The Book of Dave (44 page)

Carl stood a little way off, his slight figure camouflaged by his bubbery cloakyfing. He looked at Böm with a curious expression,
concerned yet almost contemptuous. A fulcrum had been wedged beneath their association – and the balance was tipping in Carl's
favour. Eventually he moved towards the teacher, bent down and stared into the muddy face.

– Vey töl djoo, diddun vey?

Böm nodded; there was a smear of blood at the corner of his mouth.

– U no wot cums nex … Carl took his shoulder, shook it. U no, Tonë, we gotta go an fynd out. We gotta go intah ve zön
… U no … ware mì dad went… We gotta fyndaht ve troof.

– No, Böm said feebly. No, we mustn't… we can't.

A chill wind moaned between the pines that guarded the moto wallows, and further along the Layn to the northeast the twisted
branches of crinkleleafs scratched at a tinted screen within which pinprick dash lights gleamed. For three full tariffs the
storm had lashed Ham, blowing every single leaf from the trees, the screenwash hosing the paths into muddy chutes. Now the
screen was clearing, and the wind scoured Antonë's and Carl's faces. They both carried the Hamsters' heavy mattocks on their
shoulders. Böm also had a flaming bundle of oil-soaked reeds, but the brand would shed little light – they were counting on
the headlight, which wouldn't dip until well into the third tariff.

–
Ready, then? he said.

– Reddë enuff, Carl replied.

Böm hefted his mattock. Come on, then, he said through pursed lips. Let's go.

Within a few paces the quiet of the zön enfolded them. The hill sloped steeply, and they first slipped, then fell. Struggling
on, the pair pushed through a bank of dead pricklebush and found themselves in a gully between high banks over which swarmed
the spiky roots of rhodies. Looking up, Carl saw the dark blue rift of the screen fringed by their glossy evergreen leaves.
Böm was reverently calling over and over: Forward Heath Street… Forward Heath Street… Forward Heath Street, as he
edged his way deeper in the Zön. He could see a gap in the bank to their left and, thrusting his way into it under the bushy
overhang, called back to his companion: Hampstead Square, this should be the last turn-off before we reach Beech Row.

Carl came slithering through the mud to reach Böm's side, and supporting each other they pressed forward. Djoo bleev í? the
lad whispered, overawed by the mystery of the place. Djoo bleev viss iz Lundun? Böm cast anxious glances about him at the
dark banks. Here and there the soil had crumbled away in the rain, and even through the gloom they could make out the exposed
courses of brick. After they'd skidded another hundred paces there came a second gap in the bank to their left. This is it,
Böm sighed. If we truly are in Hampstead, then this is Beech Row. Follow me.

Bent double beneath the dense press of the undergrowth, they squeezed into the ditch. After a score of paces they scrambled
up the bank to the right. On top the rhodies were quite low, and, upon rising up, they found themselves head and shoulders
above the canopy. The headlight was full beam, its silvery letric illuminating the eerie scene. Spreading out below was a
lap of land in the hillside; over it shimmered the shiny, purple-black masses of the rhodies, while here and there pinnacles
of brick rose up, stark against the night screen.

This mound – Böm indicated the tumulus immediately to their left – must be the gaff. There's Knowledge of this in the Book,
Carl. A gull swooped past, coasting on its airy ramp. Böm started and dislodged scree, which pattered down into the ditch
behind them. Carl, remembering the granddads' tales of rat colonies in the Ferbid­dun Zön, clutched Böm's shoulder. Steady,
lad, the teacher calmed him. Be steady.

They clambered down the slope and on to the flat area below the mound. Then Böm began his peculiar search on hands and knees,
seeking out first the long-buried remains of the ancient wall, then rising to check its orientation with the mound, then sinking
down again. It was eldritch, the queer rustling about in the dark shrubbery, the gulls scooting overhead, the full-beam headlight
bearing down on them from the south, smoky cloud roiling across its fly-specked glass. Suddenly Böm's scurrying ceased, and
he let out a single, low moan. Carl crashed through the bushes to his side. Böm was kneeling before a gaping pit. The vegetation
had encroached on it, the rain had washed down into it – yet still the clay streaks and sand dashes at its edges made the
hole appear freshly dug. L-look, Böm stuttered. L-look here … and here … Where the fill from the pit had been scattered
among the rhodies, there were neat piles of Daveworks, twisted bits of irony, bricks and lumps of crete. Th-this is it . .
. Böm managed to splutter. This is where the G-geezer, your d-dad dug. This is where he claimed he found the second Book!

