CHAPTER EIGHT

 

 

IT WAS A city that Gabe had lived in most of his life and had a grudging respect for, but even he couldn't deny that London showed an ugly face in summer. All its sprawling, overcrowded, soot-smeared qualities seemed to swell with the heat. Where what was once bearable in the sharp weeks of winter - its inhabitants barricaded against the bitter wind and driving sleet by thick coats and scarves as they walked its streets - became a claustrophobic, stinking concrete furnace as soon as the sun began to beat down on the baking tarmac. Perhaps it was because its citizens relaxed a touch and loosened their protective clothing, showed a little of themselves to the unforgiving metropolis. For London, it was the merciless season; everything became exacerbated - strained relationships, the stink of pollution, the heaving pavements choked with visitors and workers alike - as if a noose was being drawn tight around its walls for three sweaty months before it slackened off and the city settled back into a more natural rhythm of life once again.

It could be seen everywhere, Gabe thought, as he pedalled down Buckingham Palace Road towards Victoria Station, from the architecture to the citizens sweltering within. It could be witnessed in the firework explosions of red and orange light as a dying sun reflected off the office buildings' glass surfaces, and in the distant edifice of Canary Wharf's pyramidal tower steaming into an azure sky. It could be discerned in the blossoming patches of perspiration on the back of businessmen's shirts, and in their red-faced, squinting demeanour as they hurried to catch their cramped trains, unyielding leather shoes tramping hard down on scorched flagstones, jackets tucked over arms, ties unravelled, collars unbuttoned, air scratchy at the back of their throats. It could be felt as the grime slicked on bare arms and faces - a combination of dirt, moisture and insect residue - to the point where one had to scrub the taint of London off once one escaped its environs. It could be heard in the constant snarl of traffic and the strident accompanying blare of anger as tempers flared, drivers boiling inside their automobiles; and it could be smelled in the sickly patchwork of odours that rose from the depths of the city, of unwashed bodies crushed together, of what was once fresh growing sour in the heat of day. If the metropolis was an organism, then in summer it was an exhausted beast, irritable and grubby, floundering as it cooked in its own juices.

Gabe knew what it was like to be stifled in one of those office complexes, a paltry portable electric fan perched atop a nearby filing cabinet cooling the film of sweat on his skin, doing nothing to ease the pressure that would make his forehead throb. After a short stint in the army (whose strict embrace he'd been forced into after his raucous teenage years hotwiring cars) he'd jobbed for a lengthy period at a small local newspaper, chasing advertising and compiling the copy for the listings section - tedious, unsatisfactory work, in which he spent much of his day yearning to just up and walk out the door, never to return - and he could still remember the discomfort of stagnant afternoons, sheaves of paper gluing themselves to his damp hands and fatigue weighing down on him like a lead weight. His colleagues were mostly middle-aged hacks, filling time before their inevitable early retirement, regaling him with tales of when they had a career on Fleet Street, of tyrannical editors and marathon drinking sessions, a hint of self-pity that they were reduced to filing stories on OAP charity walkathons.

Gabe had usually found them likeable coves, but the heat didn't agree with them; they stewed and flustered, muttering to themselves, and contributed to the musty atmosphere in which the air felt like it had been trapped in a tomb. He longed to open a window, but the old soaks complained of the traffic noise and fumes emanating from Pentonville Road below. The building in which they worked had stood there since the 1950s, a stone's throw from King's Cross, and little had been done to modernise the place in the intervening decades; the walls were cracked and spattered with encroaching mould, the carpet was worn through to the floorboards, and the weak ceiling lights gave everything a dull sepia tone. Fill it with perspiring, cantankerous boozers and it was wont to turn a little ripe.

He knew he had to get out before he became preserved in the others' ale breath and cigarette ash; he would be discovered decades later petrified, chipped free and put on display. He was never returning to military life, that much was certain; although his superiors had cast a blind eye to his petty criminal past, one tour of Afghanistan was enough. He had supposed he ought to seek out an opportunity at a more modern place of work - one with air-con and bright, open spaces - but for some reason he couldn't summon the enthusiasm. He'd seen such offices on his travels to and from home - the smokers clustered outside in the street, huddled together like the remnants of a species slowly facing extinction, the reception areas with the elongated sofas and modern art - and their sterility repelled him. It worried him that maybe his extended proximity to the journalistic lags he kept company with had somehow inured him to such luxuries as a workstation that wasn't fragranced like an ashtray or fixtures and fittings that hadn't been beset by damp; but every time he stepped inside one of those silver skyscrapers, he found them soul-destroying and lacking personality. He didn't know when this transformation had taken place, but it was apparent that he'd been mentally conditioned to be incapable of working in such surroundings without wishing to start scrawling across the tasteful abstracts that adorned the walls. He tried to beat this programming to the best of his ability, diligently attending job interviews with the necessary can-do attitude. The people he spoke to, however, he found were either smug and impolite suits, or braying Sloane Square refugees that raised his hackles with each strangulated vowel. Gabe would walk out of the revolving glass doors firm in the belief that he belonged to a different tribe to these cretins; and indeed he had to wonder if there was life beyond the nicotine-stained domain of the newspaper.

