The Book of Dave (59 page)

The
Fairway
lay off Tilbury another day until the wind was in the right quarter and the tide was on the turn. Then it weighed anchor and
slipped downstream. This was a hastier, more purposeful voyage than the long slog the
Trophy Room
had made up from Bril. With a strong northeasterly wind bellying the privateer's sails, the prevailing westerly currents could
do little to hamper it; and with every timber creaking and rope straining, the
Fairway
carved a deep, white path through the booze-dark sea. The ferry shot along the coastline of Durbi; Nott Bouncy Castle was
raised at first tariff on the third day out from London, and the long, low island of Chil sighted before the foglamp dipped
at the end of the second.

Antonë Böm spent the short voyage below decks, still immersed in his speculations, covering page after page of his notebook
with inky grooves. His fingers were numb, his mental capacities exhausted. The escape was no relief for him, no life after
life, but an antechamber that debouched into yet more tense anticipation. By contrast Carl had been returned to the encompassing
present, the snuggled-up, cuddled-down now. For on the foredeck stood a large cage, and in it, wounded and wary, was Tyga.
To begin with it was bad between them. Upon their reunion Tyga had rejected Carl – a thing the lad had never even heard of
a moto doing. Tyga curled his thick top lip and flared his nose flanges. His eyelids dipped, he rolled over on the straw and,
in so doing, showed the criss-cross scars of the beatings he had received at the Bedlam freak show.

It took several tariffs of gentle coaxing, Carl moving slowly closer and closer, until he could stroke Tyga's jonckheeres,
and then the tale emerged in sibilant phrases: U leff me … Eye hayt U … Heeth thwapped me … Hith thingee …
Eye wath thor … the broken-off narrative of vile abuse. The sly kicks and pokes that the chav lads set to tend to the
moto had administered gained in frequency and intensity, until the horrific night when the warden had come in and thrust the
bottle of jack halfway down Tyga's throat. Then, when the moto was mullered, his arms and legs buckled, the warden used him
in dreadful ways.

Carl held the moto's huge head in the cage, which was redolent of the beast's sweet shit. They were surrounded by the creak
of the
Fairway
's rigging, the snap of its sails, the groan of timbers caulked with moto oil. As they gently rocked into reconciliation, Carl
felt the hardening muscles of his arms. His hand strayed to his top lip, where last year's transparent down was hardening
into stubble. He looked down and in the parting of his Inspector's robe saw the wiry hairs that were creeping up from his
wally to his navel. Seven months they had been gone from Ham – the other three motos were dead and Carl was, he realized,
irrevocably changed. He held Tyga's head with fierce love as the world turned about the still point of the ferry. Soon Carl
would be a dad – there was no stopping it.

They splashed ashore in a narrow inlet, and the pedalo's crew slung their evian skins and changingbags after them, before
shoving off without any further ceremony and heading back to the
Fairway.
The privateer came about with a cracking of canvas and under a headlight so vast and bigwatt that all its flyspecks were
clearly visible. Then it beat off up the sound, heading for the open sea and the mysteries of Úro. The two blokes were left
standing by their moto, so near to their journey's end yet utterly abandoned.

They slept that night on the rocky foreshore and were awoken past first tariff by the foglamp burning down on them. Carl cracked
open his stinging eyes and saw a few clicks away across the waves the green crown of the isle-driven-by-Dave. Despite all
their travails his heart seemed to accelerate, until with a surge it broke from his chest and flew up to join a whiff of golden
cloud floating in the pink screen of morning.

They took two tariffs to work their way along the rugged coast. The rocks were even bigger here than those they'd encountered
on the westward flight from Nimar – great piles of brick and yok, whole jagged clumps of crete. There were many twisted prongs
of irony, and spikes of other corroded metalwork lay treacherous in the shallows. Tyga, denied proper wallowing in Bedlam,
had never really recovered from the journey to London. His fresh wounds smarted in the seawater, and his old wounds reopened
as he bucketed along. Yet he bore it all with great fortitude – it was enough that he was going home. Carl, for his part,
tried to comfort the moto, wading out into the water again and again to cuddle him. But whatever intimacy they had recovered
on the
Fairway
Tyga had repudiated; again and again the moto flipped Carl off with a shake of his massive shoulders, and, turning his pathetic,
scarred muzzle seawards he plodded on.

At the beginning of the third tariff, with the foglamp dipping in the screen, they rounded yet another promontory and came,
quite suddenly, upon Nimar. The gulls were in tumult. It was the breeding season and the ferociously cawing blackwings and
oilgulls were fighting to preserve their nesting sites from bonkergulls that dived down from above to harry them. There was
nothing unusual about this dense mobbing, the ever-mutating fractals of wing and beak. Nevertheless, as the travellers drew
closer to this feathery riot, Carl saw a sinister focus to their botheration, where the concentration of seafowl was so great
that their sharp wings cut the air into wedges of white, grey and black.

