by Will Self
Dave Rudman and Cal Devenish – two men sharing the same cab. Cal sat on one of the tip-down seats, and they caromed along the road of life separated by only a few centimetres of foam rubber, vinyl and steel. They were idiotic twins, conjoined in ignorance of each other. 'Snip-snip'. Cal had cut out his conscience as the surgeon snipped his vas deferens – while Dave Rudman forgot his dates. Yet their denials were but tributaries of a far mightier river of masculine unknowing.
Where was Carl? He was upstairs in his hated, modular study-bedroom. He knew his parents thought he was out – and he delighted in allowing their ignorance to shade into anxiety. Except he didn't think of Michelle and Cal as his parents – only 'that fucker' and 'that cunt', the words lubricated by hatred. Carl was upstairs with a Benson & Hedges stuck under his downy top lip and a rolled gold Dunhill lighter – purloined from Cal's desk – in his downy hand. He lit up while striking a defiant pose in front of the mirror, then swished back the curtains and eased up the sash window.
Caught in the searchlight, caught as if he were an escapee from the nick, one arm thrown across his eyes, the other brandishing an entrenching tool. Caught bang to rights. Dave looked up and saw a neotenous head and a cigarette falling towards him end over end. While Carl saw some chav or fucking pikey … a shambolic, middle-aged fatso … trying to nick the fucking patio! A pathetic thief who had his mouth wide open yet couldn't scream. In the red cave Carl saw the wet root of his tongue uselessly gargling. He didn't recognize the man – but he knew who he was. Carl cried out, 'Dad! Dad! There's a beastly man in the back garden!' Even as he taunted one man and conferred a title on the other, he thought, Beastly beastly? Where the fuck does that come from?
They held Dave Rudman overnight at the police station on Rosslyn Hill. The cell he sat in was only a few hundred feet from Heath Hospital, but Dave was in no mood to ponder such narrative circularity, the centrifugal striving of the individual against the widening gyre of history. The magistrate, however, understood Dave and history, although, having his record laid out on the bench in front of her, she viewed it in a different light. While the non-molestation orders that had been imposed on Michelle Brodie's ex-husband may have lapsed, here was the original source material: the violence in the marriage, the breaching of previous orders, the assault in the restaurant, the psychiatric treatment. So it was only reasonable for the magistrate to assume that the victims of this obvious thug would be looking for a charge of criminal trespass, perhaps even – given that he had gone equipped with a mattock – malicious damage and intent to wound?
When Dave was eventually bailed, there was someone on hand with the same intent. 'What the fuck was that for?!' he exclaimed, rubbing his smarting cheek.
'What was it for?!' Phyllis screeched. 'What was it for? It was for being an irresponsible fucking wanker!' Her wiry curls sparked with anger as she prodded Dave down the wheelchair access ramp for the Highgate Magistrates Court. What must we look like? he thought. Fat old boiler duffing up a bald old git of a drunk … She confronted him on the pavement, her accent flattening into Essex as it did battle with the artics booming past within inches of them. 'Djew fink you ain't got no responsibilities any more – issatit? Izzit?' He shook his head. ' 'Cause if that's the way you feel you can piss off – and I mean it. There's Carl, there's Steve and there's … well,' she hesitated, 'well … there's me.'
'Carl?' He didn't mean to provoke her – he was genuinely incredulous. 'Carl? He doesn't even know who I am – I haven't seen him properly in years.'
Phyllis sighed, her exasperation was so profound – it was heavier than the hill they stood upon. Then she was calm again. She took a ball of tissues from the pocket of her denim skirt and screwed it into her eyes, one after the other. 'Let's go and get a cuppa,' she said, taking his arm, 'then you can tell me what the hell you thought you were up to. Somebody needs to do something about this whole balls-up, David, and that somebody isn't you.'
Fucker Finch was wearing a floor-length, dirty grey shift, and there were manacles on both his chubby wrists, from which dangled chinking lengths of chain. When Dave came into the empty bar, he was sitting at one of the round glass-topped tables, fiddling with a headache-pill dispenser shaped like a mobile phone. It was late morning, and the whole ground floor of the Charing Cross Hotel – half a French chateau hammered on to the facade of the station – reeked of furniture polish. Contract cleaners in nylon tabards were whipping the carpeting with the flexes of their vacuum cleaners.
