by Will Self
Late in the third tariff, when the headlight was close to dipping, Antonë Böm sat writing in his journal. His tiny, one-roomed semi lay two hundred paces beyond the Driver's on the shore of the inlet known as Sid's Slick. The room was bare, the brick walls unpainted. The tiny table was dwarfed by his plump form, and his plump form was overseen by the dark shadow the letric threw on the walls, a shadow that shifted uneasily in a draught. It had been a long tariff – the Driver had called over with great zeal. He had led the Hamstermen and the Chilmen in at least twenty runs and their points. The Hamsters – as was their way – had been cowed, as gluttonous for this spiritual sustenance as they were for the feast to come. The Hack's party, as in previous years, had been overawed by such Dävinanity in this peculiar place at the very edge of the Lawyer's dominion. Yet the Driver was clever enough to be politic – his battle for the fares of the Hamsters was a protracted one; and when the tariff had rolled on, the headlight had been switched on and the dashboard shone out over the placid lagoon, he faded away to his own gaff, so that Runti's flesh could be eaten and the sick dads of Chil anointed with moto oil.
Later still, old raps were sung in the island's Mokni, Effi Dévúsh making the call and the whole population – mummies, daddies, boilers, opares and kids – the response. Then the dancing commenced. In the margins of the firelight, where the shadows flickered and the darkness took on substance, Böm saw the gaunt form of Luvvie Joolee, the Exile, who had crept up to observe the festivities. She must by now, he thought, know what awaits Carl and me at first tariff. He tried to catch her eye but to no avail, for the tragic old boiler ignored him.
The last thing Böm noticed before he left were the wide eyes of the Chilmen, glazed by moto-oily gluttony, as they watched the increasingly abandoned gyrations of the Hamsters, pissed on the booze they'd brought, fags dangling from their sloppy lips. He guessed what the Chilmen were thinking: what a contrast there was between piety and licentiousness! The Chilmen cast surreptitious glances at the opares – who had undone their cloakyfings most immodestly. No doubt the pedalers and sick fares alike were wondering if they could afford the childsupport.
Böm could not rest – his lumpy sofabed held no appeal for him. In the morning the Guvnor and the Hack would deliberate everything before the Council. Who knew what else might come out concerning him and Carl? The Hamsters could not forbear from speaking when spoken to, and who could guess what Caff might say if she were examined? Böm had no illusions about what awaited him if he were returned to London. It was the curse of his speculative mind that had brought him to Ham in the first place, and the Inspectors had long memories while the PCO's Examiners possessed the harshest of powers. He sighed, dipped his biro in the inkwell and scratched on into the night.
Carl Dévúsh couldn't sleep either. When he finally went to his bed in the Funch gaff, and threw himself on to the rough palliasse in among the hurly-burly of his mates' limbs, their dream cries and night farts beset him. His mind stirred and turned. He recalled the bizarre garb of the Chilmen, their red jeans and ornate leather trainers. Every word the off-islanders spoke betrayed an unsettling incomprehension of all that was certain to Carl: the firm ground of Ham itself. To go out into the world of these fares, what would that be like? Besides, from what Antonë had told him, the strange ways of the Chilmen were as nothing compared to those of Londoners. It wasn't the threat of the PCO and its Inspectors that bothered Carl – such things were too remote – but the loss of his home, his beautiful island.
Towards first tariff, Carl crept out from the box bed, slapped across the yok flags, unlatched the door and went out into the greying gloom. He followed the same route he had the day before, back across the home field, over the ridge and around Hel Bä until he reached the old tower. Dave had switched off the headlight, but Carl had no need of it to find his way. He could have walked the whole island – saving the zones – in his sleep. Once at the tower, he walked under the heavy lintel, ignoring the buddyspikes growing out of the stonework that tore at his face. It wasn't strictly forbidden to enter the five towers of Ham, although it wasn't altogether allowed. Nevertheless the children had all been in before, frightening each other with tales of how the giants would get them. Sitting down in the remains of a fireplace, Carl looked up through the open roof of the tower to the screen. The dashboard still shone up there, the arrangements of lights the same as those he had been taught to recognize by Caff when he was a little fare, sitting on her lap on the ground outside the Ridmun gaff, his head nestling in the hollow of her neck.
– Vass ve ëdlite, she'd said, ven iss on fulbeem we C ve lites ahtside, yeah, ve streetlites uv Nú Lundun. An ven iss dipped, we C ve dashbawd, rí, mì lyttul luv?
