Will Self - The Book of Dave

I used to come up here all the time … all the time … strange to forget it … He looked across the dark valley towards Hampstead. Yeah … came here to look over there. . over there where he was … where he is … Dave found himself on his knees, the damp earth blotting into his jeans. Then it returned to him.

Phyllis took the call on the payphone that was between the kitchen and the toilets. She'd never got the hang of mobiles. 'Phyl,' he said, sounding out of breath, shocked, 'it's Dave.'

'Alright, Dave, you sound like something bad's happened.'

'Well … well, it has … but a while back … Phyllis— Phyl, I've found it … I've found the book … It's not-not in me, Phyl — it's in the ground, a real bloody book, buried. Fucking buried.'

It took him almost a year before he could even bear to contemplate the disturbing forms of the motos. Even with myopic eyes downcast, he could not avoid seeing their repulsive hands and feet, which, while human-like, were surrounded by large cartilaginous discs. Their mopeds were a dull pinky-beige colour — as they grew, so they darkened in hue, becoming brownish and brindled. The hides of the fully grown motos reeked of oil. For such large creatures they were horribly adept at concealing themselves, and oftentimes on his peregrinations the teacher would move to place his trainer upon a mossy boulder, only to feel it wobble beneath him. He would start back — the moto, roused, would rear up, and Böm would be confronted by the face of an enormous obese infant, with clear blue eyes hidden in its fleshy folds.

When he saw one come lumbering through the woodland towards him, he took off his eyeglasses and walked swiftly, circumventing its blurred bulk. To touch one of the grotesque anomalies would have caused him such intense revulsion that he feared he would vomit up his curry, should the motos, not sensing his disquiet, cluster about to give him a nuzzle; food, like as not, both cooked in and flavoured with their own oil.

Antonë Böm did become accustomed to the motos in time — and accustomed also to the oddities of the remote community to which he had been exiled. In coming to love Ham and the Hamsters, Böm was, in part, reconciled to that bit of himself that had been isolated during the Changeovers of his own childhood.

As a kid Tonë Böm had run and jumped and played with the others. His dad was a mechanic at the bus garage in Stockwell, responsible for the jeejees that drew the lumbering vehicles through the London streets. Surrounding the dads' block where Böm senior lived were the market gardens of Clapham, which provided London with its fruit and vegetables. Tonë's mum, San, lived in a mummies' block on Brixton Hill, and on Changeover day he'd join the lines of children winding through the orchards back to their dads' gaffs. The older kids carried the little ones when they tired and comforted them when they cried — for in London Changeover came early. When he was small, Tonë, like the rest, soon forgot mummy stuff and his mummyself after the Changeover. Yet as he grew older the consciousness of the different lad he was with his other parent stayed with him, shadowing his mind like a waking dream.

Böm spoke of this to his mates — but they either gave him very odd looks or suggested, in no uncertain terms, that he should speak to a Driver. While only in their early teens, these lads already had eyes for the opares, and they were keen to become dads in their own right. This prospect did not enthuse Tone at all. He realized he must be queer.

Antonë Böm grew into a plump, shambling young man, quick of eye although slow of speech. His amiable doughy features bore the impress of the pox — which was in nowise unusual for a modern Londoner. He guarded his quizzical, inner eye fiercely, for always he saw the mummies' world in terms of the daddies', the daddies' in terms of the mummies'. He knew that many others did as well; he could detect it behind their closed faces. Yet they had no way to speak of such things, for they were all — dads, mums and queers alike — bound into the immemorial Wheel of Dävinanity, which, with its rituals and precepts, circumscribed their conduct and governed their inmost thoughts from when they arose at first tariff until they lay down as the foglamp dipped.

From when he was very young, Böm displayed the memory and the fixity of mind needed to become a Driver. His mum wanted him to — so did his dad. At nineteen he applied to the PCO and was accepted. Much of a Driver's apprenticeship consisted of calling over in the taxi schools, under the watchful mirrors of fiercely disciplinarian Examiners. The Knowledge Boys also patrolled the streets in their scarlet waterproof robes. They went out in all weathers to memorize such parts of the city as had already been built, and to consult with those Inspectors who were marking out the dävine plan for the next district of New London to be erected.

It was an exciting time to be a Knowledge Boy abroad in the city. Those structures deemed by the PCO to be most integral to New London — and which had been inaugurated at the accession of the King's dad, Dave II, almost forty years before — were now nearing completion. The great stations of King's Cross, Charing Cross, Victoria and Waterloo. The Hilton Hotel and the Houses of Parliament. The Shelters of St Paul's and Westminster Abbey. The NatWest Tower, the Lloyd's Building, the Gherkin and the very Wheel itself — mighty edifices that together expressed the full temporal compass of the dävine revelation.

However, in his second year of doing the Knowledge, when his appearances had been scheduled, Böm had a crisis. It was not one of faith — he still heard Dave over the intercom, albeit indistinctly. It was rather the PCO and the dogma it promulgated from which he detached. He looked at his fellow Knowledge Boys and saw in them only chellish vanity and the desire to exert power. He felt his mummyself recoiling from the brutal inequalities of London life; which meant that while the lawyers, the guildsmen and the Inspectorate lived a life of opulence and ease, there were beggars starving in the streets of Covent Garden.

Böm abandoned the PCO and for a time apprenticed himself to a surgeon in Old Street, who practised at the sign of the Twisted Spine. He providentially discovered that his clumsiness deserted him when it came to the furious, bloody business of the operations. The more agitated the patients became — as their limbs were bound with cloth strips and the surgeon's mate sharpened his knives and saws — the calmer Tonë was. His gaffer said he had the makings of a great surgeon in his own right, but Böm was discouraged by the palpable lack of success their ministrations had. Even a simple operation — such as removing a stone, or amputating a septic finger — would leave three out of four patients dead within tariffs.

Böm left the surgeon and joined the City of London School as an assistant teacher. He found some solace in his contact with lads whose natures were not, as yet, entirely set in the dävist orthodoxy. All this time he continued to live in a young queers' dormitory, keeping himself aloof from their whoring, betting and boozing. He tried also to ignore their rowdy persecution of the Jocks, the Taffies and the Micks — whichever minorities, in short, they could attack sure in the support of the PCO. It was a coarse and uncongenial environment for a young man with an inquiring mind; however, without a patron Böm had no means of escaping it. The best he might hope for would be to use his position as a means of seeking employ in a lawyerly household.

It was at the school that Böm came into contact with the teachings of the Geezer. Another assistant, queer like himself, had a brother who was imprisoned in the Tower, and from this unlikely source came the message Antonë had, without knowing it, been waiting for ever since his last Changeover: the confirmation that he was not alone.