The Book of Dave

by Will Self

  Michelle woke him up with a cup of Earl Grey. She told him about Blair and the letter he was going to send to her ex – he made the right noises, but his mind was in two other places. 'I can't face another day like today,' he sighed when it was his turn. 'There are consultants and accountants all over the offices like flies on a fucking corpse … and… and I told Saskia I'd go to find Daisy …' Michelle switched her grimace into a smirk of sympathy. If Cal noticed this, he chose not to remark on it; he understood. Daisy stank.

  Cal Devenish – former writer, former hell raiser, now the emollient yet forceful face of Channel Devenish – was exhausted. The production company he'd taken over six years ago was being sold to an American media conglomerate. The business had been a wrinkled little thing when Cal got it; now it was a taut balloon of gassy cash. Devenish had developed a series of hit programmes: Tumour Swap, TWOC Rally, Whorecam – and especially Blackie, a kids' show featuring a depressed spaniel that had been Globally syndicated. As well as being a shrewd purveyor of eyetrash to the myopic, Cal was also a panellist on arts review shows and current events forums, a wag and a wit. He'd skilfully blended his waning creativity with orange foundation cream, then slapped it all over his face so that it didn't shine under the studio lights. He bestrode the steadily narrowing gulf between high culture and low entertainment like a credible, shrinking colossus. Even if he managed to flog Channel Devenish – and this was by no means in the bag – he was still going to have to do a management workout, three years in the shafts of corporate carters, while maintaining his public profile because they wanted that as well.

  Devenish's career change had come with his recovery from addiction to cocaine, alcohol and commercial sex. Not that he pursued this recovery actively any more. There had been the predictable treatment centre, a Jenga of gables in the Greenbelt, where counsellors nutty as walnuts cracked other nutters with their shells. After that he did therapy for a while – both individual and group – so that he might irrigate his costive immaturity. Then he took to the gym, which tempered his skinny limbs, and acquired a goatee like a neat hairy portcullis, which, oddly, gave him gravitas. Now Cal worked all the hours he could, and when he wasn't working he was dealing with his troublesome daughter or moping around the house, never saying – although clearly thinking… what the fuck have I got myself into with this woman and her mad bloody ex-husband. Her sulky son … where will it all end?

  They didn't fight, though. They never raised their voices. They had a great deal of compatible secrecy – which would serve as intimacy for a while. As they were working their way gingerly through this minefield of mutuality, the front door opened, then explosively slammed, the fanlight rattled, the stairs reverberated, and Carl's bedroom door provided the final report that an adolescent was in the house. Michelle became acutely aware of him … my sweety, my honey … sitting up there on the end of his bed, disdaining the pastel-painted work unit, complete with personal computer, ignoring the framed posters of Tintin book covers on the candy-striped walls, instead pawing yet again through the box of kiddy stuff that he'd brought with him from Gospel Oak. Shabby memorabilia of a time before he moved up in the world: an incredibly battered Hulk; some broken Beyblades; a toy London cab driven by a faceless plastic cabbie. Stuck through the window of the cab was a shard of plastic the size of Carl's middle finger. Why it should be talismanic he'd long since forgotten – he could not recall his father demolishing the telephone with its own receiver, nor himself, dutifully collecting the bits and storing them in his toy box – a small archaeologist of the immediate past.

  At dinner – eaten en famille complete with candles, linen napkins and powered cruets – Carl sat sullenly. His downy top lip caught the rays from the spotlights, his gelled hair glistened like seaweed, a pimple – hard and yellow as a nose stud – was in the right position to be one. The odour of hormonal surge and pre-emptive aftershave hung about his sharp shoulders. Conversational sallies from his mother were slapped down with single syllables, Cal's simply allowed to fall. Carl's moodiness might have been within the acceptable range of adolescent disaffection – or way off the dial. It was impossible to judge without a control experiment: another world with different rituals, taboos and family groupings, but the same blond boy.

  When Cal, rising from tiramisu, clapped his sort of stepson on the shoulder, bent to kiss the top of Michelle's head and turned to go, a shiver of relief shook the tall room. The Op-Art swirls on the walls dilated – and he was gone to his BMW convertible. Michelle, abandoning her son to the television and the dishes to the morning Pole, trudged upstairs to dissolve her face in bottled alcohol and brush her dry lips with Clarins Moisturizing Lip Balm.

