Vail Read online

  About Spaghetti Junction being ‘safe’ he was probably right. This was a serpentine network of several hundred miles of motorway within a very small area which curled in on itself, – up and over other motorways, down and under yet others, winding tighter and tighter until becoming lost before it disappeared God-knows-where in umpteen directions.

  Some of the sections had collapsed and finished in mid-air. Contractors still worked on stretches that hadn’t been used in twenty years and probably never would be again. Yes, once inside Spaghetti Junction we would be ‘safe’; nobody could ‘home in on us’ there, whatever that meant.

  Bob Monkhouse had been replaced by The Pox, a revolutionary punk rock band (Bev thought they were ‘crisp’) miming to their latest hit Fire the Schools, a scorching indictment of the educational system and the way it had betrayed the rising generation. Having been banned by the BBC the record had sold over half-a-million copies, and it was rumoured that a book, stage show and possibly a film based on the lyrics were in the offing. There had been calls from certain quarters not to allow the group back into the country after a recent tour abroad, but as they were UK citizens this was ruled legally out of the question, quite apart, of course, from the matter of their dollar earnings, said to be in seven figures.

  ‘Bev’s suppurating,’ Mira said wretchedly. ‘Is there nothing we can do?’

  I switched on the dim yellow interior light and took a look at her. The scabs on her neck were leaking glutinous fluid. Her face was puffed and blotchy-red. Her eyes were slitted vents. She was scalding hot and pulsing with fever.

  ‘Do you have anything left you can give her?’ I said. ‘Tablets. Anything.’

  ‘What tablets?’ Mira snorted.

  ‘I thought the doctor gave you some tablets?’

  ‘She finished those weeks ago, before the sores started erupting. You know we haven’t any tablets.’

  I ripped off a corner square of foil and extruded a Temporal capsule with my thumb. It was pink and black, torpedo-shaped. There was a half-full can of Coke on the formica folding table which I used to swill the capsule down the constricted red maw of her throat. I wasn’t expecting results, and in fact nothing happened. Bev was still with us, palpably here in the airless green van, not becoming transparent or entering another time zone or anything spookily supernatural like that.

  Mira asked sharply, ‘What’s that you’ve given her?’

  ‘Febrile depressant,’ I said, tucking the foil strip out of sight before she could catch a glimpse of what was written on it.

  ‘You haven’t any money to buy fancy drugs,’ Mira said accusingly.

  ‘I’ve had them for some considerable time,’ I said. ‘For use in an emergency.’ I rummaged for the bottle and took a swig in full view of her. Mira blamed everything on me. True, I had no pride and no self-respect left. Next she would be ranting that I was trying to poison our daughter. Winning with some women, wives especially, is impossible. I thought of giving Bev a slug of whisky for good measure but rejected the notion.

  ‘And you,’ I said to Brown, ‘had better start talking, and soon. Free transportation, free food and drink, and so far you haven’t spilled a bean.’ I felt like breaking the bottle and grinding the jagged end into his starved working-class face. Some people invite, positively demand, such treatment. And to think that I’d been scared of the little mangy sewer rat! I had thought him sly, dangerous, ruthless, – and so he was, but in the manner of a cornered rat, lips drawn back in a snarl of fake quivering ferocity.

  I was in charge here, I was calling the shots, not some self-styled underground ‘subversive’ snivelling in a dark corner, clutching his bundle as though it were a baby, under the delusion he was God Almighty because he claimed to know a couple of things of which the general populace was ignorant.

  After the repeated petrol caper we were off again, the van moving faster now that the sun had gone down and the air was cooler. I couldn’t recall such a hot summer for many a long year. What with talk about ‘radiation sickness’ and ‘toxic waste poisoning’ the suspicion insinuated itself into my mind that the authorities were even tampering with the weather. I could even believe they had flown in experts from America to advise them on optimum temperatures to induce national well-being and generate a mood of dazed benevolence. This year a colonial war perhaps, next year a balmy summer; it was a cute and plausible ploy for universal pacification.

