by Ben Elton
They said that they wanted them to relieve congestion, to free the motorist, to make the nation more efficient. That's why they said they wanted them. But actually they wanted them so that they could sell more tar, more concrete, more rubber, more oil and, above all, more cars.
Private individuals make cars and pump oil, only governments can commission roads. Without roads all the people in the room surrounding Digby were finished. Their businesses, their whole industries meant nothing without roads. That was why they loved Digby so much – he commissioned the roads.
Vain, pompous, little Digby was an easy target for these clever, powerful men of the road lobby. They toadied him gruesomely. They made him feel so important, with their specious arguments regarding the massive human good that would flow from a six-mile extension of the M6 and their firm assertions that nothing less than the end of civilization would be the inevitable consequence if an extra lane were not added to the M25.
'And all these things, Minister, these world-moulding decisions,' Britain's biggest concrete mixer would say, his honeyed words massaging Digby's crotch.
'Are in your masterful hands, Minister,' a man who owned 300 car showrooms would add, his tongue extending three feet across a tray of nibbles to tease Digby's ear.
'Quite simply the choice between freedom, or a new Dark Age, is yours Minister,' the road hauliers and the oil people would add, gently unzipping Digby's fly and delicately cupping his ripe plums in their hands.
'For the good of Britain,' chimed the whole gang, their heads full of millions as they went down on Digby . . . 'Build more roads.'
THE WORM TURNS
Normally Digby would have happily listened to this stuff until his trousers burst, but tonight there was something on his mind. Something that actually made the farty little minister assert himself.
'Later, gentlemen,' he said. Then, in a low voice, he snapped at Sam, 'I want a damn word with you, Sam, and I damn well want it damn now, damn it.' Digby was better at saying thnn thnn than he was at swearing.
Sam thought, 'Oh Christ, what's got up the little shit's nose now?' But he said, 'Of course, Minister, is there a problem?'
They retired to a cosy corner.
'Listen, Sam, yesterday I had a very worrying call from the people at Patents. They say that damned invention I tipped you off about has damned well been pinched, damn it.'
'No!' said Sam, incredulously.
'Damn yes, and I don't like it, Sam! Damn it, these are civil servants, they're very vulnerable, they have the honours list to worry about and the subsidized canteen. They're hopping mad, Sam. They don't believe it's a coincidence and frankly nor do I!'
'Minister,' protested Sam, 'surely you're not suggesting that I . . . ? That Global Motors . . . ?'
'Oh come on, Sam! I'm sure you don't think I'm a fool,' snapped the Minister, who may have been sure, but he was certainly wrong . . . His voice dropped to an angry whisper. 'The patents people tell me about developments of interest and I tell you, I have no problem with that. We're all in the business of getting Britain moving. God knows we all want the best for Britain.'
'Well, of course, Minister,' Sam interrupted piously.
'But that doesn't stretch to burgling Her Majesty's property!' said Digby.
Sam was surprised. The Minister was actually being quite assertive. He had been so used to Digby's slimy mediocrity, he had never thought he would have to placate him. Sam remembered that even shit got stubborn when you were trying to scrape it off your shoes.
Sam, of course, continued to deny any knowledge of the break-in but it was a difficult process. Not because Digby was at all astute, but because it was bloody obvious that Sam must have organized the theft, or at least known the person who did, because he was the only person to whom Digby had passed the information about Geoffrey's invention.
Digby was having a wonderful time, slooshing top-notch plonk and being all stern and statesman like. There he was, farty, inadequate Digby Parkhurst, who had been known at school as Shitsby Zitburst, dressing down Sam Turk, the president of Global Motors UK, a two-fisted, big-bellied son of a gun. How Digby wished the teenage bullies of his unhappy schooldays, who used to give him Chinese burns and stuff radishes up his bottom, could see him now.
'Really, Mr Turk, I'm afraid I shall have to consider very carefully the courtesies that the Department for Transport grants to the motor industry,' said Digby pompously, 'if they are to be abused in such a way.'
