The Book of Dave

by Will Self

  When Dave arrived at the pub he found Fucker and Big End with a fair few pint glasses on the tabletop in front of them. Big End got up without asking what Dave wanted and went to the bar, where an amiable, doughy blonde had long since replaced Mrs Hedges. Big End looked like a mutant – with the empty wrinkled arms of his overalls hanging down his back. Dave spied his tool grip and spirit level propped in a corner of the bar and envied him for the honest simplicity of his tools. Fucker looks dreadful . . . And he did, his natural perm ruined by sweat, his pouchy clown's face drooping with dolour. His fat belly heaved against the table, green Fred Perry shirt riding up to reveal his furry gut. 'What's up?' Dave asked, pulling up a stool.

  'Iss Debbie, she's only gone and fucked off wiv the kids.'

  'What, did she find out about wasserface, that other bird you got on the go?'

  'Nah, she's known about Karen fer ages, they was pregnant at the same time with Jason an' Kylie. Nah, iss this other one she's found aht abaht.'

  'Another one?' Dave took the pint Big End handed him and tossed offa third of it. 'What issit with you, Fucker?'

  'I dunno, I s'pose iss jus' me nature, innit.' He smiled ruefully and took a swallow of his own drink. There were no such things as jokes now.

  'So, wotchew want me for, Fucker, to commiserate or what?'

  'Nah, don't be lemon – I know where they are an' that, I wanna go an' get 'em back.'

  'I don't like the sound of that, mate,' Dave said. 'You've gotta talk it through with Debbie, don't do anyfing hasty.'

  'That's what I been saying,' Big End put in. ' 'E's gotta talk it frough, if I got troubles with my women I talk it frough.'

  'Oh, yeah,' Dave half rounded on Big End, 'how many baby-mamas is it you've got now?'

  'Depends,' Big End grinned, 'ooze countin'.'

  'But you don' live wiv any of 'em, do you?'

  'Well … no, not eggzackly, but they 'cept that iss different in the black co-munity.'

  'Yeah, right.' Dave turned back to Fucker. 'So why me?'

  'You've got front an' that, Tufty, also you got the cab.'

  'Where's your cab, then?'

  'I 'ad to let it go, mate, couldn't make the payments. I bin doing site work wiv Big End, way fings are on ve job I may let go of my licence an' go permi'. I tell you I'm fucked – you gotta help me. If I don' 'ave those kids in me life I've got nuffing. Nuffing.'

  They sat in the Globe drinking for another hour or so. By the time Dave had downed two more pints he was prepared to go with Fucker to check on Debbie and the two kids as long as he didn't make a scene. Then, with the two unlikely fares in the back of the cab, Dave felt drunk at the wheel and regretted the whole thing. I could lose my licence if the OB gives me a tug … What am I doing?

  The flat where Debbie had taken refuge with little Jason and littler Amber was in a council block at the top of Brick Lane. It was an old LCC building, redbrick with external balconies and tiled staircases. They left the cab on a meter next to a shop advertising a closing down sale of glass slippers, plastic bead waterfalls and mock braziers with trompe l'ceil tissue-paper flames. Furtive Bengalis darted into the Friday afternoon strollers, pressing flyers on them: 'Lunch Special, All You Can Eat, £2.95.' 'I could murder a curry,' said Big End.

  The plan was that Dave would knock on the door while the other two kept out of sight. When Debbie's mate Berenice answered, he'd explain that he was a friend of Gary and he needed to speak with Debbie. When she emerged so would her husband, and hopefully there'd be a resolution. It didn't work out that way. Berenice was suspicious from the off – she only opened the door a crack. A fat, mixed-race girl in puce tracksuit bottoms stretched tight over a double belly, she goggled at Dave, taking in through the six-inch gap the whole disreputable length of him – or so he assumed. Behind her daytime TV smouldered in a dim, smoky room. 'Bwoy, she ain't even here so you can't talk wiv 'er.'

  'I'm sure she is,' Dave wheedled. 'Gary – her old man – told me she was. Look, don't you think it would be better if they sorted this out? It can't be good for the kids.'

  'Wotchew knowabout kids? Wotchew know? You push them out, yeah?' She slapped her bellies and they shivered. 'You push them out of your cock?'

  ' No – '

  He was going to try to answer her question, but Debbie forestalled him by wrenching the door open – she must have been standing behind Berenice the whole time – and letting fly: 'Oo you fronting up for, Tufty, issit that wanker? Issit?' Then Fucker came barrelling out of the recess by the rubbish chute, and charged at the door like a pocket bull elephant, howling, 'Jase! Amber! Iss Daddy! Iss Daddy! I come fer yer!'

