Will Self - The Book of Dave

From where Carl stood by the wheel, he could see all of the Trophy Room, this floating wooden island that had been his home for the past three blobs. Tyga was in his cage on the foredeck, the mate was at the wheel. Antonë Böm stood at the bow, his plump hands thrust in his drawstring jeans, his threadbare robes lashed by the stiff breeze. His mirror caught the foglight dancing upon the waves, while tucked beneath his arm was his leather-bound copy of the Book.

The gaffer of the Trophy Room had accepted Böm's story without questioning. Stalkers and their butterboys were common enough in the further dominions of King David. Besides, the queer let drop the names of powerful connections in London, and as for the monstrous brindled beast they had with them, the gaffer consented to take it aboard — such freaks fetched a pretty price in the Smoke. It would pay these lowly Drivers' passage to the capital.

The Plateists of Bril had not cavilled at Antonë and Carl's decision — theirs was a society founded not on coercion but on liberty of conscience. The travellers rested and waited for Tyga's wounds to heal; then, furnished with fresh provisions, they were rowed out into the sea lanes in one of the Plateists' pedalos. Although this craft was far larger than the Hack of Ham's, it still seemed a mere cockleshell bobbing on the waves when the Trophy Room came beating up the main of Cot under full sail.

The Trophy Room, Carl thought, was a vessel such as the giantess might have ridden in. It creaked and groaned with constant life, it stank of tar, hempen rope and its spicy cargo of fags and booze from the far south, beeswax from Ex and even a few tanks of moto oil freshly loaded at Wyc. Below decks rats scuttled and the alien chavs blubbered with their clipped tongues. There was more irony attached to the Trophy Room's rigging alone than Carl had seen before in his entire life. The gaffer wore a golden cap embroidered with the arms of his getter, and held the course of the ferry by eye and memory, with little recourse to his traficmaster.

The coast of Cot was a panorama that unrolled alongside the ferry. Bëthan semis stood in the hedged fields, their white plaster and black beams sharp against the tawny ground. After the Trophy Room had made the northern cape of Cot, these isolated buildings were succeeded by small manors, which clumped together into bigger and bigger settlements. Here the semis were of brick and crete — some of them two storeys high. The Shelters were magnificent; great green halls capable of holding a hundred fares at intercom. On their roofs stood wheel vanes, and the loud chimes that rang out from their slatted speakers carried over the waters.

Having crossed the sound between Cot and Durbi, the Trophy Room anchored off Nott to trade. Carl was astonished by Nott Bouncy Castle — and refused for a while to believe that it could be of human construction, rather than a curiously shaped stack. When the crowds piled out from the Bouncy Castle's gates, then came churning in their pedalos across the harbour to the ferry, Carl took refuge with Tyga, snuggling down in his comforting flesh folds. The gaffer threw a tarp over them. While the Nott blokes bargained with the gaffer, Antonë Böm remained below deck, scratching away at his notebooks in the tiny cabin.

The Trophy Room lay off Blackheath under a dipped headlight. The Port of London Authority pedalo came out to the ferry with a pilot. They were to proceed upriver at first tariff and berth in St Katharine's Dock. The pedalo returned to the city carrying lettuce from the gaffer to his getter in Lombard Street, and from Antonë Böm to the Lawyer of Blunt at Somerset House, his fuckoffgaff in the Strand.

Neither Antonë nor Carl could sleep that night. They assembled their few, pathetic belongings over and over again, packing and repacking their changingbags.

— You know, Carl, Antonë said, speaking softly, the gaffer will only take one payment from us for our passage and that payment alone. He has made it clear that if we do not give him this — this thing, he will hand us over to the harbour master as soon as the ferry docks.

— I, I understand, Carl replied, tears flowing down his cheeks. He went up on deck. The headlight was a silvery sliver, the dashboard a smear of illumination.

— Paw Tyga. Carl stroked the moto's salty jowls and spoke in comforting Mokni: Iss onlë 4 a lyttul wyl, yeah, an Eyem shor ve gaffa ul lúkarfta U.

Tyga regarded him with tiny trusting eyes. But Eyeth wuwwyed abaht U, Cawl, he lisped. Eyeth wuwwyed abaht U.

The foglamp came on in a screen demisted, and revealed the great earthen rampart of the Emtwenny5. A large, flat-bottomed pedalo came alongside the Trophy Room, its crew of Taffy chavs pedalling furiously. The pilot was still in his cabin, so Carl coaxed Tyga into the cargo sling, and he was swung over the side of the ferry and winched down into the well of the smaller vessel. Carl could hardly bear to look at poor Tyga. He thought of all the dangers they'd endured on the journey from Ham, and how at every opportunity the moto had placed his own life at the service of his young gaffer. Now he was being abandoned, almost certainly to a fate even worse than that of his rank.

At first tariff the Trophy Room weighed anchor, and, with only a mizzen sail set, she coasted gently on the flood tide into the mouth of the Thames. From the yawning gap between the piers of the Barrier a sleek, black shag came, travelling low over the riffling waves. The pilot took the wheel, the crew hung from the bare rigging, and, while the gaffer and his mates busied themselves below deck, Antonë and Carl went forward and watched as the prospect of the mighty city opened out before their eyes.

Past the Barrier the Thames narrowed so much that Böm was able to point out the principal districts, streets and even the individual buildings of the metropolis to his young companion: the hilltop manors of Millwall and Deptford, the smoky ravines of Greenwich and Hackney. Coaches pulled by teams of ten and even twelve burgakine were rumbling along Silvertown Way in clouds of dust. The Millennium Dome rose up on the southern shore, the long arms of cranes wavered over its bellying sides. Even at this early tariff teams of chavs were swarming up ladders, carrying hods of brick and truckles of mortar, adding to the courses that coiled like a mighty rope.

Carl could find no point of reference in this tumult; for here the trees were but buddyspike stalks rooted in the gaps between buildings, and the flocks of flying rats that wheeled about the roofs of the towering Shelters were as flies to the ordure of burgerkine. The bobbing waterfowl divided by ferry prows; the smoke streamers blowing from scores of chimneystacks on the riverbank; the turbine propellers flashing bigwatt; the hundreds of little pedalos plying from shore to shore; then, when the breeze slacked, a stench — sharp, bitter, unnatural — welled up and stung Carl's eyes.

Antonë called over the runs that pertained to the unfolding view — but this dismayed Carl still more, for, while some of the streets were lined with semis, others were but muddy sloughs edged by yok kerbstones, with a few wooden uprights in place of gaffs yet to be built. Still more were but Holloways gouged in the earth by the passage of the multitude. Then, as the Trophy Room entered Wapping Reach and the Bermondsey Hills closed in on the southern shore, so the city began to clot, its roads tangling, its streets narrowing, the gaffs — painted bright reds, blues, greens and yellows, their gable ends resplendent with golden wheels — climbed atop each other, three, four and even five storeys high.

Carl could now see the people — so many of them — and, as the ferry passed by the end of a street, it was as if a log had been rolled over to reveal a multitude of scuttlebugs hurrying about their business: lawds and luvvies lolling in their cabs, a pair of jeejees between the shafts; getters in rickshaws; the middling sort in minicabs; carrot-crunchers on top of coaches piled high with sacks of wheatie, veg and other comestibles. Chuggers, decaux pasters and squeegee merchants darted hither and thither in the roadway; and everywhere there were gangs of skinny urchins that, startled from their nefarious activities by a seeseeteevee man brandishing a staff, seemed to dance like midges above a puddle, before alighting once more.