  There was no forethought on Dave's part. He simply kept ending up here at Mill Hill, up on the Ridgeway, clambering over the fence opposite the National Institute for Medical Research, crossing the nursery-school playground, scaling a second fence, then standing staring towards the Hampstead massif, which rose like an island out of the evening traffic stream on the North Circular. He hadn't intended it – it was the fares that brought him there. His Faredar wasn't working. Instead of detecting know-nothings wiv deep pockets, he got pub-quiz misers.

  At two that afternoon Dave had been grating the cab along Stamford Street towards Waterloo … another bit of fucking metal scraped till it wangs off. In the steely jam, rain-washed manufacturers' logos shone: PLAXTON, JONCKHEERE, FORD. Windscreen wipers smeared, drivers sneered at pedestrians, cyclists veered to avoid everything. The fare was one of those cunts who thought he knew the city, thought he knew the real stories behind the news, thought he knew the mind of bloody God, 'cause 'e's the Flying-fucking-Eye . . . and was eager to share it with his paid-for listener. He'd deliberated possible routes. 'I mean, Westminster Bridge is the obvious way' – mulling over traffic flows – 'but there might be an argument for cutting through Covent Garden and avoiding the traffic' – and roadworks – 'there's a lane out going through Admiralty Arch and that means the Mall'll be backed up.' Dave wanted to kill him: What you don't understand is that I don't bloody care. I just follow the route most likely to get us there with the minimum hassle. I don't make any extra money for sitting in traffic, and besides, I want SHOT OF YOU. 'It's entirely up to you, sir, if you know a quicker way, I'm only too happy to take it.'

  'No, no, driver, you do your thing, you're the professional.' The fare sat back in his seat with a self-satisfied smile that filled the rearview mirror. Happy now, aren't yer, because you're another fucking control freak who finks 'e's swallered a Trafficmaster.

  Dave dropped the fare off and drove on round the elevated roadway to the front of the station, where stone giantesses mourn the death of its builders on Flanders Field. He ranked up and marched away past Delice de France, Upper Crust, Van Heusen, M&S Simply Food, The Reef, Burger King and Tie Rack, then down into the temple of hiss and piss, where he could wring the neck of his suicidal dick. What was it Big End used to say? 'I love myself so much when I hold my dick to piss I get a fucking hard-on.'

  Back at the rank Dave's Fairway was holding things up. Two or three trains must have arrived simultaneously, because the fifty-odd cabs were divided among the hundred-odd punters within five minutes. 'North!' the new fare barked without looking at Dave, as if she were crying 'Mush!' to a husky. And when Dave ventured, 'Anywhere more specific, madam?' the fare barked: 'Belsize Park!' Then sat there, her exploratory face pressed to the window as Dave dragged the metal sleigh back through the West End, Euston and Camden Town.

  Dried-up old stick, look at 'er … no one would want a crack at that … Dave kept casting glances in the mirror at the hated fare, and, as if responding to this, the woman got out her compact and began dabbing beige dust on a mole. Got 'er own mirror, eh … what's she got to look at innit, only the same fucking face day in, day out. Mindjoo, these old boilers – they've got their own Knowledge, that's true enough.

  The fare wanted Heath Hospital, but was either too grand or too embarrassed to say so until they
were roaring down Pond Street, then she ordered him: 'Here!' Dave pulled over outside the Roebuck. The fare tipped generously, then unfolded a gossamer umbrella and flew, like a fairy-fucking-grandmother, into the lobby. Dave found himself alone, at four thirty in the afternoon, on the shores of Hampstead. The other points at the end of this run came unbidden: Anthony Nolan Trust, Armoury Sports Hall, Hampstead Hill Gardens, Hampstead Magistrates Court, Holiday Inn, Keats Museum …

  A nervous Japanese woman got into the cab at the Southend Green rank. No questions asked as to why the detour if we're going to Hendon Central … she might as well be in fucking Osaka … Osaka . . . tourists . . . flyers … A memory rose up and bumped against the underside of his consciousness … Just before Christmas … the nervous City getter on his way out to 'eathrow. 'You can't tell me, Beaky, that it's all off the back of Bluey – or whatever that stupid kids' show is called …' His card was still tucked under the clip on the dashboard – so was Sid Gold's. The fare gave a little yelp as Dave arm-wrestled the steering wheel while reading the business card CB & EFN INVESTMENT STRATEGIES, STEPHEN BRICE, CEO EUROPE. That's it… there's stuff there on Devenish … If they're going to do it to me – I'll do it to them first … Gold'll know someone . . . An investigator … a private dick …

