The Book of Dave

by Will Self

  At first tariff the Trophy Room weighed anchor, and, with only a mizzen sail set, she coasted gently on the flood tide into the mouth of the Thames. From the yawning gap between the piers of the Barrier a sleek, black shag came, travelling low over the riffling waves. The pilot took the wheel, the crew hung from the bare rigging, and, while the gaffer and his mates busied themselves below deck, Antonë and Carl went forward and watched as the prospect of the mighty city opened out before their eyes.

  Past the Barrier the Thames narrowed so much that Böm was able to point out the principal districts, streets and even the individual buildings of the metropolis to his young companion: the hilltop manors of Millwall and Deptford, the smoky ravines of Greenwich and Hackney. Coaches pulled by teams of ten and even twelve burgakine were rumbling along Silvertown Way in clouds of dust. The Millennium Dome rose up on the southern shore, the long arms of cranes wavered over its bellying sides. Even at this early tariff teams of chavs were swarming up ladders, carrying hods of brick and truckles of mortar, adding to the courses that coiled like a mighty rope.

  Carl could find no point of reference in this tumult; for here the trees were but buddyspike stalks rooted in the gaps between buildings, and the flocks of flying rats that wheeled about the roofs of the towering Shelters were as flies to the ordure of burger­kine. The bobbing waterfowl divided by ferry prows; the smoke streamers blowing from scores of chimneystacks on the riverbank; the turbine propellers flashing bigwatt; the hundreds of little pedalos plying from shore to shore; then, when the breeze slacked, a stench – sharp, bitter, unnatural – welled up and stung Carl's eyes.

  Antonë called over the runs that pertained to the unfolding view – but this dismayed Carl still more, for, while some of the streets were lined with semis, others were but muddy sloughs edged by yok kerbstones, with a few wooden uprights in place of gaffs yet to be built. Still more were but Holloways gouged in the earth by the passage of the multitude. Then, as the Trophy Room entered Wapping Reach and the Bermondsey Hills closed in on the southern shore, so the city began to clot, its roads tangling, its streets narrowing, the gaffs – painted bright reds, blues, greens and yellows, their gable ends resplendent with golden wheels – climbed atop each other, three, four and even five storeys high.

  Carl could now see the people – so many of them – and, as the ferry passed by the end of a street, it was as if a log had been rolled over to reveal a multitude of scuttlebugs hurrying about their business: lawds and luvvies lolling in their cabs, a pair of jeejees between the shafts; getters in rickshaws; the middling sort in minicabs; carrot-crunchers on top of coaches piled high with sacks of wheatie, veg and other comestibles. Chuggers, decaux pasters and squeegee merchants darted hither and thither in the roadway; and everywhere there were gangs of skinny urchins that, startled from their nefarious activities by a seeseeteevee man brandishing a staff, seemed to dance like midges above a puddle, before alighting once more.

  As the Trophy Room pulled under Tower Bridge and into the pool of London, Carl saw above the roofs the plunging rim of a mighty Wheel that rode over it all. The glass windows of the cars attached to this awe-inspiring contraption coruscated as if each were a miniature foglamp. It revolves once each tariff, Antonë observed, powered by the Thames. It is in the shape of the Knowledge and it can be viewed from any street in London – truly it is the very mill of the city, its orrery and engine.

  The press of ferries increased until bowsprits were passing within a hand's breadth of hulls. The pilot stood stock still at the wheel, crying out commands to which the crew responded with wiry alacrity, trimming the sails so there was but a tiny noserag of canvas straining on the mizzen. The pilot brought the ferry in unerringly, until, with a final flurry of orders, she slid into the slopping basin of St Katharine's Dock.

  Hawsers whipped from the shore and crashed on to the deck. The gangplank went down and a posse of coloured dockers scampered up it.

  – It's time we bade farewell to the gaffer, Böm said; the harbour master will come aboard soon enough.

  – Where to, guv? Carl asked. Where are we goin'?

  – A boozer in Stepney known as the Öl Glöb. From the lettuce I received this tariff when the bargees took Tyga, it would appear that my Lawyer of Blunt is disposed to assist us. We are to lie low there for at least the next blob – then he will contact us. He or his mates.

