The Road to School
Most mornings I’m hurrying A out of the door and into the car. Her feet are stuck into her shoes, flip-flop style, and I radiate silent exasperation as I watch her navigate the stone steps with laces trailing and heels flattening the backs of her shoes. When she remembers, she hastily gathers her backpack, Kindle, and headphones, and squashes them to her tummy, a muddle of items in her arms. She glares at me, unhappy to have her Lego play brusquely interrupted by my demands to brush her teeth and put her shoes on. As we bounce along the bumpy driveway, she concentrates hard on pushing her feet fully into her shoes and lacing them tightly. I quiz her on the current set of times tables while swerving around potholes on the narrow lane from the castle. Tasks completed, we are free to enjoy the beauty of the journey’s remainder, which is one of the loveliest drives to school. Fifteen minutes of slender and curving country lanes, sometimes longer if we arrive at the railway crossing as a train streaks past on its way to London or Exeter or if we need to reverse to a farm driveway or a slightly more voluptuous section of road to squeeze past another car travelling in the opposite direction, hopefully without enduring a patronizing comment from a male driver, impressed that a woman can reverse quickly and accurately. At this time of year, we frequently encounter gatherings of pheasants in the road. A and I chuckle and comment on how stupid they are, as they run along in front of the car, heads flicking from left to right as they scan for a safe passage in the hedgerows to hide, little legs rhythmically hurrying to stay just ahead of our menacing car grill. Later the males will battle each other in the middle of the lanes, oblivious to vehicles racing towards them. We encounter hares, with their long, black-tipped ears, loping into the grassy fields. Occasionally, a small deer will startle us as it leaps from the woodland and across the lane. I’m curious why small birds swoop along the road, staying just a little ahead of us. Does the sound of the car startle insects into the air to be snacked upon by these opportunistic birds? Once we are past my parent’s old stone cottage, the route enters woodland, where morning sunlight slices through the beech trees. As the mornings grow colder, the mist lingers between the tree trunks. We race along the final stretch following the crumbling stone wall of the Fonthill Estate. Here the beech and pine trees tower over us, branch tips touching and forming a leafy canopy above the lane. We plunge into a hidden valley, scattering the pheasants, and the car struggles steeply upwards to the crest of the ridge, from where the land spreads out into fields draped across undulating chalk hills. The lane points us towards the rooftops of the little village where A attends school. Parked under the pollarded trees lining the high street, she reluctantly turns off her audiobook, and then happily walks with a few leaps and skips, to her small welcoming school.
