by Zadie Smith
Felix tried: ‘You had her long or … ?’
The boy looked startled. He put his hand in his fringe.
‘Have I … ? Oh, I see. No. I mean, she was a present a few years ago, my twenty-first – hand-me-down from my father – he’d had her a long time … Not a very practical present. But you’re a specialist, of course – you won’t have the same sort of trouble.’
‘Mechanic.’
‘Right. My father knows your garage. He’s had these cars for thirty years – longer – he knows all the specialist garages. Kilburn, isn’t it?’
‘Yeah.’
‘That’s sort of Notting Hill way, isn’t it?’
‘Nah, not really.’
‘Ah, now, Felix? We’ll do a left here. Escape this chaos.’
They ducked down a cobbled side street. Fifty yards away, on Oxford Street, people pressed against people, dense as carnival, almost as loud. Back here all was silent, empty. Slick black doors, brass knobs, brass letterboxes, lamp posts out of fairy stories. Old paintings in ornate gold frames, resting on easels, angled towards the street. PRICE UPON APPLICATION. Ladies’ hats, each on its own perch, feathered, ready to fly. RING FOR ASSISTANCE. Shop after shop without a soul in it. At the end of this little row, Felix spotted a customer through a mullioned, glittering window sitting on a leather pouffe, trying on one of those green jackets, waxy like a tablecloth, with the tartan inside. Halfway up, the window glass became clear, revealing a big pink face, with scraps of white hair here and there, mostly in the ears. The type Felix saw all the time, especially in this part of town. A great tribe of them. Didn’t mix much – kept to their own kind. THE HORSE AND HARE.
‘Good pub, that pub,’ said Felix. It was something to say.
‘My father swears by it. When he’s in London it’s his second home.’
‘Is it. I used to work round here, back in the day. Bit of film work.’
‘Really? Which company?’
‘All about. Wardour Street and that,’ Felix added, and regretted it at once.
‘I have a cousin who’s a VP at Sony, I wonder if you ever came across him? Daniel Palmer. In Soho Square?’
‘Yeah, nah … I was just a runner, really. Here and there. Different places.’
‘Got you,’ said Tom, and looked satisfied. A small puzzle had been resolved. ‘I’m very interested in film – I used to dabble a bit in all that, you know, the way narrative works, how you can tell a story through images …’
Felix put his hood up. ‘You in the industry, yeah?’
‘Not exactly, I mean no, not at the moment, no. I mean I’m sure I could have been, but it’s a very unstable business, film. When I was in college I was really a film guy, buff type. No, I’m sort of in the creative industries. Sort of media-related creative industry. It’s hard to explain – I work for a company that creates ideas for brand consolidation? So that brands can better target receptivity for their products – cutting-edge brand manipulation, basically.’
Felix stopped walking, forcing the boy to stop. He looked vacantly at his unlit fag.
‘Like advertising?’
‘Basically, yes,’ said Tom irritably, and then, when Felix didn’t follow him, ‘Need a light?’
‘Nah. Got one here somewhere. Like advertising campaigns?’
‘Well, no not really, because – it’s difficult to explain – basically we don’t see campaigns as a way forward any more. It’s more about the integration of luxury brands into your everyday consciousness.’
‘Advertising,’ concluded Felix, drew his lighter out of his pocket and assumed a face of innocence.
‘It’s just this next right, if you’ll …’
‘Right behind you, bruv.’
They walked through a grand square, and then off into a side street, although the houses here were no less grand: white-fronted and many storeys high. Somewhere church bells rang. Felix slipped his hood off.
‘Here we are – here she is. I mean, obviously this is not the sort of thing where – sorry, Felix, will you excuse me a moment? I better take this.’