  The duo made their way through the fetid lanes beside the Clink and into the precincts of Borough Market. Stepping into Southwark Street, Böm was taken by surprise by the press of traffic. He wondered if there had always been this mad jam of van, truck, car and lorry. For in the decade he'd been away the number of vehicles on the road seemed to have doubled. A veritable river of shit and piss ran down the gutters and the foul cries of the chavs rent the air. Standard sellers and decaux pasters were abroad – and the blizzard of A4 was equally diverting to the returnee. Even in the fastness of Ham, Böm had learned of this printing explosion – the multiplication of presses throughout the cities of Ing until there was a prontaprint on every high street. Still, it was a shock to discover that the cockneys, when not engaged in abusing each other, were to be seen with their ratty features blotted out by phonics.

  Ware2, guv? the rickshaw dad snapped. He wore a dirty singlet and tight shorts. His back flesh was flayed, and he had a prodigious goitre. All his muscle was in his rigid arms, which held the shafts, and his splayed legs, which seemed to belong to some better-fed and cared-for creature. The famished eyes that met Carl's spoke of no favours received or tendered, a two-tariff day every day, fighting with elbow and knout to wrest a living from the London streets.

  The Öl Glöb, Stepney, Böm commanded him as they clambered in, and the dad reared back before throwing his entire meagre weight forward on the ball of one foot. The rickshaw lurched, teetered and rolled into the rumbling cavalcade.

  Despite all his looming fears of the city and their fate within its walls, the young Hamster was gripped by the smooth motion of the first wheeled vehicle that he had ever ridden in, and his fancy flew, seeing himself in the not-long-distant future as a mighty Lawd, drawn through the streets in his elegant limmo; a Taffy on the roof, four pairs of jeejees in the shafts and magnificently liveried fonies poised on the bumper.

  Although it took the rickshaw a long time to cross London Bridge and trundle through the City, at least they did not suffer the thousand buffets of those who went on foot. The toffs had no fear of the hugger-mugger, preceded as they were by fonies, their staffs raised to smite the riffraff, their didduloodoo cries warning that a getter, a Driver or a Lawd was approaching. What a sight these exalted personages were! The getters wore flowing pinstripe robes, the trains dragging a full metre behind them, and their lobbs were mirror-shiny.

  If this was not sufficient to dazzle the little Hamster, there were also the many likenesses of the Supreme Driver himself. Dave was everywhere. Along the span of the Bridge in niches, and occupying plinths and columns in the City, were many stone and irony statues: Dave standing, Dave sitting, Dave driving, his massive arms held out in front of him. He was depicted in His humble raiment of plain leather jacket, jeans and trainers. His cap was tilted back on his pitted forehead. On Ham there had been no such representations, save for the engraving of Dave on the tattered frontispiece of the sole copy of the Book; yet these effigies bore the same bulging, all-seeing eyes, the same full and judgemental lips, the prominent nose like the prow of a capsized pedalo.

  All along Leadenhall the gable ends of the gaffs were wooden plaques carved in the semblance of Dave's features, while below them dangled the guild signs: the twisted spine of the Chiropractors, the flaming torch of the letric lighters, the hair-styling wand of the barbers – vivid reminders that even here, in the very citadel of the PCO, the toyist still held sway. As the rickshaw jolted through Aldgate, Carl shrank down in the seat, for above the massive lintel of the gate, impaled on a palisade of spikes, were the rotting heads of traitors. He turned back and saw a kite ma
king a stately circle over the very highest buildings of the City. The bird was etched for a moment against the tetrahedral spire of the NatWest Tower before soaring still higher and disappearing into a glowing cynosure rent in the grey-brown smog.

  In the Öl Glöb the floorboards were scattered with booze-sodden rushes, and letrics burned with a guttering flame. Coming in through the door, Carl paused and sniffed the smoky interior. Moto oil, he muttered, and Antonë said, Yes, yes, you'll find it in widespread use here.

  – Oi U! the boiler behind the bar broke in. U cummin in 4 a drink, aw wot?

  The travellers proceeded along the low room and came face to face with the boiler, who had the corpulent babyish features of an old moto.

  – Um … err … I am Tonë Böm, the teacher said, and my companion is –

  Eye no, Eye no, Eyev erred awl abaht U. Eyem Missus Edjez, iz Lawdships bloke spoke wiv me, sed Ud B cummin. Cuppuluv blokes wot need 2 lay low 4 a wyl, keep ahtuv ve mirra.

