Will Self - The Book of Dave

Dave took his place in the queue for the serving counters and checked out his peers. Fat, thick, racist, ugly, rotten wankers. In their dumb fucking zip-up jackets carrying their stupid little change bags, giving it this, giving it that, and saying fuck all. Dave didn't like many cabbies at all, but he reserved his special derision for the estimated half of London licensed taxi drivers who did nothing else but work the airport. With their stupid bloody gang names. . The Quality Street Gang, the Lavender Hill Mob … and their stupider nicknames … The Farmer, Gentleman Jim, Last Chancer, Musher Freddy … Sitting out here ranked up for half their fucking lives, tootling up West with a fare, then putting their lights out and tootling back again. Too bloody scared to ply for hire like a real cabbie, too fucking fond of their fishing and their golf, their cards and their sweepstakes. Fancy themselves part of some stupid elite, following the 'cabbies' code', when half of them are faces on the fiddle, putting foil over their computer discs before they go into the feeder park to bilk a few quid, or going down on to the terminals to steal fares, pretending they're picking someone up on the radio if they get pulled. Makes me sick.

And always had, which is why Dave avoided the airport as much as he could. This evening he was bilked by a fucking pork chop that looked succulent under the bright lights of the servery, but, once he'd borne it over to one of the blue melamine tables, turned out to be dry and solid. Meat to murder with. He wouldn't have minded plunging it like an ice axe into the red neck of the cabbie who stood feet away, leaning his elbows on a table, sticking his fat arse in the air and slamming down dominoes with Caribbean vigour. He might have done, if the back hadn't turned to reveal a face he knew: 'Wot you doin' aht 'ere ven, Tufty?' the other cabbie asked and Dave grunted, 'nuffing, I 'appens to trap a flyer.' Yeah, a flyer, a fucking 'eretic … some scumbag who's lost his faith in London.

Dave's eyes wavered over to the wood-panelled wall that was hung with photographs of dead cabbies: 'Sid Greenglass, always early, now he's late, 1935–1986', 'Chancer Ross with the one that didn't get away, 1944–1998' (this one featured a rod, a reel and two fishy faces), 'The Maida Vale Marauder, Terry Groves, 1941–1997'. Their lives seemed shorter than average, fifties and sixties mostly. It could have been the selection that was made when the new cafe was built and the photos transferred over from General Roy's — but Dave doubted it. Cabbing was always an unhealthy occupation, sitting on the shuddering seat, all the dreadful humours gathering in your belly and legs as the stress flowed in through ears and eyes and hands on the steering wheel. Piles — that's what you get from all that sitting … piles … that's why they're such arseholes. Cabbies aren't anything much anyway — they think they're professionals, but they aren't. They're mostly ex-something else, ex-coppers, ex-army, ex-crims, ex-bloody-boxers — and then they end up here on the wall at the airport, ex fucking everything.

A screen was wedged high up in the corner of the dining area showing the lane movements in the second feeder park. This was bigger than the one outside the cafe, thirty lanes wide, each one with thirty-odd cabs lined up in it. When a driver had inched his way through both these cattle pens a screen told him which terminal he was to go down to. On a good day it could take a couple of hours, on a slow one a lot longer. Then there was no guarantee you'd get a fare into the middle of London; you might just get a transit passenger, marooned for the night, who wanted to go to the Holiday Inn at the end of the motorway spur. Or worse still because at least with a run under five miles you didn't have to rank up again — you'd get a full load of Southall grannies, saris flying, all with bundles of shmatte from Pakkiland, all needing your capable assistance, who'd scrape the poor old Fairway up and down the speed bumps to No. 47, Acacia Avenue, then pay the meter and not a bloody penny more. Two hours waiting, twenty minutes driving, twenty minutes portering and all for eight bloody quid, you're better off flipping Big Macs.

Dave abandoned the pork chop long before he had to pull over to the second feeder park. Better to sit in the darkness of the cab polluted with air freshener, tangy with diesel and rank with old cigarette smoke — than bear the hateful company of his own kind. The cab — he'd spent half his adult life in it. It's not juss a motor — it's almost fucking human … He thought pointedly and with great fervour of the sleeping pills by his bed and the bottle of Scotch alongside them. He rasped his stubble with a quick-bitten thumb. When his turn came, it was a relief: he drove across the road, divvied up his ticket and joined the next metal anaconda worming its way towards the money prey. Eventually he got to the front and the screen flashed up 'No. 47304, Terminal 2'.

Down at the Terminal 2 rank passengers were being expelled by the sliding doors, sucked out of the warm nowhere and into the wet, cold here of wintertime London. Shuttle buses grunted like great pigs; armed police strutted, submachine-gun necklaces on their Kevlar decolletage. In front of Dave travellers mashed their over-stuffed cases into a cab, while the driver ignored them. When I was a butter boy, I'd've been out on the road, bouncing like a puppy … Can I help you? Let me slot this in here, I'll be careful, we can put that one up front . . . Not now, oh no.

Finally it was Dave's turn. He checked his watch: he'd been at Heathrow for an hour and three quarters. City getter would've made a grand in that time, that fucking brief of mine would've scalped half that, and I've got nothing to show for it … Still, at least we're into the third tariff band. His passenger shook herself free from the damp queue and stepped towards the cab; Dave handed his docket to the dispatcher, who said, 'North London, mate, Belsize Park, good for you?' Dave grunted, 'Not bad.' And the cab rocked a little as the woman got in; she only had a single, wheeled flight bag, the handle of which she'd already deftly stowed. 'Where to, love?' Dave asked, and she answered, 'England's Lane, please, just off Haverstock Hill?' Like so many fares she was querying his competence, wanting Dave's reassurance that he knew exactly where this was, but he didn't bother to give it, only put the cab in gear and grumbled off out of the terminal.

Thrumming back through the airport tunnel, Dave looked in the rearview mirror. The fare was a stringy brunette in her late forties, thick dark hair scraped back over sallow flesh, bony as a fucking skull. When she turned to look at the scale model of Concorde, Dave saw the tendons in her thin neck, exposed by the open neck of her blouse. She wore no make-up and a series of distinct grooves ran down her long top lip. The pashmina with the embroidered hem, the naked fingers that played with it, the bifocals on a chain, the myopic eyes blinking in the gloom: all said to Dave spinnie or lezzer, one or other, and either way not an object of desire — not that he had any available; nor one of pity — not that he had any of this either. He took out his slunk of Mansize and crunched the dried snot in his pitted nose.

The cab paused at the traffic lights under the M4 flyover, then accelerated up the slip road. Dr Jane Bernal slid her tired frame to the side of the seat and leant against the rain-dappled window. After the paranoia of the flight and the bucketing descent into Heathrow, even this chilly vibration was a comfort. Could it be mere culture shock or is London dirtier, darker, sadder and madder than when I left it? I thought Carla was a screamingly tedious hostess, and the Brunswick Opera Festival worse than dull. Yet, now I'm home, Canada suddenly looks beautiful to me, the frozen lake, the Bold tartans of the opera goers' jackets, their bright cheeks, their flaxen hair. . The minute I cleared immigration and saw the drivers lined up by the rail like undertakers I wanted to be back there. Back, if necessary, with Carla, squirming my way out of her serpentine grasp. She promised … she promised we could have a great time anyway, even if I wanted to keep things platonic. But she wouldn't let me alone for a second. Not a bloody second.