Will Self - The Book of Dave

— A teacher and a surgeon, eh? You don't ask for much! None save those who are most exalted — the Hack made a short bow — would willingly exile themselves in these remote parts. Even if I were able to find you such dads, they would most likely be compromised.

— Compromised, pissed, queer, flyer — I care not, Greaves, I care not. Send me a fellow, and no matter how rebellious he be I feel confident that I shall be able to confine his aspirations in these few clicks. Do you doubt, guv — the old crow leaned over the Hack and bore down on him with his yellow eyes — whose will would prevail?

He paused between two streets, and the Examiner reduced him to fourteen days. He stalled at a junction during his next appearance and was ordered to trial. The trial was one in name only. The old testimony of Mister Greaves was all that was required to establish Symun Dévúsh's guilt. No reference was made to his current activities, no defence was allowed. The Chief Examiner sentenced him in ancient Mokni: 2 B browkin on ve Weel. Yaw fingus crakked, yaw 4ed brandid, yaw tung cut aht, an U 2 B Xeyeled.

In the long third tariff before his sentence was to be carried out, the Geezer gathered to his chamber as many of his disciples as could be accommodated and warned them: B bluddë cairful, U lot — ve PeeSeeO ul av U inawl. Dú nuffing, say nuffing, an ven vay brayk me stä ahtuvit. Yet they could not obey him — they loved him too much. When the warders lugged the Wheel out into the yard, the dads touched by the Geezer stood in the heavy screenwash and jeered them. Other warders dragged Symun out, his feet trailing grooves in the churned-up earth. In an echo of his departure from Ham, the Guvnor refused to let him stand or address the prisoners, for fear of his inflammatory words. In the hushed silence while the flyer was lashed to the Wheel, the bitten-off cries of the hawkers without the Tower walls could be clearly heard: Ivers! Marmi! Ockings! Getcha Eterkins cuss-taaard!

This time the big Wheel kept on turning, faster and faster. The Geezer's head whipped round and around, until the vessels of his brain burst and blood flooded into all his memories. The common prisoners pointed out the details of this wheeling with the delight of spectators at a cock fight: Lookatvat, ees swallered iz tung! The Geezer's fares fell to their knees and wept.

It was a long kipper night in London. From door to door of the city the seeseeteevee men of the PCO moved with stealth and efficiency. Scholars, tradesmen, craftsmen, common day labourers and a smattering of lawyers. In all, some two hundred daddies and a handful of mummies were judged to have been tainted by the Geezer's flying. Under torture they all confessed.

They prised Symun Dévúsh's tongue from his gullet and pounded his chest to get him to breathe. Then they stretched the talking member from its root and cut it off. As he gargled in his own blood, they broke his knuckles and all the joints of his fingers with a punishment club. Then they branded him with the F for flyer on his forehead. Finally, as he swooned close to death, he was taken by cab to the Isle of Dogs and bundled aboard a ferry. The vessel lay off in the London roads that night, and in the small units of the first tariff a second exile was brought out to her by the pilot's pedalo.

This queer was unmolested and unchained. He had with him a capacious changingbag and to ward off the kipper cold he wore a heavy, bubbery cloakyfing with an oilskin cape over its shoulders. Soon after he'd come aboard, the gaffer interviewed him in his cabin: Mì awdas R onlë 2 tayk U sarf 2 Wyc, ware U R 2 B landid. Eye no nuffing uv oo U R aw wot U av dun, mayt, so folla ve rools uv mì ferrë an Eyel giv U no aggro. But fukkabaht an Eyel av U, unnerstood? Antonë Böm nodded his head slowly while tugging his prematurely white beard. He assumed others must have suffered far worse fates that long night, and — while not comprehending the cause of it — appreciated his light escape.

For the remainder of that kipper Böm remained at the Bouncy Castle of Wyc. He tutored a few of the Hack's children who were in residence, and he treated the maladies of both chavs and bondsmen as well as he was able. He knew nothing of the prisoner who languished in the dungeon beneath his feet. When buddout came, a pedalo set out from Wyc. It was a light, fast craft, pedalled by the closest and most trustworthy retainers of the Lawyer. It carried a sole passenger and set course for the last finger of land that pointed from the uninhabited island of Barn towards Ham.

Three months later, when the days were stretching to meet the summer solstice, another far larger pedalo headed south. This vessel belonged to Mister Greaves, the Hack of Ham, and was crewed by his dads. It set course first for the Hack's semi at Stanmaw, where trade goods were to be loaded, together with the sick fares of the Shelter. For Ham was its ultimate destination, and on the narrow thwart set in the prow there hunched a plump figure, his spectacles flashing in the switched-on foglamp. The new teacher and surgeon for the Hamsters that the Driver had requested was on his way at last.

The fare was lolling by the Bank of England. The dirty building, with its grooved walls and milled balustrades, was a big copper coin tossed down in the City. He beckoned lazily with an upraised finger, summoning the waiter, and Dave slewed the cab to a halt behind a van disgorging toilet paper. The fare — tall, officer class, sandy-haired, three-pieced — lounged over the road. While he slid into the back, Dave listened to the City itself. Could he hear the aftermath of the awful carnage of the day before? The final gargle as the dregs of fifteen billion pounds were sucked out of its dealing rooms? The sweat and moan of shirt-sleeved, plastic piano players pounding out the blues of ruin? No, there was only the hum of everyday urban vacuity.

'Where to, guv?'

'City of London School, d'you know it?' In the rearview mirror the sandy man's moist face belied his dry manner.

'No problem.'

'Not that… um, I'm not… I'm picking up my sons there, then we'll double back to Liverpool Street, yah?'

'No problem.' The sandy man blotted himself out with the Standard … Would've pegged 'im as a total getter, but p'raps he's come down a few pegs … Dave almost felt like telling the sandy man how bad things were for the trade. I can't make the bloody payments, mate, can't make 'em. I've the mortgage on top of that… living whatsits … the cab costs more than just the loan as well, there's your servicing, your diesel, your bits an' bobs, I'll tell you, some days I'd do better staying at home, least I'd know how much I was down then. We're next in the bloody food chain, mate, that's a fact — you lot push the wrong button, sell short instead of long or whatever, an' it's us lot who catch it.

When they got down to Queen Victoria Street the sandy man left his fat briefcase in the back — a repository of trust. He took Dave's time — lounging off along one of the walkways leading into the school, which was tied up to the Embankment like a redbrick cruiser. Domine dirige nos … There was time enough for Dave to read the nameplate on its immobile hull. Time enough for Dave to buff up his resentments and see them shine.

The Fairway no longer shone. When Dave first bought the cab, he lavished his attention on it, laving it, waxing it, shammy-leathering it personally in an autosexual frenzy. It was — he thought — a cool, dark reflection of the man he was. Now it was agony to stroke and rub the black flanks of the thing he'd come to hate, so he took it into the garage where one of Ali Baba's lads gave it a loveless seeing-to.