Will Self - The Book of Dave

The Knowledge may have had its glossolalia, but these dribs and drabs of humdrum misogyny flowed together into a mighty Jordan, nothing less than A COMPLETE RE-EVALUATION OF THE WAY MEN AND WOMEN should conduct their lives together. Which, as the Driver saw it, was mostly apart, the mummies crossing over into purdah on the far bank.

The DJ from Crash, having hailed the Fairway by Vauxhall Station long after dawn and relapsed into the stale and ghastly fug, never supposed for a second that when the cabbie's red-rimmed eyes fixed on his via the mirror, and his mouth twisted out the observation 'It'd be better if we never 'ad to shack up wiv 'em in the first place — don't chew agree? Knock 'em up — then fuck off!', this was not a random remark, morning ingloriousness triggered by memories of recent sexual rejection, but rather one proposition among hundreds that made up a comprehensive blueprint for a society in which, once the old world had been swept away by a MIGHTY WAVE, EVERYTHING WOULD BE SPLIT DOWN THE MIDDLE.

'You take my situation,' he urged the drunk doorman, the wayward priest, the absconding cashier, the reluctant whore. 'I only gets to see my lad every other weekend — thass not right. It should oughta be straight down the middle. Straight dahn ve fuckin' middul. If I ad mí way …' They let him have his way, turning aside to concentrate on sandbags slumped over men-at-work signs. '… it'd be all change on Wednesdays, right across the whole fucking country. Kiddies going from their daddies to their mummies. 'Coz I'm not a monster — '

'I tellya something, guv,' he regaled the MP he was driving back to Kennington from a late division, 'I don't like the trade much myself— most cabbies are ignorant, lairy an' fucking racial.' The pol, full of claret, sighed ambiguously. 'And as for the Public Carriage Office, they've got a fucking monopoly going, what with there only being one vehicle supplier — don't tell me they ain't on the take.' The pol didn't tell him anything, only sighed again, so the Prophet continued. 'But at least they've kept the whole show on the road. There've been licensed cabs in London for four hundred years now. Growlers, Clarences, Hansoms, there's as much bloody tradition in the trade as there is the 'ouses of Parliament — maybe more. The old drivers — they know what's what, they 'ave the Knowledge, like me granddad Benny — straight as a fucking die.

'Tellya what,' he kept on at the man, who was leaning in through the window to pay his fare, lamplight smoothing the nap of his velvet collar, 'p'raps the PCO should run the whole fucking country and your lot should get behind the wheel.' The pol tipped out of weary guilt — he hated the hectoring cabbie so. And when he'd gone the cabbie rested his forehead on the boss of the steering wheel. Rested it there for so long that when, at length, he sat up, he saw the letters 'Lti' stamped on his forehead.

'GOD SAID: MEET ME AT MY HOUSE ON SUNDAY BEFORE LUNCH.' Dave goggled at the placard, his blood seething with a deathly fizz. In the rearview was a trinity of black faces swathed in white muslin. Members of some fucking nigger sect. . whom nonetheless he felt impelled to hector, as he dropped them off at this redbrick barn of a church, on a patch of wasted ground, in a notch of north London estate, 'How the fuck can I do that?' He jerked a thumb at the placard. 'I haven't got a pot to piss in or the time to piss in it. It's alright for you lot, you don't pay any bloody taxes, do you, you don't even pay your fucking road tax, but blokes like me we're on the level, we cough up, we make ourselves known …' — and here he parodied an official voice — '… to the CSA and they cut our fucking balls off with the child support.' The Coptic worshippers cleared out of the Fairway as fast as they could and tipped out of fear, fumbling coin into the angry white man's sweating hand.

The cabbie drove away rattling with fury. Not so much as a fucking thank you for picking 'em up — let alone dropping 'em off… It's a fucking punishment. I 'ate life so much … And this too made its way into the computer.

Dave stopped making any effort to see Carl at all. His son walked across the Heath and leaned on his dad's buzzer — but Dave wouldn't open the door. He was inside, in the omni-smelling semi-darkness, in his threadbare black bathrobe, clacking away. He'd found the 'contact diary' Rebecca Cohen had urged him to keep in the first months after the separation. This held details of all the time he'd spent with Carl. The boy dragged reluctantly for boating trips on the Serpentine. Fucking chancer with his pedalos for twenty-fucking-quid an hour. . same as any other bloody fleet owner … trying to rip us off. . thought we were mugs, fucking tourists. In the rewrite, Dave's run-in acquired mythic status: the man in the booth was emblematic of every grasping capitalist, his flotilla of fibreglass vessels needed liberating, father and son pedalled away laughing through bobbing flocks of inquisitive fowl.

Back and back he went, probing with 26+ tabular tongues the rotten cavities of swimming sessions and football games, children's parties and Sunday-morning matinees. In Dave's warped recollection, the bouncy castle hired by the upper-middle-class parents of five-year-old Carl's slumming schoolfriend became a mighty bastion, inflated with prestige, power and dosh. Flash it abaht, thass wot wankas lyk vat dú. Him standing there with a cocktail sausage on a toothpick, made to feel like an oik by those fucking toffs while carillons of laughter floated over the impeccably maintained gardens of the Holly Lodge Estate.

Michelle called him up and cajoled him into a meeting. The rendezvous was a pasta and salad joint in Belsize Park. She spent two full hours in front of the mirror, and worked hard on her mascara and eyeshadow to meet the man who'd blackened both her eyes. To begin with it went well enough, true. He looks fucking dreadful … Unshaven … greasy hair … stained jeans … Still, he didn't talk too loud or throw his arms about. He wouldn't eat, though, and he stared so savagely at her cleavage that Michelle, involuntarily, kept fussing with the lie of her blouse. Swirls of rainbow dye on the silk. 'Carl's half-term starts next Friday,' she said, then added, 'He needs you, he wants to see you … but not' — this was a mistake — 'like this.' Dave was back on the doorstep of Beech House, watching her pick up her knickers. He was back on the doorstep, looking at his son's face blown up out of all proportion.

'You slag!' Dave swept the plates from the table, a wine-glass stem snapped like a glass bone. He grabbed her cleavage and ripped it. Buttons popped. He slapped her face — once, twice, and he was going for a third when the waiter, whose tofu face suggested he wouldn't say boo to a goose liver, seized him from behind. The police released him that evening — Michelle had refused to press charges. Two days later a restraining order appeared on the mat at Agincourt Road. He was free to contest it — but he didn't. Instead Dave went to Prontaprint and blew up page 45 of the A-Z on the photocopier. On to this he drew the mile-diameter circle around Beech House with a thick felt pen. Then he committed this new Knowledge to his mad memory — every street, every point, running round and round it like that fucking hamster the boy used to have, stuck in its wheel. Silly cow fed it too much. . Its stomach blew up and it died. Then he incorporated this new evidence of his MARTYRDOM into the document that was taking shape beneath his fingers, and that he referred to — unconscious of any precedent, devoid of any irony — as THE BOOK.

He typed, he drove, he took the pills religiously. Last thing before oblivion, whisky glugged, lungs tarmacked, he crucified his head on the dirty pillow.