The Terrible Privacy Of Maxwell Sim

Reading–Kendal

12

This message had been displaying on my screen for about fifteen minutes. I was on the M4, eastbound, heading back towards London but about to turn off north on to the A404(M) towards Maidenhead. Traffic was light, and I was currently doing about seventy-six miles an hour on the inside lane. I was beginning to get used to the car, now, but the number of buttons located on either side of the screen was intimidating. I was going to have to pull over somewhere and have a proper look at them. In the meantime, surely it would be safe to touch the ‘I Agree’ icon? I couldn’t just stare at this message for the whole journey. It was like those boxes you have to tick when buying something online, agreeing to the terms and conditions which nobody bothers to read. You have no choice but to agree. Or at least, you’re given the illusion of choice, but that’s all. Maybe that’s how things usually are.

When I pressed the button, anyway, a map appeared. It showed the motorway I was driving on, and it showed me – or at least my car – as a little red arrow heading determinedly forward in an eastbound direction. How many satellites were trained on me at that moment, I wondered, in order to calculate this ever-changing position? I’d read somewhere that it was always about five: five pairs of eyes keeping me under constant surveillance, from their vantage point high up in the sky. Was this a reassuring thought, or a frightening one? As usual, I couldn’t quite decide. There are so many new facts of life that we just don’t know what to think about. All I knew for certain was that it had been different, very different, back in Donald Crowhurst’s day, when he had drifted unobserved for months in the mid-Atlantic, and had believed that he could fool the world, with the help of some bogus calculations pencilled into a logbook, into thinking that he had spent that time battling with storms in the Southern Ocean. Not much chance of pulling off a deception like that nowadays.

The motorway traffic was getting heavy, and it was a relief when I saw the exit for Junction 8/9 (Maidenhead and High Wycombe) signed up ahead. As I turned off and drove up the slip road, I soon found myself braking too sharply. The brakes on this car seemed ultra-sensitive: you only had to give them the lightest of touches. There were two lanes of traffic backed up towards the roundabout, with about ten cars in each. I came to a halt, and took advantage of this temporary stillness to press one of the other buttons alongside the screen.

The button I chose was labelled ‘INFO’. When I pressed it, three green columns appeared on the screen. It took me a few moments to work out what they signified. Apparently, each one represented five minutes’ driving time, and told you what your petrol consumption had been during this period. During my first five minutes I had been averaging 34 miles to the gallon; in the second, 49, and in the third, 51. Not bad, but it wasn’t going to win me any prizes. I had been hoping for an average of 65 or more. Was I doing something wrong?

After negotiating the roundabout and joining the High Wycombe road, I slowed right down to 45 miles an hour, and immediately my fuel efficiency began to rise. I seemed to be averaging between 75 to 80 miles to the gallon now, so I drove at this speed for a mile or so, until the driver stuck in the lane behind me started flashing his lights angrily. I speeded up, feeling obscurely guilty even though I had been engaged (looking at it from one point of view) in an environmentally friendly act. It would be difficult to drive at that speed all the way to Aberdeen, I realized, even though I was bound to win Lindsay’s £500 prize if I did.

Ten miles later, the A404 joined the M40 and I took the first exit at the roundabout, swinging on to the motorway and heading north-west. On either side of me England – or what little you could see of it from the perspective of the motorway – lay stretched out, reposeful and inviting, dressed modestly in muted greens and greys. I could feel my spirits beginning to rise. I was in the mood for adventure after all.

My plan was this: today, I would drive to Birmingham, at a careful, unhurried pace, consuming as little petrol as possible. I would arrive mid-afternoon, check into a hotel, and then pay a visit on Mr and Mrs Byrne, the parents of my old schoolfriend Chris Byrne and his sister Alison. They still lived in Edgbaston, in a house backing on to the reservoir, and I had already spoken to Mr Byrne over the weekend: I’d phoned him to ask if he still possessed (as my father believed he did) a spare set of keys to the flat in Lichfield. To which Mr Byrne had answered, Yes, we’ve definitely got them here somewhere. (Although he didn’t seem to know where, exactly.) So I intended to pick up the keys, and visit the flat itself the next morning. All of this would mean a very slow start to my journey; but it still gave me plenty of time to reach Shetland, and in any case, there was no point in driving all the way to Kendal tonight, because Lucy would not be able to see me. I’d already been in touch with Caroline about that, and she’d told me that Lucy was going round to a friend’s house that night, for a birthday tea and sleepover. So, I would have to take her out to dinner on Tuesday evening. That was fine. I could still get to Aberdeen on Wednesday afternoon in plenty of time to make the five o’clock ferry. In the meantime, visiting Mr and Mrs Byrne might be a pleasantly nostalgic way to spend a couple of hours.