  Troubled by this loose talk, Carl and Antonë cast suspicious looks at the denizens of the boozer – a slovenly company of mummies in filthy cloakyfings and tracksuits. Their faces were scooped out with want and privation – they coughed and spluttered with the chancre. There were kids playing on the floor at their feet – one little girl's head was blown up like a bladder with some foul distemper. Missus Edjez laughed, a great bosom-heaving chuckle that set all her dewlaps a-jiggling. Vem? Vem! U doan need 2 wurri abaht vem – vare awl abbsolootlë ragarsed! Cummon nah, she continued, Eyel shew U ware yaw kippin, Ule av no bovva ear at ve Glöb, no sneekë cunts from ve PeeSeeO, no seeseeteevee, nunuvit!

  The two travellers followed the garrulous old boiler up a dark winding staircase and along a warped corridor, at the end of which she showed them into a cramped garret under the eaves of the ancient gaff. Missus Edjez left them, and they set down their changingbags on a dropsical sofabed. At long last the journey, which had begun four months ago on the distant shore of Mutt Bä, was over.

  The Öl Glöb was a creaking pile of timber beams, bent laths and pitted plaster that rose up – each tilting storey seemingly wider than the next – above a base of crumbling London brick laid in queerly oblique courses. The gables were as high as the masts of the Trophy Room and intricately carved with cabs, pedalos, dogs and cats. The topsy-turvy wings of the boozer were so angled that through the diamond-patterned mullions of their garret Carl could see the stock bricks of its massive chimneystack glow gold against the tinted London screen.

  The Öl Glöb stood isolated in the strange wilderness of Stepney Green, among deeply rutted roadways lined with two-storey-high hoardings upon which had been painted crude murals of the terraces described in the Book. There were also a few points – the Royal London Hospital, Queen Mary College – likenesses of which had been daubed on to still larger hoardings. The aim of the PCO's Knowledge Boys had been to anticipate the emergent New London: shiny, three-dimensional, every facade commercially artful. The hoardings and their murals had, however, been completed in the reign of the first King David, and since that time there had been little attempt to fill in the Knowledge of this tumbledown part of the East End. Behind the wooden walls there were expanses of open ground where the ruderals grew both dense and high.

  As soon as they were settled in the Öl Glöb and Böm had ensured Carl was provided for, he began to absent himself. He left the boozer early in the first tariff and did not return until after lampoff. Carl kept to the garret during daddytime, for if he did venture downstairs Terri, the old potman, had a way of cornering him and putting to him the most disturbing and intrusive questions: Oo R U? Ware R U from? Y R U ear? Terri was foxy-faced and ginger-haired, his arms twisted and his legs bent. He leered – yet Missus Edjez dismissed Carl's concerns. Im? U doan wanna wurri abaht im, eez an ol lag, bin broak on ve Weel.

  At Changeover the mummies and kids who hung out in the bars of the ol Glöb departed and in their stead came a rough crowd. Dads who worked at the docks, cabbies and puddlers from the steelyard by the Tower. They brought their opares with them – loose girls, little more than common prostitutes, whom the drunken dads openly fondled.

  Feeling abandoned and worried, Carl eventually confronted Böm. Why did he go abroad each day? Had he forgotten their revelations on Ham? For was it not a risky business? What news was there from the Lawyer of Blunt? How long would they have to remain cooped up here? And what tried the lad most severely – what about Symun Dévúsh, what about their mission to discover the Geezer's fate? Antonë was both emollient and placatory. He soothed Carl and stroked his hair. Do not worry, I have no position or place and the city is large. I pay no moto tax nor keep any chav, while this tattered robe insulates me from prying eyes. I have been about my old haunts, and I have discovered that there are forces for change at work in London. It reminds me of the months before my exile, when your dad's followers were in the ascendant. This time the revolt against the King and the PCO is an affair of reason and thought conducted by lawds and even luvvies. It is not for us to impose ourselves on my Lawyer of Blunt – we can only hope that he will contact us.

  That night Carl dreamed of Ham. He wandered the woods and orchards beneath the moto wallows. The soft breeze filled the air with fluttering blossom, and Runti was resurrected by his side. The moto gently butted Carl's tank with his moist muzzle and slooshed terms of endearment. In sleep Carl groaned as he stroked and rubbed the bristly flanks of the one he loved.

