The Book of Dave (64 page)

Death itself Dave Rudman remained in ignorance of – he was a tourist, standing beside a large monument, staring bemusedly at
the map that showed its location. True, as a dark crescent eclipsed his view of the sun, so he struggled to avoid unconsciousness,
backpedalling into the present. His heart stopped, his legs pushed feebly against the doorjamb, his hands convulsed and his
hips jerked – yet he couldn't hang on and expired like that, in quizzical pain.

No one – not even Phyllis Vance – seriously doubted that Dave Rudman had taken his own life: the heavy history of depression,
the toxic jungle of his brain chemistry, the loss of both son and career, the opportunity, the scrawled notes in the margins
of the newspaper: EMPTY, I'VE HAD ENOUGH, TAKING THE PLUNGE. These were, if not incontrovertible truths, at any rate telling
clues in the absence of any others. There were no others – the Turks, their cab, their breakfast at the Little Chef – no one
had noticed any of this, while in Clapton, Fatima bore the consequences of the crime: more bruises on arms and legs, Rifak
in a raki-sodden, self-piteous heap.

Even so, Phyllis Vance had enough canniness to introduce doubts into the mind of the local coroner, so many doubts that the
death certificate laconically recorded the end of Dave's wayward journey through life with a further 'misadventure'.

If it bothered Phyllis that her lover was to be interred in Willingale – so near to and yet so remote from his native city
– she showed no sign of it. In death she was more proprietorial of Dave Rudman than she had ever been during his life – she
needed him near to her and Steve. Not that she was off-putting when it came to Michelle and Carl – she wanted them at the
funeral more than anyone else; there to observe how properly it had all been arranged, and how skilfully she had talked round
the priest – a circuit vicar who passed through Willingale once a month like a tardy rural bus service – into committing this
recent and most unobservant of his parishioners.

For the fractured Devenish family – who had driven from London respectively silent, stunned and surly in their opulently padded
seats – this voyage in their brand-new Volkswagen Touareg was way off road. Michelle, irretrievably lost in her memories of
how
it all went
wrong,
lacked even the spirit to argue with Cal when, bedevilled by nerves, he took wrong turning after wrong turning. In the back,
immersed in a soundscape injected straight into his brain by a computer, Carl smirked, then winced. He couldn't tell which
of them he hated more – his slutty mummy, his unreal real daddy, or the
stupid fucking cabbie who'd blown his bollocks off.
There were painful blisters full of nicotinic fluid on the insides of Carl's skinny arms, for at night, at the open window
of his bedroom, looking out over the light lagoon of the city, he touched the furious tip of a cigarette to his own flesh,
desperate to discover if he could feel anything at all any more.

When they finally drew up outside the two churches of Willingale, the September day, which had been brooding all morning,
began to arrange itself in the purpling drapery of a coming downpour, unfurling great swags of cumulonimbus on to the shushed
land. Stepping down from the high vehicle, Michelle found herself aptly diminished and was able, in all humility, to approach
the similarly shrunken figures of Paul and Annette Rudman, who stood by the lychgate with their daughter, Sam, uncertain of
what they should do or feel. Michelle tore away the fine embroidered cloth to show them her cropped, ginger head.
They ought to … They have
a right … I wish they'd under –…
Chopped-off intimations of her own shame accompanied her silent obeisance. Cal hung back, while Carl advanced and applied
his lips to the strange faces of his former granddad and granny.

It was a measure of the dissipation of the Church's doctrine – its moral authority knocked over as casually as a drunk topples
a beer glass – that a suicide's funeral was to be held in the more youthful of these senescent buildings. But then, self-murder
and the mildewed hassocks, the musty drapes, the tarnished communion rail, the worm-holy rood screen, the foxed flyleaves
of the prayer books – it all sat well together. After all, the Church had murdered itself, as with every decade more and more
depressed dubiousness crept into its synods and convocations, until, speaking in tongues, it beat its own skull in at the
back of the vestry. Divorcees and devil-worshippers, schismatics, sodomites and self-murderers – they were all the same for
the impotent figures who stood in the pulpit and peered down at pitiful congregations, their numbers winnowed out by satellite
television and interest-free credit. 'Dearly beloved,' they intoned – and meant it, because if they expected anyone to pitch
up at all, they had to go round to their parishioners' houses and help them on with their underpants.

Clear across the flat lands of Essex the spires stabbed up at the sky, abandoned launch pads from which the soul ships had
long since blasted off. Inside them, clad in laughably obsolete uniforms – frilly laboratory coats, army surplices – the priests
did kitchen-garden juju with corn dollies and ewers full of sour water. They were marionettes and mime artists, fifth-rate
impressionists at the end of the world pier, officiating over a state cult for which the state no longer had any use.

Michelle stood at the back behind a ragtag bunch of mourners who could have comfortably been accommodated in three London
cabs. She recognized none of them besides immediate family. Not Anthony Bohm and Jane Bernal, nor Mo from the taxi garage.
Faisal was a stranger to her – and Fred Redmond a terrible sight, guilt-stricken almost to the point of expiring. Nonetheless,
in her ignorance Michelle realized that
this was where I came in.
An involuntary hand went to her head, and she felt the impoverished frass of middle-aged hair thin on her scalp. She conjured
up the cavernous, suburban Catholic churches of her childhood, where Cath Brodie wept, rent her British Home Stores garments,
and even banged her head on the flags. Michelle recalled the lubricious sanctity and smelly mysticism of these venues.
At least
…
at least it was dark in
there,
while here was bright and desiccated, the priest's hands were as papery as the pages he turned, his voice rustled out: 'We
brought nothing into this world and it is certain we carry nothing out. The Lord gave and the Lord hath taken away; blessed
be the name of the Lord …' Phyllis was weeping softly – Annette Rudman looked straight ahead through the battleship-grey
legs of a medieval knight imprisoned in a glass slide. Through force of habit her husband checked his watch and made a wager
with himself on the length of the sermon.

'When thou with rebukes dost chasten man for sin … thou makest his beauty to consume away, like as it were a moth fretting
a garment: every man therefore is but vanity.' Michelle Brodie smoothed black silk over her leg.
All my life – my adult life –I thought
the secret lay in birth
…
but all along the secret was that we're going to
die.
In that moment, with the priest starting to say a few uplifting words about a man he'd never known, all the suppleness left
Michelle, body and mind slackened, and she exhaled deeply. She felt her age – and she looked it as well.

'Y'know,' Cal said to his son as they sat side by side on a wrought-iron bench in the garden, 'when you read over this stuff' – he chonked together the exercise books – 'you've gotta admit that Dave was on to something.' He'd fetched one of the old
film canisters from the garage, and now Carl laid the two books inside the shallow tray and eased the lid on. Cal helped him
seal it with a long strip of gaffer tape.

Michelle had allowed the digging of a hole beyond the teak decking that separated the lawn from the big bed where, when spring
came, mail-order blooms would be planted. There were limits – even to honouring the dead. The son placed the film canister
in the moist, friable earth – then the father covered it. Short of digging up the other book – the one the dead cabbie swore
he'd buried there – this was what they both felt he probably would have wanted. Michelle stayed inside. She sat at the kitchen
worktop, coffee cup cold on the marble slab, her fists ground so hard into her eye sockets that a belated eternity ring Cal
had given her drew blood.