Peter Britton

Down this grey road.

I remember something.

I went on trips.

I remember them well.

Trips with my family. Trips with my friends. Trips alone. 

I remember them well.

I have memories.

This road.

It has made moments.

I remember them well.

I’m small, maybe five or six. I’m in the back seat of the car, our Austin Allegro. I close my eyes, my imagination soars and the world is submerged. I’m in an underwater abyss. Colours fly by the window as fish flutter past. Movement surrounds the car as bubbles flow all around. Mum and dad are oblivious to this watery world as we glide along the underwater road, in our car that has become a submarine. I imagine. I’m small, maybe five or six.

I’m older, and we have stopped for a picnic lunch, just off the road. The sun ablaze in the sky beats down on us like a weight, but a good weight, like a heavy duvet at night. It’s a hot day and the water in a nearby lake is inviting in its glassy calm. The black, red and yellow blanket floats on the plush green grass, dimpled by flavoursome finger food. Ham and cheese sandwiches for me and my sister, dad has salami and salad, mum picks at something. There are crisps, pop, chocolate, Mr. Kiplings. Pickled onions; my sister is obsessed with them. She plucks one out of the brown vinegar from the jar, and pops it into her mouth. But she breathes in as she does so… it gets stuck. She chokes. Her face turns blue, and her eyes bulge. Dad grabs her and hits her on her back. It doesn’t come out, so mum puts her fingers in my sisters mouth, right to the back of her throat and gouges, prises, pinches the onion out from my sisters gullet. A cough, and a fingernail nicked onion rolls into a dimple on the picnic blanket. It looks like a dead eye.

The immensity of the mountain looms over us, the sky forms a ceiling of wild and bubbly clouds. The water in the lake gently breaks on the shore a few feet away from us; a small but consistent lapping at the land. Dad has locked the keys in the car, and we all stand around peering at them through the front driver side window. They are in the ignition, ready to be turned, waiting to start the car to take us home. But we are out here, looking in, wondering what to do. I think we will be stuck here forever, so I start making a plan. I say we could live on fish from the lake, and I start looking for a stick big enough to make into a rod. I start collecting firewood too, and as I turn around I see my dad pick up a large rock. With his gentle hand he taps it against the drivers side window. I wonder what he’s doing, and with the next tap, harder this time, I understand. The flat glass panel shatters, becoming a hundred thousand component parts. Dad reaches in through the new aperture, and unlocks the car. He gets a carrier bag from the boot, opens the driver side door and brushes the sharp shards into the bag. Several shards spill onto the gravel by the door, the small rocks cut through with islands of translucent blue. Glass, gravel and filtered light play with one another, a Mandelbrot derivative of never-ending microscopic depth. I walk out to the edge of the water. Leaves lay in the shallow water, the cloak of floating flora disturbed by the quivering legs of a saturated hoverfly.

We’re riding our bikes through the landscape, me and my family. Riding to the pub for tea. We went there yesterday as well, and we are going back this evening because of the ‘death by chocolate gâteau’. Opulent chocolate sponge, cream and cherries. I can’t wait to dig my fork into the voluptuous sponge and unctuous cream. On the way we ride past a pond and I see sticklebacks zooming around in the crystal clear pool. I have a thought that I’ll catch some and take some back to the holiday cottage… keep them in the bath. We ride on, we come across a deserted house, behind broken gates. It’s huge, three floors, more mansion than house really. We ride up the tree lined driveway and stop to look. I push my bike to the double front doors, only one of which remains upright. I get on my bike, ride into the house and go speeding off around the large ground floor, whooping for joy at the extravagance of the experience. I crash into furniture and skid on the parquet floor. Mum and dad tell me to ‘come on’, and we ride on, toward the pub, and death by chocolate gâteau.

Mum is driving and I’m staring out of the window, with tears in my eyes. Dad has died, just weeks ago. Not unexpectedly; we had been waiting for years. Mum helped him stay alive, and he was happy. He was dignified and fearless. The pain was enormous, engulfing. But he was brave. He laughed and joked. He listened to music with me in the front room, because he knew he needed to be lost and absorbed in his favourite melodies before the blackness swallowed him whole forever. Cancer. But mum was brave too. Mum has decided that we need to get away for some days. We arrive at a cottage, just me and mum. She cooks tea, drinks wine. I read my book and go for a walk by myself to the top of the hill that sits behind the cottage. It’s dark by the time I get back and mum has gone to bed. She has nightmares in the night, the screams starting without warning, her terror realised in the dark. We leave the next day. Mum is driving and I’m staring out of the window, with tears in my eyes.

I’m driving along the grey road, she sits beside me singing along to the music, one hand in mine as we drive. Mist floods the sky, and the mountain tops are nestled in cloud. Despite the mist (or maybe because of it) I stop the car by a lake. Suddenly she’s naked in the seat next to me as we change into our swimming gear. We jump out of the car, excited by the damp air. Our feet feel the nip of the cold water as we creep from the shore, our bodies tensing at its icy touch as we submerge deeper into the clear pool, so cool and deep. We swim out into the lake and the cold is all I can take. Her blue eyes shine with life as we bob amongst the misty ripples, the rise and fall of the almost still water barely perceptible. Light begins to creep through the mist, and a shaft of gold illuminates the water vapour as it glides across her face. I envelope her in the light and cold, and as her perfect lips turn blue, I kiss them. We swim back to the shore, water below and mist above, the cold receding from our bodies as we shiver up the shore. Back at the car, wrapped in towels, I enfold her in my arms. I let my towel fall to the ground and she welcomes me into her towel, our tummies touch, dimpled with the cold. And in that moment, nothing moves.

We stopped the car and turned to look at the view, the light of the sun selecting parts of the landscape as the clouds shifted across the sky. Our shadows spread out before us, long and thin. We looked like giants.

It’s my 23rd birthday. I’m on my way to Trawsfynydd to photograph the nuclear power station. There’s a steak in the fridge at home, waiting to be cooked. My mobile rings, my pocket vibrates and I pull over. Fine drizzle slowly dapples the windscreen, and the power station sits watching me through a miasma of painterly blur. It’s you. I’m glad, because I’ve got a joke I’ve been dying to tell you. But you don’t want to hear the joke. Looks like the joke is on me. I wish I’d never answered, but I suppose I was bad news for you. I know you never meant to hurt me. There’s a steak in the fridge at home, waiting to be cooked.

And now I’m on the road again. To me it is a road well travelled and well known, but this time it leads me in a new direction. A direction driven by fate, evolution, circumstance and reason. I know not what the future holds; nobody does. But I do know that time is short, and just like my parents, I must too be brave. Just like this road, everything has a beginning and an end.

I’ll remember this well.

This road.

This trip.

This is the beginning.