by Geoff Ryman
Glum, she stands, admitting defeat. Cath will start.
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206
MR MICHAEL HANSHAW
Outward appearance
Slim, youngish black man. Grey slacks, red-striped sweater, elaborate jacket in art deco knitted patterns and leather panels. Starts to whistle edgily, in competition with the woman opposite.
Inside information
A 27-year-old telephone engineer with British Telecom. The job is skilled and well paid. Mike spends his days out on call. Lunchtimes, he lifts weights with two guys from work. He has a wife and a one-year-old baby daughter. Going to an appointment with a private South Bank clinic for drug abuse.
What he is doing or thinking
He’s down. The world is shrivelling like a bad apple and he feels like he’s wading through glue.
Coke doesn’t change him; it makes him more himself. He sizzles through work, jokes with his friends, pumps iron, goes home and makes his wife giggle. The world seems full of love.
He remembers the first time he took it, at a party full of people he only half-knew and half-liked. His cousin Colin laid it out for him. That night, kipping at Colin’s, Michael had a dream. It was more like a vision. All his friends were beyond the bedroom door and they made a light that shone under it, concentrated and searing like a star.
Michael loves cocaine. He’s signed a piece of paper that acknowledges he will be injected with a drug that reacts to it. If he uses coke, the drug will make him ill. The contract says it could even kill him.
He thinks of his wife and daughter. And the light.
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207
MISS ANGELA DOWD
Outward appearance
Battered orange leather jacket with diamond-pattern shoulders. Black tights with a hole in the thigh, motorcycle boots with elaborate shin pads and rows of undone buckles. Ring through nose, black T-shirt with the logo ‘Misbegotten’. Long hair with pink highlights. Takes out mirror, examines her eye. Starts to read last night’s Evening Standard.
Inside information
Part-time art teacher and band member. Was part of the Dublin scene for years. Knows Bono. Friend also of Annie Jeanrenaud.
Eighteen months ago, the band got a gig in Paris. With all their gear, they took a minicab to the airport. At check-in, Angela realized that she’d forgotten her passport and dashed back home.
Only to find the cab driver standing embarrassed in her sitting room, hugging her stereo, jiggling it up and down as if it were a baby.
Angela teaches art at Wormwood Scrubs. Yesterday, that cab driver showed up in her class. He stared embarrassed again.
What she is doing or thinking
Keeping her cool. She checks out her split ends: long hair doesn’t really suit the image anyway. She examines her eye: she’s got a stye coming.
Actually, it’s kind of cool to be in a situation where you’re training somebody who robbed you. Why else did she volunteer to teach art in prison? She picks up the Standard. And puts it down.
Because she’s fucking angry. She’s angry because she missed the plane, missed the gig; the police treated her like the criminal. And because at night, alone in her house, she’s not cool at all.
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208
MR DAVID OFFSEY
Outward appearance
Precise-looking gent of a certain age in a traditional suit. Newspaper held awkwardly high. Sits legs wide apart, a large bandage over his nose.
Inside information
The maître d’hôtel of the Britannia Club, near Waterloo. Appearances are important for the job.
David was trimming his hedge when he noticed blood on the leaves, on his trousers. It seemed that he had cut off the tip of his nose with the gardening shears. His wife asked him why he was on his knees. ‘I’m looking for my nose,’ he replied, testily.
She drove him to the clinic. ‘You can’t park there, sir,’ said the porter.
‘Oh can’t we?’ replied David, sounding as if he had a cold. He removed his hand from his face. The porter went white.
They repaired the nose by transplanting his foreskin.
What he is doing or thinking
It was a painful operation. Why aren’t people sympathetic?
At breakfast, his son Peter smiled. ‘I always knew you were a dickhead, Dad.’
‘It’ll certainly change how I see a kiss on the cheek,’ giggled his wife.
On the train platform, smelly Vince insisted on talking loudly about circumcision. ‘It’s like having an eyelid removed. The tip is that sensitive. You walk around bow-legged for days.’
The people at work were equally flippant. ‘So you’ll be like Pinocchio then,’ said Billy the bellhop. He mimed a massive facial erection.
‘Brings a whole new meaning to the expression Nosey Parker, doesn’t it?’ mused Dora behind the desk.
David rattles the newspaper. Can’t see the humour in it at all.
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209
MRS ALENKA MISJEKA GARRISON
Outward appearance
Fierce-faced, well-built, middle-aged woman. Hair in a professional bob. Under the bulky coat, her white suit displays devastating cleavage.
Inside information
Alenka’s husband is nice, handsome, and works constantly to keep her happy. For Christmas he gave her a Ford Sierra. Alenka works constantly at being friendly with her fourteen-year-old step-daughter. She is a civil engineer for Dobbs near Blackfriars. Unusually for a woman in an engineering company, she holds a senior position.
