Gridlock

by Ben Elton

  Deborah still couldn't quite follow the green angle.

  'So what you have to do,' she insisted, 'is to reinvent it double quick and sell it to the motor industry yourself, you could do with a few million. Believe me, bud, the rent on this place gets higher every minute.'

  'If you do a deal with the devil,' said Geoffrey piously, 'you had better be ready to end up being impaled on fiery stakes and having your sweaty bits nibbled by his tiny crawling demons.'

  'What?' enquired Deborah, not unreasonably.

  'If I sold my engine to Dagenham or Detroit they would use it on private cars and nothing but private cars and, if it's as good as I think it is, which is bloody brilliant, twenty years from now we'd just have a world clogged up with hydrogen cars instead of petrol cars.'

  'So bully for the world, Geoffrey,' insisted Deborah. 'You said yourself that these engines burn cleaner. Call me an earth mother and stick my face in a vegetarian casserole if you like, but that sounds like good news to me.'

  'Oh yes, and where would that leave us?' asked Geoffrey.

  'Rich.' Deborah was a practical girl.

  'But you'd still be a prisoner in your own city,' Geoffrey said. 'People like you and me are the best example of how too many cars isolate people. You can't use a bus, it's tough to get on a train, a lot of taxis can't take chairs, and that's because all anybody cares about is cars, cars, bloody cars.'

  'Yes but I'm disabled, Geoffrey, remember? Not everyone is like me.'

  'Everybody is disabled by cars!' insisted Geoffrey.

  'Geoffrey, excuse me, but did you leave a door open in your brain here? Cars carry people around, you know? They don't disable people, they enable them to get around – especially people like me. What's more, if you were rich you could buy me a great big car, a limo with a chair lift and a chauffeur and a bar and a swimming pool. So just cut the philosophy, OK? and hurry up and reinvent your stupid engine because the sooner I'm outta my converted Ford and into a stretch Mercedes the better.'

  And with that, Deborah wheeled herself into the kitchen and filled the kettle from the hose attached to her tap. Her kettle could not move because it was attached to a clever little tilting platform that made pouring easier. Geoffrey followed Deborah into the kitchen.

  'Do cars enable the woman with a ton of shopping waiting at the bus stop for the bus that never comes?' he shouted.

  'So now he's onto communism already,' said an exasperated Deborah, struggling with the lid of a new coffee jar that would have given Mr Universe a limp wrist. 'They tried communism in Russia, Geoffrey, their buses were worse than ours and everybody had to eat cabbage for the rest of their lives.'

  Geoffrey would not be sidetracked by red, red herrings.

  'Do cars enable the people who live on main routes and have to listen to traffic all night? Do they enable old people who can't cross roads, or have to walk miles extra to find a crossing? Do they enable the five thousand people killed each year in Britain, or the forty thousand in the US? Above all, Deborah, do they enable the hundreds of thousands of people stuck in jams every day? I mean do they really? Or do people just think they do?'

  Having finally got the lid off the coffee, Deborah was attempting very gently to penetrate the foil vacuum seal with her thumb. After she had done that she had to brush away all the coffee that had exploded into her lap . . . 'I think they spring-load these mothers!' she moaned before returning to the topic of the day. 'Listen, Geoffrey, get real, OK? People love cars, I love cars and if you manage to stop your engine being used, I'm here to tell ya, they'll just carry on making dirty old petrol ones.'

  'Deborah, look at yourself,' said Geoffrey. 'You can't walk, and the reason you can't walk is because of a car that caught you at a pedestrian crossing. They called it a pedestrian crossing, but it wasn't built for people. It was built for cars, just like everything else. Whoever I sell my engine to—'

  'Presuming you can reinvent it before these murderers get you, which isn't going to happen while you're delivering the sermon on the mount,' said Deborah. She was struggling with a milk carton and it was only after she'd had to resort to trying to chew it open that she realized that she'd been attacking the bit that says 'open other side'.

  'Yes, always presuming that,' conceded Geoffrey. 'Whoever I sell it to is going to have to sign a contract saying that it will only be used to make buses—'

  'What!' Deborah could not help but laugh.