'Oh come now, Minister,' said Sam.
'Please do not adopt that tone with me, Turk. May I remind you that I am a minister of the Crown and not accustomed to being trifled with.' Digby slurped at his champagne. 'Perhaps, thnn thnn thnn, you think that Her Majesty's Government exists for your convenience.'
'Not at all, Minister,' protested Sam, who wasn't even listening. He understood petty officials like Digby Parkhurst and was more than happy to let him have his moment of self-importance. That way he would get it out of his system and forget about it.
Digby, imagining himself to be having the most tremendous effect, happily accepted more champagne. There were flecks of filo pastry round his mouth and his fingers shone with grease.
'I am afraid I am going to have to consider this matter very carefully indeed. I am forced to ask myself whether the road lobby has achieved a sufficient maturity to justify its special relationship with Her Majesty's Government.'
'You're absolutely right, Minister,' said Sam absently, whilst casting an appreciative eye over the girl serving the drinks and wishing he was not such a staunch Catholic.
'Yes, I should imagine you are wishing you were somewhere else right now, aren't you, Turk?' said Digby, imagining Sam to be quivering in his boots.
'Well, to tell you the truth, I was, Minister,' answered Sam, imagining the waitress quivering in hers.
'I'm glad you understood the seriousness of the situation. I have not decided what course of action I shall take but I commend you to consider what I have said most carefully.'
Of course, as Sam well knew, Digby had absolutely no intention of taking any course of action at all – but what fun he was having.
'Yes, Minister, certainly. I shall consider it most carefully,' said Sam, who had already forgotten everything the Minister had said.
'We shall discuss it again after my speech tomorrow,' said Digby. And draining a final glass of champagne, he bid the road lobby good night and staggered drunkenly off to bed, imagining himself to be one hell of a fellow and actually being a git in a bow-tie.
END OF THE LINE
In another part of the hotel, a small forlorn group of men and women waited for Digby. They too had champagne to offer, although not quite such a decent vintage; they too had choice nibbles, although theirs were potted meat, not salmon.
'I don't think he's coming,' said one.
'He never does,' said another.
The forlorn group of people were the chairman and senior management of Britain's railways.
Every year, at conference time, they mounted a sad little soiree for the Minister in order to put the arguments of the rail lobby. And every year the Minister did not come and the soiree got smaller and more depressed, like the railways themselves.
'Pretty soon we shall be having the rail lobby in the hotel lobby,' murmured the company gagsmith – but nobody was laughing.
The old man sighed.
'Well, gentlemen, ladies. We did our best, we did everything they asked of us . . .' And indeed they had. During the Eighties the Government had asked the railways to slicken up their act, to get modern, get groovy, get nasty – and the old man and his team had done it.
They were aware that the lucrative business traveller was ignoring the railways. Why was this? they asked. Was it because the railways were a crap, underfunded service? No, it seemed not. The problem, apparently, was simply one of snobbery. Top people, it was decreed, did not like travelling with scumbags. Britain used to have three classes on the railways, she would do so again! The
old man and his team would reintroduce third class. Unfortunately the word 'third' is not a modern word; it is not a word that would much impress the Europeans; it is not a word that wins elections.
The solution of course was marketing. Marketing – that great decade-sized red herring which entirely replaced reality during the Eighties. A first class seat would stay a first class seat; that, it seemed, offended none. But the second class seat disappeared, re-emerging bright and new as a 'full standard fare' incorporating the new Silver service (a free instant coffee). Finally, third class was revived after an absence of forty-five years, but it was not called third class, it was reborn as a Super Saver.
So there you had it, First, Standard (with free coffee) and Super Saver. First, second and third. The business traveller could now be as isolated as he was in his car, and no bollards or contraflows. It hadn't worked of course, no amount of marketing can modernize lines and put new rolling stock on them.
'I should have fought,' the old man said sadly. 'Why didn't I fight like a tiger?' he mumbled into his booze.
