White Trash

by John King

  Standing at the window of his hotel room, Jonathan Jeffreys poured himself a glass of champagne and viewed the scenery. To his left sprawled the airport with its endless terminals and warehouses, a mess of brick bunkers and potholed yards saturated with spent gasoline. Worker ants toiled through day and night squabbling over petty differences. The flesh was weak, but the mind weaker still.

  Machines dwarfed these fools, luxury airlines passing over their heads spewing waste. Cables transported voltage to lost corners of the complex where bone-idle men hid beneath flat caps drinking endless mugs of tea. These work-shy loafers played cards and told filthy jokes about female workers who whiled away the hours painting their nails. Vacuum cleaners and mops remained unused as the filthy state of the multi-storey car parks shocked visitors, the stench of ground-in engine oil and leaking pipes turning stomachs.

  Mr Jeffreys had viewed this first hand. Carbon monoxide trapped between car-park levels was bad enough, but the unscrubbed urine stains and piled rubbish made him ashamed to be British. This was not a town-centre bus station, for God’s sake, it was an international airport.

  What would foreign businessmen and holiday-makers think? It did not create a good impression. In between the car parks holes scarred the road and diggers sat unused behind rows of dented cones. Barriers slowed the traffic and created jams. Tens of thousands of people worked in the airport, yet they could not even tend the lifts, let alone organise efficient baggage collection. The only oases of dignity were the departure lounges, where duty-free shops sold luxury goods. Here he was able to relax in a hospitality lounge while contemplating an impending trip to New York or Rome, the golden beaches of the Caribbean or Maldives.

  He allowed himself to be transported back to his most recent vacation, waylaid momentarily with memories of the short break he had enjoyed in New York since. Four days in which to attend Broadway productions and visit old friends in Manhattan. There was a cut-throat vitality about the city which he appreciated. The best people were not afraid of consumption and held a healthy disdain for those prepared to fester in the poorer zones, wallowing in their own misery. There was none of that peculiarly British hypocrisy with which he himself, unfortunately, complied. A trip to New York had also meant he was able to see Donna, whom he had met during his three weeks in the Maldives. How he had needed that holiday. To not only recharge his batteries but regain his composure. He had allowed himself to become overworked and this had affected his concentration. He had pushed himself far too hard, forgetting that the constant quest for perfection carried a hidden toll. Everything had become too much and he had teetered on the edge of the abyss. He had made mistakes and put his career at risk.

  The accommodation had been perfect on this Maldives jaunt. Simple yet very comfortable. Screens protected him from insects and air-conditioning from the heat. The coral island on which he stayed was minute. Remote and peaceful. Within hours of his arrival the heavy weight of responsibility began to lift.

  The swimming pool was cool and refreshing after the probing heat of the sun and his skin quickly tanned. Muscles stretched with regular swimming. The food was superb, and he enjoyed some of the best fish he had ever tasted. He drank in moderation. Ventured to various lagoons in chartered boats. The resort was exclusive and he was spoilt by the staff. Palm trees masked the deck outside his bungalow, from where he could scan the sea, all very different to the last seafront he had viewed on the south coast of England.

  He was distracted from these pleasant memories of the Maldives as he recalled those two years spent on the south coast working in that godforsaken hospital, forced to live in a decaying resort filled to the brim with pensioners, shabby locals and the dregs of London sent down to rot by desperate councils who could no longer cope. He could not walk along the street without seeing failure, be it the flaking paint of empty hotels and hostels or the unemployable with their plastic bags and specially reduced, out-of-date food. He had stayed in the town’s best hotel, but this was not saying a great deal. Summer was a little better, but the rest of the year dire.

  The hospital had suffered vicious epidemics during his two winters there. It was quite ridiculous, and he had been under pressure from his very first day. Not that he was complaining, or not up to the task. It was just that under such circumstances he had to be more concentrated than ever. The hospital was hard-pressed and with staff working overtime his decisions were even more vital than usual. Resources were stretched to the limit and he had to work faster than he liked. He did not feel comfortable and believed that his standards risked being compromised. Of course, he had done his best, and knew that he had helped ease the congestion. He had definitely made a difference, and that was some consolation.

  He sipped his bubbly and returned to the Maldives, recalled his holiday romance with Donna, the poor thing in equal need of a break from a hectic schedule. Jonathan greatly respected American values within the workplace. Much of the culture he found shallow, based on quantity rather than quality, yet the American dedication to a free-market ethos more than made up for the crassness. This lack of quality was to be expected. There could not be consumer freedom without a compromising of standards. The masses had to express themselves through their consumption and business merely supplied the means, interpreting and repackaging their cheap tastes. It was no good feeding caviar to a pig as the beast would not appreciate such a delicacy. People were similar to pigs. Why feed the common man quail’s eggs when he would crack them into a greasy frying pan and plaster the resulting mess over a slice of toasted bread?

