Getting Home (47 page)

The horse snorted, as if inviting him to astonish it, and raised its head. A hank of vegetation hung from its mouth and it carried on chewing. ‘They're not good for you,' Damon told him. ‘They'll give you a bad stomach. You should eat hay and stuff, good food. Somebody should take care of you. You're a mess. Here, I've got something you can eat.'

Earlier in the day he had bought a sandwich at the Acorn Service Station. He had been eating it when he saw the horse running up the road, and half of it was still in its plastic wrapping in his coat pocket. Damon dragged the packet out.

The horse appeared well acquainted with plastic sandwich packs. Eagerly, it stepped forward and snatched the snack from Damon's outstretched palm. The wrapping fell to the ground, and while the horse was snuffling at it Damon found it was easy to walk around the animal and get hold of the rope from his head-collar.

This wretched piece of harness immediately disintegrated. Damon was an excellent knot-tier. While the horse returned to eating the weeds, he unravelled the orange twine, cut a length with his Swiss Army knife, and mended the head-collar. The horse never even realised it had been caught.

It was the best thing Damon had ever done in his life. He felt marvellous, and even better when the first policeman to arrive at the scene called him a hero and said he could have a ride in the helicopter one day. The women who owned the horse, however, were not at all grateful, and called him nasty names. But Damon was used to that.

‘This is the big one,' yelled Sky High, the traffic reporter on City Southeast News. ‘This is the super SNAFU, the road to hell, the ultimate gridlock, the biggest traffic jam I have ever seen in my entire life!'

Below the bank of monitor screens, the crowd shuffling slowly through the reception hall at Channel Ten, raised a noise somewhat like a cheer. The security men, noting that they were an unusually lively bunch and unusually ill-dressed, adopted stern expressions and paced along the blue rope barrier intended to cordon the public a safe distance away from the station's staff.

‘Yes!' Sky High continued, yelling over the roar of her helicopter. ‘It's our old friend the Thirty-one at Acorn Junction near Westwick, and it's a nightmare! Nothing is moving down there, nothing at all, nothing for five miles in every direction. Do not, repeat, do not even think of getting on the Thirty-one eastbound or westbound until this incident is over.'

‘Another wet Monday in Westwick,' observed Jemima Thorogood, shaking out her umbrella as she made it inside the Channel Ten doors.

‘The police have told us that the cause of the snarl up is a horse! A horse running along the edge of the road! Everything has come to a complete stop down there! All vehicles are advised to give this one a miss – I'm calking about the Thirty-one at good old Acorn Junction.'

Another cheer, less ragged this time, rose from the queue. ‘Look, do be quiet, please,' Crusty cautioned them. ‘Remember we've got something to hide, eh?' Under their coats, the New Green Army were carrying dozens of banners proclaiming PEOPLE NOT PROFITS, NO MORE ROADS and THEY SHALL NOT PASS. They had smoke bombs, firecrackers and bags of flour in their pockets. Somebody had brought along a rabbit's foot for lutk, a live foot, with the rest of the live rabbit still attached.

‘Mum.' Topaz, who had been following the radio reports on her Walkman, took out one of the ear-pieces and turned to her mother. ‘I forgot to tell you. Ted called last night. He said to tell you he'd heard that guy from Magno Supermarkets had been out at Oak Hill asking about Rod and the TV crew.'

‘Now you tell me.' Had it not been for Topaz bullying her so much about Ted, and the fact that she was about to bring the man's empire crashing about his ears, Gemma would have allowed herself to feel touched. As it was, she snuffled and pretended offence for her daughter's benefit, while sensing a degree of unreasonable warmth towards him stealing around her heart. Trying to keep her mind on the day's enterprise didn't help. She felt like the sorcerer's apprentice, standing beside the eco rabble which she had raised to avenge the wrongs done to her family. Her spell had worked too well, the process was out of control.

‘He calls quite a lot, you know, but I never tell you because you always say you don't want to know. Especially since what happened to Flora.'

‘Don't make this my fault,' her mother warned. ‘What else did he say?'

‘He sent his love.'

‘No, I mean anything worthwhile.'