  There are no signs for Spaghetti Junction and you won’t find it on any map. In a sense it’s folklore, but it exists all right, the Sargasso Sea of the motorway system. Except in the Sargasso Sea you’re stuck in one spot all the time whereas in Spaghetti Junction you never stop moving even though you’re going nowhere; same difference.

  Another peculiarity is that you’re never sure you’re inside it until you actually are: there isn’t a boundary or dividing line which allows you to make the definitive statement, ‘We are now in Spaghetti Junction’. For a long while you wonder when you’re going to reach it and then discover you have. Rather like walking backwards into a warm quicksand you didn’t know was there until it’s gripped you by the knees and is tenderly sucking at your waist.

  (Incidentally, curfew didn’t apply here because for the police to find anybody was next to impossible, therefore it was a safe place to circulate the night away.)

  (Coincidentally, the Govt and the local authority were at loggerheads over the precise extent of Spaghetti Junction, were it to be disentangled and laid out in a straight line, for the simple reason that one calculated the distance in miles, the other in kilometres. So the actual length had never been resolved to everyone’s satisfaction.)

  Bone-weary as I was, I had no alternative but to drive on. I popped a blister and swallowed a capsule dry. Something to suck on.

  The headlights picked out a scrawl of apposite graffito someone had chalked on one of the underpasses: Welcome to the Concrete Bowel. From this I conjectured that we were indeed inside it, rattling and lurching onwards and inwards at a rate of knots. The lights strung above the motorway flickered faultily; some had gone out altogether, their protective covers hanging agape like plastic jaws. Sloughed-off tyres were strewn across the three lanes and shards of glass sparkled crazily as our headlights sent feeble swathes over the ink-black tarmac.

  Most of the other traffic had gone, – except for an occasional black limousine which swept silently past, the faces behind the curved tinted glass lit greenly from below by the subdued glow of instruments in sunken casings. Such personages had urgent expense-account business to attend to in distant parts of the kingdom and couldn’t afford not to travel at all hours of the day and night, gliding swiftly and surely towards personal gratification and self-fulfilment. In one of these hermetically-sealed containers, at midnight or thereabouts, I glimpsed the etched hawklike profile of Vince Hill, the popular balladeer and cabaret entertainer.

  Silence and darkness behind me in the interior of the van. No Thank you for the birds that sing to comfort Bev in her wretched hallucinogenic slumber. I could see no activity in the black slice of mirror and dared not glance over my shoulder for fear of sending us crashing into a steel balustrade or concrete abutment. The three lanes had merged into two. Unlit signs zipped by, fragments of names and numbers smearing themselves across my retina. I had no idea where I was going and, to tell the truth, no longer cared. For all I knew we could have been dropping down a shaft into the centre of the earth. I indulged this illusion for a little while, enjoying the sensation that all was beyond my control and I could sit back with a mad happy smile on my face, knowing that gravity had taken over and it was useless to fight it. The molten core beckoned enticingly, seething fingers of fire reaching up greedily like slow-motion lightning. A hot blast scorched my face, singeing my eyebrows and moustache. I fought for breath. Were we on fire?

  Looking to the east I searched for the dawn but the bastard was nowhere to be found.

  The dawn never did come. Neither Mira nor Brown commented on the f
act, or non-fact, so I reckoned it politic to do the same. Plus I had my hands full driving and my eyes were never still, looking for a sign that said London or The South or simply →.

  (It’s always the same, isn’t it? Signs galore lead you into somewhere but nary a one tells you how to get out. It’s as if they fiendishly want to keep you there, endlessly circling purgatory with the fuel gauge nudging zero and your bladder fit to burst.)

  Brown had made the observation that by entering Spaghetti Junction we would confuse the authorities as to which direction we were taking; what he hadn’t said was that it would confuse us also. Maybe we were now travelling towards Bristol, say, instead of London, or back north up the M6, or just going round and round the same endless piece of two-lane tarmacadam. Without landmarks it was impossible to tell.

