Fast Asleep
by Ian Gregson
(Call Centre Love Song, Salt)

The driver fell asleep at the wheel
as though the edge where she’d been pushed
crumbled and she fell, but floated
and the car continued regardless
with its windscreen like a TV
turbid with disputing heads –
the merger had pushed her to the edge
and they were shouting it was wrong, wrong! –
her cigarette was burning
fifty seconds from her fingers
but her wheels were inching to the left
as the motorway was sloping
under the light rain and flashes of sun
down towards the sunlit city
where the river broadened,
all before her shut eyes
so when she looked into the windscreen
she saw her husband smile and
whisper in that woman’s ear
as she careered below a kestrel
that dipped, then rose, then hovered
like a moment of stuck time

There are no full stops in this poem, not even at the end. So when you get there you are stuck in time at the point of realisation that it is all over, just as the woman in the plummeting car is.

I can’t imagine that there are people who have not driven while stressed or tired or just having had a blazing row, when attention wanders. I include myself as well as policemen, ambulance drivers, truck drivers, mothers on the school run, sales people, priests and nuns. In fact, the only time someone drove into the back of my car, it was a nun who had just pulled out of the gates of her convent.

The poem balances the driver’s sleeping consciousness with her awakening subconscious. She has plainly been pushed to the edge of exhaustion – which crumbles to leave her floating, suspended between the real world that has drained her physical and emotional resources, and the dream world in which her anxieties can assault her while her defences are down. It seems the strain of a business merger has contributed to this; the “windscreen like a TV” is “turbid with disputing heads” that shout “it was wrong, wrong!” We can’t be sure if they represent the real heads of those who disagreed with the merger, or her subconscious manifestation of the way she feels about it herself, but we know that her head is full of voices, arguing. She is smoking and the cigarette is almost down to the butt, being “fifty seconds from her fingers”. If it burnt more quickly, the glowing embers might reach her skin and wake her in time to save herself.

We often adopt our car as an extension of our ego, while at the same time imbuing it with the power to know where the road is even when we’re reading a map, or unnecessarily facing our passenger when we talk to them – as if they can’t hear us otherwise. (Apparently we unconsciously steer in the direction that we are looking.) Sometimes we are so tired that our eyes close in a too-long blink and we think the car will still be safely on the road when we open them, not in someone else’s hatchback.

While young drivers can be reckless and brash, as if shouting “look at me”, and older, wiser, more experienced drivers often slow down in the certain knowledge that belief in one’s immortality can all too often lead to a severe case of death, we are all equally susceptible to making foolish mistakes if our faculties are compromised.

One recent car journey brought my husband and me up behind a white van on the M6. Everyone was giving it a wide berth as it attempted simultaneous use of all three lanes. We thought the driver must either be incredibly drunk or asleep. Suddenly, the van snapped back into line in the middle lane and we were able to overtake it, quickly, in case it became an unpredictable missile again. Discouraging my husband – who was driving – from shaking a furious fist as we passed, I glared at the van driver. A man in his early twenties, he had obviously just woken up: his expression was one of terror, his eyes appeared to be glazed and popping out of his face, his head was pinned back against the headrest and his mouth was open; I could almost hear him howl.

Drive defensively, my father used to tell me, and he was right. Expect everyone else to drive like an imbecile: not a difficult stretch of the imagination then. Although the good, safe drivers far outnumber the dangerous ones, sometimes it’s not the idiot who causes the accident; sometimes it’s a highly intelligent and usually thoughtful individual who is driving while tired or distracted, and who believes that they are too sensible to succumb to unconsciousness on the open road. But when exhaustion allows the mind to weave the imagery of the subconscious into the reality of the journey, it is already too late. We might wake up to find ourselves witnessing the consequences of a lapse in concentration that we cannot undo in the seconds before our own accident.

In addition to being worn-out and distracted by work-related matters, the woman in the poem also has troubles on the home front: in the confusion of exhaustion, cigarette smoke, the noise of the engine, the rain, the camber of the motorway and the “disputing heads” that clamour before her in her semiconscious state, she sees her husband’s face as he smiles. But the smile is not for her; he is smiling at the woman in whose ear she sees him whisper. The betrayal is palpable as she careers “below a kestrel”, and we know that she is already airborne; nothing can undo what is happening now. No one can take back the inevitable impact that is about to occur because the moment the tyres of the car left the tarmac, a commitment was made. As long as that moment continues, however, she will remain alive. So, no full stop

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