  'Or . . . or, I don't know . . . for every ten cars they make they've got to make a train coach, or at least that only one can be sold to each household, or that it can't be used in heavy freight lorries, I don't know, something. Don't you see, Deborah, it's a question of beginning to change people's attitudes.'

  'Look, Geoffrey,' said Deborah, deciding to have a can of Diet Coke instead. 'You can't force people to build buses. This is the free world, they can build what they like.'

  'Not with my bloody engine they can't,' announced Geoffrey. 'Have you ever heard of gridlock, Deborah?'

  'Geoffrey, I come from New York, of course I've heard of gridlock,' she snapped. Gridlocks had indeed originally been a US phenomenon. They emerged for the first time in Los Angeles in the late Seventies and occur when the grids of roads (or spaghetti of roads as they are in towns like London) become jammed at a series of junctions, meaning that cars cannot escape. The jam then feeds back, blocking more junctions and hence causing further jams. The size of the gridlock is dependent only on the number of cars feeding into the jam and how quickly the police can close the roads leading into it.

  'London is heading for a super-jam,' said Geoffrey, 'so is every car city in the world. It would only take a couple of accidents to happen at the same time in peak traffic; a jackknife on the Cromwell Road, a couple of smashes on the bridges, a pile-up at the mouth of the Ml or Shepherds Bush maybe – virtually anywhere actually. It would only take a coincidence and the whole city would be massively disabled. Just like us, eh?'

  'Very funny,' said Deborah.

  At that point the front door slammed and a footfall was heard in the hall. 'It's only Toss, Geoffrey,' said Deborah. 'Come out from behind the sofa.'

  HIGHWAY MAN

  The door opened and in walked Toss in his traffic warden uniform. 'I have to tell you, guy, that I was wicked today.' He threw his traffic warden cap onto a hook and put on a baseball cap – actually he missed the hook and the cap hit the ground.

  'Toss,' said Deborah, 'pick the damn hat up.'

  'OK, guy, it's happening, y'nah what I mean?' replied an aggrieved Toss. 'But like you know, it's only my warden lid, it's not a bomb or nuffink, right, Spas?'

  'Right, Toss,' replied Geoffrey, emerging from behind the sofa. 'Personally I'm into spatial anarchy. Mess is God's way of telling us we have too much stuff.'

  'Totally good point, Spas,' said Toss, getting a litre of juice from the fridge. 'You're a philosopher, you know that? You should have your own show on Channel Four.'

  'What am I talking to, the three wise monkeys here? Listen, Toss,' said Deborah with quiet menace, 'I have told you till my tonsils have worn out that the reason I don't want your stupid stuff on the floor is because it snags my stupid wheelchair. If you left a hat and a coat on the floor in every room of this stupid flat I would not be able to fuck'n' well move!' Deborah's voice was rising to a crescendo. 'I don't enjoy having to talk like I'm your fuck'n' mother, Toss! I'm only twenty-one years old! Twenty-one-year-olds should not have to spend their time worrying about whether little scheisters like you pick their hats up or not, but I do have to worry about it because otherwise I shall become trapped for ever in a cave made entirely of your socks and stinking underwear! So pick things up! Or I swear I shall personally get two shoeboxes full of wet cement and stick them on your feet when you're asleep. See how you like being anchored to the carpet!'

  Toss picked up his hat. 'Nice speech, Debbo, happening. I appreciate the point, although, right, it's not necessary to chuck a total mental.'

  Toss was Deborah's
lodger, he had been home to his mother's for the weekend, which was why he had not been there the previous night.

  Deborah had taken a lodger the moment she found her place. She knew that her compensation would take years, and money was tight. Money is incredibly important to people with disabilities. You will never ever hear a person with disabilities say 'money doesn't mean much to me'. Money means mobility, money means independence and personal dignity. Yet, for a person with disabilities, money is much more difficult to come by. Toss had been a lucky find. A year younger than Deborah, he was kind and easy-going.

  His job had surprised Deborah at first.

  'What do you do?' she had asked.

  'I hang out, girl. I chill,' replied Toss.

  'No, I mean for a living,' said Deborah, wondering about somebody who hung out and chilled's ability to pay the rent.

  'Oh that, right? I'm a traffic warden, and I am wicked with a ticket, girl, all right? Just the best. Don't mess with Toss when he's got his cap on because I take no prisoners!' said Toss proudly.

