Martin Amis - Yellow Dog

Supermaniam said, ‘Ainsley Car reckons Durham’s the best dryout centre he’s ever been to. Course he’s treated like a god in there. And Ainsley and Beryl are going to get married for the third time in the prison chapel. Could do a piece on that.’

Crinkling his nose, Desmond Heaf said, ‘So you see some things turn out for the best.’

‘Yeah. You know,’ said Clint: ‘“The faded and disgraced football legend gave a wry smile as he added his own slops to the bucket of filth outside his cell. His wedding day had begun.”’

‘Oh I imagined something a bit softer in tone. Though point taken: football is the religion of our … Now,’ said Heaf with a glance at his watch. ‘It doesn’t happen often — oh no — but every now and then, every now and then, in a publishing lifetime, you encounter an instance of the journalist’s craft that simply takes your breath away … Yesterday morning I said to Clint here, “Clint? I’ve had a personal communication from the Palace via the FPA.” ‘Heaf briefly waved a flyer-like sheet of paper in the air. ‘It says that the tacit embargo on the Princess is now officially lapsed, but that they do respectfully ask that we maintain a certain tact and distance at this very sensitive time, following the demise of Queen Pamela. Explaining this, I said, “Clint? How about a little piece on Vicky? Something for the op-ed page. And not Yellow Dog, mind! More like your earlier light-hearted style. Now that all the scandal’s blown over, and with her sixteenth birthday not that far off. To go with this nice new photograph. Lovely to see her laughing again, isn’t it? … A turning of the page — the start of a fresh chapter.” This morning I happened to open my Lark at the breakfast table, in the company of my wife and six daughters. Would you all now turn to page thirty-three. “Vicky With Nobs On”.

‘“Hi, men !”’ Heaf recited. ‘“With these words Princess Vicky kissed goodbye to her catflap — and nun too soon says the Lark. Gore blimey, it was virgin on the ridiculous. These days British minge is spreading the butcher’s apron aged 12 or 13. So high time Vicky had herself deflowered (what in carnation did you expect?) and jumped aboard the cherrygoround. We’ve had a Virgin Queen — Liz I. So loosen your belts for the Goer Princess.

‘“Who’s the (p)lucky boy then? Porking the Heir Suggestive is still a topping offence so this must have come from on high. Did she do a Blessed Mary and let the Lord God giveth her one? Or was it an inside job in at least two senses? We all knew that Vick’s first pash would have to be posh. And it’s well known that her Pop hasn’t popped for more than two year. Maybe she said, ‘Dad? I need a nob. Let’s keep it in the (royal) family.’ And he said, ‘What the Hal?’

‘“So out with the crown jewels, lads, and start dreaming. Now that one bloke’s got his leg over, the vestal surely follow. After all those years of Queen Pam, known to every motorist as the Buckingham Turnoff (RIP), here’s a royal to tauten the todge. Look across the page, lads, and raise your rifles. Ready, aim — and let Britannia drool the waves!”

‘… I never thought I’d ever hear myself say this, Clint. But you’re fired.’

Mattock Estate, NW2. Homeless John and And New were sitting on the pavement.

‘It ain’t a bad patch, this,’ said Homeless John. ‘You can help people with their cars. Say, “Eh up, mate. You got a ticket. Tried to stop her but the cow give you one.”’

‘How’s that help?’ asked And.

‘Well, prepare them. Warn them. Where you been then?’

‘On an oil-rig. In the fucking North Sea.’

‘Eh. Mega money.’

‘If you’re a driller, yeah. Not if you’re licking out the fucking pie-warmer it ain’t.’

The black Avenger crept up, with Clint’s head in it like the hump of a camel.

Still seated, Homeless John made a series of unreadable gestures till Clint lowered the passenger window.

‘Not there, mate. It’s Residents’ up to ten-thirty. Back up a bit and it’s Pay and Display. Just beyond the yellow line. Beyond the yellow.’

Clint backed up, then climbed down, holding the two bottles of champagne by their necks in his left hand and the pigskin hamper in his right. ‘Yeah cheers lads,’ he said.

‘Eh up then,’ said Homeless John. ‘I’m off home.’

And Clint started across the road. Nice to get going early: love in the afternoon. Roaming across the road, ambling, sort of happy-go-lucky. A loon, a wander. Pressure? There was no pressure, not with Kate. And he was prepared for every contingency: when shaken, his pockets sounded like a pair of maracas. Conversation? Okay: the new royal sensation, breaking as we speak. (Well out of that. Let them other mugs do it.) Or amuse her with the story of the two nights he had served in a Lovetown jail for smoking in his room. Every sprinkler in the whole hotel …

He admitted to himself that she had her little mannerisms. Like her paltry ingenuities on the keyboard. Some of her abbreviations saved her but one touch, and none at all when they included the use of the tab. And punctuation as visual pun: ‘i must—’; ‘orl&o’s, of red hair’; and, of course, ‘a 2nd 9-hour operation on his:’. And 6 for sex kept making him think she came from bleeding New Zealand. Unconsciously, too, of course, Clint was suffering from a proliferation of doubts in new areas: innovatory uncertainties. He had the sense that he was missing something — and not a detail. And he had already suspected, many times, and not just unconsciously, that she wasn’t quite right in the head.

He pushed the button marked k8. Time passed. I bet that lamb felt it, he thought insensately, when I come up on it. The house opened out with a soft laugh and the smell of hot greens, and closed again.

Captain John Macmanaman : I’ve got a little more feel here. I don’t know. Maybe the gear is giving us just a little bit of rudder, or maybe the air — it’s lower, it’s thicker.

Flight Engineer Hal Ward : What you got you got.

Macmanaman : How are you doing there, Nick?

First Officer Nick Chopko : … The numbers say drop the nose.

Reynolds knew why the Captain wanted her in a seat facing aft. You quickly intuited that you had a large piece of fixed furniture to cushion you, rather than the slender section of strapping enjoyed, for example, by the man in 2A. On the other hand there were unfamiliar sensations to be accommodated. When the plane met with resistance, in the shuddering clouds, it felt to her spine like acceleration. And the obverse: when the nose went down and they started to dive, it felt to her spine like reverse thrust.

But they didn’t have reverse thrust.

Four hundred people gulped, as the plane jerked wildly to the left. So sudden, so sharp. She thought of the scrap of tissue paper in the steel toilet bowl, an hour or more ago, sucked sideways with the sound of a sneeze. As sharp as that.

People were no longer wailing, even at the most terrible drops and lurches. Except for some of the couples, people were no longer touching or talking but staring straight ahead. People had stopped saying that word, which they nearly all said and which was fuck. People travelling alone were no longer saying goodbye to their loved ones on their mobile phones. People were no longer saying goodbye to their loved ones, in their heads. People were saying goodbye to themselves.

Earlier in the morning of Valentine’s Day, Brendan had breakfasted with the Princess, and they had had words.