The Book of Dave (32 page)

'I tell you, Fucker, I HAVEN'T HEARD!' The stripper reared away from him.

'Not so loud, son,' Fucker took Dave gently by the scruff as a heavy in a black Harrington unbuckled his meaty arms and came
towards them. 'No bovver, mate,' said Fucker, fending him off. 'We wuz leavin' anyway.'

In the street – which was the brooding clash of Hackney Road and Old Street – they leaned against each other like discarded
milk crates. A tramp came striding by, his certain tread and modern backpack contradicting his boots, which were
shot to shit…
uppers and soles with no heels or toes. 'What, then?' Dave burped. 'What about Phil?'

''E …'e …' Fucker gasped it out: ''E only went and topped 'imself.'

In the minicab Fucker elaborated. 'Like me, Phil couldn't make the payments. 'E did a runner, posted the keys in the door
an' took off. But 'ere's a fing.' Fucker's two ham hands held Dave's shoulder. 'They caught up wiv 'im. Skip tracers, they
call 'em, you surface they track you down. Dirty fucking work. Dirty. Finance company were gonna take the cab offa 'im, so
he went to a shark. Shark upped the vig, sent round the chaps, didn't get Phil – found 'is girl, Lottie.'

'Don't know her.'
How could I? Haven't seen Phil in five years . .
.
Never will now …

'They roughed 'er up pretty bad, she's a straight-goer azitappens, nurse or sumfing. Anyway Phil blamed 'imself big time –
fought of offing the shark, got a shooter inall – but in the end 'e did the business on 'imself.'

'With the gun?'
For some reason it matters
…

''No, 'ung 'imself.' Fucker stared out through gems of rain towards the river and beyond it the Greenwich peninsula. 'Oi, mate,'
he said addressing the bullet head of the driver, 'you should've taken the first turn down Westferry, you've gone all round
the fucking 'ouses.'

'Pliz?' Thick lips parted in the rearview mirror.

'Oh, it don't matta … it don't fucking matta … I tell you, Tufty, it's the dog I feel sorry for, the poor little fing
was stuck wiv 'is body for free days, see the bird 'ad fucked off… trauma an' vat … When they found Phil the dog 'ad
gnawed 'is legs just to survive.'

The cab pulled into the kerb and Fucker levered himself out. 'Dog, dogs,' he was muttering, 'funny that, 'coz we're on the
Isle of bloody Dogs and goin' t'see some.' Dave paid the minicab, while his friend continued, 'Not that they are, really.
Seriously, my Carol is a good little sort – '

'But a brass, right? No offence – '

'None taken. Yeah, she's a brass, but it's not like that wiv me an' 'er, it's more of a friendship, mostly we don' even shag,
we juss 'ave a little cuddle.'

'A cuddle?' Dave couldn't help but laugh.

'Nah, nah, don' get me wrong, Tufty, thass not what's lined up fer you, there's free of 'em working 'ere, all nice girls,
cummon nah.' With artful dabs Fucker guided Dave towards the house, which was a bog-standard Millwall semi. Further south
were the pseudo-warehouses stacked with apartments, while up towards Limehouse No. 1 Canada Square towered over the now purely
ornamental docks. Yet here Millwall remained, a low-rise grid of ordinary aspiration.

The three girls sat round a muted telly rolling joints and drinking Diet Coke. In their catalogue peignoirs and mail-order
harem pants they looked like teenagers playing at being tarts. However, there was nothing playful about Carol – a brunette
as tall as Dave, with rigid hair and blurred features, who rose up from the sofa and bore Fucker off to another room. Soon
enough Dave could hear her
creating, which leaves me with
Yasmin, to whom he'd been introduced and who now rose up as well.
Jesus! She's a big girl, you don't get
many of 'em to the pound . .
. The schoolboy joked because the man felt disgusted with himself– and disgusted by her.
Goods Way in the
80s
…
recession tarts
…
The other lads would 'ave 'em in the back .
. .
get a polish, then drive 'em to their dealers
…
I never did, though
… It seemed much worse because she was Asian. The crow hair, the bluey-brown shadows under her eyes,
the sortuv sideburns those Pakki
birds have.
Perversely, he felt concerned for her disgrace.
Can't be
any going back up north now
…
not after this …
Faisal popped up, admonishing them both with a stiff finger.
Allah Akbar .
. .

All those ice-cream scoops of brown flesh
…
I can't touch 'em
… Yasmin seemed to have no such reservations. She escorted Dave upstairs to a room where damp carpet off-cuts surrounded
an avocado Jacuzzi. 'Tek yer things off, loov, an' 'op in, ahl give yer oondercarriage a good old soapin',' she sung-said,
while sliding from the harem pants to reveal the grim webbing of a suspender belt.

'It… it wasn't… what I – '

'C'mon, loov, don't be shy like.' Yasmin propped one huge haunch on the rim of the Jacuzzi and dabbled the flub-a-dub-dub
of the water with electric-blue talons. 'Wassermatter, don'choo fancy me?' Dave recoiled …
I don't fancy you at all
…
I can't do this .
. .
Rubbed by her
…
Rubbed by someone you don't wanna rub in return
…
like a .
. .
like a bloody shmeiss ponce!

He couldn't find a cab until he was back up by Westferry Road. 'You're lucky, my son.' The driver wore a Hawaiian shirt decorated
with the Miami skyline. 'That dahn there, thass bandit cuntry. You don't wanna be dahn there before sun-up.' His saviour had
more
fucking rabbit than Watership Down
and went on and on about football: Platt, Juventus, Spurs' chances in the new season. Dave moved to the tip-down seat and
stared at the cabbie's shirt so that one city supplanted the other. The tide of booze and speed was subsiding; in its wake
were mudflats of gloopy wakefulness.

