by Will Self
It wasn't until he turned off Wells Lane and bumped up the rough track between Mill Hill school and its sports fields that Dave realized he hadn't replied to the fare. He thought of remedying the deficiency, but it was too late for anything save a hearty 'Well, here you are, sir, up on the heights. If it were only a little earlier I'd suggest you take a stroll after your meeting. You can see most of the northwest of London from here, and right into the city centre.' The fare only grunted, examined his crumpled paper, then sang out, 'This is it!' as they drew level with a prosperous cantonment. The Burberry bundle tugged up his briefcase and piled out of the door. Standing by the driver's window, he sorted through the pigskin wallet he'd drawn from an inside pocket in the irritating, dilatory way of a foreigner, examining each note as if he weren't quite sure if it had any value at all – let alone its face one. Dave saw his tip dwindle to nothing. Americans who were used to London tipped well; newcomers seldom bothered – they certainly didn't understand that twenty per cent was considered perfectly acceptable for a black cab. Still, twenty-five notes on the meter, and who knows if . . . 'You wouldn't like me to wait would you, sir? I can turn the meter off if you're not going to be more than an hour.' The fare consulted his watch before replying, 'No, thank you, I'm gonna be a good deal longer.' He handed over the money, a tenner and a twenty, then hesitated while Dave combed the coin in his bag, finger waves pitter-purling on metal shingle, then, 'Keep the change, cabbie.'
'Thank you very much, sir, much obliged to you!' Consider yerself at home! Consider yerself one of the fa-mi-ly! We've taken t'you so strong! It's clear! We're! Going to get along!' In the jaundiced eye of his own self-contempt Dave saw himself leaping from the cab to hoe down in the dirty puddles, skipping and splashing, his sleeves up to his elbows, tugging the peak of his cap in lieu of a forelock.
Once the ex-fare had turned and walked off under the homely glow of a solitary streetlight, Dave bumped the cab on over the top of the hill and down to the Ridgeway. He made a right and parked up opposite the Institute. There were seven storeys of big, metal-framed windows – including dormers – and all were brightly lit. From the open transoms came the hum of purposive machinery. When Dave was a boy, hidden in the estate off Bittacy Hill gasping on a fag, and waiting for the rest of his class to return from their run up to the top of the Ridgeway so he could rejoin the race at a believably low ranking, the word was that the cure for cancer was on the point of discovery under the Institute's green copper roof. Then he'd glimpsed white-coated lab assistants doing things with racks of test tubes, but now the lower windows were equipped with reflective glass, and Dave had found out that if he moved towards the fence CCTV cameras tracked him, each one equipped with its own little 'eek' of a wiper. Inside, the biomedical boffins had given up on the cancer cure – just as they themselves had given up smoking. Instead the American's colleagues were splicing genes, humanizing antibodies and growing ferny little forests of stem cells. The occasional puppy's eye was dissected, the live animal pinioned in a savage clamp. White girls with dreadlocks, maddened by the deficiencies of their vegan diets, would come up here and try to kill the boffins. It's a bitch save dog world …
Dave Rudman switched off the engine and got out of the cab. He was a large man with broad shoulders rounded by occupational hunching. He had the standard issue potbelly of the sedentary forty-year-old, and his unfit jeans hung low on his sagging rear. His features were handsome enough and taken at a glance they gave an impression of strength and sensuality: broad, full-lipped mouth; prominent, fine-bridged nose; firm, dimpled chin. Sadly, up close this wavered, then dissolved. His dark eyes were too bulbous and too close set. His complexion was worked over by the leather-puncher of old acne scars. His thin, veined ears stuck out. When he took off his cap he revealed that his hair – which anyway had been nondescript – was gone, leaving behind a lumpy skull, full of odd depressions and queer mounds. Where his hairline used to be were several rows of little craters, as if a minuscule crop had been lifted. His two front teeth niggled at each other, one bony knee trying to cross over the other. Given a measure of content it was a face that might have cohered; now, standing in the damp dusk of winter's day on the bluffs above London, Dave Rudman's face was disorganized by pain, his features driven apart from one another by an antagonism so powerful that it pitted ear against eye, cheek against nose, chin against the world. Five days' stubble gave him a cartoon muzzle.
