The cab growled over the brow of Shoot Up Hill and on along Cricklewood Broadway. This was another ring of the city. Outside the grocer's there were stacks of plantains and boxes of sweet potatoes under flapping plastic — garish, alien vegetables infesting the lacklustre suburb. Outside the pound shops West Africans flicked amber worry beads and peered at displays of washing-up brushes. A big pub hove into view, the Crown, engraved glass, double bow windows, free-standing sign. It looked impressive, but it's only been made over to look like what it once was. Inside are fifteen kinds of piss on electronic tap, a video jukebox and a bunch of slappers giving the come-on to farting salesmen full of refried cheer.
'And what's this county called, then?' the fare asked.
'County yourself bloody lucky you don't live here, sir,' Dave said, then laughed to show he wasn't serious. Not that I'm racial or anything, it's only that if I'm perfectly honest, at the end of this particular bloody awful day, I can't stand the fucking shvartzers. . Can't stand their tight, furry curls, their chocolate skin, their blubbery lips. . their dreadful fucking driving … Shvartzers. Hard to think of Big End, whom Dave had known since he was a teenager, as a shvartzer. But it's better to say shvartzer than coon or nigger, innit? Afro-Caribbean's plain stupid, 'coz they aren't all that. If Benny were still alive he'd be amazed to see black, black cabbies, fucking blown away. Black, black cabbies and diesel dykes inall. Not that there are anything like as many blacks as there were Jews — thank fucking God. Benny said that in the sixties most cabbies were Jewish. What the fuck's 'appened to 'em? Disappeared to Emerson Park, Redbridge and fucking Stanmore, living out their days behind double glazing, under the watchful eyes of lawyer daughters and doctor sons. Hung up their ski jackets and fur boots, quit the patch leaving only their bloody shtoopid shlang behind 'em.
The cab bundled on past bed shops and a new Matalan, before finally ridding itself of the endless parade of commerce and entering authentic suburbia, the great shrubbery of three-bedroom, inter-war semis that defined London more than any mere black cab or Big Ben ever could. The road fell away towards the North Circular, splitting into three tongues, one poking through the arch of a still higher flyover, while the two others lolled down to the ground. The VDU facades of PC World and Computer Warehouse glared at each other across six lanes. The cab passed between them, then was aloft, buffeted by wind, spattered by grit, slapped by waste paper. To the east seagulls soared above the sea-greenery of Hampstead. Like a kid's snowstorm toy, the little cab shaken up. Dave remembered the little kid crying, huge pink finger marks on his naked bum. And what he had whimpered: Not hurting Dad … not hurting … as he confused the pain and the action that had caused it.
Dave had been driving for so many years he hardly ever thought about the actual graft of turning the wheel — except for when he did, and then it was a torment. When Carl was little and I felt like this, I'd find a call box and pull over. I was working nights. 'Do you want to speak to Daddy? Daddy's on the phone?' The sound of two-year-old breathing rasping the mouthpiece, then his voice, piping yet oddly distinct:
'Daddy?'
'Hiyah, Runty, how's it going, mate?'
'Mummy, issa ghost.'
The ghost drove on up the Broadway past the uglified slab of the Connaught Business Centre and on through Colindale, turning right down Colindale Avenue by the Newspaper Library, where ageing amateur genealogists sifted the dusty old doings of their ancestors between their arthritic fingers. The copper roof of the National Institute for Medical Research at Mill Hill shone in a single faint beam from the setting sun. 'That's NIMR, isn't it?' said the fare, but Dave didn't hear him, he was aiming for it, tacking the cab this way and that: under the MI at Bunns Lane, then up Flower Lane to Mill Hill Circus. He wasn't using any knowledge to get to his destination — simply a homing instinct. Now it's Carl that's the ghost. . First they stopped meeting in the flesh, then the phone calls got shorter and shorter, a few muffled phrases: 'Yeah, Dad, alright, yeah,' a few muffled phrases that eventually deteriorated into text messages: 'Eye not CU … Eye 8 B4 … Eye luv U 2 …' A staccato script of letters and digits beamed from an alternative world. Then they ceased communicating altogether and began to liaise in dreams or nightmares.
It wasn't until he turned off Wells Lane and bumped up the rough track between Mill Hill school and its sports fields that Dave realized he hadn't replied to the fare. He thought of remedying the deficiency, but it was too late for anything save a hearty 'Well, here you are, sir, up on the heights. If it were only a little earlier I'd suggest you take a stroll after your meeting. You can see most of the northwest of London from here, and right into the city centre.' The fare only grunted, examined his crumpled paper, then sang out, 'This is it!' as they drew level with a prosperous cantonment. The Burberry bundle tugged up his briefcase and piled out of the door. Standing by the driver's window, he sorted through the pigskin wallet he'd drawn from an inside pocket in the irritating, dilatory way of a foreigner, examining each note as if he weren't quite sure if it had any value at all — let alone its face one. Dave saw his tip dwindle to nothing. Americans who were used to London tipped well; newcomers seldom bothered — they certainly didn't understand that twenty per cent was considered perfectly acceptable for a black cab. Still, twenty-five notes on the meter, and who knows if. . 'You wouldn't like me to wait would you, sir? I can turn the meter off if you're not going to be more than an hour.' The fare consulted his watch before replying, 'No, thank you, I'm gonna be a good deal longer.' He handed over the money, a tenner and a twenty, then hesitated while Dave combed the coin in his bag, finger waves pitter-purling on metal shingle, then, 'Keep the change, cabbie.'
'Thank you very much, sir, much obliged to you!' Consider yerself at home! Consider yerself one of the fa-mi-ly! We've taken t'you so strong! It's clear! We're! Going to get along!' In the jaundiced eye of his own self-contempt Dave saw himself leaping from the cab to hoe down in the dirty puddles, skipping and splashing, his sleeves up to his elbows, tugging the peak of his cap in lieu of a forelock.
Once the ex-fare had turned and walked off under the homely glow of a solitary streetlight, Dave bumped the cab on over the top of the hill and down to the Ridgeway. He made a right and parked up opposite the Institute. There were seven storeys of big, metal-framed windows — including dormers — and all were brightly lit. From the open transoms came the hum of purposive machinery. When Dave was a boy, hidden in the estate off Bittacy Hill gasping on a fag, and waiting for the rest of his class to return from their run up to the top of the Ridgeway so he could rejoin the race at a believably low ranking, the word was that the cure for cancer was on the point of discovery under the Institute's green copper roof. Then he'd glimpsed white-coated lab assistants doing things with racks of test tubes, but now the lower windows were equipped with reflective glass, and Dave had found out that if he moved towards the fence CCTV cameras tracked him, each one equipped with its own little 'eek' of a wiper. Inside, the biomedical boffins had given up on the cancer cure — just as they themselves had given up smoking. Instead the American's colleagues were splicing genes, humanizing antibodies and growing ferny little forests of stem cells. The occasional puppy's eye was dissected, the live animal pinioned in a savage clamp. White girls with dreadlocks, maddened by the deficiencies of their vegan diets, would come up here and try to kill the boffins. It's a bitch save dog world …