, or did Razor owe him drugs? Razor seems to have aged dramatically. The scar on his cheek, a legacy of a turf war, has been joined by a companion, just below the jungle of gold earrings. He must be in his mid-thirties, but with the tattoos that cover his shaved head now faded, he looks distressingly old.
There’s Riley Wing, who I briefly shared a flat with in the nineties. Riley was a guitarist with a number of rock bands that never quite made it. I played piano on one or two tracks, uncredited. The royalties would not have been staggering, had I been. Riley has not changed. His clothes look current, but he looks to still be in his twenties. I spot Colin and Malcolm, the landlords of The Red Lion, a pub by the river Kate and I sometimes visit on a summer evening for a drink or two, watching the boats make their way round the gentle meander. They invited Kate and me to their Civil Ceremony, but as I recall it clashed with Kate’s amateur tennis tournament. Where is Kate? What has happened to her? Shouldn’t I be looking for her? Holy cow! There is Ravi from SmartMart where I used to buy my cans. He was always open at two in the morning when I finished my shift. Ravi used to call me George, after George Harrison, I think. I never asked. ‘Got some Drum under the counter, George, if you are wanting it,’ he would say. ‘Special price for you on Stella.’ That was twenty-five years ago.
Despite how we are encouraged to think about it, time is inconsistent. Something doesn’t add up about the way things that are madly important at the time fade easily into the recesses of the unconscious, while other trivial recollections from long ago survive intact and seem like they happened yesterday, highlighting time’s inconsistency. I keep a detailed diary to keep track of the what, where, and when. But even with this record, all that I am doing is measuring change.
I read recently that scientists no longer see time as linear, the bad news for us being that through a process of indoctrination, our brains are irreversibly programmed to think of time as linear. We remember things happening in the past, things are moving around in the present, we plan for the future. We have an agreed-upon measurement of time, so we come away with the illusion of time and continuum. We can only experience now, but it could well be that time is a loop or even infinite, or both. It’s possible all time exists simultaneously.
But back here in the land of light and shadows, I catch sight of Chuck, who lived next door to us in Churchill Drive. Red-bricked semis are on a suburban estate. I am more accustomed to seeing Chuck in lycra. We went cycling together on Sunday mornings, a while back. I resisted the lure of lycra, favouring a comfortable tracksuit. Last I heard, Chuck had moved to Florida. But here he is, larger than life. Larger than he was, anyway. He may have left the bike in the garage recently.
I catch a glimpse of Roxy Singer. I found myself in a house share with Roxy in the months of my post-student malaise along with a roundabout of short-term tenants. Roxy worked as an escort and seemed hell-bent on a descent into drugs. We are not talking recreational puff or the occasional toot of marching powder. Roxy was really going for it. But at least she is still alive. It is a monumental shock, though, to see Dean Ford, who used to service my Mondeo. Dean died ten years ago. I went to his funeral. I close my eyes and open them again. He is still there.
But these people are bit-players in my story. No one has played a significant role. Any rationality in their appearing eludes me. Why would this disparate group of acquaintances come together and why here in Broadwoodwidger? What is it that is happening here? Things are no longer clear. It’s easy to tilt at windmills when your dependables disappear. What have you got to rely on? Is this still Broadwoodwidger, or have things already moved on? Is there really a place called Broadwoodwidger? Isn’t that Lark Ascending I can hear? Why is that still playing?
We are back in the car and heading to Cornwall. I ought to be keeping my eyes on the road. Whatever has been holding up the flow of traffic seems to have been sorted out and my thoughts are back on track.
‘Did you see the name of that place back there, Sean?’ Kate says.
‘Hey?’
‘That name of the place we passed, Sean? Was it Broadwoodwidger?’
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