by Ben Elton
Deirdre stormed out of Digby's office and got to work on a cover-up. The result being that when Deborah put the phone down to face Geoffrey she had to inform him that his invention had completely disappeared.
Geoffrey was truly stunned. The disaster befalling him was huge. First they had tried to kill him, now they had stolen both copies of his life's work, and he did not know who they were, or why they were attacking him. Geoffrey sat on Deborah's bed, trying to think what he should do.
'OK, Geoffrey, so give me the juice. What is this crazy invention?' asked Deborah, hauling herself up into a sitting position by means of the bar that was suspended above her head. 'You've always made a secret out of it like it was the recipe for Coke. What could be so special? Have you discovered the secret of alchemy?'
'I did it for you, Deborah,' said Geoffrey. 'It's an engine, and I designed it for you.'
'An engine?' enquired Deborah. 'That's nice, thanks. You mean like in a car?'
'Yes, exactly like in a car, except it doesn't use petrol. It's powered by hydrogen,' said Geoffrey and adding rather unnecessarily, 'it's a hydrogen engine.'
'Don't be stupid, Geoffrey,' said Deborah. 'You can't run an engine on hydrogen.'
'You can run an engine on anything that is a source of power, Deborah,' snapped Geoffrey. He did not normally snap at Deborah, in fact, even if he had wanted to he probably would not have had the guts, but he was in something of a turmoil. 'Anything at all, oil, electricity, coal, legs . . .'
'Some legs,' said Deborah. 'Mine couldn't power an electric toothbrush.' It had been almost three years since the arsehole in the Global Moritz had tried to rush the pelican crossing on yellow, but understandably she was still a little bitter.
'Yes, some legs,' admitted Geoffrey. 'But you can run an engine on any source of power. The only question is, how efficient is it? I wanted to make a clean engine, a light engine, an engine that could make you truly mobile, Deborah. One where the fuel weighed very little but delivered an immense amount of power. When I first met you, I wanted to make an engine that would turn your wheelchair into a Thunderbird. I wanted to make you able to dance and fly. You were the inspiration, Deborah, you concentrated my mind. You made me want to build an engine!'
'I have that effect on all the guys,' said Deborah.
Chapter Ten
BOY MEETS GIRL. BOY ANNOYS GIRL. BOY STANDS NOT A HOPE IN HELL WITH GIRL
DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE
Since Deborah's friendship with Geoffrey was shortly to lead her into the most mortal danger it is worth taking a moment to discover how it was that they came to meet at all. It had happened some three years previously on the London Underground. Well not actually on the underground, but at the wall of ticket barriers that the authorities began to erect shortly after the King's Cross fire, in the apparent hope that next time nobody at all would get out.
Early in the time of Deborah's burden, before she became cripwise to the system of apartheid under which she would be spending the rest of her life, she had attempted to take a tube. Later of course Deborah was to realize that she was as disbarred from such simple public activities as were black South Africans from municipal swimming pools in South Africa. Later of course, Deborah would come to realize that the only thing missing from doorways, steps, lifts, escalators, curbs, etc. in London were neat signs saying ACHTUNG! No Disabled People Allowed. However, this was in the springtime of her trouble. The Global Moritz was still a recent memory and Deborah was determined to stay in Britain, continue her education and square up to the slings and arrows of outrageous bastards.
Of course her parents had begged her to return to New York.
'What, you hate your momma so much you won't let her look after you?'
'Momma,' Deborah had said, 'if I come to you now I'll never get out again. You'll glue yourself to my wheelchair and force soup down my throat for forty-five years till you die, and then I'll starve. Now is the time I have to learn to live my own life.'
'You don't like my soup?' said Momma.