In the end, fate came along and lent a hand: the paper folded suddenly and with little fanfare. For the hacks, it meant extended leisure time, and they greeted the news of the office's closure with unconcealed glee. For Gabe, however, at twenty-four, he couldn't afford to be so blasé. His qualifications were mediocre, and he felt many might be reticent about employing a former soldier, especially one that had had brushes with the law. Even so, the newspaper job, for all its shortcomings, had been enough to cast doubt on whether he was cut out to sit at a desk all day, tapping away at a keyboard, all life passing him by outside. He felt jaded with white-collar work, and the thought of spending more summers suffocating in an open-plan oven, shuffling files, filled him with dread.

It had been his flatmate that had posited the solution. They had been throwing possible career routes between each other - based on Gabe's nebulous ideas of how he wanted to make a living that didn't involve some kind of corporate infrastructure - when Tom suggested a cycle courier. Gabe assimilated the notion and ticked off its advantages: it was outdoor work, it involved little contact with colleagues, it had a built-in fitness regime, and there was a pure simplicity to the job that appealed. He even owned his own bike, and growing up in the city had afforded him an almost encyclopaedic knowledge of London's thoroughfares that could be put to his advantage. The more he mulled the possibility, the more he could see that this could be his way to escape the stifling office environment, and use his love of the capital to work for him rather than be swallowed by its oppressive sprawl.

He visited some local firms and eventually signed up. Within days he was pleased to discover that his instincts had been right, and the job gave him just the satisfaction that he craved. The sheer volume of traffic that he had to contend with had been an initial shock, but once he got the hang of making his presence known on the roads, forcing motorists to acknowledge that he was there, then it became a breeze. The freedom felt exhilarating, and he got to see the metropolis in a whole new light, a hidden London of back alleys and secret squares, centuries of history overlapping in forgotten corners far from the public gaze.

Despite the marvels that the city still clutched to her bosom and that he continued to uncover on his journeys, Gabe reflected, it never looked its best in the middle of July. A little of its beauty was tarnished as it wilted under the heat, but he was glad to be witnessing it out here rather than viewing it through an office window, a position he'd been in for close to a year now.

He shuttled across into Belgrave Square, and headed towards Hyde Park Corner, squeezing down the tight back roads of Knightsbridge, pedalling hard. He piloted his bike down Wilton Place, a car approaching in the other direction allowing him to pass. He powered forward, keen not to keep it waiting.

When the Audi swung out suddenly from its parking slot on the left-hand side of the street, Gabe barely had time to brake - and consequently slammed into its wing at full speed.

 

 

HOSPITAL AT FIRST was a nightmare glimpsed through waking moments. He was told later - when he had been capable of processing the information - that he had been severely concussed (in addition to three fractured ribs, a broken nose and extensive facial bruising). But at the time Gabe flittered in and out of consciousness, snatching only handfuls of sobriety. He found it difficult to differentiate between the world inside his head and that of his bedridden condition; or rather it was hard to choose which was worse. When he was asleep, he plunged into a sea of shadow in which he seemed to be constantly rushing forward, as if caught in a slipstream or surrendering to the inexorable pull of a current. Sometimes the darkness dissolved enough for him to discern that he was racing along the city streets, his body floating only a few feet from the tarmac. A vague thought would always pop into his dream-self's mind that he was on a collision course, that unless he fought the power that controlled him, he was going to smash into an obstacle that was undoubtedly going to be standing in his way. It started as a suggestion, an irrational feeling that bubbled out of nowhere, but it would quickly blossom into panic and an incontrovertible sense of certainty that he was racing towards disaster. The city appeared abandoned as he raced through it - amorphous, indistinct buildings on either side, roads empty of life - but without question, somewhere, there was trouble waiting to hit him head-on.

