Fiction: Car Alarms by Peter Newall

Photo Source: Unsplash

‘Car alarms,’ he said, ‘those bloody annoying car alarms that run through a sequence of honks and beeps. I hate them.’

She looked at him quizzically.

 ‘Didn’t you hear it?’

‘No, I didn’t.’

‘Well I did, just then, in the street outside. I’m sure they serve no purpose, nobody even looks round if one goes off, let alone the police paying any attention. See, you didn’t even notice it. I didn’t think you still had them here in Germany. We still have them in Ukraine – maybe we’re behind the times – and every time I hear one go off, I automatically think of drones and rockets landing.

‘You know, the first night of the real war, back in 2022, four thirty in the morning, I was asleep, and there was a loud explosion outside, really loud. I felt it through the floor as much as heard it. Then another. And the car alarms, from the cars parked along the street below my flat, all went off, from the vibration. I looked down from the balcony; a row of cars, flashing their hazard lights and making that noise.

‘ And that’s when I knew something was seriously wrong, something that couldn’t be explained away in the morning, when I knew what people had talked about happening had happened, the Russians had attacked us.

‘Now I always hear those sounds together in my mind, the booming sound of missiles landing and the car alarms, a chorus of them.

‘That’s more than four years ago, but it hasn’t stopped, the sequence hasn’t changed, A loud bang, something hitting us, hitting the city, and a car alarm immediately afterwards.

‘Because most nights now there are these explosions, the Russians send their drones and ballistic missiles against us, just to kill women and children, basically. About half past two in the morning, pitch black, you hear our air defence guns, pom-pom-pom-pom-pom, and sometimes you hear the two-stroke sound of the drone flying above you. Most of them are shot down, but not all. And whenever they land, there’s a bang, then car alarms going off. So I associate that sound with being attacked, with being, I have to say, vulnerable, and I imagine I always will. And that’s why I heard the car alarm outside and you didn’t,’ he added, grinning rather shamefacedly.

They’d been talking for a couple of hours now, about music, about art, about the history of Europe, and he’d been lost in their conversation, the pleasure of it, the pleasure of her company, her appearance, the quiet bar, everything about the evening, until the car alarm went off, reminding him of home.

‘That’s terrible.’ She looked at him with sympathy. But you can’t really understand what I mean, he thought. It’s not something you can comprehend intellectually if you haven’t been there, it’s a visceral feeling, in your guts, the sound of a car alarm at night means something has just been hit nearby, perhaps people have been killed, and maybe there’s another drone overhead, just above you.

Now he was embarrassed to have spoken about the war, as if he’d been trying to make himself seem special.

‘Look, I’m sorry to have mentioned it. It’s stupid, it can’t mean anything to you. And it’s only a sound, anyway. For us, car alarms are the least of it. Maybe your brother is fighting at the front, or your son, or you’re going to be called up yourself, or your parents’ house is actually hit, not just rattled. The alarms are nothing – it’s just my personal, I don’t know, Pavlovian reaction. Perhaps that’s not the right term, but I was trying to say that every time I hear one of those bloody alarms I automatically think of an explosion, and of the war, of everything that goes with the war, everything that’s still happening in Ukraine every day.’

‘When are you going back?’

‘On Saturday.’

‘Look, they’re closing here. Would you like to come back to my place?’

He paused, looking at her warm, inquiring gaze, her dark hair glowing in the soft light of the bar.

‘No, I don’t think I can. I have someone in Odesa, you see.’ He immediately felt abrupt, rude, and was overcome with embarrassment.

He paid for their drinks, and walked with her to the taxi rank. She didn’t speak; no doubt she too was embarrassed, and offended. His rebuff was out of step with the whole tenor of the evening. He opened the door of the cab for her.

‘Good night.’

‘Good night.’

‘I really enjoyed your company, Margit. Thank you for this evening.’

She shrugged, but half-smiled as the door closed.

Why didn’t you go home with her, he asked himself as the taxi disappeared, a pleasant, attractive, intelligent woman, no doubt a pleasant apartment, the whole thing would have been pleasant. Of course there’s Tanya at home, and I do feel good for having refused for her sake, for our sakes, I can go home with a clean conscience, nothing to hide, even in my memory, from her. No one else’s skin on mine.  

But why, really? Have I just lost my nerve, is that it?

No, it wasn’t that. It was precisely because she was so sympathetic, and because he knew that sympathy was unearned, that he’d refused. Yes, they’d made a connection, they had a lot in common, even, and he wasn’t unhandsome, he knew, but it was sympathy that had tipped the scale for her, that and the sense that he was a thread joining her to something unusual, dramatic. I would have felt an absolute hypocrite, lying beside her in her neat, sophisticated bedroom. Trading on her sympathy, trading on the war. A war profiteer, basically. Cheating the people getting bombed back home, cheating the guys who are actually fighting at the front, which I am spared because of my diplomatic position. No, I couldn’t do it.

‘Bastard car alarms,’ he said, out loud to the empty street.

Peter Newall has worked as a dockyard labourer, a lawyer and a musician. He has lived in England, Australia, Japan, and now in Odesa, Ukraine, where he leads a local blues band. He has been published in the UK, Europe, North and South America, India and Australia. 

If you would like to learn more about Peter, you can find him on Instagram here.