'Because you're a cowardly old git and you wanted to get knighted,' thought his team – but they didn't say it.
'I should have told them to stuff their restructuring up their collective bum holes,' continued the old man. 'You can't run a railway without government money. They understand that in Europe. The garlic-gorgers know it; the sausage-suckers know it; even the pasta-pukers are beginning to suspect – why can't the British work it out? The savings come later. Oh well, it's too late now.'
'Too late, sir!' gasped the old man's team who thought more creatively than they spoke.
'Yes, I'm afraid this is my last lobby,' said the old man. 'Earlier today I spoke with Ingmar Bresslaw.'
'Ingmar Bresslaw!' gasped the old man's team, taking on the role of the Greek chorus at the tragedy.
And well they might have done, for Ingmar Bresslaw was the Government's chief hatchet man. The most terrifying man in Whitehall. It was he who had been chosen to lie to the press about Digby's road-building plans; and it was he who had carried the news to the chairman of Britain's railways that his industry was doomed.
'Ingmar Bresslaw informed me that tomorrow he will instruct the Minister for Transport to announce the formation of the BritTrak Consortium. Of course, I shall resign.'
The BritTrak Consortium?' replied the team, still practising their echo effect.
'Yes, the BritTrak Consortium. What's more, ladies and gentlemen, it is my sad duty to inform you that there is no "c" in "trak" . . . Is nothing sacred to these despicable people?' the old man anguished. 'They reduce Britain to a single syllable and the word "track" to four letters. What will they do to the railways themselves?'
The room fell silent. Well actually the room did not fall silent. The room went on playing the string arrangements of Simon and Garfunkel's greatest hits which it had been playing all along. The people in the room fell silent. They knew that what the old man feared had already come to pass. During the love affair with tarmac most industrial nations had neglected their trams and trains, and now, with eco armageddon looming, and oil-producing nations holding the world to ransom, rail was needed again but was in no state to fulfil that need. In Britain, it seemed, the process of disintegration was not over yet.
Sandy Mackay, the youngest rail person, spoke up.
'What will the BritTrak Consortium do, sir?'
The old man took a deep breath.
'It will reduce the rail network to a single high-profit track, running from the City to a decent little pub in Chobham.'
Sandy was a rail enthusiast. He had wanted to be an engine driver when he was six years old, and he still wanted to be one. His love for trains was wild and huge. He knew what it was that made people stand on the end of station platforms in anoraks, insanely taking down a series of meaningless numbers – it was the beauty of trains. He understood the man who spent thirty-six hours of every weekend in his attic watching Hornby models trundle through tiny tunnels while his wife took lovers in the living room. It was the speed, the power, the romance of rail. And now it seemed that Digby Parkhurst had been instructed to finally destroy that romance for ever.
Sandy decided to act.
BIG BEARD
Deep deep down in the bowels of the hotel, where the ancient, groaning heating system shuddered and hissed and made sounds which wandered round the pipes, giving the impression that a ghost was being sick in the radiator, there stood one man alone. Deep down in the forgotten underworld of an English hotel, with the great piles of moulding leaflets from failed Fifties advertising campaigns (Isn't sunshine all the nicer for not having too much of it?) stood one solitary fellow with a bottle of rum in his hand. He was a huge, wild-looking man with great gnarled fists and great gnarled arms. Everything about him was gnarled – the story of how his inside thighs came to be gnarled delighted the lads at the Frog and Gherkin every time he told it.
The man was clearly mad. His wild eyes sparkling over his huge beard. A beard which gave him the appearance of a man who was trying to swallow an Old English sheepdog and not getting very far; a great tousled mass of steel-grey hair which was a sort of Bermuda triangle for combs and brushes. A great, strong, noble-looking man, with a fearful, savage dignity – but mad. That's what they said.
'Old Big Beard,' the hotel porters said, 'bloody mad.'
And they were right, but not mad as in insane, mad as in angry. Old Big Beard was angry as a man with no head who gets a collection of balaclava helmets for Christmas.
