Stone Bruises

She gives me a quick smile. ‘Chloe.’

She’s maybe a year or two younger than me, slender, with pale-blonde cropped hair and deep-blue eyes. Pretty.

‘Are you warm enough now?’ she asks. ‘If I leave the heater on full for too long it overheats.’

I tell her I’m fine. She reaches out to the dash and adjusts the temperature. Her hand is long-fingered and fine-boned. A thin silver band encircles her wrist.

‘I’m surprised you stopped. You don’t often find girls taking a chance on hitch-hikers. Not that I’m complaining,’ I add.

‘You’ve got to take some chances. Besides, you looked harmless enough.’

‘Thanks,’ I laugh.

She smiles. ‘What are you going to London for?’

‘Looking for work.’

‘So it’s a permanent move?’

‘If I can find a job, yeah.’ Although just the word permanent makes me feel uneasy.

‘What sort of work are you looking for?’

‘Whatever’s going. Bar work, labouring. Anything that pays.’

She glances over. ‘You a graduate?’

‘I was, a while back. But I wanted to travel, so I took some time out.’ Some time is deliberately vague: I’m uncomfortably aware of how it’s slipped by. Most of my peers have settled into careers by now, but I’ve drifted from one job to the next without any real direction.

‘Good for you,’ Chloe says. ‘I went backpacking to Thailand for six months. God, absolutely brilliant! Where’d you go?’

‘Uh… just to France.’

‘Oh.’

‘I plan to go back,’ I add, defensively. ‘You know, when I’ve got enough money together.’

That’s not likely to be any time soon. Even though I’ve stopped smoking, the casual jobs I’ve been doing don’t pay much. She nods, but isn’t really listening. I grip my seat as she suddenly switches lanes to overtake a van, pulling out in front of a speeding Jaguar that’s forced to brake. It flashes its lights indignantly, jammed right up to our rear bumper. The VW’s engine becomes shrill, gathering just enough speed to draw alongside the van without being able to pass.

‘Come on, dickhead,’ Chloe mutters, glaring past me at the van driver. I watch anxiously as she keeps her foot down until we’re just ahead before darting back into lane. The van blares its horn and drops back, putting space between itself and the mad young woman in the VW. I let go of the seat, my hands aching from the pressure.

‘So what did you study?’ Chloe continues, unperturbed.

‘Film.’

‘Making or theory?’

‘Theory.’ I realize I’m sounding defensive.

She grinned. ‘Ah, now I get it. That’s why you went to France. Don’t tell me – Truffaut’s your hero. No, Godard.’

‘No,’ I say, stung. ‘Well…’

‘I knew it!’

I can’t keep from grinning as well, happy to find someone to argue with. ‘You don’t like French cinema?’

‘I don’t dislike it, I just think the whole New Wave thing was overrated. It’s just dull. Give me the Americans any day. Scorsese. Taxi Driver.’ She turns one hand palm up in a there-you-are gesture. ‘And he didn’t have to use black and white to make his point.’

‘What about Raging Bull?’

‘That was a deliberate reference to the boxing footage of the forties and fifties. And it made the blood in the fight scenes more effective. What has Truffaut done to compare with that?’

‘Oh, come on…!’

The argument runs on, both of us warming to it, until she has to stop at a services for petrol. I’m surprised to see from a road sign that London is only twenty miles away; the journey has passed too quickly. Chloe waves away my offer of a contribution towards the fuel, but as we set off again she seems distracted.

‘So what about you?’ I ask after a while. I motion towards the portfolio on the back seat. ‘Are you an artist?’

‘That’s what I tell myself.’ She smiles, but there’s something sad about it. ‘For a day job I work as a waitress and try to sell the odd illustration to advertising agencies. I’m on my way back from a pitch now. A big-eyed little kitten for a cat-food manufacturer.’

I’m not sure what to say. ‘Congratulations.’

‘They didn’t go for it.’ A shrug. ‘It was rubbish anyway.’

The conversation dies after that. Suburbs have sprung up around us, and it isn’t long before we reach the outskirts of London. She taps her fingers on the wheel in frustration with the slow-moving traffic. When we get to Earl’s Court she pulls up by the tube station, leaving the engine running. I look for an excuse to delay the moment, but she’s waiting for me to go.

‘Well… thanks for the lift.’

‘No problem.’

I’d made up my mind to ask for her phone number, but she seems miles away already. I climb out and start to pull my rucksack from the back seat.

‘I know some people at a private language school,’ she says abruptly. ‘The place is short of an English teacher. I could put a word in for you, if you like.’

The offer takes me by surprise. ‘I don’t have any teaching qualifications.’

She shrugs this away. ‘You can do a TEFL course easily enough. Do you speak French?’

‘Yes, but…’

‘Well, there you go. They get a lot of French students.’