by Will Self
Phyllis looked as eccentric as ever, wrapped up in a woollen coat sewn from crocheted panels of scarlet, green and yellow. Her mad curls escaped from beneath the ear flaps of a Laplander's hat, her Dolly hands were tucked into matching mittens. She took his cold hand in her woolly pad and squeezed it. 'The turn-out,' she said excitedly, 'it's huge. I knew – but I never thought – so many people.' Dave saw gloomy old pranksters in harlequin tights, Socialist Worker clones in donkey jackets and Doc Martens, laughing crocodiles of British Asian girls down from their northern redoubts, their Muslim Association of Great Britain placards held at jaunty angles. Between these factions, stolidly tramping, in their pastel anoraks and buff fleeces, was a great mass of ordinary punters, who, even to Dave's jaundiced eye, seemed secure in the knowledge that by their sheer weight of numbers they could prevent the bombers from taking off and Stop the War!
Through a scraggy barrier of trees and over the balding grass with every yard they gained the compression of bodies grew greater. 'Palace-stein! Palace-stein! Palace-stein!' I'm not racial, Dave admonished himself – yet their fanaticism smelled alien, a dangerous spice, saffron and suicide. A head taller than the crowd, he was borne forward on an undulating carpet of scalps, entire acres of hair combed over by the teeth of the breeze. Up ahead the scene was Babylonian: flags and banners waved, obelisks of speakers loomed on a stage, only the yowl of feedback stopped the subsidence of this era into the last.
All masses – no matter how pacific – contain within their sumps many thousands of litres of adrenalin the motor oil of rage. Dave Rudman felt this potential conflagration slopping about them as he and Phyl were driven forward to the steady, four-stroke beat of a massive Lembeg drum. Then they were trapped against a barrier fence. Through its wide mesh police snappers in blue-checked baseball caps probed their telephoto lenses. A line of stewards sporting fluorescent tabards bearing the legend IN THE NAME OF ALLAH, THE MOST COMPASSIONATE, THE MOST MERCIFUL struggled to keep back the demonstrators, who barked, 'Who let the dogs out?!' before yelping their own reply, 'Bush! Bush!'
Dave felt himself detaching, lifting up into the now lustreless sky where surveillance helicopters chattered and swooped. He felt for Phyllis's mitten – a soft anchor – to ground him, but it was gone. She was gone. He began frantically scanning thousands of faces. Izzat'er? Izzat? Izzat? The rant started inside his pock-marked face. Fucking lefties … dumb cunts … middle-class tossers … 'Who let the dogs out?! Bush! Bush!' They don't even know where they fucking are … Pakkies down from Bradford … The fucking stewards couldn't find their way to Tottenham Court Road … He began shouldering his way back through the whippy limbs of this human scrub, still looking for Phyl but understanding that it was pointless. When he reached a clearing where three whey-faced kiddies were drinking cans of Mecca-Cola in a shieling of milk crates, he had a moment of clarity. They weren't having sex yet, but we're like a married couple … at ease in ways both profoundly irritating and comforting; we aren't having sex, although he couldn't have said which of them was resisting the slide into that damp pit of guttural obfuscation; we aren't having sex – nevertheless he'd agreed to come along on this idiotic march because … I love her.
The air was crinkled up like cellophane by the exhaust fumes. It stank; he stank. He felt the ingrained lubricant of a thousand thousand fill-ups slide between his fingertips and the shaky rim of the wheel. His past was a mirage, glimpsed across the stained forecourt of time. Through the miserable slot of the Fairway's windscreen he could see the glistening skin of the Swiss Re Building, as like some monstrous penis it self-erected over the City. It already had a nickname – the Gherkin – but a proper cockney wouldn't ask for a gherkin and chips, he'd say wally … gissa wally.
