R336

I’d delayed my journey as long as I could. I’d be gone a few days, and there was plenty to do finishing up the contract I was working on. I left in the afternoon, which was all well and good until I found myself driving the R336 through a gloomy twilight, well on my way to being late for the removal.

Patrick rang in the morning, when I was shaving. I couldn’t answer. I was still half-covered in shaving foam, my hands wet. I knew he’d ask me what time I was arriving, wondering silently why I wasn’t coming sooner. He never understood the pressure I was under at work. It was all in the voicemail.

The headache had been nudging at me all day. I loosened my black tie, but could still feel the pulse in my throat. I knew I shouldn’t be late, but no matter how much I edged past the speed limit, the minutes seemed to slide by even faster.

Speeding round the road’s long curves, I saw a battered Fiat on the side of the road. Reflexively I eased off the throttle, slowing to look. When Patrick and I were young we used to make a game of it, trying to identify the models involved in wrecks. I hadn’t thought about that for years, but something about the sorry-looking Fiat brought it back to me. We used to drive Mam mad.

The Fiat was parked crookedly in the lay-by — must have broken down, and no wonder. It was the same model as mine, but badly worn and scraped until you’d hardly know. One side of the bonnet was pulled up in a misshapen snarl, and one whole side of the car was dented, quaking inward. I cast my eye over the road ahead, but couldn’t see the driver.

A mile or so later I found him by the side of the road. I was annoyed, to be honest. He was on foot, on a country road — madness in the December murk — and dressed in navy or some dark stuff. I’d nearly missed him.

I thought he was drunk, but as I got closer I saw he was old, about Mam’s age, and leaning heavily on the stick he carried. What I’d taken for drunken lurching was in fact a heavy limp — he was depending precariously on the stick. I wasn’t in the mood for a passenger, it wasn’t like I had the time, but he staggered as I slowed to pass him and I knew I couldn’t leave him behind.

‘Where are you headed?’ I asked once I had him in the car.

‘Spiddal,’ he said. ‘I’ve had that car for years,’ he gestured back up the road toward the old Fiat, ‘and it always breaks down on me at the worst possible time.’

‘Isn’t that always the way,’ I said. He kept on talking but I wasn’t really listening, I was trying to work out how long it would take to drop him home, if I’d even be in time for the mass.

‘It’s come through some rough times, in fairness. I’ve always had bad luck with cars,’ he said. ‘Even other people’s cars — touch wood, now! I’m bad luck, I think.’

‘Ah no,’ I said absentmindedly.  ‘Listen, where will I drop you?’

‘Turn right at the corner shop in the village,’ he said. ‘I can direct you from there.’

I felt a burst of irritation, but then immediately felt guilty. Mam would have hated that — she always went the extra mile to do someone a good turn. But it was for her sake I was rushing. She didn’t like us to be late either.

‘Don’t mind the smell,’ he said, ‘there’s nothing wrong with your car, it’s only me. I tried messing around with mine, and didn’t I get petrol all over myself.’

I’d been vaguely aware of a smell, but only noticed it consciously after the old man pointed it out to me. I glanced over and could see the dark stains on his hands.

‘Not a bother,’ I said, but I could feel the headache blooming, the heady sickening smell filling the car, pain radiating across the crown of my skull. I wanted to open the window, but didn’t want to let the heat out. It was a cold night, and I could already see he was shivering.

‘I appreciate the lift,’ he said. ‘I wasn’t sure I’d make it on foot, even with the stick. My knee is very bad.’

‘Is it arthritis?’ I asked. Mam used to complain of arthritis, I think.

‘No, it was an accident,’ he said. ‘The first car accident I was in, I broke it very badly, and it took a long time to heal. It hasn’t been right since then.’

‘The first one? Have you been in many more?’

He looked at me very intently then, and there was a strange expression on his face. I don’t know how to describe it, as if he was looking at me and past me, all at once. He said, ‘I’ve been in two serious car accidents, and I know the third one will kill me.’

I didn't know what to say to that, so I said nothing. I started to wonder if he was all there. Or maybe it was just his age — don’t people get very preoccupied with death at a certain point? I tried to remember if Mam had been that way, toward the end, but we never talked about that kind of thing. She had some mad idea about the phone charges, that my being on the mobile would cost her even if it I was the one who made the call. I don’t know where she got it from but eventually I stopped trying to convince her. I think I was glad of the excuse to get off the phone.

I continued driving and realised my passenger was still talking about his injury.

‘A compound fracture. Had to have surgery, but it got infected and I was in and out for months. They weren’t happy at work. I lost the job in the end, and I had to come back here.’

Like Mam. She’d no intention of staying here, until she got married. I remember her eyes when I got accepted for a job in the city. Pride and a bit of sadness, maybe.

‘And then the second time it was my collarbone,’ he said. ‘And next time …’

‘You might not have another accident.’ I felt compelled to say it, he seemed so convinced of his fate. His eyes were still on me, and I wished he’d look away. My head was pounding, and the smell of petrol seemed suddenly more intense.

‘No,’ he said. ‘There’s another one in store for me, I know that much. And I won’t survive it.’

I forced myself to keep my eyes on the road, but it didn’t help. The curves and loops of it kept opening up in front of me, endless repetitions. I tried to think how far we might be from Spiddal, but I couldn’t concentrate with the throbbing in my head and the fumes that blurred my thoughts. I was going around in circles — we’d passed that stretch of stone wall before, surely, we were driving around the same old loop again. We were never going to escape.

I heard myself say, ‘Do you mind if I open a window?’ and the stone wall shattered the headlights and the road finally, mercifully, stopped.

*

I came to in the revolving glow of an ambulance. I struggled to sit up, but a pair of hands held me down. ‘Lie back,’ they said. ‘We need to get you to the hospital.’

That was that, then. Sorry, Patrick.

‘The old man,’ I said. ‘I had a passenger, there was a man in the car —’

‘Don’t worry about that now,’ they said. I turned my head and there he was, his eyes staring blankly. I watched as they zipped the black bag, the two halves closing over his face. I shut my eyes and breathed through a wave of nausea.

The pain was raw, exposed in the cold, and something in my leg became too much to ignore. It seemed safer not to move, so I lay as still as I could. They lifted the stretcher and carried me into the ambulance. I fought the urge to vomit. Agony shot through my leg.

‘His knee,’ a voice said, distantly, then I heard more clearly, ‘Compound fracture.’

I opened my eyes and saw the body bag lying there under the swirling lights. The car was in the ditch, the walking stick somehow poking out through a shattered window. I could see the ruined bonnet from here. One side snarled up like it was telling me something terrible. My head swam, but I thought that seemed important. Something I should remember. I kept staring at the car, and the body-bag, the battered stick, until the ambulance doors closed over me and I couldn’t see them anymore.

Aoife Ní Dhochartaigh is a freelance writer based in Dublin. She has a BA in English Literature and Film Studies. She tweets @ni_durkey