  Dave dropped the Jap at a hotel he'd never noticed before, four semis knocked into one dull frontage. Palms in half-barrels sat on a tarmac apron. A sign flashed RALEIGH COURT in the gathering dusk. She picked up her carrier bags, shouldered her Hello Kitty rucksack and paid what was on the meter. Dave drove on up to Mill Hill, the National Institute for Medical Research calling to him, its copper roof shining over the tiled valley.

  Once there Dave took up his position on top of Drivers Hill, and, finding card and mobile phone mysteriously in his hand, he made the call, not expecting anyone to be there at this late hour … least of all a bent fucker like Gold who's gotta be propping up the bar in China White, one hand on a Bellini, the other up a tart's skirt … The wind whooshed in Dave's ear but Gold's 100%-sure-of-itself voice was closer still. He remembered Dave, saying in response to his muttered request, 'No trouble, Dave, I know a geezer, you gotta pen and paper?'

  Cal Devenish drove south. The traffic was light enough – a steel spatter on the bluffs of Kingsway. On the south side of Waterloo Bridge, the National Theatre was lit up, a giant sugar cube soaked with cultural vaccine. Inside his fellow bourgeoisie sucked sweets and watched Imogen and Ralph play at queens and kings. While not far off, in Brixton, Cal's ex-wife, Saskia, was lying on her crapped-out sofabed, their preposterous granddaughter clamped in her arms. The baby slept, blowing milky bubbles against its grandmother's hammering heart.

  'She's done a runner again, Cal,' Saskia had cried that afternoon, a cry Cal heard via the phone as he drove home to Hampstead. He'd frozen for a moment – caught between crushing bergs of work and family – before answering, 'I thought she was on a locked ward?'

  'You thought! You … thought!' Saskia snorted. 'That's novel!' She was standing, he supposed, in her kitchen. Toast crusts, apple cores, damp clouts, canisters of decadent marjoram and a greasy oven glove lay on the worktop. On the windowsill a miniature mesa of cacti supported a greenfly colony. 'They didn't have her on a section – she's gone!'

  'I'll … I'll go and find her … later …' He'd manoeuvred the Beamer on to Hampstead Road. Laurence Corner, the army-surplus shop, was still open. I ought to pick up a mattock and a water bottle, I'll be needing them … later.

  'You do that,' Saskia snapped.

  To be fair, Cal thought now, as he turned down York Road, whatever Saskia's lunacies – the shopworn socialism, the maintenance-funded 'creativity', the double-barrels (bi-polar, obsessive-compulsive, manic-depressive, personality disorder) through which she shot at their daughter's pathology – the facts were simple: she'd been a single mother for thirteen years, and now she was a single grandmother. Some fucker rubbed his legs on Daisy's petals, then buzzed off again. And she, either hammered by Largactil or ranting on garage forecourts, was in no fit state to care for a baby. Shit… they had to tie her down and knock her out for the delivery. Even if she'd been sane, she was only sixteen …

  He talked to the duty psychiatrist at St Thomas's, a distant, pharaonic figure. 'Yes, Mr Devenish … your daughter, Daisy. I understand your concern.' But don't share it, obviously. 'Her GP hadn't been in touch, and the consultant here hadn't made any provision. We had no grounds for holding her against her will.' Except that she's a fucking loony. 'She was quite lucid when she left … said she was going back' – he consulted a tan transcript – 'to Driscoll House?'

  Unwilling to abandon sickroom security, Cal stood for a while by the double doors, looking towards Westminster Bridge. On the lobby floor, in front of the shuttered coffee shop, a ham and tomato sandwich was reduced by scurrying feet to a smear of red, brown and pink.

  Heading south down the old Kent Road, Cal felt mangling hands of anxiety on his neck. He remembered the girl found dead in the fountains at Marlborough Gate. Three days fouling up a tourist attraction – when they dragged her out in her sodden stonewashed jeans she was unidentifiable.