  (And without the dawn equally impossible to know whether we were moving forward in time or repeating the same minute, moment, and therefore ourselves, ad nauseam.)

  There is a theory that with each passing nano-second another universe splits itself off from our existing universe and takes a new direction in time and space. A nano-second later another universe splits itself off from this second universe into a third, which also takes a new direction; and a nano-second after that the third universe splits itself off and takes yet another, fourth, direction. So on and so on. And each of these separate multiplying universes in turn split themselves off, nano-second by nano-second, into other universes, which continue splitting and separating every nano-second of recorded time. The theory goes that each of these universes inhabits ‘a state of probability’, that each is as likely to exist as any of the others, and that we, as conscious beings, must thread our way through this multifarious labyrinth as we progress from birth to death. Therefore it follows that alongside the universe we perceive with our senses there is an infinite number of other probable universes, none of which is more real than ours, just as ours is no more real than all the others. Further, this hypothesis goes on to state that as each universe splits into the next, we split with it, with the result that an infinite number of our probable selves inhabits an infinite number of probable universes. It occurs to Vail (whose thoughts these are) that if only it were possible to switch tracks, skipping from universe to universe, he might light upon a universe more to his liking. And with this thought comes another: as new universes are still being created, nano-second by nano-second, it follows that, – because his probable self inhabits each of them, – he has an infinite number of choices before him. One probable self will continue driving for evermore on this same endless stretch of motorway, while another will suffer a heart attack and crash into a bridge, while another will stop the van and go for a pee in the bushes, while another will see a sign saying London: This Way, while another will hear furtive scuttlings in the back and realise that his wife and Brown are having intercourse, while another will hear a strangled wail as Mira discovers that their child has died, while another will grin with relief at the sight of a stat ahead, its rosy glow on the concrete horizon mimicking the false dawn that thus far has failed to materialise. All these were possibilities (more correctly, probabilities) which he might take in the future. Yet the annoying thing about the theory was that it didn’t give one the power to choose. For example, another of his probable selves was at this precise moment sitting down to a hearty meal in a warm, softly-lit restaurant with a piano playing Noel Coward in the background (in an infinite number of probabilities anything and everything is possible) while this probable self, inhabiting this particular world-line, this Vail, was still driving hopelessly in the pre-dawn through the Concrete Bowel with wife, child and underground terrorist. Indeed, as he realised, a probable self of his existed somewhere who hadn’t been intrigued by Brown’s story and had refused to provide him with transportation. Still another of his probable selves in another probable universe hadn’t started out on the journey at all and was at this moment standing at the bar of the Albion quaffing whiskies with half pint bitter chasers. Farther back, moreover, another wouldn’t have married Mira in the first place, and in consequence was now a millionaire entrepreneur merchandising Selina Southorn video pornlets and at this point in time lying next to her smooth brown body beside a swimming pool in Tenerife. This really was the bloody annoying part: that of all the infinite number of probable universes in existence, I was stuck with this one, and seemingly didn’t have the power to choose or switch.

  One such probable universe (the one I happened to be inhabiting) now hove into view: a rosy glow on the concrete horizon mimicking the false dawn that thus far had failed to materialise. I grinned with relief at the sight.

  The blue and white sign said: Watford Gap Services.

  Mira broke away from whatever she was doing and raised herself to peer over the folding formica table. Her hair was tousled and her eyelids swollen with fatique. Perhaps, I thought charitably, she actually had been asleep and not having intercourse with Brown behind my back.

  ‘Are we here?’

  ‘Are we where?’

  ‘I don’t know. Where are we?’

  ‘Watford Gap.’

  ‘We’re not in Spaghetti Junction any more?’

  ‘Apparently not.’

  ‘Thank God. I’m parched.’

  ‘How’s Bev?’

  ‘Still in a coma. The fever’s gone.’

  ‘How’s Brown?’

  ‘How should I know?’

  ‘He’s back there with you.’

  ‘He’s back here but he’s not with me. Not in the Biblical sense.’