  Donna herself was an intelligent, and beautiful, woman. She admitted on the night they met that she made movies for morons. Those were her exact words. The people dictated her product and she was their servant. Jonathan found her easy to speak with and very cheerful. As the only two people holidaying alone it was perhaps natural that they should find each other. They swam together in the pool and ate lunch in the shade. Went on a fishing trip and caught a baby shark. Snorkelled in among the coral of a lagoon. Made love in Donna’s room.

  It had been a romantic interlude to both their lives, but he did not see the relationship developing into something long-lasting. Naturally he looked forward to their rendezvous in New York yet did not pine for the woman. They had enjoyed each other’s company and that was enough. He appreciated her achievements and vitality while she was impressed by the fact that he reminded her of the actor Hugh Grant. It was a typically American thing to say of course. She appreciated his restraint and modesty, plus the fact that he was articulate and toned, soon to be tanned. She knew that as an American he had the one thing her own wealth could never buy. If he was to fall on hard times, gamble his fortune away or give it to charity, he would still have breeding. Being wealthy was icing on the cake, so to speak. He laughed and ran his tongue along the rim of his glass.

  Donna was a fine-looking woman who also kept to a fitness regime despite her workload, but it was her vitality that he most admired. There was a lack of tradition that freed her to make hard decisions with barely a second’s thought. This was something that he found near enough impossible, bogged down as he was by history and precedent. She was from a good New York family and had been educated at the best schools and universities, yet she still possessed the pioneering spirit.

  He turned away from the airport and looked to his right. Here lay the outer reaches of London and the town in which he worked, a monstrous carbuncle on the edge of a great capital. Another tangle of confusion, it had none of the romance of the airport, which at least offered a gateway to New York, Rome, Paris, cultural centres on a par with central London. In the town where he plied his trade, the scent of Chanel and cappuccino was replaced by the stink of cheese-and-onion crisps and barrelled lager, a stomach-churning stench of batter and curry powder etched into the very brickwork. This was a sordid world with no meaning or will to change on the part of dull people who walked in never-ending circles, too stupid to understand that their lives were futile. That they amo
unted to nothing, however much they tried to delude themselves.

  These things were determined at birth. Had they read the classics, he wondered. The texts of Socrates, Sade and Nietzsche? If by some miracle they had, was there a brilliant professional mind by their side to guide them towards the true meaning of the words? Did they listen to the great composers being interpreted by the world’s finest orchestras? Did they view the masters? Take tea at the Ritz? Venture to the theatres of the West End and boutiques of Knightsbridge? No, they drank Coca-Cola in McDonald’s and watched football matches and searched for cut-price pints and shopped in cheap bazaars. It was the difference between high and low culture, the latter term assuming a quality that did not actually exist. There was no culture there, just an energy-sapping mediocrity dressed up in garish sentiment.

  Jonathan Jeffreys was in reflective mood. He lifted his glass once more, fully appreciating the year. But he was feeling generous of spirit. The lights twitching in the distance masked so many ordinary lives that he was almost humbled by a sense of scale, the sheer size and complexity of the universe, the eternal battle between Man and Nature, the constant struggle for perfection.

  His face was held in the window, his reflection merging with the airport and the town, depending on the angle of his head. It was a curious effect and best enjoyed with a casual glance, both outer and inner worlds visible. He held his glass high and toasted his success. Life had been good and long might it continue. He allowed his mind to wander once more.

  When he was a boy his parents had given him a pet. A puppy dog that immediately wet the carpet. His mother had beaten it with a stick in order to show that such an action was unacceptable. She was being cruel to be kind. Even now he could recall the crack of wood on bone. He had laughed at the time, but nervously, unsure how to react. The sound of the puppy’s skull vibrating from the blow remained with him, its squeal high-pitched and primitive, slightly disconcerting. He had comforted the creature afterwards, amazed by the affection it displayed. The creature soon forgot its punishment, but did not mess the carpet again. This was during the holidays and one of the maids looked after his pet when he returned to school. He had tolerated the animal, but never felt particularly close to it, never allowed it to sleep in his room and did not stroke the fur. He was uneasy remembering a period a couple of years later when he had actually hit the animal to cause fear, then comforted it and rebuilt its trust. All children went through a stage in their lives when they displayed such cruelty and he now regretted his actions, but had been interested by this idea of trust, how it could be built so quickly.

  At a later date, when he became interested in science, he had used the poor dog for his childish experiments. On a couple of occasions his potions had made the animal vomit and roll its eyes. He realised secrecy was required and this was easily achieved. It was the crying that put him in danger of punishment, not silent contortions. Then there were the electric currents that made its body twitch. He winced thinking of this now. It had been so unnecessary and he had been so unaware. The dog would have howled the house down given the chance, but he had bound its mouth so only faint whimpering was audible. The dog became terrified of him for a while, yet it was very stupid and could always be tricked back. This notion of trust came to fascinate him. A natural childish interest in science could be misinterpreted as cruelty of course, but he knew for a fact that this was not the case.

