SALOME

Kimberley told him she could pinpoint exactly when their relationship changed. It was that week in September when he bought Salome. Life had been free and easy before then, bumbling around in the old Austin, even though they’d broken down on an ambitious trip to Cornwall. But with the delivery of the sleek black Ford Cortina, Jeff, she insisted, had become a different person. ‘It’s all you ever think about these days.’

‘That is a total exaggeration,’ he protested but he knew it was true. Life, which had been beautifully simple: the office and going out with the gorgeous Kimberley, had taken a disturbing turn. He loved and admired his girlfriend for all her endearing qualities, her sense of humour and love of life. She was lighthearted, played the guitar and seemed to have no further ambition than working in a vegetarian café. When he was with her he felt young and carefree, his tendency to angst dispelled. But Salome, like some Belle Dame Sans Merci, had him in thrall. Her design was so elegant and up to the minute. She was altogether perfectly balanced and sleek, finished beautifully with circular rear lamps. Then there was her interior. Jeff had opted for luxury with a deep pile carpet and well padded leather seats. Her bodywork demanded constant attention, her radiator and hubcaps must be gleaming bright. Jeff was constantly on his guard for the slightest sign of a scratch or dent. When he was not at work he could never relax until Salome had been negotiated into the first available space outside his house where, from the living room window, he could keep watch over her.

Kimberley said he was obsessed. ‘You’ll drive yourself crazy if you carry on like this,’ she told him. ‘Mellow out, man.’

‘Kimberley please, you don’t understand what Salome means to me.’

‘Go with the flow, Jeff. What do a few little scratches matter?’

Kimberley wasn’t her real name, she had been christened Brenda, but when she became a hippy she just had to change it. She had embraced hipdom with the fervour of a religious convert.  Her long blonde hair was encircled by a headband, flowing scarves and beads topped her tie dyed tee shirts and bell-bottoms. Because she and her friends were anti-materialist they bought their clothes in charity shops so they were ragged, patched and embroidered. They attended sit-ins and anti-war demos, they created happenings where they camped out in fields and woods, listening to music. This behaviour was a threat to Jeff’s peace of mind. Were those secondhand clothes clean? Were there any embryonic fleas? Then there was the question of Kimberley’s Afghan coat, the skins of which had not been cured properly so that it permeated the car with a nasty smell. If ever he allowed Kimberley to sit beside him in Salome, he was haunted by these thoughts. And the moment he was alone he set about vacuuming the carpet, wiping over the seats, spraying and spraying air freshener, to remove all trace of germs and parasites, also the horrible scent of the coat.

‘You think more of that car than you do of me,’ she often said. 

‘Of course I don’t,’ he denied.

 It was far more complicated than that and scarcely explicable, even to himself. At times he felt as if he had a dual personality. There was a part of him that could be the Jeff who had taken off for Brighton with Kimberley singing beside him. But there was another troubled Jeff chained to the demands of Salome. 

‘You’re such a downer these days,’ she told him.

‘If you’re so fed up with me why do you stay?’ he asked. 

She nuzzled him with her pretty little nose, she twined her arms round his 

neck and kissed him. 

            ‘Because I love you, Jeff.’ She kissed him long and hard. She took him by the hand and led him to the bedroom. On occasions like these, he was back in his former skin but on others he wondered how it was the two of them had ever got together. Why hadn’t he met a woman who would go with his car, a neat, clean woman with a smooth and perfect Jackie Kennedy bob, a woman who wore little tailored dresses and pearls? A Valerie or Laura, some kind of name like that, scenting the air with the rose and jasmine notes of Joy. But somehow these women had never come his way.

Meanwhile Kimberley was becoming a thorn in his flesh, pestering him to let her have a go at driving his car. She usually rode a bicycle decorated in psychedelic colours with a bunch of flowers in the front basket. 

‘Get yourself a car if you want to drive so badly,’ he told her.

‘Cool it, ‘Kimberley ordered. ‘You know I want no part in the consumer society? I’d just like to have a try and see what it feels like.’

One morning after a steamy session the night before, he relented and allowed her to take Salome round a car park. To his surprise, she was an excellent and skilled driver. 

‘Where did you learn to drive like that?’ He asked. 

‘My dad taught me. He used to do test driving at one time.’

She slammed Salome’s door with a force that made him shudder. She dug her hands into the pockets of the Afghan coat, a coat whose wet dog smell Kimberley had attempted to mask with the scent of patchouli oil. ‘Well Jeff, now the spell is broken can’t we go back to how we were before all this nonsense?’

Surprised, he realised she understood the power of Salome’s bewitchment.

 ‘I don’t know what you are talking about,’ he said. 

‘Oh come on, Jeff, get with it. Why can’t we share your wretched car?’

Something stronger than he made him shake his head.  ‘I’m sorry, Kimberley, but I’m afraid I can’t share Salome with anyone, not even you.’  

There was a pause after that. Kimberley gave him a long hard stare.

 ‘If that’s your last word, I’m leaving. I’ve tried to understand this compulsion of yours but it’s too way out for me. Life is for celebrating, having a gas, not fussing over a stupid car.’

