Will Self - Grey Area

We woozed away from the kerb and jounced around the corner. An air freshener shaped like a fir tree dingled and dangled as we took the bends down to Chalk Farm Road. The car was, I noticed, scrupulously clean and poisonous with smoke. George lit another Dunhill and offered me one, which I accepted. In the moulded divider between the two front seats there sat a tin of travel sweets. I could hear them schussing round on their caster-sugar slope as we cornered and cornered and cornered again.

I sucked on the fag and thought determinedly of other things: figure skating; Christmas sales; the way small children have their mittens threaded through the arms of their winter coats on lengths of elastic; Grace. . which was a mistake, because this train of thought was bad magic. Grace’s relationship with John was clearly at an end. It was perverse to realise this, particularly after her display in the café, when she was so secure and self-possessed in the face of my tears and distress. But I could imagine the truth: that the huge crevices in their understanding of each other had been only temporarily papered over by the thrill of having someone in the flat who was in more emotional distress than they. No, there was no doubt about it now, Grace belonged to the league of the self-deceived.

George had put on a tape. The Crusaders — or at any rate some kind of jazz funk, music for glove compartments. I looked at the tightly bunched flesh at the back of his neck. It was malevolent flesh. I was alone in the world really. People tried to understand me, but they completely missed the mark. It was as if they were always looking at me from entirely the wrong angle and mistaking a knee for a bald pate, or an elbow for a breast.

And then I knew that I’d been a fool to get into the cab, the rapistmobile. I looked at George’s hands, where they had pounced on the steering wheel. They were flexing more than they should have been, flexing in anticipation. When he looked at me in the office he had taken me for jailbait, thought I was younger than I am. He just looked at my skirt — not at my sweater; and anyway, my sweater hides my breasts, which are small. He could do it, right enough, because he knew exactly where to go and the other man, the man in the office, would laughingly concoct an alibi for him. And who would believe me anyway? He’d be careful not to leave anything inside me. . and no marks.

We were driving down a long street with warehouses on either side. I didn’t recognise it. The distances between the street lamps were increasing. The car thwacked over some shallow depressions in the road, depressions that offered no resistance. I felt everything sliding towards the inevitable. He used to cuddle me and call me ‘little animal’, ‘little rabbit’. It should happen again, not end like this, in terror, in violation.

Then the sequence of events went awry. I subsided sideways, sobbing, choking. The seat was wide enough for me to curl up on it, which is what I did. The car slid to a halt. ‘Whassermatter, love?’ Oh Jesus, I thought, don’t let him touch me, please don’t let him touch me, he can’t be human. But I knew that he was. ‘C’mon, love, whassermatter?’ My back in its suede jacket was like a carapace. When he penetrated me I’d rather he did it from behind, anything not to have him touch and pry at the soft parts of my front.

The car pulls away once more. Perhaps this place isn’t right for his purposes, he needs somewhere more remote. I’m already under the earth, under the soft earth. . The wet earth will cling to my putrid face when the police find me. . when they put up the loops of yellow tape around my uncovered grave. . and the WPC used to play me when they reconstruct the crime will look nothing like me. . She’ll have coarser features, but bigger breasts and hips. . something not lost on the grieving boyfriend. . Later he’ll take her back to the flat, and fuck her standing up, pushing her ample, smooth bum into the third shelf of books in his main room (some Penguin classics, a couple of old economics text books, my copy of The House of Mirth ), with each turgid stroke. .

I hear the door catch through these layers of soft earth. I lunge up, painfully slow, he has me. . and come face to face with a woman. A handsome woman, heavily built, in her late thirties. I relapse back into the car and regard her at crotch level. It’s clear immediately — from the creases in her jeans — that she’s George’s wife.

‘C’mon love, whassermatter?’ I crawl from the car and stagger against her, still choking. I can’t speak, but gesture vaguely towards George, who’s kicking the front wheel of the car, with a steady ‘chok-chok-chok’. ‘What’d ‘e do then? Eh? Did he frighten you or something? You’re a bloody fool, George!’ She slaps him, a roundhouse slap — her arm, travelling ninety degrees level with her shoulder. George still stands, even glummer now, rubbing his cheek.

In terrorist-siege-survivor-mode (me clutching her round the waist with wasted arms) we turn and head across the parking area to the exterior staircase of a block of flats exactly the same as the one I recently left. Behind us comes a Dunhill International, and behind that comes George. On the third floor we pass a woman fumbling for her key in her handbag — she’s small enough to eyeball the lock. My saviour pushes open the door of the next flat along and pulls me in. Still holding me by the shoulder she escorts me along the corridor and into an overheated room.

‘Park yerself there, love.’ She turns, exposing the high, prominent hips of a steer and disappears into another room, from where I hear the clang of aluminium kettle on iron prong. I’m left behind on a great scoop of upholstery — an armchair wide enough for three of me — facing a similarly outsize television screen. The armchair still has on the thick plastic dress of its first commercial communion.

George comes in, dangling his keys, and without looking at me crosses the room purposively. He picks up a doll in Dutch national costume and begins to fiddle under its skirt. ‘Git out of there!’ This from the kitchen. He puts the doll down and exits without looking at me.

‘C’mon, love, stick that in your laugh hole.’ She sets the tea cup and saucer down on a side table. She sits alongside me in a similar elephantine armchair. We might be a couple testing out a new suite in some furniture warehouse. She settles herself, yanking hard at the exposed pink webbing of her bra, where it cuts into her. ‘It’s not the first time this has happened, you know,’ she slurps.’ Not that George would do anything, mind, leastways not in his cab. But he does have this way of. . well, frightening people, I s’pose. He sits there twirling his bloody wheel, not saying anything and somehow girls like you get terrified. Are you feeling better now?’

‘Yes, thanks, really it wasn’t his fault. I’ve been rather upset all day. I had a row with my boyfriend this morning and I had been going to stay at a friend’s, but suddenly I wanted to get home. And I was in the car when it all sort of came down on top of me. .’

‘Where do you live, love?’

‘I’ve got a room in a flat in Kensal Rise, but my boyfriend lives in Barnsbury.’

‘That’s just around the corner from here. When you’ve ‘ad your tea I’ll walk you back.’

‘But what about George — I haven’t even paid him.’

‘Don’t worry about that. He’s gone off now, anyway he could see that you aren’t exactly loaded. . He thinks a lot about money, does George. Wants us to have our own place an’ that. It’s an obsession with him. And he has to get back on call as quickly as he can or he’ll miss a job, and if he misses a job he’s in for a bad night. And if he has a bad night, then it’s me that’s on the receiving end the next day. Not that I hardly ever see him, mind. He works two shifts at the moment. Gets in at three-thirty in the afternoon, has a kip, and goes back out again at eight. On his day off he sleeps. He never sees the kids, doesn’t seem to care about ‘em. . ’