  The masses were ignorant and therefore critical of such things as vivisection. Animals were objects that did not experience pain in the same way as human beings. Imposing human feelings on animals was ridiculous. The sentimental hordes held similar reactionary views about genetically modified crops, abortion, genetics, even the use of pesticides. For this reason the powers that made society work employed a great deal of tact. It was a shame, but the price of a society as yet unable to control its emotions. Sentimentalism angered Jonathan Jeffreys. Even as a teenager he had found it embarrassing. Those opposed to abortion and vivisection really did annoy him. Slaughterhouses were screened from view and guarantees given that the killing was humane, as if that was not an obvious contradiction in terms. The hypocrisy and easy self-deception of the people was truly amazing. Multinational companies understood this and employed public-relations agencies, then carried on regardless. Likewise the state. Misfits who dedicated their life to protest were arrested and sent to prison, the will of the people obeyed and its conscience massaged.

  As a teenager he had been interested in chemistry and physics, yet it was medicine, and later economics, that he had studied until his mid-twenties. He had also been intensely interested in the spiritual world. His parents were religious and he was raised to believe in God. Even so, from an early age he had started to ask questions. Was there an afterlife, for instance? Did consciousness end with death? If there was a heaven then how did anyone know what it was like? The Bible was not believable, his parents decent people who accepted it without question, yet he could not.

  He had a restless, enquiring mind. If there was only endless nothingness to look forward to then that would be unbearable. There had to be a life after death, there just had to be, yet the more he thought about the existence of heaven the more scared he became. What if he hated it there? Why should he be forced to stay for ever in a place he detested? The Bible had been written by men and they had created God in their own image. From fire and brimstone to socialism, the messages were confused. The same applied to the official view of heaven. These men did not know. As a teenager he was determined to control his own destiny.

  It was this desire for self-determination that separated man from the beasts, the intelligent man from the fool. He had never liked his pet, never felt emotion towards the animal, merely forgotten it as he grew older and let the maid dote on the creature. Pets were a sentimental attachment and this sort of thinking held back the higher minds. Dumb emotion curtailed the work of vivisectionists and geneticists, and stopped scientists experimenting on human beings. Why waste millions treating the mentally ill and physically disabled when they could serve the greater good? Of course they would have to be willing, he was not proposing enforced vivisection, but he felt these people would be happy to assist. It was all very well pumping rabbits full of chemicals and watching the response, recording blood-sugar levels and the growth of created cancers and tumours, but how much more efficient it would be if these tests were carried out on humans.

  Another source of ready labour was the truly poor. A mass of men and women who could be chosen according to their lack of importance to society. A dole-queue sponger who took and took and gave nothing back could be gainfully employed. They would receive payment of course. He was not advocating slavery. Was no Nazi or communist. He laughed at this ridiculous idea and admired his face in the glass. Knew that women found him attractive.

  When he turned eighteen his pals had given him a woman as a present. He was a virgin and had no sexual experience whatsoever. They had referred to this young woman as a lady of the night, chuckling and egging him on. They had been drinking wine in an Italian bar in Covent Garden and then walked over to Soho, which was a rough-and-ready area in those days. The memory made him wince. The girl herself had been low class. This was no discerning call girl with a luxury apartment and select list of clients but a common tart waiting at the top of a neonlit stairwell, the original gateway to hell. Her name was next to a buzzer and when he had ascended the stairs he found her door wide open. She was sluttishly glamorous with a childish voice, the skin powdered and eyes dull, no doubt from some sort of narcotic. She had performed oral sex on him in a seedy room above a striptease parlour and he had felt humiliation throughout. After he had ejaculated and withdrawn, he was overwhelmed with shame. The girl was disgusting and the room foul. He became angry at her for forcing him to lose control and refused to hand over the agreed fee. He attempted to leave the building but a large man had cornered him in the hall. Jonathan had been punched hard in the stomach and he was sick. This thug then forced him t
o pay the money, plus an extra five pounds to clean up the mess. The girl had come on to the landing and spat in his face. Called him all sorts of foul names. The man then struck him in the face and kicked him down the stairs. He could have died. Broken his neck perhaps. As he lay at the foot of the stairs their howls of laughter echoed in his ears. He stumbled into the street and vomited in the gutter.

  Fortunately nothing had been broken, but he had been sore for a week afterwards. It was a terrifying thing to happen to a sensitive young man. His friends had disappeared by the time he reached the street, and he found them in the restaurant where they had agreed to meet if they became separated. But not before he had been forced to run the gauntlet of the lowlife crowding the area. It had been an experience, but not one he ever wished to repeat. Thankfully his friends were not there to see him grovelling on the pavement, though outrage was expressed at his injuries. The result they believed of a mindless attack by a gang of football yobs.

  How Jonathan hated that prostitute. For spitting in his face as much as the oral sex and his own loss of control. He hated the man who had belittled him so easily. He thought about returning and finding the girl. Telling her what he thought of her. But he was not stupid. He knew that it was far too dangerous. He held no sway in that twilight world. Things had quickly spiralled out of his control and he had found himself at their mercy. He shuddered even now, sipping his champagne so many years after. The man could have stabbed him, slashed his throat, kicked him to death. He could have jumped up and down on his skull or castrated him like a dog. Anything. Jonathan had been completely powerless for the first time in his life and it had been a sobering lesson.