I settled down to a steady 55 miles per hour. Every other vehicle on the motorway was going faster than this, even the heaviest lorries. My petrol consumption was back down to 70 miles per gallon, and I began to think of all the petrol that people would save if they drove at this speed all the time. Why was everybody in such a hurry? What difference did it make if you arrived at your destination half an hour later than you could have done? Perhaps it was motorways themselves that were the problem. Motorways allowed you to drive faster, yes, but more than that, they made you want to drive faster, they obliged you to drive faster, because driving on them was such a boring experience. I had only been on the M40 for about fifteen minutes, but already I was bored. There was absolutely nothing to see, nothing to look at, apart from the little punctuation marks that broke up the motorway itself – roadsigns, chevrons, gantries, bridges, all of which merged into one indecipherable, meaningless sequence after a while anyway. There was countryside on both sides, but it was featureless: the occasional house, the occasional reservoir, the occasional glimpse of a distant town or village, but apart from that, nothing. It occurred to me that the areas bordering our motorways must make up a huge proportion of our countryside, and yet nobody ever visits them or walks through them, or has any experience of them other than the monotonous, regularly unfolding view you get through the car window. These areas are wastelands; unaccounted for.

‘Welcome Break, 3 Miles’, one of the signs said; so I decided to come off the motorway here, and have some lunch. The next services – operated by Moto – were another twenty miles away, and the ones beyond that were more than forty miles. I didn’t want to wait that long. Besides, even though I didn’t fancy Kentucky Fried Chicken at the moment, the face of Colonel Sanders beaming out at me from the welcome sign was somehow reassuring. So I entered the slip road at Junction 8A, negotiated the network of mini-roundabouts, and found myself looking for a parking space in a car park that was, at this time of day, full almost to bursting point. Eventually I slotted my Prius between a Ford Fiesta and a Fiat Punto, and turned off the ignition with a sense of relief.

It was 1.15, and I was hungry. All around me, people were heading for the main food hall – business people like me, mainly, wearing dark suits, collar and tie, sometimes with the jackets slung over their shoulders (although it was cold, today, and I for one was going to keep mine on). I felt a surge of well-being at the thought that I was part of something again: part of a nationwide process, part of a community – the business community – that was doing its bit, day in and day out, to keep Britain ticking over. We all had a part to play. Everybody here was involved in selling something, or buying something, or servicing or checking or costing or quantifying something. I felt connected again: back in the mainstream.

The services themselves were a perfect microcosm of how a well-functioning Western society should operate. All the basic human needs were catered for here: the need to communicate (there was a shop selling mobile phones and accessories) and the need to amuse yourself (there was a gaming area full of slot machines); the need to consume food and drink, and the need to shit or piss it out again; and, of course, the eternal, fundamental need simply to buy a whole load of stuff: magazines, CDs, cuddly toys, chocolate bars, DVDs, wine gums, books, gadgets of every description. What with the Days Inn located just across the car park, with its offer of cheap beds for the night, you could theoretically move into this service station and never need to leave. You could spend your whole life here, if you wanted to. Even the design was good. I’m old enough to remember what service stations used to be like in the 1970s and early 1980s. Horrible cheap plastic tables and unspeakable food outlets selling runny eggs and burgers swimming in grease. Here we had big picture windows looking out over a paved area with fountains tinkling away attractively; the tables were clean and modern-looking and some of them even had individual table lamps mounted on elegantly curved supports. Some thought had gone into all this. And the choice of food! There was Burger King, of course, and KFC, but if you were a bit more health-conscious than that, a big sign announced that ‘I ♥ Healthy Food’, and directed you towards counters where all manner of salads and fresh-looking sandwiches were available. Not to mention an outlet called Coffee Primo, which offered latte, cappuccino, mocha, hot chocolate, espresso, americano, vanilla cream frappe, caramel cream frappe, Twinings teas, a couple of dozen other caffeine-laden options, and of course the ubiquitous paninis.

