I never felt so much alike

TW: His Dad is a bigot, and it shows in his language.

I’m just leaving Harrods on Brompton Road when a skinny young man waves me down. He’s wearing a white shirt, light gray suit, and he’s empty handed, so I figure he’s probably in the money business, going to the Square Mile.

I twist in my seat to face the passenger, “Where are you headed, guvnor?”.

He consults a piece of paper, “Saint Mark’s Place, off Wimbledon Hill….”.

I’m stumped for a moment, “Isn’t there an old brick pub there? The… the Alexandra?”

“Yes, that’s right!” says the man, surprised. “How long do you think?”

Putney Bridge, the Park, Beverly, Malden, I visualize the route, “forty-five minutes, this time in the morning”. 

I poke the cab into traffic and look at him in my mirror. “Did you know that there are sixty-seven roads and streets named after Princess Alexandra, but there’s only one pub?”

He’s Asian, with delicate features, very dark eyes. I feel a familiar sadness, it wells up from my belly into my chest. 

+++

Jenny Patel was in the same year as me at school, but in another class. A tall sinewy fine-featured Indian girl with shiny black hair drawn back tight in a ponytail, and dark, dark black eyes.  Like most of the immigrant kids she was almost invisible, head-down, a serious student, and I didn’t pay much attention to her until one day she got a mention in assembly for a first-place finish at a district athletic meet. It hadn’t crossed my mind that Asian kids could be good at sports.

One day Jenny waved to me in the lunch queue, said hello to me in the corridor, smiled at me outside the cloakrooms. 

Elizabeth Hicks, who lived round the corner from me, told me that Jenny’s mum died a year earlier. I might have felt sorry for her, I suppose, but mostly I was worried that she might get pulled out of school, all of a sudden, just like Priya Sharma. 

+++

I dropped off my Wimbledon fare, looped back north toward the river and got flagged down by a young lady heading to Blackfriars. We hit roadworks at Battersea, so I crossed the Thames at Wandsworth, went up through Pimlico and drove past the Houses of Parliament and Big Ben, which I thought she might appreciate.

“Ever wonder why taxi drivers call them the gasworks?”, I ask, but when I look in the mirror I can see her tonsils. She’s nodded off in the cage.

+++

Priya Sharma was a goodstudent, always had her nose in a book. A poem she wrote was honored in a nationwide competition, sad and beautiful verse about an imagined pet cat. Even the boys applauded.

One day Priya’s desk was empty, and we saw Miss Clarke, the English teacher, sobbing in the corridor, outside the classroom.

Hanging onto a strap, on the W8 bus, going back to Enfield town after school, Elizabeth spilled the beans for me. Priya was sent back to India for an arranged marriage to a man in his 20s! She was only fourteen and we never saw her again. 

+++

Another off-and-on. All-American, all-business, leaving a shiny glass office block down by the river. “Threadneedle Street”, he said. He whipped out one of those new flip-phones, pulled out the antenna and started jabbering away to some unknown person in some unknown place, not paying attention as we drove past The Monument down Fleet Street and along The Strand. I pressed on in silence towards the Bank, just a bit lonelier for a moment.

+++

Elizabeth is arm in arm with Jenny near the chain-link fence at the edge of the hockey pitch, and they are watching me as I jog over to join the football team for practice, they’re giggling. I feel awkward under their gaze.

” Jenny thinks you have nice legs!”, shouts Elizabeth, joyfully announcing it to the entire world.

I started avoiding Jenny. I mean, what else could I do?  I backtrack down corridors, I hide around corners, I make stupid detours which make me late for lessons. I do everything I can to avoid a chance encounter and the dreaded eye-contact.

+++

Near St. Paul’s I pick up an old man who looks like an academic, or a writer, or maybe a clergyman in mufti. Destination: Hamstead Heath, the intersection of Highgate and Croftdown roads, where there are more plaques than there are houses. I think he might like some numbers. “Did you know that it’s the biggest green space in the city, nearly 800 acres?”.

