The Book of Dave (31 page)

'Yeah, yeah, but first I'm going over east to have a bite with Gary and Big End.'

'What?'

'You heard.'

'I didn't mean … it's just that… just that – '

'Mum! Mum! MumMumMumMumMum –' Carl was tugging his mother's sleeve and his need was insistent – now and for ever, need without
end. Dave left.
I know what she means
…
I hardly see
any of 'em any more … my mates … my friends … That's what it
does … being … being
… Unhappily married. What could they do? To confide in anyone was to invite a dangerous sympathy: 'Oh, yes, isn't he/she
awful, I've always thought that, you should leave him/her …' and so the miserably bound remain lashed together on their
island of desertion while friendships cruise away. Yet even unhappiness can be a kind of intimacy.

'Iss Debbie, she's only gone and fucked off wiv the kids.'

'What, did she find out about wasserface, that other bird you got on the go?'

'Nah, she's known about Karen fer ages, they was pregnant at the same time with Jason an' Kylie. Nah, iss this other one she's
found aht abaht.'

'Another one?' Dave took the pint Big End handed him and tossed offa third of it. 'What issit with you, Fucker?'

'I dunno, I s'pose iss jus' me nature, innit.' He smiled ruefully and took a swallow of his own drink. There were no such
things as jokes now.

'So, wotchew want me for, Fucker, to commiserate or what?'

'Nah, don't be lemon – I know where they are an' that, I wanna go an' get 'em back.'

'I don't like the sound of that, mate,' Dave said. 'You've gotta talk it through with Debbie, don't do anyfing hasty.'

'That's what I been saying,' Big End put in. ' 'E's gotta talk it frough, if I got troubles with my women I talk it frough.'

'Oh, yeah,' Dave half rounded on Big End, 'how many baby-mamas is it you've got now?'

'Depends,' Big End grinned, 'ooze countin'.'

'But you don' live wiv any of 'em, do you?'

'Well … no, not eggzackly, but they 'cept that iss different in the black co-munity.'

'Yeah, right.' Dave turned back to Fucker. 'So why me?'

'You've got front an' that, Tufty, also you got the cab.'

'Where's your cab, then?'

'I 'ad to let it go, mate, couldn't make the payments. I bin doing site work wiv Big End, way fings are on ve job I may let
go of my licence an' go permi'. I tell you I'm fucked – you gotta help me. If I don' 'ave those kids in me life I've got nuffing.
Nuffing.'

They sat in the Globe drinking for another hour or so. By the time Dave had downed two more pints he was prepared to go with
Fucker to check on Debbie and the two kids as long as he didn't make a scene. Then, with the two unlikely fares in the back
of the cab, Dave felt drunk at the wheel and regretted the whole thing.
I could lose my licence if the OB gives me a tug
…
What am I doing?

The flat where Debbie had taken refuge with little Jason and littler Amber was in a council block at the top of Brick Lane.
It was an old LCC building, redbrick with external balconies and tiled staircases. They left the cab on a meter next to a
shop advertising a closing down sale of glass slippers, plastic bead waterfalls and mock braziers with trompe l'ceil tissue-paper
flames. Furtive Bengalis darted into the Friday afternoon strollers, pressing flyers on them: 'Lunch Special, All You Can
Eat, £2.95.' 'I could murder a curry,' said Big End.

The plan was that Dave would knock on the door while the other two kept out of sight. When Debbie's mate Berenice answered,
he'd explain that he was a friend of Gary and he needed to speak with Debbie. When she emerged so would her husband, and hopefully
there'd be a resolution. It didn't work out that way. Berenice was suspicious from the off – she only opened the door a crack.
A fat, mixed-race girl in puce tracksuit bottoms stretched tight over a double belly, she goggled at Dave, taking in through
the six-inch gap the whole disreputable length of him – or so he assumed. Behind her daytime TV smouldered in a dim, smoky
room. 'Bwoy, she ain't even here so you can't talk wiv 'er.'

'I'm sure she is,' Dave wheedled. 'Gary – her old man – told me she was. Look, don't you think it would be better if they
sorted this out? It can't be good for the kids.'

'Wotchew knowabout kids? Wotchew know? You push them out, yeah?' She slapped her bellies and they shivered. 'You push them
out of your cock?'

' No – '

He was going to try to answer her question, but Debbie forestalled him by wrenching the door open – she must have been standing
behind Berenice the whole time – and letting fly: 'Oo you fronting up for, Tufty, issit that wanker? Issit?' Then Fucker came
barrelling out of the recess by the rubbish chute, and charged at the door like a pocket bull elephant, howling, 'Jase! Amber!
Iss Daddy! Iss Daddy! I come fer yer!'

The mêlée quickly became an ugly stand-off: all five adults were jammed inside the main room of the flat. In the bedroom to
the right, Dave could see a bunch of kids cowering behind a bunk bed. Fucker grabbed a thin baby from a bouncy chair and held
it against his chest, its little heels drumming on his heaving stomach. Berenice began bellowing, 'Gimme 'im! Gimme 'im! Gimme
'im!' again and again, while Fucker screamed, 'Back off! Back off!' Debbie had collapsed on to the floor, and all Dave Rudman
could think of was
very black roots growing out,
in the perverse way that dramatic events force trivia on those involved.

