The Book of Dave (51 page)
Authors: Will Self
At the mention of the Geezer there was a great commotion. The toffs all fell to their knees and a confused babel arose from
them, part calling over, part pleas addressed directly to Dave, exhorting him to tear his eyes from the mirror and confront
them. Two of their number â a gawky mummy in a purple skirt and a daddy wearing an eyepatch â were thrust into the centre
of this ecstatic circle. The others joined hands and began to chant: Don't breakup! Don't breakup! Don't breakup! Carl looked
from ghostly visage to cockpiece, from brandished Daveworks to mouths flecked with spittle. His dazed eyes slid to the arched
windows of the chamber, and through the distorting glass he could see a rainbow shimmering against the muddy clouds. Don't
breakup! Don't breakup! Don't breakup! the mummies and daddies continued, working themselves into a frenzy. It was all too
overwhelming for the peasant lad, and at last he did faint quite away.
Carl recovered consciousness in a sumptuous chamber, lying in a high hard sofabed on strangely chilly white material. A shapeless
covering lay over him, upon which was the sign of the Wheel. In the pool of light thrown by a tall letric sat Antonë Böm,
scratching away at his notebook. Carl lay for a while, staring up at a painted ceiling that depicted Dave in his flowing robes,
composing the Book in golden letters. Carl was at once oppressively aware of these opulent surroundings â and curiously divorced
from them. He was miserably uncomfortable â he longed for the prick of straw and even the nip of the bug. He wanted to be
where he was a lad to every dad, where he wasn't a stranger or an oddity.
â W-wot â wot woz awl vat abaht, ven? Dön braykup an vat?
At the sound of Carl's voice, Antonë looked up. Arpee, Carl, Arpee at all times, Antonë reminded him, then continued, And
that, ahem, little ceremonial was conducted because Danëel and Karen Brooke have been caught cohabiting by the Lord Chancellor's
Department, yes indeed. Naturally, the Blunts' sect has been under surveillance by trained mediators for many years now â
ever since Luvvie Blunt was exiled for the same crime. Böm sighed heavily. These hoorays, Carl, they speak of the Geezer as
if it were his calling over that led them into such practices, when the truth is that posh mummies and daddies have always
shacked up with each other, daddies even as they left the very Shelter itself, going straight to the mummies of their children,
children they freely acknowledged as their own. No, no, it is only since the dävidic line assumed control of the PCO that
the writ of State and Shelter have become one, and that the King's political allies have sought to dignify their suppressions
with dävine doctrine.
Yet upon whom does this weigh most heavily? Böm rose and began to pace back and forth, pontificating in a manner that so vividly
recalled to Carl the days of his childhood, far away in the Shelter at Ham, that he could not prevent himself from smiling.
I will tell you upon whom, the poor, the cockneys and the peasants, the Taffies and the Scots â even the chavs, who are mere
property to be bought and sold, are subject to the rigours of Breakup and Changeover. I have no cause to disparage my Lawd
or Luvvie â they have been our protectors â still, when I see these foppish fellows smiting their perfumed brows and crying out
how they are overawed by the tragic vision of the Lost Boy, abroad on the Heath and at the mercy of Nature's savagery . .
. well, I confess, lad â I do not know what to think. No, no, indeed I don't.
Carl drifted back to sleep, and when he awoke again the next tariff, the chamber was full of bigwatt foglight. Böm had already
risen and was dressed in the tight jeans, frogged T-shirt and full-skirted leather carcoat of a Hack. Come on, come on, he
cried, get up, lad, The cabbie has already brought the limmo from the garages, we hardly have time to bolt starbuck before
we must be gone for our sightseeing tour. Your threads are over there, he added as an afterthought, indicating a pile set
atop a pair of high-topped trainers that were broken at the ankle.
With his top lip scraped raw by a bic and his hair smarmed back under a cap, Carl felt like a little ponce. Antonë, however,
assured him he looked the part. What part? Carl asked, and his mentor explained: From now on I am a Hack who holds a mortgage
on one of the Blunts' estates, my name is Barrë Iggynbumme, you are my son and your moniker is Sam.
The Taffy was at the reins of the limmo team; he lashed at the jeejees, and as they swept out of the courtyard two fonies
leaped on to the rear bumper. From their flub-a-dub-dub through the back window, Carl assumed they were chavs rather than
bondsmen. He wanted to ask Antonë about them but the marvellous sights outside the limmo soon captured his attention.