As the cockney wally rose up, it dumbly forced new parallaxes on the earthbound toilers. Dave Rudman had never felt so imprisoned in the wobble boards of the cab's bodywork, so coiled in razor wire, so commanded to KEEP LEFT, GIVE WAY and STOP. The CCTV cameras angled across the box junctions; the traffic wardens like urban Watusi with hand-held computers for spears; the cops in their cars; the PCO in their concrete bunker – every square foot of London was accounted for, taxed and levied. He looked about him at the other cars in the jam. The drivers sat, mobile-phone hands clamped to their aching heads, suffering the neuralgia of ceaseless communication. The radio on the Fairway's dash muttered on: 'Lorry shed its load on the A3 Kingston Bypass . . . stop-start traffic there … Lane out on the Marylebone Flyover …' Dave had become a cabbie to miss out on the supervisory eyes that made adult working life another fidgety classroom, yet here he was '… coming into junctions fifteen and sixteen on the Emtwenny5, that's the Emfaw and the Emfawty, lane and speed restrictions are in force …' with the worst guvnor of all – insecurity. Insecurity and the Flying Eye, its rotary eyelid blinking overhead.
Dave pulled into a side street and turned off the ignition. He got out his pills and began to pop the antidepressants out of their plastic blisters. He didn't stop until the gulches of his jeans were choked with little white boulders. Then he opened the door, picked up his change bag, got out and chinked away, scattering dumb Smarties as he went. He didn't look to see if he was parked on a yellow line; he didn't even bother to lock the cab. He didn't care. It was over – he'd grabbed the fat moment. He was free.
As he walked, Dave Rudman looked not up to the sky, nor around him at the brutal buildings, but at the ground, at the tarmac upon which his life had been rolled out. Tarmac blue-black and asphalt dimpled; tarmac folded and humped like a grey-brown blanket; tarmac cratered, bashed and gashed. This was the petrified skin he'd been feeling all his prostituted life, its texture transmitted through rubber tread and steel shock-absorber. Dave felt a compulsion to kneel down on the kerb and bow his head into the gutter – to lick the abrasive surface with his rough old tongue.
Dave licked between Phyllis's shoulder blades and drove his tongue down her grooved back. She shuddered and, grabbing his thigh, pulled it up and over her own so that he half straddled her. In the confusion of their bodies – his hairy shanks, her sweaty thighs, his bow-taut cock, her engorged basketry of cowl and lip – there was clear intent; so that when he penetrated her, they moved into and out of one another with fluid ease, revving and squealing, before arriving quite suddenly.
Dave and Phyl were having sex in her cottage outside Chipping Ongar. They'd had sex the previous evening after a healthy meal of cauliflower cheese. They had woken twice – perhaps three times – in the night to do it again, and now, with the larks crying over the fields outside, they were having sex once more. There was no billing or cooing between them – mouth chanced upon mouth infrequently. She pulled him into her spasmodically, her heels jamming on his hips. He felt the solidity of her – she wasn't blubbery but taut with fat. He plunged and rebounded. No words were spoken – yet neither doubted that they were making love, plenty of honeyed love to be stored for the future in their cells, should there come another time of scarcity when they needed replenishing.
In the late morning Dave walked into the little town to get the Sunday papers. Even in brisk March, with branches still bare, and rain showers moving across the Essex landscape like shading on a drawing, the gathering heat of summer was resounding through the land. He paused by the ancient moat of the long-since-levelled castle and lost himself in the subsurface bloom of duckweed. This would be a special day – they would not fret or worry. Towards evening they might walk across the fields to Good Easter, watching the returning flocks of swifts clench, then relax in the umber sky. The letters had been sent, the calls had been made, the reports had been written. At Phyllis's instigation Dave had taken matters into his own hands. Lawyers – they both agreed – would only sop up money and make things worse, like they always did. Better to make as direct an approach as possible and state – with clarity and humility – that if Carl was at all willing, and his mother would permit it, Dave would like to resume seeing his son.
Dave ranked up by the cop shop
on Old Burlington Street and walked down towards the offices of Undercroft Mendel. Since coming off the antidepressants he still felt the elbow-jabs of reckless thoughts – but mostly he felt better. Much better. Even so, he couldn't judge whether his damp palms were a withdrawal symptom or a dread anticipation. The newspaper rattle of pigeons taking flight startled him – and he mounted the steps feeling dizzy, fists clenched in the pockets of his old tweed jacket.
There were no sugar-dusted shortbreads or gold-rimmed coffee cups. There was no propelling pencil or unctuous manner. Instead of tipping back in his chair, Mitchell Blair leaned forward, doodling nervily on a yellow legal pad in unadorned biro. 'The thing is, Mr Rudman … at the end of the day' – he picked out demotic phrases from a mental file he maintained for such occasions – 'it isn't down to the Lord Justice, CAFCASS or even the courts' – he glanced towards the reassuringly open door – 'whether or not you resume contact with, er, Carl.'