  'A traffic warden?' This had not been what Deborah had expected at all.

  'You have a problem, girl? Are you some kind of libertarian geezer who reckons it is her democratic right to park on top of babies' heads? Is that it? Because then I am your enemy, girl, and you'd better hide right now, because the ticket of Toss has your number on it,' said Toss.

  Actually, being a person who could not walk and who lived in one of the busiest cities in the world, Deborah had good reason to support those who enforced the parking laws, particularly those laws concerning disabled parking places which people often pinch. It is, however, important to remember that they do not do this out of any desire to nab a convenient space. Of course not, no, they do it out of a morally courageous desire to pay back the charlatans, scroungers and malingerers who they personally know to be in possession of 90 per cent of all disabled car stickers.

  Of course they accept that there are genuinely disabled people and they would not dream of depriving them of a place, but really, sometimes, you do wonder. After all, are these people really so disabled? Lots of people get aches and pains, they don't all go putting stickers on their cars.

  It was because of this type of thinking that Deborah had no objection to traffic wardens, she was merely surprised to discover that Toss was one.

  'I just thought that a cool, black guy like you would be a DJ or something,' she added.

  Toss looked at Deborah slightly pityingly, as a fond uncle might look at an idiot child, or an MP might look at a constituent.

  'Listen, girl, you're not thinking straight right? You have not thought this one through at all. Let me ask you this. If all the cool geezers was doing the scratchin' and the mixin' and the "ooh get down-in" right? Then who would there be to get down? Who would there be to strut? No-one, that's who. Check out the theory, girl, it's watertight.'

  'So why a traffic warden?' asked Deborah, who could not fault Toss's disco theory.

  'Because, girl, I like the streets. I like to cruise around and hang and chill and check things out. This way I get to do it all day, and I get a wicked uniform, know what I mean,' and Toss laughed, 'aha ha ha.'

  'Is your name really Toss?' asked Deborah who wanted to get everything sorted out at once.

  'Nah, it's Tosh, Harold Wilson Tosh. But all the kids at school, right? they called me Toss. Which is understandable, y'nah what I mean? Because like Tosh to Toss is only one letter change to turn it into a wicked joke you see, girl? So I said to them, I said OK, guys, you can call me Toss right, because right, and get this, because right, I don't give a . . . Wicked riposte, right? Aha ha ha.' Toss had clearly told this one before, and it had not improved with age.

  'Quite wicked,' said Deborah rather doubtfully, and she let Toss have her spare room. That had been three years ago and Toss had not changed.

  'Toss,' said Deborah, 'Geoffrey's going to have to stay here for a while. There are some people trying to kill him,' Deborah added.

  'Don't worry about it, Geoffrey,' said Toss. 'You'll get used to it. I'm a traffic warden, I have people trying to kill me every day.'

  'No, Toss,' said Geoffrey. 'Really trying to kill me.'

  'Exactly, guy, that's what I'm saying,' replied Toss. 'I need a gun, I need armour and a gun. A traffic warden is at the sharp end of the twentieth century, guy. When the dust settles, we are the enforcers, the last line of law. After us, man, it's anarchy. We are that close to the edge,' and Toss proferred his thumb and forefinger to emphasize his point. 'They should do a film you know? It would be wicked! Clint Eastwood as a traffic warden, right? He gives this car a ticket OK? thus keeping open the city's life-lines, and letting the ambulance with the little girl in a coma get to hospital, right? Then the geezer who owns the car comes up with his portable phone and his cheese and ham croissant, and his Psion organizer—'

  'Yeah, Toss . . .' Geoffrey attempted to interject, but Toss was on a roll.

  'And the guy starts crying right? He says, "Oh go on, mate, let me off, I've only been gone three and a half days, I'll move it now. Go on, mate, be a mate." And Clint says, "Sorry, guvnor, but it's the law. I'm really sorry, but I have to do it." And the guy says, "Well you little fucking shit, give 'em a uniform they think they're fucking Hitler. I hope you die of cancer, cunt!" And then Clint gets out his Magnum and says, "I keep the city alive, arsehole, and you're dead." Then he shoots the geezer and has his VW Golf crushed up into a tiny cube. It'd be a brilliant film, wouldn't it?'

