Will Self - The Book of Dave

— W-why, Carl whispered to Antonë as they followed the Luvvie's clacking heels through halls, along galleries and between the columns of elegant colonnades, does she wear a mask?

— Mask? Mask? Oh, I see, you mean her slap — this is only such unguents and creams as London luvvies are wont to adorn themselves with. It is customary — a sign of refinement.

Carl thought it no refinement at all but a ridiculous oddity, making of the mummy a stranger to herself. However, he had not time to dwell on this, for his surroundings were so marvellous and unexpected that he struggled to take in their bewildering detail. The archways they passed beneath, the wall panels, the domed ceilings, the very flags of the floor they trod upon — in short, every surface was adorned with painted scenes drawn from the Book. Carl's eyes, attuned to the subtle shades of green and brown that dominated his native Ham, ached with the bombardment of lectric blues, intensified indigos, dayglo oranges and the silvery curlicues that drew the vignettes together into a continuous, dävotional mural. He wanted to touch and prod the tiny figures and little black cabs. He wished he might clamber into this brilliant London and, together with Dave and the Lost Boy, escape the chellish PCO. Carl's head began to swim — and he would have fainted had not Luvvie Sarona pushed through a final set of doors and guided him to a chair, where he gratefully subsided. The floor of the vast chamber that Carl found himself in appeared to be covered with a woodland canopy, as if screen and ground had been reversed. Here and there on this dappled expanse were little posses of mummies and daddies. To begin with, so still were they that Carl assumed these figures weren't living fares but some fresh trickery of the eye. The dads stood with their arms cocked, their hands on their hips, their chests thrown forward to emphasize the snowy expanse of their T-shirts. Their leather jackets curved into great rigid tails like the folded wings of birds. Their white jeans were skintight, their cockpieces upraised, their trainers laced to the knee. The long peaks of their caps were pulled down low and the smoke from their fags boiled there.

The mummies — although far fewer in number — were no less resplendent. Their long legs were sheathed in hose, their skirts were as short and tight as belts, their decolletage plunged to reveal cunningly contrived chokers and gorgets of Daveworks. Their faces were uniformly mask-like, and they peered quizzically at the new arrivals through the heart-shaped lenses of their lorgnettes. A curious stench — at once fruity and spicy — emanated from these mummies and daddies. On the mantel a meter clunked the units with dreadful finality.

Then, quite suddenly, as if this were a prearranged signal, Luvvie Sarona closed the double doors with a 'clack', and the toffs sprang to life. They closed in on Antonë and Carl, their fags poking, their earrings jangling, questions firing from their painted lips. What did they think of London? How had they contrived to get here? Was it true that Carl was the Geezer's son? And Antonë Böm, a learned queer, how had he withstood exile at the very limit of the King's realm? These motos of which the Luvvie Joolee had written — did they indeed speak as lisping children? And, most importantly, what of the second Book — the one the Geezer was reputed to have found on his native island — did they know its whereabouts?

Carl did his best, yet no sooner had he begun to reply to one of his inquisitors than another interposed himself. The gathering was fast degenerating into a mêlée. The peaks of the daddies' caps jabbed at Carl's face, and he was on the verge of swooning, when Luvvie Sarona called them all to order. Daddies! Mummies! she cried. These blokes are weary and have travelled far under the most terrible exactions, there will be, I trust, time aplenty for them to make appearances before you all. For now they must rest, and in due course it is only proper that this young lad be afforded the opportunity to go about the town and learn something of our ways. He comes among us in the figure of the Lost Boy! Let us revere him — for my sister tells me that he also bears more of the Geezer's revelation!

At the mention of the Geezer there was a great commotion. The toffs all fell to their knees and a confused babel arose from them, part calling over, part pleas addressed directly to Dave, exhorting him to tear his eyes from the mirror and confront them. Two of their number — a gawky mummy in a purple skirt and a daddy wearing an eyepatch — were thrust into the centre of this ecstatic circle. The others joined hands and began to chant: Don't breakup! Don't breakup! Don't breakup! Carl looked from ghostly visage to cockpiece, from brandished Daveworks to mouths flecked with spittle. His dazed eyes slid to the arched windows of the chamber, and through the distorting glass he could see a rainbow shimmering against the muddy clouds. Don't breakup! Don't breakup! Don't breakup! the mummies and daddies continued, working themselves into a frenzy. It was all too overwhelming for the peasant lad, and at last he did faint quite away.

Carl recovered consciousness in a sumptuous chamber, lying in a high hard sofabed on strangely chilly white material. A shapeless covering lay over him, upon which was the sign of the Wheel. In the pool of light thrown by a tall letric sat Antonë Böm, scratching away at his notebook. Carl lay for a while, staring up at a painted ceiling that depicted Dave in his flowing robes, composing the Book in golden letters. Carl was at once oppressively aware of these opulent surroundings — and curiously divorced from them. He was miserably uncomfortable — he longed for the prick of straw and even the nip of the bug. He wanted to be where he was a lad to every dad, where he wasn't a stranger or an oddity.

— W-wot — wot woz awl vat abaht, ven? Dön braykup an vat?

At the sound of Carl's voice, Antonë looked up. Arpee, Carl, Arpee at all times, Antonë reminded him, then continued, And that, ahem, little ceremonial was conducted because Danëel and Karen Brooke have been caught cohabiting by the Lord Chancellor's Department, yes indeed. Naturally, the Blunts' sect has been under surveillance by trained mediators for many years now — ever since Luvvie Blunt was exiled for the same crime. Böm sighed heavily. These hoorays, Carl, they speak of the Geezer as if it were his calling over that led them into such practices, when the truth is that posh mummies and daddies have always shacked up with each other, daddies even as they left the very Shelter itself, going straight to the mummies of their children, children they freely acknowledged as their own. No, no, it is only since the dävidic line assumed control of the PCO that the writ of State and Shelter have become one, and that the King's political allies have sought to dignify their suppressions with dävine doctrine.

Yet upon whom does this weigh most heavily? Böm rose and began to pace back and forth, pontificating in a manner that so vividly recalled to Carl the days of his childhood, far away in the Shelter at Ham, that he could not prevent himself from smiling. I will tell you upon whom, the poor, the cockneys and the peasants, the Taffies and the Scots — even the chavs, who are mere property to be bought and sold, are subject to the rigours of Breakup and Changeover. I have no cause to disparage my Lawd or Luvvie — they have been our protectors — still, when I see these foppish fellows smiting their perfumed brows and crying out how they are overawed by the tragic vision of the Lost Boy, abroad on the Heath and at the mercy of Nature's savagery. . well, I confess, lad — I do not know what to think. No, no, indeed I don't.