by James Hawes
I sat there for some time, then found that the key was in my hand. I started the car. She caught first time, as always. Yes, I had done well indeed, motor-wise! As I drove off, I did not even bother to check my enemies. I could see them in the corner of my eye, standing completely motionless. I looked back once in the mirror and there they still were, as if waiting for an Edwardian photographer to say it was all right for them to move once again. Would they stay frozen there for ever, victims of my modern gorgonry, one of the sights of south London for generations to come?
Trouserless still, I steered, accelerated and slowed the car for perhaps five minutes like a learner suddenly left to go solo, with enormous care in the actual business of driving but without being in the least aware of where I was heading. The car’s bonnet seemed to cover acres, the dash looked a mile away, the steering wheel felt as if it was made entirely from soft rubber. I saw a quiet space on the side of the road. I punctiliously mirrored, then signalled, then manoeuvred, and so pulled up in text-book fashion.
I sat there awhile, succeeded at length in making my hands release their white death grip on the wheel, got out of the car with some difficulty, opened the back door, found my soaking trousers and pulled them on.
For some reason, that clammy wetness gripping my legs was the final straw, a truly dreadful feeling, a lost memory of shitty infanthood or a dark intimation of cold senility. It shrank my soul.
I considered, took a couple of steps away from the car, leaned down and was quite calmly but very profoundly sick.
40: My Little Armalite
After the chucking-up had stopped, a mountain-top clarity dawned on me. I stood there leaning on the bonnet of my Mercedes. Through the tears squeezed out by the vomiting and the rain running down from my hair, I could see all too well.
My little Armalite, I had said to the hoodied youths. Well, I knew where that came from, didn’t I?
No, no.
Oh yes.
Alone and cold before the court of my own memory, I swallowed queasily. I now knew why I had immediately recognised the silhouette of the upper receiver assembly so clearly. It had been a voice from a past to which, unlike most of my pasts, I did not refer.
Most of my peers and friends enjoyed my tales of manly derring-do on the Miners’ Strike. They laughed to hear how I had boldly outraged the young Tories at college by singing ‘Malvinas Argentinas’. They smiled wistfully at my Schweyk-like stories of the bad yet somehow good old days in East Germany. After all, everyone had a soft spot for the long-gone miners, no one thought the Falklands War justified and pretty well anything was better, or at least no worse, than America’s sole world hegemony, wasn’t it?
But even at dinner parties filled with fellow readers of The Paper, I never boasted, however drunk I got, that I had been for some years a fellow traveller of the IRA.
Said it.
Oh God.
I writhed as Memory stirred itself yet again.
For years, it had been a one-sided battle. My brain, being human, is equipped with a filter no computer can emulate. I have a crack five-star pre-installed utility called Self-Respect, which can wipe Memory pure every time. However often Memory came back and tried again, Self-Respect had always won, hands down. It simply could not be true. I could not have succoured and glorified thugs who destroyed ordinary people’s lives and killed children with bombs left at bus stops. It was just not possible.
But Memory was armed now, backed by the firepower of the gun in my car, and this time it was not going to give in. At last, it rebelled.
On the merciless screen of my mind, grey pebbledashed council estates in Derry (how authentic, how tough, how earthy!) faded back nastily into life, their walls covered in murals of men holding up machine guns with very recognisable silhouettes. Ah, those trademark carry-handles.
Yes indeed, that was how I had immediately recognised the gun this evening.
I was winched back into that shameful past. From deep in my gutless guts, the long-dreaded words were dredged up, flecked in vomit.
No, please! I can’t! I can’t sing that.
But I could.
I now leaned on my Mercedes bonnet and began softly to sing, ludicrous faux-Irish accent and all, a man keening for my lost leftie soul, all alone in the dark and the November rain:
It’s down by the Bogside that I want to be,
Lying in a ditch with me Provo company,
With a comrade to me left and a comrade to me right,
And a clip of ammunition for my little Armalite.
No, no, no. It had to go and it had to go right now. Into the river with it.
