The Book of Dave

by Will Self

  They didn't make love when Steve was at the cottage; he slept on the other side of a plaster-and-lath wall as thin as matchboard. Dave, unable to sleep, thought back to when Carl was a toddler and he, back from a night's driving, would lie in the pre-dawn grey glimmer, desperate for repose but with the road still rearing up in front of him. There would be a creak, the stolid thump of little feet coming across the landing, the insinuation of a head. Dave felt no love on these occasions, only colossal irritation at the prospect of little toenails scratching his thighs. Now, years later, a sense of loss welled up in him, sweet and cloying as honey. The child hadn't been a part of him at all – he was from another species, half human, half something else. He had been engineered only to be loved and then sacrificed, his corpse rendered down for whatever psychic balm it might provide. Eventually, Dave slept, then woke in the pre-dawn of the present, with Steve stretched out beside him on the mattress.

  He went into the village and bought three A4-sized, narrow-feint notebooks from the newsagents. They were the sort he remembered from childhood, the covers obliquely striped in shades of blue, the stripes wefted with what looked like massively magnified bits of bacteriological goo. Dave stared deep into the cover – another familiar thing that was, it transpired, altogether strange. Beside the shelves of stationery were racks of newspapers. On the cover of the Sport the gusset of a soap starlet's exposed panties was circled and enlarged; on the cover of the Daily Mail Gary Finch was being brought down from the Clifton Suspension Bridge, a distant pygmy in top hat, cravat and frock coat. His police escort made it seem he'd only succeeded in engineering another failure. Behind him a banner hung from the parapet: FIGHTING FATHERS – BUILDING RELATIONSHIPS.

  Dave and Phyl sat at the kitchen table, the notebooks in front of them on the plastic cloth. 'It's like the Knowledge,' she said. 'It's like what you've told me about when you were a Knowledge Boy – you know it's all there in your head, so you've got to call it over, don't you?' He did: he left on the right, then went into the tortuous pattern of mad DOCTRINES and madder COVENANTS. He summoned it up, the hellish DESIGN FOR LIVING he'd tried to foist on his LOST BOY. Each lunatic run across the mental metropolis was pulled out of him and coiled on the table to be picked over by the two of them, between ceaselessly refilled mugs of tea. Phyllis, in these mornings before she set out for the city, her white mask still in a pot in the bathroom, her ruddy features earnestly starred with burst blood vessels, helped Dave to recant. 'No,' she insisted, 'that's not right – you know you don't believe that, you know that's wrong. I don't care what went down between you and Michelle – you don't treat me like that, and now you've got to make things right. It doesn't matter what she did then – it's what you do now that counts.'

  A new Book took shape. As Dave trudged along the laborious biro furrows, he turned up a new EPISTLE TO THE SON, which told the lad to RESPECT MEN AND WOMEN BOTH, to strive always for RESPONSIBILITY, to understand that WE MAKE OUR OWN CHOICES IN LIFE, and that BLAMING OTHERS is not an option. Children NEED BOTH THEIR MOTHERS AND THEIR FATHERS, yet if their union does not last there should be no CONFLICT, no tug of HATE. The new Book's composition was evidence of this harmoniousness, for its true author was Phyllis quite as much as Dave. And as for the KNOWLEDGE itself– the mad bigotry of the London cabbie, his aggressive loneliness, his poisonous arrogance, his fearful racism – that too, that had to go. What profiteth a man who can call over all the POINTS and RUNS, if he still does not know where he truly is? This extraordinary document took shape in the little weatherboard cottage, while outside valetudinarian bumble bees veered across the field under a hard rain of ultraviolet rays. Although their thoughts lay in a proximate future, yet the Book became inflected with a STOICISM worthy of Roman citizens hearing the barbarians at the gate, or Sumerian scribes setting down their monumental ataraxy. Between the narrow feint the new Book whispered: the ice caps may melt, the jungles shrivel, the prairies frazzle, the family of humankind may have, at best, three or four more generations before the BREAKUP, before they find themselves sundered from the MUMMY EARTH and compelled to lie down on a crunchy sofabed of a billion animal skeletons, yet there can be no EXCUSE for not trying to DO YOUR BEST and live right. Put a BRICK IN THE CISTERN, clean the ugly smear of motor oil from beneath your TRAINERS and walk away from the city. Abandon it, lose it, let it fall from your mind, for there cannot be – not now, not ever – a new London.