The gulls were fighting over the yellowing strips of flesh that they tore from a corpse – the corpse of the Beastlyman, for
it could be no other. Carl started forward screaming and striking at the gulls, and a humming vortex opened up. One oilgull
poised, webbed feet on gory eye sockets, pulling a slack goo away from the corpse's exposed, mulish teeth. This, this was
his dad … this tattered puppet, manipulated by a bird with a tendon in its beak. Nó U! Carl cried. Nó U Beestlimun! And
Tyga hearkened to his call, letting out a bellow of motorage as he charged over the rocks scattering the gulls. He stood at
Carl's side looking down and lisping: Ith not a beethlimun, ith a nithemun.

To cover up his confusion and his own grief for the Geezer he'd revered, Antonë Böm took refuge in surgical detachment. I
would say that he cannot have expired much more than a tariff before we arrived, he pronounced as they shifted bricks to furnish
a safe tomb for the dead dad. Then, remembering the way he had failed to recognize his Geezer, Antonë said falteringly, I'm
so very sorry, Carl, so very sorry. The lad was, however, almost serene as he dropped a flag on to his dad's face. He reached
a hand out to Antonë, so that they stood hand in hand as, through some spasm of dying faith, they called over the funeral
run:

– Leave on left Homerton High Street, forward Urswick Road … And the point at the beginning:

– Homerton Hospital.

And the point at the end:

-Jewish Federation Cemetery.

– Djoo no wot kyld im? Carl asked as they went over to the Geezer's hovel of a gaff. Woz í wunnuv vose wankas, he said, gesturing
towards Ham.

– I doubt it, Carl, Antonë replied. It is naught save the saddest happenstance. For long years now he had been here, in pain,
in hunger, tormented by memories of grievous handling, and still routinely abused by those who had once embraced him. That
we should have arrived too late to save him … well, even so, perhaps there was some dävine mercy in it, for our own future
is so uncertain.

They found Symun Dévúsh's changingbag easily enough. The battered old moto-hide satchel was lying in his hovel on a pallet
of gull feathers and rags. Carl lifted it up and heard the pitter-purling of hundreds of tiny bits of plastic. He reached
inside and withdrew a strange discoid container of metal, metal mottled with the verdigris of age yet unrusted. I have seen
such artefacts before, Antonë said, they are exceedingly rare. See how perfect the circle is, how skilfully milled as if by
a metermaker. If you find the seam betwixt the top and bottom you may open it up. Carl did so. Peering inside, all he could
see were Daveworks, a shingly mound that he combed with his hesitant fingers. nuffing, Carl said eventually, no Búk, no nuffing.
His voice was as lacklustre as the box from before the MadeinChina, and for the first time Antonë heard his young companion
speak with an accent of despair.

It was an odd flotilla that breasted the current towards Ham. The humans held fast to the evian skins, and with the changingbags
lashed about Tyga's thick neck they positioned themselves so as to contribute their churning feet to the moto's more efficient
motions. In the gathering darkness and the open water, both Antonë and Carl were gripped by the same nightmarish vision: the
Driver, his face a mush of decay, rising revivified from the ground where he had been lying dead these past seven months.

The foglamp had been switched off when they at last came ashore, to discover that the current had pushed them some way along
the coast to the curryings at Goff. The headlight was driving up over the woodland, illuminating every stately tree and twisted
shrub. Despite this, they would be safe for now – no Hamster or moto would be abroad until first tariff. They could even risk
a fire to dry their wet robes. While Antonë plied his lighter, Carl went forward with Tyga and watched with pleasure as he
foraged smoothbark nuts and acorns, the motos' favourite snack.

Home – Carl was home. The old rutted lane of Stel curved up through the woodland to the Layn and the Gayt field beyond. A
scant few paces and Carl would find himself standing on the southern shore at Sid's Slick by Antonë's old gaff. Home, apprehensible,
recognizable, graspable home – every criss-crossing greenspike, bending sawleaf and feathery frond of brack spelled HOME as
clearly as if the phonics had been inscribed upon them. For a few units, as Carl abandoned himself to the cool green embrace
of the woodland, he dared to imagine that the Hamsters might greet him with open arms the following day. That they might embrace
him as if he were the Lost Boy come among them.

The humans picked at the greasy takeaway the Guvnor of the
Fairway
had slung at them, while Tyga, gorged on his native fodder, fell asleep. His huge body curled up to provide a living windbreak
for their little encampment. The flames from the fire shot up into the screen as the driftwood burned with vivid licks of
green and blue flame. Repose did not come readily for Carl and Antonë – yet the chitchat flowed easily enough between them.
So they ranged in speech back and forth, from Ham, to Chil, to London, then to Ham once more, recalling the sights they had
seen and the adventures they had had. In this dark time the queer and the stripling found themselves most completely engrafted,
until at last, with only a few units to go before Dave switched on the foglamp, they slumbered.