The limmo rollicked along Whitehall and clattered between the precincts of the Royal Palace. Wide courtyards opened out on
each side of the roadway. In one of these Carl saw rope-dancers and fire-eaters performing for the amusement of a posse of young
dads in screen-blue robes. The King's EyeBeeEms, Böm saw fit to inform him. These striplings are brought into his service
to keep the Exchequer's tallies and manage the coinage. Then, between two wings of the Palace, Carl saw a beautiful garden,
bursting with unusual blooms arranged in cunning patterns and low walkways overarched with clipped shrubbery. Along one of
these sylvan aisles he espied laughing luvvies, tottering along on the highest of heels and accompanied by fools cutting capers
and opares wheeling maclarens.
The Palace was so large as to defy comprehension â it spread along the river bank in a thick moraine of yok, crete and London
brick. This behemoth building was pierced by a myriad windows and hung about with numerous, precarious wooden staircases. Its
sweeping roofs were speared by a forest of smoking chimneys and seeseeteevee masts, while everywhere Carl looked, flapping
from high poles, was the King's standard, the golden Wheel folding, then stretching to proclaim the motto of the dävidic line:
DAYV GUYD UZ.
On they rolled, into the boggy water meadows beyond Westminster and through the pretty little riverside manors of Millbank
and Pimlico. It wasn't until the limmo slowed to a crawl and the cabbie asked them all to climb out and walk, for the King's
Road was too steep and too muddy for them to haul up, that Carl emerged from his reverie. There were other cars being drawn
up the rutted roadway, while their posh passengers trailed along behind, gingerly lifting their trainers to avoid piles of
horse shit and other ordure.
As they joined this workaday cavalcade, Carl asked Antonë:
â What sight is it, exactly, that we're going to see?
Böm was abstracted. Why, we have come here to see this, of course.
They had gained the heights of Chelsea and, looking back, Carl could apprehend for the first time the whole lazy bend of the
Thames as it swept through the city. On the far back were the hilltop manors of Kennington and Battersea, while below them
and to the east London spread out: a carpet of tiled roofs, pierced by dense thickets of smoking chimneys and redbrick towers.
Here and there were golden domes â which to the lad's eyes had the aspect of giant shrooms. With the black bugs of motos trundling
through the streets and the flocks of flying rats, crows and ringnecks circling, London seemed Ham-like to Carl, an island
of urbanity in the windswept burbs.
The following day Carl Dévúsh awoke to discover that the mist had blown in off the burbs during the third tariff and mingled
with the sulphurous smoke of the city's thousands of fires to engender a thick particular. This lay as heavy as crete over
the malodorous river. The masts of luggers, barges and wherries disappeared into it, while the wargaffs lining the south bank
emerged from it wavering and insubstantial â as if they were but a temporary solidification of the smog and it was the more
durable element. The brackish reek of the river water and the richer pong of London's effluvia seeped into the Lawyer of Blunt's
fuckoffgaff, and, despite the best efforts of the chavs and poles â who darted hither and thither strewing incense on the
fires â the elegant chambers stank as the meanest hovel.
Idle, with time heavy on his hands, and no tank for the rich curry or strange takeaway the Luvvie Sarona pressed upon him,
Carl wandered the galleries and halls. He tried to imagine the Hamsters here in London â genial, squat, broad-faced Fukka
Funch striding bow-legged among the crowds on the Strand; or his stepdad Fred Ridmun's lanky length poling a pedalo over the
colloidal waters of the Thames. It was impossible, though: like the buildings on the far bank, the Hamstermen wavered and
dissolved into the smog. They had no place in this ant heap; they could never adjust to this rigid hierarchy of chavs, bondsmen
and commoners â which mounted up to the Inspectorate and the King himself. The Hamstermen would have wanted to sit down and
discuss it all at great length over booze and fags â and there was no time for that. No time at all.
At first tariff the following day the foglamp was once again bigwatt in a clear screen. The Luvvie Sarona was in the front
hall when Carl came down, her changingbag packed, her opares fussing about. It's Changeover, she explained to the lad, and
I will be off in the limmo to my brother-in-law's estate in the sticks, while he will return here before third tariff. Dave
be with you, lad, I understand that your teacher has a diverting day planned for you!
It was indeed a diverting day â although not in a pleasant way. As soon as they turned out of the ornate gates of Somerset
House, with their lawyerly escutcheons and wrought irony spikes, they found themselves in the thick of an hysterical crowd.
The Strand was packed with children, opares and mummies, all of them bent under changingbags, all of them attempting to secure
the available transport. Cabbies, rickshaw dads, the fonies who had charge of vans and artics â all were bargaining with the
desperate mummies in a most savage fashion. Carl saw one huge pikey tear the dosh from a mummy's hand, then bodily throw her
and her children on top of his coach, where ten or so other unfortunates were already sprawled.
