The Book of Dave (49 page)

Dave was up and down to Colindale several times. Winterbottom, quite rightly, thought him crazy – so Dave had to put down
a three-grand deposit. He had to pick the metal for the plates that would be pages, he had to select the rings to bind them.
He had to correct the proofs himself – and supervise the presses – because no one, repeat NO ONE was to have sight of the copy.
'A one-off like this,' Winterbottom remarked, 'the cost is fee-numb-in-awl. Phenomenal. Sure you don't wanta 'ave us do ten
or twenty more – it'll cost yer the same?' But Dave Rudman wanted one – there had to be ONLY ONE. Then, when it was done and
he'd taken delivery, he handed the cheque over for the balance and took the film from the press, the computer discs from the
setting machine, and any other evidence there was of The Book's production. He found a providential skip, poured petrol on
this stuff, flicked a match, got in the motor and drove away.

Michelle considered it nothing short of a miracle that the three of them were managing to get on this well. Granted, the peculiar
situation put
stresses on all of us and allowances have to be made for
Carl.
Still, Beech House ticked over, and she revelled in the keeping of its moneyed beat. Redecorating was under way, and Michelle
had taken a leave of absence from work. In her heart-of-hearts, where ambition was stilled, she knew she wasn't going back.
Standing in the bay, at the ebony windowpane, looking out over rain-lacquered gardens at the lap of land that cuddled Hampstead,
Michelle could see nothing much besides the questing fingers of TV aerials scratching the rushing night sky.

Behind her in the high-ceilinged rooms, a new reality was taking shape. Carl was up in his computerized crack house, bossing
his 'hos'; Cal was taking a bath. A stately pine dominated the drawing room, a heap of boxes contrived by the Harrods specialist
gift-wrapping service spread out beneath its shaggy, sagging limbs.
It's
a lie … another fucking lie … Until they know which one of them is
the boy's father, it's just another fucking lie …
Michelle's head was reflected in the glass – a shapeless pile.
At the flat in Fulham
…
I had those mirrored doors on the fitted cupboards
…
I used to watch
blokes make love to me in them
…
Then with Dave crammed in beside
me I watched my belly swell. I woke in the middle of the night
…
the
night before we were married … I started shaking
…
I could see a figure
in the dark … evil coming off it. I turned to Dave and he was awake
already – he'd seen it too. He put on the light – it was only a shapeless
pile of clothes on a chair. We both calmed down, then I said, 'We're
making a big mistake, you know.' And he said, 'I know.' It was mad, but
we were closer – we felt closer then than we did the whole next day.
What's that, then – knowing you're making a big mistake but doing it
anyway … a conspiracy?

'Cal!' Michelle shouted. 'There's someone in the garden!' She already knew who this someone was. Cal came running from the
bath, spattering bergamot bubbles and slip-sliding on the newly laid marble of the grandiose hall. In the garden Dave turned
towards her cry. A flap of curtain was open, and buttery light spread across builders' rubble – barley-sugar twists of reinforced-steel
in a fudge of old London bricks and mortar.
Smoked salmon scraps from
Greenspan's the deli… A Danish pastry ring and the News of the Screws
…
Dad shitting out his hangover in the bog … Sunday morning in the
'burbs
… He fled.

They saw him as he scattered along Beech Row. They saw him, Cal and Michelle, standing on the front step of their seven-figure
lifestyle, and Michelle shook her red head and said, 'Poor Dave, what's he doing? Where's he going to?' Cal put a bare, wet
arm around her shoulders.

He was going to the day, because he couldn't hide in the nighttime any longer. The darkness was where he'd done it – the darkness
was where they might find him. So he fled into the day, through the curtain of drizzle and into the chicane at the bottom
of Park Lane, where Achilles was back up on his plinth, fending off the hair-styling wand of the Hilton with his black shield.

13

New London

MAR 524 AD

From where Carl stood by the wheel, he could see all of the
Trophy Room,
this floating wooden island that had been his home for the past three blobs. Tyga was in his cage on the foredeck, the mate
was at the wheel. Antonë Böm stood at the bow, his plump hands thrust in his drawstring jeans, his threadbare robes lashed
by the stiff breeze. His mirror caught the foglight dancing upon the waves, while tucked beneath his arm was his leather-bound
copy of the Book.