He knew. 

+++

I couldn’t avoid Jenny forever. One day she caught up with me in a corridor near the science labs.

“Why are you avoiding me, Neville!”, she grabbed my arm and made me look at her.

I was shocked by her appearance, “Why are you blue?”, I said. There was a turquoise tinge to her skin.

“Better than being brown!”, she said, which sounded bitter and cruel at the same time. 

“I mean, why is your skin died blue?” I asked.

“That stupid prick Burton threw ink into the pool during girl’s swim team practice”, she said, looking in my eyes with a ferocity that had nothing to do with the subject of discussion. 

I felt like she was looking inside my brain, “You look like a goddess”, I said, shocked at my own words. 

Her gaze softened, she smiled with perfect teeth. She was so beautiful that I felt like I might melt into the floor right there and then.

“Like Vishnu”, I said, fumbling around for something to say.

She stomped her foot, “Neville, you are such an idiot”, she said, “Vishnu is a god! He's male!”

++++

“Portobello Road, please”, asks the old biddy, who's dressed in a tartan skirt, looks like she’s been rambling across the Scottish Highlands.

I wait for her to settle in the seat, “Did you know that Portobello Road was named after a naval battle in the war of Jenkin’s ear?”

“Pardon?”, she replies.

“Exactly”, I chortle. “Admiral Vernon, seventeen thirty-nine. He won the battle, but we lost the war”. 

Time flew, but the cab got stuck in heavy traffic in Bayswater, and I told her not to bother with a tip.

++++

Reverend Peters was a drunk who lived in a mobile home down near Brimstone Road, near the power station. Rumor was that the headmaster kept him on at the school as an act of charity.  He had a combover.

It was in his class that Vishnu appeared on the page of a book as a blue-skinned beauty, adorned in a bejeweled sari that barely concealed her contoured voluptuousness. Dainty hands disposed in almost a saintly way, coils of black and gold hair, thick lips, heavy lids over dark eyes; a vision of such loveliness that it seemed to move things inside me. I think the good Reverend would have been appalled by my state of mind as it drifted from the text-book, to idle daydreams about girls in swimsuits, girls in the gym, girls in athletic bras, and Jenny running around the track. 

+++

A four hander, four yobs in Adidas gear. They jump onboard at Hampstead and want me to take them east to Tottenham, not far from my old school. There’s no football match (it’s a Friday), so I can’t figure out what they’re about. Likely lads, loud and a bit obnoxious with the smell of beer on their breath, so I watch them carefully in the mirror, reminding myself that London has always had its ruffians. I wonder if they will just leg-it when we get to White Hart Lane. I figure they don’t much care about the Knowledge, so I keep schtum. 

+++

The specific origins of the Knowledge are a bit murky, lost in the mists of Victorian London, but it is said that the much-feared test of memory was devised in response to the ineptitude of London’s cabbies during the Great Exhibition of 1851, when London was inundated with thousands of tourists and dignitaries trying to make their way to Crystal Palace. Overwhelmed by complaints, the authorities instituted a test of memory for aspiring cabbies, and it is largely unchanged in the 150 years since. 

Most candidates take five years to master the Knowledge, or so they tell me, but I did it in a year. 

We lived here and there, hopping from rental to rental, before we settled in Enfield town. I explored each new area, first on foot, then on my bike, until slowly the villages, towns and boroughs formed a mosaic in my head. When I was a teen, I graduated to public transportation, and the entire city unfolded like a gigantic story book, opening up in every direction, bound at the seams by the thread of history: the romans, medieval monks and kings, Tudor estates, regency splendor, Dickensian slums, and the Blitz. 25,000 streets with 25,000 stories, and I think I know every one of them. 

Even before I decided to be a cab driver, I would drive around the city in my Datsun, looking for stories. Looking for Jenny too. 

