The Book of Dave

by Will Self

  – W-why, Carl whispered to Antonë as they followed the Luvvie's clacking heels through halls, along galleries and between the columns of elegant colonnades, does she wear a mask?

  – Mask? Mask? Oh, I see, you mean her slap – this is only such unguents and creams as London luvvies are wont to adorn themselves with. It is customary – a sign of refinement.

  Carl thought it no refinement at all but a ridiculous oddity, making of the mummy a stranger to herself. However, he had not time to dwell on this, for his surroundings were so marvellous and unexpected that he struggled to take in their bewildering detail. The archways they passed beneath, the wall panels, the domed ceilings, the very flags of the floor they trod upon – in short, every surface was adorned with painted scenes drawn from the Book. Carl's eyes, attuned to the subtle shades of green and brown that dominated his native Ham, ached with the bombardment of lectric blues, intensified indigos, dayglo oranges and the silvery curlicues that drew the vignettes together into a continuous, dävotional mural. He wanted to touch and prod the tiny figures and little black cabs. He wished he might clamber into this brilliant London and, together with Dave and the Lost Boy, escape the chellish PCO. Carl's head began to swim – and he would have fainted had not Luvvie Sarona pushed through a final set of doors and guided him to a chair, where he gratefully subsided. The floor of the vast chamber that Carl found himself in appeared to be covered with a woodland canopy, as if screen and ground had been reversed. Here and there on this dappled expanse were little posses of mummies and daddies. To begin with, so still were they that Carl assumed these figures weren't living fares but some fresh trickery of the eye. The dads stood with their arms cocked, their hands on their hips, their chests thrown forward to emphasize the snowy expanse of their T-shirts. Their leather jackets curved into great rigid tails like the folded wings of birds. Their white jeans were skintight, their cockpieces upraised, their trainers laced to the knee. The long peaks of their caps were pulled down low and the smoke from their fags boiled there.

  The mummies – although far fewer in number – were no less resplendent. Their long legs were sheathed in hose, their skirts were as short and tight as belts, their decolletage plunged to reveal cunningly contrived chokers and gorgets of Daveworks. Their faces were uniformly mask-like, and they peered quizzically at the new arrivals through the heart-shaped lenses of their lorgnettes. A curious stench – at once fruity and spicy – emanated from these mummies and daddies. On the mantel a meter clunked the units with dreadful finality.

  Then, quite suddenly, as if this were a prearranged signal, Luvvie Sarona closed the double doors with a 'clack', and the toffs sprang to life. They closed in on Antonë and Carl, their fags poking, their earrings jangling, questions firing from their painted lips. What did they think of London? How had they contrived to get here? Was it true that Carl was the Geezer's son? And Antonë Böm, a learned queer, how had he withstood exile at the very limit of the King's realm? These motos of which the Luvvie Joolee had written – did they indeed speak as lisping children? And, most importantly, what of the second Book – the one the Geezer was reputed to have found on his native island – did they know its whereabouts?

  Carl did his best, yet no sooner had he begun to reply to one of his inquisitors than another interposed himself. The gathering was fast degenerating into a mêlée. The peaks of the daddies' caps jabbed at Carl's face, and he was on the verge of swooning, when Luvvie Sarona called them all to order. Daddies! Mummies! she cried. These blokes are weary and have travelled far under the most terrible exactions, there will be, I trust, time aplenty for them to make appearances before you all. For now they must rest, and in due course it is only proper that this young lad be afforded the opportunity to go about the town and learn something of our ways. He comes among us in the figure of the Lost Boy! Let us revere him – for my sister tells me that he also bears more of the Geezer's revelation!

  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 – a gawky mummy in a purple skirt and a daddy wearing an eyepatch – 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 – and curiously divorced from them. He was miserably uncomfortable – 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.

  – W-wot – 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 – 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 – 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 – they have been our protectors – 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 – 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 – 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:

  – 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 – 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 – 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 – who darted hither and thither strewing incense on the fires – 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 – 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 – 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 – 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 – 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 – 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 seesee­teevee 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 – 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 – deranged even. They have no love for child, dad or Dave – 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 – he took Carl by the arm – 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 – 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 – the elongated dome of which towered above the mean semis and tumbledown boozers – 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 – 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 – 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 – here he faltered and dropped his voice – 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.