— Dave av mursee, the dads echoed.
— W-will we aff 2 go viss mumf wiv ure partë? Carl couldn't prevent himself from blurting out — then he cowered in anticipation of a slap.
Greaves, however, remained calm, and his voice chimed with a note of sympathy:
— No, lad, you're too young this year. Next year, when I return, you'll be dad enough. Until then you and Böm will remain here, but mark me, if either of you meddle in the zone from now until then, or if you bother the Driver in any way, it will count still more severely against you when you arrive in London. Remember your own dad, Carl Dévúsh, remember what happened to him.
2. Trapping a Flyer: December 2001
Hunched low over the wheel, foglamps piercing the miasma, Dave Rudman powered his cab through the chicane at the bottom of Park Lane. The cabbie's furious thoughts shot through the windscreen and ricocheted off the unfeeling world. Achilles was up on his plinth with his tiny bronze cock, his black shield fending off the hair-styling wand of the Hilton, where all my heartache began. Solid clouds hung overhead lunging up fresh blood. The gates to Hyde Park, erected for the Queen Mother, looked like bent paperclips in the gloom, the lion and unicorn on their Warner Brothers escutcheon were prancing cartoon characters. Evil be to him who thinks of it, said the Unicorn, and the Lion replied, Eeee, whassup, Doc?
Stuttering by them, Rudman's Faredar picked up a Burberry bundle trapped on the heel of grass that was cut off from the central reservation by the taut, tarmac tendon of Achilles Way. Stupid plonker. The cab's wipers went 'eek-eek'. The bundle was trying to roll over the Y-shaped crash barrier — all that prevented him from being mown down by the four lanes of traffic, traffic that came whipping past the war memorial where bronze corpses lay beneath concrete howitzers. Tatty coaches full of carrot-crunchers up for the Xmas wallet fuck, pale-skinned, rust-grazed Transit vans with England flags taped across their back windows, boogaloo bruvvers in Seven Series BMWs, throw-cushion specialists in skateboard-sized Smart cars, Conan-the-fucking-Barbarian motorcycle couriers, warped flat-bed trucks piled high with scrap metal, one-eyed old Routemaster buses — the whole stinky caravan of London wholesale-to-retail, five credit-worthy days before Christmas was intent on crushing this bit of Yank, wannabe roadkill … So Dave slewed the Fairway over to the nearside lane and waited to see whether he'd make it.
He did. He came puffing up to the driver-side window. 'Sir, sir, excuse me, sir …' Sir, sir?! Is he fucking insane? 'Thank you for stopping.' He's going to ask me if I know which theatre The King and I is playing at. Stupid cunt. 'Could you take me to …' The Yank drew a piece of paper from his trench-coat pocket and consulted it. 'Mill Hill…' He said the two words slowly and distinctly, as if they might be difficult for Dave to comprehend. 'If that's … that's not kinduv of beyond your range?' My range, what does he think I am, some fucking wild boar? Dave pictured beastly London cabs, rolling in the roadway, shaking their metal shoulders to rid themselves of railings hurled by Hoorays starved of sport.
'Get in, please.' Dave bent his arm out of the window and opened the door, then he shrugged back inside and hit the meter. The bundle bowled in, a grateful blob of wet gaberdine that wafted a gentle stench of some male fragrance advertised by chest-waxing ponces in underpants. Dave Rudman shifted the cab into drive and shuddered off up the nearside lane, expertly swerving to avoid a coach that lurched out of its bay. Then he rubbed his sore nostrils with a wad of tissue as shapeless as snot. Day-and-fucking-Night-nurse. . that's what you need in this job. Open the hatch and through it comes another slant-eyed virus at 120 mph.
The fare sat in the middle of the back seat, knees akimbo, potbelly exposed by the open flaps of his trench coat, both hands on the safety handles set in the rear doors of the cab as if he's in a rickshaw costing twenty-five-fucking-grand. 'When I say range, cabbie,' said the fare, leaning forward to push his fat face through the open hatch, 'I mean, I've heard of your famous Knowledge, but I figure that maybe Mill Hill is a bit beyond ít … beyond the area you have to cover.' He's a talker, this one, he wants to talk, he goes to whores and when they try to plate him he says he'd rather talk, 'coz the only thing he wants in their mouths is comforting words. He'll start on fucking Afghanistan in two minutes flat. He's gonna go all Tora Bora on me …
'That's right, it is a little beyond the six-mile radius from Charing Cross, which is the theoretical limit of the London streets we have to learn.'
'Theoretical?' He doesn't expect to hear this word out of my lower-class lips, lips he sees flapping in the rearview. He's putting together a photofit of me from lips, chin and the back of my head. He ain't fooled by the baseball cap — and he likes that I'm going bald, as a fatty it gives him the drop. 'Yeah' — put him still more at his ease, this cunt could be an earner — 'theoretical, because in practice we also have to know a fair bit of the suburbs, which would cover Mill Hill as well.'
'Uh huh.' The fare was satisfied, he'd marked his card, he'd shown Dave he wasn't just another dumb tourist who thinks London is a nine-hundred-square-mile souvenir T-shirt, decorated with tit-helmeted coppers, red phone boxes, Mohican-sporters, tiara-jockeys and black-bloody-cabs. The fare looked to the left at the Avenue of plane trees running up to Speakers' Corner. He looked to the right at the tiny road-cleaning machine bumping along the gutter, its circular electric brushes polishing the York stone molars. He was lost, momentarily, in a reverie provoked by a pair of backpacking lovers, wet-weather freaks, who were leaning up against the lip of a fountain, her thighs imprisoned in his. He was thinking about his family — and Afghanistan.
'Kinduv weird being in Europe.'
'I imagine you'd rather be at home, what with all this business — '
'In Afghanistan, you bet I would. Sure, it's crazy to think you're any more at risk here, or your family's any more at risk if you're not there, but still — '
'You'd rather be with them.' And so would I, in a small clean family hotel on Gloucester Place, seventy quid a night, walking tour of Bloomsbury inclusive. Two big, burger-stuffed kids, plenty of metalwork in their mouths, Mom in a beige trouser suit. I want his family so I can slot them into the gap left by my own.
'I'd booked the flight before 9/11, I figured it would be giving like succour to the enemy if I didn't come over.'
'Gotcha.'
'Eek-eek' the wipers went; the cab braked, then heeled over to join the other rusty hulks cruising around Marble Arch, a reef of Nash that loomed up out of the silty drizzle. 'I tell you something, cabbie.' Tell me everything, you dumb motherfucker, pour it all out. 'I didn't vote for Bush, but I reckon he's handling this OK, and it wasn't the Twin Towers that set me against these Taliban fellows — though Lord knows it was a terrible thing — but I knew these were dreadful people when they blew up those two ancient statues of the Buddha, you know the ones?'
'Yes.' Fellows? Lord knows!?