++++

I got lunch, a sausage sandwich with a mug of tea at a small café in Bloomsbury. I picked up a “Flight”, a ride out to Heathrow Airport.  I hate the A4/M4, especially the Flyover; it’s a concrete scar across Hammersmith and Chiswick, not really part of the story book.

+++

I live alone in a flat on Muswell Hill. 

I don’t want you to think that I am obsessed with Jenny or that I’m some kind of sad sack, like Eeyore. I watch Spurs home games when I can, I meet some regular blokes down at the pub once or twice a week, and I go fishing on the River Lee now and then.  I’ve had girlfriends, and I nearly got married a few years back. I told the poor girl that the cab broke down on the way to the registry office, which wasn’t true, and she said that she would forgive me, which also wasn’t true. 

+++

It’s rush hour. A suit jumps in the cab and needs to get to Kings Cross in a hurry, he’s catching a train to Peterborough. I cut off a white Renault and make a quick right turn into St Pancras Road. It’s a short trip, he gives me a big tip and runs into the station, a cathedral of imperial pomp surrounded by metal and mirror-glass cubes with a bit of 60's brutalism thrown about. If Prince Charles ever ventured out from Buck House, he’d have kittens.

+++

A crusty old toff is on the TV, prattling on about immigration policy and "rivers of blood".

My dad is sitting in his armchair, drinking lager from a can. “These darkies are taking over our streets and neighborhoods, destroying property prices”.

Mum rolls her eyes.

"And don't even get me started on this Common Market nonsense, or the miners' strike, or..." he's on one of his rants, and he hasn't even hit the bottle yet.

I go up to my bedroom to work on my train set. Ziggy Stardust is playing on the transistor radio.

+++

A pair of spritely pensioners enter the cab, a cock and hen. They’ve come to town to see a play at the Haymarket. The old geezer asks me if I’ve ever had any celebrities in my cab, so I rattle off a list of names… footballers, politicians, pop stars and actors. 

“Was Charlton Heston handsome?”, asks the woman, “I loved him in ‘Here to Eternity’”, she says wistfully.

It starts to rain, a light summer shower. The roads are slick. 

+++

I think I saw Jenny once, a few years back, walking down the High Street in Wood Green, but the traffic was bad, and the one-way system threw me around a loop, forcing me away from the shopping center. I parked the cab behind the Woodman pub, hurried on back to the pedestrian area, looking in every shop, down every side-street, hoping I’d see her.

+++

It’s Friday night, the crowds are out. Stag and hen parties, pub crawlers and confused tourists swarm Piccadilly Circus and Leicester Square. Over at the West End, it’s a ritzier crowd, sports cars and limos clog the roads near posh restaurants, penguins outside Park Lane hotels are accompanied by women in sequin dresses, clutching small shiny bags.

+++

It was summer, we’d just graduated from Edmonton Comprehensive. I received pass grades for my two A Levels so maybe I’d get an offer from a university, maybe I wouldn’t. I felt a bit lost. 

I got a temporary job at Waisetts and Strek, delivering fancy foods, imported juices and snacks to shops and restaurants in and around Soho. I bought a blue Datsun 240z, with go-faster stripes, souped-up by the boy-racer around the corner, Elizabeth’s older brother.

I didn’t have a girlfriend, but at least I had a car, boosting my prospects, though how, I still wasn’t quite sure.  My friend Colin was a regular co-pilot as we explored town, but he was a bit of a loser like me, and his head seemed much too big for his body, which might frighten off the girls I thought. 

“Did you get some beers!” he said getting into the car, “This might be the last time we see them”. 

I started driving down the road, a bit unsure as to where we were going.

“Liam’s house is on Chase Avenue”, said Colin.

“Off Windham Hill?” I asked.

“You should be a cabbie”, said Colin, nodding his big head appreciatively. 