– Mebë iss stil vare, said Carl, and, since Böm at first did not acknowledge him, he said it again: Mebë iss stil vare – ve
Búk.

– W-what d'you mean?

– Me dad, ee sed Dave túk ve Búk bak, diddunee? Mebë ee ment ee put í bak, bak in viss ole.

– Oh, no, no, surely not – it couldn't be, there's nothing there, look … look …

– We gotta lúk innit, Carl said after a while. We gotta dig, thass Y we brung vese … He held up his mattock. Cummon nah,
Tonë, lettus dahn.

As Böm tried to lower the lad carefully into the pit, the sides gave way, and they were both precipitated into the chilly
quag. They wallowed there, at first working their mattocks deep into the sludgy pit bottom; then, when that yielded nothing,
they sank down, plunged their arms in up to the shoulder and grabbed handfuls of the muck. Finally, exhausted, they abandoned
the search and heaved themselves back up the sides of the pit, to lie wet and cold under the dashboard. There's nothing there,
Böm gasped. But there was once something – there must have been. This, the very empty pit itself, was enough of a revelation
for him; and so, along with its eroding sides, the last vestiges of his loyalty to King Dave and the PCO crumbled away.

He had no need to summon them: cold, soaked, caked with mud, as if they were primordial men, reborn from the very soil of
Ham, the two recusants limped towards their destiny. In stony silence the dads watched them approach and in stony silence
they listened while the Driver pronounced his anathema:

– Flyers! That's what you are – both of you. Flyers! Digging and delving where you have no business! A branded flyer and a
flyer's whelp! The chellish mummies are behind this – of that I've no doubt!

As if it were only another of the Driver's rants, with no more application to him than to any Hamster, Carl Dévúsh felt his
attention first wander, then burrow deep inside of himself to that cosy mummyplace where all cares were forgotten. His dad
– the Geezer – he had known this escape from the daddytime as well, of that Carl was now certain; and whatever the future
might bring, he too would always have this refuge.

12

The Book of Dave

October 2000

Lit by the rising sun, fingernails of opalescent cloud scratched contrails
on the sky. Achilles stood beneath Constitution Arch and beat shield with
sword. With a bang, then a spatter of stony fragments, the four horses
atop the arch came alive, tossing their leaden heads. The boy holding the
traces struggled to control them. Peace, erect in her chariot, her robe
coming off her shoulder in rigid folds, flicked the reins and the whole,
mighty quadriga rose, banked sharply and came crunching down. Peace
threw her laurel wreath like a frisbee, and Achilles caught it on his sword.

The other statues on the traffic island were animating: the Iron Duke
spurred down his horse, Copenhagen; the bronze figures that attended
him – Guard, Dragoon, Fusilier and Highlander – wrenched themselves
free from the polished granite and fell in behind their commander-in-chief.
On the Royal Regiment of Artillery memorial the dead gunner rose up
from under his petrified greatcoat and joined his comrades. Together they
unlimbered their stone field gun. David, tall, svelte and naked, shimmied
from the Machine Gun Corps memorial – sword in one hand, Bren gun
in the other. These terrible figures stood apart, turning to face down
Piccadilly, Knightsbridge, Grosvenor Place and Park Lane, undecided
what to do now movement had been bestowed upon them. The few
pedestrians who were abroad at this early hour scattered like rabbits,
tearing between the trees of Green Park, discarding briefcases and
umbrellas as they ran, while those drivers not violently impinged on
remained oblivious, their heads clamped in their own metal tumult. The
company of statues formed up, with Achilles in the van and Peace to the
rear. They marched off down Constitution Hill, feet striking sparks as
they clanked over the kerbs.

