The Road To Success

MODERN LIFE SHORT STORY BY MOIRA SMYTH

All this talk of driving lessons had Maggie remembering her own

“Any chance of a lift to the bus stop, Mum? I’ve got a lecture this afternoon.”

Maggie’s youngest son looked at her hopefully.

“As long as we leave in the next five minutes. Have you got everything?”

She knew what Jon was like. He was a bright boy, but he had trouble with the everyday essentials.

“Bus pass, keys, mobile phone . . .?”

A look of panic crossed Jon’s face and he sprinted to his bedroom.

Maggie picked up the small cake box on the kitchen counter and headed for the car.

“I forgot my phone,” Jon told her as he clipped his seatbelt and threw his backpack at his feet.

“As long as you’ve got it now.” Maggie smiled at him and reversed out of the drive.

“When do you think Dad is going to be free to take me out driving?” Jon began.

“I’m never going to pass my test if I don’t get some practice,” he complained. “If I don’t sit my test soon, I’ll lose the money I paid for my theory test.”

Maggie drew in a breath.

This argument had been going on for months and she didn’t want to get in the middle of it.

After all, she couldn’t help.

She’d tried to take her eldest son, Alex, out when he was learning to drive, but that hadn’t gone well.

She had started out with the best of intentions, but when he took a corner while driving at 40 miles an hour, her nerves couldn’t take it.

“Pull in right now!”

She had been gripping the passenger door handle as if her life depended on it, and her heart had been pounding.

“I told you to slow down to take that corner!” she’d cried. “Go down to second gear, I said, not take the corner on two wheels!”

Alex had put on an innocent expression.

“I wasn’t going that fast,” he’d protested. “Honestly, Mum, I lose all confidence driving with you. You make me nervous!”

“Make you nervous? I’m having a panic attack here.”

Maggie had then unfastened her seat belt.

“Swap places with me. I’ll drive us home.”

Alex hadn’t been happy.

“But how am I going to learn? Mum, this isn’t fair!”

Maggie had shaken her head.

“No. I can’t do this. We’ll speak to your dad tonight to see if he can take you. My nerves just aren’t up to it.”

Luckily, her husband, Stuart, had been made of sterner stuff and taken Alex out until he had finally passed his test.

After her experience with Alex, Maggie had shut Jon down when he’d started making suggestions about her taking him out.

Stuart had survived taking Alex out, so he could take Jon out, too.

Waving goodbye to Jon at the bus stop, Maggie headed for her sister’s house.

Ten minutes later, she suddenly became aware of a loud siren behind her.

Sure enough, there was a fire engine bearing down on her and everyone was pulling into the side of the road to let it pass.

Quickly getting out of the way as the large red truck thundered by, Maggie smiled as she had a memory of her dad.

When she had been young and any emergency vehicle had its sirens and lights on, her dad had always said the same thing.

“The driver just realised he’s left his sandwiches at home. It’s an emergency!”

Maggie had believed that tale for years until she was old enough to understand that her dad was simply trying not to frighten her.

She’d even told her own children the same thing, until Alex and Jon were old enough to tell her to stop.

Her sister, Beth, put the kettle on.

Maggie checked on Beth’s small grandson, sleeping peacefully in his pram in the utility room.

“You timed that well. He’s out for the count,” her sister said.

“Look at him; he’s an angel.” Maggie gazed down at the sleeping baby, his tiny face creased in a smile.

“His mum’s not calling him that!” Beth exclaimed. “She says he was up three times last night, so he’s probably making up for it now.

“Thank goodness I only have him during the day!

“Let’s take our coffees into the conservatory. The sunshine this morning has made it lovely and warm, and I can keep an eye on Aaron from there.”

“I brought you a cupcake. I’ll grab two plates.” Maggie followed her sister. “A fire engine passed me on the way here, with its sirens blaring and blue lights flashing.

“It made me remember what Dad always said.”

“That the driver just realised he’s left his sandwiches at home. It’s an emergency!” Beth finished.

They both smiled.

“Jon was on at me again this morning about his dad not taking him out for driving lessons,” Maggie told her. “I’ll have to have a word with Stuart tonight.

“He did it for Alex, he can do it for Jon.”

“Do you remember Dad taking us out for driving lessons?” Beth asked her, pausing to savour the vanilla icing on her cupcake. “He was the worst driving instructor ever.”

Maggie nodded.

“To be fair to him, he did save us a fortune.”

“Yes, but how many times did your driving lesson with him involve driving him to an off licence for beer and then the newsagent for pipe tobacco?

“It was torture trying to park outside the off licence.”

Beth was right. Maggie had had more lessons than she could count driving round various newsagents looking for his favourite pipe tobacco.

“I still tell my boys that I passed my test after thirteen official driving lessons.” Maggie smiled. “I just don’t tell them about the thousand unofficial ones I had with Dad.”

