‘Two quid.’
‘Two quid, then.’ I’d have given him five. ‘There’ll just be time before I put you off.’
He rustled a few papers. ‘I’ll tell you a love poem.’
‘Is that the best you can do?’
‘What’s wrong with a love poem? Panda and me perform love poems perfectly.’
‘Don’t you have a funny poem?’
His laugh nearly cracked the mirror. ‘There’s no such thing. Laughter and poems don’t go together. People only buy poems when they cry, or are moved. If I make ’em laugh they just feel good, and walk out by the overloaded table without buying one of my books.’
‘Any poem will do,’ I said.
He phlegmed out of the window. ‘Listen to this, then. It’s called “Dusk Queen” — by Ronald Delphick:
‘A rhododendron for a rudder
as we steer the wild canals:
slither-lines of silver between black and green.
Geraniums on cottage windows
claw golden glass,
smokestacks pouring eye-shadow
in God’s evening glare
grabbing the day and night to work in.
Headstocks of a coalmine draw
cages up at dusk as our barge
between the slag heaps steers its way,
and you on the burnished poop deck
sitting while you play
Gary Glitter on the wind-up gramophone.’
A Capri cut in a bit too close in front, playing his own little game. A Rolls-Royce is sport for everybody, and Delphick didn’t notice my smart avoidance procedure. ‘I know it’s not that good, and that I’m still working on it, but you might fucking well say something.’
‘If I had a lady in this car,’ I said, ‘I wouldn’t have given you a lift in a million years.’
‘Oh,’ he said nastily, ‘you’re power mad, are you?’
‘But I liked your poem. It was better than I thought it would be.’
‘Oh, bloody good. Bloody good. Now I know why I sweat blood. Just to hear something complimentary like that. You’ve not only made my day, but you’ve made my life.’
‘I enjoyed it.’ Praise cost nothing. ‘I was so engrossed you nearly made me have an accident.’ The straight dual carriageway was fabulous for speed. I remembered the cluttered and winding ribbon of death on my first motorised trip to London nearly fifteen years ago. ‘You really did.’
‘A real accident?’
‘Another split second and we’d have been a blazing funeral pyre on the central reservation: you, me, Dismal and Panda going skywards in a cloud of soot and flame — and maybe the four people in the offending car as well. A holocaust, in fact.’
‘Marvellous.’ He scribbled away. ‘Go on.’
‘There would be a multiple pile-up and a tailback for ten miles, and the sky would reflect ribbons of blue flashing lights, as police cars and ambulances tried to get to us. And if one car’s petrol tank exploded, so would the one behind, and the one behind that, and you’d have the domino theory in action right back to York, like Dick Turpin’s horse of flame called Red Bess jumping the turnpike gates.’
‘Don’t tell me,’ he screamed, causing Dismal to bark. ‘Don’t tell me. Now I’ve got it: “Like the Fifth Horseman of the Apocalypse.” That’s it. Wonderful. What an image. Delphick does it again. “Dick Turpin rides a horse called Poker Lips through a multiple pile-up …” Now you can go on.’
His enthusiasm had dried me up.
‘Well, go on, then!’
‘Write your own poems.’ I signalled to get off the motorway. ‘Here’s the parting of the ways.’
We lifted his panda-wagon out of the boot, and he didn’t thank me for services willingly provided, but then, I was glad to see him go with pennant waving, making progress towards his triumphant reception in Stevenage.
I laid a hand on Dismal’s head as we got back to the big wide track. He seemed pleased that we were on our own again and nudged me fondly. I was tired. Composing Delphick’s poem had worn me out, making me realise how hard a poet’s life must be. A graceful road bridge spanned the motorway and gave a perfect side-on view of a jam sandwich, at which Dismal merely twitched. There was something reassuring about the sight, and in the apparition of a London taxi which overtook me and was soon well in front. I stopped dragging my heels and went a bit faster, thinking it time to show everybody that the Rolls-Royce was still king of the road.
When I overtook the taxi at eighty he flashed me, and Dismal breathed down my neck with full approval at our speed. I floated effortlessly up to a ton and wondered who had been in that cop car crossing the overhead bridge near Stevenage. Moggerhanger had many contacts among the jam sandwich fraternity, and both organisations were interested in my whereabouts, so maybe the cop car had radioed my progress to the metropolis. I slowed down to ninety, not wanting a speeding charge to be the first of many stepping stones to twenty-five years. ‘And it is recommended that he serve the whole of the sentence.’
There’s some benefit to having a split personality, especially when you have constant access to the most cheerful, positive and optimistic side. That was one of the things Bridgitte couldn’t stand, yet if I hadn’t had such an easygoing side to my nature we would have been divorced years ago, which maybe was something else she held against me. I felt a vivid and passionate longing to see Sam and Rachel, as well as Smog, but crushed it down as being counter-productive to my scheme of survival. It was no use driving to Harwich and onto the boat to Holland with so much unfinished business in the air.
I slowed down further on the long slope before the island at the end of the motorway and slid into the path of a lorry to get around. The driver didn’t like it, so told his mate to sit on the horn, the noise following me the whole way to Hatfield. It was bad driving, to bring such attention to myself. He tailgated me for a while, forty white halitosis headlights burning my neck and almost driving Dismal mad. Then he turned off, so I settled into a sedate trundle on the long grind to the North Circular.
From twenty miles away, on a rise of the road, I saw the sprawl of London. I could smell it, and the car seemed to speed up even though I didn’t put my foot on the pedal. Half a hoarding was missing, where a lorry had smashed into it, and a large signpost a few miles further along was so covered in mud it could hardly be read. The pull was definitely on when I got to Barnet, orange sodiums fully lit even though the sun burned bright. I threaded the denser but quick-moving traffic through the matchless boxwood villas of Mill Hill, till I was turning west on the North Circular, passing places I had ticked off a few days ago but which now seemed from another life.
Every traffic light turned green at my advance, and I got into London too early for comfort. I had imagined a night approach, on the understanding that if there was a barney when I handed the car back there would be a chance to vanish like a cat in the blackout. I stopped at every pedestrian crossing to let anyone over who stood within fifty yards of the edge. If a traffic light did turn amber I was pathetically grateful for the favour of being held up.
‘Are you going then, or aren’t you?’ I shouted to one old lady, who therefore felt she must hurry so fast to the crossing that I dreaded her having a heart attack. I should have gone to Delphick’s gig in Stevenage, got him to take me on as his manager and press agent (or pander) so as to hold back from London for another few days.
Instead I decided to visit Blaskin’s flat, and see how Bill Straw was starving along. I cut into Town on Watling Street and Edgware Road and an hour later found a parking meter near Harrods.