  The Lawyer of Blunt's fony came for them the very next day, not long past first tariff. Having gobbled down his starbuck, Carl emerged from the boozer to find four pairs of jeejees, their bridles chinking as they bent their heads to crop the meagre turf. A light mizzle suffused the air, and the jeejees' coats were a sheen of moisture. Still reeling from his homesick reveries, Carl addressed the lead jeejee tenderly and insinuated his hand where its jonckheeres should have been. The jeejee snapped at him and Carl recoiled. The big fony and Antonë laughed heartily. It's not a moto, Carl, Böm said, but a mere toyist beast! Carl took a seat in the limmo, while Böm fetched their changingbags from the garret. As he climbed in, Missus Edjez and Terri, the weaselly potman, appeared at the back door. The Taffy cabbie cracked his whip, and the limmo jolted out of the yard and turned to the right, rattling along the Whitechapel Road towards the towers of the City.

  Soon, however, the limmo slowed to walking pace and joined the queue of artics lumbering in from the forbidden zones to the east of the city. These were drawn by large teams of burgerkine, and overloaded with brick, yok and irony for the ever-hungry developers who laboured by day – and when the headlight was on full beam by night as well – to raise New London. Sorrë, guv! the Taffy cried out. Vares taylbaks on ve Wessway – aw so vaysay. Traffiks jammedup cleerfroo tahn. Then, seeing a gap in the traffic heading into Houndsditch, he cracked his whip and the limmo lurched forward again.

  Mindful of his instruction Antonë pointed out to Carl the crowds clustered beside the door to the Royal Exchange waiting for the day's trading to commence. Dosh tossed down in the City, he said, the King's maxed-out credit cards bought and sold in an unseemly scrabble. He gestured towards a group of dads wearing peculiar blue robes. See them gathered there, the blokes in the odd robes? The Swizz League. All the land between here and the river is granted to them by the King. They live apart, eat their own curry, worship in their own Shelter. They have the right to trade free from the moto tax to which the Guilds are subject – their presence here in London is a sore affront to native daddies. See the screwing out they're getting from the Inglish getters. I am told that not a day passes without an affray on the floor of the 'change.

  As the limmo rattled on along Cheapside, the enormous green walls of St Paul's Shelter rose up before them, towering above the surrounding gaffs. Antonë could not forbear from pedagogy: My dear Carl, think on this, the tea urn is the biggest in the entire known world, the gingham curtains took a thousand mummies to sew, the Shelter can hold five thousand daddies at a time, it was
burned down in the reign of the first King David and then rebuilt. The meter on its roof is the largest in Ing … But Carl wasn't listening: his attention was caught by the press of Drivers who were swarming out from the elaborately carved doors. Drivers tall and short, thin and fat. All were richly caparisoned, the peaks of their caps embroidered in silver, their trainers bright white and barred with the colours of their orders. All of them bore the sign of the Wheel worked into their breasts with gold thread, and all of them were calling over. Their massed recitation broke against the gaff fronts in wave after wave of dävine incantation, carrying with it the transcendent Knowledge of the once and future city. As the Drivers moved into the packed streets, they began to move faster and faster until they were almost running. Guided by the pure radiance of their Faredar, their eyes alighted on guilty opares, backsliding daddies and uppity mummies. In their rearview were craven fares, frantically making the sign of the Wheel.

  The cabbie gave a blast on the horn and the Lawyer of Blunt's limmo parted the throng on the Strand and sped into the courtyard of Somerset House. Mechanics sprang to the jeejees' bridles. Standing at the top of a wide flight of stairs, waiting to greet them as they clambered out, was a figure at once outlandish and familiar to Antonë and Carl. She was very tall for a mummy. Her barnet was a tight and glossy helmet around her pasty white face. Her mouth was a perfect, carmine oval, and her eyes two black eyeholes. Tinfoil earrings dangled beside the taut tendons of her neck, her black nails were as long as talons, and when she parted her lips her teeth were blood-stained. Her legs were clad in woolly hose and a wispy shawl was around her shoulders.

  – W-where to, Luv? Carl uneasily saluted her.

  – To New London, she replied, then continued, So Carl Dévúsh, you are with us at last, a Hamster in the Wheel. My sister, the Luvvie Joolee, has sent me lettuce concerning you and your companion – she turned to Böm, who made obeisance. She acknowledged him then, saying, I am the Luvvie Sarona and you are welcome in Somerset House. Now follow me, for there are mummies and daddies who fain would meet with you.