This is a short story of mine which was published in a Scottish magazine called Cutting Teeth.
It was early morning. Scraping the ice from the car windscreen took longer than he had thought it would. The ice was stubborn, the scraper clumsy. The cold stung his fingers.
'Haven't you left yet, John?' The shout fell from the upstairs window and seemed to come from his wife's dishevelled early morning hair bushing down, almost obscuring her face.
'Can't go if I can't see through the window.'
'You always ignore that alarm.'
'It gets the time wrong
'You'd never manage to get to work at all if my foot didn't wake you up.'
He took out his aggression on the ice.
'Ready.'
He swung open the car door and heaved his relief onto the seat.
'You'll lose that job yet.'
'If only...' he thought but chose not to say it.
He staggered the car down the street. The engine was slow in warming up and his foot was unsteady on the clutch. The ice on the road worried him. He could feel the wheels slipping. He would have to forget any effort to be on time, and concentrate on getting there. His headmistress's voice beat into his mind. 'What am I supposed to do with your class while I'm waiting for you?' She'd been very annoyed the last time he'd been late. The car swung away from him. He heaved back. Work. The demanding god. It would be a slow, anxious journey all ten country miles of it, but he'd better get on with it. He pulled out of the side street and into the main road through the town.
It happened as he was turning the corner past the newsagent's. Strangely, it wasn't his fault. A girl about six years old ran across the road in front of him without giving any warning. He braked but couldn't stop in time. Her face looked up, long brown hair waving across it. Her eyes looked startled as she turned, looking for an explanation. The car hit her and she disappeared. When they picked her up, she was dead. He looked into that face quite often after that.
A woman, obviously the girl's mother, rushed up, shouting at him. She said he was crazy. What was he doing driving so fast? Her face was a wreckage, emotions semtexing it out of its normal shape. She threw herself at him, fists ready to pummel, but fortunately another woman held her back.
'He's...'
'It won't do any good.'
He heard voices struggling with words, trying to sound persuasive.
'It was an accident.'
He staggered back from her, drained. He'd killed someone. They should have let the mother explode fists into him. He deserved anything. He didn't know what to say or do but the police and an ambulance were sent for. Someone else came up to him, the newsagent, an old man with leathery skin and thin hair. He said he'd seen it all. 'That woman's hysterical. It wasn't your fault. The girl was rushing over to a friend she'd just seen. Children that age are like that. A thought comes into their heads and everything else goes out of them. She didn't look. And you weren't going fast.' There were other voices babbling around him but he didn't take them in. His feelings knifed at him.
The ambulance arrived, took the girl away and the squalling mother. A policeman talked to him, a young man with a clean face, simple in its own conviction. Guilt hadn't clawed at him. He spoke simply and politely, covering facts efficiently. John had been driving the car that hit the girl? What had happened?
'She just... I didn't see her... then she was there... she just came out... she wasn't there before... I didn't even have time to brake.'
He had to go to the station. Worn lino and grey walls. A room to wait in with a clock and a hard wooden seat while the policeman went away and talked to someone. He came back with a pen and some questions. He asked for details, the speed of the car, and the condition of the road. He wanted to know when John had first seen the girl.
'You're sure she's dead?' John asked.
'There's no doubt.'
'it was so quick. She can't be. Just like that.'
'I'm sorry. Do you know the mother?'
'No.'
'She does live in the same town. You know each other now. You'll have to be careful.'
'Yes.'
'You're sure you had no warning of the girl coming out onto the road?'
'Yes.'
'Were you looking?'
'Yes.'
'About twenty you say you were doing when you came round the corner. You weren't late for work or anything?'
'The roads were icy. I wasn't going fast.'
The man asked his suspicious questions, then went away and came back with a cup of coffee. John could see a computer typing out his statement through the open door. Someone was using two fingers. A steady wearing away at the blankness on the screen, replacing it with death.
They gave him the statement to sign. He didn't go to work but went back home. His wife wasn't there. He poured himself a whisky and stared into space.
Theirs was a comfortable home. Their was supposed to be a comfortable life. he was a teacher, someone in a reasonably well paid job. His wife was a charge nurse. They had no children yet which they were becoming anxious about but he supposed babies would arrive in time.
He looked round the room, took in the pretty watercolour, the Royal Doulton, the tasteful fitted carpet, the seat where his wife sat, the seat where he sat. He sat in it. He drank from his whisky glass. He looked out of the window. He drank some more. Snow was whirling round outside now. Perhaps school would be closed today anyway. He would need time to come to terms with this. The problem with work was that it left you no time for yourself. How could he work tomorrow or the day after with a girl's face staring at him in his mind asking why he was killing her? Jean was at work looking after patients when he needed her. That annoyed him too. He drank again. He got up and walked over to the window. He looked out.