FIRE HAZARD
And so Deborah had stayed in London and, on that fateful day when she met Geoffrey, found herself stuck at the ticket barrier at South Kensington station with a weary-looking London Underground person approaching her. Deborah was very quickly realizing how naive she had been in assuming that, with enough determination, she could roll where she wanted to roll. An enormous revelation was about to be demonstrated to her. A lifetime-sized truth was looming up at her wearing the uniform of London Regional Transport. Deborah, who before her encounter with the Global Moritz had been a young woman, was now a fire hazard. She had passed through a physical transformation. A transformation even more dramatic than that undergone by female stars in the US who, on reaching the age of forty-five, disappear for a month and re-emerge aged thirty, talking about feminism and being careful not to sneeze too hard in case they implode. Deborah's transformation had been greater even than this. For Deborah, once a warm and vibrant human being, exuding personality and soul, had become a fire hazard. Fire hazard, and specifically fire hazard. Not obstruction, embarrassment or damn nuisance, but fire hazard.
The reason Deborah was so specifically a fire hazard was that in those two little words, the able-bodied community let itself off the hook. It would of course be churlish to deny someone access to a theatre or pub because their chair would be difficult to get up a flight of steps, or because they occupy more space than walking customers and are hence less profitable. On the other hand, to deny someone access because they are a fire hazard – well, there is a sensible and public-spirited action. There is a fast route to the moral high ground if ever there was one.
'Nobody likes it, love, but there you go.'
Should Deborah, or anyone similarly afflicted, be so selfish as to complain about their effective ostracism from social and cultural life, what would she be doing but wishing pain and death upon the able-bodied community? And let us face it, it is not their fault that she is in a wheelchair.
'It's the possibility of a panic that worries us,' people would patiently explain to Deborah. 'You have to ask yourself what your situation would be in the case of a rush and a stampede.'
Very occasionally Deborah attempted to argue her corner, pointless though she knew it to be.
'Listen, bud,' she had said, as politely as she could manage, to the slightly punky young man who was refusing to sell her a ticket to a play to be performed in the upstairs room of a pub . . . 'It is Saturday afternoon, OK? and I have just negotiated the entire length of Oxford Street. I have dealt with it all: the tone deaf dickwit playing two of the three chords of "Blowin' in the wind", who kindly had his guitar case full of five pence bits spread across half the pavement—'
'Yeah, all right but . . .' interjected the young man, slightly offended. He did a bit of busking himself and often did a Dylan number or two, after all you had to cover the classics didn't you? However, Deborah was in no mood to be interrupted by a hippy, especially one who thought that having short, spiked hair meant he wasn't a hippy.
'I have got round ten broken paving stones that the council kindly put there to trip up blind people and snag wheelchairs. I have avoided the one and a half million tourists standing in groups wondering how they just managed to pay five pounds for a can of Coke.'
The punky hippy tried to interject, but failed.
'I have circumnavigated the thousands of thugs from the City in pretend Armani suits who can't see you because they're talking into their portable phones. So they bash you in the knees with their stupid briefcases, with the reinforced steel corners, that are absolutely essential to protect the bag of crisps and a copy of Penthouse, which is all they have inside the case.'
The punky hippy was amazed, this woman did not seem to require oxygen.
'I have detoured round the gangs of bored youths who hang around waiting for their balls to drop, outside each and every one of the identical fast food outlets offering identical crap in a bap and Tennessee Fried Dog; t
he crocodile of French schoolgirls with their beautiful Benetton jumpers tied round their waists, just at a nice level to get caught in my face; the endless men who stop dead directly in front of me to turn round and look at the French schoolgirls' asses; the road works; the bollards; the steaming piles of plastic bin liners; the taxis taking a little-known short cut along the pavement; the bloke who stands around with a sandwich-board saying eat less meat and protein; and the strange bearded tramp waving his arms around and screaming fuck off at everybody. All these things I have dealt with today, in a frigging wheelchair, bud. I think I could just about handle twenty-five assorted teachers and social workers making for the door of an upstairs room in a pub!'
'Hey,' said the punky hippy. 'Don't you ever have to breathe?'
'It's called circular breathing,' replied Deborah. 'The Australian Aboriginals developed it to play their didgeridoos, it means that they can keep blowing for ever. All New York Jewish girls are taught it, that's how we get to marry such rich men.'
