The Book of Dave

by Will Self

  Eased by the hottest cupasoup the opares could provide, his aching limbs massaged with oil, his curry-cracked feet bathed, Carl sat in front of the fire in the Brudi gaff and absorbed the warm fug. He had recounted his jump and the scramble up the stack. He had frightened the little ones with his vivid enactment of his near-fall, as he leaned low to grab the sentinel blackwing and his hands slipped on the rope. He told how he had hung from a buddyspike root for long units and the memory ghost had visited him, so that he saw the Sentrul Stac sheathed in golden glass, and through this translucent skin appeared beautiful angels, clad in jeans and jackets of the finest cut. They were playing upon curious plastic instruments and their silent airs were kaleidoscopes of imagery on sparkling mirrors.

  The Guvnor looked on approvingly, for this too was the way of it: the stack jumper's tale was a vital addition to the story the community told of itself, one of humans spitting in the indifferent face of Nature. After Carl had recounted it in this gaff, he would sally forth and retell it in all the others, until the entire manor was buzzing with his accomplishment.

  Pausing, flushed with this approbation, and preparing to dive under the stone lintel of the Funch gaff, Carl saw a pale flash at the end of the manor. For an instant he wanted to ignore the signal, but what then? He sloshed down the sodden bank of the stream. Screenwash was falling, softening the night, and his feet were numb. Antonë Böm was waiting for him at the seaward end of the Dévúsh gaff, his broad back propped against the mossy brick. It was so dark that Carl could only make out his mentor's beard, wavering like a moth.

  – Eyev bin bizzë, he said without any preamble, Eye gó ve geer awl stashed up bì ve wallos. Takeaway, oil an evian – awl Eye cúd nik wivaht bein sussed. We gotta go nah, Carl, rì nah.

  – But Eye onlee juss gó bak, innit. Eye onlee juss toal mì storë an vat … As Carl trailed off, Böm's hand tightened on his arm, his face came up close, the lenses of his spectacles were two owlish discs.

  – Carl, he said simply, we go nah aw nevah. Nah aw nevah.

  The night pressed in on them, a nightjar chirred, the sea snatched at the shoreline. Carl felt the whole of his life slipping away – perhaps it would have been better to have fallen from the Stac? He had a sudden image of his body lying in the milky waves, the gulls pecking at his bloody face.

  When Fred Ridmun, early to rise, opened the heavy door of the gaff to admit the foglight to its dark interior, he first noticed that Dave's demister had powered up, leaving a bright autumnal day. Then, tracking the bigwatt from the doorway, he saw lying in its exact oblong the copy of the Book that was held by the Guvnor. It was open on the table, a handful of Daveworks scattered on its thick yellow A4S. He let out a cry that woke the rest of the dads. For Fred Ridmun knew immediately what this meant: it was the Hamster way that a traveller departing on a journey off the island left the Book thus, and therefore his stepson must be gone.

  Tyga and Sweetë, old Runti's mopeds, had been easy to drive. They always foraged in the woodlands immediately beyond the wallows. Hunnë and Champ, Pippin's mopeds, were a trickier proposition. Carl left Antonë with half the rank and the changingbags, while he ventured down into Sandi Wúd. Foglight streamed between the trees, while up above them piled brilliant white clouds, their undersides glowing mauve and orange. New leaf fall swished beneath Carl's feet, and, despite his haste to find the motos, he was still awed by the beauty of his homeland.

  At last, Carl found the two motos on the shoreline below the thick undergrowth of Turnas Wúd. They were sunk deep in a slough covered with dead brack and leaves. He roused them by gently stroking their jonckheeres, then brought them fully to consciousness by whispering his plan into their floppy ears. He knew that any resistance on their part would thus be forestalled, for motos would accept any idea – no matter how unusual – as simply an aspect of the new world they'd awoken to. Weer goin onna big wallo, he cooed, me an U 2, an Ant an Tyga an Sweetë. Biggist wallo evah, gonna B luvverlë – yul C.