  The mêlée quickly became an ugly stand-off: all five adults were jammed inside the main room of the flat. In the bedroom to the right, Dave could see a bunch of kids cowering behind a bunk bed. Fucker grabbed a thin baby from a bouncy chair and held it against his chest, its little heels drumming on his heaving stomach. Berenice began bellowing, 'Gimme 'im! Gimme 'im! Gimme 'im!' again and again, while Fucker screamed, 'Back off! Back off!' Debbie had collapsed on to the floor, and all Dave Rudman could think of was very black roots growing out, in the perverse way that dramatic events force trivia on those involved.

  It was left to Big End to do something effective. He strode over to Fucker, relieved him of the infant, handed it back to its mother, then dragged the chubby man out on to the walkway. 'I'll 'ave the fucking raddiks on you, bwoy, you see I won't!' Berenice screamed while Debbie sobbed. Dave tried to calm the situation, tamping the women down with outstretched hands, but Big End came back in and dragged him out as well. When they had regrouped by the cab, Big End put his arms round the two other men's shoulders and said, 'Right, then! 'Owzabout that curry?'

  Ten minutes later they were sitting in the Lahore Kebab House on Henriques Street at a rice-bedizened, sauce-smeared table. Fucker had picked up a half bottle of Scotch, and, unmindful of religious sensibilities, the three men passed it between them, taking hefty swigs. Meaty blobs speared by airy cutlery met numb lips. Dave stared woozily at the thickening traffic: the scabrous Transits bumping in from the A13, Canvey Island and all points east; the grumbling dump trucks, anfractuous scrap metal spilling over their grooved sides; the executive landaus with expense-account arses spread on their buttery upholstery … This … this is the real East End, where the soaring towers of the City, prestressed with adrenalin, collapse into the tat and veg of Brick Lane and Petticoat Lane. Here, in this parched badlands, the alien minarets of the new mosque pricked the grey heavens. Across the Commercial Road the rag traders' showrooms were like hot houses pressed from within by multicoloured flowers of brocade, lace and cotton.

  A full cab-tariff band later, Dave's heart changed down and struggled to pull his clapped-out consciousness into the dim light of the spieler. He noticed that Big End was gone – and acknowledged he'd been so for some time.

  'Heh-heh,' said one of the old faces who was playing blackjack with Fucker, 'wadjew give 'im, whizz or wot?'

  'Whizz,' Fucker said. He was at ease with these men, whose mortal clay was fired with venality.

  'Heh-heh, hit me, you cunt.' The dealer – a terrifying rail of a man in a zip-up nylon windcheater – chucked the old face a card. 'Busted. Orlright, I'm ahtuvere.' He got up, a bandy-legged little man, who for all that exuded palpable menace. 'Wherejoo 'eaded, Freddie?' the Dealer asked, tipping back on his chair.

  'Gants Hill,' Freddie spat. 'I'm minted an' I'm putting a monkey on wiv Basset fer Tony Thornton to whip that prancing nigger Eubank.'

  'As you do,' Fucker put in, but Freddie paid him no mind, only shrugged on his blazer and adjusted his display handkerchief, smoothing the two snowy linen fangs. He departed through red velveteen curtains with a puff of dust.

  For the next hour or two Dave lay slumped on the narrow vinyl banquette, while Fucker played cards and described his sexual conquests to the rail with gynaecological precision. They call me Mister Loverman. They call me Mister Loverman … Other men came in throu
gh the curtains and sat down for a hand or two. They were all of a kind – lazy and dangerous – their patter reduced to staccato machismo. There was much talk of 'stinky little drummers', 'going out there' and 'doing a bit of work'. 'Orlright, is 'e?' They jerked their dagger-thumbs at Dave, and Fucker vouched for him. ''Im? 'E's a cabbie, we used to be butter boys togevver.'

  Gary – Fucker – Finch. He came across the waiting room of the Public Carriage Office on Penton Street the day Dave went to put in his application. He put out his hand to be shaken, and when Dave reached for it jerked it away and sent it burrowing into his own curly mop. That was Fucker, a tubby little chap laughing at his own japes and practical jokes. The inflated condom, the deflated back tyre, the prank phone call – when he was a lad it was endearing, then as he got older it grew staler. What stunts, Dave wondered, would he be pulling in middle age?

  With its old kitchen-unit bar, nicotine ceiling and snooker-hall lampshade, the spieler was outside of time and even space. Dave thought they might be in a cellar – but he couldn't be sure. When he went to squirt half-digested curry into a shattered commode, he staggered along a dank corridor. To one side there was exposed brickwork, on the other stacks of plastic-wrapped toilet rolls. But there was no paper in the kharzi, unless he tore another strip from the poster of Sam Fox in string-bikini bottoms. Someone had already ripped off her left breast.

