Bloody Shaggers

"Bloody shaggers," said the gruff Mr. Simon Garrigue, pushing the base of his palm into the front of the steering wheel and sounding the horn four times as they squeezed past the parked car on the side of the lane. "How many years have they been doing that now?" he asked, accelerating off up the valley, "every bloody Saturday night blocking the road with their... sex cars."
Mr. Spools, having ventured a laugh, nodded sagely, trying to think of something funny to say: "It's the most romantic place they can find I suppose."

"Shhh!", said Polly, instinctively grabbing hold of the headrest in front of her as Garrigue took them hurtling round the bend at the sixth telegraph pole. She had meant to fill in with the words "Shitting hell" but the danger having passed as quickly as it came, she got no further than the first syllable before realising that she'd overreacted.

And then, so as not to seem too rude in doubting Mr. Garrigue's (admittedly somewhat drunken) driving, she swallowed, and added: "I was always scared it was our Ted in one of those cars"

Mr. Spools, pleased with his first answer, repeated it in a different form: "Oh no, I'm sure our Ted would find somewhere more romantic.

"It's the condoms that bother me," said Mr. Garrigue, lurching forward as he changed gear for the hill. Another lamppost loomed and receded. "When I was rebuilding that wall after the accident I found masses of them stuffed into cracks," continued Mr. Garrigue. "All sorts. There was that one guy, remember, before the police started coming round, who used to hang them on a tree there, whole collection. Blair Witch like, you remember that? Horrible, I m telling you... and dangerous."

The car roared up the hill in the night. "They don't decompose I suppose," said Polly. "That's why you're not supposed to flush them down the loo." She'd read about them measuring sea-pollution by condoms per square metre in the Greenpeace newsletter.

"Can't digest them." he savoured the word digest as if it were a biscuit.

"If you're lucky," Mr. Garrigue slowed to let a sheep get out of the road, "then it just comes out the other end, but if you're unlucky, well..." he trailed off to let them imagine the worst. The dark banks of the road outside passed in the night.

"How much did they pay for the wall?" asked Mr. Spools wondering if he could do some similar work for the council.

"Not enough. Nowhere near enough, you can never make enough here. Skilled labour and you get paid shit all."

They swallowed another corner and the car roared on, rising now out of the trees and commanding, through its rear window, a view of the village lights far below. Mr. Spools, feeling the need to remind Mr. Garrigue who was showing no signs of slowing that they were approaching the fork in the road which separated the two farmer's houses, said quietly. "Ah here we are."

When the car doors had been slammed, and the dark cow-grid had safely been crossed; when the sounds of the cool night had resumed again their proper order, then Mr.Spools put his arm around his wife and they walked side by side, the last few steps across the yard and into the warm and waiting house.