The Book of Dave

by Will Self

  This queer was unmolested and unchained. He had with him a capacious changingbag and to ward off the kipper cold he wore a heavy, bubbery cloakyfing with an oilskin cape over its shoulders. Soon after he'd come aboard, the gaffer interviewed him in his cabin: Mì awdas R onlë 2 tayk U sarf 2 Wyc, ware U R 2 B landid. Eye no nuffing uv oo U R aw wot U av dun, mayt, so folla ve rools uv mì ferrë an Eyel giv U no aggro. But fukkabaht an Eyel av U, unnerstood? Antonë Böm nodded his head slowly while tugging his prematurely white beard. He assumed others must have suffered far worse fates that long night, and – while not comprehending the cause of it – appreciated his light escape.

  For the remainder of that kipper Böm remained at the Bouncy Castle of Wyc. He tutored a few of the Hack's children who were in residence, and he treated the maladies of both chavs and bondsmen as well as he was able. He knew nothing of the prisoner who languished in the dungeon beneath his feet. When buddout came, a pedalo set out from Wyc. It was a light, fast craft, pedalled by the closest and most trustworthy retainers of the Lawyer. It carried a sole passenger and set course for the last finger of land that pointed from the uninhabited island of Barn towards Ham.

  Three months later, when the days were stretching to meet the summer solstice, another far larger pedalo headed south. This vessel belonged to Mister Greaves, the Hack of Ham, and was crewed by his dads. It set course first for the Hack's semi at Stanmaw, where trade goods were to be loaded, together with the sick fares of the Shelter. For Ham was its ultimate destination, and on the narrow thwart set in the prow there hunched a plump figure, his spectacles flashing in the switched-on foglamp. The new teacher and surgeon for the Hamsters that the Driver had requested was on his way at last.

  8

  The Shmeiss Ponce

  September 1992

  The fare was lolling by the Bank of England. The dirty building, with its grooved walls and milled balustrades, was a big copper coin tossed down in the City. He beckoned lazily with an upraised finger, summoning the waiter, and Dave slewed the cab to a halt behind a van disgorging toilet paper. The fare – tall, officer class, sandy-haired, three-pieced – lounged over the road. While he slid into the back, Dave listened to the City itself. Could he hear the aftermath of the awful carnage of the day before? The final gargle as the dregs of fifteen billion pounds were sucked out of its dealing rooms? The sweat and moan of shirt-sleeved, plastic piano players pounding out the blues of ruin? No, there was only the hum of everyday urban vacuity.

  'Where to, guv?'

  'City of London School, d'you know it?' In the rearview mirror the sandy man's moist face belied his dry manner.

  'No problem.'

  'Not that… um, I'm not… I'm picking up my sons there, then we'll double back to Liverpool Street, yah?'

  'No problem.' The sandy man blotted himself out with the Standard … Would've pegged 'im as a total getter, but p'raps he's come down a few pegs … Dave almost felt like telling the sandy man how bad things were for the trade. I can't make the bloody payments, mate, can't make 'em. I've the mortgage on top of that… living whatsits … the cab costs more than just the loan as well, there's your servicing, your diesel, your bits an' bobs, I'll tell you, some days I'd do better staying at home, least I'd know how much I was down then. We're next in the bloody food chain, mate, that's a fact – you lot push the wrong button, sell short instead of long or whatever, an' it's us lot who catch it.

  When they got down to Queen Victoria Street the sandy man left his fat briefcase in the back – a repository of trust. He took Dave's time – lounging off along one of the walkways leading into the school, which was tied up to the Embankment like a redbrick cruiser. Domine dirige nos … There was time enough for Dave to read the nameplate on its immobile hull. Time enough for Dave to buff up his resentments and see them shine.

  The Fairway no longer shone. When Dave first bought the cab, he lavished his attention on it, laving it, waxing it, shammy-leathering it personally in an autosexual frenzy. It was – he thought – a cool, dark reflection of the man he was. Now it was agony to stroke and rub the black flanks of the thing he'd come to hate, so he took it into the garage where one of Ali Baba's lads gave it a loveless seeing-to.

