Will Self - The Book of Dave

'Well, y'know how it is, guv, 'oddle is a born-again, so 'e's only followin' 'is inner voice.'

'Yeah, right!' the fare snorted. 'Just like Ian Rush. God said, "Pick up three mil' to go to Juventus" and Rushy replied, "Hallelujah!"' The fare waggled outstretched fingers like a nigger minstrel.

Dave was on a run, leapfrogging from fare to fare, using their pinstriped backs to propel himself across town. The bliss of driving when the only goal was money — and money was everywhere — was still with him a year into the job. Besides, he'd long since learned that just as he had to throw away his Hs, so he had to gather up the beautiful game. Dave didn't give a shit about football any more, but his mates demanded football talk, the fares demanded it, the world — itself just a bladder in space — demanded it. Dave thought the fare was a racist cunt, but his appearances before the PCO had taught him not to rise to anything. Don't rise to it. The Examiner tells you to leave the minute you've got your bum on the seat do what he says. If he tells you you're not fit to be examined 'coz you've got a cold, say, 'Yes, sir' and leave. Never argue. Always talk football. He'd enjoyed the appearances — and done well. The Knowledge was vast — yet circumscribed. The Examiners drove to the heart of it: they asked you for a run and its points. If you got them right, the number of days before your next appearance was halved — if not you were knocked back. Dave had two fifty-sixes, six twenty-eights, four fourteens. Then he took his driving test, and got his precious badge.

Michelle saw him standing right at the back of the lobby by glass cases full of headscarves and rolexes. He was looking endearingly distracted, his face empty like when he comes. She headed for him, with each pace the air-conditioning whispering the sweat off of her. Not that he minds. I-love-every-thing-a-bout-you! he'd shouted into her neck at the climax of their last rendezvous. Now, he rose into her embrace. 'Why here?' Michelle spoke into his ear, while trapping his hand in hers and dragging it between their bellies. Her nail snagged his wedding band — he winced and they broke. 'You won't believe it,' he flustered, 'but a client of my dad's did a runner from here this morning. He's asked me to come and check the room, then settle the bill. So … well … I thought.'

Michelle felt a trickle of desire descend her inner thigh as the lift urged them up. The bell tinged for the eleventh floor, and he dragged her out. The carpet shushed their feet as they staggered, pawing at each other, past a maid unloading haircare from a steel cart. The key fob clattered against the door as he fiddled for the lock, then they fell into its cigar-stunk interior. A corridor led them down to a harsh light box. The drapes had been pulled open and the sun setting over the jungly canopy of Hyde Park shone directly in on a scene of animal debauchery. Dogs and ducks have been fighting in here was Michelle's first thought, for there were bloody claw marks on the white sheet, and a pillow had been slashed open. . fighting over chocolate … because there were hundreds of tinfoil scraps strewn on the carpet … to the death, because there was an evil atmosphere in the room — not only cigars had been extinguished in here but hope as well.

'Guy's a druggie,' he said. 'I didn't think it'd be this bad, though, sorry.' He slumped against a stark armoire, on top of which empty spirits miniatures played chess.

'It's OK, don't worry, it doesn't bother me.' To show how little it bothered her she took his hand and used it to pull up the back of her suede dress. He peered through the red mist of her hair at the rear view of her in an opposing full-length mirror. 'Come on.' Michelle's tongue licked the pulse in his neck. 'Come on …' Her hand, groping at his hip, felt a wad of stuff and he recoiled, his hand going to his pocket to half withdraw a rolled-up nappy. 'Jesus,' he softly exclaimed, 'oh, Jesus … I … I …' He shrank away from her. 'I can't, Michelle.'

'Whaddya mean?' You know what he means, you stupid cow.

'I can't.' His shaky hands had lost their magic, while the nappy poking from his pocket was the ear of a rabbit conjured up by conscience. For three seconds Michelle teetered between self-righteousness and self-pity, before falling to the right, into the briny.

Come on, you Spu-urs! Come on, you Yids! Dave had sunk into a memory of White Hart Lane, where little Dave and big Benny bawled with the mob, urging on the Tottenham players, who spun, dipped and slid on the viridescent stage … Yids shouting 'Yids' — you gotta hand it to us — getting in the dig before the yocks did. 'Anywhere here — no, there!' The fare cut in on Dave's reverie. They were bumbling up Hill Street in Mayfair, swarthy types in lilac shirts were debouching from townhouses stamped with brass plates. Jet-set pikeys who live in gaffs so stuffed with glass-topped furniture they look like fucking department stores. 'Here?' Dave slotted the Fairway in between two Daimlers.

'It'll do.' The fare had become all business again … Obviously I wasn't quite chummy enough for him.

'Seven-eighty, guv.' The fare handed over a tenner, and there was a moment during which Dave's long face looked at him, a graven image before which it was customary to lay quantifiable offerings. Then at last: 'Keep the change, cabbie.'

Michelle hadn't even noticed the doormen on her way in, borne as she was on hot draughts of desire. Now that she was clammy and unpleasantly weak at the knees they loomed in the plate glass, stripping her of her Hilton get-up, exposing the naked girl from Streatham. One of them was going to click his fingers, say, 'Weren't you the girl in that ad' or worse 'What you been up to, girl, no slappers allowed in 'ere, I'm gonna call the old Bill. Steve, grab this one!' Instead the doorman only opened the door with a white-gloved hand and said, 'Do you require a cab, miss?'

Dave had been scanning the Standard on the rank outside the Hilton for about five minutes before the waver-upper in the gold-frogged frockcoat did his bit. What'll it be, some Yank div wanting a diesel trot along Rotten Row? But it was a young woman perhaps a year or two younger than himself, a beautiful young woman if you like the freckled Irish type and I can't say I do. She wore a tan suede dress, tight at the breast, flared from the thigh. She carried a linen jacket slung over one arm and a handbag that matched the dress. Her flaming hair crackled on her bare shoulders. She isn't wearing a bra. The waver-upper had the door of the cab open, and she shoved herself inside. Dave took in her pale face, her vacant eyes, her bit-upon lip. She's 'ad a blow. When he asked her, 'Where to?' she didn't reply for several seconds, and he had to say it again and louder. 'Where to, luv?'

'Soho,' she replied, sounding desperate. Dave fingered the meter and drove — which was what he did best.

Michelle sat stiffly on the sweaty yet dusty upholstery. The insides of black cabs had a peculiar ambience of extreme enclosure. This — they seemed to say — is the real interior of London; your sick office buildings, stuffy houses — even your deep-bore tube tunnels — are mere lean-tos, open to the elements. It's only when you're in one of us that you're utterly contained. The cab's thumping engine pounded the shocked Michelle deep inside herself to where her mother, Cath, betrayed for the twentieth time by feckless, freckled Dermot Brodie, sobbed and sorted through the tokens of her girlhood, yellowing communion cards and postcards from Lourdes. Cath Brodie keened and plucked at her British Home Stores cardigan, as if intent on exposing her own wounded heart, so as to let it fall, beating, on to the leatherette pouffe where the lost trick of her innocence was fanned out.