In the Celestial Empire, Dave Rudman ate barbecued pork and crispy pork rice, washing it down with a pot of green tea. He wedged the Standard under the lip of his plate and read about the Public Carriage Office, who were ruthlessly failing black cabs for their annual test, picking up on such tiny infractions as under-inflated tyres and 'lacklustre' bodywork. Not been getting their kickback, the wankers.
After he'd paid, Dave strolled back round to the cab. He had no clear plan beyond working the theatre crowd for a couple of hours. It could be a doddle, hacking the cab on an evening like this. There were the right on-off rainy conditions to get nervous nellies' umbrellas up and their arms out. He was throbbing back down Shaftesbury Avenue when he saw her again — the girl from the Hilton. She wasn't exactly hailing him, but she did have an arm out to steady herself as she bent down to retrieve a lost sandal. Dave slewed the cab into the kerb and called through the offside window: 'Cab, luv?'
Michelle had decided to go home after snorting the line of cocaine in the toilet with Jane that was meant to make her go on to Gossips. She had only taken coke once before — and as soon as the powder crinkled up her face she regretted it; for it chopped her into two Michelles, idiot drunk and calculating fool, lashed together in a freckled skin bag. She felt awful, she wanted revenge on that wanker, I'll call his hippy-dippy posh wife and tell her what he's been up to while she sits at home with baby … The intensity of this shook her, so she didn't make any excuses — she just left. The walk down Dean Street didn't clear her head; it thickened it with the sight of crotchless panties on plastic dummies, stared at by City types with eager-beaver faces. I should go in that open door and up those stairs … The pimp could put a new sign under the buzzer: 'Busty redhead new on scene, likes to be abused …'
When the cab squealed to a halt beside her, she crawled into the back, grateful for respite, even though two cabs in one evening, it's insane … I can't afford it. The cocaine was making tiny little calculations for her, white beads on a sparking synaptic abacus, so that when Dave said, 'Where to, luv?' Michelle replied, 'Olympia, then on to Danebury Road, it's off the Fulham Palace Road.'
Dave drove in silence and snatched occasional glances in the rearview at the fare slumped in the corner of the back seat. They trundled down Haymarket and along Pall Mall, past the mock temple of the Athenaeum, with its golden statue of Athene, poised on the pediment, dispensing wisdom to a Clubland frieze. They swerved into the Mall and bumbled under the blank white eyes of Victoria — who hefted her orb, as if about to rise and pitch it from her stubby shoulder. They roared up Constitution Hill, around Hyde Park Corner and down Knightsbridge. Quite unexpectedly Michelle spoke: 'D'you mind going that way?' She waved her hand towards Edinburgh Gate. 'I want to — I want to see the statue.'
'The one under Bowater House? The Epstein — Pan chasing the Family of Man?' Dave lapsed into his mother's pedagogic manner. Bloody 'ell, Michelle sniggered to herself, it's Fred Housego, then said: 'Er, yeah, that's the one, but I thought he was the Devil.'
'I love this statue,' Dave remarked, because they were by it, shuddering through the arch, past the oil-dark goat legs of Pan. Michelle looked up at his fig-leaf scrotum. He was pursuing the primordial couple with their kids and pets. Their hard faces were flattened against the future, the whole bronze gaggle pelting full tilt from the swamp of Belgravia towards the greying greenery of the Park.
Rolling up the South Carriage Drive … a fine brougham, milady. . Dave imagined there was now some complicity between them — although he had no idea what in. The glass partition had been slid open, he wanted to talk about the statue, but Michelle had slumped back in the corner, her eyes vacant and her coral pink nails worrying at the neck of her dress.
When they got to Olympia and Dave pulled up on the empty rank alongside the overground station, Michelle got unsteadily out of the cab. 'Can you wait?' she asked. 'I'll leave my bag.' When Dave saw the security guard disputing with her, he decided to intervene. What must she think of me in my sweaty T-shirt with my spotty nose and mucked up, thinning hair? Michelle saw a tall, commanding figure. 'The young lady needs to pick something up from the stand she's working on,' Dave said, and to back this up Michelle produced her exhibitor's badge in its plastic sheath. 'Strictly speaking no one's allowed in, mate,' the guard said, already unlocking the door.
'We'll only be a few minutes,' Dave replied, ushering Michelle in. He darted back to lock the cab, before following on behind.
Padding along the shadowy defiles between the half-built stands, slapping the rubber treads of the stairways, their complicity grew — they were children infiltrating a school by night and the cardboard cut-outs of winsome computer salesmen were caricatures of derided teachers. On Level 5, at her clients' stand, Michelle found the ring-binders of plans and specifications where she'd left them in a steel cabinet, and Dave took them from her.
Back in the cab, he homed in unerringly on Danebury Road, using the North End Road as a flight path into the heart of Fulham. IVERS MARMA, OCKINGS, ETERKIN'S CUSTARD: the revenants of Victorian advertisements remained, haunting the pitted redbrick shopfronts. Feeling the city wheel about the cab — a widening gyre of miles and years — Dave thought, I'm never going to be this connected to anything ever again … I'm falling.
In the small hours of the following morning it dawned on Michelle that she should be able to locate that precise point where drink, drugs and anger were mixed inside her in exactly the right parts to simulate lust. It was mostly anger. The flaming thought of what devastation it would wreak on him if he were to know that within hours of leaving the Hilton she was fucking someone else heated Michelle up enough, so that when the cab finally turned into Danebury Road and jounced to a halt outside No. 43, she slid herself off the greasy seat and said, 'You couldn't help me with these, could you?'
Confessions of a bloody lucky cab driver … Dave plodded up the stairs, the binders under each arm. He knew a cabbie called Stan who liked to be stood upon. That's how he got his moniker: Stood-upon-Stan. If he got an overweight woman fare and she looked biddable, he'd strike up a conversation and eventually make the peculiar proposition: 'If you'll stand on me for a few minutes, luv — juss stand on me chest in yer stockinged feet — nuffin' kinky — I'll waive the fare.' Nothing kinky! That's fucking kinky. . Yet according to Stan lots of them would. Apart from this oddity, although Dave had heard a few stories about the allure of the cabbie to women of a certain age, he mostly discounted them. He no more thought of trying it on with a fare than he considered picking up a black guy heading south. No offence, mate, he'd mutter to an archetypally good black man as he swept past, too many fucking nose bleeds. 'None taken,' replied Nelson Mandela, and bent back to pulverizing the York stone kerb with his prison mallet.
In the strongly perfumed interior of Michelle's flat — with its framed film posters, draped silk scarves and potted geraniums — events took a queer course. She slopped warm vodka and flat tonic into tumblers, which they then drank on a tiny rooftop terrace. They sat awkwardly on metal chairs, looking at the green belt of gardens three storeys below. Then the alcohol got her dander up again and Michelle said, 'I asked you up here to fuck me.' I never speak like this, never … 'Don't you want to?'