The Driver's Seat (7 page)

The
record starts, and the girl swings. Lise says, ‘Do you believe in macrobiotics?’

‘I’m a
Jehovah’s Witness,’ says Mrs Fiedke. ‘But that was after Mr Fiedke passed on. I
have no problems any more. Mr Fiedke cut out his sister you know, because she
had no religion. She questioned. There are some things which you can’t. But I
know this, if Mr Fiedke was alive today he would be a Witness too. In fact he
was one in many ways without knowing it.’

‘Macrobiotics
is a way of life,’ Lise says. ‘That man at the Metropole, I met him on the
plane. He’s an Enlightenment Leader of the macrobiotics. He’s on Regime Seven.’

‘How
delightful!’ says Mrs Fiedke.

‘But he
isn’t my type,’ Lise says.

The
girl with the pigtails is dancing on by herself in front of them, and as she
suddenly steps back Mrs Fiedke has to retreat out of her way. ‘Is she what they
call a hippy?’ she says.

‘There
were two others on the plane. I thought they were my type, but they weren’t. I
was disappointed.’

‘But
you are to meet your gentleman soon, won’t you? Didn’t you say?’

‘Oh,
he’s
my type,’ Lise says.

‘I must
get a pair of slippers for my nephew. Size nine. He missed the plane.’

‘This one’s
a hippy,’ says Lise, indicating with her head a slouching bearded youth dressed
in tight blue-jeans, no longer blue, his shoulders draped with an assortment of
cardigans and fringed leather garments, heavy for the time of year.

Mrs
Fiedke looks with interest and whispers to Lise, ‘They are hermaphrodites. It
isn’t their fault.’ The young man turns as he is touched on the shoulder by a
large blue-suited agent of the store. The bearded youth starts to argue and
gesticulate, but this brings another, slighter, man to his other shoulder. They
lead him protesting away towards the emergency exit stairway. A slight
disturbance then occurs amongst the record-hearing crowd, some of whom take the
young man’s part, some of whom do not. ‘He wasn’t doing any harm!’ ‘He smelt
awful!’ ‘Who do
you
think you are?’

Lise
walks off towards Televisions, followed anxiously by Mrs Fiedke. Behind them
the pigtailed girl is addressing her adjacent crowd: ‘They think they’re in
America where if they don’t like a man’s face they take him out and shoot him.’
A man’s voice barks back: ‘You couldn’t see his face for the hair. Go back
where you came from, little whore! In this country, we …’

The
quarrel melts behind them as they come to the television sets where the few
people who have been taking an interest in the salesman appear now to be torn
between his calm rivulet of words and the incipient political uprising over at
Records and Record-Players. Two television screens, one vast and one small,
display the same programme, a wild-life documentary film which is now coming
to an end; a charging herd of buffalo, large on one screen and small on the
other, cross the two patches of vision while music of an unmistakably finale
nature sends them on their way with equal volume from both machines. The
salesman turns down the noise from the larger set, and continues to address his
customers, who have now dwindled to two, meanwhile keeping an interested eye on
Lise and Mrs Fiedke who hover behind.

‘Would
that be your gentleman?’ Mrs Fiedke says, while the screens give a list of
names responsible for the film, then another and another list of names. Lise
says, ‘I was just wondering myself. He looks a respectable type.’

‘It’s
up to you,’ says Mrs Fiedke. ‘You’re young and you have your life in front of
you.’

A
well-groomed female announcer comes on both televisions, small and large, to
give out the early evening headlines, first stating that the time is 17.00 hours,
then that a military coup has newly taken place in a middle-eastern country
details of which are yet unknown. The salesman, abandoning his potential
clients to their private deliberations, inclines his head towards Mrs Fiedke
and inquires if he can help her.

‘No
thank you,’ Lise replies in the tongue of the country. Whereupon the salesman
comes close up and pursues Mrs Fiedke in English. ‘We have big reductions,
Madam, this week.’ He looks winningly at Lise, eventually approaching to
squeeze her arm. Lise turns to Mrs Fiedke. ‘No good,’ she says. ‘Come on, it’s
getting late,’ and she guides the old lady away to Gifts and Curios at the far
end of the floor. ‘Not my man at all. He tried to get familiar with me,’ Lise
says. ‘The one I’m looking for will recognize me right away for the woman I am,
have no fear of that.’

