Gridlock (11 page)

Deborah could see that the only crowd cooperation likely to take place in the next few minutes would be Geoffrey's lynching.

'Forget it, pal,' she said. 'You can't get people to stand up for themselves, let alone anyone else. As far as they're concerned we're just a couple of crips holding up their day.'

'But that's the exact attitude we have to fight,' stuttered Geoffrey.

Deborah was beginning to warm to this insanely deluded young man. For one thing, she was grateful that she was no longer the only inconvenient, disabled person irritating a crowd of people. On the other hand, she, unlike her champion it seemed, still lived on the planet Earth.

'You fight it,' replied Deborah. 'I have enough problems fighting this chair.' At which point she reversed hard into a big suitcase directly behind her which had been slowly pushing her towards the barrier.

'Well excuse me!' said someone who wanted to get to Heathrow.

'Sit on it!' said Deborah, offering a vertical forefinger. She was angry, and tired, and completely stuck.

'You won't get anywhere feeling sorry for yourself,' said the Heathrow traveller, and all the other pushers and shovers turned away. They personally would be too embarrassed to
talk
to a cripple, let alone argue with one.

With a huge effort, Deborah managed to extricate herself from the melee and effect a partial escape.

'You mustn't fight the chair,' shouted Geoffrey, leaving Terry to get on with his day and scuttling after Deborah, 'it's part of you.'

Some explanation is required here.

Did Geoffrey leap to the defence of every person with disabilities whom he encountered? Did he run after everyone in a wheelchair trying to engender in them a positive attitude to their condition? No, had he done so there would have been no time for him to gain his PhD in physics. The fact was that from the first moment he saw her, Geoffrey was smitten by Deborah. This, obviously, was not because Deborah, like Geoffrey, suffered from a disability. A person's sexuality is not governed by their own physical condition but by that which they find attractive in others. When we see pictures in the colour supps of some half-dead, prunelike Hollywood mogul escorting a twenty-year-old blonde bombshell about the place, we do not say, 'Oh I thought he would have gone for somebody more half-dead and prunelike.'

Geoffrey fancied Deborah for the obvious reason that she was very beautiful. Lots of men fancied her and she had had a number of boyfriends. Of course, occasionally, her disability did confuse things, she had to watch out for the weirdos. Deborah soon recognized that there were some guys who got all mushy and romantic over what they saw as her helpless condition.

'You want to protect something? Get a job with Securicor,' Deborah had said to one misty-eyed suitor who had informed her that he wanted to build a nest for her to snuggle up in. There had also been one man who Deborah strongly suspected was actually turned on specifically by her immobility.

'I ain't being no new experience for some jerk who's into bondage,' she had told him. 'Go stick it in a slot machine,' and he had burst into tears.

Like most people her age, Deborah struck up relationships for the fun of it and had no interest in a long-term thing. Geoffrey, who would gladly have married her, had never got so much as a snog. This did not greatly surprise Geoffrey, as he was realistic and did not consider himself the world's most romantic catch.

This first, tube-side, encounter had taken place three years previously. Little had changed since then: Geoffrey still loved Deborah and wanted her sauce, Deborah had come to love Geoffrey but definitely did not want his. One thing had changed of course, and changed very suddenly. They were now both in deep trouble.

Geoffrey was very silent after the phone call to the Office of Patents and it was not his cerebral palsy that was making him shake.

'Geoffrey, tell me what's going on?' asked Deborah.

His thoughts were far away. 'I was so concerned with building it for you, I never really considered how important it could be to everyone else. I was a bit of a dickhead I'm afraid, Deborah, after all, it's obvious, it will change everything.'

'What are you gurgling about?' asked Deborah testily.

'Everything, Deborah. The entire economy of the earth, the political map, the military map. Everything.'

'Crap,' said Deborah, expressing her scepticism.

'Deborah, I've invented an engine that runs on hydrogen,' insisted Geoffrey. 'An engine which runs on hydrogen is an engine that
does not run on oil.
It could change the world!'

'So how come nobody invented it before?' said Deborah. 'Hydrogen isn't new.'

'People have been inventing hydrogen engines for years,' said Geoffrey, 'and biomass engines, and electric engines. The problem has always been that all of these methods carry much less energy density than petrol, hence less power. People
like
power. Most cars crawl along at fifteen miles an hour, but the drivers want the
potential
to be able to do a hundred. That's why engines using cleaner fuels have never been adopted.'

'And you've made your hydrogen dense have you?' enquired Deborah.

'Well, not dense, just more efficient, Deborah. I have invented a colossal thing. It costs nothing to run . . . it's environmentally harmless.'

