The Book of Dave (15 page)

Michelle sat stiffly on the sweaty yet dusty upholstery. The insides of black cabs had a peculiar ambience of extreme enclosure.
This – they seemed to say – is the real interior of London; your sick office buildings, stuffy houses – even your deep-bore
tube tunnels – are mere lean-tos, open to the elements. It's only when you're in one of us that you're utterly contained.
The cab's thumping engine pounded the shocked Michelle deep inside herself to where her mother, Cath, betrayed for the twentieth
time by feckless, freckled Dermot Brodie, sobbed and sorted through the tokens of her girlhood, yellowing communion cards
and postcards from Lourdes. Cath Brodie keened and plucked at her British Home Stores cardigan, as if intent on exposing her
own wounded heart, so as to let it fall, beating, on to the leatherette pouffe where the lost trick of her innocence was fanned
out.

No matter that somehow she got over it and, when Dermot was finally gone, made a life for herself complete with boyfriends
like Ron, Cath still hugged her betrayal, loving it more than anything or anyone else. To be Cath's only child was to be her
closest ally,
her Siamese fucking-twin.
They were tied to the same stake, consumed by the same fiery male lust. The only way to escape this awful complicity was for
Michelle to practise …
secrecy
…
that's
what I called it … They were only little lies … white ones. I'm going
out with Janey – when it was Avril; I'm staying at Paula's – when it was
Sharon. All kids lie to their parents at that age – but I lied more. But if I
hadn't've lied I wouldn't've had any life of my own at all! She'd've
dragged me down with her. I had to
…
I had to. But if she knew I'd been
seeing a married man she wouldn't know what to do first – kill me or kill
herself.
Michelle's fabricators went to work in the cab and speedily erected a plausible mockup of the flat on Streatham High Road,
its sharp-cornered rooms and stippled walls, its fussy matriarch presiding from the suite over the TV, the coffee table, the
cabinet full of dolls in national dress – all of which stank of ammonia.
Dolly
daughters who couldn't do wrong if they tried .
. .
whose knickers can't
be removed because they're sewn on.

Dave sensed the bruised silence at the back of his neck, but he drove on, feeding the wheel through his large hands as they
orbited Berkeley Square. He glanced in the rearview a couple of times, but the fare wasn't actually crying. If she'd been
crying, he would have reached for a tissue from the box he kept underneath the dash and offered it to her, saying lightheartedly
all part of the service.
Yet she didn't cry, only sat, white-faced and desperate.

The traffic was easing as the curtains went up at the Lyric on Shaftesbury Avenue, the Comedy Theatre on Panton Street and
the Garrick on Charing Cross Road, where provincial audiences began merrily to consider …
when did you last see your trousers?
Dave dropped the fare outside Gossips in Dean Street and said, 'A little early for dancing, isn't it, luv?' Luv was on a
par with guv, both tip-getters, both evoking a happier age of honest amity and sturdy deference; yet for once he meant it,
the fare looked so luvlorn.

'I'm meeting some mates in the wine bar,' she mumbled, as if giving an alibi along with her fiver. 'Keep the change.'

'You sure?'

'Sure.' She teetered on the heel of her sandal, recovered herself and was gone into the glass-fronted wine box, which welcomed
her with a gush of chatter. Dave didn't put the 'For Hire' sign on.
I'll
eat now, then work when the theatre's out.
He drove over to the little yard behind Gerrard Street – a tarmac cranny that only those with the Knowledge knew was there
at all – parked up and strolled round to the Celestial Empire, his change bag banging his thigh with a 'cash-cash' sound.

Three glasses of house white and Michelle was tipsy enough to tell her friends what had happened; four glasses and she felt
drunk enough to regret having done so. All of them judged her in their different ways, all of them lapped up her shame and
misery like a catholicon that cured them of their own. Not that any of them said anything mean – they soothed, patted and
combed the victim's hair with their sympathetic bicker, while from concealed speakers George Michael politely implored, 'I
want your sex …'

Sandra, who filed her nails to a point out of boredom and sensibly wore brown skirts that camouflaged her wide hips against
the null terrain of London. Bubbly, blonde Betty, whose electric-blue chenille top hid red, self-inflicted wounds. Pale and
interesting Jane, who stood in Shepherd's Bush, propping up a domestic fantasy: the pretence that her husband Rick went out
to work, when he stole her purse and went out to score. Sandra judged Michelle with the prerogative of a first officer, for
whom her captain's decisions are always foolhardy. Betty felt that her follies were permitted by reason of her vulnerability,
whereas Michelle – who was tough and self-reliant – should know better. Jane was quite straightforwardly contemptuous: her
husband might be a lying abuser, faithful only because he was impotent, but he was a husband and, importantly, he was hers.

They really care,
Michelle thought, looking from Sandra's spaniel waves to Betty's poodle curls. However, her belly gurgled the opposite: there
was justice in their poorly concealed
schadenfreude,
for, while all vain, pretty young women require at least one who is less so, to offset their own allure, she'd greedily insisted
on three.

