Will Self - The Book of Dave

When Dave got back to the cab and strapped Carl in, he found a message from Gary Finch on his pager … stupid little doo-da, only got it 'cause 'chelle was pregnant. . and when he called him the tubby man was in some distress. 'Come over east, willya, Tufty, I need to 'ave a chat. I'm plotted up wiv Big End in the Globe.'

Michelle's period had come that morning, and dumping the used applicator in the bin, and the wrapping in the toilet bowl, she wondered whether all her ill feeling had given birth to this papery curl. 'Are you going out working, love?' He was still love — but it was a love that would dissolve with the next Alka-Seltzer.

'Yeah, yeah, but first I'm going over east to have a bite with Gary and Big End.'

'What?'

'You heard.'

'I didn't mean … it's just that… just that — '

'Mum! Mum! MumMumMumMumMum —' Carl was tugging his mother's sleeve and his need was insistent — now and for ever, need without end. Dave left. I know what she means … I hardly see any of 'em any more … my mates … my friends … That's what it does … being … being … Unhappily married. What could they do? To confide in anyone was to invite a dangerous sympathy: 'Oh, yes, isn't he/she awful, I've always thought that, you should leave him/her …' and so the miserably bound remain lashed together on their island of desertion while friendships cruise away. Yet even unhappiness can be a kind of intimacy.

When Dave arrived at the pub he found Fucker and Big End with a fair few pint glasses on the tabletop in front of them. Big End got up without asking what Dave wanted and went to the bar, where an amiable, doughy blonde had long since replaced Mrs Hedges. Big End looked like a mutant — with the empty wrinkled arms of his overalls hanging down his back. Dave spied his tool grip and spirit level propped in a corner of the bar and envied him for the honest simplicity of his tools. Fucker looks dreadful. . And he did, his natural perm ruined by sweat, his pouchy clown's face drooping with dolour. His fat belly heaved against the table, green Fred Perry shirt riding up to reveal his furry gut. 'What's up?' Dave asked, pulling up a stool.

'Iss Debbie, she's only gone and fucked off wiv the kids.'

'What, did she find out about wasserface, that other bird you got on the go?'

'Nah, she's known about Karen fer ages, they was pregnant at the same time with Jason an' Kylie. Nah, iss this other one she's found aht abaht.'

'Another one?' Dave took the pint Big End handed him and tossed offa third of it. 'What issit with you, Fucker?'

'I dunno, I s'pose iss jus' me nature, innit.' He smiled ruefully and took a swallow of his own drink. There were no such things as jokes now.

'So, wotchew want me for, Fucker, to commiserate or what?'

'Nah, don't be lemon — I know where they are an' that, I wanna go an' get 'em back.'

'I don't like the sound of that, mate,' Dave said. 'You've gotta talk it through with Debbie, don't do anyfing hasty.'

'That's what I been saying,' Big End put in. ' 'E's gotta talk it frough, if I got troubles with my women I talk it frough.'

'Oh, yeah,' Dave half rounded on Big End, 'how many baby-mamas is it you've got now?'

'Depends,' Big End grinned, 'ooze countin'.'

'But you don' live wiv any of 'em, do you?'

'Well … no, not eggzackly, but they 'cept that iss different in the black co-munity.'

'Yeah, right.' Dave turned back to Fucker. 'So why me?'

'You've got front an' that, Tufty, also you got the cab.'

'Where's your cab, then?'

'I 'ad to let it go, mate, couldn't make the payments. I bin doing site work wiv Big End, way fings are on ve job I may let go of my licence an' go permi'. I tell you I'm fucked — you gotta help me. If I don' 'ave those kids in me life I've got nuffing. Nuffing.'

They sat in the Globe drinking for another hour or so. By the time Dave had downed two more pints he was prepared to go with Fucker to check on Debbie and the two kids as long as he didn't make a scene. Then, with the two unlikely fares in the back of the cab, Dave felt drunk at the wheel and regretted the whole thing. I could lose my licence if the OB gives me a tug … What am I doing?

