Free The Driver's Seat by Muriel Spark

terrible.’
    The men
are impressed by this, one and all. Some are visibly cheered up. The proprietor
turns one way and another with arms outstretched to call the whole assembly to
witness his dilemma. ‘Sorry, lady, sorry. How was I to know? Pardon me, but I
thought you were one of the students. We have a lot of trouble from the
students. Many apologies, lady. Was there something we can do for you? I’ll
call the First Aid. Come and sit down, lady, over here, inside my office, take
a seat. You see the traffic outside, how can I call the ambulance through the
traffic? Sit down, lady.’ And, having ushered her into a tiny windowed cubicle,
he sits Lise in its only chair beside a small sloping ledger-desk and thunders
at the men to get to work.
    Lise
says, ‘Oh please don’t call anyone. I’ll be all right if I can get a taxi to
take me back to my hotel.’
    ‘A
taxi! Look at the traffic!’
    Outside
the archway that forms the entrance to the garage, there is a dense block of
standing traffic.
    The
proprietor keeps going to look up and down the street and returning to Lise. He
calls for benzine and a rag to clean Lise’s coat. No rag clean enough for the
purpose can be found and so he uses a big white handkerchief taken from the
breast pocket of his coat which hangs behind the door of the little office.
Lise takes off her black-stained coat and while he applies his benzine-drenched
handkerchief to the stain, making it into a messy blur, Lise takes off her
shoes and rubs her feet. She puts one foot up on the slanting desk and rubs. ‘It’s
only a bruise,’ she says, ‘not a sprain. I was lucky. Are you married?’
    The big
man says, ‘Yes, lady, I’m married,’ and pauses in his energetic task to look at
her with new, appraising and cautious eyes. ‘Three children — two boys, one
girl,’ he says. He looks through the office at his men who are occupied with
various jobs and who, although one or two of them cast a swift glance at Lise
with her foot up on the desk, do not give any sign of noticing any telepathic
distress signals their employer might be giving out.
    The big
man says to Lise, ‘And yourself? Married?’
    ‘I’m a
widow,’ Lise says, ‘and an intellectual. I come from a family of intellectuals.
My late husband was an intellectual. We had no children. He was killed in a
motor accident. He was a bad driver, anyway. He was a hypochondriac, which
means that he imagined that he had every illness under the sun.’
    ‘This
stain,’ said the man, ‘won’t come out until you send the coat to the
dry-cleaner.’ He holds out the coat with great care, ready for her to put on;
and at the same time as he holds it as if he means her, temptress in the old-fashioned
style that she is, to get out of his shop, his eyes are shifting around in an
undecided way.
    Lise
takes her foot off the desk, stands, slips into her shoes, shakes the skirt of
her dress and asks him, ‘Do you like the colours?’
    ‘Marvellous,’
he says, his confidence plainly diminishing in confrontation with this foreign
distressed gentlewoman of intellectual family and conflicting appearance.
    ‘The
traffic’s moving. I must get a taxi or a bus. It’s late,’ Lise says, getting
into her coat in a business-like manner.
    ‘Where
are you staying, lady?’
    ‘The
Hilton,’ she says.
    He
looks round his garage with an air of helpless, anticipatory guilt. ‘I’d better
take her in the car,’ he mutters to the mechanic nearest him. The man does not
reply but makes a slight movement of the hand to signify that it isn’t for him
to give permission.
    Still
the owner hesitates, while Lise, as if she had not overheard his remarks,
gathers up her belongings, holds out her hand and says ‘Good-bye. Thank you
very much for helping me.’ And to the rest of the men she calls ‘Good-bye,
good-bye, many thanks!’
    The big
man takes her hand and holds on to it tightly as if his grasp itself was a
mental resolution not to let go this