‘No. He said Oak Hill wasn't his show any more, that they'd fired him.'

‘Oh, good,' responded Gemma incautiously.

‘He's got some idea we're doing something, I think. But he didn't say anything. I thought it was pretty nice of him really. Won't he lose a lot of money?'

‘Yup,' agreed Gemma, feeling confused. He had called, he cared, he had been fired, he was still a sleaze anyway. She had spent days organising this disaster to hurt him and now he was going to escape, and she was pleased about that. Gemma-was not a morning person, she felt the hour was too early for all this. She decided to concentrate on the new threat to their success. ‘Crusty, what can they do, the people at Magno? There's nothing they can do, is there? Even if they suss us.'

‘Never fear,' Crusty reassured her. He was behind them in the queue with a knitted hat pulled down to hide his dreadlocks. It was not much of a disguise but it was enough. Few people ever realised that off-camera he was definitely below-average height for a man, but then, Topaz recalled, so was Stalin, who had to wear built-up boots and stand on a special podium for Lenin's funeral. ‘If they sussed what was going on they could get an injunction, but then they'd have to deliver it.'

He gestured at the TV screen, now showing pictures? of six lanes of stationary traffic petrified in the action of entering and leaving the Acorn Junction. ‘You have to deliver an injunction by hand. Medieval, really. No fax, no E-mail. The actual document has to be taken from the judge who signs it, and handed over. Can't see anyone getting through unless they were on a bicycle. As long as that Parsons woman is out there in that lot, we've got nothing to worry about.'

‘News just coming in – don't give up, down there on the Thirty-one!' Sky High was back on the screen, chattering excitedly into her headset. ‘The horse causing the incident has been caught. They've rounded him up and they're bringing him in. That's the Thirty-one at Westwick, stationary in both directions right now because of an incident caused by a horse straying on the road. Hope is at hand, drivers, the horse has been caught. Our friends over there in the police are telling us things will be moving normally again in forty minutes. OK, that's it from me, Sky High at City Southeast News, signing off at nine-twenty.'

‘Blow it,' observed Crusty with annoyance. ‘That horse is the flyest animal that ever lived. None of us can
ever
catch him.'

‘Don't like the look of this,' Allie's driver told her, heading down Willow Gardens as fast as he dared. Since the last occasion he took this route the municipality had elected to install speed humps and half-barriers in the road, so progress was a tedious matter of waiting at every obstruction to negotiate a right of way with the steady stream of cars, driven by men with desperation on their faces, which passed them in the opposite direction. ‘Look's like it's blocked up ahead somewhere.'

‘It can't be blocked,' retorted his passenger. ‘Why should it be blocked?' She pretended not to see her husband in his Discovery bumping disconsolately past her, but felt the first shiver of panic in consequence. Whatever else could justly be said about Ted, he knew the back-doubles in Westwick better than any driver alive, and if he had despaired of this route, something was seriously wrong.

At the bottom of the road they saw through the streaming rain a line of red-and-white-painted iron posts and a metal gate barring the route under the bridge. The posts carried a bright new sign which read: EMERGENCY ACCESS ONLY – ROAD CLOSED.

‘Shit,' Allie said, bold faced. ‘Shit, shit, shit.'

The driver did not like guttermouthed women. He felt that they were claiming an unfair advantage for their gender in using language which decency would restrain a normal man from employing in the same circumstances.

‘You could walk,' he suggested. ‘It's only ten, maybe fifteen minutes from here along the towpath. I can give you the umbrella.'

‘Don't be ridiculous,' she snarled. ‘There has to be some way to get there. I'm on air in forty minutes. It's the first show of the new series. I
must
get there. There's no alternative. What does it mean, emergency access?'

‘Only the police, fire service and ambulances. They get a key which unlocks the gate.'

‘Well, this is an emergency. Call the police.'

‘I can't do that – I'd be prosecuted. I'd lose my licence.'

Allie hissed through her teeth as if facing unreasonable defiance. ‘Don't be stupid. Don't you understand? I
have
to get there in time for
Family First.
You're being paid to get me there, for fuck's sake.' The name of the programme could work like a magic spell, but not this time.