'What's all this about?' Dave asked without any preamble.
'This?' Fucker held up the pill phone. 'Iss fer Nuro-whatsit, Nurofen.'
'No, not that, the cloakything.' He took a fold of Fucker's shift between his thumb and forefinger. 'Lovely bit of shmatte by the way.'
Fucker gave a mordant shrug. 'Iss burghers, today, we're mennabee burghers today.'
'Burgers? Whaddya mean?'
'Burghers, Tufty, the Burghers of Calais, there's a statchew of 'em in that park by Parliament. Plan was fer us to dress up like 'em and chain ourselves to it.'
'Isn't that a bit low level for your mob? I mean, the old Bill'll cut you off that in seconds.'
'Yeah, I know what you mean, mate' – Fucker necked a couple of Nurofen with a swallow of lager – 'but we gotta take whatever opportunities present themselves – thass what Barry says. There's a debate in the Commons today what affects all us single dads, an' they'll 'ave every 'igh fing fer miles under surveillance. Me, I get a buzz ahtuv the 'igh ups. Far as I'm concerned – the 'igher the better. When I'm up there it's a big fucking buzz – better than sex, better than charley. I feel, y'know, alive.'
Dave consulted his watch. 'So when you heading over, then? It's gone eleven thirty.'
'Nah, y'don't geddit.' Fucker shook his rubber face. 'I'm surplus to requirements, I am. I pitches up wiv me robe an' manacles an' it only turns out they've got six other fucking burghers in hand already. So 'e mugs me off, don't he.'
'Y'know Fucker – Gary,' Dave spoke as softly and reasonably as he could, 'you want to be careful with that lot, Higginbottom in particular. It could all come on top – you know what he's like.'
Fucker snorted, 'Yeah, yeah, I know what 'e's bloody like. I tellya, Tufty, it's like poetry watching him do all that telly stuff – 'e's got more front than Brighton. I swear, I sometimes fink 'e's 'aving a bubble wiv 'em, 'cause 'e ain't like that wiv me, 'e's juss an ordinary geezer.'
'He's using you, Gary – '
'Oh, yeah? Well, maybe that's the way I want it, it's all up wiv me, Tufty, all I got left is this an' it's a matter of prints-supple – thass wot it is, a matter of prints-supple. Even if I never get to see the kids regular again, least I'll 'ave made me point.'
Dave tried another tack. 'What're you doing for money, then, Gary?'
'Gelt? I'm fucked, mate – I 'ad to let the begging box go. Weren't no point in 'anging on to it anyway – I bin nicked so many times this year they was bound to take me badge.'
'Did you sell it?' Dave asked, thinking of his own old Fairway underneath the arches off Vallance Road.
'Sell it!' Fucker guffawed. 'Nah, I didn't bloody well sell it, my old man was renting it for me on the half-flat, donchew remember? Fing is' – he leaned forward conspiratorially – 'I borrowed a couple of grand on it before I let it go, so now I've gotta give the old manor a bit of a wide.' Fucker swerved his manacles across the table.
From deep inside the station came the mammoth door chimes that precede an announcement; here, at the very epicentre of the Knowledge, a hefty realization was requesting admission. 'They're looking for you, Gary,' Dave confided, 'couple of Turks, heavy mob, they've been round at Ali Baba's – Mo thought they were after me, but it's you they want, innit?'
'I dunno, mate – don't fucking care neever. 'Ow they gonna find me anyway? I'm kipping in a fucking bail hostel over Vauxhall. Barry sees me right for a few quid, an' whenever I go out' – he gave his manacles a shake – 'I'm always in disguise!'
Michelle wonde
red if the woman standing on the doorstep of Beech House was wearing a disguise, because she had the oddest costume on. Whoever she was, she appeared to have carefully selected her clothes with the aim of maximizing what a dumpy figure she had. She wore a short white denim jacket and a long white denim skirt that fell to the ground in a series of distinct tiers, each defined by a tufted cotton ruff. The ensemble was completed by a white denim cloche hat, which crushed her abundant black curls down about her kabuki face, and a white denim shoulder bag as shapeless as a cloud.