The gaffer of the
Trophy Room
had accepted Böm's story without questioning. Stalkers and their butterboys were common enough in the further dominions of
King David. Besides, the queer let drop the names of powerful connections in London, and as for the monstrous brindled beast
they had with them, the gaffer consented to take it aboard – such freaks fetched a pretty price in the Smoke. It would pay
these lowly Drivers' passage to the capital.

The Plateists of Bril had not cavilled at Antonë and Carl's decision
–
theirs was a society founded not on coercion but on liberty of conscience. The travellers rested and waited for Tyga's wounds
to heal; then, furnished with fresh provisions, they were rowed out into the sea lanes in one of the Plateists' pedalos. Although
this craft was far larger than the Hack of Ham's, it still seemed a mere cockleshell bobbing on the waves when the
Trophy Room
came beating up the main of Cot under full sail.

The
Trophy Room,
Carl thought, was a vessel such as the giantess might have ridden in. It creaked and groaned with constant life, it stank
of tar, hempen rope and its spicy cargo of fags and booze from the far south, beeswax from Ex and even a few tanks of moto
oil freshly loaded at Wyc. Below decks rats scuttled and the alien chavs blubbered with their clipped tongues. There was more
irony attached to the
Trophy Room's
rigging alone than Carl had seen before in his entire life. The gaffer wore a golden cap embroidered with the arms of his
getter, and held the course of the ferry by eye and memory, with little recourse to his traficmaster.

The coast of Cot was a panorama that unrolled alongside the ferry. Bëthan semis stood in the hedged fields, their white plaster
and black beams sharp against the tawny ground. After the
Trophy
Room
had made the northern cape of Cot, these isolated buildings were succeeded by small manors, which clumped together into bigger
and bigger settlements. Here the semis were of brick and crete – some of them two storeys high. The Shelters were magnificent;
great green halls capable of holding a hundred fares at intercom. On their roofs stood wheel vanes, and the loud chimes that
rang out from their slatted speakers carried over the waters.

Having crossed the sound between Cot and Durbi, the
Trophy
Room
anchored off Nott to trade. Carl was astonished by Nott Bouncy Castle – and refused for a while to believe that it could be
of human construction, rather than a curiously shaped stack. When the crowds piled out from the Bouncy Castle's gates, then
came churning in their pedalos across the harbour to the ferry, Carl took refuge with Tyga, snuggling down in his comforting
flesh folds. The gaffer threw a tarp over them. While the Nott blokes bargained with the gaffer, Antonë Böm remained below
deck, scratching away at his notebooks in the tiny cabin.

The
Trophy Room
lay off Blackheath under a dipped headlight. The Port of London Authority pedalo came out to the ferry with a pilot. They
were to proceed upriver at first tariff and berth in St Katharine's Dock. The pedalo returned to the city carrying lettuce
from the gaffer to his getter in Lombard Street, and from Antonë Böm to the Lawyer of Blunt at Somerset House, his fuckoffgaff
in the Strand.

Neither Antonë nor Carl could sleep that night. They assembled their few, pathetic belongings over and over again, packing
and repacking their changingbags.

– You know, Carl, Antonë said, speaking softly, the gaffer will only take one payment from us for our passage and that payment
alone. He has made it clear that if we do not give him this – this thing, he will hand us over to the harbour master as soon
as the ferry docks.

-I, I understand, Carl replied, tears flowing down his cheeks. He went up on deck. The headlight was a silvery sliver, the
dashboard a smear of illumination.

– Paw Tyga. Carl stroked the moto's salty jowls and spoke in comforting Mokni: Iss onlë 4 a lyttul wyl, yeah, an Eyem shor
ve gaffa ul lúkarfta U.

Tyga regarded him with tiny trusting eyes. But Eyeth wuwwyed abaht U, Cawl, he lisped. Eyeth wuwwyed abaht U.

The foglamp came on in a screen demisted, and revealed the great earthen rampart of the Emtwenny5. A large, flat-bottomed
pedalo came alongside the
Trophy Room,
its crew of Taffy chavs pedalling furiously. The pilot was still in his cabin, so Carl coaxed Tyga into the cargo sling, and
he was swung over the side of the ferry and winched down into the well of the smaller vessel. Carl could hardly bear to look
at poor Tyga. He thought of all the dangers they'd endured on the journey from Ham, and how at every opportunity the moto
had placed his own life at the service of his young gaffer. Now he was being abandoned, almost certainly to a fate even worse
than that of his rank.

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 making 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.