Will Self - The Book of Dave

Böm hustled Carl down Northumberland Avenue away from the riot. These dads' groups, he sighed, they are always angry. Their grievances against the Child Support Agency and the Lawd Justice's Department are entirely unreasonable — deranged even. They have no love for child, dad or Dave — yet the King and the PCO, rather than suppressing them, prefer to use them after the fashion of a cat's paw, to strike terror into the populace. Come on, my son, come on — he took Carl by the arm — make sure your cockpiece is prominent, without it you still have the aspect of a boy, and if you were taken for a kiddie … He did not complete the ghastly thought, and, while Carl hearkened to him, as they made their escape across the Golden Jubilee Bridge and on to the Southbank, it was not anxiety that he was filled with but a feeling he could not identify, a queasy yet not unpleasant sensation — which had been triggered by a single word from his mentor's plump lips: son.

The pair sauntered along the Southbank and skirting the dävine precincts of the Wheel itself, headed across Victory Gardens and past Waterloo Station. By the time they reached Bedlam, which was the object of their promenade, the crowds had altogether died away, and, save for the occasional hurrying mummy dragging a squealing child, the rutted tracks and rubble-strewn boulevards were almost empty. However, on the steps of this monumental building — the elongated dome of which towered above the mean semis and tumbledown boozers — awaited a posse of lawds and luvvies.

They treat the spectacle of these unfortunates, Antonë explained, somewhat after the fashion of an entertainment. Here are confined lunatics, prodigies and even freaks — all alike and in the most insalubrious conditions. While nominally a charitable foundation, set up by worthy dävines, there is also a hard getter instinct here enshrined, for the warden of the asylum is permitted to run Bedlam as a paying concern. So saying, Böm dropped a coin into the palm of a grovelling fony who bowed, scraped and admitted them.

Antonë and Carl soon detached themselves from the toffs, who were led on ahead by the warden; instead they sauntered along a cavernous wing, beneath a barrel-vaulted ceiling. To each side irony bars formed a dense palisade, and behind them the maddads rocked and raved. They were filthy, they stank of shit and piss. Seeing expectant faces on the far side of the bars, these pitiable figures came shuffling through the rotten straw and addressed Carl with a babble of broken Mokni gibberish: Ware2, guv, ware2! Eye ad vat geezer in ve bakkuv ve cab. Nah, nah iss no bovva an vat… Many of them think they are Dave, Antonë observed, and call over after the fashion of Drivers. In my own youth there was only one madgaff in all of London, yet now I am told there are several, and still more are being erected upon the burbs.

They had reached the wing allocated to the mummies — and, if this were possible, these fares were in a still more wretched condition. See how they preen themselves, Antonë whispered, and apply their own shit as if it were slap. The poor things believe themselves to be Chelle and beat their heads against the brick walls to drive out their own evil.

One mummy was slumped right beside the bars. Her skirt had ridden up, and she was masturbating with an expression of utter vacancy on her blurry face. Carl turned away, but Böm responded as he did to any notably unusual phenomenon and continued to expatiate: There are those who say the flyspecks on the foglamp are growing in size and that this accounts for the increase in the numbers of the insane. Others contend that the fullbeam headlight is the cause. Still more blame bad water, or the monstrous size of the city that under the lash of the PCO grows at the pace of a walking dad. However, I … I — here he faltered and dropped his voice — I blame the Changeover itself, which latterly has become so rigid that it cleaves in two minds not yet formed. So I wonder if these desperate fares are only those, who, like ourselves, retain that cleavage after the end of Changeover. When I was a young bloke I thought I might go mad; until, that is, I heard the calling over of your dad.

They had caught up again with the warden and his party. This hunched fony, who averted his face from all and ceaselessly grovelled, was telling the toffs: Be not too frettened or afeared, your lawdships, the fings you are about to see are all Dave's critturs juss lyke uz. He withdrew a prodigious bunch of keys from the skirt of his leather carcoat and, unlocking an irony door, ushered them in with great ceremony. From a bracket on a wall the warden took a guttering torch, and then he led them on into the darkness. In the first chamber they came to a coloured dad who was spread out on the straw. He was quite naked and of immense size. Viss fella iz an Eeefeeopp chavage, my lawds, the warden explained, brought here by ferry froo mennë lands. Eees so chavage vat Eyev putte im in fettas coz giwen arf a chanz eed rip yer éds orf! The luvvies gasped and drew back in the way the warden clearly desired. Antonë, however, only whispered in Carl's ear: Arrant nonsense. It is but a coloured chav bought in the market like any other. Granted, he is of prodigious extent, but this our 'ahem' guide has sought to exaggerate. Look closely, all the articles in his cell have been made small — the chair, the table, even the tincan — so as to enhance his stature.

So it was with all of the so-called freaks: the Hairydad, the Monkeydad, the wattled mummy, the Pyrenean Twins — in each case Antonë sought to bring these oddities within the compass of comprehensibility. An nah, the warden cried, Eyev sayvd mì bess til lars. Viss … viss fing — he was lost for words — az bin wiv uss onlë a short wyl but iss gotta B ve stranjist bluddë creetur imajinobobble. nunnuvuz can figga aht wot í iz — dad aw beeste, reel aw — he shuddered — toyist. Í az ve aspekk ov a gyant bäcön, but, az U wil C, mì nöbbul lawds an luvvies, í speeks wiv ve voys uvva –

Carl was no longer listening. He shouldered his way between the toffs, who stood honking on their clove balls, and there, behind bars, his flanks, his tank, his shoulders deeply scored with bloody welts, his jonckheeres tattered with some awful fungus, one of his eyes a bloody mess, and a disturbing nappy wrapped around his hindquarters, was Tyga.

Carl pressed his face between the bars and, weeping, cried out:

— Tyga, O paw Tyga!

The moto shuffled over to him, lisping:

— Ithat oo, Cawl? Ithat oo? Eye wanna go oam nah. Eye wanna go oam 2 Am.

At third tariff, following a mournful curry eaten alone in the sumptuous dining room of Somerset House, Antonë and Carl were back in their own chamber when they heard the sounds of a limmo arriving in the courtyard below. Shortly afterwards, and not proceeded by fony, gaffer or retinue of any sort, the Lawyer of Blunt came to them, sliding diffidently through the door. He was a smallish dad, the skin stretched tight on his close-cropped head. His cheekbones were sharp, his green eyes deeply recessed and fiercely acute. His small hands fidgeted at a bundle of signets and seals that hung on a chain from his neck. His threads were bespoke — yet hardly sumptuous. On receiving him, Antonë and Carl fell to their knees crying, Where to, guv? but he waved for them to rise, stuttering: P-please, my d-dear blokes, no such deference is required, truly — I beseech you.

While Carl sat, sunk in his own sad thoughts of Tyga and his miserable confinement, the Lawyer and the teacher spoke in hushed tones of weighty matters. From his notebook Antonë produced a brief he had been labouring on, the essence of which was a petition requesting information on the fate of Symun Dévúsh. I understand and appreciate your strategy, the Lawyer said; the CSA can prevent no lad from knowing his own dad, no more than any dad be kept from his lad. This much is sacrosanct. Such a course will alert both the King and the PCO to our intentions, yet it may well be that they would prefer to reach a private accommodation — for if we cry it abroad through standards and decauxs it could spark rebellion. To treat with those lawds and commonfolk who oppose the Breakup and the Changeover would be no less than they have done hitherto, and such pragmatism might commend itself to our purposes if it allowed for — and here he sighed deeply — the return of my poor wife from her exile, and the pardon of yourself, Antonë Böm, and your young companion.