‘Ha!’ snorted Crispin once more, this time turning right around in his seat so the FATE minibus (which wasn’t officially the FATE minibus; it still had KENSAL RISE FAMILY SERVICES UNIT in ten-inch yellow letters on either side; a loan from a social worker with furry animal sympathies) only narrowly missed a gaggle of pissed-up high-heeled girls who were tottering across the road. ‘No political agenda? Is he taking the fucking piss?’
‘Keep your eyes on the road, darling,’ said Joely, blowing him a kiss. ‘We want to at least try to get there in one piece. Umm, left here… down the Edgware Road.’
‘Fucker,’ said Crispin, glowering at Joshua and then turning back. ‘What a fucker he is.’
‘ “By 1999,” ’ read Kenny, following the arrow from the front to page five, ‘ “the year experts predict recombinant DNA procedure will come into its own – approximately fifteen million people will have seen the FutureMouse exhibition, and many more worldwide will have followed the progress of the FutureMouse in the international press. By then, Dr Chalfen will have succeeded in his aim of educating a nation, and throwing the ethical ball into the people’s court.” ’
‘Pass. Me. The. Fuck. Ing. Buck. Et,’ said Crispin, as if the very words were vomit. ‘What do the other papers say?’
Paddy held up Middle England’s bible so Crispin could see it in the rear-view. Headline: MOUSEMANIA.
‘It comes with a free FutureMouse sticker,’ said Paddy, shrugging his shoulders and slapping the sticker on his beret. ‘Pretty cute, actually.’
‘The tabloids are a surprise winner, though,’ said Minnie. Minnie was a brand-new convert: a seventeen-year-old Crusty, with matted blonde dreads and pierced nipples, whom Joshua had briefly considered becoming obsessed with. He tried for a while, but found he just couldn’t do it; he just couldn’t leave his miserable little psychotic world-of-Joely and go out seeking life on a new planet. Minnie, to her credit, had spotted this straight off and gravitated towards Crispin. She wore as little as the winter weather would allow and took every opportunity to thrust her perky pierced nipples into Crispin’s personal space, as she did now, reaching over to the driver’s cab to show him the front page of the daily rag in question. At one and the same time Crispin tried unsuccessfully to take the Marble Arch roundabout, avoid elbowing Minnie in the tits, and look at the paper.
‘I can’t see it properly. What is it?’
‘It’s Chalfen’s head with mouse ears, attached to a goat’s torso, which is attached to a pig’s arse. And he’s eating from a trough that says “Genetic Engineering” at one end and “Public Money” at the other. Headline: CHALFEN CHOWS DOWN.’
‘Nice. Every little helps.’
Crispin went round the roundabout again, and this time got the turning he required. Minnie reached over him and propped the paper on the dashboard.
‘God, he looks more fucking Chalfenist than ever!’
Joshua bitterly regretted telling Crispin about this little idiosyncracy of his family, their habit of referring to themselves as verbs, nouns and adjectives. It had seemed a good idea at the time; give everybody a laugh; confirm, if there was any doubt, whose side he was on. But he never felt that he’d betrayed his father – the weight of what he was doing never really hit him – until he heard Chalfenism ridiculed out of Crispin’s mouth.
‘Look at him Chalfening around in that trough. Exploit everything and everybody, that’s the Chalfen way, eh Josh?’
Joshua grunted and turned his back on Crispin, in favour of the window and a view of the frost over Hyde Park.
‘That’s a classic photo, there, see? The one they’ve used for the head. I remember it; that was the day he gave evidence in the California trial. That look of total fucking superiority. Very Chalfenesque!’
Joshua bit his tongue. DON’T RISE TO IT. IF YOU DON’T RISE TO IT, YOU GAIN HER SYMPATHY.
‘Don’t, Crisp,’ said Joely firmly, touching Joshua’s hair. ‘Just try to remember what we’re about to do. He doesn’t need that tonight.’
BINGO.