  When they were done the two notebooks were filled and it was properly autumn. The harrows came chattering across the great field, tearing up the earth with their steely argument.

  15

  The Moto Slaughter

  JUN 524 AD

  The reception area was a long, sunlit corridor on the third floor of the Forecourts of Justice. Every few paces there were deep embrasures and through their windows Carl could see the workaday traffic of the Strand, its deep gorge full of bustling folk and trotting jeejees. Beyond this the high-gabled roofs of the ancient wooden gaffs tumbled down to the tangle of jetties and walkways on the quaggy bank of the Thames.

  Foglight streamed through the panes of these windows, picking out every pock and liver spot on the brief's lined sullen face. Carl was closeted with this peculiar-looking bloke in one embrasure, while, three embrasures along, Antonë and his brief – a skinny fellow with a pronounced goitre – were in deep consultation. Both briefs were imposingly attired in thick woollen tracksuits and knee-high trainers. Their cockpieces were tasselled and their formal bald wigs gave them the guise – in Carl's eyes – of granddads at the Council of Ham. This was reassuring to him – while nothing else was.

  The corridor bustled with warders, seeseeteevee men, Drivers and Inspectors. From time to time a fony would didduloodoo and a brief would hustle his client towards one of the forecourts. Carl's own brief hadn't deigned to introduce himself, merely droning, Ware2, guv, before shuffling his A4s and continuing:

  – I've been engaged by the Lawyer of Blunt to represent you … as part of your defence he has given me a petition of inquiry regarding your dad – he glanced at a sheet – Symun Dévúsh, is that correct? Carl nodded. Let me tell you right away, said the brief, at last regarding his client with weary eyes, that just as any stay-of-appearance has been denied in your case by the Chief Examiner, so I believe he will reject this petition. As I'm sure you have the wit to realize, objects in the mirror –

  – May appear larger than they are, hurrying-up Böm supplied the end of the well-known tag. Yet what need have we of caution now? I suspect the Examiner will have proofs of our guilt aplenty and no need of magnifying them. If we show any restraint it can only be with a view to furthering the interests of the Lawyer of Blunt and his claque, and at this perilous junction I fear we have diverged from their lane.

  Carl's brief spat his gum on to the crete floor but made no other response.

  A fony coming right up to them didduloodooed, and they rose and were led into the forecourt. It took a while for Carl's eyes to adjust to the gloom, and then he was gripped by awe. The forecourt was a great chamber, many metres high and lit only by a few dim letrics dangling from lengths of chain. A window set high above the Examiners' bench admitted a single beam of foglight that lanced down into the inspection pit. Here, in formal array, stood the Inspectors in their brightly coloured formal robes, some quartered scarlet and white, others striped yellow and green, still more checked like Shelter drapes. Above their bald-wigged heads mounted the bench itself, tier upon tier of elaborately coffered dark wood with platforms let into it at regular intervals, so that the wigs of the Examiners who occupied them were as the whitish blooms of a pyramidal shinynut tree.

  At the very apex of this was the Chief Examiner's seat, above which hung the shield of the dävidic line. This mighty escutcheon was party per cross in argent and gules, blazoned in the first quarter with the Cab of Dave, below it with the Rampant Wally, in the upper-right quarter with the Toyist Cab of the Lost Boy and below that with the Pink Chelle of Perfidy. Beneath this on
a carved scroll was the Royal motto: DAVE GUYD UZ.

  It was only once they had been ushered to the dock that Carl began to look around the forecourt. It was surrounded on all sides by three tiers of galleries, and within each were perhaps four or five rows of benches, all of them packed with spectators. The highest gallery to the right of the inspection pit was boxed off apart from a long, slitted grille behind which there was considerable agitation and the occasional flash of eyes. Hides, Antonë whispered, bird hides. All the luvvies will be in there, justice in New London is accorded a great spectacle. Carl was amazed to note that the queer ran a hand through his white hair and smoothed his filthy T-shirt. If justice was a spectacle, then Böm was determined to play his part to the hilt.