 She grabbed hold of her bicycle and raced away. He watched her go, her long hair flying in the wind. In that moment, like a drowning man, episodes of their past times together flashed through his mind. Kimberley the day he met her at that party when they’d spent practically the entire evening standing in the kitchen and talking. Kimberley turning up on his doorstep when, two weeks after that meeting, he hadn’t called her. ‘Well, aren’t you going to invite me in?’ And of course, the disastrous trip to Cornwall when they’d walked arm in arm through heavy rain to find somewhere to stay after the Austin broke down. Now he must face a future without her: it would be just him and his car. He eyed Salome crouched like a sleeping panther where Kimberley had parked her. He fancied an air of complacency about her as if this was what she had been planning all along and could now claim him for her own. He had a momentary urge to kick her, which he quickly controlled.

Life resumed its usual routine, albeit without the presence of Kimberley. Every day, Jeff went to the office, every evening he cleaned and cossetted Salome, always on the look out for any possible threat to her pristine condition, any miniscule scratch from a careless, passing motorist. On the infrequent occasions when he took her for a spin, her engine purred, she swiftly reacted to his manoeuvres, changing speed at his lightest touch. If ever a car could be said to have feelings, hers were one of deep contentment.

He mulled over the last conversation he had had with his girlfriend, trying to justify the stance he had taken. Why couldn’t she have understood the relationship between a man and his car? It was a well-known fact. Surely there must be more comprehensive women than Kimberley? He’d never begrudged her any other aspect of his life. He’d only twice asked her to stop wearing that ‘malodorous excuse for a coat.’

Often, he asked these questions standing by Salome when once again he’d brought her safely home from some tentative foray. It seemed to him she understood and condoned his decision. He even imagined her reply: ‘you’re better off without a woman like her. Think if you’d married her, you wouldn’t be able to call your life your own.’ 

But as time went on, Jeff grew less convinced. He realised he had expected Kimberley to climb down and call him. He would find himself circling the telephone, willing it to ring. But it never did. Where was she at this very minute? Who was she with? Were she and her hippy friends having a good laugh about him?

‘Obsessed,’ he seemed to hear Kimberley say with that giggle in her voice. ‘Totally OTT with that car.’

She had so many friends. They all loved Kimberley and thought he was ‘ape’ as she had informed him once. Soon they would take off for another happening, she lounging on the grass playing her guitar, wearing that evil smelling coat. Jealousy crept in, something that, surprisingly, hadn’t occurred to him before. Wasn’t loving everything and everybody the theme of these events?  Jeff ached for his wild and beautiful woman. He would give anything in the world to have her in his arms again. 

In an attempt to cool down he went outside to polish Salome’s hubs. There she sat close to the kerb, a dark presence. Her bodywork gleamed from all his care and she seemed to him smug in her acceptance of his continuing devotion, certain now that she would always come first in his life.

‘What have you done to me?’ He muttered. ‘You…you bitch!’ 

He turned on his heel and went back into the house. He went to sit in the kitchen from where he could have no sight of his car.  

Another week passed. The weather changed, summer turning into a gloomy autumn. Jeff stayed on at the office, working late, rather than face his silent house. In early September, a card had arrived from Kimberley with a brightly coloured picture of a Greek beach where she was holidaying with those friends of hers. ‘Having a blast!’ she had written. Nothing more. She must be home by now, he thought, his hand straying towards the telephone. No, what was the use? She had made it very clear she was enjoying life without him. 

One evening, when he had arrived home wet through from a sudden downpour of rain, Jeff could stand it no longer. Salome stood outside the house, the rain having washed away some of the grime he had allowed to collect on her once immaculate paintwork. 

‘You’re going to be useful for once,’ he growled.

Roughly he opened the car door and threw himself inside.  He turned the key in the ignition. Nothing happened. He tried again. Salome came briefly to life then stalled again. The car had never done this before, simply purred into action. Jeff took a deep breath. So that’s the way you want to play it? He murmured. ‘You jezebel! Listen to me and do what you’re told or I’ll put you on the market.’ For a third time he turned the key and sulkily Salome came to life. They drew out of the quiet street and headed for the main road. He put his foot down on the accelerator and forced the car forward. The rain was coming on heavily and the windscreen wipers worked like a fury. He cursed the weather, he cursed his once beloved car, only had one idea in his mind, to see Kimberley again.  He found that he was crying and muttering her name ‘Kimberley, Kimberley, Kimberley.’ He shouted at the car, 'You’re a witch, a bloody witch but you’re not going to ruin my life anymore.’ Through the rain he glimpsed the street where she lived. He urged the reluctant Salome forward. It occurred to him that he was engaged in a frantic battle with the car, which had turned into an avenging creature determined to thwart him. He didn’t see the lorry until the last minute, swerved, lost control and…When he opened his eyes he heard frantic banging on the window and saw Kimberley’s anxious face staring in at him. She rushed round to open the passenger seat and tugged him over. Then she rushed back to the other side of Salome and got into the driver’s seat. This time the car appeared to realise it was beaten and responded. She drove with a grim concentration through the driving rain. 

Stupefied he asked ‘Where are we going?’

‘To the hospital, you fool,’ she spoke through gritted teeth and he sensed her 

fear. ‘You were lucky, you could have been killed. As it is you’re bleeding all over the wretched upholstery and you’ve put a few dents into this car of yours.’

The mingled smells of billy goat and moist dark earth emanating from 

Kimberley’s coat prompted a dim memory of a phrase he’d once read: ‘sweeter to me than all the perfumes of Araby.’ As long as she was there by his side, nothing else really mattered. So Salome was scratched and buckled. All that could be repaired, even if she didn’t deserve it. What was far more important now was to mend his relationship with the woman he loved.        ENDS