On this occasion he stayed for five minutes and ten times as many such ‘naked moments’ before his sentimental voyeurism was sated. Then he headed off towards the bank of electronically operated doors and the taxi rank, passing the wailing wall of the noticeboard without even a glance. The suitcase followed him.
Whenever The Fat Controller came to London he put up at Brown's Hotel in Piccadilly. The Fat Controller liked Brown's for a number of reasons. He felt inconspicuous there — there were so many other fat people of indeterminate age in residence, many of them sharing his taste in tweed and Burberry. Another plus was that quite a lot of minor American celebrities — actors, producers and directors from the cinema and musical theatre — tended to stay at Brown's. There wasn't an hour of the day when you couldn't find one of these people, tucked into a corner of the chi-chi lobby, being interviewed by an English hack about their latest production. The Fat Controller got a vicarious sense of notoriety from coming and going amidst this continual press call. He did like to think of himself as a celebrity of sorts. Although, more than most people, he appreciated that being the object of other people's attention was at best a transitory and unrewarding experience, and at worst, a positive damnation.
That's why, rather than actually being a celebrity, The Fat Controller preferred to adopt a celebrity demeanour. The kind of carriage and countenance that made at least one in three people who he passed by think to themselves: I'm sure I recognise that man but I just can't place him. He must be someone famous. This was the kind of renown that The Fat Controller desired. An uncomplicated way of being the talk of the town, without obligation and honestly ephemeral.
Outside, in the already tired atmosphere of the late-summer morning, The Fat Controller paused, surveying the hideous jumble of concrete buildings that constituted the airport. Why travel, he thought to himself, when you merely arrive back at where you started from? He was thinking of the other people who thronged the airport precincts, not himself. For The Fat Controller all modern westerners were essentially the same, conforming to the small number of stereotypical characters that had been allotted them. He opined that, were a suburb of Scranton NJ to be swopped in its entirety for one in Hounslow Middlesex, hardly anyone in the areas abutting them would even notice. All of these people, he mused, his frog eyes flicking hither and thither, are in transit from some urban Heimat, an ur-suburb, a grey area. They are like colonists who have set out en masse, lemming-like, uncomprehending, obeying an instinctive need to buy a newspaper in another country.
The next cabby in the rank pulled forward and tucked his Standard away on top of the dash. The electric window slid down.
‘Where to, Gov?’
‘Brown's Hotel, Piccadilly,’ said The Fat Controller.
Then there was an uncomfortable hiatus, a strange pause. He made no move to enter the cab. The cabby sat and waited. After a while the cabby barked at him, ‘Well, aren't you going to get in?’ The Fat Controller pushed his porcine head through the window of the cab, pressing four pounds of cheek against the already clicking meter. ‘Not,’ he boomed, ‘until you get out and pick up my bag.’
The cabby's eyeballs bulged with rage. He felt his gorge rise up his neck, bitter, bilious and sarcastic. Foolishly — as it transpired — he choked it back down again. He quitted the cab and came round to where The Fat Controller was standing. By now, some of the other cabs in the rank had loaded up with passengers and were hooting to get away. The cabby gave The Fat Controller a long and penetrating look, intended to intimidate him. Then he picked up the brown Sansomite suitcase and placed it in the back of the cab. He held the door open for The Fat Controller, who took his time getting in, settling himself, and wedging trench coat to one side and Herald Tribune to the other.
They were on the M4 heading towards the Chiswick Flyover, when The Fat Controller lit his first cigar since clearing customs. It was the flaring trumpet of an operatic Tosca. He stuck the cheroot in the corner of his wide mouth and applied the guttering flame of his convict-built lighter to its organic end.
A comic scene ensued as the cab plunged up the flyover ramp. Suddenly, The Fat Controller and his driver lifted off from the scrublands of Hillingdon and Hayes. They were floating on a carpet of tarmac high over the blue haze of the city. The vast ocean of London lapped around them. Ahead, the flyover snaked its way between corporate blocks. Where the roadway drew near to the fourth or fifth storey of each edifice, a digital clock and thermometer had been placed. These disputed with one another: 11.44, as against 11.43; 32° celsius, as against 33. The Fat Controller sucked an inverted blast on his Tosca and considered the vicissitudes within the secret lives of products, the serendipitous occurrence of both siting and style that had allowed the Brylcreem and Lucozade buildings to end up thus, their neon fifties’ logos flashing in anachronistic opposition to one another, across the Chiswick Flyover.
‘Can't you read the sign?’ The sliding window separating him from the cabby had been torn open, shattering The Fat Controller's reverie. He fanned away the thick coif of blue-brown curls that had formed in front of him, bringing into view a prominent ‘No Smoking’ sign.
‘I can.’
‘Whassat?’
‘I can read the sign.’
‘Well, why don't you do what it effing well says then?’
‘I don't choose to.’
‘Don't choose to? Don't fucking choose to!’ The cabby was trapped, driving along the flyover. He couldn't stop, he couldn't turn around, he wasn't even able to wave his arms about. He vowed to himself that he would eject The Fat Controller as soon as he possibly could.
The cab sped on along the elevated roadway. The Fat Controller puffed contendedly on the stinking instrument in his mouth and meditated on whether or not this wasn't an altogether purer way of tormenting someone than applying physical force, or more obviously contrived psychological pressure.
The cab canted down on to the straight that leads to the Hogarth Roundabout.
‘Hn, hn!’ grunted The Fat Controller, thinking aloud. ‘A fine Rake's Progress and no mistakin’.’
‘Whassat?’ barked the cabby, alive to the possibility of some fresh insult.
‘Oh nothing, nothing — don't trouble your little head.’
As soon as he safely could, the cabby pulled over into the nearside lane and then turned off down a side street. The cab came to a rest with a squeal, under a sticky plane tree. The cabby leapt out and came round to the back door, which he yanked open.
‘Get out!’ he shouted. ‘Come on, get out!’ he reiterated. The Fat Controller dropped the upper edge of his Herald Tribune and regarded the cabby from the vantage of several millennia of cold neutrality. He really did look rather revolting, arms akimbo, breasts bulging under a green T-shirt, which had the silky half-sheen that is rendered near-transparent by sweat. Further down, his plump, white, hairless thighs fell gracelessly from the rucked crotch of his day-glo football shorts. The Fat Controller noted that, in the colonial way, the cabby was wearing lace-up shoes and white knee-socks.
‘No,’ said The Fat Controller, glancing around at the empty residential street. ‘You get in.’ Then, with a fluidity of motion that was rendered all the more unnatural and frightening by his bulk, The Fat Controller lunged forward, grabbed the cabby by the throat and pulled him straight down on to the floor of the vehicle. Like a conjurer, he flicked a silk paisley handkerchief from his jacket pocket and thrust it into the cabby's gasping mouth. Next, still grasping his prey like some gargantuan trout that he had managed to tickle from the urban mill race, The Fat Controller proceeded to torture him gently. Taking another pull on his Tosca, he applied the glowing tip of the stogie to the white billow of occupational lard that had emerged from beneath the cabby's T-shirt. He didn't leave off until he had managed to create a neat line of blisters.