For a terrifying moment, I realised that I was picturing myself too, weighted down by the clutched gun, plunging gratefully into the black waters of the Thames. If I made it look like an accident, perhaps Sarah and the kids would still be OK, insurancewise … ?
I looked wildly around. Now for the first time, I saw where I was: a roadside in the middle of nowhere, somewhere in the deepest armpit of south-east London. A hole without CCTV. Now then, without further ado. Just slip the bloody thing out of the car and drive.
I spat a rancid gobbet of after-sick from my mouth and sauntered innocently round to the passenger door. I paused to let a thudding carload of scum pass me by, laughingly avoiding their scornful gazes (little did they know!) and then bent low in order to slide the gun out, muzzle-first, and just lay it in the gutter, naturally planning to be very, very careful not to point it at anything, especially myself.
But as my hand went for the gun barrel, I simply seized up.
I just could not touch the thing.
Before I could stop myself, I had leaped back and slammed the door shut again with a helpless little yelp of animal loathing, as if I had just discovered that my car held a very large and very deadly insect. I tried to force myself to have another try, but now I could not even bring my hand up to the door before it jerked itself back again. My breath jammed. Sweat rose instantly through my cold skin and my hands shook uncontrollably. My face locked in what I knew must be a grimace of pure terror.
I stood there for many seconds, staring helplessly at my own car, getting soaked.
Then the corners of my eyes were alight with colourful flashes as the police car pulled smoothly up behind me.
41: Vulnerability Assessment
Pleasure would be too strong a word, but as I let the lights of the police car flicker in the wet lenses of my specs, I listened to my own breathing and felt a wave of positively Eastern fatalism wash over me. Not pleasure, but not pain either.
After all the endlessly impossible choices of the evening and the night, it came as a relief. Perhaps this was how real criminals felt when, after long days and nights feverishly plotting creaky alibis and trying to work out whether their mates had in fact already shopped them, they decided to just confess all and be done with it?
No more decisions. Thank God for that.
I was ready now, and so I looked round. Behind their rain-spattered windscreen, the policemen slowly unhitched their seat belts and exchanged some kind of merry quip. They would check the car, of course. They would find the gun, assembled by me, cocked and loaded. I felt my shoulders relax and my eyes droop at last with the wonderful liberation of unfreedom. Actually, perhaps pleasure was not too far off the mark.
The driver‘s window of the car buzzed slowly down. The officer looked out at the rain and addressed me as one might an idiotic child.
—Just wait for us there, would you, sir?
—Right. Um, right.
As the cops prepared their paperwork and their equipment in a leisurely fashion while keeping out of the wet, letting me feel the full force of the weather and of their stately presence, I let the cold wind freeze me over once again and prepared myself for this radical change in my life.
Perhaps it would not be so bad, really?
Surely, in some way or another, the system would recognise that I was not just any old criminal? I mean, this was Engla
nd. Surely here of all places judges could spot, you know, that sort of thing?
Standard Client Vulnerablity Assessment Client 129/676/CO Dr J. Goode*
Age of Client:
45
Ethnic Background:
White British
General Appearance:
5’ 11”, 13.5 st, light build, clean-shaven
Distinguishing Marks:
Middle-class liberal
Education:
100th percentile (BA, MA, PhD)
Establishment:
HM Prison Wormwood Scrubs
Sentence:
Seven years
DETAILED ASSESSMENT
Dr Goode* has a peculiar status in this establishment, the result of his presenting a suite of characteristics which tend to make a Client, in the eyes of other Clients, worthy of ‘respect’.
1) The AR-15 Armalite assault rifle is generally known, even to senior UK Clients with a background in armed robbery, only as an iconic weapon from US films. To have personally brandished one about, cocked and loaded, is thus approximately the equivalent to our Clients (in terms of ‘respect’) of a young offender having been convicted of joyriding at 150 mph through central London in a Ford GT40.
