Twelve miles of indefatigable misery

The taxi-driver wound his window one third of the way down and put a priestlike, confessional ear to the freezing night air. I spoke the name of my village. Twelve miles. Twenty minutes. Forty quid normally, including tip. A decent fare, considering that the vast majority waiting at this railway-station cab rank require only the short ride into town. And yet an agonised grimace contorted his miserable, flabby, unshaved face. After an omnipotent pause, however, it nodded gloomy assent and I walked around the bonnet of the 12-year-old Mondeo and climbed into the passenger seat.

‘Busy?’ I said when we were in motion, to start the conversational ball rolling. He slumped forward on his steering wheel in despair and looked at me as if I was mad asking that on a January midweek night as cold and as wet as this one. ‘Good Christmas?’ I said, trying to force a cheerful word out of the guy. Not that either. He hadn’t had a good Christmas, he said, because last summer his wife had walked out on him after 20 years and gone to live with the boyfriend she’d had when they were at school together. He had come home from a busy day’s taxiing and found a note on the kitchen table saying, ‘I don’t love you any more. I’m going to live with Ian.’

He was still numb, he said. Indeed he looked it. Then I got the full jeremiad. For 20 years he’d worked his fingers to the bone. She and the two kids had wanted for fuck all. And then, right out of the blue, she’d done that, he said. ‘You ask me if I had a good Christmas?’ he said. ‘Waking up on fucking Christmas Day on your own for the first time in your fucking life? No, not really, is the answer to that one, my friend.