Despite this plethora of choice, unimaginable (when you think about it) a generation ago, before Thatcher and Blair set about transforming our society, I decided to have a hamburger. Sometimes a burger is exactly what you need. No extras, no frills. What’s more, at this place, you didn’t even have to talk to anyone to get your hamburger. You did it all on your debit card, selecting your order on a machine, putting your card into the terminal and then taking the receipt to a collection point. Worked very well, too. My burger was ready within about thirty seconds. When I saw it, though, I felt a bit guilty for not ordering something a bit more healthy so I went and stood in the queue at the sandwich counter and bought myself a bottle of pomegranate- and lychee-flavoured spring water, which cost £2.75. Then I took my dinner over to one of the tables next to the big picture windows.

I had brought a fair amount of reading matter with me. First of all there were the manuals for the Prius – one for the car itself, and one devoted entirely to the onboard SatNav. There were also the instructions for the bluetooth headset I had been provided with, which connected up to the car somehow and could be controlled from the steering wheel. Trevor and Lindsay had been especially keen that I should get this up and running as soon as possible, because they wanted to be able to keep in regular contact. I wondered, in fact, if it was too early to phone Lindsay right now. Perhaps it was. There was hardly an urgent need for her to know that I had reached Oxford Services after an hour and a quarter’s driving. And then I had to study the manual for my video camera, which looked pretty complicated too. I would keep that for later, probably. Best to concentrate on the SatNav for the time being. I sat and read the manual for about ten minutes, until I felt reasonably sure that I had grasped all of the essentials. I felt confident now that I understood enough to use it on the next stage of the journey, as far as Birmingham.

When I got back into the car, I turned on the ignition and pressed the ‘I Agree’ icon as soon as it flashed up on the map screen. Then I pressed the ‘Destination’ button and rather laboriously entered the address of Mr and Mrs Byrne on the touchscreen display. Within a couple of seconds the computer had located their house and was offering me a choice of three different routes from my current position. I chose what seemed to be the quickest one, straight up the M40 and then northbound into Birmingham along the Bristol Road. And then, as soon as I had made this selection, I heard a female voice say:

– Please proceed to the highlighted route, and the route guidance will start.

It wasn’t so much what she said, it was the way that she said it.

Most people, I would say, are attracted to other people on the basis of their looks. And of course, I’m as susceptible to that as anybody else. But the first thing I find really attractive in a woman, nine times out of ten, is her voice. That was what I noticed about Lindsay Ashworth, the first time we met – her lovely Scottish accent. And, going back further than that, it was the first thing I’d noticed about Caroline, as well – her flat Lancastrian vowels, which were completely unlike anything I was expecting to hear from someone who in every other way appeared to be so elegant and posh and metropolitan. Now, this may sound ridiculous, but even those two women, even Lindsay and Caroline, did not have voices as appealing as the one that came out of this machine. This was, quite simply, a beautiful voice. Breathtakingly beautiful. Probably the most beautiful I had ever heard. Don’t ask me to describe it. You’ll have realized by now that I’m not great at this sort of thing. It was an English voice – not classless, exactly – more what used to be called Received Pronunciation or ‘BBC English’. There was something slightly haughty about it, I suppose. It had an undertone that might even be described as a little bit bossy. But at the same time, it was calm, measured and infinitely reassuring. It was impossible to imagine this voice sounding angry. It was impossible to imagine hearing it without feeling soothed and comforted. It was a voice that told you everything was right in the world – your world, at any rate. It was a voice without a single note of ambiguity or self-doubt: a voice you could trust. Perhaps that was what I liked about it so much. It was a voice you could trust.