'With my son, you mean.' Despite the rehearsals he'd been through with Phyl and every internal restraint he'd imposed upon himself, Dave was already warming up.
'Well, that's precisely the issue.' At this, Blair, losing all professional detachment, ducked down behind a barricade of heavy volumes. 'Ms Brodie has raised the matter of Carl's paternity. To be blunt, she doesn't believe that you are his biological father.'
Dave shook his head slowly – a great lummox pole-axed by a low blow. He felt uncomprehending and untidy. He groped automatically for a cigarette, although, even while so doing, he was appalled to hear his voice going on without him: 'Whaddya mean?'
'I mean – that is to say, I can state with some certainty' – Blair was recovering his sang froid, his fiddly features reappeared from behind the leather shield – 'that it has been established that Carl's biological father is, in fact, Mr Devenish.'
'Cal Devenish?' Dave kept on shaking his head. 'But that's impossible – how? When?'
'Mr Rudman.' Blair was now fully composed. He lay back in his chair, the sole of his loafer cleaner than Dave's shirt. The gold propelling pencil was out, the toothy timpani began. 'Ms Brodie had no intent to deceive you – both she and Mr Devenish understood that he was … well, he had had a vasectomy. However, these, ah, things can happen. Very rarely – but they do happen. Your ex-wife thought you would be upset, she understands that she owes you a full explanation. Were it not for your er' – he paused, smiling faintly – 'behaviour in the past, she would've been present for this meeting. Instead, she has given me this letter for you' – he placed it on his blotter – 'and should you – quite reasonably – require verification, your own nominated doctor can take both your blood and the boy's. Arrangements can be made for these DNA samples to be independently tested …'
By the time Blair had completed his speech, Dave was already on the stairs. He hadn't bothered with Michelle's letter. The phrase that stayed with him – albeit edited – was take … your … blood, for his very blood had been taken from him. Or had it? Checking himself in every reflective surface he passed – brass plates, plate glass, wing mirrors – Dave was forced to concede that this hereditary cap didn't fit at all well. You suspected all along … The dates never made sense . . . never added up … She got funnier about it the older he got. . . And Carl, well, he. . .he just doesn't LOOK ANYTHING LIKE YOU.
The fare, chunk of silicone chips soldered to his ear, was going to check out David Blaine. The American illusionist was sealed into a perspex box, which had been dangled from the arm of a crane on the south side of Tower Bridge. The new London Assembly had appeared near by – beamed down from the future so suddenly that its concrete and glass walls bellied with the impact – and all that was left of the park that used to occupy the site was a patch of exposed dirt. Every day a crowd gathered here to bay, catcall, take photos, catapult hamburgers, hold up babies, flash their tits and bums, frolic, gass, guffaw – and generally confirm the truth that, as Blaine's beard grew and his fat evaporated, nothing ever changed in this city: the most grotesque of street theatre always had – and always would – take place within the very shadow of governance.
The Fairway was snarled up in Tooley Street. In front was a white Securicor van with plexiglas windows. Sweatboxes, that's what they call 'em. Some crim who used to drink in the Old Globe told Dave all about them – the tiny, individual cells in the bouncing vehicle, no room for the prisoners to stretch their legs, no handholds, everything made of plastic. In winter they were like … fucking fridges . . . but in summer the cons slopped in their own sweat. Still, wasn't the whole of London an endless bloody sweatbox? nuffing to hold on to, everyone going somewhere to do nuffing. The cab limped past the London Dungeon, where a dummy felon hung from a fucking toyist gibbet. The fare had run out of friends to call … no wonder … and was scratching his balls.
Tiring of this tax on disorientation, Dave saw a parking place and plonked the cab in it. 'Wossup, mate?' said the fare, who was young with a vulnerable dimple in his chin. 'I'll stroll down there with you,' Dave explained. 'I fancy a gander at this chancer.' They clambered out, and Dave locked up. He asked for a fiver, even though there was twice that on the meter. As they walked along past Hay's Galleria towards HMS Belfast Dave wanted to put an arm around the lad's shoulders, because he was another one young enough to be my son. But not.