  ‘I didn’t mean to imply that he was. It was just a friendly inquiry.’

  ‘Well ask him yourself. He’s got a tongue in his head.’

  This conversation having apparently run out of steam, I didn’t pursue it.

  ‘Where are we?’ Brown said.

  ‘For God’s sake, don’t you start,’ I said, setting the handbrake. I sounded irritable but in actual fact I was rather pleased. This being Watford Gap meant we were on the Ml, which was something of an achievement. A brief rest, something to eat and drink, petrol, and we could crash straight down to the Smoke in a matter of hours, arriving at dawn, whenever that happened to be. It crossed my mind that the Govt had tampered with that too for some reason, – either postponing it temporarily or extending the night indefinitely. Possible.

  I couldn’t put my finger on it, but this stat seemed different somehow. One of the reasons might have been that it was quiet, though I supposed that at this time of the night/early hours of the morning there would be few people about anyway. Still, it was exceedingly quiet.

  Some of the buildings were in darkness, including the Macdonalds’ burger joint. Less than a dozen cars, I counted, were on the car park, and of these four rested on their haunches, minus wheels. Unusually, too, the large curved screen was blank and silent, and the stanchioned speakers which normally poured forth pop music night and day non-stop were empty black mouths murmuring hollowly in the slight movement of air which you could hardly call a breeze.

  Brown got out and stretched himself up to his full five-feet-four. He raised his arms alternately, swapping the bundle from armpit to armpit to facilitate this action. I’d made up my mind to leave him here. So far he’d been nothing but a smart-ass pain-in-the-neck, and possibly a wife-fucker into the bargain.

  Leaving Mira and Bev in the van we approached the main entrance which consisted of five pairs of double glass doors, two of which stood ajar. We entered. The foyer was in semi-darkness. We went up the stairs, following the direction indicated by the arrowed sign saying CAFETERIA. Behind the chest-high glass-and-laminate partition which walled off the cafeteria from the passageway, eight or nine young men were sitting astride huge powerful motorcycles with twin exhausts. The machines were buffed and polished to gleaming perfection. The young men, all of whom I recognised, were wearing black leather, chains and denims, and it was impossible at first glance to see where the bodies of the young men ended and the machines began, a
s each appeared to merge into the other.

  I remember thinking They must have had prosthetic surgery, and this was an astute guess on my part as it turned out. I can be pretty smart at times.

  ‘Hey, you guys,’ I called out. ‘Any chance of getting something to eat and drink around here?’ I said this in a confident, friendly voice, consciously adopting the indolent stance of their body language and the lackadaisical manner of what I assumed to be their speech patterns.

  (Incidentally, I’ve noticed this trait in others as well as in myself: that of genuflecting to certain people in similar fashion to those apes which present their backsides and balls to a potential adversary as a gesture of prior submission.)

  ‘If you were hoping to score you can butt out,’ James Dean said, swivelling round from the hips to address me. ‘We’re users, not pushers.’

  ‘No, no, you got me wrong,’ I said. ‘We want food and drink, not dope. Anything at all will do.’

  ‘Who is this turkey?’ asked Marlon Brando.

  Elvis Presley, Gene Vincent and Eddie Cochran shrugged their shoulders. Sal Mineo sneered a little. Jerry Lee Lewis ran a comb through his long wavy hair and said, ‘You got permission to invade our turf?’

  ‘It was open so we just came on in,’ I said. ‘No offence.’

  ‘Who is you guys?’ asked Little Richard. He was astride a Harley-Davidson with low-slung handlebars and a quilted backrest. The plastic job on his face hadn’t taken as well as the others; the cheekbones weren’t quite right and the dark skin tone was patchy. The pencil moustache looked good though.

  I introduced myself and Urban Brown. ‘We’re not here to cause any trouble. We just stopped by for something to eat.’

  ‘Trouble?’ Marlon grunted, raising a sardonic eyebrow above a hairy throat. ‘I hear you mention trouble, boy?’

  Brown whispered in my ear: he didn’t like the look of the situation: he wanted out.