Heston Services (IP)

The sign said: Heston Services. I turned off the M4 with a growing sense of anticipation. I was born in Heston. In those days it was just plain Heston without the Services, and although Royal Heston on the Services would have been my choice, I supposed the Council must know what they were doing. I expected some changes but I was sure I would recognise my home town.

The car park was a lot bigger than I remembered it. I recalled Heston as a quiet, sleepy town but it seemed to have become a popular tourist destination. I wondered what they had all come to see. The war memorial? St. Leonard's church? The florist? As far as I could tell, it was the petrol pumps. Cars were queuing to take a closer look at them. They seemed very ordinary to me.

I let myself out of the car and took a deep breath of Heston air. I coughed so hard I had to sit down again to prevent myself from fainting. The driver of a nearby car displayed an oxygen cylinder through the window and mimed taking a breath from the attached face mask. I staggered over to his car and he opened the window just enough to let the mask protrude. I took a few grateful breaths of oxygen and felt a little better. As soon as I had finished, the driver withdrew the mask, wound up his window again and mimed vomiting. He could have been on the stage. I tried to mime 'thank you', but couldn't think how to do it.

I made my way to a large building, the only one I could see, taking frequent rests along the way. The doors hissed open and I was assaulted by the miasma of greasy food. The building was full of people milling about, presumably gathering their strength to make the journey back to their cars. The atmosphere, although rank, seemed less harmful than the air outside. People who had acclimatised to it seemed able to stand and walk without too much difficulty. I suppressed my gag reflex and manfully walked deeper into Heston. I had changed my mind about Royal Heston: somehow I couldn't picture the Queen in these surroundings.

I looked for somewhere to buy a postcard. There were many shops selling sweets, fizzy pop and magazines, but no postcards, not even with pictures of the petrol pumps. Maybe people didn't send postcards any more. Maybe they just took photographs on their digital telephones and sent messages saying: rnt u gld ur nt hr lol.

I wondered if anybody would remember me or my parents but I couldn't see any familiar faces. Most people were obviously tourists, no point asking them, but maybe one of the shopkeepers would remember. I stood in the queue in a cafe that, judging by the garish images above the serving counter, sold round things with chips. When I arrived at the front of the queue an enormous creature with the face of a sixteen-year-old girl and the body of a middle-aged sumo wrestler faced me. I knew she wouldn't remember anything, but maybe her parents owned the cafe. They might be able to help.

I asked whether I might have a word with Mr. McDonald. The girl looked at me blankly. "Jew want a miw diw?" she asked. I looked around for somebody who might translate for me, but I didn't know what nationality the girl could possibly be. An equally fat middle-aged woman approached from behind the counter.

"Mrs. McDonald?" I asked, extending my hand.

She backed away. "We don't touch no customers," she said. "It's unhygienic. We got regulations, we 'ave. Paris on the tiw, she touches the dirty stuff, money and customers and that. We do food. We 'ave to wash our 'ands, even if we only bin to the toilet."

It seemed like a surprisingly long and well-constructed utterance for somebody of her class. I was impressed. But maybe she'd just spoken to me in disjointed fragments and I'd edited and reconstructed it in my own mind until it was an approximation to human speech. But then why had I preserved the dropped aitches and dimwit pronunciation? This was becoming ever more mysterious.

The people behind me in the queue were getting restless so I asked for a 'speshoo', feeling rather proud of my pronunciation and my ability to blend in anywhere. I received a collection of polystyrene containers, a waxed paper parcel and some thin chips, the only things I recognised, standing upright in an open-topped cardboard box. I paid for them at the till, pushed the entire collection of vileness into a rubbish bin, and escaped from the cafe as quickly as I could. I looked back at the doorway and a child, with the encoragement of her parents, was fishing my abandoned meal from the bin, wiping it on her sleeve as she went. I ran.

Back in the car I started the engine and drove away as quickly as I could. Yes, Heston had changed, but there was still something about the old place. Maybe I'd visit again one day, say in a decade or two.