It is Sunday evening, and my wife and I are coordinating diaries. Except I don’t have my diary; it’s in my shed, and it’s raining. I’m doing my bit from memory.
“Tomorrow, band rehearsal,” I say. “Also on Wednesday, I think. Thursday, some Christmas thing. Friday, Honiton, Saturday, Dorchester.”
“How are you getting there?” my wife asks.
“I’m driving,” I say.
“In that car?” she says. “The brakes are weird.”
“I won’t use them,” I say.
“Also, the MOT runs out Tuesday,” she says.
“Oh,” I say.
My wife inserts a deliberate silence here, to allow me to reflect on how smoothly my life runs most of the time, no thanks to me. “It’s fine,” she says, at last. “I’ll take it to Farouk tomorrow.” Farouk is in our old neighbourhood. He’s been repairing our cars for perhaps 20 years.
“OK,” I say.
“You mean thank you for doing everything always,” she says.
“Yes, that,” I say.
The next day, I have to take a taxi to rehearsal – from my point of view, a monstrous privation. I get home late, and rise early to get some work done. When I cross the garden from shed to kitchen at 10am, my wife is waiting for me. “The car failed its MOT,” she says.
“On what, brakes?” I ask.
“Number plates,” she says, “So what you need to do is…”
“How can it fail on number plates?” I say.
“I don’t know, they’re rotten or something,” she says. “So what you need to do is, you need to take your driving licence…”
“I don’t have my licence,” I say. “It hasn’t come.”
“The car is in your name,” my wife says. “It has to be you.”
“Two weeks, they said.”
“And you have to do it today, otherwise…”
“I can’t possibly do anything today,” I say.
“You’re the one who needs the car,” she says. “I can’t help you with this.”
I stomp back to my shed with a single mission in mind: to establish the fundamental impossibility of procuring two new numberplates at short notice using the documentation currently in my possession. In this, I fail.
“What’s happening with the number plates?” my wife asks when I return to the kitchen.
“They’re being made now, just down the road,” I say. “I can pick them up in an hour.”
“It’s interesting, isn’t it?” my wife says. “Doing things for yourself.”
“Don’t pretend you like it when I exhibit general wherewithal,” I say.
On the table is an envelope addressed to me. Inside is my new driving licence. I scrutinise the photo: a haggard old man wearing an expression that speaks of boundless sorrow, but is actually simple bewilderment caused by the instructions in the photo booth at Acton Central station.
My wife and I are in the middle of London on Thursday when Farouk calls to say the car is ready. We take the tube to our former neighbourhood.
“It’s weird,” my wife says as we walk down the old, familiar streets. “For a minute, it felt like we were just going home.”
“I know,” I say. “I was already thinking about taking my shoes off.”
We stop at the open garage doors of Farouk’s establishment, where I can see our car still up on the lift. Farouk, a lean and elegant figure in a beret, comes out to greet us. “What an honour,” he says. “I’ve never seen you together before.”
“Haven’t you?” my wife says.
“The car needs some welding,” he says. “One more hour.”
“Ugh,” my wife says. “I need to go home.”
“Take my car,” Farouk says, pulling some keys from a drawer. “Go home, come back, one hour.”
As we creep through evening traffic, I think about the basic, reflexive civility of our longstanding mechanic-client relationship, a thing of incalculable value. I also think: Farouk’s car is way nicer than mine. “Are these seats leather?” I ask.
“He has one just like this for sale,” my wife says. “He wants five grand for it.”
“Really?” I say, trying to imagine owning a car this nice. “I guess that’s not a bad…”
“I offered him four,” she says. “He’ll take it.”