  Hunnë drew her legs up beneath her bulk, rolled sideways on to her slopping tank and then hefted first her front and then her rear end upright. Champ followed suit, with much snorting and gobbling, until he too was on all fours. Wegonna wawwow, Cawl? he asked. Thass rí, said Carl, grabbing a handful of each beast's wattles, and with expert tugs moved them off along the coast towards Mutt Bä. Although the big creatures were still only half awake, they were as surefooted as ever, their long fingers and toes neatly grasping the tree roots that snaked underfoot. Their shuddery breathing smoked the air, and their hot, damp withers gently steamed. Carl buried his hands deeper in the clammy neck folds. Nothing else in the world gave him a feeling of such secure content, and even if he had to leave Ham then at least he'd be taking with him its unique natives. Surely, with four motos to accompany them, the journey to London could not prove too arduous?

  He settled Tyga and Sweetë at Mutt Bä, then returned to the wallows, where he found Böm pacing nervously and casting fearful looks towards the manor. Fyahs iz smoakin, he said, vey muss B up, we gotta moovit, Carl. Then all was a pell-mell descent through the woods back down to the shore, Tyga and Sweetë jogging, tanks and changingbags bouncing against their thick necks. The two humans struggled to keep up with them, and Carl was frantic that when the two halves of the rank met up their nuzzling would dislodge the loads.

  As it was, Carl and Antonë slithered between the last few trees to find not only the motos butting and bumping but a far more disturbing sight: the Driver. His beard and hair were in wild disarray, his robe was hitched up above his legs, and he wasn't even wearing his mirror. He was brandishing a staff. Oi, U! he screamed as he clapped eyes on them. U – U! He was quite beside himself, swishing the heavy staff back and forth in the air, turning to confront first the motos, then the escapees. Wot djoo fink yaw doin? he managed to say at last. Böm backed off, placing a stand of blisterweed between himself and the hysterical man of Dave, but Carl was suddenly enraged. He ran over and grabbed Tyga's ear, then drove the moto off the rank. Sorlrì, Tyga, he told him, weer juss goin 4 vat big wallo lyke Eye sed. They advanced together on the Driver.

  Carl knew that, despite his long stay on Ham, the Driver had never lost his initial revulsion for the motos; now, in this charged moment, Tyga's gaping jaws and peg teeth struck terror into him. Dropping his staff, the Driver reared back, tripped, then fell headlong to the ground, where he lay motionless. Wassamatter wivim, Cawl? Issë urtë? Tyga goggled at the black stain of the Driver's robe on the carpet of leaves. Antonë knelt and lifted up the Driver's head. Ees it a brik, he said, ees aht cold. Nah we reelë gotta moovit. Swiftly the two men stripped and coated themselves with a slather of moto oil.

  Carl had splashed in the shallows with the motos, yet he had no idea if the beasts would consent to bear him and Antonë into open water. The rank was orderly if excitable as he led them down to the shoreline. Only Sweetë moaned:

  – Eye wanna fowidj, lemme fowidj.

  – Plennë uv fowidj ovah vare, Carl told her, pointing to the distance, where the rocks of Nimar rose up above the waves. Cummon nah.

  He coaxed Tyga a few paces into the sea, then, grasping a handful of neck wattle, swung himself on to the moto's broad back. Behind him Antonë followed suit with Champ. Cummon nah! Carl urged Tyga on, and, feeling the rising water buoy up his body, the moto began to paddle strongly. Eye thwimmin! Eye thwimmin! he lisped. Looking back, Carl saw the two other motos enter the water after Antonë and Champ. As they came out of the bay, then scraped across the reef, the waves began to break over Tyga's back, and Carl was instantly soaked. His anger had drained away with the advancing sea to be replaced by a naked terror. Yet, looking back at the shore, he saw the Driver still lying prone, final confirmation – if any were needed – that there was no going back.

  6

  The Skip Tracer

  April 2002

  When Michelle came out of the lawyers' offices, which were sunk in the isthmus of nineteenth-century stonework separating Savi
le Row from Vigo Street, her logical course would have been to take a cab. She had become a cab-hailing type of bird – she had the money, she had the gym-toned wing to fling in the air, she was even dressed for it in a fashionable mac like a shiny red bell tent. Her hair had recently been dyed its natural colour – only more so. Yet she couldn't hail a cab; if an orange TAXI sign had shone out from the London downpour she'd have turned tail and flapped away. The likelihood that it was driven by her ex-husband, Dave, was infinitesimal, still the Law of Sod said it would be him, echo-locating her by bouncing a screech of anger off the buildings and picking it up with his bat ears. He was that mad.

