Will Self - The Book of Dave

Dave Rudman was sharing a semi-detached house with two mates that year. It was near the Metal Box Company building in Palmers Green. They were all cabbies who'd got to know each other doing the Knowledge. It forged a bond — this open university of bitumen. They did tutorials in dingy bedsits or else the painfully tidy front rooms of their parents' houses — calling over the points and the runs for night after night. Fear of getting any police record kept them mostly sober. Dave Quinn, Phil Eddings, Tufty Rudman, Gary 'Fucker' Finch. Musketeers on mopeds — that's how they thought of themselves. And when they weren't out doing the Knowledge, they worked together for a dodgy contract-cleaning outfit run by Quinn's Uncle Gerry, which operated out of Barking.

They cleaned hospitals, care homes and offices — or rather they didn't. Dave Quinn showed them the fiddle on their first night: 'See this.' He'd climbed up on a ladder and was pointing at a dingy patch on the off-white wall near the ceiling. 'Thass a tester, that is, yer leave a little bit of the wall uncleaned to show the 'ole floor's been done, right? Except' — he scampered down the aluminium ladder, snapped it shut, hung it on his shoulder, picked up a bucket slopping dirty water, and with the others in his wake, ran up the stairs to the next floor — 'that's not 'ow we do it 'ere.' He yanked the ladder open and, still carrying the bucket, ascended. 'You got yer little bit of card, see, like a stencil, right.' He held this up to the wall. 'Then you dobs a sloosh of yer dirty water on it, an' Bob's yer fuckin' uncle, a tester!' He cackled his maniacal laugh, a pocket version of his Irish uncle, his full lips twisting into cupidity.

Dave didn't like it — this dirtying of a tiny patch instead of cleaning a broad expanse — but he got used to it, it was a liberty but not a diabolical one. They were little guys, weren't they? Dave and his mates — and little guys had to take what they could. Uncle Gerry knew the score, the environmental services managers he gave kickbacks to knew the score. Everyone knew the score … except for the boring straight-goers. Besides, Dave liked the all-night-shift poker games they played in the empty offices. The hundreds of desks, personalized with a photo cube or a jokey sign — 'THE BOSS IS IN … YOUR FACE' — now depersonalized entirely, swivel chairs pushed back, papers abandoned, calculators cast aside, their daytime inhabitants tucked up in bed, in the sticks.

Walking the echoing corridors, creeping down the emergency stairs to check on the security guard, then finally hitting the streets as dawn silvered the glassy peaks of the city; this, Dave had imagined, was the topsy-turvy world he'd inhabit when he got his badge. I'll choose my own hours and my own patch … I'll be free of the hamster wheel these desk jockeys swivel in, free of the need to kowtow to some finger fucking, expense-account-padding wanker, in from his carport in the sticks, who finks 'e's Robert-fucking-Maxwell 'coz 'e drives a company bloody Ford Sierra. And if he felt a little wonky when he got on his Honda later that morning, he could always neck a wrap of whizz and let the two-stroke of his young heart yank him forward.

The Palmers Green gaff was a parody of domesticity: T-shirts in the sink, ashtrays in the fridge, the pot plants weedy specimens of Cannabis sativa. The lads worked different shifts and rarely collided at a social hour — if they did mayhem ensued. One would rustle up girls, another drugs, a third booze. The partying was frenetic and loud, neighbours despaired — the garden made their eyes sore. They came round to complain and were met by Phil Eddings, whose suede head and skull face were enough to terrify anyone. On one much recounted occasion, the neighbour visited an apparition: Big End, who'd let some giggly girls, high on mushrooms, anoint him with their foundation. He came to the front door looking like Baron Samedi, his happy face masked with Caucasian flesh tones, his big naked torso sweaty and black.

Towards Christmas of that year the partying died down. The lads were cramming in as many shifts as they could; Dave Quinn and Tufty Rudman had switched to renting full-flat so they could mush whenever they wanted. Ever since Black Monday in October, it'd got a lot tougher to get the getters. Quartering the Square Mile — up Lothbury, down Houndsditch — Dave Rudman wondered Where 'av all the little chancers in their striped blazers got to? Still, Christmas Day and New Year's Eve should double up their money. The plan was to put enough doubloons in the war chest so they could take off in January. Just like Benny and his mob used to … Las Palmas … shtupping grateful golf widows.

Poor Fucker was working as hard — but every penny he made went into soft furnishings and white goods, kandy-striped kiddy klothes and presents. 'Fer me fuckin' bird. I tell you lot,' he told them over a spliff sucked down in front of the news, lithe Palestinian boys lobbing rocks at Uzi-toting Israelis, asymmetrical warfare among the Semites, 'don't fucking go there, keep your rain hat on 'cept when she's on the blob. That's bin my bloody downfall.' He laughed bitterly. Women, eh … they're like beautiful flowers … luring you in, then once you've dumped your pollen before you know it they're fat old boilers with fucking 'taches. Still — a kid's a cute thing … Dave tiptoed into a nursery and began playing with his secret mummyness. I'd call my little chap Champ …

Fucker had borrowed the money from Mann & Overton in the Holloway Road to get his own cab. To make the payments he had been forced to suffer the indignity of a full Evening Standard livery job. 'Makes me eyes funny looking at it,' he moaned, and the other lads, standing on the kerb, squinting at the newsprint plastered all over the new vehicle, laughed until they felt sick. 'Your sherbert looks like sumfing you got from the chip shop,' Phil Eddings quipped. 'Yeah, and you're the fucking wally!' Dave Rudman added.

One afternoon in December, Dave ranked up at King's Cross and went for a tea in the grimy booking hall. The place still stank with all the evil fumes of the fire the previous month, when thirty punters had been incinerated on the tube escalator. The night it happened, Dave had been at Victoria when the radio began to spit out the news in sizzling horror gobs. The cabbies got out of their vehicles and huddled together, shifting from one foot to the other, as if sensing the Hades beneath their feet. Now, standing under the barrel ceiling of this other terminus, looking at the junky scum and Jock chancers fresh off the InterCity, Dave felt sudden and unaccustomed depression: a premonitory sadness that took him back to the cab, back to Palmers Green and into his daytime bed.

When the bell woke him from his couvade, hours later, Dave wanted to ignore it. He had a cookie of sputum lodged in his throat … gotta pack in the fags. He felt like he was skiving off school … It might be an inspector from the PCO, or Ali from the garage come to check out why I'm not on the fucking road … So he pulled his jeans and T-shirt back on and tramped down the narrow stairs. When he swung the door open, there she was, her beautiful mouth pulled hard down at one side, as if sneering at her own good looks. Michelle was seven months pregnant, and there was no question in his mind of not letting her in.

They were married four weeks later, in a registry office on Burnt Oak Broadway. The cab was tricked out for the wedding in frills and bows. Gary Finch drove while Dave and Michelle sat in the back. They were both being taken for a ride.