– Owzabaht Dave, Mummi, vairs ee?
– Ees sittin infruntuv uz, luv, but we carn C im coz ees invizzibull.
– But ee can C uz, earn ee, Mummi?
– O yeah, mì luv, ee can C uz, ee sees uz in iz mirra. Ees lookin awl ve tym – lookin in ve mirra ä uz, an lookin froo ve screen 4 ve Loss Boy. An uppabuv im, mì luv, uppabuv im vairs ve Flyin I, an ee sees all ve wurl.
Yet now, seven years later, huddling in the fireplace at the giants' tower, Carl doubted that Dave saw anything at all in his mirror let alone him.
Midway through the first tariff of the following day, when the foglamp was already high over the Gayt, the dads of Ham gathered for the Council. While the Council wall was right by the manor, stands of willowstalk and blisterweed hid their deliberations from the prying eyes of mummies, opares and kids. The dads looked instead to the bay, where, through the sole gap in the vegetation, the Hack's pedalo could be seen, drawn up on the shore. Although there were only twelve dads and granddads now, Fred had told Carl that in his own youth twenty dads had deliberated, while a generation before that there had been more than thirty – all pitching in to argue and dispute the business of the community.
In those days the Council had been a babel, but in the years since the Driver came among them order had been imposed on the noisy little assembly. This was never more noticeable than during midsummer, when for a full month the Hack's party was in residence. Then the Council conducted itself with great solemnity, the better to impress the visitors. On the first day after the Hack had arrived it was customary for him to judge those wrongdoers who had committed crimes in the intervening year deemed too serious to be dealt with by the Guvnor. However, there were hardly ever any of these – theft and violence were all but unknown among the dads, while tittle-tattle, bubbling and other instances of bad faith were dealt with by Fred. A simple oath upon the Book was always sufficient to discover the truth, while a ticket of a few quid served for most offences.
The Driver had not intervened directly in the running of the Council – he was too wily for that. Yet the time the dads had to spend in the Shelter – a whole tariff each day, two every seventh – had brought a davine rigour to everything they undertook. There was this dampener on the little assembly, and there were also the first symptoms of the pedalo fever: noses were clogged up, throats were sore, eyes watered. Some of the dads were gripped by an ague so severe that their newly bartered fags shook from their fingers and fell to the beaten earth. That the Council had to judge the most serious crime on the island in thirteen years weighed heavily upon all of them, not least because until thirteen years previously the concept – let alone the actuality – of flying had been unknown on Ham.
The Hack sat on the highest part of the circular wall. He gathered his bubbery carcoat about his hunched back in tight pleats. His full side whiskers – an anomaly among the Hamstermen, who grew their beards from the chins alone – gave him a magisterial air. Fred Ridmun stood before him, his official baseball cap in one hand, his cudgel in the other, while Carl and Antonë sat on the ground at his feet.
– Mì sun, Fred said, az bin gó ä bì Tonë Böm, guv, ee nevah wooduv dun viss stuff wivaht Böm.
– U shor abaht vat? The Hack drew meditatively on his fag. Iz reel dad dun stuff lyk
e viss innal, innit?
– But wurs, Fred answered. Far wurs.
– Wot cood B wurs van diggin in ve Zön, eh? Eye no wot sumuv U ló bleev in yer arts. Eye no U stil fink vat ve Búk woz fown ere on Am. U granddads iz ól enuff 2 remembah ve Geezer? There was a low murmur of assent. B4 King Dave vair woz enni numbah uv pissi lyttul playsez wot ad a clame 2 B ve craydul uv ar faif, innit? Another murmur. But ve Kings granddad, ee chaynjd all vat. Ee ad a revelashun vat ve Búk woz fahnd in Lundun, aint vat ve troof ?
– Iss ve troof, the ailing Hamsters muttered.
– Iss nó juss ure zön wich iz ferbiddun – all ve zöns on Chil iz juss ve saym. Ven U need brik aw crete aw yok aw grint U gë í from ve edj. But U avent ve skil uv wurkin wiv ironi, an U av no Inspektur 2 soopavys such diggins. Nah vis bloke – he stabbed a finger at Bóm – oo cums ear a refewjee, ee dares 2 muck abaht in ve Zön. Wot else az ee dun, eh?
– Nah, nah, Mistah Greaves, Fred said, nó a bì-uv-ì, we aint gó no uvva bovva wiv Tonë, ees juss lyke wunnuv us.
