The Book of Dave (42 page)

In those first years of exile Böm set himself to compile a description of Ham; he included its flora, fauna and topography,
as well as the customs, language and beliefs of its inhabitants. This he set down in the bound notebooks he had brought with
him from London. Each night he scratched long into the third tariff by the dim lectric, his biro casting a wavering shadow
on the roughly rendered walls of his little semi. It was, thus, to begin with an isolated life – yet he did not find it so.
For he was already accustomed to being alone with his secret mummyself.

Being recognized as queer, Böm was free to take his meals with either the mummies or the daddies and was not required to observe
the Breakup strictly. Nevertheless, for some time he was circumspect in his intercourse with the Hamsterwomen, until an incident
that occurred in the buddout of his third year on Ham brought home to him that excessive caution was unnecessary.

He was out walking with old Effi Dévúsh. Together they strolled through the wind-tossed boughs of Kenwud and along the spit
to the feature known as the Mutha's grave. Here they stood, staring out through the dead heads of the blisterweed, towards
the islet, a perfect little tumulus capped by an ingrown copse of pines. Their flat clusters of needles were angled away from
the spray in a series of bafflers, their trunks twisted into a strangulated knot. Even at this early season the underbrush
was dense. Shil B cummin rahnd ve mahntin ven she cums, Effie rapped. Shil B cummin rahnd ve mahntin ven she cums. Shil B
cummin rahnd ve mahntin, cummin rahnd ve mahntin, cummin rahnd ve mahntin ven she cums. Böm was surreptitiously noting down
this old rap of the Mutha. The emaciated rapper and her podgy amanuensis were so lost in the haunting air, the sough of the
breeze and the vista of heaving waves marching into the distance that they failed to hear the Driver coming up behind them.
He spoke – his words sharp and hectoring – and, as Effi whirled to confront him, a lock of her lank, white hair caught the
Driver in the face.

He screamed and clawed at his own flesh. Heedless of the blisterweed, he charged straight into the lagoon and plunged his
head beneath the water. You touch you – me touch never! he cried. Effi screamed as well and covered her face with her cloakyfing, yet Böm was torn between horror and hilarity; for it had dawned
on him that the Driver was not merely careful – as any Driver must be – to avoid contact with a mummy, but terrified to the
point of revulsion. The black crow was now dipping his head in a frenzy, the seawater flowing in glaucous cords from his beard
and hair.

Eventually, while Effi faded into the woodland, Böm carefully negotiated the blisterweed, waded into the shallows and assisted
the Driver back to the shore. The incident was never spoken of again, and this became part of the compact between them: the
Driver confined himself still more to the Shelter, to leading the dads and lads in the calling over, to his interference in
their Council; while Böm was free to wander the island and commune with the Hamsterwomen.

Effi Dévúsh had borne the brunt of the community's displeasure after the Geezer was deposed. Her grandson, Carl, was the last
infant she had been allowed to anoint. Although she still acted as knee woman, as she grew older her skills – which had only
ever been rudimentary – became unequal to the task. Apprenticed surgeon or not, of their own accord the Hamsterwomen would
never have let Böm be present at a birth. It was he who heard Bella Funch's cries when her baby was being born breech. He
ran full tilt into the mummies' gaff where she lay. Eye can elp! he cried. Bleev me, pleez, Eye no wot 2 dú! He did – he eased,
coaxed, manipulated and finally yanked the bloody mite into the world. Then he stitched Bella up with neat loops of moto sinew,
before applying a poultice of curried Sphagnum. She survived – and so did the baby.

It took Böm several more years to gain the mummies' trust, and when he did, he mostly regretted it, for it made a torture
garden of his imagined Arcadia. When Böm had arrived, he'd thought the island an idyllic place, for, despite its minatory
Driver, Ham was far enough from London for the grip of the PCO to be slack. He understood now that the palisade of blisterweed
that guarded the little island wreathed the minds of the Hamsters as well. Böm had seen the bruises and welts on the mummies,
their scratched faces and wrists twisted into floppy uselessness. No dad or lad ever spoke of such things – it was as if they
could not even recognize that it was they who had done them.

Even so, as the full truth began to come out in dribs and drabs – little gushes of pained recollection – it was only as he had
sadly suspected. The beatings and rapes, the dads queuing up to take young opares just changed over, the casual clouts and
blows – the dark, mummy-hating underbelly of Dävinanity that Antonë Böm could now recall in the whimpers of his own mummy,
as she lay on her sofabed, recúperaytin – as she put it – after another visit from Antonë's own dad.

So Caff poured all the love she had into Carl. She snuck into the woods and found him out with Gorj. Lifting the little boy
down from the moto's neck, she would then spend whole tariffs with him, walking and talking, reminding him of who the mummies
were – that they were not mere chavs, leased to them by Dave in order to do the daddies' bidding, but feeling, hurting fares.
Caff told Carl he should never forget his own mummy when the motorage came upon him, and the daddies urged him on, and the
young opares cowered in the byres.

