Fortunately, the journey to Islip via the Long Island Expressway was quick once Arthur got out of Brooklyn and Queens. Quite soon the nose to tail traffic reduced to the occasional motor car which allowed Arthur to put his foot on the gas. He’d get the women to their appointment in time. He was a pro, after all. He slipped the radio on, the bluegrass and skiffle music blocking out the majority of his passengers inane nattering.
For a short while he entered a bubble of his own, a little universe of music and the road and the countryside. Small brown birds fluttered in and out of the hedgerows as he drove, each too small and distant to identify. He did spot a few blackbirds though, along with a handful of starlings that crossed in front of him. Each sighting brought a small jolt of satisfaction, each a nudge towards him quitting city work in favour of a job in the country where the scenery was joyous all the time.
Soon he peeled off the freeway and negotiated a village where a river wound its way south and, at the instruction of Tina, drove his cab onto a single-track road that ran straight through open farmland. ‘Damn…’ he muttered as the music dissolved into a hiss of static. He flicked stations. Nothing. Again. Nothing. With mild frustration he flicked the device off; he’d have to spend the rest of the journey listening to the women.
So, he drove and the road he travelled ran for miles, the surroundings featureless. Arthur began to sense unease in his passengers. Finally, Tina cried ‘Stop!’ and he pulled over.
‘What’s up?’ he asked and wished he hadn’t. The women’s expressions were thunderous.
‘Something isn’t right,’ Tina said.
‘Are we lost?’ He winced at the reproachful glower he received as a response.
Tina was ignoring him, choosing to address her companions instead. ‘I don’t understand this. We should be there by now.’ She let herself out of the cab, stood stiff and straight, and inhaled deeply.
‘Well?’ Lara asked, her voice curt.
Tina’s head bobbed back inside. ‘We should return to the village. Somehow, we’ve taken a wrong turn.’
‘A wrong turn. We never take wrong turns. What did you do?’ Every direction had come from Tina.
The woman didn’t apologise to her companions. ‘Me? I did nothing. Someone is messing with us. This place is… not where it should be.’
That made Arthur’s eyes widen. He didn’t have a clue what she meant but he understood that she was accusing someone of interfering with their work. He fought an urge to turn around and ask who it might be, but this was between the three women and best left alone. He needed only to follow their directions. Besides, who’d want to mess with them? Whoever it was must either be brave or foolish.
Chloe flapped the ends of her skirt, then pulled the fabric down tight across her legs. ‘We’ve lost a lot of time,’ she said. ‘Tina, can we get out of this place?’
‘Yes. Arthur, turn us around and put your foot on the gas. We’re so late …’
He nodded. ‘Sure,’ and did as he was bid. Turning the cab on such a narrow road was a little tricky but he soon had them heading back the way they’d came. The return journey took longer, which was strange considering Arthur spent most of the time with his foot flat to the floor, urged on by the ladies’ insistence on haste. All the time the agitation grew in his passengers. They fidgeted, sighed, and cursed every bump he drove over. Arthur kept his eyes on the road: it wouldn’t have done to have careered into a field or come face to face with a tractor or some other agricultural vehicle.
As it happened, the road was deserted and when he finally arrived back at the settlement and slowed to a sensible speed Lara apologised. ‘Sorry, Tina, you were correct. We are being toyed with.’ She sucked in her breath. ‘I don’t like it when we get messed around. Arthur… take a right here, please.’
‘I should have been more vigilant,’ Tina said. ‘I didn’t know such interference in our work was possible.’ There was a worrying note of alarm in her tone.
‘Who’d do such a thing, though? Him?’ That was Chloe, her voice tight.
Lara responded as Arthur committed the cab to the right turn. ‘No, I don’t think so. This isn’t his style. Besides, what would it gain him?’
Arthur concentrated on the road. The conversation was continued by Tina. ‘It can’t have been more than a delaying tactic. Something to hold us up, or something to show off.’
This new road wound passed a whitewashed church, through a neat row of houses and back out into the country.
‘It’s certainly an inconvenience,’ Chloe said. ‘We can’t fulfil this obligation and get down to the city again in time for our next appointment. Unless…’ she paused.
‘No!’ Tina and Lara barked in unison.
‘But it would be quicker that way.’
Tina grunted distaste at the proposal, then said, ‘We’re not leaving Arthur on his own…’
He wished they’d talk to him rather than about him. Still, as his effective employers it was their choice to discuss him in any way they liked. Their conversation was incomprehensible, but he got the thrust of it. They were debating whether he remained glued to their sides, or abandoned to his own devices. Well, he was a grown man, and fully capable of looking after himself if they decided to give him some free time. He’d drive back to the city and wait for their next call.
