'Forgot to take her travel-sickness tablets again, I bet,' Peter commented from behind and with a 'Ugh, what a stink!'
climbed out, plugged his earphones back in and waddle-walked over to the verge, the seat of his trousers midway
down his legs.
Maybe the time had come to teach them all a lesson.
Max sat looking at his family through the rear view mirror, Rita leaning protectively over Anna’s heaving frame; Peter
standing some way off, absorbed in his own world. Three separate worlds by the side of the autobahn, their energy
drawn from the sparks which flew between them as they circled each other. Max’s fingers tightened on the key which
was still in the ignition and he hesitated. He bowed his head and closed his eyes as if gathering the strength he
needed for the decisive act. He glanced back up at the mirror for one last look. They were not to be seen. He froze
momentarily before a movement behind him told him he had waited too long. Rita was helping Anna back into the
car. Peter had his shoulders hunched. ‘It still stinks’ was his only, grunted, offering.
Max turned on the engine. He felt defeated. Angry with himself for his lack of decisive action, and he felt empty,
quite hollow, as if doing nothing was all he could ever have done. Out of the corner of his eye, he glimpsed a flash of
brightest crimson: wild poppies growing on the embankment, a whole cluster of them. He turned off the ignition again,
and Rita looked at him, her eyes dark and challenging. Max got out of the car, leaving the driver’s door open and
walked over to the flowers, their flimsy petals fluttering and waving in the continuous air stream. Beckoning. He
approached cautiously, as though they might explode and spit their black seeds at him. He glanced back at the car.
Rita was staring in his direction, her expression hidden by the reflection on the windscreen. Anna seemed to be
looking in his direction. Peter, no doubt, was somewhere else. Max bent down, squatting as if working in the garden,
puffing slightly and beginning to sweat, and yanked a single, delicate poppy from amongst its companions. He
watched it twisting gently in the wind that swooped up and down the embankment, and then stood and retraced his
steps, pulling the car door shut behind him with a satisfying, solid clunk.
‘What are you doing? Have you finally gone senile on me?’ spat Rita, looking at the poppy which Max still held
delicately between his index finger and thumb. ‘What are you going to do with that?’
Max shook his head. He put the flower on the top of the dashboard, noticing already that the bright bloom of colour
was fading and the first signs of limpness were creeping in. Rita picked it up and, removing the top of the Henniez
bottle, put the stalk into it. ‘It won’t survive, you know. Why did you pick it?’
They drove on with silence between them, Peter locked in his own wall of sound, Rita and Anna communicating in
hidden gestures and smiles and Max trying to drown out the angry sounds of his failure to make a statement, to do
something different, indulge in an act of defiance. They had turned off the autobahn, the mountains looming large,
and Max was negotiating the twisting roads when a sudden sadness crept over him. He dug inside himself to find the
cause of this hidden well of grief. As they rounded the last hairpin bend and the chalet came into view he realised
that when they had left that morning, he hadn’t found the time to go over to the chapel of rest and visit the old lady in
Cool Room 3. He’d never said goodbye and by the time they got back it would be too late. She would have been
moved to a more permanent resting place.
Back to 'Cool Room 3'