  'I honestly think he's mad,' Michelle had said to the lawyer, whose name was Blair. 'There's already a restraining order to prevent him coming near to the house.' She felt comfortable with the 'honestly'; it sounded right for this dark wood panelling and thick, turquoise carpet.

  'But he's breached it, yes?' Blair took notes on a yellow legal pad with a gold propelling pencil. He was leaning far back in his leather swivel chair and had to stretch to reach the notepad. This emphasized his petiteness.

  'Well … yeah … I mean pretty drastically so far as I can see. My … partner and I saw him in the garden, at night, but he ran off.'

  'And this was in December?'

  'Yeah.' Yeah? You sound like trailer-park trash.

  'You didn't report it to the police?' Blair raised one plucked eyebrow on his sallow forehead.

  'That's what Fischbein – the other lawyer – asked us. We were so shocked, it'd never happened before.' Michelle took a sip of coffee: it was tepid, and she put the bone-china cup down next to a plate of refined shortbread. 'When he broke the order again we did call the police, but there was nothing we could get him for, because … because … my son … he wouldn't. . .' Michelle gulped down hot tears with more tepid coffee. I'm gonna start crying now … the thought of being offered a tissue by Blair – who'd asked her to call him 'Mitchell' – nauseated her. Not that Blair made any move to dispense tissues; he remained recumbent and tapped his unnaturally small teeth with the tip of his pencil. Michelle controlled herself and went on: 'My son wouldn't say anything against his father – that's what he told me. Still, he doesn't want his dad turning up like that, outside his new school. It upsets him … his dad acts … I dunno, crazy, but Carl's very loyal … He's angry with both of us.'

  Then it came pouring out of her, the whole sorry, stereotypical tale. Yet even as Michelle recounted the clouts Dave Rudman had aimed at her and the crockery he'd hurled, the way the volume of the rows had risen into a vacuous silence, followed by the lawyers' letters and the fruitless mediation, she was aware that this was precisely what Mitchell Blair required. He might have spent hours extracting this evidence from her; instead it came bagged, tagged and slammed down on his Moroccan leather desktop. The gold pencil raced across the narrow feint to keep pace with her.

  When Michelle had finished – or at any rate ceased, for there could be no end to such a litany – Blair cleared his throat: 'Erhem.' 'Ms Brodie,' he said, 'may I summarize?' He smiled. 'Your ex-husband was physically and mentally abusive within the marriage. You divorced on those grounds and your only son, Carl, initially stayed with you at the family home. Your husband moved to a rented flat near by. To begin with they had normal contact, alternate weekends and Wednesday visits, half school holidays when Mr Rudman's … ah, work, permitted. During this time he, ah, behaved himself well enough. Then, when last year you began a relationship with Mr Devenish, and you and your son moved in with him to a new house in Hampstead, your ex-husband became abusive again. Increasingly so. He turned up at your house and banged on the door; he also made threats which led to … Mr Fischbein obtaining a non-molestation order through the County Court, although your son continued to have contact with his father.'

  'Carl's old enough to go to see his father by himself. I didn't want to stop them seeing each other.'

  'Quite so. But now the situation has changed again, your ex-husband's behaviour is highly erratic, and you feel that – '

  'I dunno what I feel, but I'm worried about what Dave might do. Fischbein said it was difficult to get a further injunction unless Dave had been arrested – I don't want to wait for that to happen, I don'tthinkitsrightthat – ' Michelle's words tumbled out, Blair caught them in his plump hands, set them down in the opulent solemnity of the office. The air was stilled by leather-bound precedents – they might have been anywhere, or even in another, quieter era.

  'What Mr Fischbein says of the Family Division at County Court may well be true, but, given the right approach' – Blair paused to emphasize that such an approach was a Blair speciality – 'it is entirely possible to obtain a total exclusion order from the Principal Registry in the High Court. If this is breached, a power of arrest is automatically invoked carrying a committal warrant for six months' imprisonment. As to visitation rights, if you insist on these continuing, there can be supervised access.'

  'Me?' Michelle was nonplussed. 'If I insist?'

  'That's right, but you may regard it as in your best interests for any contact between your son and your ex-husband to be stopped at once.'

  Michelle had sat through years of deliberations with lawyers, mediators, court welfare officers and Child Support Agency assessors: 'your best interests' was not a phrase she had heard during all this time; 'the child's best interests' certainly; there had also been much talk of'the relationship's interests', as if it were an entity in its own right; but her own, unalloyed, selfish interests had never been alluded to. 'I'm sorry … Mister Blair.'