“It’s just as well we both passed first time.” Beth nodded. “We were paying for those official lessons out of our Saturday job wages.”

Beth went to check on Aaron and came back a moment later.

“He’s snoring away. I still think it’s a miracle we passed our driving tests.

“I used to go out with Dad and ignore everything he said,” Beth went on. “I always remember being out with the instructor and a set of lights weren’t working at a junction.

“He told me to slow down, take my time and judge when my chance to go was.

“At the same junction that night, Dad told me to put my foot down, let nobody in and get through as quickly as possible.”

Maggie laughed.

“If I ever ventured over twenty miles an hour, he would shout, ‘Get your foot off the gas, Emerson!’

“I said that to Alex once and he asked me who Emerson was. He’d never heard of Emerson Fittipaldi.”

“Lewis Hamilton would be today’s equivalent,” Beth replied. “Do you know what I saw the other day? A Lada.

“I couldn’t believe there was still one on the road.” She shook her head. “Dad had the worst taste in cars.

“I developed strong muscles in my arms and legs from driving that car.

“Turning a corner meant wrenching the huge wheel around.

“I’ve still got muscle memory from doing that.”

Maggie nodded.

“My thigh muscles still remember driving with my feet in the air because the foot pedals were for Russian farmers with size twelve boots.

“My feet were nowhere near those pedals unless I kept them in the air.

“I swear he only bought that car to put me off driving.”

Beth took a sip of her coffee.

“What about the radio? He turned it off so I would concentrate on the road. He was worried I would get carried away listening to the top ten!”

Maggie snorted.

“Little did he know we didn’t want tunes blaring – someone we knew might have spotted us in that ugly tank of a car.”

“It must have been the shock of his life when we both passed,” Beth replied. “Mum was overjoyed, though. You know how much he hated shopping.

“She couldn’t wait to get to the shops without him.”

They both smiled.

“She still loves a trip to the shops. She used to complain when you insisted on parking beside the lorries at the back of the car park because you wanted plenty of room to manoeuvre, though,” Beth teased her older sister.

“You try parking a Lada! They don’t know they’re born with power steering these days.”

Beth gathered up their mugs and took them to the kitchen, checking on Aaron as she passed.

“My first date with Ronnie nearly never happened because of that Lada,” Beth recalled. “It was the most stressful first date ever.

“I was an hour late!”

Maggie smiled.

“It just shows how keen he was that he waited so long

for you.

“Didn’t I give you

that lovely vase over there for your

forty-third anniversary last month?”

“You did, thank you.” Beth smiled. “You had kindly offered to pick me up after my Saturday job because I had a date.

“Unfortunately, the Lada decided to break down in the multi-story car park.”

“I tried everything I knew,” Maggie confessed, “but I couldn’t get the car to start.

“We had to push it into a parking space in the end and get the bus home.”

Beth nodded.

“I barely had time to brush my hair before I had to get the bus to Glasgow to meet Ronnie. It’s a wonder we ever went out again!

“Dad’s face was a picture when the two of us walked in the back gate without the car.

“He nearly had a heart attack, thinking he was going to have pay excess multi-story parking fees on it,” she added, laughing. “He was in the garage, grabbed his tool kit and was on the bus in ten minutes.

“I’d never seen him move so fast.”

Maggie looked to her left as a movement caught her eye.

“I think that’s Aaron waking up, Beth. He’s waving his arms around.”

Coming back with a smiling baby a few moments later, Beth sat Aaron on her knee and spoke seriously to him.

“We were just talking about your great-grandad and the driving lessons he gave your great-aunt Maggie and me.

“You won’t get to meet him, Aaron, but you’ll feel like you know him because we’re going to tell you all about him.”

Maggie nodded, feeling familiar tears gathering at the back of her throat.

“Even after all this time, it’s hard to admit that he’s gone.”

Beth reached for her sister’s hand and squeezed it firmly.

“It is, but he’s certainly not forgotten. Haven’t we been talking about him since you arrived?”

Maggie’s phone pinged.

“It’s Jon. He wants me to remind Stuart about his driving lessons,” she explained. “I’d better do it now or I’ll get no peace about it.”

“When you’ve done that, can you take Aaron for a moment for me?” Beth asked. “It’s got quite warm in here. I’m going to open a window.”

Maggie cuddled Aaron as Beth opened a window in the conservatory.

As she did so, they both heard a loud siren from outside passing by.

Beth took her grandson back from her sister and spoke to him softly.

“Can you hear that, Aaron?” she whispered. “That’s a fire engine, a police car or an ambulance passing by.

“Don’t worry, though . . .”

“The driver just realised he’s left his sandwiches at home.

“It’s an emergency!” the sisters chorused, grinning broadly at each other.

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