The dads gave affirmative grunts, and Fukka Funch spoke up, saying:
– Ee sayvd mì Bellas lyf.
– Izzat so? The Hack addressed himself only to Fred.
– Í iz, Tonë iz a grayt jeepee, an im bein kweer ve wimmin av lë im be ä summuv vair birfs.
Mister Greaves shifted into the more sonorous cadences of Arpee, and Antonë Böm realized he meant there to be no further inquisition:
– None the less, flying counts against this man more than giving life counts for him. Flying takes away faith, and without faith we have nothing, no runs, no points, no intercom, no New London.
– No Nú Lundun, the dads chanted.
Greaves turned to Böm:
– Is there anything you can lay before this Council concerning your behaviour that could possibly justify it in the mirror of Dave? Do you want to tell us why you took young Carl Dévúsh into the Zöne and why you dug and delved in there?
Antonë Böm looked up at Greaves. He knew something of the Hack's status in the Bouncy Castle of Chil. He knew that, while Greaves may have paid hard dosh for the privilege of becoming his Lawd's subcontractor, nevertheless he had always been a sincere protector of the Hamsters. It would do the Hack's cause no good to be seen to go against the Driver – and beyond him the PCO.
– No, Böm said at last, I have nothing to say on my own account. So far as Carl is concerned, he's but a lad, he came with me unwittingly, and I sought to dissuade him. He had no idea of my purpose.
The Hack took a deep drag on his fag and blew out a plume of smoke.
– I care not one whit, he said, the lad's crime is the same as yours, flying, and I am not fit to sit in judgement on either of you. You will have to go to London, to the PCO. The Examiners have taken it upon themselves to try all flyers, and I cannot stand in their way. Dave have mercy on your fares!
– Dave av mursee, the dads echoed.
– W-will we aff 2 go viss mumf wiv ure partë? Carl couldn't prevent himself from blurting out – then he cowered in anticipation of a slap.
Greaves, however, remained calm, and his voice chimed with a note of sympathy:
– No, lad, you're too young this year. Next year, when I return, you'll be dad enough. Until then you and Böm will remain here, but mark me, if either of you meddle in the zone from now until then, or if you bother the Driver in any way, it will count still more severely against you when you arrive in London. Remember your own dad, Carl Dévúsh, remember what happened to him.
2
Trapping a Flyer
December 2001
Hunched low over the wheel, foglamps piercing the miasma, Dave Rudman powered his cab through the chicane at the bottom of Park Lane. The cabbie's furious thoughts shot through the windscreen and ricocheted off the unfeeling world. Achilles was up on his plinth with his tiny bronze cock, his black shield fending off the hair-styling wand of the Hilton, where all my heartache began. Solid clouds hung overhead lunging up fresh blood. The gates to Hyde Park, erected for the Queen Mother, looked like bent paperclips in the gloom, the lion and unicorn on their Warner Brothers escutcheon were prancing cartoon characters. Evil be to him who thinks of it, said the Unicorn, and the Lion replied, Eeee, whassup, Doc?
Stuttering by them, Rudman's Faredar picked up a Burberry bundle trapped on the heel of grass that was cut off from the central reservation by the taut, tarmac tendon of Achilles Way. Stupid plonker. The cab's wipers went 'eek-eek'. The bundle was trying to roll over the Y-shaped crash barrier – all that prevented him from being mown down by the four lanes of traffic, traffic that came whipping past the war memorial where bronze corpses lay beneath concrete howitzers. Tatty coaches full of carrot-crunchers up for the Xmas wallet fuck, pale-skinned, rust-grazed Transit vans with England flags taped across their back windows, boogaloo bruvvers in Seven Series BMWs, throw-cushion specialists in skateboard-sized Smart cars, Conan-the-fucking-Barbarian motorcycle couriers, warped flat-bed trucks piled high with scrap metal, one-eyed old Routemaster buses – the whole stinky caravan of London wholesale-to-retail, five credit-worthy days before Christmas was intent on crushing this bit of Yank, wannabe roadkill … So Dave slewed the Fairway over to the nearside lane and waited to see whether he'd make it.