‘It would only be for a moment or so. That’s all it would take…’
There’s nowhere for them to go on their own, Arthur thought. The only place nearby was the village they were heading back to. If he didn’t drive them, it would take them ages to walk there, and even longer to go anywhere else.
Tina’s voice rose. ‘That’s all it would take for all hell to break lose. We are not leaving Arthur on his own, especially as we don’t know who or what sent us on our little excursion. Who knows what’s lurking in the shadows waiting for its chance?’
That brought an end to the debate. Chloe muttered something to herself and lapsed into silence. Arthur switched his attention back to the road. He was directed down a track beside a farm building, the lane looping in an arc back towards the outskirts of the village where a trailer park, almost as large as the village itself, was located. He drove through large rusting gates hinged upon two elaborate stone pillars and slowed across a series of speed bumps as the road meandered between the park’s collection of caravans.
‘There.’ Tina pointed over Arthur’s shoulder as they ventured into the heart of the park. ‘Stop right there.’
Arthur complied, drawing to a halt in front of a dilapidated trailer nestled under an old ash tree. The tree’s leaves were withered and distressed, its trunk clambering out of the earth to escape the diseased soil around it. Arthur cut the engine, lifted his hat and wiped his brow. It was getting warm and sweat had gathered behind his hat’s soft padding.
‘We’re too late,’ Tina muttered as she got out of the cab. ‘Well, we’ll just have to do what we can and salvage the rest later.’
Lara agreed. ‘Yes. We should wrap this up as soon as possible. We need to get back to the city, anyway.’
Arthur switched the radio back on, its reception clear once more, and slouched in his seat while a country singer wailed about the loss of his bourbon and his wife. The lyrics made Arthur snigger. He cleared his throat, struck his chauffeur’s hat back on his head, and feigned attentiveness while his passengers approached the trailer’s entrance.
Its door opened before they arrived, flung wide in haste as a man spilled out, followed by a bedraggled bouquet of flowers that scattered across the short path. An angry voice yelled from within, ‘You just go back to the city and leave me alone. I don’t need you or your flowers, and Connor don’t need no toy from you nor any fatherly advice. You ain’t his dad, Vincent. You ain’t now and you never will be.’
Vincent staggered and scrapped his way up the path, not seeing the three women approach, stopping to look at the door. ‘But Ellen…’
A woman stepped into view clutching a toddler against her knee. Arthur supposed the woman was a little over twenty even though her complexion would have marked her as nearer forty. She wore a pair of charcoal leggings and a stained pale blue t-shirt that stretched tight across her midriff. ‘Don’t you But Ellen me. Get out. Get your lazy ass away from here and don’t come back. Go to the city and the low lives you hang out with. Go wherever the hell you like. Just don’t come back here.’
Vincent staggered under the reprimand. The man appeared lost for words but flapped his arms against his sides pathetically before spinning around and crashing into Tina’s shoulder. Vincent’s face paled with panic. He offered no apology to Tina though, but spun on his heels and launched into a half-run as he staggered away through the park.
The woman regarded Vincent’s retreat with a crooked smile before she stooped to pick up the discarded flower stems, examining each to see if any were salvageable. Only then did she notice her new visitors. ‘Can I help youse?’
The women edged towards her and made some compliments about her child before addressing Ellen directly with words that didn’t quite travel back to the cab. The woman’s expression softened. She bobbed her head, swung a protective arm around the boy, scooping him in her embrace as she made her way inside the trailer with Arthur’s three ladies following.
Arthur sighed. Having observed the woman, a surge of sympathy overtook him. Her home was as run down as any he’d visited and he drew immediate conclusions about the harshness of her existence. How hard it must be to bring up a kid on her own in such an environment, how difficult to provide food and clothes when there was little money around. The last thing the woman, or her kid, needed was more misfortune or misery heaped upon them.
Yet some additional horror was about to befall her. After all, bad shit followed his passengers like a shadow. They’d met an actor who’d subsequently jumped from his hotel window, and a businesswoman who’d been arrested for all sorts of crimes. It stood to reason that something appalling would fall upon whomever next they visited. He shook his head. Life was unfair. Arthur bet the woman who lived in this trailer had never experienced a stroke of good fortune, had never been far from hunger, had never had the luxury of time or money to experience cool things at any time during her bitter life. And there she was, at the sharp end of a visit from his bringers of doom, hapless in the face of the monstrous event they were about to cast upon her.
He pulled his cap over his eyes and angled his head so the trailer was no longer in view. There was no altering the situation, but he wasn’t about to sit there and gawp. He wasn’t about to jump out of the cab and wave the woman back into her home while shouting ‘Beware, beware,’ at her either. His passengers wouldn’t put up with any interference from him. He understood that without even testing the premise. But this knowledge didn’t make him any more comfortable with what was about to unfold.
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