+++

I pulled up to the taxi rank on Shaftesbury, about 9.45pm, just before the theater burst. I was dreaming a bit, mesmerized by kaleidoscopic light reflecting off the wet road-surface. A gift from my city.

+++

Liam lived in a big house; a dark green Mercedes parked outside his detached home. Wall-to-wall carpets, a wood laminate Hi-Fi system, a large collection of albums, sorted by band name. There are scores, maybe hundreds, of hardbacks in a floor-to-ceiling bookcase. I couldn’t even see the TV. 

Liam was leaving for university next week, like half the kids at the party. He told me to put the beers on something called “an island” in the kitchen. 

“Hello Neville” and my heart skipped a beat, maybe two.  Jenny was in the kitchen, leaning against the door jamb, obstructing the opening to the garden. She was wearing Army Surplus fatigues and a dayglo X-Ray Spex T-shirt.

“Jenny”, I said, surprised. 

“Jinhu”, she replied.

“I’m sorry. Jinhu”, I said, “that’s a nice name. Is it Hindu?”

“No, it’s an old Scottish name. My family is from Aberdeen”, she laughed.

“No way! I thought you were from India!”, I exclaimed.

‘Neville, you really are an idiot!”, she laughed. “We’re from Uganda.”

“What Idi Amin? That stuff?”

“Yeah. That… stuff””, she paused. “Come with me”, and she stepped outside, beckoning me to follow her, like a dog. I would have followed her through the gates of hell.

“Why did you ignore me at school?”, she asked, pulling me down to sit next to her on a wooden bench. I could feel her bony leg against my thigh.

“I didn’t ignore you”, I said.

“Then I don’t understand. You do know that I was interested, right?”, she looked at me.

“But you aren’t now?”, crestfallen, I sensed an ending.

“Neville, you are such an idiot”.

My head was light, almost spinning, she reached for my hand, made me look her in her eyes, and then she kissed me, and the world, and everything in it, changed color.

Colin came out to get me, beer in hand, but he turned on his heel and went back inside, and Jenny laughs.

+++

I pick up a yuppie couple that need a ride back to their flat overlooking Camden lock. I should get home before midnight.

+++

Colin was drunk, and I wanted to abandon him outside Liam’s house, but Jenny looked a bit disappointed with me, and I knew she was right, so we pushed him headlong onto the tiny back seat of the Datsun. I was a bit irritated, and Jenny was amused.

She was vague about her address, and I figured that she was probably embarrassed by her living circumstances, living with her dad and all, so we set off for the Finsbury Park area, without a specific destination. When we got to Harringay, close to the dog track, Colin started moaning and heaving.

“Let’s stop” said Jenny, “I can walk from here. I can cut across the park”.

We got out of the car, I hauled Colin to his feet, and he promptly threw up into a hedge.

“Jenny, please don’t go!”, I pleaded. “You can’t leave me with Colin, not like this”. 

“Neville, it’s OK”, she said, “I will see you again tomorrow, or Sunday”. 

She came over and kissed me again, “tomorrow”.

It was the last time I ever saw her. 

+++

I hate the end of the day, when the lights go out and London goes to sleep, when the punters are gone, and I am alone with my thoughts and the Knowledge seems useless baggage in my brain.

I pull up at a stop sign as I get close to home, a woman runs up from behind, along the deserted street, and she bundles into the back of the cab, panting. I probably should tell her that I’m finished for the day, but it’s late and it’s a dangerous part of town at night. Besides, I’ve got nothing better to do. 

“Where are you going, young lady?” checking the side mirrors to see if there’s someone chasing her.

“Can you take me to Finsbury Park?”, says the woman. It’s a familiar sounding voice.

I jolt into wakefulness, “Where in Finsbury Park?”, I search for a face in the mirror.

“Oh, anywhere near the park will do!”, she says.

A police car drives by, blue lights flashing.

In the mirror I catch a brief glimpse of a blue-skinned Indian woman, fine-featured, dark, dark black eyes.