Ideas Above Our Station

by M Y Alam

  My next pick up comes a few minutes past midnight. A couple, in their late thirties/early forties, on the tail end of a night out. Surprise-surprise, they’ve gone and overdone it with the booze. Seems to me most people overdo it when it comes to the booze. She’s not as bad as him, though: on her way to being pissed, not quite there. Him, poor fat bastard’s close to being out on his feet and the thing on his head – lamest wig I ever seen – is all over the place. Looking like he does, he’s still got the presence of mind to slur me something about Horsforth and none of your guided tours, either, pal as he crawls into the back. As she helps him in, she laughs that laugh I’ve a heard a million times from a million other Donnas, Claires, Martines and Jeanettes. Little black/white/red/electric blue dresses with matching fuck-me shoes, tanned legs, Jimmy Saville jewellery clanking around, blonde streaks and make-up done specially, this is the high point of the week. But it’s only Tuesday so it’s got to be some other cause for celebration: birthday is odds-on favourite followed closely by wedding anniversary. And what a night it is: half a pound of food, too many yards of piss to count, a line or ten of dancing and then, to round it all off, a drunken, soon to be forgotten five-mile ride home in the back of some Sabu’s cab whose name they’ll ask but never recall fully: Karim, Kesser, Khan: I call ’em all Tony/Sam/Pete, me – can’t be arsed with messing around with them names they got. Curry, pub, club and then home in a four-wheeled tub. The experience is no more memorable than a wet fart but it’s the ritual and the routine that can’t be done without.

  She gets in the front, turns round and sees him slouched, fast asleep, dribbling and drooling over his dark brown knee-length leather. Shakes her head and says:

  ‘Three pints and a couple of shorts and he’s anyone’s, him.’

  I force a smile, slip into first, and as we set off, I ask: ‘Horsforth, you said?’

  ‘Mind you, he’s not as bad as me, if you know what I mean,’ she adds, drawing a little closer.

  I can tell she’s looking, hoping for a reaction of sorts. Any second now, she’ll lean closer still and whisper a bunch of sweet fuckalls in my ear and give my thigh a bit of a squeeze if she’s feeling particularly bold. She’s pretty enough, trim and healthy looking but she’s not sober. Right now, she’s not herself and all this will be forgotten tomorrow. Besides, I’m not desperate and I’m not stupid, either – lay a finger on a fare and it’s assault; go any further with a female and it’s attempted rape. So she can bring it on all she likes while her stupid, unknowing, probably un-caring fat fuck of a husband snores away in the back. This fish, he’s not biting and won’t be reeled in, least not this night.

  I pull up outside number 17 of a quiet cul-de-sac. Jack, her husband, is barely conscious and his hairpiece has slipped off completely. His wife puts it back on his head and slaps his flabby cheeks a couple of times. He moans but doesn’t come round. He might be happy where he is but I’m not. Great. So I’m now forced to help this sweaty, smelly and pissed-up idiot out of my car so I can get on with my life. He stands but then collapses, his arse landing squarely on the pavement. Must have hurt but I forgot, he’s pissed which is why he starts laughing. Rather than telling him to shut up, she starts laughing as well. If I worked for free, I’d leave them there.

  After slapping him around some more, we get him up again. Slowly, we half-walk/half-drag him along the path and into the house. She keeps cursing at him but he’s not registering a word. Every now and then he laughs for no apparent reason but that’s about it. With one arm round her neck, the other around mine, eyes closed, mouth occasionally blurting and mumbling something that not even he fully understands, wreaking of bitter or whatever it is that he calls his poison, I’m surprised he can move at all. Can’t see the point of it, myself; getting so pissed that you’ve disabled yourself for the night. Then again, maybe that is the point.