'And then it turns into a pizza and you can eat it,' said Deborah. 'Come on, Geoffrey, I know you've got a brain that gets stuck in doorways but . . .'

'I tell you it costs nothing to run, and it's environmentally harmless,' said Geoffrey, firmly. 'That's why they've stolen it; that's why they tried to kill me – it's too bloody good. The hydrogen is produced by the electrolysis of water . . .'

This sounded vaguely convincing to Deborah, she could dimly remember something from school about anodes and cathodes.

'And the beauty of it,' continued Geoffrey, 'is that it burns cleanly. All it produces is water. Not tetraethyl lead; not carbon monoxide; not nitrogen oxides – just water. It's a potential revolution as big as steam or oil itself!'

'But they've got it, whoever
they
are,' Deborah reminded him.

'Yes, they've got it,' Geoffrey conceded, 'and they're trying to kill me. God knows why. Why not offer to buy it off me, that's the way things are normally done isn't it?'

'I guess they must be nuts. But the point is, what are we going to do?' said Deborah.

'Well I think I'm safe here,' said Geoffrey, reasoning that it would be unlikely that his hunters would connect him to Deborah. No-one at work knew anything about his private life. His colleagues had long ago given up even the pretence of making any effort to understand him. They were perfectly pleasant and friendly but they had their own lives to lead.

'Listen, they want you dead because you are a living copy of your invention,' said Deborah. 'Having robbed your workplace, and your home, they presume that they hold all the hard copies, so all they have to do is kill you and it's theirs. But they blew it didn't they? So it's simple. Just write out some more copies of the secret and hand them round, give one to the police, put one in the bank, take out an ad in the paper. Once they realize what you've done, they'll also realize that there isn't any point in killing you any more because the secret is beyond their control anyway. They've shot their bolt, Geoffrey; they've let you get away. Even if they find you again it will be too late.'

'Not if they find me within the next three months, Deborah,' said Geoffrey morosely. 'Because that's my estimate of the minimum amount of time it would take to recreate the plans in any comprehensible manner, and that's if I can get hold of a computer.'

'Three months!' exclaimed Deborah.

For a moment, the seriousness of the engine situation was overshadowed by the seriousness of the having-somebody-crashed-on-your-sofa-for-three-months situation.

'Here's a pencil,' she said, 'I want you out in two and a half.'

Digby strode towards the podium, calm and confident, he was feeling good. The shock of the previous night was like a dream now, he was back in his element, wrapped in the warm cocoon of his party, and, as long as he avoided offending any major industrialists, he could remain there for ever. They had given him a great slot for his speech, just after lunch. Everybody would be mellow and he had plenty of time to get it all on camera before the dreadful
'Play School
turn off when the television stations ended their live coverage in order to do the kids' programmes.

'The Minister is no stranger to the platform,' said the BBC's political correspondent lovingly into his microphone . . . 'Old conference hands will perhaps recall his first appearance at the famous Blue Podium, when, as a plucky fifteen-year-old, he won many a heart on the floor with a little youthful common sense. If memory serves, young Master Parkhurst even made one or two of the party grandees sit up and listen.'

The correspondent was referring to a particularly revolting occasion which had happened some twenty or so years previously, when, for a brief moment, Digby had found himself enveloped in the warm glow of uncritical press attention. It was one of those nauseating incidents which crop up periodically, when a youngster is deemed to have spoken with a simple clarity and insight that grown-ups, living in the complex world, had lost sight of.

'I just think,' young Digby Parkhurst (aka Shitsby Zitburst) had said, to a smiling and indulgent conference, 'that it's about time the unions pulled themselves together [warm applause]. After all, we're all British aren't we, and I don't think that the men who fell in two world wars would think very much of these strikes. My father works very hard and has never been on strike. It took him six years to pay for our car, and I'm extremely proud of that.'

Young Digby had been president of his school debating society. He had written an essay entitled 'England or Anarchy?' which had been published in a local newspaper, and, as a result, he had been invited to conference as a 'youth delegate'. The reason that this invitation had been made was that, at the time, the concern in Digby's party was that they had become out of date and were considered unfashionable amongst the young. Searching about for a solution to this problem, the party grandees had decided that the appearance of fifteen-year-old Shitsby, school blazer tightly buttoned, hair parted and flattened, a soup stain growing slowly on his upper lip, would make them hip. This was a miscalculation, but conference loved it.

'When I'm set an essay at school
thnn thnn,'
young Master Parkhurst had said, 'I certainly do not go on strike! I jolly well write that essay, for I know that is the only way that the job will get done!' Loud cheers.

