Will Self - The Book of Dave

'No kiddin',' Dave responded, bitter-mouthed.

'Wossup wiv you, Tufty?' Fucker put in. 'You're a bit down in the mouf.'

Tufty was Dave's cabbing nickname. It referred both to the unsmarmable sprig of hair at the back of his broad neck, and a cartoon squirrel that had fronted a 1960s road-safety campaign. Gary Finch — aka Fucker — was a cabbie as well; he and Dave had done the Knowledge at the same time, then they'd been butter boys together, wangling nights with cabs fronted by Gorgeous George at Nationwide Taxi Garages. 'Mister Hyde 'as pulled a stroke,' Dave explained. ' 'E's not in tonight, so Ali said I could 'ave the cab.'

'Result, no?' Fucker wiped a smear of lager from his full lips; with his curly mop, fat tummy and stubby legs, he was like a stationary bowling ball in the alley of the bar.

'Yeah, s'pose, still, I was looking forward to hoisting a few with you, an' then — '

'On to Browns, then a club, then a shebeen, then before I know it I'm rolling in at five in the fucking morning and the boiler's giving it this.' Fucker made an emu glove puppet of his hand and pecked at his own neck and head.

'Nick-nick.' Dave felt for him, but he thought also of Gary's wife, as rotund as her husband and with an extra ball stuffed up her jumper, due to fall out in a few weeks. Dave knew Debbie — and he knew Gary's mum and dad as well. They'd been a bit of a surrogate family for him. Dave wondered at the way things were panning out — the young couple had fallen out with both their families. Instead of cheeky cockney consanguinity, the mother-to-be was isolated in their flat in Edmonton, while Gary, well … Fucker by name …

'As soon as she fell pregnant,' Mrs Hedges coincidentally resumed, ' 'e done 'is nut an' cut 'er up again — she 'ad t'go fer a tonic from the doctor.' Big End tutted sympathetically. What am I doing here? Dave said to himself with Received Pronunciation, as Mrs Hedges's Hs fell at the floor by his feet and Ts stopped up his companions' throats. This isn't me, it's an act … because Dave hadn't dropped his Hs — he'd flung them away from himself, ninja stars that stuck quivering in the smoky bacon Victorian woodwork. There's no going back now, no three-point turn out of here. All that Knowledge, the city crumpled up in my head … He could envision it, the streets superimposed on the whorls of his cerebellum and I'm holding on to it. He downed the last of his pint and thudded the glass on to the bar. He snatched up his keys and swivelled to leave, his badge — which he wore on a leather thong around his neck — swinging into Fucker. 'Oi!' The tubby little man howled, clutched his mop of curls and fell against the bar. Dave, shocked, made to grab him before he fell, whereupon Finch reared up laughing, 'Adjoo there, mate! Adjoo there!' When he saw how shocked Dave was, he stopped and asked, 'You fucking off already?'

'May as well,' Dave said, addressing them all. 'I ain't gonna get a fare in 'ere am I, but if I start now I'll catch the theatre burst — might clear a wunner before midnight.'

'Well,' Big End put in, 'meet me down the club if you knock off'. As he bashed out through the door, Dave heard the fresh conversation resume behind him.

'She was pretty big by then?'

'Fucking big.'

'Is it John's?'

' 'Course it is …'

Outside in the Mile End Road, Dave unlocked the cab and stood for a moment looking west to where the buildings of the City stacked up. There were new blocks at Aldgate and down towards the Tower of London; a thicket of cranes sprouted over the old Broad Street Station, and above it all reared the black, glassy stack of the NatWest Tower. Another course of London was being laid on top of the last, millions of tons of steel, concrete, brick and stone, weighing down on the present, pressing it into the past.

While here, in the East End, magenta buddleia spears and coils of fluffy rosebay willowherb sprang from between the sheets of corrugated iron that fenced off the bombsite behind the pub. Benny had once told Dave that during the war sand had been gouged from the top of Hampstead Heath and poured into bags that were then piled in front of the hospitals and government ministries. When the ack-ack ceased and the barrage balloons were winched down, the pulverized terraces of the East End were swept up, loaded on to trucks, and dumped in the hollows and dips where the sand had been dug. Round and round it went, London's auto-cannibalism. It made Dave feel queasy to be standing suspended over such deep time, on the taut cable of a summer evening. He lowered himself into the cab and, starting the engine, felt better immediately, and better still when within seconds his Faredar peeped and he netted a commuter heading for Fenchurch Street. Go west, young man.

It was the tempo of the times — the years themselves were in a rush, the decades even, struggling to attain the next era. The matt-black chrysalis of the 1980s was splitting and, with stop-action rapidity, out came a vast moth, unfurling sticky, tinted-glass wings.

In the layer cake of Olympia — jammy carpet tiling, spongy exhibition space — Michelle Brodie struggled to keep up with her idea of who she ought to be. Almost all those who laboured to get Olympia ready for the opening of Business Computing '87 knew Michelle by sight — she was hard to miss, with her fiery plume of auburn hair and her trim figure in its neat, scarlet suit. Hurrying here, rushing there, her heels clicking and a comet tail of gaseous regard streaming behind her.

The fabricators weren't working hard enough on the stand. Michelle wasn't in charge of this — any more than she was in charge of the account overall — if it's a success Manning takes the credit, and if it bombs it'll be my fault. Manning, the Exhibitions Executive, that fat wanker with his white socks and cheap loafers, his greased-back hair and C&A suit … thinks he's God's fucking gift, had made his obligatory pass at Michelle within days of his appointment. Since he's been brought in over me, he thinks he has the right to climb on top of me. Although by the standards of the passes that had been made at Michelle — and there were many at this time — Clive Manning's was low key. His fish-belly hand lounged towards her coppery tights while he burbled of 'forward planning', then, when she flinched, it flopped away while he continued uttering banalities about 'feedback'.

What if I'd let him? Pork-pie breath on my shoulder, greasy hair in my eye, little dick digging at me down below. . The grim vision goaded Michelle on past fabricators who were bolting steel frames and hammering together wooden partitions, speedily erecting a model city inside the cavernous exhibition hall; a new London, shiny, two-dimensional, every facade commercially artful. The workmen, scenting her perfume, turned to stare, wet tongues lolling on their yellow teeth, while women looked daggers at her, searching for chinks in her beautiful armour — the hint of a sag or a blemish.

At her clients' area Michelle talked to the foreman, a dependable Irishman, older, his wedding band emphatic on his veined hand. I remind him of his daughter or niece — he can't respect me 'cause I'm not a virgin — but he doesn't dream of fucking me. She showed him the revised drawing: the stand was to be in the shape of a giant desktop computer, with the staff answering queries through the screen. Prospects would be ushered in to look at its shiny innards. It was her idea.

Michelle's mate Sandra took the call at her desk in the Shell Centre, while forking grated carrot from a plastic container and peering myopically at the drizzly window. 'Not at lunch, San?' Michelle said.