Looking for Mrs Dextrose (13 page)

Shortly before 4pm, while Importos was showering, Dextrose passed out.

“That should do it!” chirped Quench, slapping his hands together.

I was non-plussed. No way had my father reached his alcoholic capacity. I prodded his head, prone on the table, thumb in his mouth, as he gurgled away in la-la-land. No reaction.

“’E was never gonna come wiv you, Pilsbury,” said Quench. “So I knocked ’im aht wiv some shaman-quality sleeping drops. ’E’ll sleep like a baby for
hours.”

It sounded a bit dodgy. A bit like kidnap. “But…”

“Don’t you worry. Jus’ tell ’im I did it, for ’is own good. Right? Nah all you gotta to do is load ’im into the sidecar.”

“Sidecar?”

“Aht the front. Benzani wheeled the bike in just nah.” He grinned, pleased with himself. “You were out of petrol, that’s all. Well, that and wrapped arahnd a tree. But
’e’s knocked the dents aht as best he could an’filled her up wiv gas – by my reckoning you’re good to go!”

“How much do I owe you?” It was all I could think of, though I owed Livingstone Quench far more than mere cash.

He held up a finger. “’Old on,” he said. “I’ll get your bar bill.”

This was going to be painful. I couldn’t recall Dextrose handing over money for a single drink, and particularly on that second night, when we had become tangled up in the lapsed
explorer’s deftly spun yarns, there were many times when I, the willing gimp, had cried all too blithely, “My round!”

Quench returned with a till receipt. “£231.82!” he declared.

“Ah,” I went, knowing full well that my wallet contained just £175 in traveller’s cheques.

“Well?” demanded Quench, his usually benign features narrowing to something more schoolmasterly. But he could not hold it for long and burst into raucous laughter, patting me on the
cheek like a well-rouged aunt. “As if I could charge you, young Pilsbury! Any son of ’Arry’s is a son of mine – an’ jus’ you remember that! ’Ere,
’old on a minute,” he said, and left by the back door.

When he returned he was lugging a battered tan leather suitcase in one hand and had a khaki suit draped over the opposite forearm. “’Ere’” he said, thrusting the suited
arm towards me. “This’ll make you look the part, if you’re gonna be accompanying a world-renowned explorer.”

“What is it?”

“It’s a safari suit,” he said. “Left behind by some tourist. Reckon it’ll fit you jus’ fine.” He smiled. “An’ this is ’Arry’s
stuff. We’ll ’ave to strap in on the back.” As he heaved the suitcase upright, it tinkled like an early-morning milk float.

If we hurried, I thought, we could sneak off before Importos realised we had gone.

Dextrose – quite some dead weight, requiring the strength of myself and Quench to shift – had been stuffed into the sidecar. His arms were lolling out of the sides,
his gut had become caught on the tiny windscreen and his head was tipped backwards so that his mouth gaped open, snoring at the sky.

I had quickly donned the safari suit, having dumped my stinking casuals in a bag and thrust that into the recesses of a half-empty rucksack. So few possessions – but I didn’t
care.

“’Ere,” said Quench, pushing a roll of banknotes into my hand and closing my fingers around it. “You’ll need this. Long way to where you’re
goin’.”

“I can’t…” I faltered.

“Course you can.”

I wondered out loud: “How can you afford all this?”

He narrowed his eyes at me. “Ask me no questions, I’ll tell you no lies.” Then he chuckled. “Ah, what’s the ’arm in tellin’ you? Bank job,
’72.”

Not all gangsters are unlovable, I decided.

“Nah, go on, quick, ’fore that lanky fella catches up wiv you!” (And Gdgi’s people, and the Shaman, I thought, glad I had failed to mention them to him.)

Dextrose belched in his coma. Livingstone Quench and I shook hands, mine feeling so much smaller than his.

“Good luck, lad,” he said. And he turned, walked back into Gossips and shut the door behind him. Not a sweat patch on his back.

Boy, was I going to miss him.

As I gunned the engine, on the verge of getting away with it, Importos came haring outside, his gangling limbs waving around like windsocks in a squall. “Hey! Senor Alexander! You to
forget Importos!”

There had been one road out of Mlwlw, left towards the southern coast instead of right into the jungle. It was strewn with nature’s debris, causing Dextrose’s head
to jerk up and down violently. Importos clung on behind me, towering over my head. Anything he tried to say to me was swept away by the rushing air or drowned out beneath the engine’s
thrum.

I felt happy to be on the road, welcomed the miles strewn before us. This was freedom and let it last, cutting through the breeze, between the verdant sentries guarding the roadside, as
we… not exactly hurtled along, though it was progress… out towards new lands, fresh experiences.

Let the Shaman come after me. And all of the villagers! They would not catch us, not while I was in this mood!

The trees became shorter and more sparse, the further from Mlwlw we travelled, as the rainforest began to peter out. The route became smoother. Occasionally we would pass
people on the road: women with bundles or baskets on their heads, men carrying tools, shooting us uncertain smiles, children jumping and waving excitedly.