‘Yeah, well…’
Crispin put his foot down on the accelerator. ‘Minnie, have you and Paddy checked that everyone’s got everything they need? Balaclavas and that?’
‘Yeah, all done. It’s cool.’
‘Good.’ Crispin pulled out a small silver box filled with all the necessaries to roll a fat joint and threw it in Joely’s direction, catching Joshua painfully on the shin.
‘Make us one, love.’
CUNT.
Joely retrieved the box from the floor. She worked crouching with the Rizla resting on Joshua’s knee, her long neck exposed, her breasts falling forward until they were practically in his hands.
‘Are you nervous?’ she asked him, flicking her head back once the joint was rolled.
‘How d’you mean, nervous?’
‘About tonight. I mean, talk about conflict of loyalties.’
‘Conflict?’ murmured Josh hazily, wishing he were out there with the happy people, the conflict-free people, the New Year people.
‘God, I really admire you. I mean, FATE are dedicated to extreme action… And you know, even now, I find some of the stuff we do… difficult. And we’re talking about the most firmly held principle in my life, you know? I mean, Crispin and FATE… that’s my whole life.’
OH GREAT, thought Joshua, OH FANTASTIC.
‘And I’m still shit scared about tonight.’
Joely sparked the joint and inhaled. She passed it straight to Joshua, as the minibus took a right past Parliament. ‘It’s like that quote: “If I had to choose between betraying my friend or my country, I hope I should have the guts to betray my country.” The choice between a duty or a principle, you know? You see, I don’t feel torn like that. I don’t know if I could do what I do if I did. I mean, if it was my father. My first commitment is to animals and that’s Crispin’s first commitment too, so there’s no conflict. It’s kind of easy for us. But you, Joshi, you’ve made the most extreme decision out of us all… and you just seem so calm. I mean, it’s admirable… and I think you’ve really impressed Crispin, because you know, he was a little unsure about whether…’
Joely kept on talking, and Josh kept on nodding in the necessary places, but the hardcore Thai weed he was smoking had lassoed one word of hers – calm – and reined it in as a question. Why so calm, Joshi? You’re about to get into some pretty serious shit – why so calm?
Because he imagined he seemed calm from the outside, preternaturally calm, his adrenalin enjoying an inverse relationship with the rising New Year sap, with the jittery nerves of the FATE posse; and the effect of the skunk on top of it all… it was like walking under water, deep under water, while children played above. But it wasn’t calm so much as inertia. And he couldn’t work out, as the van progressed down Whitehall, whether this was the right reaction – to let the world wash over him, to let events take their course – or whether he should be more like those people, those people out there, whooping, dancing, fighting, fucking… whether he should be more – what was that horrible late twentieth-century tautology? Proactive. More proactive in the face of the future.
But he took another deep hit on the joint and it sent him back to twelve, being twelve; a precocious kid, waking up each morning fully expecting a twelve hours until nuclear apocalypse announcement, that old cheesy end-of-the-world scenario. Round that time he had thought a lot about extreme decisions, about the future and its deadlines. Even then it had struck him that he was unlikely to spend those last twelve hours fucking Alice the fifteen-year-old babysitter next door, telling people that he loved them, converting to orthodox Judaism, or doing all the things he wanted and all the things he never dared. It always seemed more likely to him, much more likely, that he would just return to his room and calmly finish constructing Lego Medieval Castle. What else could you do? What other choice could you be certain about? Because choices need time, the fullness of time, time being the horizontal axis of morality – you make a decision and then you wait and see, wait and see. And it’s a lovely fantasy, this fantasy of no time (TWELVE HOURS LEFT TWELVE HOURS LEFT), the point at which consequences disappear and any action is allowable (‘I’m mad – I’m fucking mad for it!’ came the cry from the street). But twelve-year-old Josh was too neurotic, too anal, too Chalfenist to enjoy it, even the thought of it. Instead he was there thinking: but what if the world doesn’t end and what if I fucked Alice Rodwell and she became pregnant and what if-