The boy put his phone to his ear and sat on the black and white tiled steps of the nearest house, dead centre between two potted orange trees. Felix walked a half-circle until he was standing in the road. He crouched. She was smiling at him, but they all do that, no matter what state they’re in. Frog-eye headlamps, manic grille grin. One-eyed in this case. He touched the spot where the badge should be. When the time came it would be a silver octagon, with the two letters back to back, dancing. Not plastic. Metal. It was going to be done right. He straightened up. He put his hand through the giant slash in the soft top and rubbed the fabric between his fingers: a thin, faded polyester weave. Plastic window gone anyway. The rust he didn’t need to touch, he could see how bad it was. Worst at the rear left – it was like a continent there – but also pretty drastic all round the bonnet, which meant it had likely rusted through. Still: the right red. The original red. Good arch on the front wheels, square as they should be at the back, and a perfect rubber bumper – all of which marked it as authentically what it claimed to be, at least. M DGET. Easily fixed, like all of this external stuff – cosmetic. Under the hood was where the real news would be. In a funny way, the worse the news the better it was for him. Barry, at the garage: ‘If it moves, son, you can’t afford it.’ He would make it move. Maybe not this month or the one after, but finally. A little impatiently he tried a door handle. He had an urge to rip through the blown-out window, taped shut with cardboard and masking tape.
‘It’s not a question of who feels more,’ the boy said. He was pulling a pebble back and forth across the tile with a foot. Felix leant against the car. ‘Soph? Soph? Look, I can’t talk now. Of course not! My phone was dead. No, not now. Please calm down. Soph, I’m in the middle of a thing. Soph?’ The boy took the phone from his ear and looked at it curiously for a moment. He slid it back into the pocket of his coat. Felix whistled.
‘Ninety-nine problems. I hear you, bruv.’
‘Sorry – what?’
‘The car. It’s got some problems.’
‘Well, yes,’ said Tom Mercer, and made an expansive gesture that meant to take in the whole vehicle. ‘Of course, it’s clearly a project car. This is not something you’re going to drive away in. Hence the price. Otherwise we’d be talking in the many thousands. Clearly a project car. Let me open it up, give you the full tour.’
Felix watched Tom wrestle with the key.
‘I can do that if –’ began Felix. The door popped.
‘Just needs a wangle. Project car, as I say. But doable.’ The tour turned out to be somewhat limited. ‘Clutch,’ said Tom, and ‘Gears,’ and ‘Steering wheel,’ brushing these objects vaguely with his hand, and then, as they both looked dolefully at the mouldy, curled carpet and rusted floor, the wool and wire bursting out of the stained upholstery, the hole where the radio should be, he murmured the year of manufacture.
‘Year I was born,’ said Felix.
‘Then it’s fate.’
Now the boy read off a series of facts from a small piece of paper he took from his pocket: ‘ MG Midget, one thousand five hundred cc Triumph 14 engine, 100,000 on the clock, manual, petrol, two-door roadster, transmission requires –’
Felix couldn’t resist: ‘Two doors, yeah? Got it.’
Tom blushed appealingly. ‘My father’s list. Not really a car man myself.’
Felix felt moved to pat him in a friendly way on his high, bony shoulders. ‘Just messing with you. Can we get a look under the hood?’
It creaked open. Beneath was all the bad news he could have hoped for. The battery overwhelmed by rust, the cylinder cracked. Pistons right through to the engine block.
‘Salvageable?’ asked Tom. Felix looked perplexed. Tom tried again: ‘Can it be saved?’
‘Depends. What sort of money we talking about?’
Tom looked once more at his piece of paper.
‘I’ve been instructed around the tho
usand mark.’
Felix laughed and reached his hand into the engine. He scratched at the rust with a fingernail.
‘To be honest with you, Tom, I see these come in every day, in better condition than yours, much better – for six hundred. No one’s gonna pay six hundred for this. This one you won’t be able to sell to no one but a mechanic, I promise you.’
The sun now hit the car directly: the bonnet lit up. Radiant wreck! Tom looked up, squinting.
‘Good thing you’re a mechanic, then, isn’t it?’
There was something funny about the way he said it. Both men laughed: Felix in his big gulping way, Tom into his hand like a child. The phone in his pocket started up.
‘Oh Jesus – look, it’s not really any skin off my nose, but if I tell my father I took less than seven hundred I’ll never hear the end of it. Personally I’d much rather be back in my bed. Excuse me a second – Soph, I’ll call you back in one minute –’ But he kept the phone to his ear and Felix heard more than he wanted to as Tom mimed apologies at him. At the end of the road, a happy roar rose up from a crowd at one of the pub’s outdoor tables. Tom raised his eyebrows quizzically at Felix and made the ‘lifting a pint’ gesture; Felix nodded.
