Martin Amis - Yellow Dog

Much has happened. I will tell you everything. I can’t understand why I want to tell you this now, but I do. In the past, when I thought about my father, I used to fantasise that he was allowed occasional glimpses of my life. Now of course he died when I was still married to Pearl. But I used to think: he would work it out, he would put two and two together, and see that I had married you now, and that we had these two girls, Billie and Sophie. I don’t believe he can do that. But it would be good and right if he was allowed to, every now and then — the privilege expiring after a couple of generations, the story discreetly fading from view when the children are about sixty-five. And when we’re dead, I should be allowed to watch the boys, and you and I should be allowed to watch the girls.

Epithalamium.

With furious precision the maddened corpse of Royce Traynor delivered its final, smashing blow, and he was gone, away, spinning end over end through the plane-shaking clouds …

The pressurised air in 101 Heavy now fled it too: a squall of dust and grit. The mid-section of the cabin floor instantly collapsed, severing all remaining hydraulic lines.

Reynolds felt the bang, the howl like a ricochet, the stinging wind, the harsh vibration. In ragged unison the oxygen-masks dropped and hovered. After a few seconds all the cigarette smoke was replaced by a thin white mist.

Captain John Macmanaman : … Feel it, Nick.

First Officer Nick Chopko : No …

Macmanaman : No quantity. None.

Flight Engineer Hal Ward : … You know the ‘feel’ they put into it’s bullshit. It’s just the computer. The yoke’s bullshit.

Macmanaman : Engineer, we’re flying by direct law.

Chopko : And if we reengage?

Macmanaman : We’d get fictitious feel, if anything. Gentlemen, we have no hydraulic control over this aircraft. She’s banking. She’s banking. The throttle, Nick. If you … She’s coming back. She’s coming back … We’re just blundering around up here. We have no flaps and no spoilers. If we can get her down we ‘re going to land at 300 knots with no reverse thrust and no brakes. We don’t need an airport. We need an interstate. Three miles of good road. And one on our present setting. Nick. Brief SAM [System Aircraft Maintenance]. Hal? I’m going to be asking you to line up every kind of rescue and emergency we can get. She’s banking. Come on back …

System Aircraft Maintenance : Copy your situation, one oh one heavy.

Macmanaman : We’re just making grand clockwise circles up here …

SAM : I don’t want to add to your cares, sir. But we’d better start thinking about the NEO window.

Macmanaman : Hey. Come on back. Come on back. Come on back to me.

‘So some so-called 14-year-old’, he typed, ‘has been crying “rape” after a bit of fun in a ditch with an older lad.’

Have you seen this bird (see photo) ?

She looks 16 if she’s a day.

And how was he supposed to tell?

The bloke’d had a few, as he freely admits.

He’s getting on a bit and his eyes aren’t as sharp as they were.

And they say in that part of the woods it was so dark you couldn’t even—

Clint paused. He thought: got to be careful with the medication. Overdo it with the Narcopam and what happens? You’re checking into the hotel with the bird slung over your shoulder.

And who does the judge think he’s kidding?

He’s got the gall to tell us there was ‘no provocation’.

When the bird was wearing a school uniform.

What are we, c **ts?

He was sixty-six hours away from the date with Kate: Valentine’s Day (nice touch). He could see himself parking the Av enger and crossing the road. In a kind of saunter. Hands in hip pockets. Just … looning over the road to her door. Well he was like the boyscouts, wasn’t he: always prepared. The Potentium, the His Voluminousness (supplemented by a booster called Volume Control), the Valium, the Hellcat (Legally Not To Be Used Without Partner’s Permission), the Narcopam (ditto), the Diploma from the Academy. The guy was oozing confidence.

Joseph Andrews sat before the tape recorder. He looked as if he had just climbed out of the swimming-pool; but his clothes were dry.

‘ Come on, Boss. Have half a Nurofen.’

In a strained and trembling voice he said, ‘Fuck off out of it.’

‘You had the local.’

‘Against me will. Ready? And Manfred. You transcribe this now, all right?

‘[ Click. ] Is it a crime to want to die in me own country? [ Click. ] Apart from a personal family matter and four or five blokes who know fucking well who they are [ click ] I pose no threat to society whatsoever. And the fact is, I’ve got you over a barrel, mate.

‘Uh. Take out the “mate” and put in uh …’

He intended to add an evocation of his love of England. But the essence of what he really missed about it was waking in the cold, and feeling the rust in his hipbones, all wired up and saddled to a faint need to shit.

‘Where’s Simon? I need me Simon. ’

Brendan was reading it out loud and had come to the last page.

‘“And the fact is, I’ve got you over a barrel, Your Majesty. I’m a confirmed royalist, and of course we all worshipped your mother and father. And it would break my heart if I was obliged to make the enclosed material public. I’m just an old man who wants to lay down his bones in the land of his fathers. I want to hear the chimes of Big Ben, I want to hear the sound of leather on willow at the village green, I want to walk down Worship Street and in through the doors of the World Upside Down. I’m coming into Heathrow on the afternoon of February 13, under my own name, and will take to my farmhouse in rural Essex. And that’s the last you’ll hear of me. But if I’m nicked on my way in, then you know the consequences. Respectfully, Joseph Andrews, Esquire. PS. If you don’t mind me saying, you had some front, didn’t you, claiming it was all a fake? I had half a mind to go public then and there, to get some respect. But wiser voices prevailed. Now you can stick to your guns and hopefully it’ll all pass over quickly for the Princess. What with her mum and all. PPS. I see your cousin offed poor old Jimmy O’Nione down Cold Blow way. I knew Jimmy at Knavesmire, where we did an Inspector together. Jimmy O’Nione was one of the best.”’

Brendan dropped his hands to his lap.

Henry uncrossed and recrossed his legs.

He said, ‘And what is that, Bugger, may I ask?’

‘A DVD, sir … A digital videodisc’

‘Well I suppose we’d better …’

The two men were in Brendan’s rooms in St James’s — not otherwise would such a viewing be possible. Not in any of the wintry palaces, the lashed castles … Brendan said,

‘I’m wondering whether you have to expose yourself to this, sir. I could simply tell you what you needed to know.’

‘Stop babying me, Bugger. Call Love and then lock the door.’

Captain John Macmanaman : Come on back to me. Come on back to me. No no no no. Wait. Now … Got to stay ahead of her, got to stay ahead of her. Got to lead her. Can’t get behind her.

System Aircraft Maintenance : Captain, say souls on board and fuel remaining.