The punky hippy was embarrassed. People in wheelchairs weren't supposed to crack dirty jokes. The idea of Deborah making gags about blow jobs embarrassed him . . . after all, he thought, could she? Would she still want to? People in wheelchairs are desexed by society, which is why they all have to use the same toilet.
BARRIER
So there she was, at the ticket barrier at South Kensington tube station, asking if she could be allowed through the gate reserved for those with luggage as her chair would not fit through the automatic barrier.
'I can let you through here, love,' the man had said, 'of course I can.'
'Good,' answered Deborah.
'But what about the steps, eh? The steps down onto the platform, eh? Sorry, love, but what about the steps?'
South Kensington is partly a ground-level station and the platform for the District and Circle lines are reached by a flight of steps. Deborah enquired whether there was a lift and was informed that not only was there not one, but this was exactly the sort of thing that she should have found out before setting out on her journey. London Regional Transport could not be expected to deal with this sort of problem at the drop of a hat. It seemed like a fairish point, but not when you consider the number of people in wheelchairs in London. The reason why requests like Deborah's were so rare is that most wheelchair users know the score and don't even bother to ask. In fact, if Deborah had phoned in advance she would merely have saved herself the trouble of going to the station at all, because there was no lift and no staff available to carry the chair anyway. And where was she going? Piccadilly? Well she might as well try to get to the moon. There were the escalators at this end, the escalators at that end, the corridors, the steps, the crowds. It turned out that in order for a person in a wheelchair to travel by tube they must arrange in advance to be met and helped by London Transport staff at both ends, and only travel at certain times, and only to and from stations where facilities are available.
Deborah realized that she was not going to be allowed through, and resolved to turn away, vowing then, as she was to vow a thousand times a week for the rest of her life, not to consume her precious energy on anger and frustration. She could not allow herself the luxury that most people indulge in, of letting off steam by having a raving good whinge.
Who can honestly say that they have never been consumed by that intense annoyance, never felt that burning but wrenching tension and anger at life's petty frustrations? A barman repeatedly ignoring you; a screw head that has for some reason been made out of soft putty instead of steel; a traffic light which has a thing about the colour red – such tiny irritations make one ready to kill. What, then, would be the inner fury felt by a person who has lost the use of certain limbs? How terrible would be the endless turmoil to the stomach that simple inanimate objects and petty bureaucracy will engender? If that fury were given expression, the person in question would die of exhaustion within a week. Deborah was no mystic, but, since her encounter with the car, she had learnt to keep control of her karma.
CREATING A SCENE
So, with a weary sigh, Deborah nailed a lid down on the fury bubbling up in her guts, and with a left-hand shove started the skilful process of extricating herself. Unfortunately, she now discovered that during her brief negotiations with officialdom, she had become the cork in a crowded bottleneck of people with suitcases and their own problems.
Deborah wanted the floor to open up and swallow her, and not just because this would have been a convenient way of getting down to the tube trains. She had never been fond of scenes and had already discovered that her new circumstances made her a natural centre of attention. In fact she sometimes felt that she was condemned to be either totally ignored or the object of all eyes and asked to choose between the lesser of these evils. Like most people, she would certainly have chosen the former. Since her encounter with the Moritz she had constantly been attracting people's notice; holding them up when trying to get through doors or into lifts; getting in their way when they wanted to carry drinks across the pub floor; being stared at by hundreds of people as she and her chair were manhandled into a concert. She hated every one of these little starring roles of life, just as she hated the one in which she was caught up at the tube station.
Deborah's reactions to all of this were no different to anyone else's. Who wants to be an inconvenience? Who wants to be in the way? Everybody knows the feeling of social villainy one experiences on getting out a chequebook at a supermarket cash till and holding people up while you write it out. We have all felt the howling wind of that great communal sigh which emanates from the queue behind you. You can almost hear them all thinking, 'He could at least have filled the name of the shop out while she was weighing his carrots.'