Under the bulging blue eyes of this stocky apparition Michelle felt highly conscious of her own Tunturi-turned legs, sheathed in silk and knee-high suede; her own piquant face, made tasty with sweet creams and savoury exfoliants. She was about to lie 'Can I help you?' when the funny little woman came straight to the point of everything. 'You must be Michelle.' Her voice was common yet clear and confident. 'I'm Phyllis Vance – Dave's girlfriend.' Michelle was deeply shocked. She had no idea that Phyllis, or any Phyllis-type person, existed. Social acuity had never been Michelle Brodie's thing: she had lived her adult life with her gaze at an upward angle; behind and below her lay Cath, Ron, Dave and what she now perceived as the inner-city slum of her marriage, cobbled alleys full of barefoot kids with rickets, fat boilers like Phyllis hanging out laundry to soil in the smutty air.
Phyllis was not remotely intimidated by Beech House or its mistress. She knew women like Michelle only too well – had she desired it, she might have gone that way herself. Every day in Choufleur she stuffed them full of macerated okra and aubergine. From her steamy kitchen she could hear their clipped tongues snipping at their lettuce as they commiserated with one another about their enslavement to Dr Atkins. The only mystery, so far as Phyllis was concerned, was what conceivable reason – save for sheer, mucky moral turpitude – Michelle could have had for being with Dave Rudman. They had the house to themselves – the sunlit drawing room jaggy with taupe swags and eau-de-Nil ruches. To Phyllis's surprise Michelle told her it all. When the penitent is ready the confessor appears, and Phyllis, in her denim surplice, with her unthreatening mass and risible make-up, made Michelle feel very safely superior. She began by conceding that: 'The letter I wrote to Dave, well, it wasn't … it wasn't about anything much but me really. I couldn't – I didn't…' Then 'snip-snip', she managed to cut away at the sack of lies and out spilled the seedy truth: she had been weak, she had been vain, she had been self-deceiving to begin with – but then a far greater deceiver. 'By the time I could admit to myself the truth that Carl wasn't Dave's at all, well…' The arms race was on, the hateful escalation of elbow-dig and low blow. Now Phyllis understood not only how far down her lover had been – but the extent to which he'd raised himself up. 'He's changed, love,' she explained to Michelle, 'believe me, he has.'
They had a light, bitter lunch of cottage cheese and chicory leaves in the kitchen, and Michelle opened a bottle of Chablis. The view of the tilting garden with its heavy decking levered up incredible news. 'He wrote a book? I can't believe it.' Believe she must, for, as Phyllis explained, despite all the madness surrounding its composition, this was still a true expression of Dave's love for Carl – a love he still felt. 'That's what that idiot was doing in your garden,' said Phyllis, waving a bit of Ryvita. 'He thought he oughta dig it up, get rid of it. He's worried it's gonna be found. Not now – maybe not for ages, but when it is it'll screw Carl up. Apparently' – she shook her head in amazement – 'it's full of the craziest shit.'
By the time Phyllis left for her evening shift in Covent Garden they'd reached an understanding. 'I know this must be very hard for Dave,' Michelle said, 'but Carl still doesn't want to see him. To be – to be honest…' And why the hell not? … 'he doesn't want to see me or Cal either. He – he's got a lot of stuff to work through, and I don't think there's any way we can help him. I don't think he even thinks of any of us as … mummies or daddies.'
Cal Devenish got home in time to hear one end of a telephone conversation. On the other end was a Detective Sergeant based at Rosslyn Hill. 'No,' Michelle was saying with winey emphasis, 'no, we have no wish to press any charges at all – we want them dropped, all dropped.' Cal dropped his briefcase on the hall floor and walked towards his partner. 'No,' she went on, 'none of us is prepared to make witness statements, or appear in court should the CPS decide to prosecute. I don't think I'm making myself clear here – we want the charges dropped, he wasn't trying to steal anything, HE WAS TRYING TO GET IT BACK!'
It had taken ages for them to get over to Basildon from Chipping Ongar, the bus trundling from estate to village as they worked their way across the Essex badlands. Steve didn't seem to mind – but then he didn't seem to have a mind. He'd had another course of ECT in hospital. The shrink had said, 'It might jolt him back to life,' as if the depressed young man were one of Dr Frankenstein's faulty automata. Instead it had jolted him deeper into catatonia.