‘Can
you credit it?’ says Mrs Fiedke looking back indignantly in the direction of
Televisions. ‘Perhaps we should report him. Where is the Office?’

‘What’s
the use?’ Lise says. ‘We have no proof.’

‘Perhaps
we should go elsewhere for my nephew’s slippers.’

‘Do you
really want to buy slippers for your nephew?’ Lise says.

‘I
thought of slippers as a welcome present. My poor nephew — the hotel porter was
so nice. The poor boy was to have arrived on this morning’s flight from
Copenhagen. I waited and I waited. He must have missed the plane. The porter
looked up the timetable and there’s another arriving tonight. I must remember
not to go to bed. The plane gets in at ten-twenty but it may be eleven-thirty,
twelve, before he gets to the hotel, you know.’

Lise is
looking at the leather notecases, embossed with the city’s crest. ‘These look
good,’ Lise says. ‘Get him one of these. He would remember all his life that
you gave it to him.’

‘I
think slippers,’ says Mrs Fiedke. ‘Somehow I feel slippers. My poor nephew has
been unwell, we had to send him to a clinic. It was either that or the other,
they gave us no choice. He’s so much better now, quite well again. But he needs
rest. Rest, rest and more rest is what the doctor wrote. He takes size nine.

Lise is
playing with a corkscrew, then with a ceramic-handled cork. ‘Slippers might
make him feel like an invalid,’ she says. ‘Why don’t you buy him a record or a
book? How old is he?’

‘Only
twenty-four. It comes from the mother’s side. Perhaps we should go to another
shop.’

Lise
leans over the counter to inquire which department is men’s slippers. Patiently
she translates the answer to Mrs Fiedke. ‘Footwear on the third floor. We’ll
have to go back up. The other stores are much too expensive, they charge you
what they like. The travel folder recommends this place as they’ve got fixed
prices.’

Up they
go, once more, surveying the receding departments as they rise; they buy the
slippers; they descend to the ground floor. There, near the street door, they
find another gift department with a miscellany of temptations. Lise buys
another scarf, bright orange. She buys a striped man’s necktie, dark blue and
yellow. Then, glimpsing through the crowd a rack from which dangles a larger
assortment of men’s ties, each neatly enfolded in transparent plastic, she
changes her mind about the coloured tie she has just bought. The girl at the
counter is not pleased by the difficulties involved in the refund of money, and
accompanies Lise over to the rack to see if an exchange can be effected.

Lise
selects two ties, one plain black knitted cotton, the other green. Then,
changing her mind once more, she says, ‘That green is too bright, I think.’ The
girl conveys exasperation, and in a manner of vexed resignation Lise says, ‘All
right, give me two black ties, they’re always useful. Please remove the prices.’
She returns to the counter where she had left Mrs Fiedke, pays the difference
and takes her package. Mrs Fiedke appears from the doorway where she has been
examining, by daylight, two leather notecases. A shopman, who has been hovering
by, in case she should be one of those who make a dash for it, goods in hand,
follows her back to the counter. He says, ‘They’re both very good leather.’

Mrs
Fiedke says, ‘I think he has one already.’ She chooses a paperknife in a sheath.
Lise stands watching. She says, ‘I nearly bought one of those for my boy-friend
at the airport before I left. It was almost the same but not quite.’ The
paper-knife is made of brassy metal, curved like a scimitar. The sheath is
embossed but not, like the one Lise had considered earlier in the day,
jewelled. ‘The slippers are enough,’ Lise says.

Mrs
Fiedke says, ‘You’re quite right. One doesn’t want to spoil them.’ She looks at
a key-case, then buys the paper-knife.

‘If he
uses a paper-knife,’ Lise says, ‘obviously he isn’t a hippy. If he were a hippy
he would open his letters with his fingers.’

‘Would
it be too much trouble,’ she says to Lise, ‘to put this in your bag? And the
slippers — oh, where are the slippers?’