'He hasn't come!' Big Beard roared in a voice so filled with passion that even the boiler stopped gurgling and listened.
'Another year goes by! and still he hasn't come!'
This was the annual conference soiree of the canal lobby.
'Hear me! Hear me!' thundered Big Beard, pulling mightily at his bottle and grabbing up thirty or forty cheesy nibbles in his hamlike fist. 'Britain has hundreds and hundreds of miles of canals! Dug with sweat and blood and . . . and . . . shovels,' he continued, slipping from his oratory peak for a moment. 'Dug two centuries ago, to transport goods about the country. Today, we carry coal by road!!!' Tears stood in the huge man's eyes. 'Are we mad! A hundred million years coal lay still in the earth! and we take it on its last journey at seventy miles an hour! Burning oil all the while! Choking the sky! Scarring the land! Squashing the hedgehogs!' The tears began to dive out of the old beardy's eyes, making elaborate somersaults and pirouettes as they fell and bounced off his oilskin coat – just to make their point absolutely clear.
Behind Big Beard, mostly obscured by his huge gnarled tummy, was a map of the British Isles. A map which nobody but Big Beard ever saw. On it were marked the canals of Britain and on each canal was drawn a chain of barges covering its entire length.
The point was, that although the very first barge at the front of the queue might take weeks to reach its destination, from that point on, if the chain were not broken, barges might arrive every fifteen minutes. This clearly would not do for perishable products, but for coal, concrete, brick, wood . . .
'Imagine it,' the visionary screamed, 'a great, noble shire horse, running on high-octane grass and bramble, slowly plodding along, pulling perhaps thirty barges! No fuel consumption, no pollution, except the kind you can put on your roses . . .!
'Listen to me! Listen to me!'
Of course there would be pretty considerable practical problems, you certainly could not get that volume of traffic through locks as they are currently designed. But then there are considerable practical problems to building motorways, and that never stopped anyone. Anyway, Big Beard was an idealist. He knew nothing of practical problems, mainly because nobody had ever bothered to discuss them with him.
Big Beard took another great sorrowful pull on his bottle and loosened his bow-tie. He fell over. The canal lobby soiree was over for another year.
Chapter Eight
NIGHT MOVES
SET-UP
'What are you doing,
Sandy?' said the young rail enthusiast's wife, sleepily.
She had gone to bed early claiming that she couldn't stand all the bullshit. She was right, there was a lot of bullshit, but Sandy's wife would have detected bullshit in a house brick, as long as it had been a London house brick. For she was a Liverpudlian, a Liverpudlian graphic design graduate who now lived in London and she had decided that London was entirely populated by bullshitters. Many arty London-based Liverpudlians share with arty London-based Glaswegians the deep-seated conviction that they, despite being artists and filmmakers quaffing champagne in the same bars as the native artists and filmmakers, somehow retain an honest earthiness and cynical sense of humour that is their birthright. The longer they live in London, the more convinced they become that nobody in that city is capable of communicating honestly. Whereas back home, a fishwife might be found sitting in a pub with a clothes designer and an ex-murderer discussing architecture. This is of course bollocks. All cities have an equal amount of bullshit, and an equal amount of honesty – and anyone who claims differently is bullshitting.
Anyway, Mrs Mackay was half asleep and she wanted to know what her husband Sandy was doing.
'Nothing,' he said. But he wasn't; he was doing something.
Sandy had spent the past hour trying to find a prostitute. It was his intention to either compromise or blackmail Digby Parkhurst out of announcing BritTrak on the morrow.
Digby was in his late thirties, and still single, but he was known throughout the party for his flirty ways with girls and his frequent, unpleasant and intimidating sexual allusions towards those women over whom he held power. Sandy reckoned that all this indicated that underneath Digby was probably a sad, frustrated little git. Also Sandy had seen Digby stagger to bed and knew him to be drunker than an eighteenth birthday party. If ever there was a time to get him, that time was now. At least that was what Sandy reckoned, but then again, he was completely pissed as well.