  That morning he'd been roused by the whale song of marital farts, semiconscious leviathans calling to one another across a glutinous ocean of duck down. 5 a.m. and fully awake … Cal looked at Michelle's profile etched on the pillow beside him by the acid light of a London dawn. She's holding out on me, I know it. There's something she isn't telling me – it doesn't add up. Her secret is soft – she moulds it to evade detection. It's hidden inside her body – she's a mule …

  Low down on the scabrous underbelly of South London, the BMW raced from one shopping parade to the next. From OK Chicken to Perfect Chicken, from Bootiful Chicken to Luvverly Chicken, from Royal Chicken to Chicken Imperium, from Chicken Universe to one forlorn joint in the filthy crotch of Burgess Park that was simply dubbed 'Chicken'. Down here, where men wore nylon snoods, the light industrial premises massed and every public, horizontal thing was planted with metal thorns, Cal felt the turbid threat of the city, which might choose – quite impersonally – to climb into the car at the lights and suggest, at gunpoint, that he step out.

  Driscoll House, built in 1913, was Castle Dossula. Vast and foursquare, beneath its crenellations ranged scores of loopholes, behind each a rental embrasure. Weekly rates were pegged to the emergency-housing benefit. The security door was propped open with a pallet. Cal made inquiries at a battered plexiglas window. Then he was led along a corridor. Doors opened to either side and faces emerged, pitted, veined and puce. Their owners were drinking fortified wine with Antabuse chasers, and the stop-start strain on their sclerotic hearts was going to kill them stone-dead.

  The string-vested seneschal stopped in front of No. 137 and unlocked it with a key from his enormous bunch. Inside were knickers in a twist and jeans draped over a chair; a cheap candle had melted into a Formica tabletop and curled over like a limp dick. 'She wozere,' said the seneschal, "coz I 'eard 'er carryin' on wiv 'owie.'

  'Howie?' Cal queried, although from other Daisy hunts he recognized the name.

  'Jock geezer, piggy ring in 'is 'ooter, sells the Issue. Collects bottles. Drinks wiv a school dahn at ve Bullring, but 'e azza flop in Mottingham.'

  Mottingham was so far out on the outskirts of the city that the Avenues the BMW swished along were damp with the sweeter showers of the countryside beyond. At bucolic roundabouts cellophane-wrapped flowers were stacked up to mark the site of fatal collisions. The makeshift shrines were garlanded with plastic gewgaws and papered with scrawled cards; so the prosaic, the accidental, was factored into a Divine Plan for London.

  At the address the seneschal had given him Cal found two black teenagers smoking weed and watching a video of a nightmare on another street. A tenner elicited a further address, where ' 'owie an' 'is bird' had gone to score. At this location – a plyboard warren of bedsits in a venerable Victorian villa – the finder's fee was upped to twenty quid. Finally, at 3.3
0 a.m., Cal ran her to ground, dry-heaving under a rhododendron bush in the gardens of a derelict pub. The huaraches he'd brought her back from Mexico lay discarded near by. In the silence between his daughter's spasms Cal could hear a nightjar churring, although he thought it was a scooter accelerating along the A20. When he got her into the car, Daisy began to babble about the environment. There was no sign of Howie.

  'What's the baddest thing in the world, Dad?'

  'What did ya say, Tiger?'

  'Dad, what's the baddest thing in the world?' Carl stood before Dave in baby elephant pyjama trousers. His front teeth were big white pegs in his chubby six-year-old face. 'Dad, what's the baddest thing in the world?' He repeated himself, and then, because he was a bright kid, never confused like his father by the sheer amorphousness of everything, he supplied his own answer: 'Is it killing yourself?'

  Dave Rudman, on his knees in the North London playing field, looked south to where his son is banged up … He wept and clawed at the grass. He salaamed, head-butting the ground. Fuck you, earth . . . and the blow stove in the roof of a vault full of nastiness. I was in their garden … in their fucking garden … I buried it in their garden … that mad fucking rant … Why did I do it? Why? It put me eleven fucking grand out of pocket, that's why I'm skint – that's why I can't pay Cohen, that's why I'm mushing every fucking hour of the day …

  'What's the baddest thing in the world, Dad?' Dave imagined six-year-old Carl sitting cross-legged by the mess his father had made, picking up a lolly stick and dabbling it in the mud.