When Jean came back he had difficulty in convincing her that he hadn't been to blame but in the end she understood what had happened and tried to comfort him.
To his surprise he went back to work next day. The roads were still icy but he rose early and drove carefully - in his wife's car. His was still at the garage.
'I'm sorry to hear about your accident.' His headmistress was struck by the fact he'd killed someone. 'Are you sure you should be in work today? How do you feel?' He didn't really know. He was too shocked to be sure of what was going on inside him. But he'd thought it best to carry on as normal anyway. it gave him something else to think about.
'Well, you're here. We'd better do some work.'
Though she'd said the right things, she didn't behave as if she cared about his feelings. She wanted to talk about the fact his class had done badly in its last test. What was his explanation? He said they were making good progress - for them. it was a low ability class. But his headmistress wouldn't accept this.
When he was teaching class later, he felt strange. The children were practising their nine times table. You'd have thought he could lose himself in the pleasing objectivity of number bonds. When he asked them questions they raised their hands happily and volunteered their answers. But the simplicity of the situation was beyond him. They were a class of ten-year-olds but when he asked a question the six-year-old girl would look back at him from where the pupil was sitting. Her hair would whirl round following her head as she looked at him. Her eyes were piercing, dumbstruck. There was even a moment when he lost track of what was going on in class. He started asking questions about another times table. They looked at him in a strange way. He got through the day with difficulty.
He had to pass the newsagent's when he was driving back. He stopped the car and looked at where it happened. The sounds were still there, the shouting, the crying. Strange. His life had gone in a straight line before. You worked hard, got your qualifications, and got yourself a good job paying good money. That morning had been fate. He had killed someone not because he had planned to and not because he had made a mistake in his driving but just because that was supposed to happen that day. He had thought that if you organized your life properly things would work out largely as you had planned. He didn't even know what action the police would take. Perhaps they would find he was not to blame. Perhaps he would be charged with something. His feelings churned.
He and Jean went out that night for a meal. It was a pizza place with colourful prints on brick walls. A waitress in a miniskirt strutted up and down, and John didn't even glance at her. This was supposed to be a chance to talk. John sat in morose silence. Jean talked of work, of the patients on the eye-ward where she worked, the miracle when Annie Robson's cataract had been removed and she could see again, the misery when Alec's operation failed. A patient called Will Muirhead complained about everything. Jean talked of new curtains, the new car she wanted, her mother's aches and pains. She talked non-stop but she couldn't get John to join in. John tried to listen patiently but didn't take in everything that she said. She chattered desperately. She had a calm face used to being patient with people when they were ill and at their most difficult. Lines of kindness stretched back from her lips. Her eyes looked clearly ahead.
Eventually he spoke.
'I can't believe it happened,' he said.
'Believe it.'
'There was nothing I could do.'
'You've told me. I believe you.'
The pizzas came. He'd ordered a Marguerita, she a tuna topping. He could still eat and it surprised him. He still enjoyed the taste of tomatoes and melted cheese. He felt guilty about that.
He started to talk about his class and the difficulties he was having There was a boy whom he couldn't get to behave at all. They drank some wine. All the time the girl was turning in his mind, trying to ask something, showing her surprised eyes.
They ordered coffee. It came. He sipped at it as if it were the end of an ordinary meal on a normal day and he could think of the things in front of him.
'How bad are things with the head?' Jane wanted to know.
'Bad enough but not serious. It'll be all right. It's just this class. All that will happen is that I'll get a different class next year and it'll have to be better than this one. They'll make good progress and the head will like me again. She did last year.'
'You're sure?'
'Yes,' he said, making sure he sounded confident.
'I'm glad.'
'Good.'
'I've got some news.'
'News?'
'I'm pregnant.'
Another piece of chance he thought. They'd been trying for years. They'd never known why she hadn't become pregnant. The doctors didn't. And now what they'd both wanted - for no new reason - had suddenly happened.
'Are you sure?'
'Yes. The doctor says the tests are positive.'
Her face was radiant - like dawn after a very long night. He put out his hand to hold hers.
'You didn't give me any idea.'
'I wanted to be sure.'
'I'm so pleased.'
'Good.'
'But I don't think I'm going to take it in just now.'
And he didn't.
Their lives were about to change completely. Another life to plan for. Another person to share problems and joys with. And, though Jean and he hadn't talked about it, it made their marriage complete. Something arid had been growing, a bitterness and a frustration. They were short with each other. Now there was this gift of life. Life not just for the child but for them. The gift of life. The gift of death. it made no difference to chance which it was.
He thought of the girl he had killed and what it must mean to her family. He thought of their pain, of their inability to change anything.
And tomorrow he would be back in his class, teaching, working out one problem after another - as usual - putting one foot in front of another to find where it led, while a girl with long hair looked at him with her surprised eyes, asking for an explanation he couldn't give.