  We get inside the house. White wedding day pictures along the hall from twenty-odd years ago. The happy couple – her in puffy white gown, a Bonnie Tyler hairdo and loud make-up; him looking like a toned down New Wave Romantic in a grey suit and red tie, both from Top Man or maybe Burton’s. Best man with a few twinkles in his eye, standing in line to kiss the bride and maybe to get off with a bridesmaid later; both sets of mums and dads radiating pride; nippers in suits, dresses and shiny shoes pissing around and sneaking sips of Tetley’s, Lambrusco and Three Barrels. Everyone smiling, everyone drinking and everyone thinking things are good and will only get better. Further on, evidence of a family; a daughter and then two sons. All blonde-haired, blue-eyed. Could be real little bastards but they look innocent enough, the way all kids do in those production line school portraits. Red school jumpers and dodgy school ties, cloudy blue backgrounds and those big smiles hiding the things that cause them to lose sleep every other night: bullying, spelling tests, the wrong trainers.

  She helps him up the stairs and comes back down less than a minute later.

  ‘Thanks ever so much,’ she says, trying to sound husky and seductive.

  ‘No problem,’ I tell her. ‘Do you need a receipt or owt?’

  ‘Oh no,’ she says. ‘Can I get you a drink or…’

  ‘I’m fine, ta. Nice of you but… you know, work to do.’

  She tips me a few quid and I’m gone. I know lots of drivers, especially the ones with more vanity than plastic surgery junkies, who jump at this kind of chance. Quite a few got women on the side who they met this way: hard-up wives fancying something a bit more exotic than the usual whatever’s on offer. That kind of messing around, it comes back and bites you right in the arse when you least expect it.

  Five o’clock in the morning and I’m on my way back to Bradford, maybe stop by the Sweet Centre on Lumb Lane and catch some breakfast before I hit home and tuck myself in for a good day’s sleep. Could murder a portion and a half of channa puri right now but then I hear Tab call out this one job a few times. They’ve all gone deaf or, more likely, they’re all ignoring it. Council house in Chapeltown to a pool hall in Headingley then to drop at a second-hand car lot in Beeston. The fare’s been waiting a good twenty minutes already.

  ‘I’ll take it if no one else will, Tab.’

  ‘Watch yourself.’

  Not many – barely any – pick up black guys. Soul brothers, they’ve got this reputation. One thing a driver doesn’t need is a fare who’s sure to make it hard work – it’s just asking for trouble. Don’t like paying the full fare, talk a lot of shit, show you disrespect and as soon as they get in they make like they own your car, your home and your right to earn a living. Thing is, they’re not the only ones. In one way or another, every punter has what it takes to draw out and make more intense this agony we call life. Myself, I’m not fussed. Come one, come all: they’re all losers as far as I’m concerned. Young and old, black and white, men, women and children are treated with equal contempt. Well, it’s only fair, considering that’s what they seem to have for me.

  He leaves the door to the house open and gets in. You don’t see so many of them, these days. An old time Rasta – greying beard, dreads gathered in a hat and a great big spliff – six skinner at least – parked in the side of his mouth.

  ‘Right, Lalla?’

  Mostly, you take the shit. You take the shit because life’s too short to get all pent up about petty things like this. But it’s gone five o’clock in the morning, I’m tired, I’m hungry and I’m doing this guy a favour and yet, he’s got the nerve to call me Lalla?

  ‘My name’s not Lalla, man.’

  Dread smiles, exhales a rich cloud of smoke and nods like he’s some wise old fuck with a million years of philosophy drifting out his nostrils.

  ‘No offence, my friend. Just a word is all.’

  ‘Just a word,’ I sigh to myself and stop myself from saying, so’s nigger, motherfucker.

  Dread takes a phone call and chats into his hand for maybe five minutes or so. When his conversation finishes, he turns to me, and picks up where we left off.

  ‘W
hat’s your name, man?’

  ‘Why you ask?’

  ‘No reason. Nothing wrong with taking a man’s name.’

  ‘Depends what you do with it once you’ve took it.’

  Dread laughs again.

  ‘A man’s name’s a precious thing. Gives you meaning.’

  ‘Everything has meaning.’

  He gets a text on his phone but ignores it, choosing instead to hit me with more of whatever’s on his mind.

  ‘So tell me, Mister: how’s things these days?’ he asks.

  ‘These days?’

  ‘Yeah, man. You know, with all the noises about your people.’

