Two Fingers

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Two Fingers

The rain beat monotonously on the huge expanse of triplex. Two twenty-four-inch wiper blades religiously drew their proscribed arcs across the centre of screen and, occasionally, when the gusting wind blew rain in huge sheets of heavy water and they seemed unable to clear the deluge, the next sweep mercifully restored the view ahead. The A3 (South) on Fridays was the end of the week for thirty-three year old John Towers – tonight could have been the end of the world for all he knew since Portsmouth was still thirty-eight miles hence and the luscious Sandra two hours away. The late autumn gale had been driving across southern England all day and the roads were awash with water and the mulch of brown leaves meaning that, in the heavy traffic, visibility was limited and driving conditions were hazardous. Thirty-eight tons of articulated Scania were scant protection from driving winds on the more exposed sections of the highway, but offered a lofty view of the road ahead over the lesser autos that scampered past the rumbling leviathan that soaking evening.

Ahead was the long drag up to the aptly named Devil’s Punchbowl. Apt, because it was the only remaining section of the A3 from London to Portsmouth that was still single carriageway and, understandably, a bottleneck of automanic proportions during the daily commuter migrations. In the summer the Punchbowl offers stunning northerly views of the green rolling hills of Surrey for Sunday morning walkers – the natural amphitheatre protecting all those who used the hilltop cafe and the septuagenarian-friendly paths. This evening there would have been no view and anyone foolhardy enough to have left the warmth and relative comfort of their car would have been soaked in seconds by the driving, drenching rain.

Approaching the beginning of the single carriageway section, John Towers could see the brake lights being applied by the vehicles ahead as they slowed to funnel into the wooded section that marked the beginning of the approach to the Punchbowl. High mounted ‘safety’ lights with their brighter bulbs momentarily blinded all that followed in the spray. Fully-loaded with boxes of jeans destined for a processing plant just outside Portsmouth – they washed and pressed them before their delivery to stores across the South – meant that the forward momentum generated by his truck and notwithstanding the fact that he was travelling up an incline, he would have to brake as well. A quick check in the offside door mirror revealed that a similarly proportioned giant to his own was close to his rear doors, its own headlights reflecting back into the cab so that John could clearly see the face of the driver, an older man with a shirt and tie. A Stobart truck surmised John. He gently applied the powerful air brakes so as not to surprise his fellow tarmac tramper, and the Scania started to slow.

About one hundred yards before the end of the dual-carriageway is a parking area where long distance travellers stop to relieve themselves in the bushes and HGV drivers coming south from the north of the country occasionally sleep a few hours to comply with the stringent tachograph rules before the early morning dash to the ferry-port. When John was approximately thirty yards from the entrance to the parking area something next to the carriageway caught his eye. Standing on the wide, grassed kerb, and flashing like a strobe light from the passing headlights, stood a figure braced against the wind and rain, its left hand reaching out to the traffic with an upturned thumb. John could just make out what looked like a bag in the person’s right hand, being blown about in the swirling wind.