Desperate Dave limped to the fence and climbed over it into the playground of a little breeze block of a nursery. Threading his way between shoulder-high slides and swings, he gained a second fence and hoisted himself over that. He hardly seemed conscious of his progress, lifting each heavy denim leg over the chainlink as if it were a prosthesis, until he stood unsteadily, looking out over the darkening valley strung with the fairy lights of street lamps. Rudman sank to his knees – a sudden plunge. His hands – big, soft and hairy – drove into the muddy surface; he grabbed at the soil, lifting clutches of it up, squeezing the morass between his fingers. 'You fucking bitch!' he blubbered. 'You fucking bitch, you've taken … you've taken . . . ev-ery-thing!'
'We're fathers first,' said the group leader. 'We're loving dads,' responded the nine men who sat in a loose circle of plastic chairs.
'Iss juss a formality,' Gary Finch whispered to Dave, 'don't take it serious.'
'Good,' said Keith Greaves, the group leader, 'I'm glad we got that straight.' His gaze ranged around the circle, from Dan Brooke in his adman's Armani, to Finch and Rudman in their jeans and tracksuit tops. 'It doesn't matter who we are or where we come from – the only important thing here at Fathers First is that we're dads who want to care for our kids.' There was a throaty mutter of assent. Dave looked away from the men's faces to the tiny gold features of the figurines on the swimming trophies in the glass cabinet that took up a whole wall of the institutional room. 'Now!' Greaves gave a motivational thigh-slap and hunched forward. His white shirt was savagely pressed, his jeans sharply creased, everything about him shouted defiance of lone male neglect. 'Is there any particular issue that a dad wants to raise with the group this evening?'
A skinny man in a leather jacket with a wispy beard raised a tentative finger. 'Access,' he croaked.
'Good, Steve,' said Greaves, his thin lips curling, 'we can all identify with that, now, what's the problem?' Steve began slowly and in measured tones to complain: he'd seen the court welfare reporter, he'd punctiliously attended meetings with the Children and Family Court Advisory and Support Service, he'd honestly reported his earnings to the Child Support Agency, but 'Babs, she dicks me around.' His voice began to rise: 'I turn up on a Wednesday afternoon to pick the girls up from school and she's already got them' – a low rumble of identification from the dads – 'she sends them to her mother's on my weekends' – another rumble – 'they go to her place in new clothes I've bought them, then the clothes never come back to my place' – more rumbling, and, egged on by it, Steve began to rant, 'she's got the house, she's got the car, she's even got another fucking bloke! Now she wants to stop my girls having any relationship with me at all, I can't stand it, I – ' Dave Rudman looked at the faces paled by resentment, the eyes bright with anger. How's this going to help? Adding his own can of pain to this slopping tank of loss?
Forward Regent's Park Road. Forward Finchley Road. Left Temple Fortune Lane. Bear left Meadway Crescent. Bear left Meadway. Right Hampstead Way … Driving by the Heath Extension, looking over the mock meadows, Dave remembered childhood forays up here with his brother, Noel: jumping their bikes over the hillocks and dells in North End Woods, dismounting to battle with other kids, their weaponry sticks and acorns, then charging through the undergrowth – sloshing into the boggy hollows. Finally they would freewheel towards home down Wildwood Road, past the big houses with their glossy privet hedges, cooling Jags and rollers ticking in the driveways. Right Wildwood Road. Left North End Way. Comply Jack Straws Castle … Comply … comply with your fucking restraining order, you dickhead!