Now Phyllis's son sat keeled over on the rubber bench, the cotton dag tails of his frayed jeans sopping up the water on the floor. From without came the reverberating yelps of child bathers. 'C'mon,' Dave said, 'I'll help you into your trunks.' He'd chosen a family changing cubicle for this reason. He let down the wall-mounted nappy-changing table so he could lay Steve's clothes in its plastic depression. Steve wasn't entirely catatonic – he uttered sighs and coughed negatives – the bits of conversation that weren't words. Whatever position Dave placed him in he remained there. He was emaciated – his collarbone so pronounced it could have been grasped like a handle – and the presumptuous dreadlocks he'd sported at Heath Hospital were gone, leaving behind a nubby, scarred scalp.
Dave held and even stroked Steve's pitiful thighs, as he coaxed first one foot and then the other into zooty surfer's trunks. Then he led the ill young man through the footbath to the pool area and conducted him down into the chlorine broth. Outside the undulating windows that swam the length of the pool Dave could see a shopping arcade with ordinary life going on in it: pensioners pushed by wheeled baskets, seagulls scrapping over the yellowy rinds of white bread, a young mother struggling with the harness of a baby buggy. Steve fell forward into the migrainous waters, and Dave, panicking, lunged for him and held him up from beneath his belly. Steve's feet kicked out into Dave's nylon crotch, and the first words he'd spoken all morning blurted out: 'I'm swimming!' he spluttered, 'I'm swimming!' Dave Rudman began to cry and for the first time in a decade the tears weren't for himself.
It was a fortnight before Mo finally came back to Dave with an offer: five grand. Although it was almost half what Dave could have got if he had taken the trouble to arrange a private sale, he accepted. He wanted rid of it and he needed the money. Once the lawyer's bills had been paid off there was fuck all left from the sale of his flat. When Dave went down to Bethnal Green to pick up the money, there was the Fairway – a stupid, bulbous creature with a radiator grin. Its engine purred, its bumper nuzzled him, it demanded affection – it wanted another twenty-odd years of creepy, interspecific cuddles. Dave was repelled.
Mo had more bad news: 'Those geezers 'ave bin by again. I told 'em what you said about Finchy, but they weren't 'aving nunnuvit. Said they didn't borrow 'im 'iz money. You pozzitiv you shouldn't be giving 'em summuv this?' Dave shook his head and took the wad of cash. It would give him a few months' respite, and pay for the three of them to take a little holiday, if, that is, Steve was up to it.
The Turks called by Dave's old flat in Agincourt Road as well. Mrs Prentice offered them a cup of tea, because they were well-spoken and she was a trusting soul. They accepted, because subterfuge was integral to their job performance and they enjoyed it in a sick way. She had nothing to tell them, though – her former neighbour had left no forwarding address.
The evenings were long at Phyllis's cottage, there was no television, and Dave found it hard to settle to any reading. It was a tiny weatherboard box cast down in the corner of a ten-acre wheat field, and hidden from the world by the dip and swell of an ancient Holloway. At daw
n, the low-angled sun revealed pod-shaped depressions left behind by some lost village in the dew-soaked stubble. A few roses clambered over the bottle-bottom glass of the windowpanes, starlings nesting in the chimney scratched and chirred.
On the weekends Steve came home he would sit at the kitchen table drawing in felt tip on rolls of shelf-lining paper. His drawings were always of elaborate demons – many-headed, multi-armed, their fur green and spiky, their eyes purplish swirls. 'Better out than in,' his mother said, 'and that goes for you too, David.'
'You what?' The cottage was quiet save for the squeak of Steve's felt tips and the 'pop-pop' of a moth caught in a lampshade. There was no way he could have misheard her.
'It's time you wrote to Carl,' she continued. 'You've got to, you have to tell him the truth about all that mad bollocks you buried in their garden.'
'What for?' he snorted. 'I mean to say, what am I gonna do with this … I dunno … this letter if I do write it? Send it him, or bury it as well?'
'Whatever,' she countered. 'That's not the point, the important thing is you can't let all that stuff you wrote when you were off your' – she checked herself – 'when you were ill to be the final word. It's bad enough that it's there at all, up on that hill, cast in bloody metal, screaming' – she made a foray into the unmapped territory of metaphor – 'screaming at the future.'