Until 1968, Alenka’s father was a notable figure in the Czech government. Alenka remembers giving wrong directions to the invading Russian troops. The Foreign Ministry helped her family escape by giving them holiday visas for Tunisia. They lived in Tunis for four years, then were granted entry to the UK. Alenka changed countries at fourteen and eighteen. She now habitually restages such catastrophic migrations.
What she is doing or thinking
The season has changed. Alenka will get off at Waterloo and instead of turning right for Blackfriars, she will turn left for the Shuttle to Paris.
To lose her too-nice husband whom she pictures unloading clothes from a laundry basket. She sees his trusting daughter. Learn, Alenka tells her: life is not for trusting.
Her computer full of notes and research; her closet full of clothes and shoes; the flat full of photographs from this life; especially the Christmas Sierra. She will lose everything. She will be stripped of it, as if naked. That makes her feel engorged. In a dream, she gets off and walks towards the Shuttle.
London Spring.
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210
MRS REZIA BEGUM
Outward appearance
Bolt-upright, older woman wearing orange pyjamas, long peach top, and a gilded shawl. Her face is rigid, as if carved out of polished wood.
Inside information
Rezia’s uncle married her to a distant cousin in the UK. It was a magnificent match. She went from a village in Bengal to Brick Lane, and from there to Harrow. Her husband runs a restaurant in some place called Lamabett. She has never been there. Rezia only knows its name and that it’s on the Bakerloo line.
Her husband did not come home last night. She is going to the restaurant to find him.
What she is doing or thinking
After 30 years, Rezia misses her mother. She buys dresses from strangers. It is not the same as your family making them for you. Her sister writes tearful letters about the good life Rezia must be having. Could she send more money?
Back home, Rezia would have lived with her husband’s mother, who would now be dead, leaving her to run things. Even 20 years of mother-in-law would be better than the huge English house on two floors with its gardens and silence. All three of her children have left home. Rezia wears silence like a clo
ak. Sometimes it does not seem worth getting up in the morning.
Now her fat, handsome husband has disappeared. She sat up all night; he did not telephone. If he died, who was there to tell her? Would she have to bury him alone?
Lamabett. Where is that?
The train pulls out of Lambeth North.
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211
MR ANDREW VOWLES
Outward appearance
Tall, pudgy black man with long hair brushed straight down his back. Conservative brown suit, worn but expensive shoes. Carries translucent shopping bags full of unlabelled tins. Along with a tin opener.
Inside information
Qualified industrial caterer and past nominee for a Foody Award (Industrial section). Teaches at the Education Authority’s Catering Training Unit, a homely bungalow in a Peebrane Estate near Waterloo.
The bags contain prototypes for a new product—ready-prepared West Indian dishes. Andrew has a theory about why Indian restaurants prosper and West Indian don’t.
White people aren’t frightened of Asians. Working-class Brits, intimidated by posh eateries, feel at home with a curry and lager served by a small polite brown man to whom they can still feel superior.
But they’re frightened of Caribbeans. And there are Caribbeans who would be buggered if they’ll be waiters to anyone.
So how to get the British eating West Indian food? The answer is to serve it to them in non-West Indian environments. Andrew’s Typically Tropical line of prepared food would be served in Italian restaurants, Thai restaurants, even Indian restaurants. He hopes to premiere his new product at this February’s IFE 95 show.
What he is doing or thinking
Rehearsing his pitch. He pictures the bank manager. Did he know that chicken tikka is the second most popular British sandwich after egg mayonnaise? Did he know that Thai and Tex Mex are now the fifth and sixth most popular forms of cuisine? The British have developed a taste for spicy food.
But not, evidently, for spicy people.
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212
MR HENRY FISHER
Outward appearance
Tall, hefty, raw-fingered ex-public schoolboy in conventional pinstripe suit and sensible shoes. Standing up, eyes closed, smiling. Purple port-wine stain across his forehead, right eye and cheek.
Inside information
Civil servant working in the MOD. His normal exit is Embankment. Got on the tube at Paddington, which was packed. He fell asleep standing up.
What he is doing or thinking
In a reverie of Jenny. They met at a party of his cousin’s and knew each other for quite a while before he got the courage to ask her out. Finally, his cousin told him to get a move on. To his surprise Jenny replied yes, without hesitation.
It was like the torment of university all over again. Henry didn’t know what to do. He ended up taking Jenny to the Savoy,5 with its mirrored dining room over the river with the hundred-year-old dance band in the corner. Jenny said she’d always wanted to see it, and with a pixilated grin, toured its bars, hat-checks, and theatre lobby. The bill came to £200.
After that, he treated her to nachos and movies. Nothing else. All his life, you see: his face.