  Dave felt drunk, sick and wired all at once. His heart kept thumping him in his conscience. I'm no kind of father at all . . . I'm nothing … If I was gone tomorrow he'd never know … He'd never remember the hours spent in the PlayZone, the two of us squirming in the plastic balls … That fever he had … The smell of it … Eggy water spilt on a hot ring … Pushing him up from Falloden Way to my mum's pulling ivy from a fence … Laughing … At Brighton he said 'Jewels' and tried to scoop up the sunlight on the sea … Trudging across the Serpentine in a pedalo . . . His feet barely reaching the pedals … Is this the sea, Daddy, the really sea? There's no point in going home now … Too late.

  Later still they were in a strip club and a skinny girl was thrusting her green Spandex crotch in Dave's face. He could see her stubble – she his. Boy George bragged, 'I know all there is to know about the crying game.' Fucker chose this moment to be coherent: 'You 'eard about Phil Eddings, then?'

  'You what? You … what?'

  'Phil, U erred wot 'appened?'

  'No.'

  'Oh, c'mon, you're fucking jarring me now, Tufty.'

  'I tell you, Fucker, I HAVEN'T HEARD!' The stripper reared away from him.

  'Not so loud, son,' Fucker took Dave gently by the scruff as a heavy in a black Harrington unbuckled his meaty arms and came towards them. 'No bovver, mate,' said Fucker, fending him off. 'We wuz leavin' anyway.'

  In the street – which was the brooding clash of Hackney Road and Old Street – they leaned against each other like discarded milk crates. A tramp came striding by, his certain tread and modern backpack contradicting his boots, which were shot to shit… uppers and soles with no heels or toes. 'What, then?' Dave burped. 'What about Phil?'

  ''E …'e …' Fucker gasped it out: ''E only went and topped 'imself.'

  In the minicab Fucker elaborated. 'Like me, Phil couldn't make the payments. 'E did a runner, posted the keys in the door an' took off. But 'ere's a fing.' Fucker's two ham hands held Dave's shoulder. 'They caught up wiv 'im. Skip tracers, they call 'em, you surface they track you down. Dirty fucking work. Dirty. Finance company were gonna take the cab offa 'im, so he went to a shark. Shark upped the vig, sent round the chaps, didn't get Phil – found 'is girl, Lottie.'

  'Don't know her.' How could I? Haven't seen Phil in five years . . . Never will now …

  'They roughed 'er up pretty bad, she's a straight-goer azitappens, nurse or sumfing. Anyway Phil blamed 'imself big time – fought of offing the shark, got a shooter inall – but in the end 'e did the business on 'imself.'

  'With the gun?' For some reason it matters …

  ''No, 'ung 'imself.' Fucker stared out through gems of rain towards the river and beyond it the Greenwich peninsula. 'Oi, mate,' he said addressing the bullet head of the driver, 'you should've taken the first turn down Westferry, you've gone all round the fucking 'ouses.'

  'Pliz?' Thick lips parted in the rearview mirror.

  'Oh, it don't matta … it don't fucking matta … I tell you, Tufty, it's the dog I feel sorry for, the poor little fing was stuck wiv 'is body for free days, see the bird 'ad fucked off… trauma an' vat … When they found Phil the dog 'ad gnawed 'is legs just to survive.'

  The cab pulled into the kerb and Fucker levered himself out. 'Dog, dogs,' he was muttering, 'funny that, 'coz we're on the Isle of bloody Dogs and goin' t'see some.' Dave paid the minicab, while his friend continued, 'Not that they are, really. Seriously, my Carol is a good little sort – '

  'But a brass, right? No offence – '

  'None taken. Yeah, she's a brass, but it's not like that wiv me an' 'er, it's more of a friendship, mostly we don' even shag, we juss 'ave a little cuddle.'

  'A cuddle?' Dave couldn't help but laugh.

  'Nah, nah, don' get me wrong, Tufty, thass not what's lined up fer you, there's free of 'em working 'ere, all nice girls, cummon nah.' With artful dabs Fucker guided Dave towards the house, which was a bog-standard Millwall semi. Further south were the pseudo-warehouses stacked with apartments, while up towards Limehouse No. 1 Canada Square towered over the now purely ornamental docks. Yet here Millwall remained, a low-rise grid of ordinary aspiration.

