For Everyone Concerned by Damien Wilkins Page B

Instructed.
    Don’t use my own words against me, Ken.
    You know, you’ve never said your name. Who am I speaking to?
    Andrew, said the boyfriend’s father. Andy.
        
    Walking home at night from parties or from friend’s places, I went through a period when I couldn’t resisttrying the doors of cars parked on the empty streets. I was sick with car door handles, the interiors of other people’s cars. My cousin in Auckland was a great stealer of cars and pleasure craft. His father had died under anaesthetic while in hospital for a routine operation. My father was vastly alive a few streets away and I had no intention of stealing the cars I felt my way inside. I climbed into a Jaguar once. The smell of leather, that smell which seems almost like a taste, as if you’re sucking the seats. O Jaguar. The seats were like beds, the headrests pillows. The instruments on the dash set into the walnut like they were miniature trophies. I was inside a mobile hunting lodge—smouldering logs, heavy rugs. In the glovebox, which was as deep as a filing cabinet, silent as a cave, I found a big wad of keys. There were perhaps twenty-five keys, of all sizes, buttoned up in a leather pouch with a brass clip. I kept that pouch of Jaguar keys for years, until the leather grew chalky with mould. I must have had in that one wad the keys to several homes and several holiday homes and to businesses and lock-ups and private areas—drawers, secret chests. I was always keeping keys. They were the coins of my adolescence—great rings of hope.
       
    For some time after the crash, as a passenger in cars, I carried around with me a stupid and self-regarding fatalism. I was satisfied not to be driving. I had anawful and false smugness. Let this other person have the accident. At least it won’t be me that kills us or someone else. I’m in the clear.
        
    Priests drive smallish cars, never saloons or wagons. Non-family cars. I could never imagine trying the handle of a priest’s car if I came across one at night. They drive automatics mostly—widower’s cars— because the gear lever is a business. Priest’s cars are garaged cars—not because they believe in caring for the cars but because church properties have large garages. They can’t hear engines, priests. They’d go up hills in fourth and never know. They forget about the petrol. They can’t read temperatures and dials. They can’t read smoke. They don’t know where the full-beam switch is kept. Priests are hopeless parkers. They’ll drive around for ages, unmindful of the petrol, looking for a park they can drive straight into. A priest will hit you three times, front and rear, trying to get out of a straight park. They have no vision. They’re talking drivers, busy, late-planners, last-minute deciders. I’ve seen priests pull out into a line of traffic without looking—they think the traffic will part for them.
    At the time of the crash I had a little job servicing the parish car fleet—three widowers’ cars. I didn’t know anything about cars except oil and water. My father got me the job. I checked the oil and waterevery third day. I drove the cars to the garage to fill them with petrol. I had the windscreens cleaned while I waited. I took the cars to get the dings hammered out, the paintwork retouched. And I drove the old priest, Father Liddell, who was suffering from, among other things, glaucoma, to and from his weekend appointments. He wasn’t kindly. He was taciturn and testy and old and he forgot things. He ached—not just in his eyes. Father Liddell winced with every movement he made. He was a pained shadow of something once formidable. I drove him to doctors. Sometimes he was rude to me. He found out I didn’t attend a Catholic school. My father didn’t trust the Brothers. Father Liddell often mistook me for other people.
    Wild, wild boy, he said to me from the back of the car. Wild, ungrateful Archie.
        
    In cars, despite the appearance of