Will Self - The Book of Dave

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.

Acting with entire accord, the two blokes urged the moto on into the deep undergrowth of the Gayt. They had awoken late and scrambled to break camp and quit the curryings before the Hamsterwomen were abroad gathering kale and samphire. It had been agreed that Antonë and Tyga would hide up in the Gayt while Carl — with his more intimate knowledge of the island — went forth to discover how things stood in the tiny commonwealth. Beyond that they had no other plan, or at least none that either was prepared to confide to the other, for Antonë also had fantasies of confronting the Hamstermen with their deception and how poorly they had used Symun Dévúsh.

Broad, flat moto hands and feet displaced clods of earth and clumps of brick that rolled down the ravelin. Slowly yet unerringly Tyga discovered a gap in the dyke and pushed a path deep into the crackling rhodie boughs. After a couple of hundred paces they discovered a tiny clearing in the undergrowth, and here Carl bade Tyga lie down. The moto didn't want to — he was agitated, he kept lumbering in a tight turning circle, his broad flanks sweeping the two humans into the bushes.

— Doan go, doan go, he implored Carl, Eyeth fwytunned, Eyeth fwytunned.

Carl tried to soothe him:

— Iss onle 4 a lyttul wyl, juss so Eye can fynd aht woss wot.

Yet it wasn't until Antonë closed in on the moto, took his huge head in his arms and stroked Tyga's agitated wattles that the beast could be quietened:

— I'll cuddle you until Carl gets back, I'll get you a snack. You'll see, we'll have a great time. Turning to Carl, he continued:

— Don't worry about him, I'm sure he'll settle down as soon as you've gone.

Carl decided to make for the point where the Layn debouched into the moto wallows. As he tramped through the dense scrub of Turnas Wud, then the dells and clearings of Norfend, an uncanny sensation gathered in the small of his back. After Nimar, after London, after the burbs and the forests he had seen on their trek across Chil, these, the playing grounds of his boyhood, were eerily still. There was no rat-scuttle, bunny-hop or tree-rat-scratch. No flying rats coo-burbled in the crinkleleafs. He took his smart trainers off the better to feel his homeland — yet even beneath bare feet the bark chips and leaf fall felt desiccated and lifeless.

Then it struck him — by this time in the tariff the motos should be filling the woods with their deep lowing, the reedy cries of their young mushers and infant charges piercing the leafy canopy. The crackling thud of flanged moto feet and the mechanical rasping of moto molars was so integral to Ham that without it, it was as if the very life force had been stilled. Carl shuddered, even though every tree and bough was familiar to him, yet this was no more Ham than the painted hoardings of Stepney Green were the proud buildings of New London foretold in the Book.

Lost in this reverie, Carl nearly tumbled over a figure that was bowed down between two mossy smoothbarks, grovelling in the earth with a mattock. It started up and ran — he couldn't tell if it was mummy or daddy, so swathed was it in a cloakyfing. Before he had time to consider what he was doing, Carl found himself running in hot pursuit, smashing through brack and sawleaf. The figure was making for the Layn — soon they would be exposed to whatever watchers there were down below in the manor. Carl put on a spurt and the pelting wraith tripped on a root and fell headlong into a boggy slough. Fell, sprawled and twisted so that the cloakyfing was torn away from the freckled face of:

— Salli! Salli! Carl cried, Ware2, luv? Ware2?

She didn't answer his salutation — only glared up at him, her pale eyes brimming with the dull hatred of a toyist beast.

Carl stared at Salli. Her cheeks were hollow, her neck scrawny, there was a film over her frightened eyes. The cloakyfing was wound round her emaciated body like a shroud on a living skeleton. The Beastlyman swam up again in Carl's fevered fancy — was this a vision? Were he and Salli in the breaker's yard already, was she about to rise up and hail Dave? The cloakyfing was wound so tightly, Carl hadn't seen such a cover-up even with the London mummies. He bent down to offer her his open hand, and she spat in his face:

— Wanka! she cried, then, Fukkin wanka!

He knelt down beside her to show he was no threat, and she cowered, then spat at him again.

— Doan tuch me! she said cowering, Eyem a boylar nah!

— A boylar? Carl was incredulous. Waddya meen? Owzat?

— Lyke Eye say — Eyem a boylar, aniss yaw fukkin fawlt. U fink yaw awl davyn but U aynt — iss mummies wot mayd U juss lyke we mayd vat fukkin kweer — wurs lukk!

Misunderstanding her ire, Carl began a halting explanation as to why he and Antonë had left the island. He told Salli of their hardships on the way to London and what they had discovered there, then, as he told of his dead dad on the rocks of Nimar, Carl became more and more agitated — he so needed her to comprehend the shifting sands of belief that quaked beneath them, yet the only potent image he could call upon was one at the very core of Dävinanity.

— I-iss … iss lyke viss, Salli, he stammered. Ewe C Eyem lyke ve Loss Boy — ewe C wot Eye meen? Ve Loss Boy –

U! U aynt no Loss Boy! She spat again. Ure a wanka juss lyke enni uwa dad — juss lyke ve dads wot nokked me up.

— Wen?! Wen diddí appen!? Mummy shame and daddy jealousy curdled in his hammering chest.

— O ajez ago, she laughed bitterly, B4 U leff Am. Eye dunno oo í woz, if thass yaw nex kwestchun — coz sew menne ovem ad a krakkat me — up ve kunt, up ve garri, U no owí