  The three girls sat round a muted telly rolling joints and drinking Diet Coke. In their catalogue peignoirs and mail-order harem pants they looked like teenagers playing at being tarts. However, there was nothing playful about Carol – a brunette as tall as Dave, with rigid hair and blurred features, who rose up from the sofa and bore Fucker off to another room. Soon enough Dave could hear her creating, which leaves me with Yasmin, to whom he'd been introduced and who now rose up as well. Jesus! She's a big girl, you don't get many of 'em to the pound . . . The schoolboy joked because the man felt disgusted with himself– and disgusted by her. Goods Way in the 80s … recession tarts … The other lads would 'ave 'em in the back . . . get a polish, then drive 'em to their dealers … I never did, though … It seemed much worse because she was Asian. The crow hair, the bluey-brown shadows under her eyes, the sortuv sideburns those Pakki birds have. Perversely, he felt concerned for her disgrace. Can't be any going back up north now … not after this … Faisal popped up, admonishing them both with a stiff finger. Allah Akbar . . .

  All those ice-cream scoops of brown flesh … I can't touch 'em … Yasmin seemed to have no such reservations. She escorted Dave upstairs to a room where damp carpet off-cuts surrounded an avocado Jacuzzi. 'Tek yer things off, loov, an' 'op in, ahl give yer oondercarriage a good old soapin',' she sung-said, while sliding from the harem pants to reveal the grim webbing of a suspender belt.

  'It… it wasn't… what I – '

  'C'mon, loov, don't be shy like.' Yasmin propped one huge haunch on the rim of the Jacuzzi and dabbled the flub-a-dub-dub of the water with electric-blue talons. 'Wassermatter, don'choo fancy me?' Dave recoiled … I don't fancy you at all … I can't do this . . . Rubbed by her … Rubbed by someone you don't wanna rub in return … like a . . . like a bloody shmeiss ponce!

  He couldn't find a cab until he was back up by Westferry Road. 'You're lucky, my son.' The driver wore a Hawaiian shirt decorated with the Miami skyline. 'That dahn there, thass bandit cuntry. You don't wanna be dahn there before sun-up.' His saviour had more fucking rabbit than Watership Down and went on and on about football: Platt, Juventus, Spurs' chances in the new season. Dave moved to the tip-down seat and stared at the cabbie's shirt so that one city supplanted the other. The tide of booze and speed was subsiding; in its wake were mudflats of gloopy wakefulness.

  In Gospel Oak he turned the key and admitted himself to Michelle's face.

  'It's your granddad … it's Benny …' She didn't
need to say any more – Dave sobbed, heaved, then buckled. She caught him in the sternum with her sharp little shoulder. He lurched upstairs to the bathroom, with her close behind. He tore open his own crazy face and fumbled in the potted pathos of the family medicaments – Calpol, Milk of Magnesia, Rennies, Band-Aids – for the ancient Valium he knew was there. Then he burrowed into her hollow and finally, with the analgesic sounds of Carl waking in his ears, and a mouthful of chalk, Dave Rudman slept.

  The funeral was way up in Edmonton. Thinking back to his early childhood and the colourful cavalcade that surrounded Benny Cohen, Dave was appalled by the few old crocks who managed to make it to the cemetery. Two crotchety cabs drew up at the cemetery gates and disgorged eight or nine bent little men, the desiccated, salty residuum left behind after all those Saturday afternoons sweating in the Turkish baths. A couple of them could barely walk and felt their way forward to the anatomical wound of Benny's grave with rubber-tipped sticks, as if probing the gravel for unexploded death bombs.

  Dave drove his mother and father from East Finchley. His sister, Samantha, tipped up from Golders Green in a dark green Jaguar XJS. Michelle stayed at home in Gospel Oak with Carl. Noel was in Aberystwyth refusing his medication. Annette Rudman resolutely refused to grieve. Dave wondered if her hatred of cabbing alone could be responsible – or was there some other more vital failure that she perceived in both her father and her eldest son?

  A hack rabbi retained by the cemetery brayed Kaddish in the chilly prayer hall. When he stepped away from the podium, Aunt Gladys came swishing up in a stiff billow of black nylon. Dave was grateful to her – even if she disturbed the piss-poor congregation with her purple-bound book, there was at least passion in her reading: 'O 'ow grate the goodness of our God, oo prepareff a way fer our escape from this awful monster; yea, that monster, deff an' 'ell, which I call the deff of the body, an' also the deff of the spirit.' Later, as they sat scraping chopped liver from paper plates in the front room of the house on Heath View, he thanked her. Benny's former colleagues nattered, salad cream smudging their moustaches, but they talked more about the roadworks on the North Circular than they did about him.