  Toss spent his entire day being either pleaded with or vilified, and, like many people in high-stress jobs, he tended to take his work home with him.

  'It is mayhem out there! The minute word goes round that anything above fifteen inches of London kerbstone has become vacant it is a battle zone, guy! They're all screaming "mine, mine" and spitting and snarling and throwing boiled sweets and road atlases at each other. People will kill to park! They will kill themselves to park. There are geezers out there will eat their own testicles to get just one wheel within a yard of the pavement, you hear what I'm saying? We are talking Conan the Barbarian in a Vauxhall Astra! He is growing horns and a forked tail here! He is a Panzer Commander] Left hand down, right hand down, left hand down, right hand down, left hand down, right hand—'

  'Toss!!' said Deborah.

  'Both hands down at the same time.'

  'The point is, Toss,' said Geoffrey, 'there's just too many private cars.'

  'You telling me!' said Toss. 'It's like trying to get fifteen heads into the same hat, it cannot be done!!'

  'Well exactly,' said Geoffrey, 'and what we as a society have to do . . .'

  Deborah could stand it no longer and decided to go out for a drive.

  CAREER STALLED

  Having turned off the news Digby sat alone in his hotel room for hours, until eventually steeling himself to the awful task of writing a letter of resignation – a letter that would end his meteoric political career. Wearily he crossed to the writing desk. The chocolate wafer which the maid had left beside the kettle, and was going to be his treat, seemed hollow now (it was), the neat little soaps occasioned him no glee, his life was over.

  'My dear Prime Minister,' he began, pausing to consider the correct wording for such a momentous letter. 'Deeply though I regret that our long association . . .' There was a rustle of paper. Somebody had pushed a note under his door. Digby picked it up and read it, there was not much to read.

  'From the Office of the Prime Minister. Please be informed that your resignation as Minister for Transport has been accepted.'

  It was the cruellest blow of all. Not even an 'I shall always appreciate your friendship'. Drink/drive resignations were treated more kindly than this. Tears welled up in Digby's eyes and as they dropped onto the Prime Minister's note, or rather the note from the Prime Minister's office for it was not even signed, Digby had but one thought in his head – to get Sam Turk, the man he wrongly believed had destroyed him.

  Why had Turk done i
t? Hadn't Digby apologized enough? Why destroy him? And in such a cruel cynical manner too. Such a wicked, vicious blow to deliver; to destroy him over railways! What vindictive irony, to force Digby to sacrifice his entire career in transport over a railways announcement!

  Digby could not even take any satisfaction from the thought that Turk would be as irritated by the spoke that Digby's improvised speech had put in the road wheel as Ingmar Bresslaw had been. All he knew was that Turk's punishment of Digby for ticking him off over the Patents Office break-in had been terrible indeed. A huge, cruel, unjustified punishment far in excess of Digby's crime. Digby swore he would remember Sam Turk for what, Digby supposed, Turk had done. And Digby did.

  CRISES IN THE BUNKER

  Way, way above Digby's head, in every sense of the word, further up the road at the top of his hotel, in the Prime Minister's penthouse bunker, a crisis meeting was in progress. The Prime Minister and the Home Secretary were listening to Simon Rodney Butterface in gloomy silence. Ingmar Bresslaw was also in attendance, plus one or two other ministers – empty suits so lacking in distinction that at times it was possible to forget that they were in the room at all.

  Simon Rodney Butterface was the chairman of the party. He was considered an intellectual, which, by the sad standards of the Cabinet of the time, meant that he knew who Shakespeare was. It was Simon Rodney Butterface's job to ensure that the party would be re-elected at the next election. A job which, up until now, had merely involved delivering the official pompous sneer at anything that the Leader of the Opposition said and sending his long, damp tongue slithering along the corridors of certain 'proudly independent' British newspapers until it located an editor's anus in which to gently insert itself. Not arduous tasks by any means, and Simon Rodney Butterface had, up until the evening in question, had plenty of time to work on a slim volume of verse he was compiling entitled The Glory that is England. However, tonight was different. The party was in crisis and Simon Rodney Butterface's plump face sweated under his Brylcreemed hair.