‘What’ll you have?’
‘Ginger beer, thanks.’
‘Ginger beer and?’
‘Nah, that’s it.’
‘Look, for me it’s hair of the dog – least you can do is join me.’
‘Nah, I’m all right. Just ginger beer.’
‘My father says there’s only two sentences a self-respecting Englishman should accept in this situation: I’m on antibiotics and I’m an alcoholic.’
‘I’m an alcoholic.’
Felix looked up from the slats of the wooden table. Tom wiped the sweat from his forehead, opened his mouth but said nothing. Felix took a moment to appreciate that his own skin could not broadcast shame so quickly or so well. Tom’s phone started up again.
Felix rose up from the bench. ‘Don’t worry, mate, you take your call. I’ll go. Pint, yeah?’
Outside it was a glorious Saturday lunchtime in late summer; inside it was ten o’clock at night on a Tuesday in October. The ceiling black and carved into hexagons, the carpet light-absorbing and dark green. conn-wood furniture, ancient and heavy. One old man sat in the corner by the jukebox, in a shabby donkey jacket, with white papery skin and yellow hair and nails, rolling a cigarette – he looked like a cigarette. At the bar, a skinny-legged old girl perched on a stool counted and recounted four piles of twenty-pence pieces. She stopped this activity to stare frankly at Felix, who only smiled back. ‘All right,’ he said, and turned to the barmaid. The old woman sliced suddenly at the towers of coins with the side of her palm. Felix’s reflexes were quick; he saved one pile from flying off the bar altogether. In his peripheral vision he saw Tom heading for the toilets. The barmaid mouthed ‘sorry’ and screwed a finger into her temple. ‘No worries,’ said Felix. He took a cold glass in each hand. He let the barmaid put a packet of salt and vinegar crisps between his teeth.
‘How old are you, Felix?’
‘Thirty-two.’
‘But why d’you look younger than me?’
Felix split the bag of crisps down the seam and laid them out on the table.
‘Is it. How old are you?’
‘Twenty-five. I’m already losing my bloody hair.’
Felix bit down on his straw and smiled round it. ‘My old man’s the same way. No wrinkles. Genetics.’
‘Ah, genetics. Explanation for everything these days.’ Tom shielded his eyes with his hand, to make out the sun was bothering him. Felix’s gaze was intense – he met your eyes no matter how you tried to avoid it – and Tom was not used to looking at even his closest friends that way, no matter a perfect stranger to whom he hoped to sell a car. He took a pair of sunglasses out of his pocket and put them on. ‘And how did you get from working in film to mechanicing, if you don’t mind me asking?’
‘I’ve done all sorts, Tom,’ said Felix cheerfully, and got his fingers into position to count them off. ‘Cheffing, that’s where I started – I did a GNVQ in catering, didn’t I – got quite far with that when I was younger; head chef at one point at this little Thai place in Camden, all right place; chucked that in, did a bit of painting and decorating, bit of security, you know, in the clubs, bit of retail, drove a truck delivering them crisps you’re eating round the M25, worked for the Royal Mail,’ said Felix, with an accent so peculiar it was hard to imagine who was being impersonated. ‘Used to make these.’ He pointed at his chest. ‘Then got lucky, got into some stuff – You know the Cot-tes-low?’ asked Felix, slowly, as a way of marking all the vital Ts. ‘It’s a theatre,’ he explained, abandoning all the Ts and adding an F. ‘Near here. Was front of house for a year, box office that means. Then I was assistant backstage, putting the props where they needed to be, all that – that’s how I got into the film thing. Just very very lucky. Always been lucky. But then I really got deep in the drug thing, to tell you the truth, Tom, and I’m just basically picking myself up off the floor from that the past few years, so.’
Tom waited for the bit about the mechanic thing – it didn’t come. Like a man who has been thrown a lot of strange-shaped objects, he clung to the one that struck him first.
‘You used to make T-shirts?’