The flat where Debbie had taken refuge with little Jason and littler Amber was in a council block at the top of Brick Lane. It was an old LCC building, redbrick with external balconies and tiled staircases. They left the cab on a meter next to a shop advertising a closing down sale of glass slippers, plastic bead waterfalls and mock braziers with trompe l'ceil tissue-paper flames. Furtive Bengalis darted into the Friday afternoon strollers, pressing flyers on them: 'Lunch Special, All You Can Eat, £2.95.' 'I could murder a curry,' said Big End.

The plan was that Dave would knock on the door while the other two kept out of sight. When Debbie's mate Berenice answered, he'd explain that he was a friend of Gary and he needed to speak with Debbie. When she emerged so would her husband, and hopefully there'd be a resolution. It didn't work out that way. Berenice was suspicious from the off — she only opened the door a crack. A fat, mixed-race girl in puce tracksuit bottoms stretched tight over a double belly, she goggled at Dave, taking in through the six-inch gap the whole disreputable length of him — or so he assumed. Behind her daytime TV smouldered in a dim, smoky room. 'Bwoy, she ain't even here so you can't talk wiv 'er.'

'I'm sure she is,' Dave wheedled. 'Gary — her old man — told me she was. Look, don't you think it would be better if they sorted this out? It can't be good for the kids.'

'Wotchew knowabout kids? Wotchew know? You push them out, yeah?' She slapped her bellies and they shivered. 'You push them out of your cock?'

' No — '

He was going to try to answer her question, but Debbie forestalled him by wrenching the door open — she must have been standing behind Berenice the whole time — and letting fly: 'Oo you fronting up for, Tufty, issit that wanker? Issit?' Then Fucker came barrelling out of the recess by the rubbish chute, and charged at the door like a pocket bull elephant, howling, 'Jase! Amber! Iss Daddy! Iss Daddy! I come fer yer!'

The mêlée quickly became an ugly stand-off: all five adults were jammed inside the main room of the flat. In the bedroom to the right, Dave could see a bunch of kids cowering behind a bunk bed. Fucker grabbed a thin baby from a bouncy chair and held it against his chest, its little heels drumming on his heaving stomach. Berenice began bellowing, 'Gimme 'im! Gimme 'im! Gimme 'im!' again and again, while Fucker screamed, 'Back off! Back off!' Debbie had collapsed on to the floor, and all Dave Rudman could think of was very black roots growing out, in the perverse way that dramatic events force trivia on those involved.

It was left to Big End to do something effective. He strode over to Fucker, relieved him of the infant, handed it back to its mother, then dragged the chubby man out on to the walkway. 'I'll 'ave the fucking raddiks on you, bwoy, you see I won't!' Berenice screamed while Debbie sobbed. Dave tried to calm the situation, tamping the women down with outstretched hands, but Big End came back in and dragged him out as well. When they had regrouped by the cab, Big End put his arms round the two other men's shoulders and said, 'Right, then! 'Owzabout that curry?'

Ten minutes later they were sitting in the Lahore Kebab House on Henriques Street at a rice-bedizened, sauce-smeared table. Fucker had picked up a half bottle of Scotch, and, unmindful of religious sensibilities, the three men passed it between them, taking hefty swigs. Meaty blobs speared by airy cutlery met numb lips. Dave stared woozily at the thickening traffic: the scabrous Transits bumping in from the A13, Canvey Island and all points east; the grumbling dump trucks, anfractuous scrap metal spilling over their grooved sides; the executive landaus with expense-account arses spread on their buttery upholstery … This … this is the real East End, where the soaring towers of the City, prestressed with adrenalin, collapse into the tat and veg of Brick Lane and Petticoat Lane. Here, in this parched badlands, the alien minarets of the new mosque pricked the grey heavens. Across the Commercial Road the rag traders' showrooms were like hot houses pressed from within by multicoloured flowers of brocade, lace and cotton.