The driver took off his cap and smoothed down his hair to give his brain a better look at the problem. ‘I can call the studio and tell them what's going on,' he offered ungraciously. ‘Traffic report says things'll start moving soon. We can wait it out on the Broadway or try going west around Oak Hill, over the Forty-six and then cutting across the Thirty-one at Acorn Junction. That's all I can think of.'

‘How the hell long will that take?'

‘On a normal day, less than twenty minutes,' he offered, knowing full well that this morning was far from normal and that every other escape route would be clogged by this time.

‘Well then.' She threw herself angrily back in the seat. ‘What are you waiting for? And for fuck's sake,
hurry.'

‘She's held up.' In the
Family First
gallery, where the vision mixer was checking that the first frames of Rod's so-called supermarket feature were cued up and ready to roll, the senior producer was moved by the scale of the emergency to half-rise in his chair. ‘Allie's held up, everybody. Change the running order. Rod, I'm going to come to you first. We'll go with supermarkets, then the makeover, then we'll hope Allie gets to the studio in time to finish up with the interview.'

‘Fine.' In the half-darkness at the back of the gallery, Rod tried to tranquillise himself with breathing exercises. Tension in his neck would rob his voice of resonance. He started relaxing his face muscles one at a time. At the desk in front of him sat Maria. Under the desk top, she was pouring two fingers of vodka into a styrofoam cup from a bottle hidden in her handbag. Doing this, her professional gloss vanished and she looked pathetically young, like a schoolgirl passing a note around the class. It had not occurred to Rod that she might also be feeling the heat. ‘You OK?' he asked her.

‘I will be,' she muttered covertly, winking over the rim of the cup. ‘Butterflies in the guts, that's all. Have a belt?'

‘No, thanks.' It was such a little deal to say no that ten minutes had passed and he was down in the studio when he realised he had done it.

‘Allie's been delayed, everybody,' announced the director's voice over the PA. ‘We're starting with Rod and his film report, hoping she'll get here by the break.'

‘I knew it,' muttered the Tarot reader, standing beside Stephanie in the windowless holding tank furnished with stained seating units and a flatulent coffee machine which served the show as a green room. ‘I knew it. First card I turned up this morning was The Wall.'

‘What does that mean?' asked Stephanie, feeling as if her make-up would crack if she showed too much animation.

‘Destruction,' the woman informed her, digging a cigarette out of her handbag. ‘Unexpected events, chaos, laying waste, irrevocable changes. It's not a bad card, we should not look at any of the cards as bad in themselves. We are the masters of our own fate. Good can come out of bad. Something in your life is destroyed, it makes way for something better. But most people don't like to get The Wall.'

‘No,' murmured Stephanie, watching Rod on the monitor. Looking several million dollars in his glorious new suit, he was listening to someone talking through his ear-piece. His face was radiant with satisfaction, as if the most beautiful woman in the world were whispering endearments to him.

‘Is he new?' asked the Tarot reader. ‘I don't remember seeing him before. He certainly is cute.'

‘Yes,' Stephanie agreed.

‘Can we smoke in here?' The woman had the cigarette in her lips and her lighter poised.

‘I'm sure you can. I don't mind,' Stephanie told her.

‘You're very calm.' The lighter clicked and she exhaled a stream of smoke. ‘Aren't you nervous? You don't look nervous?'

‘I ought to be nervous.' Stephanie looked down at her knees as if they belonged to another woman. In a mirror, she saw herself sitting in a corner of the worn seating unit, looking quite regally relaxed. The terror of public exposure which she used to feel at the mere idea of television was absent. Other things had grown in its place: a sturdy courage, a trust in life. Curiously, she turned her head and tried to examine her profile – was it there, the poise of the Empress Josephine? Chaos, waste, irrevocable change – for six months she had been eating that stuff for breakfast. She felt like the master of her fate.

Lauren Pike could hear herself wheezing. They were still on the Broadway, fifty yards from the turning for The Magpies. She had sanctioned the use of the Gameboy, passed out crayons and paper, confiscated a crossbow from Ben Carman, played a tape of musical multiplication tables and still the children were squabbling.