I put the car into Drive mode and made my way out of the car park. As I left the service station I passed a notice which said: ‘Thank you for visiting Oxford Services. Your visit and registration number have been captured on CCTV.’ More evidence, if any was needed, that I was not as alone as I’d thought.

‘What do you think of that, then?’ I found myself saying to the voice on the map. ‘Bit sinister, isn’t it?’

And she answered:

– Exit coming up. Then, two hundred yards later, straight on at the roundabout.

For the time being, I forgot all about my desire to phone Lindsay.

I continued to drive slowly, trying to save petrol, so it was another hour and a half before I reached Junction 1 of the M42.

– In half a mile, exit left, towards Birmingham South.

It was the first time she had spoken to me for about ten minutes. I had worked out, by now, that I could summon up her voice whenever I wanted by pressing the ‘Map’ button on my steering wheel. If you did that, she would usually tell you to carry on doing whatever you were doing at that moment. So every few minutes, I would press the button, and she would tell me to ‘Proceed on the current motorway’. I wasn’t listening to the radio. I had tried a bit of Radio 2 and a bit of Radio 4 but I didn’t want to listen to other people chattering away. I wanted to be left alone with my thoughts, and with Emma’s voice whenever I felt like hearing it.

Oh – did I not tell you that she was called Emma? I’d spent most of the last hour trying to decide what I was going to call her. Finally I chose Emma because it had always been one of my favourite names. Partly it was a memory of having to read Jane Austen’s novel for English O-Level at school: I hated the book (which was one of Caroline’s favourites, by the way) and only got a ‘D’ in the exam, but for some reason the heroine’s name had stuck in my mind as a sort of emblem of classiness and sophistication. Also, I used to have a bit of a crush on Emma Thompson, the actress – going back a bit, to the late 1980s, when she looked really boyish and did that film where she had an amazing sex scene with Jeff Goldblum. So, what with one thing and another, Emma seemed an appropriate choice.

– Exit left. Then, heading slightly right at the roundabout, take third exit.

Our relationship was going to be put to its first test, now, because I had decided not to follow her instructions for the next few minutes. She wanted me to head down the A38, all the way to the Lydiate Ash roundabout, and then take a right turn towards Rubery. But I had other plans. I wanted to drive straight over the crest of the Lickey Hills and to rejoin the A38 via the B4120 at the bottom of the hill. It was a more scenic drive, and it would take me through some of the landscape of my early childhood. But how would Emma respond? Would she understand the nostalgic impulse that lay behind it?

Feeling a little nervous at my own audacity, then, I ignored her insistent repetition of ‘Next left’ as I curved around the roundabout, and took the fourth exit rather than the third. I imagined what Caroline might have said if I’d ignored her directions in this way, on one of our family holidays. ‘No, not this one!’ There would have been a sigh of exasperation, and then her voice would tense, slipping into that awful register of angry resignation at my stubbornness and stupidity. ‘Fine. If you think you know better than I do, just carry on. I won’t bother looking at this any more.’ Then she would have thrown the road atlas into the back of the car, narrowly missing Lucy who would be sitting up on her booster seat, listening to the argument with wide-eyed bewilderment, her little brain probably asking itself whether this was how grown-ups always spoke to each other. Yes, that’s just how it would have been. I could remember countless scenarios like that.

But with Emma, it was different. She said nothing at all, at first. The only sign that she had taken any notice of my decision was a message on the screen that said ‘Calculating Route’. Then, after a few seconds, her voice returned. There was no change in her tone at all. Still calm, still measured. Totally unflustered by my little act of rebellion. ‘Proceed for about two miles on the current road,’ she said. And that was it. No disputes, no sarcasm, no questions asked. She accepted my authority, and responded accordingly. God – how easy life would have been, if only Caroline could have behaved more like that! I was already beginning to think that, in Emma, I had found something like the perfect partner. I pressed the ‘Map’ button, just so I could hear her say it again.

– Proceed for about two miles on the current road.

Beautiful. I loved the little pause she put in, after the word ‘miles’. She spoke it as if it was a line of poetry.