  As his eyes grew accustomed to the gloom, Carl began to pick out individual faces from the mass of gawpers. They were all there – every fare he'd picked up in London had done a runner on him. The gaffer of the Trophy Room; the Lawyer of Blunt and his fony Tom; Terri, the creepy old potman from the Öld Glöb; and even the grovelling warden from Bedlam. Some of the toffs from Somerset House were there – and, although he couldn't see them, Carl didn't doubt that Missus Edjez and the Luvvie Sarona would be in the hide; nor did he imagine them to be any different from the other spectators, all of whom were noisily chewing gum, taking swigs from evian bottles and craning forward to point out this or that to their neighbours.

  Geddup! Stannup! the court fony cried out. The hubbub died away, and the entire assembly rose as the Chief Examiner swept through a door at the back of the forecourt. Carl was shocked by how young he was – a thick blond fringe of hair escaped from beneath his bald wig. He wore a long robe of three distinct tiers – the breast was red, the waist orange, the trailing skirts green – the panels separated by cotton ruffs. As the fony assisted him to mount the steep ladder to the top of the bench, Carl noted the Chief Examiner's smooth skin and tip-tilted nose. The forecourt was cool in contrast with the hot, dusty streets outside; yet, despite this, sweat wormed from beneath the Chief Examiner's bald wig and formed shiny patches on his exposed neck.

  At last, settled on his bench, the Chief Examiner called the forecourt to order:

  – Where to, guv? His voice was deep and strong – it reached to every corner despite his back being turned.

  – To New London! the Examiners, Inspectors, briefs, fonies, spectators – and even the accused – all bellowed back.

  With that the trial of Antonë Böm and Carl Dévúsh for the most grievous flying began.

  For the first tariff Carl did his best to concentrate on what was happening; yet, by the end of the second, despite the mortal importance of the proceedings, his mind began to wander – wander back to Ham. Antonë had said this would be a toyist trial, that they were naught save plastic figures played with by the Law. In truth, Carl found it difficult to conceive of how any trial conducted in London could be anything besides toyist, given the empty rituals practised by briefs, Inspectors and Examiners. Some speeches had to be made in Arpee, others in Mokni; some depositions could only be read in the Examiners' mirrors, others might be directly perused. On frequent occasions the Inspectors and briefs were required to mount the bench and confer with one or another Examiner on matters of procedure. The Chief Examiner had a fony on hand whose express function was to mop the sweat from his bonce with a mansize; despite this it was necessary for the forecourt to rise at least three times each tariff so that he could retire and change his T-shirt. The sweat, Antonë whispered, must be lashing off him.

  The first day of the trial had a carnival atmosphere; the spectators never stopped their chattering and rustling. If Carl made the mistake of meeting the gaze of someone he recognized in the galleries, they wouldn't hesitate to call out to him. With each successive day the crowd thinned out, while the smoke from the letrics grew darker and denser, for as was customary their moto oil was not changed. Soots floated down into the inspection pit, and a deepening and ominous silence welled up, as, with their audience departed, the forecourt officials began to hiss their obscurantism in sibilant legalese.

  At the end of each day the accused were taken from the forecourt, chained and bundled into a sweatbox, which was then drawn with much lurching and crashing along Cheapside to the Tower. Through the barred hatch Carl saw down the narrow alleys that wound into the rookeries. Here, bowlegged Dfishunt kids played on the mucky cobbles, while fat boilers hung their laundry out in the smutty atmosphere. Squalid as the scene was, Carl still wished he might be one of their number – that he'd never grown out of the Changeover. He bitterly recalled the thrill of his first car journey in London, how the easy progress of the Lawyer of Blunt's limmo had, for a time, smoothed out his life's bumpy course.

  At night, in the Tower, Carl and Antonë huddled together in the soiled straw of a stall they shared with twenty or more other prisoners. Despite the terrifying human dregs who sprawled about them, Antonë continued to exhibit a most phlegmatic disposition, and endeavoured to instruct Carl on the finer points of each day's proceedings:

  – Don't listen to what the briefs or Inspectors say, he stressed, watch instead the way they move about the forecourt. The Law is the very engine of Dave's cab. Here the secular and sacred aspects of the Knowledge gear one into the other, each functionary is a part of that engine, his robe patterned so as to resemble cog, wheel and alternator. In their revolutions from inspection pit to bench is to be seen the drive shaft of the Knowledge, which extends from the Forecourts of Justice into the city, the burbs and even the sticks beyond.