  At the beginning of the year the cabbie had been clearing a minimum of seven hundred pounds every week. A flat fucking neves, no joke, mate, double-bloody-bubble fer Sundays … Then BCCI collapsed. Gang of fucking coke heads, it never looked like a bank to me anyway, I remember ferrying those dodgy wallahs to their gaff on the Cromwell Road, all smirk an'no bloody tips … And the unemployment figures cranked up to three million. No matter, the Tories were still back in come April, rotten bunch, half of them shtupping their secretaries, the other half on the take … Then in June Lloyd's lost two billion. Granted they were a bunch of dumb toffs – only too happy to take unlimited liability before the shit hit the propellor, but they weren't just Names to me, mate – they were fares . . . Then only last month the stock market goes fucking tits-up. Five billion off shares in a morning and the big bull needed a fucking Bic round its chops – too late, it's gone an' turned into a bear … Then Paddies all over the fucking shop in their fertilizer dump trucks. Bomb upside the NatWest Tower, Bomb in fucking Victoria Street – I blame … my wife …

  All of this is only braggadocio, confessed to the windscreen of the cab as if there were still a fare sitting on the tip seat, ear inclined to the sliding window. When it winds down, Dave is left with his diminished self: a big little balding man who's afraid to look at his own sparse brow in the rearview mirror … RE-CREATE YOUR HAIRLINE … DEVELOPED IN JAPAN – but why? I've never seen a bald Jap … NEW GENERATIONS STRAND-BY-STRAND REFUSION WITH TECHNO-FUSE CAN RE-CREATE YOUR HAIRLINE AND PROVIDE A TOTALLY NATURAL-LOOKING HEALTHY HEAD OF HAIR. TECHNO-FUSE IS INTEGRATED WITH YOUR SCALP AND THE PROCEDURE CAN BE PERFORMED OVER A PERIOD OF TIME, INVOLVES NO SURGERY AND NO ONE NEED EVER KNOW … CALL WIGMORE TRICHOLOGICAL CLINIC NOW. NOW!

  The copywriter's medicalese has become Rudman's own private thoughts, a pabulum to chew over: Good News about hair loss. Perhaps if I did it, she'd fancy me … Because it's all about him, the way Michelle turns away in the bed they still, mysteriously, share and edges to the extreme far side of the mattress, where she rolls herself into a chaste belt of duck down.

  The meter went on ticking. Christ, I'm tired … The little runt was four now, yet it was taking a long time to recover from being woken in the early hours of the morning. When Dave had been doing nights, he'd come in, then drift off, only to be yanked up again by a cry from the slumbrous woodlands. Dave had fought his way through whippy boughs of fatigue to where Carl trampled and snuffled in his cot. Dave had felt stunned as night after night snapped in two or three pieces. This, he had realized, is how soldiers feel in combat. . . It was then that the ordinary heroism of parenthood struck Dave hard in his selfish face. It was striking him still: They oughta give you a fucking medal … Maclaren buggies lined up by the Cenotaph, spunk-drunk mummies slumped over their handles, bums up to be taken again. The Prime Minister steps forward – a martial insurance clerk in his steel helmet hair – and pins decorations shaped like feeding bottles, teat-on-teat.

  The Sandy Man's lads were two versions of himself: one lanky, stretched on the rack of adolescence, a stipple of happy pimples on his outsized jaw; the other compact, chubby even, a lush blond fringe in his mooncalf eyes. The Sandy Man said, 'On to Liverpool Street, then, cabbie,' and Dave replied, 'No problem,' because he desperately wanted there to be NO PROBLEM. In the City, if there's one street knocked out by roadworks, then you're edging round for fucking hours . . . Leave on right Queen Victoria Street, forward Threadneedle Street, left Bishopsgate . . . Dave was convinced this was a mid-week dad: the Sandy Man was too eager to ask questions about new teachers and forms, to pick up on the quick rhythms of lives irretrievably lost for him, the paradiddle of young hearts. How does it feel, Dave wanted to ask him, to be like a nonce, dragging these kids off to yourpervy cottage in the sticks For One N
ight Only?

  Liverpool Street was a massive bollix of renovation and construction. The Victorian facade was being torn off, a new one of silky granite slipped on. Inside, a transept of baguette stalls and knicker booths was being laid across the end of the platforms. In the old Victoria Station there were whole wheeling flocks of scabby pigeons, everything was smoky and sooty, iron pillars shooting up into dingy glass ceiling… Dad used to take me down to the Cartoon Cinema … Left me in there while he went into the hotel next door for a few shorts . . .