I held my face up to the sky, let the sun’s rays rain down on me, took my hands off the handlebars, flung them out wide and opened my mouth to pour out my joy. I spotted the black blob
hurtling towards me too late, swallowed the large flying insect, heard its panicked buzzing inside my head as its wings beat dementedly on the roof of my mouth. Jamming my hands back onto the
handlebars, I spat violently while retching and, when I was sure the dastardly bug had been ejected, felt around my mouth with a doctorly tongue, paranoid that I might have been stung. Behind and
above me Importos laughed with abandon, his stomach pulsing against my spine.

After an hour or so I spotted our first sign up ahead, partially concealed by vegetation to the left of the track. As we drew closer I saw it was a hefty wooden construct nailed between two
poles. On it was written, in two languages:

YOU ENTER NAMELESS HIGHWAY

Which hardly inspired a satisfying dollop of confidence.

Still, here we were. I was in one piece, there was no one on our tail, as far as I could see, and we had sufficient supplies, Quench having packed sarnies
ad infinitum
as well as a vast
water can. As we approached a bend in the track beyond which I hoped the Nameless Highway would come into view, my heart was beating like a cantering nag. What would it look like?

Our home for the next few days, its name evoked in my mind’s eye scenes from Clint Eastwood movies, cowboys in hats chewing on tobacco, toting pistols the length of savaloys, bar brawls
and prostitutes in petticoats. But were names deceptive?

Then we turned the bend and the answer lay spread before me: the Nameless Highway looked like nothing on earth.
Literally
nothing on earth. It were as if a god with a giant vacuum had
sucked up every last feature, from one side to the other. Desolation. Sand, sand, sand, as far as the eye could see, deep orange in colour. This could have been the surface of Mars. And bisecting
it, fashioned in pristine tarmac, the road. The Nameless Highway, as straight as a python eating a pool cue, stretching out towards the far horizon.

Sand and a road. Not a bush nor a cactus nor another soul in sight. Certainly no Clint.

Just sand. And a road.

The Nameless Highway.

Our home for the coming days.

I stopped the bike, exhaled deeply, and stared. “Fuck.”

Beside me, Dextrose continued to doze. Behind me, Importos moaned.

“We in big shit,” he said.

At least there was a breeze rolling in over the sands from the south, from an unseen ocean that I imagined I could taste. It calmed the intensity of the sun dipping behind us
and tousled my blonde hair, overgrown and untended since the start of my travels. When had I last shaved,’I wondered? When had I last even looked in a mirror? Vanity and real travel
functioned poles apart, I realised, running a hand over the curves of my face and through patchy bum-fluff. Any self-respecting 33-year-old back home would have been ashamed to call that a beard. I
wore its untidiness with honour – to me it said ‘explorer’.

According to the map, the first stop on the Nameless Highway would be a settlement imaginatively named First Stop. It was about half an inch in, on a road that went on for roughly five.
According to the scale, that meant a journey of perhaps 250 miles before we would hit civilisation. We dared not even consider roadside camping, so would have to make First Stop that night, which
was pushing it given our top speed of 45 miles per hour. (On heart-stopping occasions, when the motorbike and sidecar seemed possessed by a devil-may-care spirit, the speedometer needle would crawl
over the 45 mark, like a pensioner negotiating an obstacle course, then oscillate wildly either side of 46, dancing on hot coals, appalled and elated by its own temerity. Then it would backfire
– the machine version of shitting itself – and normal service would resume.)

I checked my watch, the lovely Timeco Z112.2 XG, too many buttons and space-age face, purchased in High Yawl. It was sold to me, in that Utopia for the commercially minded, by the delightful
Mimsy Flopkins, who had mourned my leaving her emporium with the phrase, “Your premature departure has left a hole in my soul.” I hadn’t necessarily believed her, though it did
stick in my mind. The Timeco Z112.2 XG was a lovely watch, which she promised would flash red if I stopped breathing.

It was 18.42. Time to get going. Importos and I glugged down some water, and I managed to tip some into Dextrose’s upturned gob without him stirring.

“Hold on to your hat!” I called over my shoulder and upwards to Importos, though of course he wasn’t wearing a hat. “Next stop, First Stop!”

“To whoppy-do!” he called back drily.

Meanwhile, Dextrose snored: a crackly, hacking sound.

The ride quickly settled into a rhythm, with the engine as soundtrack. With no features to speak of, not even a white line down the middle of the road, it sometimes seemed we
weren’t moving, so I had to trust to the speedometer’s insistence and the blurred rotation of the front wheel. It was as if we were perched atop a rotating drum.

I could sink into it, my mind wandering, picking up random signals from the cosmos and turning them over. Inevitably, though, my thoughts veered towards family.

Harrison Dextrose was my father, that much I had accepted; however, the implications had not fully sunk in. The situation felt true yet unreal. My only memories of him came secondhand, from the
contents of
The Lost Incompetent
. That was how I knew him, though the boorish drunk I had encountered in the flesh bore only a minor resemblance to his own recorded take on himself –
which tended to gloss over the negatives and blame everyone else. I had to assume that encroaching old age – more spare time and the alcohol to fill it – had narrowed his mind, and that
the Dextrose of his writings, the curmudgeonly but playful character, had he existed at all, lay dormant. Just needed a nudge or two to emerge, I hoped… Nay, felt certain.