Heavy Water: And Other Stories by Martin Amis Page A

thrashed and envassaled machines contended with the sound of the new, its pings, pips, peeps, beeps, bleeps, tweets and squawks and yawps … Big Mal heard it first, and paused there, down on one knee with his pipe wrench. A concentrated body of purposeful human conversation was moving toward them, the sopranos and contraltos of the women, the sterling trebles and barrelly baritones of the men, coming up round the corner now, like a ballroom, like civilization, uniforms of tuxedo and then streaks and plumes of turquoise, emerald, taffeta, dimity.
    “Lol mate,” said Mal.
    Fat Lol was a couple of cars further in, doing a Range Rover and tightly swearing to himself.
    “Lol!”
    You know what it was like? A revolution in reverse—that’s what it was like. Two bum-crack cowboys scragged and cudgelled by the quality. Jesus: strung up by the upper classes. What seemed most amazing, looking back, was how totally they folded, the two big lads, how their bottom, their legitimacy, just evaporated on them there and then. Fat Lol managed to get to his feet and splutter something about these vehicles being parked illegally. Or parked improperly. Or plain parked bad. And that was the extent of their resistance. Big Mal and Fat Lol, those bottle-ripped veterans of ruck and maul, dispensing the leather in cross alleys and on walkways, on dance-hall staircases, elbowing their way out of bowling alleys and snooker-hall toilets, crouching and panting by dully shining exit doors—they just rolled over. We didn’t want to know  … Mal tried to wriggle in under the Lotus he was doing but they were on him like the SAS. The first blow he took from the pipe wrench knocked him spark-out. Soon afterwards he awoke and, leaning on an elbow in a pool of blood and oil watched Fat Lol being slowly hauled by the hair from car to car, with the ladies queuing and jockeying to give him another kick up the arse, as best they could, in their gowns. The ladies! The language! Then they were on Mal again, and he stopped another one from the pipe wrench. I’ve copped it in the back, sir. Nigger’s dead, sir … No rest for the wicked. And ain’t that the fucking truth. They hoisted Mal upright, giving his mouth a nice smack on the headlight frame, and had him slewing from bonnet to bonnet, prising at the windscreen stickers with his cold white fingers. This vehicle is illegally. For prompt assistance. All major … And after a last round of kicks and taunts their cars were chirruping and wincing and whirring into life; they were gone, leaving Fat Lol and Big Mal groping toward each other through the fumes and echoes and the heap of cheap clamps, gasping, dripping, jetsam of the machine age.
7. S AD S PRINTER
    “Operagoers.”
    Sheilagh said, “Operagoers?”
    “Operagoers. Okay, it was a bit of a liberty, me and Fat Lol. You could argue we was out of order …”
    “You sure it was operagoers?”
    “Yeah. I thought it might have been a premiere crowd. Been to a Royal Premiere or something.” Mal and Linzi had recently attended a Royal Premiere, at considerable expense. And he thought it must have been decades since he had been with a rougher crew: fifteen hundred trogs in dinner jackets, plus their molls. “No, they left programs. The Coliseum. They ain’t nice, you know, She,” he cautioned her. Sheilagh had a weakness for films in which the aristocracy played cute. “The contempt. They were like vicious.”
    “I’ve been to the Coliseum. They do it in English. It’s better because you can tell what’s going on.”
    Mal nodded long-sufferingly.
    “You can follow the story.”
    He nodded a second time.
    “You doing the dads’ race?”
    “Well I got to now.”
    “With your face in that state? You’re no good on your own, Mal. You’re no good on your own.”
    Mal turned away. The shrubs, the falling leaves—the trees: what kind were they? Even in California … Even in California all he knew of nature was the mild reek of rest