It was early morning. Scraping the ice from the car windscreen took longer than he had thought it would. The ice was stubborn, the scraper clumsy. The cold stung his fingers.
'Haven't you left yet, John?' The shout fell from the upstairs window and seemed to come from his wife's dishevelled early morning hair bushing down, almost obscuring her face.
'Can't go if I can't see through the window.'
'You always ignore that alarm.'
'It gets the time wrong
'You'd never manage to get to work at all if my foot didn't wake you up.'
He took out his aggression on the ice.
'Ready.'
He swung open the car door and heaved his relief onto the seat.
'You'll lose that job yet.'
'If only...' he thought but chose not to say it.
He staggered the car down the street. The engine was slow in warming up and his foot was unsteady on the clutch. The ice on the road worried him. He could feel the wheels slipping. He would have to forget any effort to be on time, and concentrate on getting there. His headmistress's voice beat into his mind. 'What am I supposed to do with your class while I'm waiting for you?' She'd been very annoyed the last time he'd been late. The car swung away from him. He heaved back. Work. The demanding god. It would be a slow, anxious journey all ten country miles of it, but he'd better get on with it. He pulled out of the side street and into the main road through the town.
It happened as he was turning the corner past the newsagent's. Strangely, it wasn't his fault. A girl about six years old ran across the road in front of him without giving any warning. He braked but couldn't stop in time. Her face looked up, long brown hair waving across it. Her eyes looked startled as she turned, looking for an explanation. The car hit her and she disappeared. When they picked her up, she was dead. He looked into that face quite often after that.
A woman, obviously the girl's mother, rushed up, shouting at him. She said he was crazy. What was he doing driving so fast? Her face was a wreckage, emotions semtexing it out of its normal shape. She threw herself at him, fists ready to pummel, but fortunately another woman held her back.
'He's...'
'It won't do any good.'
He heard voices struggling with words, trying to sound persuasive.
'It was an accident.'
He staggered back from her, drained. He'd killed someone. They should have let the mother explode fists into him. He deserved anything. He didn't know what to say or do but the police and an ambulance were sent for. Someone else came up to him, the newsagent, an old man with leathery skin and thin hair. He said he'd seen it all. 'That woman's hysterical. It wasn't your fault. The girl was rushing over to a friend she'd just seen. Children that age are like that. A thought comes into their heads and everything else goes out of them. She didn't look. And you weren't going fast.' There were other voices babbling around him but he didn't take them in. His feelings knifed at him.
The ambulance arrived, took the girl away and the squalling mother. A policeman talked to him, a young man with a clean face, simple in its own conviction. Guilt hadn't clawed at him. He spoke simply and politely, covering facts efficiently. John had been driving the car that hit the girl? What had happened?
'She just... I didn't see her... then she was there... she just came out... she wasn't there before... I didn't even have time to brake.'
He had to go to the station. Worn lino and grey walls. A room to wait in with a clock and a hard wooden seat while the policeman went away and talked to someone. He came back with a pen and some questions. He asked for details, the speed of the car, and the condition of the road. He wanted to know when John had first seen the girl.
'You're sure she's dead?' John asked.
'There's no doubt.'
'it was so quick. She can't be. Just like that.'
'I'm sorry. Do you know the mother?'
'No.'
'She does live in the same town. You know each other now. You'll have to be careful.'
'Yes.'
'You're sure you had no warning of the girl coming out onto the road?'
'Yes.'
'Were you looking?'
'Yes.'
'About twenty you say you were doing when you came round the corner. You weren't late for work or anything?'
'The roads were icy. I wasn't going fast.'
The man asked his suspicious questions, then went away and came back with a cup of coffee. John could see a computer typing out his statement through the open door. Someone was using two fingers. A steady wearing away at the blankness on the screen, replacing it with death.
They gave him the statement to sign. He didn't go to work but went back home. His wife wasn't there. He poured himself a whisky and stared into space.
Theirs was a comfortable home. Their was supposed to be a comfortable life. he was a teacher, someone in a reasonably well paid job. His wife was a charge nurse. They had no children yet which they were becoming anxious about but he supposed babies would arrive in time.
He looked round the room, took in the pretty watercolour, the Royal Doulton, the tasteful fitted carpet, the seat where his wife sat, the seat where he sat. He sat in it. He drank from his whisky glass. He looked out of the window. He drank some more. Snow was whirling round outside now. Perhaps school would be closed today anyway. He would need time to come to terms with this. The problem with work was that it left you no time for yourself. How could he work tomorrow or the day after with a girl's face staring at him in his mind asking why he was killing her? Jean was at work looking after patients when he needed her. That annoyed him too. He drank again. He got up and walked over to the window. He looked out.