  To get to the set-down Dave had to wrestle the cab down temporary passageways of scaffolding and tarpaulin, humping over rubber sills. The Sandy Man had his twenty out long before they'd stopped. He folded it into a strip that he twined between his clever fingers, then poked the origami earnings at Dave. Funny the way people handle money, playing with it, touching it up … wouldn't do it with any other thing … 'Ain't you got anything smaller, guv?'

  'Sorry – but no.' The Sandy Man took his change and the three of them disappeared into the clatter of the station. Fucking wanker-little tossers . . . He'd forgotten to tip. Once Dave ranked up, he had a long wait for another fare in the diesel-stinking darkness. He recognized a few faces looming in nearby windows from infrequent trips to cab shelters, or snaffled lunches at the Cafe Europa in King's Cross but no one he wanted to talk to. They'd only wanta moan some … Moan-fucking-moan . . . Magic Tree air fresheners dangled from their rearview mirrors. All these big blokes, lost in a tiny bloody forest… Dave thought of Benny, his granddad. I really oughta go and see him.

  CLARINS AT HARVEY NICHOLS pulls Michelle up short. SKINCARE CENTRE. FACE, BUST, BODY AND SUN. TRAINED THERAPISTS. Yeah, right … Five stormy years of marriage have given her a piratical internal monologue; she stands on the tilting deck of her consciousness wielding a tongue like a cutlass. Trained bloody slags is more like it. In from Bromley and Selhurst, Traceys and Shawns without an idea in their tiny minds except Darren's cock and she-said he-said … DETOXIFYING FACIAL AND HAND TREATMENT. Still, I have to admit that sounds good.

  Michelle stopped scanning the Standard to look at the scumbled junction of Kentish Town Road and Leighton Road: the neo-Gothic horror of the Assembly Rooms pub, and a daft pavilion with glass roof and cast-iron stanchions beneath which dossers lolled like filthy pashas. Carl was slumped beside her eyeing an apricot. 'C'mon, love,' Michelle said, 'it's nice, it's like a sweetie.' The four-year-old bit into it with frank dubiety, his pretty, freckled features – hers really – screwed up in distaste. 'Iss gusting,' he said and spat. REFRESHING CUP OF HERBAL TEA. If I don't get out of this shit … She levered the sticky yellow blob off Carl's T-shirt and popped it in her own mouth … I'm gonna do something stupid. DELICIOUS FRUIT COCKTAIL.

  In the two and a half days a week Michelle looked after her son she tried to make sure Carl had a balanced diet – plenty of fruit, no fizzy drinks, green vegetables, brown bread. She had kept abreast of debates about immunization. She had campaigned for the right nursery-school place. It was ironic that now it wasn't quite so bad between her and Dave she felt like leaving more than ever.

  When we were first married, it was alright. I was touched … by him … They bought the house on Kingsford Street in Gospel Oak. At National Childbirth Trust classes, held by a woman called Sarona in her endless living room up on the heights of Hampstead, Michelle didn't only learn how to breathe, she found out how to be a different woman. Dave couldn't partner me, he was working all hours … But Sarona did. She had perfect style . . . beautiful deportment… black trousers, hammered silver jewellery . . . nothing vulgar … wispy shawls … that very aquiline Persian nose … I didn't even know what aquiline meant before that … When I went back to work again I had 'it', at last, a … seriousness … a poise … having a kid helped … I was grateful to Dave for-for the whole set-up. It doesn't mean they don't put you down or stare at your tits, but once you're a mum their moves are … slower, more obvious, sadder.

  The 214 bus shushed to a halt and caught by surprise she dragged Carl on board and paid the fare, snagged the child and collapsed into a seat as the bus thrummed on up Highgate Road. The funfair motion made the little boy laugh, and she cupped his cheek. 'You're gorgeous,' Michelle said. 'My gorgeous – my Gorj.' But then, looking down, Michelle saw that her floral-print skirt had ridden up over the miserable spectacle of razor nicks and stubble on the same leg. GLAMOROUS EVENING MAKE-UP.

  It didn't seem to me … I thought I'd suffered enough … I could never stand Dave's ham-fisted touch unless I was drunk . . . and when … I … It… He … He'd always said he'd had … the snip … reasonable doubt, isn't that what lawyers call it? I should've told him … Dave … told them both … but I'd made a commitment, hadn't I? Besides he was off his fucking rocker by then, booze, charley, Godnosewot . . . what would've been the point? Four completely unhappy people instead of two? BEAUTY FLASH BALM FOR EVENING'S ENJOYMENT.