Her
package of slippers is lost, is gone. She claims to have left it on the counter
while she had been to the door to compare the two leather notecases. The
package has been lifted, has been taken away by somebody. Everyone looks around
for it and sympathizes, and points out that it was her own fault.

‘Maybe
he has plenty of slippers, anyway,’ Lise says. ‘Is he my type of man, do you
think?’

‘We
ought to see the sights,’ says Mrs Fiedke. ‘We shouldn’t let this golden
opportunity go by without seeing the ruins.’

‘If he’s
my type I want to meet him,’ Lise says.

‘Very
much your type,’ says Mrs Fiedke, ‘at his best.’

‘What a
pity he’s coming so late,’. Lise says. ‘Because I have a previous engagement
with my boyfriend. However, if he doesn’t turn up before your nephew arrives I
want to meet your nephew. What’s his name did you say?’

‘Richard.
We never called him Dick. Only his mother, but not us. I hope he gets the plane
all right. Oh — where’s the paper-knife?’

‘You
put it in here,’ says Lise, pointing to her zipper-bag. ‘Don’t worry, it’s
safe. Let’s get out of here.’

As they
drift with the outgoing shoppers into the sunny street, Mrs Fiedke says, ‘I
hope he’s on that plane. There was some talk that he would go to Barcelona
first to meet his mother, then on here to meet up with me. But I wouldn’t play.
I just said No! No flying from Barcelona, I said. I’m a strict believer, in
fact, a Witness, but I never trust the airlines from those countries where the
pilots believe in the afterlife. You are safer when they don’t. I’ve been told
the Scandinavian airlines are fairly reliable in that respect.’

Lise
looks up and down the street and sighs. ‘It can’t be long now. My friend’s
going to turn up soon. He knows I’ve come all this way to see him. He knows it,
all right. He’s just waiting around somewhere. Apart from that I have no plans.’

‘Dressed
for the carnival!’ says a woman, looking grossly at Lise as she passes, and
laughing as she goes her way, laughing without possibility of restraint, like a
stream bound to descend whatever slope lies before it.

FIVE

‘It is in my mind,’ says
Mrs Fiedke; ‘it is in my mind and I can’t think of anything else but that you
and my nephew are meant for each other. As sure as anything, my dear, you are
the person for my nephew. Somebody has got to take him on, anyhow, that’s
plain.’

‘He’s
only twenty-four,’ considers Lise. ‘Much too young.

They
are descending a steep path leading from the ruins. Steps have been roughly cut
out of the earthy track, outlined only by slats of wood which are laid at the
edge of each step. Lise holds Mrs Fiedke’s arm and helps her down one by one.

‘How do
you know his age?’ says Mrs Fiedke.

‘Well,
didn’t you tell me, twenty-four?’ Lise says.

‘Yes,
but I haven’t seen him for quite a time you know. He’s been away.

‘Maybe
he’s even younger. Take care, go slowly.’

‘Or it
could be the other way. People age when they’ve had unpleasant experiences over
the years. It just came to me while we were looking at those very interesting
pavements in that ancient temple up there, that poor Richard may be the very
man that you’re looking for.’

‘Well,
it’s your idea,’ says Lise, ‘not mine. I wouldn’t know till I’d seen him.
Myself, I think he’s around the corner somewhere, now, any time.’

‘Which
corner?’ The old lady looks up and down the street which runs below them at the
bottom of the steps.

‘Any
corner. Any old corner.’

‘Will
you feel a presence? Is that how you’ll know?’

‘Not
really a presence,’ Lise says. ‘The lack of an absence, that’s what it is. I
know I’ll find it. I keep on making mistakes, though.’ She starts to cry, very
slightly sniffing, weeping, and they stop on the steps while Mrs Fiedke
produces a trembling pink face-tissue from her bag for Lise to dab her eyes
with and blow her nose on. Sniffing, Lise throws the shredded little snitch of
paper away and again takes Mrs Fiedke’s arm to resume their descent. ‘Too much
self-control, which arises from fear and timidity, that’s what’s wrong with
them. They’re cowards, most of them.’

‘Oh, I
always believe
that,’
says Mrs Fiedke. ‘No doubt about it. The male sex.’