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Signs of Life

Nancy L. Horner

Toby’s Dog-leg

“He’s late, again,” I said, looking at my watch and pacing the lobby of our hotel. After nearly a week of travel with my husband’s employee, Toby, the fact that he was already fifteen minutes late came as no great surprise. Toby—on his first business trip out of the United States—fancied himself a connoisseur of beer and had spent his evenings visiting the local pubs in England and Scotland, drinking a variety of beers and making friends until the wee hours of the morning. He was completely unreliable, so we’d already spent a great deal of time waiting for him to meet us in various hotel lobbies.

This meeting was crucial because we had a trans-Atlantic plane to catch and needed to leave as early as possible to avoid heavy traffic on the motorways near London. We planned to depart the hotel by 6 a.m., granting ourselves nearly four hours in which to return the rental car, hop on the airport tram, check in our luggage, and roam around the airport, where we hoped to spend the remainder of our English currency to avoid exchange fees.

“If we leave by six, we should have more than enough driving time,” David carelessly remarked the night before our flight. “I’m deliberately overestimating so we won’t be rushed. That should give us about three hours to walk around the airport.”

Forty-five minutes after we arrived in the lobby, David finally relented and rang Toby’s room. Outside, the sky was no longer pitch black as the sun began to rise, illuminating gray morning haze. Time was wasting.

David returned from the phone booth with a grim look. “He was still asleep. I hope he can get ready fast, for once.”

Unfortunately, Toby never apparently goes anywhere without his shirt neatly pressed and tucked, every hair in place and a cloud of aftershave following in his wake. Another torturous thirty minutes passed before he emerged from the elevator, looking as prim and tidy as ever. I said “Good morning,” through gritted teeth.

Traffic was heavy, but the drive was smooth for a time as we headed east on the M4 from Swindon. Frequent message boards over the motorway kept us informed of traffic conditions. Slowly, the signs began to flash ominous messages. There was an accident blocking all but two of the eastbound lanes, up ahead. The flow of traffic began to slow as we neared the scene of the crash, the radio confirming that “significant delays” loomed ahead. Our three hours of airport time already narrowed to just over an hour-and-a-half, we now realized that a delay of any significance could easily result in a missed flight.

In the back seat, Toby pored over the map in search of options. “You could take this side road, here. See, that’ll take you on a dog-leg around and back to A25. I think we should take the dog-leg, y’all, and save some time.”

Beside me, on the right-hand side of the car, David fidgeted in the driver’s seat. I recalled how he’d told me, less than 24 hours before, that past experience driving in Great Britain had taught him to go with his gut instincts on the road. I could see him struggling to decide whether or not he should take a chance on the back roads. Toby leaned between the seats, pointing at the map to make his point. “We really oughta take the dog-leg.”

“What’s your gut instinct?” I asked David quietly.

“It could clear up,” David said. “But we’re going to be cutting it close if I’m wrong. I really think it’ll clear.”

Toby continued to push the idea of his side route while I attempted to nudge David into following his intuition.

Finally, as we approached the exit to Toby’s dog-leg and traffic dramatically slowed, David made an abrupt decision. A tightening in my chest told me my own instincts objected as we exited the motorway.

We realized the depth of our mistake the moment we hit the side road. Two narrow lanes squeezed between trees, frequent traffic circles, and thousands of people hurrying to their jobs in London made for serious gridlock. After half an hour of grinding ahead at an excruciatingly slow pace, the radio informed us that the motorway was clear and traffic flowing freely. We would continue to remain stuck for a further hour. Tightly jammed on back roads which apparently never intersected with the motorway, I wanted to leap into the back seat and wring Toby’s squeaky-clean neck.

But, now we had another problem. We were nearly out of petrol.

“We’re going to have to stop for gas,” David said. “Have either of you guys even seen a gas station? I don’t think we’ve passed a single one.”

There was a collective sigh from the tiny car as we all began to strain for the sight of a place to refuel. We were running on fumes by the time we located a British Petroleum station. While injecting expensive petrol by the liter, David studied the map. We were finally nearing an exit that would lead us to the higher-speed roads. A short dash down the final stretch and we might make the airport in time.

At the airport a third disaster—around a hundred people queued to check their luggage in front of us—was averted when David spied the empty line for flyers with medallion status. Checking our baggage in less than 5 minutes left us a whopping 15 minutes of airport time. Both of us were tremendously disappointed, having planned a leisurely few hours shopping for Christmas stocking-stuffers; but we were pleased to know we’d catch our plane. We parted with Toby and dashed to the stores to make a few quick purchases, offloading most of our remaining British pounds in the process.

For a time after our return from England, I couldn’t look at Toby without an intense desire to kick him in the shins or muss his perfectly-combed hair. Now, over two years after the fact, David and I can look back at our journey and laugh at the experience. In heavy traffic I’ll turn and utter our private joke, imitating Toby’s thick Southern drawl: “You know there’s a dog-leg up ahead,” I say to David, “I think we oughta take that dog-leg.”