  She doesn't know her arse from her elbow … Her Hackney from her fucking Ealing… She's lived in London all her bloody life and if the tube packed up, the buses stopped running, and there wasn't a cab driver to take her there, she wouldn't know how to get home from work … not a clue. No Knowledge whatsoever … She went into the hospital in the morning…in daylight… Made it more clinical… Maybe it would've been … more … brung us closer … if it'd been dark . . . Crushed up in the smoky cabin, Dave lit another filter tip. He grimaced, remembering the jerky shuffle he'd danced with his groaning wife across the swirly linoleum of the delivery room.

  The done thing for an eager dad was to hearken to the New Arrival. In the event there wasn't room for Dave in the tangle of tubes and the jive of trained hands. Michelle's face was blanched with fatigue, flattened by agony, all her features wrenched to one side, like those of a skate or a turbot. She was that remote from him, Dave thought, deep under the womanly sea. When, at the crucial moment, he did head down to where scratchy brown paper towels were spread ready, he found the gash and the gush – then these other features twisting to confront him. Fucker Finch had said, 'Iss uncanny, yeah, but you'll recognize 'em from the off. Thass what iss bin like wiv awluv mine. I fought "Oh, so iss you issit…"' But Dave didn't recognize this miraculous, shiny fruit at all; it had fallen from a strange tree.

  To be fair, Dave Rudman didn't have any paradigm for the birth of a child. He tried to talk to his father in the final fetid days when Michelle's bump pushed him from the house. 'I was at Tadcaster the day you were born,' Paul remarked, dabbing transcriptase on his pint glass with his wet bottom lip.

  'Why?' Dave was nonplussed. 'Did you have some slots up there?'

  'No, don't be daft, there was a good card that day, your mother wouldn't've wanted me within a mile of the hospital – she didn't for Sam or Noel neither. I phoned, checked everything was shipshape, then I scooped a monkey on the last two. Reverse forecast – you were a lucky little chap when it come to the gee-gees.'

  Fathers – they were always absent, while houses – they endure. Put upon by plaster, MDF and emulsion; ground down by sanders and drills; fiddled with by plumbers and electricians – they come through it all that much more robust. Like so many others, Dave and Michelle had placed their faith in a house: it would be their repository of trust and belief. Dave did his bit and his rewards were fettuccine and salmon bakes, the occasional glass of white wine, a limp hand job on a Saturday morning.

  Yet the strange thing was that the more Dave painted, hammered and wired, the more the finished thing was hers – all hers. Michelle had the capacity to psychically invest laminated surfaces, tiles and even the very tiny screws that pinioned towel rings to kitchen units. When she was at home, she was in the house, in every part of it, while he always felt like a lodger.

  Strolling up to the ironmonger's at Southend Green, intent on track lighting, Dave noticed an Indian takeaway. The sign over the open door read: PIZZA WORLD AND CURRY WORLD – TWO WORLDS IN ONE. Peering inside, he was taken aback – Faisal, with whom he'd been at s
chool in Woodside Park, was bustling about behind the counter. The nerdy boy who'd set out to become a doctor was sporting collar-length hair, thick sideburns and stained Kameeze. He was sowing the raw dough with rough-cut red peppers and whistling.

  They hadn't been friends, and Faisal was wary. Dave was surprised to see him running this ghee shop – and said so. Hadn't he wanted to be a doctor? The other man muttered about family. Death. Duties. After that, whenever it got too tense at home, or the cloacal intensity of it drove him out – mother, mother-in-law, baby, three big hands competing to wipe one small bottom – Dave snuck to Two Worlds, where, on a wonky round table strewn with yellowing tabloids, he ate whatever Faisal set before him. Slowly the two men relaxed into a friendship – an unfocused closeness, as if they were sitting side by side on a riverbank and fishing as a pretext for intimacy.

  Dave assumed his new friend was as godless as himself, yet within days of beginning to patronize Two Worlds, he found Faisal on his knees between the two chiller cabinets, making obeisance towards the Holloway Road. Given the glacial pace of male confidence, it took another two years for Dave to discover that Faisal was not simply on nodding terms with the Koran, but a highly advanced believer in the literal truth of the ancient text. As Dave munched his way through Desert Storm, the proprietor of Two Worlds enlightened him as to the totality of his own submission: it was all in the Koran, right down to diagrams of the microcircuitry in each and every warhead. 'You don't really believe that, do you?' Dave twitted him.