When Jean came back he had difficulty in convincing her that he hadn't been to blame but in the end she understood what had happened and tried to comfort him.
To his surprise he went back to work next day. The roads were still icy but he rose early and drove carefully - in his wife's car. His was still at the garage.
'I'm sorry to hear about your accident.' His headmistress was struck by the fact he'd killed someone. 'Are you sure you should be in work today? How do you feel?' He didn't really know. He was too shocked to be sure of what was going on inside him. But he'd thought it best to carry on as normal anyway. it gave him something else to think about.
'Well, you're here. We'd better do some work.'
Though she'd said the right things, she didn't behave as if she cared about his feelings. She wanted to talk about the fact his class had done badly in its last test. What was his explanation? He said they were making good progress - for them. it was a low ability class. But his headmistress wouldn't accept this.
When he was teaching class later, he felt strange. The children were practising their nine times table. You'd have thought he could lose himself in the pleasing objectivity of number bonds. When he asked them questions they raised their hands happily and volunteered their answers. But the simplicity of the situation was beyond him. They were a class of ten-year-olds but when he asked a question the six-year-old girl would look back at him from where the pupil was sitting. Her hair would whirl round following her head as she looked at him. Her eyes were piercing, dumbstruck. There was even a moment when he lost track of what was going on in class. He started asking questions about another times table. They looked at him in a strange way. He got through the day with difficulty.
He had to pass the newsagent's when he was driving back. He stopped the car and looked at where it happened. The sounds were still there, the shouting, the crying. Strange. His life had gone in a straight line before. You worked hard, got your qualifications, and got yourself a good job paying good money. That morning had been fate. He had killed someone not because he had planned to and not because he had made a mistake in his driving but just because that was supposed to happen that day. He had thought that if you organized your life properly things would work out largely as you had planned. He didn't even know what action the police would take. Perhaps they would find he was not to blame. Perhaps he would be charged with something. His feelings churned.
He and Jean went out that night for a meal. It was a pizza place with colourful prints on brick walls. A waitress in a miniskirt strutted up and down, and John didn't even glance at her. This was supposed to be a chance to talk. John sat in morose silence. Jean talked of work, of the patients on the eye-ward where she worked, the miracle when Annie Robson's cataract had been removed and she could see again, the misery when Alec's operation failed. A patient called Will Muirhead complained about everything. Jean talked of new curtains, the new car she wanted, her mother's aches and pains. She talked non-stop but she couldn't get John to join in. John tried to listen patiently but didn't take in everything that she said. She chattered desperately. She had a calm face used to being patient with people when they were ill and at their most difficult. Lines of kindness stretched back from her lips. Her eyes looked clearly ahead.
Eventually he spoke.
'I can't believe it happened,' he said.
'Believe it.'
'There was nothing I could do.'
'You've told me. I believe you.'
The pizzas came. He'd ordered a Marguerita, she a tuna topping. He could still eat and it surprised him. He still enjoyed the taste of tomatoes and melted cheese. He felt guilty about that.
He started to talk about his class and the difficulties he was having There was a boy whom he couldn't get to behave at all. They drank some wine. All the time the girl was turning in his mind, trying to ask something, showing her surprised eyes.
They ordered coffee. It came. He sipped at it as if it were the end of an ordinary meal on a normal day and he could think of the things in front of him.
'How bad are things with the head?' Jane wanted to know.
'Bad enough but not serious. It'll be all right. It's just this class. All that will happen is that I'll get a different class next year and it'll have to be better than this one. They'll make good progress and the head will like me again. She did last year.'
'You're sure?'
'Yes,' he said, making sure he sounded confident.
'I'm glad.'
'Good.'
'I've got some news.'
'News?'
'I'm pregnant.'
Another piece of chance he thought. They'd been trying for years. They'd never known why she hadn't become pregnant. The doctors didn't. And now what they'd both wanted - for no new reason - had suddenly happened.
'Are you sure?'
'Yes. The doctor says the tests are positive.'
Her face was radiant - like dawn after a very long night. He put out his hand to hold hers.
'You didn't give me any idea.'
'I wanted to be sure.'
'I'm so pleased.'
'Good.'
'But I don't think I'm going to take it in just now.'
And he didn't.
Their lives were about to change completely. Another life to plan for. Another person to share problems and joys with. And, though Jean and he hadn't talked about it, it made their marriage complete. Something arid had been growing, a bitterness and a frustration. They were short with each other. Now there was this gift of life. Life not just for the child but for them. The gift of life. The gift of death. it made no difference to chance which it was.
He thought of the girl he had killed and what it must mean to her family. He thought of their pain, of their inability to change anything.
And tomorrow he would be back in his class, teaching, working out one problem after another - as usual - putting one foot in front of another to find where it led, while a girl with long hair looked at him with her surprised eyes, asking for an explanation he couldn't give.