After he'd paid, Dave strolled back round to the cab. He had no clear plan beyond working the theatre crowd for a couple of
hours. It could be
a doddle,
hacking the cab on an evening like this. There were the right on-off rainy conditions to get
nervous nellies'
umbrellas up and their arms out. He was throbbing back down Shaftesbury Avenue when he saw her again – the girl from the
Hilton. She wasn't exactly hailing him, but she did have an arm out to steady herself as she bent down to retrieve a lost
sandal. Dave slewed the cab into the kerb and called through the offside window: 'Cab, luv?'

Michelle had decided to go home after snorting the line of cocaine in the toilet with Jane that was meant to make her go on
to Gossips. She had only taken coke once before – and as soon as the powder crinkled up her face she regretted it; for it
chopped her into two Michelles, idiot drunk and calculating fool, lashed together in
a
freckled skin bag.
She felt awful, she wanted
revenge on that wanker,
I'll call his hippy-dippy posh wife and tell her what he's been up to while
she sits at home with baby …
The intensity of this shook her, so she didn't make any excuses – she just left. The walk down Dean Street didn't clear her
head; it thickened it with the sight of crotchless panties on plastic dummies, stared at by City types with eager-beaver faces.
I should go in that open door and up those stairs … The
pimp could put a new sign under the buzzer: 'Busty redhead new on
scene, likes to be abused …'

When the cab squealed to a halt beside her, she crawled into the back, grateful for respite, even though
two cabs in one evening, it's
insane
…
I can't afford it.
The cocaine was making tiny little calculations for her, white beads on a sparking synaptic abacus, so that when Dave said,
'Where to, luv?' Michelle replied, 'Olympia, then on to Danebury Road, it's off the Fulham Palace Road.'

Dave drove in silence and snatched occasional glances in the rearview at the fare slumped in the corner of the back seat.
They trundled down Haymarket and along Pall Mall, past the mock temple of the Athenaeum, with its golden statue of Athene,
poised on the pediment, dispensing wisdom to a Clubland frieze. They swerved into the Mall and bumbled under the blank white
eyes of Victoria – who hefted her orb, as if about to rise and pitch it from her stubby shoulder. They roared up Constitution
Hill, around Hyde Park Corner and down Knightsbridge. Quite unexpectedly Michelle spoke: 'D'you mind going that way?' She
waved her hand towards Edinburgh Gate. 'I want to – I want to see the statue.'

'The one under Bowater House? The Epstein – Pan chasing the Family of Man?' Dave lapsed into his mother's pedagogic manner.
Bloody 'ell,
Michelle sniggered to herself,
it's Fred Housego,
then said: 'Er, yeah, that's the one, but I thought he was the Devil.'

'I love this statue,' Dave remarked, because they were by it, shuddering through the arch, past the oil-dark goat legs of
Pan. Michelle looked up at his fig-leaf scrotum. He was pursuing the primordial couple with their kids and pets. Their hard
faces were flattened against the future, the whole bronze gaggle pelting full tilt from the swamp of Belgravia towards the
greying greenery of the Park.

Rolling up the South Carriage Drive …
a fine brougham, milady
. .
. Dave imagined there was now some complicity between them – although he had no idea what in. The glass partition had been
slid open, he wanted to talk about the statue, but Michelle had slumped back in the corner, her eyes vacant and her coral
pink nails worrying at the neck of her dress.

When they got to Olympia and Dave pulled up on the empty rank alongside the overground station, Michelle got unsteadily out
of the cab. 'Can you wait?' she asked. 'I'll leave my bag.' When Dave saw the security guard disputing with her, he decided
to intervene.
What must she think of me in my sweaty T-shirt with
my spotty nose and mucked up, thinning hair?
Michelle saw a tall, commanding figure. 'The young lady needs to pick something up from the stand she's working on,' Dave
said, and to back this up Michelle produced her exhibitor's badge in its plastic sheath. 'Strictly speaking no one's allowed
in, mate,' the guard said, already unlocking the door.

'We'll only be a few minutes,' Dave replied, ushering Michelle in. He darted back to lock the cab, before following on behind.

Padding along the shadowy defiles between the half-built stands, slapping the rubber treads of the stairways, their complicity
grew – they were children infiltrating a school by night and the cardboard cut-outs of winsome computer salesmen were caricatures
of derided teachers. On Level 5, at her clients' stand, Michelle found the ring-binders of plans and specifications where
she'd left them in a steel cabinet, and Dave took them from her.

Back in the cab, he homed in unerringly on Danebury Road, using the North End Road as a flight path into the heart of Fulham.
IVERS MARMA, OCKINGS, ETERKIN'S CUSTARD: the revenants of Victorian advertisements remained, haunting the pitted redbrick
shopfronts. Feeling the city wheel about the cab – a widening gyre of miles and years – Dave thought,
I'm never going to be this connected
to anything ever again
…
I'm falling.