Felix frowned. It was not the thing that usually interested people. He stood up and pulled at his own T-shirt so its faded message at least read straight without creases.
‘I’m sorry, I don’t speak – is it Polish?’
‘Exactly! Says: I Love Polish Girls.’
‘Oh. Are you Polish?’ asked Tom doubtfully.
That struck Felix as very funny. He fell back in his seat and was a good time repeating the question, slapping the table and laughing, while Tom took quiet sips off the head of his pint like a little bird swooping over a puddle.
‘Nah, Tom, nah, not Polish. London born and bred. These I did a long time back – business venture. Five years back – know what? It’s seven. Time flies, innit! Truthfully it was my old man’s idea, I was more like … the money man,’ said Felix awkwardly, for it was a bold way to describe his thousand-pound stake. ‘Each one was in its own language. I love Spanish girls in Spanish, I love German girls in German, I love Italian girls in Italian, I love Brazilian girls in Brazilian –’
‘Portuguese,’ said Tom, but the list continued.
‘I love Norwegian girls in Norwegian, I love Swedish girls in Swedish, I love Welsh girls in Welsh – that was more of a joke one, you get me? Nah, that’s harsh, but you know what I’m saying – I love Russian girls in Russian, I love Chinese girls in Chinese. But there’s two types of Chinese – not many people know that, my mate Alan told me. You got to have both. I love Indian girls in Hindi, and we had a lot of different ones in Arabic, and I love African girls in I think it was Yoruba or something. Got the translations off the Internet.’
‘Yes,’ said Tom.
‘Made three thousand of them and took them to Ibiza, to sell them, didn’t I. Imagine you’re walking through Ibiza town with a T-shirt says I love Italian girls in Italian! You’d clean up!’
Repeating the idea, with Lloyd’s enthusiasm, as Lloyd had first conveyed it to him, Felix was almost able to forget that they had not cleaned up, that he had lost his stake, along with the good job at the Thai restaurant he had given up, at Lloyd’s insistence, so that he could go to Ibiza. Two thousand five hundred T-shirts still sat in boxes in Lloyd’s cousin Clive’s lock-up, under the railway arches of King’s Cross.
‘Tom, what about you?’
‘What about me what?’
Felix grinned. ‘Don’t be shy now. What would I put you down for?
Everyone got a type. Let me guess: bet you like some of that Brazilian!’
Tom, somewhat dazzled by the gleaming hardware in Felix’s mouth, said: ‘I’ll say French,’ and wondered what the true answer was, and found it troubling.
‘French girls. Right. I’ll throw one of them in with the deal. Still got a few.’
‘Isn’t it me who’s making the deal?’
Felix reached over the table and patted Tom on the shoulder.
‘Course it is, Tom, course it is.’
The phrase ‘the drug thing’ still hovered over the table. Tom left it alone.
‘And are you married, Felix?’
‘Not yet. Planning to. That your missus keeps belling you?’
‘Christ, no. We’ve only been going out nine months. I’m only twenty-five!’
‘I had two kids when I was your age,’ said Felix, and flashed the screen of his phone at Tom. ‘That’s them in their Sunday best. Felix Jnr; he’s a man now himself, almost fourteen. And Whitney, she’s nine.’
‘They’re beautiful,’ said Tom, though he hadn’t seen anything. ‘You must be very proud.’
‘I don’t see much of them, to tell you the truth. They live with their mum. We ain’t together. To be honest, me and the mum don’t really get on. She’s one of them real … oppositional women.’
Tom laughed, and then saw that Felix had not meant to be funny.
‘Sorry – I just – well, it’s a good phrase for it. I think that may be what I’ve got on my hands. An oppositional woman.’
‘Listen, if I told Jasmine the sky’s blue, she’d say it’s green, you get me?’ said Felix, clawing at the label on his bottle of ginger beer. ‘Got a lot of mental issues. Grew up in care. My mum was in care – same thing. Does something to you. Does something. I known Jasmine since we was sixteen and she was like that from time. Depressed, don’t leave the flat for days, don’t clean, place is like a pigsty, all of that. She’s had a hard time. Anyway.’