He never discovered it. The fear would build in tandem with his velocity to such a degree that he would surface into consciousness with a gasp, as if he had dived into himself and was returning for air. But his waking episodes were no respite; the heat and chaos in the ward day and night left him unable to relax, and any movement he attempted made him aware of his injuries. His body seemed to ache right down to the bone. The doctors kept him doped up, so his notion of reality was woozy at best, and he had few visitors to help anchor him to the everyday; his mother was living somewhere in Europe with her new husband, and his father was infirm, cared for by a nurse of his own back in Cork. With no siblings, the only face he could lucidly recognise was that of his flatmate Tom, whose sporadic trips to see him were as irregular as Gabe's sleep patterns. The combination of the drugs and fatigue would inevitably propel him towards unconsciousness again, a journey he vainly fought, terrified of once more flying through London with no notion of where he was going, or possibly finally meeting what was waiting for him at that moment of impact he knew was unavoidable.

Over the following weeks, his confused mind stabilised and his lucid periods lengthened. His memories of the accident slowly returned, and if he closed his eyes he could visualise the front wheel of his bike buckling against the driver's door of the Audi, throwing him forward and across its bonnet. The recollection of his head bouncing off the windscreen - did it shatter? He couldn't remember hearing the sound of breaking glass; all that filled his ears was the screech of brakes and the scrape of metal on metal - made him gingerly run his fingertips over his puffy face. The skin was tender to the touch, and a lump the size of a golf ball had risen above his right eyebrow. He asked a nurse for a mirror, because the contours of his face no longer felt familiar, and the reflection that stared back at him confirmed it; he barely recognised himself. He'd been assured that the injuries would heal eventually, and that the swelling would go down given time, but even so the red-raw damage and the changes it had wrought on his appearance shocked him. His nose swathed in bandages, his lips split where his teeth had pierced them, purple-black bruises running in parallel with his jawline, he felt like he'd been battered into a different shape, moulded and created anew with all the attendant pain that such a process entails. He wouldn't be the same, he knew, no matter how well he recovered; already he considered what he looked like before the accident to be the face of somebody else.

It proved true enough the moment he left the hospital, his bones sufficiently knitted together. The trip back to his flat was one fraught with anxiety as the noise and relentlessness of the traffic caused him to visibly cringe, despite Tom's reassurances. Gabe tried to remain calm, aware that a mere month ago he'd been whizzing through these very streets on his bike with nothing to protect him but a helmet and a shoulder bag, but now the idea seemed inconceivable. It was as if he were viewing the city through different eyes, seeing potential dangers at every turn. He dug his fingers into the passenger seat of his flatmate's Mini as it rounded a corner and braked at a crossing, expecting a phantom vehicle to thunder into their path any second. Tom told him that he had spoken to the doctor before they had released Gabe, and he had mentioned that a victim of such a serious accident was very likely to exhibit symptoms of something approaching post-traumatic stress, and that it was perfectly natural for him to be fretful once he returned to the real world. But it would pass as soon as he got his strength back and grew more confident.

For Gabe, that day seemed a long time coming. Ensconced within the walls of his flat, he found himself lacking the courage to venture outside, and the more time he spent inside on his own - Tom working long shifts at a bar in the West End - the more he found comfort in seclusion. Rather than facing down his fear, he embraced it and let it control him, ensuring that his daily routine was subservient to it. The courier company he worked for regularly got in touch, asking when he felt ready to return to work, and he fobbed them off with excuses, claiming he still needed time to recover. In truth, he was physically back to normal bar a few scars and tender patches, but in his head the thought of braving London's roads once more filled him with panic. He relived the accident again and again in his dreams, awaking sweating at the moment of impact and with a hard cluster of pain at his temple. Eventually, his boss telephoned him to apologetically let him go, saying that without any end to his convalescence in sight they couldn't afford to keep him on their books any longer. He was unemployed once more, and felt in no fit state to do anything about it.

As soon as Tom learned that Gabe was out of a job, he sat down with his flatmate for a crisis talk.

"Mate, we gotta do something or we're going to be out on our ear. There's no way I can manage on my wage alone, and I doubt your income support is going to add much. You've got to get yourself out there."

"I know, I know," Gabe replied, conscious of the fact that there was no situation that couldn't be made worse by having a little guilt thrown into the mix. "I don't want to put us both in the lurch, of course I don't. It's just... I'm scared of going out there. I'm on edge, thinking something is going to happen. My stomach knots, I can't breathe, feel nauseous..."

"It's a panic attack. The doc said you could expect them. But you can't afford to let them run your life. It's like you're caught in a loop - the more you stay in here, agonising over what's going to happen to you if you step outside the flat, the more the anxiety spreads. You're feeding it by not coming to terms with it. If you went out on those streets and became accustomed to them once again, you'd find that the fear would lessen. It's what you don't know - it's what you're imagining is out there - that's causing this apprehension."

