Vail

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Title Page

Copyright Page

A CHRISTIAN PRAYER

1ST SECTION LONDON (I)

2ND SECTION MOTORWAY (I)

3RD SECTION LONDON (II)

4TH SECTION MOTORWAY (II)

Trevor Hoyle

First published in Great Britain in 1984 by Calder Publications Limited,
and in the United States of America in 1984 by Riverrun Press Inc

This ebook edition published in 2014 by
Jo Fletcher Books
an imprint of Quercus
55 Baker Street
7th Floor, South Block
London
W1U 8EW

Copyright © 1984 by Trevor Hoyle

The moral right of Trevor Hoyle to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 978 1 848669 277 1

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places and events are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

You can find this and many other great books at:
www.quercusbooks.co.uk

To John Calder

Lord, make me an instrument of Thy peace:

Where there is hatred, let me sow love;

Where there is injury, pardon;

Where there is discord, union;

Where there is doubt, faith;

Where there is despair, hope;

Where there is darkness, light;

Where there is sadness, joy.

O Divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek

To be consoled as to console;

To be understood, as to understand;

To be loved, as to love;

For it is in giving that we receive,

It is in pardoning, that we are pardoned;

And it is in dying that we are born

To eternal life.

St Francis of Assisi

Vail had been in London less than a fortnight and had been accosted four times by the police. Each time he had given them a different name, address and occupation. Either they were incompetent or the national computer wasn't functioning properly, or his luck was just too good to be true. Then again, maybe they really couldn't care less: he was a scrounger, a layabout, a fringer, – no real threat to society except perhaps for a spot of petty larceny and the odd rape here and there. Why waste a cell on a useless
swmbwl
such as him?

If they locked up all the useless
swmbwls
they could find there wouldn't be room for the Krays and Kagans of this world.

He could remember the moment of decision exactly. It occurred while he was standing on the pavement outside an electrical retailer's at twenty minutes past ten one night watching twenty-two television screens showing the same identical face. A woman in a beige hip-length coat walked by and laughed in her throat at his expression. Vail didn't hear, – or if he did paid no attention: his gaze was fixed, rabid. The idea seemed very simple and obvious, and he wondered why he hadn't thought of it before.

[The reason was that until this minute he'd never contemplated killing anyone. Most people don't, as an act of retribution, much less as the solution to their problems.]

Vail is now firmly committed to this course of action, and while he hasn't formulated the means of carrying it out, and knows it will be difficult (some might say impossible), he isn't too much concerned. He has a naïve faith in the inevitability of the evolutionary imperative: nature fills an available niche, abhors a vacuum, etc. It had to be and therefore would come to pass.

Sooner or later an Opportunity will present itself.

He goes home to his cardboard box under the viaduct off Southwark Park Road and beds down for the night. It is balmy August. Vail composes himself for sleep, and drifts away, despite the frostbite nibbling hotly at feet and hands.

His belly full of Salvation Army pea soup, Vail sets off on another aimless ramble of the capital. Tourists everywhere. It is cloudy and heavy, a torpid sort of day. Smells come from the drains and mingle with the dense blue vapour of the traffic. Near a sandbagged sterile enclosure in the vicinity of Piccadilly Circus he overhears a conversation:

‘And I'm telling you, Freesia-Belle, – the South Bank is
this
way!'

‘All righty, I believe you. But can't we get the toob? I'm so
hot'
 – suffering complaint.

‘I thought you wanted to see the ass-hole of the universe? You don't see it underground. Just diarrhoea and vomit!'

‘Let me imagine.'

‘Listen: imagine in your own time on your own money. I didn't sell four hundred twenty-eight Datsuns because I love the Japanese junk!'

‘I'm too hot, honey. Can't we take a cab?'

‘And get lice? Are you serious?'

‘Well at least can't we …'

‘What, for chrissakes!'

Whispers.

‘What?'

‘That man.'

‘Huh?'

‘He's listening to us.'

‘Can we do anything for you, mister?'

‘Now, honey, don't be …'

‘I don't give a goddamn!
Well?'

Vail stares for a moment, blinks, moves on.

‘He wasn't begging, Spud.'

‘Just let him try! I've stepped on better looking roaches …'

Vail presses his face to the diamond mesh of the perimeter fence around Hyde Park and looks at the dewy sprinklered grass. The greenness makes him swoon. He can see Enid Blyton in the shimmering haze perambulating to her dressmaker's. She moves incorporeally along the neat gravelled paths to the sound of chimes calling the hour. England trails in her wake like a dozy playful poodle. Her face is smooth, padded, rosy, bountiful. In her eyes are hatpins.

A man touches Vail's shoulder.

‘I know you, don't I?' Vail shakes his head. He is always being accosted by policemen or fringers. Why can't he be accosted by somebody clean and prosperous and well-attired, – somebody with a jewelled ring, say, or a fat black shiny car?

‘John, isn't it?' He is thin and shabby and exuberant, the narrow ridge of his nose criss-crossed by broken purple veins. ‘It is John, isn't it?'