In Gospel Oak he turned the key and admitted himself to Michelle's face.

'It's your granddad … it's Benny …' She didn't need to say any more – Dave sobbed, heaved, then buckled. She caught
him in the sternum with her sharp little shoulder. He lurched upstairs to the bathroom, with her close behind. He tore open
his own crazy face and fumbled in the potted pathos of the family medicaments – Calpol, Milk of Magnesia, Rennies, Band-Aids
– for the ancient Valium he knew was there. Then he burrowed into her hollow and finally, with the analgesic sounds of Carl
waking in his ears, and a mouthful of chalk, Dave Rudman slept.

Dave drove his mother and father from East Finchley. His sister, Samantha, tipped up from Golders Green in a dark green Jaguar
XJS. Michelle stayed at home in Gospel Oak with Carl. Noel was in Aberystwyth refusing his medication. Annette Rudman resolutely
refused to grieve. Dave wondered if her hatred of cabbing alone could be responsible – or was there some other more vital
failure that she perceived in both her father and her eldest son?

A hack rabbi retained by the cemetery brayed Kaddish in the chilly prayer hall. When he stepped away from the podium, Aunt
Gladys came swishing up in a stiff billow of black nylon. Dave was grateful to her – even if she disturbed the piss-poor congregation
with her purple-bound book, there was at least passion in her reading: 'O 'ow grate the goodness of our God, oo prepareff
a way fer our escape from this awful monster; yea, that monster, deff an' 'ell, which I call the deff of the body, an' also
the deff of the spirit.' Later, as they sat scraping chopped liver from paper plates in the front room of the house on Heath
View, he thanked her. Benny's former colleagues nattered, salad cream smudging their moustaches, but they talked more about
the roadworks on the North Circular than they did about him.

Benny's death changed Dave the way a father's should, for, like so many families, the Rudmans were wrongly geared, the slow
maturation of this generation and the speedy ageing of the last leaving them out of sync. In his grief Dave saw clearly the
beauty of his son and the massive forbearance of his wife. He apologized, he curbed his resentment – he did what was necessary
to save the marriage for the next few years, so that when it failed it could do so spectacularly. They let go of the bovine
au pair. Dave dropped her at Euston and off she clopped on pointy hoofs, fresh meat for an unsavoury boyfriend in Droitwich.

Carl became Dave's main fare. It made sense: Michelle was earning four times what he could.
Leave on left Fitzjohn's Avenue
…
Comply Finchley Road … Comply Avenue Road … Left Adelaide Road
…
Dave drove Carl to swimming pools where they squirmed in the urinary waters.
Leave on left Kensington Gore … Right Queen's
Gate
…
Left Cromwell Road.
He drove the kid to museums, where they goggled at animatronic dinosaurs. He drove him to playground after playground after
playground, where they swung and slid and see-sawed. Boarding the roundabout, Dave pushed it with one foot on the rubberized
surround – 'eek-eek, eek-eek, eek-eek', building up speed until the little boy was screaming with intoxication. Feeling his
blood pound in his temples, Dave leaned back and watched as the clouds overhead revolved on the axis that was him.

Yes, he was at the centre of it all, and the Knowledge was Dave's Kaddish for his grandfather as well as his son's birthright.
It named the God of the city, and prayed that His Kingdom be established, a New London, run by run, point by point. 'I'm sorry
for your loss,' people said, but how could Benny Cohen, of all people, have got lost? It was inconceivable to Dave that even
when dead his granddad would be disorientated.

In the dark of winter Dave succumbed to depression, a winding down, the numb indifference of a mind that couldn't stumble
… to … the … next … thought. Each morning the comb had a full head of hair, while this
dumb slaphead
looked back at Dave from the mirror. 'Get out,' Michelle urged him. 'Go do something anything. See your mates, get pissed
– I don't care.' Yet Dave couldn't; instead he watched TV, or hobbled up Fleet Road to Two Worlds, where he sat reading the
Daily Express
while Faisal dished up curry. Every week or so Aunt Gladys called: 'Come dahn the Tabbanakcle wiv me,' she urged. 'It'll make
you feel better.' Eventually, to get her off his back, he did.

He picked her up in Leytonstone early on a wintry Sunday morning, and they drove across town to South Kensington with the
Fairway's wipers sucking bits of road from the aqueous city. Gladys sat bolt upright in the middle of the rear seat – she
wanted to go back twice to check that the cats were alright, but Dave wouldn't let her. He must have passed the Mormon Tabernacle
a thousand times or more since he got his badge – Exhibition Road was on the tourist loop – but he'd never noticed its elegant
golden spire or smooth stone facade.

They were late and the service had begun, so they stood waiting in a vestibule decorated with a panorama of Mormon life. A
Nordic baby was born and raised. He studied, married, was gifted with his own baby. The family grew as the Mormon did construction
work, then more work – now white collar. In old age the snowy-haired Saint, fulfilled, instructed a granddaughter, before
dying a peaceful death on white pillows. The soft hands of a sky god reached down to gather him up. The Mormon go-round was
lived out in a city of wide boulevards and spacious, modern dwellings. The Mormon Knowledge was a simple grid pattern, while
beyond the 'burbs green hills rose to bluey mountains. Heaven was a ski resort in the Rockies.