He did. He came puffing up to the driver-side window. 'Sir, sir, excuse me, sir …' Sir, sir?! Is he fucking insane? 'Thank you for stopping.' He's going to ask me if I know which theatre The King and I is playing at. Stupid cunt. 'Could you take me to …' The Yank drew a piece of paper from his trench-coat pocket and consulted it. 'Mill Hill…' He said the two words slowly and distinctly, as if they might be difficult for Dave to comprehend. 'If that's … that's not kinduv of beyond your range?' My range, what does he think I am, some fucking wild boar? Dave pictured beastly London cabs, rolling in the roadway, shaking their metal shoulders to rid themselves of railings hurled by Hoorays starved of sport.
'Get in, please.' Dave bent his arm out of the window and opened the door, then he shrugged back inside and hit the meter. The bundle bowled in, a grateful blob of wet gaberdine that wafted a gentle stench of some male fragrance advertised by chest-waxing ponces in underpants. Dave Rudman shifted the cab into drive and shuddered off up the nearside lane, expertly swerving to avoid a coach that lurched out of its bay. Then he rubbed his sore nostrils with a wad of tissue as shapeless as snot. Day-and-fucking-Night-nurse . . . that's what you need in this job. Open the hatch and through it comes another slant-eyed virus at 120 mph.
The fare sat in the middle of the back seat, knees akimbo, potbelly exposed by the open flaps of his trench coat, both hands on the safety handles set in the rear doors of the cab as if he's in a rickshaw costing twenty-five-fucking-grand. 'When I say range, cabbie,' said the fare, leaning forward to push his fat face through the open hatch, 'I mean, I've heard of your famous Knowledge, but I figure that maybe Mill Hill is a bit beyond ít … beyond the area you have to cover.' He's a talker, this one, he wants to talk, he goes to whores and when they try to plate him he says he'd rather talk, 'coz the only thing he wants in their mouths is comforting words. He'll start on fucking Afghanistan in two minutes flat. He's gonna go all Tora Bora on me …
'That's right, it is a little beyond the six-mile radius from Charing Cross, which is the theoretical limit of the London streets we have to learn.'
'Theoretical?' He doesn't expect to hear this word out of my lower-class lips, lips he sees flapping in the rearview. He's putting together a photofit of me from lips, chin and the back of my head. He ain't fooled by the baseball cap – and he likes that I'm going bald, as a fatty it gives him the drop. 'Yeah' – put him still more at his ease, this cunt could be an earner – 'theoretical, because in practice we also have to know a fair bit of the suburbs, which would cover Mill Hill as well.'
'Uh huh.' The fare was satisfied, he'd marked his card, he'd shown Dave he wasn't just another dumb tourist who thinks London is a nine-hundred-square-mile souvenir T-shirt, decorated with tit-
helmeted coppers, red phone boxes, Mohican-sporters, tiara-jockeys and black-bloody-cabs. The fare looked to the left at the Avenue of plane trees running up to Speakers' Corner. He looked to the right at the tiny road-cleaning machine bumping along the gutter, its circular electric brushes polishing the York stone molars. He was lost, momentarily, in a reverie provoked by a pair of backpacking lovers, wet-weather freaks, who were leaning up against the lip of a fountain, her thighs imprisoned in his. He was thinking about his family – and Afghanistan.
'Kinduv weird being in Europe.'
'I imagine you'd rather be at home, what with all this business – '
'In Afghanistan, you bet I would. Sure, it's crazy to think you're any more at risk here, or your family's any more at risk if you're not there, but still – '
'You'd rather be with them.' And so would I, in a small clean family hotel on Gloucester Place, seventy quid a night, walking tour of Bloomsbury inclusive. Two big, burger-stuffed kids, plenty of metalwork in their mouths, Mom in a beige trouser suit. I want his family so I can slot them into the gap left by my own.
'I'd booked the flight before 9/11, I figured it would be giving like succour to the enemy if I didn't come over.'
'Gotcha.'
'Eek-eek' the wipers went; the cab braked, then heeled over to join the other rusty hulks cruising around Marble Arch, a reef of Nash that loomed up out of the silty drizzle. 'I tell you something, cabbie.' Tell me everything, you dumb motherfucker, pour it all out. 'I didn't vote for Bush, but I reckon he's handling this OK, and it wasn't the Twin Towers that set me against these Taliban fellows – though Lord knows it was a terrible thing – but I knew these were dreadful people when they blew up those two ancient statues of the Buddha, you know the ones?'
'Yes.' Fellows? Lord knows!?
'Any folk who could destroy a thing of ancient beauty so brutally … well, nothing they could do would surprise me after that … and the way they treat their women too.'