If you do it again and they catch you, you'll be in a fucking sweat box! Dave's headlights washed over a gaggle of seven-year-olds who were tumbling out of the new-old coaching inn. They were batting a white balloon between them. A tall figure loomed behind them in the doorway and lifted a hand to remonstrate, while gesturing with the other to the busy traffic only feet away. Dave drove on. Right West Heath Road. Left Branch Hill. Right and comply Frognal… The Fairway wallowed over the speed bumps. Nowadays, when the stress built up, he found himself doing this, calling over the route while he drove it, just as he did in his days as a Knowledge boy, puttering around the city on his moped … Left Arkwright Road. Right Fitzjohn's Avenue … It helped to keep his wheels on the ground, stop the cab from taking off like fucking Chitty Chitty bloody Bang Bang. Left Lyndhurst Road. Right Haverstock Hill … which he roared down, his Faredar off. He couldn't afford to pick up a fare up here on the borders of the forbidden zone. It could be anyone – and they might tell someone. Forward Chalk Farm Road. Points at the beginning: Mill Hill school, St Joseph's College, The Rising Sun. Points at the end: None, it's all fucking pointless, innit … Dave sighed, hit the window switches, lit a B & H, switched on his 'For Hire' sign and aimed for the West End. If he was lucky he'd get the after-work crowd, then still be back down in town for something to eat before the theatre burst.
On Shaftesbury Avenue three women extended from the kerb in a chain of linked arms. Whadda they fink they're doin' – fording a river? Dave picked them up. They were on their way back to Chelmsford, and Shirley had some cava in her thermos – this much he gathered. They'd loved Mamma Mia!, although not as much as they'd hoped. They did a chorus of 'Waterloo' and two of 'Fernando', drumming on the seats with their fists until he asked them to stop. Nicely. The cab heaved itself off of Primrose Street and squealed down the ramp into the bowels of Liverpool Street Station. The Essex housewives squealed as well, their glassy eyes running up the polished flanks of the new block. At the bottom the tiling reverted to public convenience and oofing they helped each other out, paid what was on the meter and tipped him with their tipsy adoration, '30544, we'll be looking out for yoo-hoo!' Confusing the cab's number with his own, confusing the cab with him. But everyone did that – even Dave.
Dave circled the wheel and pulled back up the ramp. Before he had time to drive round to the rank, he got a fare. Bit dodgy but it was quiet up West, not enough Yanks, not enough shoppers … The lights up Regent Street flashed mostly at themselves.
The new fare was tipsy as well … a City getter . . . one Lobb in the gutter, the other on top of his big shiny case, the boxy kind suits use for overnighters. His camelhair overcoat was open, his jacket was undone, his blue-and-white check shirt was unbuttoned at the collar, his eggy-puke tie yanked down. He lunged in the back without asking, because he was pissed and yakking on his mobile. Dave remained stationary, pointedly not hitting the meter. 'Where to, guv?'
'I don't fucking care where that tranche is, Beaky, put it in the other account, mix it up, shift it round – 'eathrow –' he flung through the glass panel and then resumed: 'It's not a case of coverin' up, man, it's getting things done. I get things done – you get things done, the whole whatsit moves … moves forward.' Dave could hear Beaky pecking to get in from the ether, until he flicked the shift into drive and the cab lurched off through the unmanned police check and round the corner into London Wall.
The fare couldn't stop talking as Dave threaded the cab down through the dark fabric of the City to the Embankment. He got out his laptop and began linking it up to his mobile with a pigtail of cable, until this proved beyond him, so he just read stuff off it to Beaky. Not that Dave was paying much attention, but this getter – young, ferret face, lock of mousy hair on a voddie-sweat brow, fake signet ring – didn't care if he listened or not. The driver was only another part of the cab's equipment for him, like the reading light or the fan heater. Dave obliged him – he had his own thoughts for company.
Fifteen up West, fiver from those old girls, airport run'll score me thirty or forty. Rank up in the feeder park and 'ave a snack at Doug Sherry's, run back into town – if I'm lucky – and I'll call it a night. Globular old lamp-posts with fat fish curled round them stood along the Embankment, while above the drooling Thames cast-iron lions sucked their dummies. The Millennium Wheel slowly revolved on the South Bank, its people-pods ever threatening to dip into the silty wash. Dave hugged the river, zoning out as the cab puttered up through Olympia, until they hit the Cromwell Road, where life-sized mannequins of business-class travellers advertised intercontinental seat-beds. Not real, toyist…
Not toys, son, Dave's father said, machines for entertainment. They were in the lounge bar of the Green Man out at Enfield Lock; nicotine was smeared on Paul Rudman's hair and fingers like toxic pollen. The week's take for the slot machines was racked out on the table in little pewter columns. Vince Bittern, the ex-old Bill who ran the boozer, wasn't too bothered with exact calculation. He put his flabby forearm down the middle of the table and curled it round a rough half of the stacks. Orlright, Paul? he demanded. No bother, mate, no bother, Dave's father acquiesced, lifting his wine glass of Bells to his wet lips so that the rim rattled on his denture. Dave sat in the corner, his face cherried-up with shame – Dad was so weak, so bloody hopeless …
Not toys, Dave told Carl, who was sitting on the tip seat immediately behind him, sighting back along the road, asking interminable questions – a tyrannical seven-year-old inquisitor. They're real, son. The boy howled with anger, Nooooo, stop it! Stop lying! They're not real, they're toyist.