And again Digby was at the podium facing an expectant conference crowd. Rumour had got about that there was to be an actual policy announcement during the transport speech, and actual policy was always a treat at conference.

'The Minister is playing to a packed house,' said the BBC correspondent. 'We are all certainly expecting something pretty significant. The rumour is
rail.
It is very unlikely to be roads with the depth of popular feeling on the subject at the moment. We shall simply have to wait and see, but it is certainly going to be a highly significant speech.'

Actually the correspondent knew exactly what was in the speech because Ingmar Bresslaw had given him a full text earlier so that he could write his copy in advance and meet his afternoon deadlines.

'Yes,' he gushed, 'I feel confident that the Minister has some fairly spectacular policy changes to set before us.'

He knew it, the hall knew it, and Digby knew it, but Digby wasn't going to rush things. He was going to luxuriate in every moment of the buildup, the audience would have to wait three quarters of an hour for the big BritTrak moment. In the meantime, Digby regaled them with his uninspiring succession of humourless platitudes to which the hall responded with their uninspired repertoire of Pavlovian responses. They clapped joyfully, they nodded thoughtfully, they mumbled 'hear hear' sagely and scratched their bums and thought about the bar. Digby loved every minute of it. He positively glowed; the immaculate Brylcreemed hair, the shiny cheeks, the fat wet lips. He almost seemed to be glowing from within. It was as if he'd sat down hard on a 1,000-watt light bulb.

The donkey gag went down a storm.

'A donkey and trap!' they repeated to each other. 'So that was what those Luddite environmentalists proposed! Ha!' They sniggered and grinned and clapped and leant over to inform each other that Digby was on terrific form. Oh yes, they all agreed, he might even, one day, be in line for the top job if he managed to avoid screwing his secretary and didn't get caught drunk driving or making multiple share applications.

Oh, how Digby was loving himself. The weight of all those years of toadying and being a despised little farty was lifting from his shoulders. If, as Kissinger claimed, power is an aphrodisiac then at that moment Digby could have coaxed an orgasm out of a concrete elephant.

'I hardly think,' he said again. 'I hardly think' was Digby's absolute favourite phrase and probably the most accurate thing he would say in his entire political life. Digby
did
hardly think, but that wasn't how he meant it. To Digby, the phrase was a three-word sneer, always delivered with a tiny laugh.

'Thnn thnn
[tiny laugh], I hardly think . . .'

Whenever an audience heard that scintillating rhetorical combination they hugged themselves, for they knew that they were in line for a searing bit of ministerial wit. They knew that Digby was ready to sock it to 'em. And he was. He squared up and shot his big gag straight through the transparent autocue.

'Thnn thnn
[tiny laugh], I hardly think that even the
looniest
environmentalist could be so
green
. . .'

Digby paused, it was his fantastic green/naive pun. His people assured him it would be a major woof and they had coached him meticulously to pause at this point so as not to spoil it. But there was no laugh. Digby was in that terrible place which comedians fear most of all – the gag swamp. He hit it again.

'Ahem, thnn thnn
[larger laugh] could be so
very green.'

Still nothing, the murky waters were closing over him.

'Ahhhhhm, thnn thnn thnn thnn
[huge laugh, drum roll, drop trousers and sing 'Mammie'] could be so green. By which I, of course, mean
naive.'

That was it, he'd got 'em. Digby was enveloped in that comforting cloud of boozy, cigary, lunch-laden whiff that indicates that a thousand conference delegates have got the joke.

'. . . So green and naïve, as to question the inalienable right of every man and woman to own a motor car, if they so wish.'

There are at present about 500 million trucks and cars in the world and the earth is literally staggering under the strain of them. Yet, in fact, only a small part of the world has yet been car colonized. Almost all of the 500 million cars and trucks are located in the Westernized, developed world, 81 per cent in fact.

It was lucky for Digby that the three or four billion inhabitants of China, the Soviet Union, India and South America did not turn up that afternoon at the conference and, having had their food bowls thoroughly searched, come into the hall to claim their inalienable rights. Should those populations ever achieve the levels of car ownership prevalent in the West it would undoubtedly, and as a matter of simple fact, destroy the planet. Hence, what Digby really meant was the inalienable right of every man and woman in Europe, North America and Japan to own a car if they so wish.

Fortunately for Digby his audience did not question this point. They were still explaining the green pun to each other.

Having established so eloquently the inalienable right of a person to own a car, Digby went on to argue his rights as a freeborn Briton to use it with the minimum of restriction.

'What is the point of a chap having the inalienable right to own a car,' he said, 'if he is not entitled to drive it where he pleases?'