2) In the UK (unlike in the US) the vast majority of gun crime is carried out by Repeat Male Clients of HM Prison Service who also exhibit a marked propensity to carry out less extreme acts of violence on a daily basis. Hence Dr Goode* is (no doubt erroneously) perceived by senior and opinion-forming Clients as a spiritual comrade in terms of a broad capacity for criminal actions. He thus suffers none of the harassment or abuse normally experienced by our (very rare) Clients from social/professional class B.
3) Physically non-challenging and carefully dressed, making no effort to drop his aitches or otherwise modify the complex circumlocutions and arcane cultural references of social/professional class B (he has, indeed, placed his several degree certificates in prominent positions on his cell walls), Dr Goode* agreeably fulfils, to our other Clients, the stereotype of the Oxbridge Professor, by which title, abbreviated in the usual manner, he is universally known (though he never in fact attained such a position). He is the regular recipient of gifts such as cigarettes and pornography, the unofficial hard currency of this establishment.
How long would I really get? Seven years? Five? Minus a few for parole? I might miss the boys being teenagers, but then again, at fourteen wouldn’t they rather have a famous absent father who had been jailed for toting an Armalite, rather than an ineffectual old git following them round the house trying vainly to arouse their interest in German history or to lay down the feeble law?
Famous, yes!
I mean, how many people with PhDs and full lecturing CVs in the liberal arts go to prison for carrying automatic weapons around London? My God, I would be truly special at last! The Paper would not be able to resist me now, surely? When I got out, the TV series would be mine! I would get rich on the insatiable appetite of law-abiding people to slum it with criminals. I would probably earn more that way than by seven years’ lecturing. And it would come in a lump sum, that was the vital thing which was never going to happen otherwise: think how this would affect the mortgage! Yes, yes, when you thought about it without being blinded by prejudice or bourgeois morality, a few years in prison would almost certainly do me more good than the same few years spent lecturing!
4) Dr Goode* appears positively to enjoy prison life. Given that he was, says he, for some years a blatant glorifier of a bunch of green, fascist, terrorist bastards just because it made him feel tough and dangerous when he was in fact a specky geek, he cheerfully asks on what grounds he should consider his present imprisonment in any way a global miscarriage of justice? He points out that he freely chose to spend his youth and strength, while others were surfing and dancing, beavering away in university libraries and wretched student rooms, unregarded and unloved, reading and annotating the works of a deservedly obscure writer (and, as it turned out, a lying, spying arsehole) from a now thankfully non-existent shithole which survived on the maps of Europe only so long as it was run by the Red Army. How, then, he asks, should he be imagined to view with any dismay the prospect of spending his tired and declining years in a prison library and a homely cell, visited regularly by the wife whom he never expected to win and the children (now resident within the catchment area of a decent school in Exeter) whom he never deserved, the object of many profitable offers for his memoirs (The Paper has already run several pieces on him), quietly reading the immortal works of Franz Kafka and suchlike?
*We are aware that the Home Office has asked HM Prison Service not to refer to Dr Goode by his academic title, but our latest legal advice is that we are obliged to do so. He is, as you know, currently appealing against the decision of the University of London to revoke his doctorate due to his non-liberal behaviour. His lawyers argue that…
—Been out tonight, sir?
—Sorry? No, no. Well, I mean, yes, obviously, but not in that way, no.
—We pulled you up because you were behaving somewhat strangely, sir.
—Yes, officer. You’re right. I was. And I can explain everything.
42: Superbug
Oh well.
OK, here goes. Days in the cells coming up. Just have to tell the whole truth. And point out that if they look at the hard drive of any humanities lecturer in the country they’ll find similar anti-American, anti-New Labour stuff, and that it all really means nothing. They could hardly argue that every humanities lecturer in the country is implicitly dodgy, could they? Of course not.
And yet, I was as guilty as sin. As a privileged, statefunded student at Oxford I had once nicked a milk bottle from the doorstep of a quiet little house where hard-working people and children slept. Just because I had been drinking all night and felt like it. I had been part of the moral rot, in big things and in small. Should I confess to that too? Yes, to everything: God, it was about time.