All across London, as the statues came to life, they were at first bemused
– then only with reluctance purposeful. Clive of India jumped from his
plinth and took the stairs down to Horse Guards skipping. Lincoln at first
sat down, surprised, then, struggling up from his chair in Parliament
Square, crossed over to the menhir bulk of Churchill, took his arm and
assisted him to walk. Earl Haig led his mount alongside Montgomery, who
was preposterous in his dimpled elephantine trousers. In Knightsbridge,
Shackleton and Livingstone stepped out from their niches in the Royal
Geographical Society. Golden Albert squeezed between the gilded
stanchions
of his memorial, and those blowzy ladies Europe, Africa, Asia and
America formed a stony crocodile in his train. In Waterloo Place, Scott
strolled up and down the pavement, striking a few attitudes, modelling
his Burberry outfit.

In Chelsea, Thomas More stood up abruptly, his golden nose flashing;
while across the river the droopy-eared Buddhas were stirring in their
pagoda. Up in Highgate Cemetery the colossal head of Marx wobbled,
then rolled downhill over the mounds of freshly dug graves. They were all
heading for Trafalgar Square, where five-metre-high Nelson was gingerly
shinnying down his own column, while Edith Cavell tripped past
St Martin-in-the-Fields, her marble skirts rattling against the pedestrian
barriers.

Not only human figures were on the move but animals as well: packs
of stone dogs and herds of bronze cattle. Guy the Gorilla knuckle-walked
out of London Zoo and around the Outer Circle; the dolphins slithered
from the lamp-posts along the Thames and flopped into town. Mythical
creatures joined the throng closing in on Trafalgar Square: riddling
sphinxes, flying griffins and even the ill-conceived Victorian dinosaurs
came humping overland from Crystal Palace. The whole mad overwrought
bestiary arrived ramping and romping. The Landseer lions rose up to meet
them, stretched and soundlessly roared.

Multiples of monarchs: doughty Williams, German Georges, dumpy
Victorias. Presses of prime ministers, scrums of generals and colonial
administrators, flying vees of viceroys, gaggles of writers and artists,
cohorts of Christs – from facades and niches, plinths and pediments,
crucifixes and crosses, the statues of London tore themselves free, until the
whole centre of the city was a heaving hubbub of tramping bronze,
clanking cast-iron, grating granite and marble. These graven images, these
tin-pot gods! They had no more uniformity of purpose than they did of
style, substance or scale – giant warmongers and diminutive deities, they
were distorted embodiments of their creators' confused and ever-changing
priorities. They didn't mean to cause any damage or distress – but they
just did. They left pediments bare and cornices crumpling, domes imploded,
porticos and bridges slumped, colonnades collapsed. They didn't mean to
hurt the soft little people, but they were so big and hard that skins were
split and skulls were crushed wherever they went.

Standing on the steps of Nelson's column, Achilles beat sword on
shield, trying to gain the statues' attention. It was pointless – these hunks
could make no common cause, they knew nothing, felt nothing – only the
rage of eternal sleepers robbed of their repose. Greek gods and goddesses
stood about in profile; Saint Thomas à Becket writhed in his death agony;
Baden-Powell scouted out the terrain. Slowly – lazily even – the statues
began to fight one another. Marble clanged on iron, granite on bronze, as
the maddened effigies battled with the incomprehensibility of their own
sentience. What were they? Nothing. So sightlessly stared through for so
very long that they had no more significance than a dustbin or a postbox
– less perhaps.

Then there was a diversion – some dumb cabbie had managed to wrestle
his vehicle free from the jam on the Charing Cross Road, and now he was
trying to turn around in the roadway beneath the National Gallery. He
backed and filled, knocking fauns, cherubs and caryatids over like ninepins.
Achilles leaped down from his vantage and strode over. He leaned down,
and his disproportionately tiny cock rasped along the cab's roof, shattering
the 'For Hire' sign
…

'Bash! Bash! Bash!' Something was bashing against the driver window of the Fairway. Dave Rudman came to in a flurry of anxiety
to find he was parked up on Goods Way behind King's Cross Station. A big cop was knocking on the outside of the window so
hard that Dave's head was bouncing off it. As he bent to hit the button, he saw a three-quarters-empty whisky bottle lying
on the floor between his trainers. He hooked it out of sight beneath the seat. 'Morning,' the cop said. He was plainclothes;
behind him two others were propped against a big estate car, unmarked except for the revolving blue light stuck on its roof.
A steely sun was beating down on the gasometers along Battle Bridge Road. 'Funny place to be having a kip.' The cop's face
was pink and also unmarked. His grin was wolfish – his full head of silvery hair as neat as the clippers that had cut it.