"I wish it was as easy as that..."

"It's the only way forward, mate," Tom replied, a hint of exasperation entering his voice. "Otherwise it's going to explode into full-blown agoraphobia, and you'll be bunkered away in here for the rest of your life. You're, what? Twenty-five? You're going to imprison yourself for the next sixty years, is that it? Unless you're prepared to give in to it, you've gotta be strong and fight it."

They sat in silence, Gabe listening to the hum of traffic filtering through the window, acting as an additional taunt to Tom's words. He knew his friend was right, and wished he possessed the resolve to act upon the advice. He admonished himself for being weak and pathetic. Was he really going to let this fear get the better of him? Was he really going to sacrifice his life to it? Otherwise, what difference would it have made if his guts had been splattered under the tyres of that Audi? Survival had given him a choice - either he grasped the chance with both hands or he just upped and surrendered right now.

"It's something only you can do, Gabe," Tom said. "Of course, I'll help you in any way I can, but I can't make you take the first step. That's your responsibility." He sighed. "The other alternative is that you work from home. You know, tele-sales, or something. But whatever you decide, we've reached crunch-point, mate. We're in deep shit unless we take action now."

Gabe agreed that it was time he got busy rebuilding his life, and promised that he would take charge of the situation; the implication being that he would finally face up to his fear of London's streets. But when it came to it, he found picking up the telephone to enquire about finding work cold-calling and selling kitchens the easy option. He hated himself even as he listened to the saleswoman's explanations of what the job entailed and the techniques of keeping the potential customer on the line. It seemed he had taken several long strides backwards, placing himself in employment that he despised and shackled once more to the mundane grind of monotonous, dismal toil. He put the telephone receiver down, having accepted the numerous conditions, and slumped in an armchair, feeling wretched.

As it turned out, the work proved to be more stultifying than even he could stand, and at last gave him the incentive to get him through the front door. The countless hang-ups and insults thrown at him as he initiated his spiel were the final straw, and as he sat staring at the living-room wall, a disconnected tone buzzing in his ear, he realised that nothing that was out there on the roads could possibly be any worse than this. Indeed, if this stuttering circle of a half-life was all he had to look forward to, a little danger would come as welcome relief. He flung the phone to the floor, and strode out into the street before the fear-centre of his brain could stop him.

He walked, without much regard to a direction or purpose, simply putting distance between him and the flat that he'd entombed himself within for weeks on end. Despite the familiar surge of sickness and the growing pounding in his head, as trucks roared past and sirens wailed, he didn't halt his progress; rather, he rode the anxiety out, staying above the wave and letting it carry him forward rather than disappearing beneath it. Breathing deeply, with each step he found himself surfing on something else too, something he hadn't felt since he'd been in uniform: adrenaline. He was terrified, but in contrast to his self-inflicted exile, there was a joy to his terror. It gave him an edge he had forgotten existed. He walked for hours, perversely enjoying the thrill he got from punishing his panicking senses. He was living again, he decided triumphantly.

When Gabe informed Tom that he wanted to return to traversing the city's arteries, his flatmate commended him on his courage but warned that perhaps getting back on a bike would make him feel a touch too vulnerable at such an early stage. He suggested a compromise to ease his way back into the ebb and flow of the capital's heart.

"Fact is, there's a sniff of a job at work," he said slowly. "Not in the bar itself, but working for the guy that owns it. Several of his boys come in to drink there, and they've mentioned on more than one occasion that he's after a new full-time driver."

"A chauffeur-type job, you mean?"

"Pretty much. The geezer's after someone who knows the city like the back of his hand, and let's face it, Gabe, that's your forte. If you're going to work to your strengths, then this could be an ideal opportunity. And at the risk of sounding like some pop-psychologist, it's going to be good therapy for you, getting you confident about being on the roads again."

Gabe mulled it over. Piloting some rich creep around all day didn't have the same appeal or sense of freedom that cycling afforded him, but he could see it would work as a stepping-stone to regaining his self-assurance. Plus the prospect of visiting the many corners of London again was always an attraction. "What's he like, this boss?"

Tom shrugged. "Rarely comes in to the bar. Seen him once, I think; seemed sound to me. Gary the manager deals with him, and they get on OK. He owns clubs all over, so I'd imagine he's proper loaded. You're interested then?"

Gabe nodded.

"Cool, OK, I'll put in a word with Gary, see if you can get a meet with the boss." Tom smiled. "Good to see you back on your feet, mate."

"Yeah, feels good to me too," Gabe replied. "Oh, by the way, what's this bloke's name? The boss-guy?"

"It's Flowers. Harry Flowers."