  'Mitchell.' He smiled again with the titchy gnashers.

  'I'm not used to what I want being talked about so … so …'

  'Bluntly, Ms Brodie? If you retain me I act in your interests. There's a lot of nonsense talked in family law, and I'm not in the habit of contributing to it. If you require an order against your ex-husband with more' – he tapped them with the pencil – 'teeth, that is something I can arrange. The law – like any other art – is one of the possible.'

  Glancing over her shoulder as she joined the parade of rainwear heading west along Oxford Street, Michelle saw schools of snorting black cabs, pods of red bus leviathans, and beyond it all the towering stack of Centrepoint rising up from the swell of masonry. A single sunbeam fingering its way through the dirty clouds picked out its concrete summit. She shuddered. Where was it now, the internal warmth of that long-maintained secret? The secret that had sutured up the bloody gash of Carl's birth, that had annulled every awful moment of her marriage to Dave Rudman, the secret that justified any number of Blairy bills whirling down like A4 snowflakes on to Cal Devenish's desk?

  Michelle shuffled on past the cut-and-shut architecture of Oxford Street – the top storeys of Loire chateaux cemented to provincial car showrooms. In Selfridges she lost herself in the Food Hall among others of her kind: trim, middle-aged, nouveau riche women, anatomizing the ideal snack under lights of operating-theatre strength. This, surely, was what had been meant for her all along? The Queen Anne house in Hampstead, the coffee breaks with interior designers, and the trip home from the West End where she'd been visiting her expensive lawyer, bearing no malice but instead a glossy paper bag, inside it a bottle of L'Occitane Lavender Body Cream.

  The mineshaft of the Northern Line gave way, once Michelle had been winched up through the heavy hill, to the pithead of Hampstead. She walked up Heath Street, which was shining under April sun after a low-pressure hosing. The shop windows were clotted with affluence – the pavements busy with the economically unproductive. Halfway up the hill Michelle passed Liberation, the lingerie shop she owned in partnership with her new friend Peter Prince. The window was thronged with knickers: flesh pink, organdie and eau-de-Nil scraps, worth, weight for weight, more than currency and hardly flying out of the place.

  Two flights of stairs curled up from each side to the glossy maroon front door of Beech House. Twelve twelve-paned windows looked down on the narrow lane below
– a gross of affluence. Michelle was still thinking about pants. Dave didn't take them off when he came to bed … disgusting paisley Y-fronts with white piping … I couldn't bear to touch them, if he guided my hand there I yanked it away. I could do it with him after exactly three glasses of wine, but his prick always felt small inside me, like a pip I could squeeze out… Then later, when the rows got violent, I lost all feeling in my tits … That GP said I should do a regular self-examination for lumps … Sod the fucking lumps – with Dave pawing me my tits were numb … numb with disgust…

  The way that Beech House had been freshly tricked out could have been wholly deduced from the lacquered Chinese box full of decorative walking sticks that stood beside the front door. Michelle looked across the hall to where a door opened on to a kitchen fitted with slate worktops, quarry-tiled floor and oaken units. To be fair, he was always lying down in the hollow Cal had left in my bed … When Cal came back and we made love for the first time after so many years I thought I'd be embarrassed – him seeing what having a kid had done to me … my floppy white belly, my stretch marks. It wasn't like that at all … Shucking off her shiny mac, Michelle hugged her own baby-soft cashmere shoulders. Being naked in the daylight with him … it made me as young as a child … He felt like a father as much as a lover when he took off my dress . . . Sweat prickled her brow as she sheathed her umbrella in the box. My father and Carl's. Then afterwards we slept so sweetly, such sweet dreams …

  In the humming silence of the mid-afternoon house, redolent of beeswax, Michelle Brodie stared hungrily at the television in the kitchen: a packet of humdrum delights. From outside in the road she heard a tinkling 'Byeee!' and could imagine the girl in the brindled uniform of an exclusive Highgate school, her glossy mane and chocolate shoes. But before she could move towards the kettle and the television, Michelle sensed a presence in the house, faint but threatening. She rushed into the drawing room to find Cal bedded down in the Eames chair, the pink and black patchwork of the Financial Times spread on his slow-rising chest.