  I know where this is going and although I don’t really want to find myself there, there’s not much I can do to steer it elsewhere.

  ‘What kind of noises we talking about?’

  Nine out of ten sober fares will ask you, at some point in the journey, about ‘things these days’. It’s become a routine, for them doing the asking and for those doing the answering. It’s more than the idle chit-chat people feel obliged to make when in the company of strangers – the weather, the football, the latest inane scandal taking up too much space in the newspapers or on the box. This has become real enough for everyone to have thoughts, questions and answers about.

  ‘The terror noise, Mister. You know what I’m talking about.’

  ‘Oh,’ I say, forcing a smile, like I didn’t know, ‘you mean that.’

  ‘Yes, that, man. What you think about it?’

  ‘Why you asking?’

  He gently pulls on his spliff and holds for a good fifteen seconds. As he exhales, he says:

  ‘I’m curious, you understand.’

  I shrug, make a face that’s supposed to show I’m giving it serious consideration and offer him my usual response; one that means nothing, not even to me. With as much gravity as I can muster, I tell him:

  ‘Well, it’s bad.’

  Dread shakes his head – part-amused, part-disappointed.

  ‘Bad? Bad how?’

  Most people don’t bother asking – either because they take my first answer how they want to take it or because they’re too scared to push further in case I’m one of them. Hell, four days worth of stubble, a body borne of a brown-tinted gene pool and a badge that says a name they all hear but don’t know is more than enough to get lots of people feeling a little uneasy. This war and this enemy is everywhere: coming to a take-away, corner shop and cabbie near you, soon. Right now, this is just another pain we’re all getting used to.

  We pull up outside the pool hall in Headingley.

  ‘Five minutes, Mister,’ says Dread, and hands me a twenty before I can even think about asking him for the running fare.

  ‘Your meter,’ I tell him.

  Good to his word, he’s back after a few ticks of the indicator.

  ‘Beeston,’ he says. ‘Take it slowly, though. I got plenty time on my hands.’

  I coast along easy enough, trying to time my driving so I hit every set of lights at red.

  ‘Bad how?’ he asks again.

  It’s difficult being honest about this kind of thing. If you’re honest, it half-sounds like you’re not that far off what they’re likely to think you are anyway. Unless you say them there terrorists are a bunch of crazy inhumane and insane motherfuckers, you all but invite them to think you’re strapping a rucksack. So you got to play it careful. You might want to but you just can’t tell people it’s all fucked up, out of all proportion, complicated, political and economic. People just don’t want to hear that. All they want to know is which side you’re on: with us or against us, condemn them or condemn yourself. When you don’t really know what each side is really about, it’s hard to give them something so easy and simple. All you can do is bluff your way through and try to stay safe with shit like:

  ‘It’s bad. You know, for innocent people and that, it’s bad.’

  Innocent people are there to be fucked up no matter what. That’s their role in the world and maybe it’s always been that way. Even in peace, the innocent get it up the arse and then some. Why should war – a real or an imaginary one – make things any easier for them sorry bastards? Since when do the innocent have a right to be not fucked over? Hell, being all innocent like that, they’re practically asking for it.

  ‘I bet that’s what you tell everyone,’ he says. ‘Be honest, Mister. I can take your truth.’

  ‘Truth? You think I’m lying?’

  Like a man about to administer a cure, he closes his eyes and seems to meditate for a few moments.

  ‘Let me tell you a truth seen by me, Mister,’ he says. ‘And then you can think better about telling me one of yours.’

  ‘Shoot.’