The keening of the mummies and kids as they were pushed and shoved contrasted grotesquely with the set faces of the few daddies
who were abroad, hurrying about their business, and the seeseeÂteevee men who leered down from their watchtowers. The kiddies
must all be changed over and their mummies off the streets before the beginning of the second tariff, Antonë explained; after
that the PCO begins to make arrests. Thousands of gaffs are searched every Changeover day. No parent can escape them.
They gained Trafalgar Square, and here the commotion was even greater, for crowds of mummies and children were being forced
up on to the steps of Dave's column â forced by a tight wedge of running dads who were spilling from the mouth of Whitehall.
And if the PCO doesn't get them, Antonë said ruefully, then the mob will. The daddies all wore long black T-shirts, their
faces were twisted by venom, their mouths gaped, their trainers stamped, they struck out with their fists to the left and
right, smiting mummies and kids both. Fukk ve SeeEssA! Fukk ve SeeEssA! they were chanting.
Böm hustled Carl down Northumberland Avenue away from the riot. These dads' groups, he sighed, they are always angry. Their
grievances against the Child Support Agency and the Lawd Justice's Department are entirely unreasonable â deranged even. They
have no love for child, dad or Dave â yet the King and the PCO, rather than suppressing them, prefer to use them after the
fashion of a cat's paw, to strike terror into the populace. Come on, my son, come on â he took Carl by the arm â make sure
your cockpiece is prominent, without it you still have the aspect of a boy, and if you were taken for a kiddie ⦠He did
not complete the ghastly thought, and, while Carl hearkened to him, as they made their escape across the Golden Jubilee Bridge
and on to the Southbank, it was not anxiety that he was filled with but a feeling he could not identify, a queasy yet not
unpleasant sensation â which had been triggered by a single word from his mentor's plump lips: son.
The pair sauntered along the Southbank and skirting the dävine precincts of the Wheel itself, headed across Victory Gardens
and past Waterloo Station. By the time they reached Bedlam, which was the object of their promenade, the crowds had altogether
died away, and, save for the occasional hurrying mummy dragging a squealing child, the rutted tracks and rubble-strewn boulevards
were almost empty. However, on the steps of this monumental building â the elongated dome of which towered above the mean
semis and tumbledown boozers â awaited a posse of lawds and luvvies.
They treat the spectacle of these unfortunates, Antonë explained, somewhat after the fashion of an entertainment. Here are
confined lunatics, prodigies and even freaks â all alike and in the most insalubrious conditions. While nominally a charitable
foundation, set up by worthy dävines, there is also a hard getter instinct here enshrined, for the warden of the asylum is
permitted to run Bedlam as a paying concern. So saying, Böm dropped a coin into the palm of a grovelling fony who bowed, scraped
and admitted them.
Antonë and Carl soon detached themselves from the toffs, who were led on ahead by the warden; instead they sauntered along
a cavernous wing, beneath a barrel-vaulted ceiling. To each side irony bars formed a dense palisade, and behind them the maddads
rocked and raved. They were filthy, they stank of shit and piss. Seeing expectant faces on the far side of the bars, these
pitiable figures came shuffling through the rotten straw and addressed Carl with a babble of broken Mokni gibberish: Ware2,
guv, ware2! Eye ad vat geezer in ve bakkuv ve cab. Nah, nah iss no bovva an vat⦠Many of them think they are Dave, Antonë
observed, and call over after the fashion of Drivers. In my own youth there was only one madgaff in all of London, yet now
I am told there are several, and still more are being erected upon the burbs.
They had reached the wing allocated to the mummies â and, if this were possible, these fares were in a still more wretched
condition. See how they preen themselves, Antonë whispered, and apply their own shit as if it were slap. The poor things believe
themselves to be Chelle and beat their heads against the brick walls to drive out their own evil.
One mummy was slumped right beside the bars. Her skirt had ridden up, and she was masturbating with an expression of utter
vacancy on her blurry face. Carl turned away, but Böm responded as he did to any notably unusual phenomenon and continued
to expatiate: There are those who say the flyspecks on the foglamp are growing in size and that this accounts for the increase
in the numbers of the insane. Others contend that the fullbeam headlight is the cause. Still more blame bad water, or the
monstrous size of the city that under the lash of the PCO grows at the pace of a walking dad. However, I ⦠I â here he
faltered and dropped his voice â I blame the Changeover itself, which latterly has become so rigid that it cleaves in two
minds not yet formed. So I wonder if these desperate fares are only those, who, like ourselves, retain that cleavage after
the end of Changeover. When I was a young bloke I thought I might go mad; until, that is, I heard the calling over of your
dad.
