'My oldest son would be fascinated by this stuff,' said the fare, who'd relaxed now they were trundling past Little Venice and up through Maida Vale. 'He's a history geek … gets it from his dad, I guess.' The fare looked about him at the five-storey Tudorbethan apartment blocks, and, as if taking comfort in their solidity, unglued his hands from the handles and at last eased himself back in the seat.
Dave hit the intercom button — a plastic nubbin incised with a hieroglyphic head: 'Yeah, I always think of Watling Street as a sorta time tunnel, connecting the past with the present.' What's the point in knowing there's a time tunnel there if you've got no one to go down it with? Now I understand that I learned this city to hold in my mind for a while — then lose it to my boy. Without him it's starting to disappear like a fucking mirage.
'It must be busy for you now … before Christmas?' The fare was uncomfortable with Dave's extravagant image, but thass alright, he's paying to feel superior as well as be driven. Superior in knowledge, superior in wealth, he don't need some hack to tell him he's neither.
'Yeah, busy enough, I'm out in the begging box all hours.'
'Begging box …? Oh, I get it.'
'But come New Year town'll be dead as a doornail. We call it the kipper season.'
'I'm sorry?'
"Coz it's flat — nuffing 'appening 'til the spring.' When the Ideal-fucking-Home-Show hits town, more ponces than you can shake a roll-neck at. Then the headscarf-and-sleeveless-anorak mob up for the Flower Show, Chelsea Bridge crammed with shuttle buses and off-roaders that've never even slid off the fuckin' gravel drive. Benny used to clear out to Tenerife on the banana boat for the kipper season. Said he could live out there all winter for five bob a day, come back when the trade picked up again.
They passed Fratelli's, a glass-container bistro below the deck of the new Marriott, then the cab flipped up on to the Kilburn High Road. The shitty little shopping centre at Kilburn Square teemed with bat-eared London Irish kids exchanging benefit money for synthetic-furred animals with glued-on eyes. Cheapo chavs … baggy fucking tracksuits … flapping their skinny arms. Still, Dave felt at home here — he'd reached the right circle of the city, the one where he more or less belonged. Built up over centuries in concentric rings, like the trunk of a gargantuan tree, London districts derived their character from their ring: Kilburn, Shepherd's Bush, Balham, Catford — all of them grown from the same barky bricks and pithy masonry.
The rain had died away to a cellulite pucker of drizzle on the brown puddles, and there was an oily gloss on everything. The wipers 'eeked' to a standstill. Dave tried to make the lights at Willesden Lane and failed. He pulled up short in the yellow net of lines thrown across the junction and applied the handbrake with its wooden stair creak. The Kilburn State Ballroom leaned over them, posters peeling away from its diarrhoea tiling. Fucking Taigs, dumb Paddies, with their hurdy-gurdy show bands and their leaky-eyed, pissed-up, violent lovelessness, worshipping a sexless cow with her chest hacked open. The fare was looking through the speckled windows at the old navvies, flannel trews lashed round Guinness bellies, who came tottering out of Paddy Power's shredding their slips and chucking them in the air so they created localized snowfalls, off-white Christmases of loss.
'We call this County Kilburn,' Dave said, and, when the fare looked uncomprehending, he enlarged, 'because a lot of the Irish live here.'
'Oh … sure … OK.'
'Lovely people.' I wouldn't be here at all if it weren't for you, my son. No pick-ups and precious few drop-offs either. Who wants some son of the sod blowing Bushmills chunks on the upholstery while he blabs about his poor old mammy? Not me. Still, I ought to go and see my poor old mammy, she worries about Carl. It's on the way back into town, I could even look in at the Five Bells and have a drink … No, make me fuzzy with the pills … Fucking bejazus! What if the PCO pulled me in for a medical?
Dave didn't want to see his poor old mammy anyway. Didn't want to see her sitting in the worn-out armchair by the window, scrupulously marking her pupils' projects even though it was the start of a two-week holiday or, worse, diligently preparing for a child-centred Christmas that the central grandchild wouldn't be attending. Folding paper serviettes decorated with prancing reindeer, checking cracker availability, climbing up the tiny aluminium stepladder to get the box of decorations down from the equally tiny loft. Mum never liked Michelle — hated her, more like. Funny, when I feel Mum's hatred I stop hating 'chelle. They would sit there, over mugs of instant coffee in the kitchen, listening to the old man snooze next door in front of the racing: 'They're on the home straight now, past the last furlong marker … and it's Tenderfoot, Tenderfoot… all the way from Little Darling …' The unspoken lay on the tablecloth between mother and son, among blue Tupperware, the Hendon Advertiser and a pile of dog-eared exercise books.
If Dave offered his mother the opportunity, she'd vouchsafe some of her ailments — the hot flushes, the sweats, the cramps and pains … She's in her mid sixties, but it's like she's still on the fucking blob! He deliberately framed the most disgusting thoughts — hating mummies was what he excelled at, and this — he dimly comprehended — was because I'm such a fucking mummy's boy …
The cab trundled under the railway bridge at Brondesbury and began to strain up Shoot Up Hill. Pile of shit, rip-off on wheels. That's the trouble with cabs — they're all fucking ringers, they're all pretending to be cabs but none of them are the real thing. Benny's old FX4 was so underpowered it could hardly make it up the ramp from the Euston rank. He told me he once had to ask some fatties to climb out and walk 'til he made it to the level. This Fairway is bearable, so why would I lay out thirty grand for a TX? For a bigger windscreen so I can see more of this bollocks? A wheelchair ramp so I can pick up spazzes? I'd be in hock to the finance company and having to work still bloody harder to keep those fat fuckers in time-share villas in fucking Marbella …
'I must say, cabbie,' said the fare, 'the reputation of these vehicles doesn't do them justice, they are most exceptionally comfortable.' Comfortable for who? You try getting your porky trotters down under this dash, it's like putting your legs in a coffin, mate, a vibrating bloody coffin. It fits tighter than a ridged dick in a ribbed condom. I swear, I've got out of this thing at the end of a day's work and fallen straight fucking over. 'I'm glad you're enjoying the ride, sir, we like to say that this is the finest custom-built taxi in the world. Its unique twenty-five-foot turning circle makes it ideal for London's crowded streets, and helps to ensure that the licensed trade stays in business.' I'd give it up tomorrow and drive a fucking Renault Espace for Addison Lee if it wasn't for the ghost of old Benny urging me on, and my own dumb pride.