  The Tower was not a place that either Antonë or Carl could have survived in for long. Its population had swelled mightily in the years since Symun was held there, and the continual skirmishing on the far borders of Ing added Taffies and Scots to the burgeoning numbers of cockney crims. No matter whether they were captives or offenders, most of these dads were given only the most cursory of legal examinations before being snipped, chained and sent off in gangs to be chavs on lawyerly estates in the sticks.

  On their arrival in the Tower, Antonë had expected provision to have been made for them by the Lawyer of Blunt – however, there was none. Instead their London finery was stripped from their backs in front of the laughing warders. The following morning they had to attend forecourt in the dirty T-shirts and cut-off jeans offered to them by the lowliest of their fellows. On returning late in the third tariff, they were close to despair, having failed even to wrest a pannikin of oatie from the mêlée, when a new protector made himself known. He was foxy-faced and ginger-haired; his teeth were blackened and snaggled. Terri the potman from the Öl Glöb extended his squamous hand to them.

  Carl didn't know which was more shocking: that this bloke, whom he'd seen in the forecourt gallery that first tariff, was now within the Tower, or that the other inmates, who had been harassing them, fell back as Terri came forward, bowing low to him, and near pressing their faces into the dust of the yard. Seeing the state they were in, Terri went first to one of the little stalls where the wealthier prisoners snacked and bought them some takeaway. As they snaffled this down, both Antonë and Carl fired questions at the potman: How did he get here? Who was he? Why was he prepared to help them? He refused to answer, only laid a scaly finger against his sharp nose and said, Awl in gud tym. Awl in gúd tym.

  The trial lasted a full blob, and each first tariff when the dipped headlight was still in the screen and the dashboard twinkled in the east out by the Emtwenny5, Carl, having no pot to piss in, would clamber up to the battlements, where the prisoners made void of their natural waste products. There was London spread out before him: the peaked roofs of its majestic Shelters, the lofty masts of the ferries moored in its docks and basins; the smoking chimneys and stilled wheelvanes; the flying rats swooping about the long knife edges of the mock terraces. Carl had eyes for none of this. Rather, he was transfixed by the cages hanging above Traitors' Gate; in them were dads convicted of treason – some had once been noble Lawyers, now they were torpid skeletons, the
ir yellow skin stretched drum-tight over their ribs, and scraps of cloth their only robes.

  Carl lifted his face up to the screen and called over, for despite every evidence of suffering he could not abandon the belief that Dave was above it all, wise and benevolent. He still hoped that when his own torment was ended, and he found himself witless from the wheeling, branded and his tongue snipped, he would rise up there, over the cloudy wipers, another Lost Boy gone for all eternity to be with his true dad.

  On the fifth day, at the second tariff when the Chief Examiner was back from his sixth recess, he came to consider the admissibility of the Lawyer of Blunt's petition. Until then arguments and counter-arguments had been concerned entirely with whether it might even be presented to the forecourt. Carl's brief, advancing across the inspection pit, addressed the Chief Examiner in formal Arpee:

  – Reervú', my client has been maintained in an ignorance entire of his own dad's fate. I put it to the forecourt that he cannot be held to account for any crimes he may have committed in pursuit of this Knowledge.

  There followed two full tariffs of whispering, the briefs, Inspectors and Examiners all hanging precipitately, in clusters, from the top bench. Eventually the Chief Examiner rose and boomed: – Enough! Shut it! I cannot be expected to weigh these arguments in such circumstances. I shall adjourn to my chambers, you, you, you and you follow me!

  They were gone yet another tariff, and when they filed back in Antonë guessed the answer even before the Chief Examiner regained his lofty perch:

  – No lad may be denied knowledge of his dad, he barked, and nor shall you be, Carl Dévúsh. However, your crimes are of such an extent and so singular, your flying so high and fast, that no mitigation can be allowed for them. Petition denied!