Well that was how Deborah was feeling now, except ten times more. She knew what they were all thinking behind her, it did not take much imagination. 'I wish this bitch would get the fuck out of the way.'
It was at this point that Geoffrey Spasmo made his appearance. Pushing through the small crowd, he lurched up to the London Underground person, and, concentrating hard so as to make himself clear, said in a loud voice:
'This is body fascism! You as a black man should understand what it feels like to be discriminated against.'
The London Underground man was indeed black and he did understand what it felt like to be discriminated against. Unfortunately, he didn't understand Geoffrey, the subtler aspects of Geoffrey's argument were rather lost in his guttural delivery. You had to listen carefully to understand Geoffrey, especially when he was shouting and excited. The only word that the London Underground man made out was 'black' and taking into account the confrontational attitude that Geoffrey was adopting, he not unnaturally presumed that race was central to Geoffrey's point. Which in a way it was but not in the way the London Underground man, whose name was Terry, presumed.
'Listen, mate, all right?' said Terry, pretty angrily. 'Don't come it with me, all right? If you come it with me, you're not going to be in a position to come it with no-one else for a long time, right? You know what I mean, mate, or what?' Terry did not give Geoffrey time to reply to this last enquiry, for he immediately expanded on this theme, producing, by a remarkable coincidence, an identical argument to the one which Geoffrey had been trying to put across himself.
'I mean you're a spastic, right? What are you doing with that racist shit? Don't you get your own discrimination, or what, I mean, or what?'
'That's what I'm saying!' said Geoffrey speaking slowly, and this time Terry understood. 'You should let this lady go on the tube.'
'I can't, can I, fuckwit?' replied the aggrieved Terry. 'What am I? Captain Kirk? Do you think I've got a transporter, or what?'
'In that case,' said Geoffrey, 'I think you should join me in some form of protest. In fact, I think everybody in the queue should. I think we should all sit down so that we can stand up for universal public access.'
Deborah could see that the only crowd cooperation likely to take place in
the next few minutes would be Geoffrey's lynching.
'Forget it, pal,' she said. 'You can't get people to stand up for themselves, let alone anyone else. As far as they're concerned we're just a couple of crips holding up their day.'
'But that's the exact attitude we have to fight,' stuttered Geoffrey.
Deborah was beginning to warm to this insanely deluded young man. For one thing, she was grateful that she was no longer the only inconvenient, disabled person irritating a crowd of people. On the other hand, she, unlike her champion it seemed, still lived on the planet Earth.
'You fight it,' replied Deborah. 'I have enough problems fighting this chair.' At which point she reversed hard into a big suitcase directly behind her which had been slowly pushing her towards the barrier.
'Well excuse me!' said someone who wanted to get to Heathrow.
'Sit on it!' said Deborah, offering a vertical forefinger. She was angry, and tired, and completely stuck.
'You won't get anywhere feeling sorry for yourself,' said the Heathrow traveller, and all the other pushers and shovers turned away. They personally would be too embarrassed to talk to a cripple, let alone argue with one.
With a huge effort, Deborah managed to extricate herself from the melee and effect a partial escape.
'You mustn't fight the chair,' shouted Geoffrey, leaving Terry to get on with his day and scuttling after Deborah, 'it's part of you.'
Some explanation is required here.
Did Geoffrey leap to the defence of every person with disabilities whom he encountered? Did he run after everyone in a wheelchair trying to engender in them a positive attitude to their condition? No, had he done so there would have been no time for him to gain his PhD in physics. The fact was that from the first moment he saw her, Geoffrey was smitten by Deborah. This, obviously, was not because Deborah, like Geoffrey, suffered from a disability. A person's sexuality is not governed by their own physical condition but by that which they find attractive in others. When we see pictures in the colour supps of some half-dead, prunelike Hollywood mogul escorting a twenty-year-old blonde bombshell about the place, we do not say, 'Oh I thought he would have gone for somebody more half-dead and prunelike.'