Vail is about to say no, –

‘Copy man at Benton & Bowles. I must be right. ‘78-'79 or thereabouts. Danish Dairy Products. Cushionflor. Callard and Bowser. Or was that Doyle, Dane & Bernbach ‘77? Might have been. Never can remember. You get them confused, don't you, switching around year after year?' The man shoots his hand out. ‘Rarity. Pete. You can't have forgotten Pete Rarity. PR. Had my pisser pulled about that more than once. How are you, John, you're looking pretty fucking awful, but who isn't these days, eh?'

Vail shakes his head instead of the man's hand and says, ‘I'm not a copy man.' What
is
a copy man?

‘Not now you're not,' says Pete Rarity. ‘You're like the rest of us now, eh? In the same boat. Sink or swim. Up the creek paddleless. Always was a dab hand at the sustained metaphor. No, seriously, I get the picture, I know the story. You don't have to lay it on
me
, friend.'

Vail says, ‘I can't somehow help feeling you've made a mistake. I've never worked for any of the companies you mention. Yes, I am out of work, as, judging by appearances, are you. In any case I'm not from around here; never worked in London, in fact.'

But of course this doesn't disconcert Pete Rarity one bit. He is the type of person who talks without ever listening to himself. Words are puffs of air, otiose, expendable. In one ear and out the other.

‘What are you doing these days?'

‘I have several plans. Nothing definite,' Vail says cagily. ‘Nothing decided.' (You have to be careful with casual acquaintances; there are
gwiches
everywhere who would sell their grannies for a yellow card or a Resident Alien permit.)

‘Fancy a drink?'

‘I haven't any money.'

Pete Rarity winks a bloodshot eye. ‘Trust Forte. Got my SS today.'

‘Not milk.'

‘I'm flush. Come on.'

They walk through the crowded noontime streets, Vail keeping a sharp eye for police, Pete Rarity endlessly talking to fill the vacuum inside his head (Pete Rarity abhors a vacuum). A newspaper placard reads: LEAK SCARE AT DUNGENESS B. The town is crawling with Germans, Swedes, Japanese and Yanks. Men in loosened ties with lightweight jackets draped over their shirtsleeved arms are coming out of pubs. There are the usual number of braless women. The activity is stupefying.

What Vail can't figure out is this: where does the wealth come from? All these people are parasites, non-producers, using up space and resources, and yet by some miracle they continue to exist and thrive and prosper without any visible means of support (braless women!). The manufacturing base is gone, wiped out, he knows that, and with it the underpinning of the economy. Yet money is everywhere on brash vulgar display. It reminds him of a cardboard ocean liner with all lights blazing and a ragged dark brown stain seeping soggily upwards past the lower portholes whose circles resemble dim green glow-worms shining through the viscous submarine gloom.

A nudge from Pete Rarity, – ‘Look, Jimmy Tarbuck!'

It is indeed the famous Liverpool comedian riding past in a ghostly silver-grey Rolls-Royce with tinted windows, polished feet propped up on a tasselled cushion, a crystal tumbler of some pale amber liquid in his bejewelled hand, smoking a torpedo-like cigar.

‘He told a great joke once,' Pete Rarity informs Vail. ‘Forget what it was now.'

Vail is thirsty and his feet hurt. They pass several establishments where coffee is available but Pete Rarity doesn't suggest stopping at any of them and Vail is too timid and penniless to bring up the subject himself. What is he looking for, the cheapest cup of coffee in London? A topless coffee shop? Health coffee made out of roasted caribou droppings?

On Brewer Street Pete Rarity asks Vail if he'd like to see a live porn show. Vail doesn't express a preference either way. A pair of flabby pockmarked thighs will look the same here as anywhere else, he supposes.

‘The coffee is free.'

They go down some thinly carpeted stairs and enter a gloomy cavern. They help themselves to a polystyrene cup of machine-dispensed coffee (Vail's black) and sit in the eight-wide cinema-style seating which fills the room wall to wall. The entire row rocks
and creaks as the man at the end masturbates under his raincoat. The show hasn't started yet. Half Vail's coffee slops over his hand.

‘What made you leave B&B John? Phased rationalisation? Voluntary redundancy? Premature retirement?'

‘Not me. I told you that.'

‘Must have been your bloody twin. Could have sworn…same dark eyes. Same black hair, – but not thinning like yours is. A lot of semen shot into the lavatory bowl since then though, eh?' Vail shrugs. ‘You remind me a bit of Jack Nicholson. You've got Jack Nicholson's hands. Slender, dark-haired, expressive. Though his aren't blue.'

Vail looks at his hands, pitted with blister scars. He wonders whether he ought to reply in kind to this flattery and decides not to. Which is just as well, because Pete Rarity does not have a very prepossessing exterior. Far from it. Pinched narrow face with hard spatular chin and sucked-in mouth as if the gums were receding and quick beady bird-like eyes that are never still. This bird-like impression extends to his thin-ridged beaky purple nose.