Last night, Jenny coaxed him back into her flat and they made love. Henry was still a virgin, but it made no difference. Pent-up energy or something. They seemed to roll all night long in clouds of each other.
A woman shouts, ‘Leave it!’ Henry jerks awake: Good Lord, Lambeth North.
He jumps through the doors just in time. And thinks of Jenny.
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Another helpful and informative 253 footnote
5 I once went to the Savoy. I was walking back along Waterloo Bridge, Westminster on one side, St Paul’s on the other. We were cold, hungry, it was Christmas, and who knows when friends would see each other again?
So, like Henry, we blew £200 at the Savoy. The art deco overhang as you drive in, all polished silver deco metal shapes, is stunning. Inside, the deco is replaced by a mishmash of styles—Greek columns, mirrors, old carpet, palms.
The hotel was built in 1884 to adjoin the Savoy Theatre, home of Gilbert and Sullivan opera. The theatre was the first public building in London to be lit with electricity. The hotel had electric lights and lifts. Ritz was the manager, Escoffier the chef, Bernhardt nearly died there, Caruso sang. It was big news. It is less big news now. But you still have to have a tie and jacket.
The theatre, the hotel and the surrounding gardens are on the site of the old Savoy Palace, which was built in the 13th century. It was rebuilt between 1345 and 1370 by Henry, Duke of Lancaster. Geoffrey Chaucer was married in its chapel. It was said to be the finest house in Britain.
History repeats, and repeats.
213
MR STEVEN WORKMAN
Outward appearance
Plump, milk-white, 35, in a grey suit, a tie that turns sideways, black Oxford shoes, and black Oxford hair complete with dandruff.
Inside information
Freelance systems analyst. Steven never fitted into corporate life. On time for an appointment with Adventure Capital.
What he is doing or thinking
Rehearsing his presentation.
‘The technology exists to give every driver in the country instant knowledge of (cue Powerpoint slide)
where on the map they are
the best way to get to their destination
traffic problems en route.’
Scotland Yard’s traffic monitoring unit has agreed to lease Steven their information. Traffic flow, cash flow.
‘I call the system,’ he will say, ‘The Knowledge. Every car could have its own personal taxi driver.’
The doors open at Waterloo: his stop. Stumbling out, Steven catches his watch in a woman’s hair. He tugs, thinking it will come free. The woman yelps.
The doors close. Damn. Frazzled hair is clenched between the sections of his metal watchstrap. Anyone could see, the only way is to pick it free strand by strand. Why isn’t she helping?
Instead, she shouts. ‘It hurts!’
‘Do you have a pair of scissors?’ he asks.
‘What?’ Her eyes tear up; her arms fold.
He explains: ‘I’ve got an appointment.’ He starts to take off his watch.
‘Will you stop that!’
They’re already at Lambeth North. ‘Look, I’ve got to get off.’
‘That’s too bloody bad,’ she says.
He gestures in frustration; her head is tugged again.
Leave it!’ she says. The doors rumble shut. Both of them are swept on to the Elephant.
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214
MR CHRISTOPHER BRETTENHAM
Outward appearance
Tall, graceful man, older than he looks. Longish red-blond hair, open countenance, donkey jacket, jeans and boots. Looks up from a book by Patrick Leigh Fermor to peer across the aisle.
Inside information
Stage hand at the Royal National Theatre, South Bank. Has survived all the contracting out. No longer actually helps build sets, instead determines budgets and badgers the contractors to stay within them. Loves travelling and has visited the Yemen, New Guinea, Pakistan, the Andaman Islands and, in 1985, Thailand.
What he is doing or thinking
He has recognized Yong Y’oud from the airplane voyage back to London ten years before. Christopher has never forgotten him.
Chris went to visit a friend who was working with Laotian refugees all along the Mekong. He saw a Thailand tourists to Pattaya, Bangkok or Chiang Mai never see. In places it was like the wild west, with anti-communist private armies. But employers took an interest in their employees’ children, and bought them gifts, and found work for the protégées of their protégées.
On the airplane, Chris was friendly to Yong Y’oud. He said something simple like ‘What will you do in Engl
and?’ Instead of being rewarded with a delighted smile, there was an awkward, bitter smirk. ‘I live there,’ Yong Y’oud said.
Christopher knew then: this one has lived in the West. This is what we do to them. To each other.
Chris thinks of the monks under trees, the women serving soup from corner carts, the beautiful children in uniform. He decides: it is time he saw Thailand again.
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MR BENJAMIN POSTHATE
Outward appearance
Fiercely red, thinning hair over pinched red face, grey suit, metal-edged square briefcase.
Inside information
Communications officer for Sum Total, the insurance company which insures Amina Khatun’s store. On his way to express his unhappiness with the Cut Health Centre, a one-stop health advice shop.
What he is doing or thinking