This is a very worrying thought because the fastest growing area of the motor industry is that of four-wheel drive. With massively improved engineering, millions of cars now have an off-road capability. Are they to be allowed to use it? After all, the confines of a narrow road restrict a person's freedom. If a fellow is capable of nipping across a field surely it is his inalienable right to do so? If not, why build in the capability in the first place? Such an idea would not be inconsistent with present thinking. A transport policy which is prepared to happily allow a million cars into a city that physically only has room for half that number, despite the general suffering of all concerned, will eventually get round to allowing the owners of fun-top jeeps to chuck wheelies in Kew Gardens.

'The private motor car is a cornerstone of our very civilization,' Digby opined. 'It is, I think, our greatest triumph.'

Triumphs of civilization cut both ways of course. Perhaps the greatest triumph of Roman civilization was the plumbing. The elite of Rome gloried in it and quickly came to ask themselves how they could ever have lived without it. The water pipes satisfied their thirst and washed away their whiffies. Unfortunately for the elite of Rome, these pipes were all made of lead and it is a fair historical supposition to make that within a few short generations the once all-conquering elite of Rome were dafter than a pair of one-legged trousers. This is why they started acting so strangely and became such easy prey for savage marauders. These savage marauders had no plumbing and hence, although extremely smelly, were not dribbling, fiddling and making horses into senators when it came to a world historical shift in the balance of power.

In fairness to the elite of Ancient Rome, they were unaware of the nastier properties of lead and when Caligula started chewing his toga and claiming to be a teapot they of course didn't think to blame the plumbing. We, on the other hand, suffer no delusions as to the catastrophic consequences of failing to address the crisis of the car. The car population is expanding faster than the human one. By the year 2030 there will be a billion of them. This is unlikely to result in the appearance of smelly marauders but the social and environmental consequences will make smelly marauders seem like welcome house guests. On the other hand, as Digby often pointed out, people need their cars, so what could he do?

The solution of course is fantastically simple. There is a solution that would put a stop to the jams, clean up the air, massively reduce the human carnage,
and probably without even having to restrict anyone's car ownership.
The solution is public transport. But it would have to be public transport so good that most people would not dream of going to the expense of using their cars for mundane things like going to work. There would have to be tubes every minute and buses everywhere. Clean transport, safe transport with nice conductors and no chewing gum on the seats. It would have to be free if necessary, and the money saved by unchaining the cities would pay for it in time.

That is the solution; not toll roads, not private clamping firms, but public transport. Unfortunately Digby's public transport policy was rather different, as he was about to show as he finally arrived at the crux of his speech, it concerned the railways.

'. . . And now, I come, if I may, to the subject of,
thnn thnn thnn,
rail transport.'

The audience shifted expectantly in their seats. This was it, the moment of excitement was approaching, they flexed their fingers and cleared their throats, ready to clap and cheer.

'Rail transport,' Digby repeated, and he almost seemed to spit the words out. He could feel the hall go tense, it was as if the demon king had leapt up beside Digby on the platform. The faceless ones knew the villain had been introduced and they wanted to hiss and boo.

With the exception of a few sad, tired old boys at the back of the hall, the audience hated trains. Not because they were sometimes late, nor because they are often a bit dirty and the buffet runs out of everything except KitKats five minutes after leaving the first station. No, these apostles of a new morality hated trains because you can't
own
them and if you can't
own
something then how can it be worth having? That is the problem with public transport. The individual cannot own a train or a bus, they can only borrow it for the journey they want to make and at the end of it they have to give it back, and, horror of horrors, let somebody else use it. People have to share trains and also they have to pay for them, even when they are not using them themselves. The people that Digby was addressing did not want to share anything. They did not want to share healthcare, they did not want to share leisure amenities and they did not want to share transport.

'Trains!' shouted Digby, 'are an anachronism,' which, to give him his due, was an extremely brave word to attempt in front of a thousand people and four channels of television.

'Contrast them if you will with the private motor car which is a gazelle. What do these great hulking dinosaurs have to offer us? Freedom of movement? No. Personal security and privacy? Luxury, comfort and a status symbol of which the whole family can be proud? No. They offer us a form of transport where people are packed in like sardines, which is confined to narrow lines and is in danger of grinding to a halt at any moment at the behest of some horny-handed trade unionist. Let me tell you what this government intends to do with trains!' Digby thundered.

'Let me explain how we shall serve this cumbersome outmoded institution.' The audience strained forward, Digby was coming to that rare thing at a political conference, the announcement of a policy. They all knew what it was, and they could not wait. The Minister,
their
minister was going to announce the destruction of the railways and they would give him a monumental ovation.