They had caught up again with the warden and his party. This hunched fony, who averted his face from all and ceaselessly grovelled,
was telling the toffs: Be not too frettened or afeared, your lawdships, the fings you are about to see are all Dave's critturs
juss lyke uz. He withdrew a prodigious bunch of keys from the skirt of his leather carcoat and, unlocking an irony door, ushered
them in with great ceremony. From a bracket on a wall the warden took a guttering torch, and then he led them on into the
darkness. In the first chamber they came to a coloured dad who was spread out on the straw. He was quite naked and of immense
size. Viss fella iz an Eeefeeopp chavage, my lawds, the warden explained, brought here by ferry froo mennë lands. Eees so
chavage vat Eyev putte im in fettas coz giwen arf a chanz eed rip yer éds orf! The luvvies gasped and drew back in the way
the warden clearly desired. Antonë, however, only whispered in Carl's ear: Arrant nonsense. It is but a coloured chav bought
in the market like any other. Granted, he is of prodigious extent, but this our 'ahem' guide has sought to exaggerate. Look
closely, all the articles in his cell have been made small â the chair, the table, even the tincan â so as to enhance his
stature.
So it was with all of the so-called freaks: the Hairydad, the Monkeydad, the wattled mummy, the Pyrenean Twins â in each case
Antonë sought to bring these oddities within the compass of comprehensibility. An nah, the warden cried, Eyev sayvd mì bess
til lars. Viss ⦠viss fing â he was lost for words â az bin wiv uss onlë a short wyl but iss gotta B ve stranjist bluddë
creetur imajinobobble. nunnuvuz can figga aht wot à iz â dad aw beeste, reel aw â he shuddered â toyist. à az ve aspekk ov
a gyant bäcön, but, az U wil C, mì nöbbul lawds an luvvies, à speeks wiv ve voys uvva â
Carl was no longer listening. He shouldered his way between the toffs, who stood honking on their clove balls, and there,
behind bars, his flanks, his tank, his shoulders deeply scored with bloody welts, his jonckheeres tattered with some awful
fungus, one of his eyes a bloody mess, and a disturbing nappy wrapped around his hindquarters, was Tyga.
Carl pressed his face between the bars and, weeping, cried out:
â Tyga, O paw Tyga!
The moto shuffled over to him, lisping:
â Ithat oo, Cawl? Ithat oo? Eye wanna go oam nah. Eye wanna go oam 2 Am.
At third tariff, following a mournful curry eaten alone in the sumptuous dining room of Somerset House, Antonë and Carl were
back in their own chamber when they heard the sounds of a limmo arriving in the courtyard below. Shortly afterwards, and not
proceeded by fony, gaffer or retinue of any sort, the Lawyer of Blunt came to them, sliding diffidently through the door.
He was a smallish dad, the skin stretched tight on his close-cropped head. His cheekbones were sharp, his green eyes deeply
recessed and fiercely acute. His small hands fidgeted at a bundle of signets and seals that hung on a chain from his neck.
His threads were bespoke â yet hardly sumptuous. On receiving him, Antonë and Carl fell to their knees crying, Where to, guv?
but he waved for them to rise, stuttering: P-please, my d-dear blokes, no such deference is required, truly â I beseech you.
While Carl sat, sunk in his own sad thoughts of Tyga and his miserable confinement, the Lawyer and the teacher spoke in hushed
tones of weighty matters. From his notebook Antonë produced a brief he had been labouring on, the essence of which was a petition
requesting information on the fate of Symun Dévúsh. I understand and appreciate your strategy, the Lawyer said; the CSA can
prevent no lad from knowing his own dad, no more than any dad be kept from his lad. This much is sacrosanct. Such a course
will alert both the King and the PCO to our intentions, yet it may well be that they would prefer to reach a private accommodation
â for if we cry it abroad through standards and decauxs it could spark rebellion. To treat with those lawds and commonfolk
who oppose the Breakup and the Changeover would be no less than they have done hitherto, and such pragmatism might commend
itself to our purposes if it allowed for â and here he sighed deeply â the return of my poor wife from her exile, and the
pardon of yourself, Antonë Böm, and your young companion.
This effusion led, quite naturally, to a request by the Lawyer for news of Luvvie Joolee and her sojourn on Ham. So it was
that they passed the remaining units of that tariff until the lampon with Antonë and Carl telling tales of the remote island
demesne.
With none of them having had any repose, the Lawyer nonetheless proposed that they sally forth once more before the second
tariff. I would speak with you concerning your speculative philosophy, he averred to Böm. The doubts you have expressed concerning
the origins of the Book engage me powerfully, and I warrant the drive to Hampstead will be a most satisfying backdrop to our
discourse. Furthermore â and here, for the first time, Carl apprehended a shadow of anxiety pass across the Lawyer's bony
countenance â we will be in the manner of sitting ducks if we remain within doors and the PCO comes a-knocking.