Zadie Smith - NW

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Mind the gap. Felix stepped in the second carriage from the end and looked at a tube map like a tourist, taking a moment to convince himself of details no life-long Londoner should need to check: Kilburn to Baker Street (Jubilee): Baker street to Oxford Circus (Bakerloo). Other people trust themselves. A variation of the same instinct had his hand deep in his pocket clutching a piece of paper with a name on it. A train barrelled past, knocking him into the seat he’d been heading for. After a moment the two trains seemed to cruise together. He looked out now at his counterpart, in the other train. Small woman, whom he would have judged Jewish without being able to articulate any very precise reason why: dark, pretty, smiling to herself, in a blue dress from the seventies — big collar, tiny white bird print. She was frowning at his t-shirt. Trying to figure it. He felt like it: he smiled! A broad smile that emphasized his dimples and revealed three gold teeth. The girl’s little dark face pulled tight like a net bag. Her train pulled ahead, then his did.

“You’re Felix? Hi! Great! You’re Felix!”

He was standing outside Topshop. A tall, skinny white boy, with a lot of chestnut fringe floppy in his face. Drainpipe jeans, boxy black spectacles. He seemed to need a moment to re-arrange his brain, which Felix allowed him, taking out his tobacco and beginning to roll while the boy said, “Tom Mercer — it’s just round the corner; well, a few streets over,” and laughed as a way of covering his surprise. Felix did not know why his own voice so often misled on the phone.

“Shall we? I mean, can you do that and walk?”

“With one hand and running, bruv.”

“Ha. Very good. This way.”

But he did not seem to know how to negotiate the corner crush between Oxford and Regent streets; after a few false starts he was half a foot further back than he had been a moment ago. Felix licked a Rizla and watched the boy concede to a Peruvian holding a twelve-foot banner: BARGAIN CARPET SALE 100 YARDS. Not from London, not originally, thought Felix, who had been to Wiltshire once and returned astounded. Felix stepped in front and took control, walking through a crowd of Indian girls with luxurious black ponytails and little gold Selfridges badges pinned to their lapels. They walked against the natural flow, the white boy and Felix — it took them five minutes to cross the road. Felix diagnosed a hangover. Cracked lips and panda eyes. A delicate reaction to light.

Felix tried: “You had her long or…?”

The boy looked startled. He put his hand in his fringe.

“Have I…? Oh, I see. No. I mean, she was a present a few years ago, my 21st — hand-me-down from my father — he’d had her a long time… Not a very practical present. But you’re a specialist, of course — you won’t have the same sort of trouble.”

“Mechanic.”

“Right. My father knows your garage. He’s had these cars for thirty years — longer — he knows all the specialist garages. Kilburn, isn’t it?”

“Yeah.”

“That’s sort of Notting Hill way, isn’t it?”

“Nah, not really.”

“Ah, now, Felix? We’ll do a left here. Escape this chaos.”

They ducked down a cobbled side street. Fifty yards away, on Oxford Street, people pressed against people, dense as carnival, almost as loud. Back here all was silent, empty. Slick black doors, brass knobs, brass letterboxes, lamp-posts out of fairy stories. Old paintings in ornate gold frames, resting on easels, angled toward the street. PRICE UPON APPLICATION. Ladies’ hats, each on its own perch, feathered, ready to fly. RING FOR ASSISTANCE. Shop after shop without a soul in it. At the end of this little row, Felix spotted a customer through a mullioned, glittering, window sitting on a leather pouf, trying on one of those green jackets, waxy like a tablecloth, with the tartan inside. Halfway up, the window glass became clear, revealing a big pink face, with scraps of white hair here and there, mostly in the ears. The type Felix saw all the time, especially in this part of town. A great tribe of them. Didn’t mix much — kept to their own kind. THE HORSE AND HARE.

“Good pub, that pub,” said Felix. It was something to say.

“My father swears by it. When he’s in London it’s his second home.”

“Is it. I used to work round here, back in the day. Bit of film work.”

“Really? Which company?”

“All about. Wardour Street and that,” Felix added and regretted it at once.

“I have a cousin who’s a VP at Sony, I wonder if you ever came across him? Daniel Palmer. In Soho Square?”

“Yeah, nah… I was just a runner, really. Here and there. Different places.”

“Got you,” said Tom, and looked satisfied. A small puzzle had been resolved. “I’m very interested in film — I used to dabble a bit in all that, you know, the way narrative works, how you can tell a story through images…”

Felix put his hood up. “You in the industry, yeah?”

“Not exactly, I mean, no, not at the moment, no. I mean I’m sure I could have been, but it’s a very unstable business, film. When I was in college I was really a film guy, buff, type. No, I’m sort of in the creative industries. Sort of media-related creative industry. It’s hard to explain — I work for a company that creates ideas for brand consolidation? So that brands can better target receptivity for their products — cutting-edge brand manipulation, basically.”

Felix stopped walking, forcing the boy to stop. He looked vacantly at his unlit fag.

“Like advertising?”

“Basically, yes,” said Tom irritably, and then, when Felix didn’t follow him: “Need a light?”

“Nah. Got one here somewhere. Like advertising campaigns?”

“Well, no not really, because — it’s difficult to explain — basically we don’t see campaigns as a way forward anymore. It’s more about the integration of luxury brands into your everyday consciousness.”

“Advertising,” concluded Felix, drew his lighter out of his pocket and assumed a face of innocence.

“It’s just this next right, if you’ll…”

“Right behind you, bruv.”

They walked through a grand square, and then off into a side street, although the houses here were no less grand: white-fronted and many stories high. Somewhere church bells rang. Felix slipped his hood off.

“Here we are — here she is. I mean, obviously this is not the sort of thing where — sorry, Felix, will you excuse me a moment? I better take this.”

The boy put his phone to his ear and sat on the black-and-white tiled steps of the nearest house, dead center between two potted orange trees. Felix walked a half circle until he was standing in the road. He crouched. She was smiling at him, but they all do that, no matter what state they’re in. Frog-eye headlamps, manic grille grin. One-eyed in this case. He touched the spot where the badge should be. When the time came it would be a silver octagon, with the two letters back to back, dancing. Not plastic. Metal. It was going to be done right. He straightened up. He put his hand through the giant slash in the soft top and rubbed the fabric between his fingers: a thin, faded polyester weave. Plastic window gone anyway. The rust he didn’t need to touch, he could see how bad it was. Worst at the rear left — it was like a continent there — but also pretty drastic all round the bonnet, which meant it had likely rusted through. Still: the right red. The original red. Good arch on the front wheels, square as they should be at the back, and a perfect rubber bumper — all of which marked it as authentically what it claimed to be, at least. M DGET. Easily fixed, like all of this external stuff — cosmetic. Under the hood was where the real news would be. In a funny way, the worse the news the better it was for him. Barry, at the garage: “If it moves, son, you can’t afford it.” He would make it move. Maybe not this month or the one after, but finally. A little impatiently he tried a door handle. He had an urge to rip through the blown-out window, taped shut with cardboard and masking tape.