Toyist. Dave had taken the child's coinage for his own. On good days only obvious fake things were toyist, like the giant spine stuck on a chiropractor's in old Street, or the big plug sunk into the wall of a block on Foubert's Place. But on bad days almost everything could be toyist: the Bloomberg VDU on the corner of North End Road was an outsized Game Boy, the flaring torch outside the new Marriott Hotel at Gloucester Road a lit match. The buildings themselves were so many CD towers and hair-styling wands, while people walked the street with the jerky motion of puppets, visible strings lifting styrofoam cups to their painted lips.
The fare was still at it when the cab reached the Hammersmith Flyover: 'I don't fucking care.' Beaky was still on the receiving end. 'I know how to value a company, mate, an' I tellya everything counts, bloody everything. We look at everything – we wanna drive down the asking price, we can dig as deep as we like … Yeah, yeah, I know they've sold a million bloody episodes to Taiwan, and I know they look kosher, but I've heard things concerning that Devenish – ' Devenish?! What the fuck, it can't be, think back, episodes … asking price – it figures. 'He's flash as it goes, lives in a fuck-off gaff up in Hampstead, spreads his money round like Lurpak … You can't tell me, Beaky, that it's all off the back of Bluey – or whatever that stupid kids' show is called. Someone's buying into Channel Devenish, and I wanna make certain it ain't the cunt who's selling it … I know, I know, mate, do the necessary, use who you want, put it on my research account.'
By the time – they were rolling up the Great West Road and Dave had the cab in overdrive for the first time in over a week, he'd undergone an attitude change – from surly serf to willing servant. The fare was slumped in the back seat, phone cast to one side, laptop to the other. The perspiration of bumptiousness and liquor had curdled into thick, fearful sweat on his hollow temples and tight forehead. 'Y'know what, mate?' he served up through the hatch.
'What?'
'I can't stand flying, can't bloody stand it.'
'Nor me, nor me.' Ah, poor iddle kiddie, iddums scaredums?
'Yeah, puts the kibosh on my whole bloody day.'
'Where're you off to, then, guv?' Keep him talking, I want his card.
'New York.'
The cab was rollicking along the Chiswick flyover past fifteen-storey corporate conservatories. What's through the arched window tonight? Another bank of blinking screens, another coffee machine, another yucca, anothe
r polish cleaner? There are more Poles in Ealing than fucking Cracow – at least that's what they say. 'Eye of the storm, then … do us a favour willya and see if you can persuade a few of 'em to come back this way.'
'Business bad, issit?'
'Bad, I tell you it's fucking diabolical.' Diabolical, he'll like that, he finks e's a leading actor an' 'e wants the rest of us to be supporting ones.
'Yeah, well, it's not been too clever in my line either.' And so it went on, the two men bantering as the taxi canted down off the flyover, then bumbled along the motorway. Heston Services. Moto 1 and 32. Since when has this been a Moto Services? Used to be Granada I think. Moto? Moto? Bloody stupid name for a motorway services. Bloody stupid logo as well … A man, lying back, arms behind his head, a sort of crown on his head, an atomic swirl of lines in the region of his supine belly like 'e's bin fucking gutted.
All the way up to the second Heathrow exit Dave sought a way to get the man's card out of him, but after years of minding his own business intrusiveness didn't come easily. The rain started up again as they hit the motorway spur. 'That's all I need,' said the fare; 'must make it ten times worse for those bastards in the cockpit.'