'I – I, I had a late drop and … I …' Dave couldn't make any of it work for him: the sentence, the thoughts to build
it and the will to power it forward. As he became more conscious, so he became more frighteningly aware of the fag ash and
booze reek, his crumpled clothes and stubbly muzzle.

The cop laughed. 'What's your name, son?'

'Um, Dave … Dave – '

'Orlright, then, David, here's what you're going to do. You're going to get out of the cab, lock it up, toddle off somewhere
and sleep it off. Unnerstan? This is your lucky morning, David – unnerstan?'

'Yeah-yeah …'course …' Dave struggled up, shut the window, groped for his change bag. He locked the cab under the amused
eyes of the cops.
Why aren't they nicking me? Probably from Vice or
Drugs, going off shift and can't be arsed with the paperwork
… Backlit by the sun coming up over the shoulder of Barnsbury, the three cops had adopted stylized postures: standing
to attention, leaning, hands on hips. The dream still banged about in Dave's head as he limped away under their watchful eyes
in the direction of York Way. The cops got back in their car and accelerated past him with a cheery wave. At once Dave doubled
back towards his cab.
Can't
leave it there, onna yellow line
…
haveta move it
… As if anticipating this, the cops had done a U-turn at the top of the road. 'Get away from that cab or I swear you're
fucking nicked!' the big, smooth-faced cop shouted at him as the car came by, and Dave Rudman recoiled, zapped by the cattle
prod of authority. He spent the next couple of hours jangling in a cafe on the Pentonville Road, waiting until he was sober
enough to drive, drinking tea and watching the junkie scum swirl around the drain of the station.

For years now their marriage had been broken down. No, not only broken down …
nicked by joyriders, ridden into the ground, then
torched by the side of the road.
It was the burnt-out shell of a relationship: the foam rubber of comfort fused by angry fire into the crushed bodywork of
hearth, home and child.
When, when did
we last have a kind word for each other? When've we had a tender
moment?
Now that Carl had stopped climbing into their bed for a morning cuddle, they didn't even have this touching by proxy.
Riding her would be like getting on a bicycle made from bones … Or my
sister… Or my mother… Her face – so familiar, so fucking strange …

A
few years before they had tried stratagems to make the marriage work. They'd gone away for a weekend at a hotel, leaving the
boy with Michelle's mother. But once Michelle had had her spa treatments and they'd eaten stodge in the chintzy dining room,
they were left even more profoundly alone together in their room, the four-poster bed corpsing them with its stagy insinuation.
Michelle read property adverts in
Country Life.
Dave smoked at the window, blowing brown fog into white muslin curtains. They went home early and in silence. They picked
up Carl from the flat on Streatham Hill and were grateful for his unceasing eight-year-old twitter, birdsong in their rotten
garden.

Dave gave his wife flowers,
because that's what you did … wasn't
it
… when you wanted to speak but couldn't find words? He bought them from roadside stalls, great sprays of lilies and spiky
carnation pompoms, proxy Michelles that he laid tenderly on the back shelf of the cab. When he presented them to her, though,
they didn't say anything much, only 'Flowers' – a flat, declarative statement of stamens, petals and stalks. Mostly she didn't
even bother to arrange them, simply dumped the whole expensive stook in whichever vessel came to hand, a bucket or a waste-paper
bin.

It had been easy not to take holidays together: she wanted to go abroad, he was desperate to remain within the orbit of London.
Carl grew up with his parents overlapping rather than conjoined. One was always arriving when the other was leaving. They
would spend a few hours – or at most days – together, before parting. Since, like all children, Carl had no accurate information
on the manner in which other families ordered these things, he had mostly taken this way of life for granted. He was numb
anyway – with a deep, dull fear. He didn't ask questions.