When Carl was seven, the summer when Changeover became irrevocable, and for half of every blob he would have to be with the
daddies, Caff told him the truth concerning his real dad. Ee woz a grayt dad, she said to the boy, ee spoak wiv Dave an Dave
toal im 2 stop alluv vis malarkë, vis mummityme an daddityme, vis Chaynjova. U muss nevah ferget í, nevah. Ear tayk vese.
She gave him a necklace of Daveworks that he could hang beneath his T-shirt, special talismans to remind him of the unity
of mummies and daddies, before their painful division by the PCO.

For the first two years that Carl sat at Böm's feet there was only this, monotonous repetition. Then, when Carl's younger
stepbrothers joined the class, Böm split them all into two groups. Henceforth the little ones were quizzed on their Knowledge,
while Carl and his mates were taught its application. Böm had A2ZS, drawn up by the PCO, which showed New London in all its
growing magnificence.

The city the Book described was a perfect circle nineteen clicks across. Every street and most of the significant buildings
had been ordained by Dave. Since the Book's discovery by the founding dad of the House of Dave, in the London burb known as
Hampstead, court Drivers had laboured to interpret its dävine plan for the city. As each run was deciphered by these phonicists,
so it was laid out. Once surveyed, the principal points were built and occupied, many by the Drivers themselves. In these
newly founded Knowledge schools the learned queers debated and refined their understanding of the Book, thus ensuring that
yet more buildings might be erected.

There were those sceptics who maintained that New London was not only incomplete but quite wrong. That its winding, muddy
lanes and narrow, cluttered alleys bore no more relation to the city of Dave than a child's drawing to what it depicts. Worse,
that the buildings themselves were mean travesties, unfit to bear the names of the mighty edifices Dave had inscribed on the
irony plates of the Book. Still more critical voices noted how it was that as the PCO had grown and grown over the centuries,
London – and beyond it Ing – became increasingly burdened by a religious bureaucracy the sole industry of which was its own
perpetuation. However, these voices were stifled by the Doctrines and Covenants of the Book: the exactions of the Breakup
and the Changeover, which kept the Inglanders riven inside, and so unable to conceive of any purpose beyond the fulfilment
of Dave's prophecies.

Besides, who could gainsay the phenomenal growth and burgeoning prosperity of London, and beyond it of all Ing? In the centuries
since the discovery of the Book, the vision it presented of a heavenly world of marvels that might be built here, on earth,
had acted as a fruitful stimulus to the Inglanders, allowing them to resurrect the glories of past civilizations with apparent
ease, and thus outstrip the haphazard advances of other nations. The Jocks, the Taffies, even the Swizz confederacy far across
the sea – all remained mired in barbarism, while in Ing the people were subject to the rule of law. Now, when Inglish privateers
encountered the longpedalos of the Nords or the ferries of the Franks on the high seas, the foreigners hove to and made tribute.
Could there be any doubt that the dävidic line was dävinely ordained to rule Ing – and beyond it the known world?

The Driver of Ham and many others thought not. These zealots tended to a far stricter and more literal reading of the Book;
for them its description of New London was of a city that stood outside time and was never to be built by mere chellish daddies.
They pointed to the topographical dissimilarity between the London of King Dave and the New London of the Knowledge. They
muttered also about the excesses of the court, where Changeover and Breakup were poorly observed – mummies and daddies openly
consorting with one another in the pleasure gardens of Green Park and St James's. They spoke through the intercom and asked
Dave for a new wave of Dävinanity to sweep across the land. As yet, these fundamentalist Davists had made no open breach with
the PCO; instead they sought the remoter regions of the King's realm for their missionary work, places where their rigour
and zeal had much toyism to contend with.

None of this had troubled Carl Dévúsh, a young lad marooned at the outermost periphery of the dominion; until, that is, Antonë
Böm began his more speculative instruction. The lads had committed to memory the Knowledge, the Letter to the Lost Boy and
the Doctrines and Covenants. Nevertheless, the complete Holding of the Knowledge required a fare to be not merely conversant
in all elements of the Book but capable of interrelating them. This necessitated the so-called Hypotheticals – rhetorical
replies to questions that called upon fares to conceive of what Dave Himself would do in a given situation.

Antonë Böm excelled in the posing of Hypotheticals. He would stand by the ceremonial urn at the end of the Shelter and sling
them out to the lads seated at the Driver's table: You're driving up Park Lane and you see a prospective fare struggling over
the crash barrier. What do you do? What do you think? Name the points, tell me the run? There would be a surly silence, interrupted
only by the irritating noise of scrubby hands scratching tousled heads. Then, invariably, it would be Carl Dévúsh who answered:
Sloo ve cab ovah 2 ve rì an syd an C if eel mayk í, guv.