—I know I was behaving somewhat strangely, officer. And with good reason.
—I hope so, Dr Goode, because you’ll appreciate that this doesn’t look very good.
—Well, you see … I beg your pardon? Through the gauze of drink, fear and guilt, my brain pricked up at the unexpected sound of my own title. —How do you know my name?
—Computers, laughed the policeman, delighted at my amazement. —Just tap in your registration and there we are. Registered keeper of vehicle: Dr John Goode. Former address: Sheffield; six weeks ago registered change of address to London SE11. So, you new to London, Dr Goode, eh?
—Um, well, yes, I, got a job at University College, you see, and, well, anyway, look, I swear I’m not drunk, I’m happy to blow into the bag, officers! You see, the reason I’m out here, now, is, oh God, it’s a bit special, actually, it’s because …
—Oh, University College Hospital? My mum was in there last year. Very happy with her treatment too. Coming along very well. Perhaps you know her consultant? Dr Bracewell?
—Sorry?
—Dr Bracewell, consultant, genito-urinary medicine? he intoned, with insider‘s pride. I looked at his respectful face. My mouth shut once more. Light flooded my mind as my Englishman’s class radar glowed. It had, after all, been trained every day of my life. It now kicked in with all the incalculable speed of an inherited instinct. I immediately knew that if I got my front foot forward fast …
—Aha. GU, eh? I think you mean Mr Bracewell, officer, since he’s a consultant, ha ha.
—Yeah, that’s right! Mr it was. I could never work that one out. Is Mr posher than Dr then?
—Only in hospitals, officer. I raised a finger in mock warning, and laughed again. The policemen laughed too.
—Funny, that.
—It is, rather, isn’t it?
—Yeah, well, so, Doc, you’re happy to blow into the bag?
—Of course.
—Lost your bonnet badge, I see, Doc.
I turned. The other policeman was strolling around m
y Mercedes, kicking the tyres and checking the lights.
—Yes, some young thugs, no doubt. Is that a problem, officer?
—No, no. So, you said you had a good reason, a special reason for being out and, to be honest, acting a bit noticeable, did you, Doc?
—Yes, I did say that, didn’t I? And, of course, I have. The thing is, as I said, I’m not only willing to blow into the bag, but I think perhaps I really should do so. After all, I don’t want there to be any doubt about this. Because, you see, because the good and special reason I have for being out, and yes, I admit, acting a little strangely, is that, in fact, um, look, this is rather difficult, officer, officers, rather. We don’t want this getting about, obviously, but, well, the reason I got lost and had to stop and be sick, as you saw, is that I’m not feeling terribly well. I’m due for an early check-up at work. Before I go anywhere near the patients. Just a precaution, but even so …
—A precaution, Doc?
—Between you and me, officer, and I must ask you to let this go no further for now, your mother was lucky to have gone in last year. Our press officer would deny it, of course he would, but the fact is, well, there’s no getting round it: the superbug’s about on the wards again.
—The superbug!
—’Fraid so, officers. No, it’s not a pleasant thought. In here, should I blow? Obviously. I should say that this is only a precautionary check-up. It’s very probably not what I’ve got at all. It’s far more likely I’ve just picked up something else on my rounds. All sorts of nasties knocking about in hospital, eh? The, um, clinical probability of it actually being the superbug, the flesh-eating one, you know, er, Superbugii morbidus necrosis, is really very small, thank God, but obviously, officer, well, with something so contagious, and quite frankly incurable, I’m sure you understand that I don’t want to be getting close to my patients, or indeed anyone else until we can be quite certain. There. Did I blow hard enough? I think that’s me clear, then, isn’t it? Oh, and I should wash my hands as soon as I reasonably can, officer, if I were you. Better safe than sorry, eh? So, was there anything else, or am I OK to go for my check-up? You’re sure? Well, sorry to have given you any reason to stop, officers. Goodnight!