  I get onto Dewsbury Road and head further into Beeston. Place was like something out of a movie that July. Half the streets cordoned off, the rest swarming with coppers drafted in from all over the place: long live overtime; all hail time and a half. There was even talk that the army was on standby. Bomb squad, forensics, DIs, DSs and even humble PCs on highly strung alert. No stone left unturned and no suspect allowed to slip through. If you matched the profile, you were stopped, searched and moved on. Might seem fucked up but for us cabbies, it was like all our Eids, Christmases, Divalis and Hanukahs had come at once. The police had one kind of presence, the journalists another. Like politicians and writers, they’re all the same: arrogance personified. Even the ones going against the grain are defined by their Volvo politics, Harvey Nichols’ lifestyles and bullshit-tinted memories; wasn’t Thatcher a bitch and weren’t The Smiths something else. For all the hypocrisy, they were welcomed with open arms by us all. Not only did these twats interrupt the monotony and drudge of every-day life, they helped pay for it, too. Throwing money around like it meant nothing to them – information, viewpoints, stories – if you had any of it, you were in profit before they could even clunk click themselves in. Journalists, I got to realise, are a lot like junkies – getting high off other people’s realities, reduced to rattling without.

  ‘You know this thing that’s playing on the news, on the tip of the lowliest and mightiest tongue – is a Godsend for us people. That’s the truth. Your curse is my blessing, Mister.’

  He doesn’t need to explain but maybe Dread figures it’s impolite not to.

  ‘Since it started, you know how much pressure been taken off us? It’s like a nigger’s never been a mugger, pimp or yardie. These days, I’m whiter than the single mothers, glue sniffers and granny rapists, man.’

  Can’t deny his thinking. There’s a new bad and mad man on the loose and this one transcends the easy distinction of colour. Yesterday’s devil might have stolen jobs, houses and women, but at least he spoke the same language, ate the same meat and wore the same clothes. This one’s completely different; more alien than another life form. If that’s not bad enough, this new devil has a different way of believing in and dealing with God.

  ‘Question is, Mister,’ says Dread, ‘how’s it feel to be like the me of yesterday?’

  He’s not gloating or nothing. Just stating a fact.

  ‘Can’t say I feel anything much. Like everything else, you learn to live with it.’

  Dread laughs and tells me:

  ‘You learn to live despite it. But you know what, Mister?’

  The sound of the Rizla crackles as he takes another leisurely draw. With smoke trickling out of his mouth, he whispers: ‘It’s all fuckry.’

  For the next ten minutes, he talks some more. I listen, nod in agreement when the need arises but don’t say much more. No point being an echo.

  I pull up alongside the patch of spare land being used as a second-hand car lot. A Portakabin in one corner and a handful of cars – mostly heaps – lined up with prices slapped on the windscreens. Dread asks me for a damage report and I tell him we’re square – the twenty covers it, more or less. Maybe it’s Dread’s side of the conversation or maybe it’s the potency of his herb that’s done it, but I don’t feel s
o tired anymore. His philosophy – if that’s what it is – is different to the crap I’ve grown to detest more than the runners, the back seat pukers and the front seat jivers. This man’s got wisdom and I’m glad he shared some of it. Hell, I almost feel bad for keeping his money; maybe I’m the one who should be paying him for being such a break from the usual.

  As Dread gets out, I notice a familiar figure walking towards us. Same tracky and trainers but he’s changed since the few long hours since we last met. Something’s working through his veins; lead in his pencil frame keeping him straight and tall. For a moment, I think perhaps him and Dread are breaking something down together but he walks past my cab, on his way to make another raise before the sun comes up: break and enter, smash and grab, wheel and deal.

  As Dread meanders over to the Portakabin, Tab’s voice comes on the radio shouting another job. It’s getting close to dawn and I think about taking it for a second but it’s not for me, not right now. Instead, I stay parked up by the car lot for a few more clicks of the clock, looking in my rear-view mirror – the crackhead with the rash and the tats now slowly becoming a dark blob. Was a time, I recall, when I’d be itching to scrap every other fare but experience breeds resignation. It’s the way of things; you know there’s no point trying to make a difference: there’ll always be thieves, there’ll always be wars and there’ll always be, without any doubt at all, the innocent ready, waiting but not so willing to feel the effects.

  I check the rear-view mirror again and can still just about see him; a speck, if that. I see myself giving a less vague kind of chase this time. Nothing but a straight line between him and me. Seems I got the energy and as for the hazard, maybe it’s doesn’t translate into such a risk after all. Luckman lost his eye four nights ago but that’s Luckman. Sure, miles better to lose a fiver than an eye but sometimes, the devil gets the better of the argument.