It was a weekday, and the crowd wasn't that big. There were dossers struck by White Lightning … language-school Lolitas … and because it was lunchtime the Pret-a-fucking-Manger mob were ranged along the parapet of Tower Bridge, swigging mineral water and chomping baguettes. In an enclosure immediately beneath Blaine's box snappers and camera crews oscillated to find the best angle. All eyes were raised towards the modern Diogenes, who slumped in a starved torpor, a silvery space blanket serving him for a robe. Everyone bayed for his attention, while he looked deep inside himself, focusing with steely resolve on major fucking sponsorship deals.
Dave had lost the ex-fare and was sitting on a bench when he became aware of a wholesale perturbation in the crowd. Eyes were swivelling away from the hunger artist towards the top of the northern tower of the bridge, where an oddly attired group was clambering out on to the parapet. Dave was up on his feet – even at this distance, and outlined against deceptive bends and furbelows of cloud, he could see that the three men were wearing historical costumes: cockade hats, cloaks and doublets. One of them was a dumpy fellow struggling with the end of a long, sausage-shaped bundle. 'Bluddy el!' exclaimed a dosser who was beside Dave. 'Iss isstree cum ter lyf!' The crowd, grasping that something – or somebody – was going to be pitched over the edge, 'ooed' and 'aahed' with sadistic glee. The London Show – in its two thousandth year at the same venue – was hotting up.
The camera crews were wrenching their tripods round to capture the action. From Wapping came the demented whippoorwill of a police siren. A couple of white-hatted Port of London Authority beadles could be seen trying to break into the bottom door of the tower, a police helicopter came chattering upriver, and it occurred to Dave that this could be the big one, code black . . . the bundle might be a fucking missile launcher. For Tower Bridge was a prime position for an attack by suicidal terrorists on the computerized dealing rooms and electronic vaults of the City.
There was a man close to Dave in the crowd who had a pair of binoculars. 'Please, mate?' Dave requested, then he crammed them to his eyes just as the three players on the roof of the tower heaved their bundle over. A long banner unrolled with a loud 'Thwack!' Dave Rudman absorbed the legend on it at the same time as he recognized the clownish lips and curly hair of the tubby man sporting the red cloak. It was Gary Finch, and he was giving the finger to the circling helicopter. The banner read: WE AREN'T HISTORICAL FIGURES – WE'RE FIGHTING FATHERS, FIGHTING TO SEE THE KIDS WE LOVE. There was the clenched-fist logo, which Dave had last seen in the Trophy Room at the Swiss Cottage Sports Centre.
The Fighting Fathers managed to stay up on Tower Bridge for a long time. When the police stormed the tower, Fucker and one of the o
thers got out along the top cantilever and chained themselves to it. Their companion was arrested immediately – but this was probably intentional, for Barry Higginbottom had taken it upon himself to be the spokesman for Fighting Fathers, and it was he who appeared on the rolling news bulletins for the rest of the day.
Watching him on TV that evening at Agincourt Road, Dave had to concede that the Skip Tracer did a good job. He was interviewed in a well-appointed playroom, against a background of Disney film posters, with colouring books and cuddly toys strewn beneath the rockers of his chair. The Skip Tracer spoke lucidly concerning the inequalities of family law: the presumption that separated and divorced mothers should have care and control of children; the financial burdens placed on separated fathers; the difficulties these fathers had in getting their former partners to comply with court access orders. The Skip Tracer's usual machine-gun delivery was slowed to an emphatic beat, his vowels flew up to buttress his rediscovered consonants. There were no obscenities, no talk of nosebag and the sweat-lash was little more than an earnest sheen.
However, the Skip Tracer's front was then demolished as his schoolboyish fringe and exposed nostrils were supplanted by exterior shots of his detached villa in Redbridge. This – the viewers were told – was equipped with a state-of-the-art security system, comprising CCTV cameras, razor wire and motion-triggered alarms. Quite why such a sensitive, loving man should be so paranoid was then explained by an appropriately nervy reporter on the scene: 'His considerable fortune was amassed during the property crash of the early 1990s, when his agency – employing scores of operatives – tracked down desperate mortgage defaulters . . .'