It was left to Big End to do something effective. He strode over to Fucker, relieved him of the infant, handed it back to
its mother, then dragged the chubby man out on to the walkway. 'I'll 'ave the fucking raddiks on you, bwoy, you see I won't!'
Berenice screamed while Debbie sobbed. Dave tried to calm the situation, tamping the women down with outstretched hands, but
Big End came back in and dragged him out as well. When they had regrouped by the cab, Big End put his arms round the two other
men's shoulders and said, 'Right, then! 'Owzabout that curry?'

Ten minutes later they were sitting in the Lahore Kebab House on Henriques Street at a rice-bedizened, sauce-smeared table.
Fucker had picked up a half bottle of Scotch, and, unmindful of religious sensibilities, the three men passed it between them,
taking hefty swigs. Meaty blobs speared by airy cutlery met numb lips. Dave stared woozily at the thickening traffic: the
scabrous Transits bumping in from the A13, Canvey Island and all points east; the grumbling dump trucks, anfractuous scrap
metal spilling over their grooved sides; the executive landaus with
expense-account arses
spread on their buttery upholstery … This … this is the real East End,
where the soaring towers of the City, prestressed with adrenalin, collapse into the tat and veg of Brick Lane and Petticoat
Lane. Here, in this parched badlands, the alien minarets of the new mosque pricked the grey heavens. Across the Commercial
Road the rag traders' showrooms were like hot houses pressed from within by multicoloured flowers of brocade, lace and cotton.

'Heh-heh,' said one of the old faces who was playing blackjack with Fucker, 'wadjew give 'im, whizz or wot?'

'Whizz,' Fucker said. He was at ease with these men, whose mortal clay was fired with venality.

'Heh-heh, hit me, you cunt.' The dealer – a terrifying rail of a man in a zip-up nylon windcheater – chucked the old face
a card. 'Busted. Orlright, I'm ahtuvere.' He got up, a bandy-legged little man, who for all that exuded palpable menace. 'Wherejoo
'eaded, Freddie?' the Dealer asked, tipping back on his chair.

'Gants Hill,' Freddie spat. 'I'm minted an' I'm putting a monkey on wiv Basset fer Tony Thornton to whip that prancing nigger
Eubank.'

'As you do,' Fucker put in, but Freddie paid him no mind, only shrugged on his blazer and adjusted his display handkerchief,
smoothing the two snowy linen fangs. He departed through red velveteen curtains with a puff of dust.

For the next hour or two Dave lay slumped on the narrow vinyl banquette, while Fucker played cards and described his sexual
conquests to the rail with gynaecological precision.
They call me
Mister Loverman. They call me Mister Loverman
… Other men came in through the curtains and sat down for a hand or two. They were all of a kind – lazy and dangerous
– their patter reduced to staccato machismo. There was much talk of 'stinky little drummers', 'going out there' and 'doing
a bit of work'. 'Orlright, is 'e?' They jerked their dagger-thumbs at Dave, and Fucker vouched for him. ''Im? 'E's a cabbie,
we used to be butter boys togevver.'

Gary – Fucker – Finch. He came across the waiting room of the Public Carriage Office on Penton Street the day Dave went to
put in his application. He put out his hand to be shaken, and when Dave reached for it jerked it away and sent it burrowing
into his own curly mop. That was Fucker, a tubby little chap laughing at his own japes and practical jokes. The inflated condom,
the deflated back tyre, the prank phone call – when he was a lad it was endearing, then as he got older it grew staler. What
stunts, Dave wondered, would he be pulling in middle age?

With its old kitchen-unit bar, nicotine ceiling and snooker-hall lampshade, the spieler was outside of time and even space.
Dave thought they might be in a cellar – but he couldn't be sure. When he went to squirt half-digested curry into a shattered
commode, he staggered along a dank corridor. To one side there was exposed brickwork, on the other stacks of plastic-wrapped
toilet rolls. But there was no paper in the kharzi, unless he tore another strip from the poster of Sam Fox in string-bikini
bottoms. Someone had already ripped off her left breast.

Dave felt drunk, sick and wired all at once. His heart kept thumping him in his conscience.
I'm no kind of father at all .
. .
I'm
nothing
…
If I was gone tomorrow he'd never know
…
He'd never
remember the hours spent in the PlayZone, the two of us squirming in the
plastic balls
…
That fever he had
…
The smell of it … Eggy water
spilt on a hot ring
…
Pushing him up from Falloden Way to my mum's
pulling ivy from a fence
…
Laughing
…
At Brighton he said 'Jewels'
and tried to scoop up the sunlight on the sea … Trudging across the
Serpentine in a pedalo .
. .
His feet barely reaching the pedals … Is this
the sea, Daddy, the really sea? There's no point in going home now …
Too late.

Later still they were in a strip club and a skinny girl was thrusting her green Spandex crotch in Dave's face. He could see
her stubble – she his. Boy George bragged, 'I know all there is to know about the crying game.' Fucker chose this moment to
be coherent: 'You 'eard about Phil Eddings, then?'

'You what? You … what?'

'Phil, U erred wot 'appened?'

'No.'

'Oh, c'mon, you're fucking jarring me now, Tufty.'