I was now driving up the Old Birmingham Road. On my left was the entrance to the primary school where Chris and I had met each other, becoming friends on our very first day, at the age of five. We had been inseparable after that – best friends for the next six years. And then, at the age of ten, we had been the only children from our year to sit the entrance exam for King William’s School in the centre of Birmingham. Chris passed the exam. I didn’t, and ended up going to Waseley Hills Comprehensive with all my other primary-school friends.

‘And that was probably it, wasn’t it?’ I said to Emma. ‘That was the turning point. So many things followed from that.’

– Proceed for one mile on the current road.

Of course, Chris and I continued to see each other. But the real reason for that, I suspected, was that our fathers had by now become such good friends, after meeting at various school-related social occasions. Chris’s Dad was a lecturer at Birmingham university and my father, who liked to think of himself as an intellectual as well as a poet, was not going to let that friendship die, even after Chris started going to a much posher school and his family had moved out of Rubery and into the leafier, more middle-class enclave of Edgbaston. So Chris and I kept our own friendship going, mainly out of genuine liking for each other but also out of our youthful intuition that it was what both of our families wanted and needed from us. And yet I’d always been conscious of the differences between us, from that point on. As I drove past the school drive, and on towards the summit of the hill, a memory came back to me. Chris and I were eleven years old; we had been at our new schools for a few weeks. He had come round to our house and we were talking in the back garden and he was asking me about Waseley and he said, ‘What are the masters like?’ And I didn’t know what he was talking about, at first. It took me a few seconds to work it out. ‘Is that what you call them, then, the teachers?’ I said. ‘You call them masters?’ A sudden image came to my mind and I could see a white-haired authority figure pacing up and down between the old wooden desks, wearing a gown and lecturing his attentive pupils on Latin declensions: a figure straight out of Goodbye, Mr Chips or a Billy Bunter novel. And I felt a ripple of shame – inferiority – pass through me as I realized what different worlds Chris and I now inhabited.

– At the next roundabout, take a left turn. First exit.

I did what Emma told me at this point. But then I decided upon another little detour to test her patience. Just past The Old Hare and Hounds pub, I took a spontaneous left turn into Leach Green Lane. She went quiet for a few seconds while the computer tried to get its head around what I was trying to do, then she said:

– In two hundred yards, right turn.

‘I see where you’re coming from,’ I told her, ‘but we’re going to deviate from the route for the time being. Hope that’s OK. The thing is, we’re going on a sentimental journey. And I don’t believe you have a setting for that.’

– Right turn coming up, she insisted.

I ignored her, and turned left. In a few hundred yards I saw what I had been looking for: a grey, pebbledashed house, disorientatingly similar to all its neighbours, with a meagre expanse of asphalt in front of it where an ancient green Rover 2000 had been parked. I pulled up opposite the house, on the other side of the road.

– In two hundred yards, make a U-turn, Emma suggested.

Without turning the engine off, I got out of the car and walked around to the passenger door side. I stood there for a while, leaning against the passenger door, looking across at the house. This was where I had lived for thirteen years, starting in 1967. Me, Mum and Dad. It hadn’t changed, not in the slightest. I stood looking at it for another two or three minutes, shivering slightly in the March breeze, then got back into the car and drove on.

‘Well, what was I supposed to think?’ I said, easing the car back on to the main A38 towards the city centre. ‘What was I supposed to feel? I haven’t seen that house for more than twenty years. That was where I grew up. That was where my childhood took place and to be honest I come back and look at it now and I don’t feel that much. My childhood was nothing much to shout about. Like everything else about me, I suppose. Unexceptional. That’s what I should have on my gravestone. “Here lies Maxwell Sim. He was a pretty ordinary bloke really.” What an epitaph. No wonder Caroline got bored with me after a while. No wonder Lucy doesn’t want much to do with me. What did we do, the three of us, in that house for thirteen years that wasn’t done by millions of other families in identical houses up and down the country? What’s been the point of it all? That’s all I want to know, really. Not too much to ask, is it? What’s the point? What is the fucking point?’

– In half a mile, said Emma, bearing slightly left at the roundabout. Take first exit.

She had an answer for everything, that woman.