Excerpt of The Book of Dave by Will Self
(Page 4 of 6)
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‘That’s right, it is a little beyond the six-mile radius from Charing
Cross, which is the theoretical limit of the London streets we have
to learn.’
‘Theoretical?’ He doesn’t expect to hear this word out of my lower-class
lips, lips he sees flapping in the rearview. He’s putting together a photofit
of me from lips, chin and the back of my head. He ain’t fooled by the
baseball cap – and he likes that I’m going bald, as a fatty it gives him the
drop. ‘Yeah’ – put him still more at his ease, this cunt could be an earner
– ‘theoretical, because in practice we also have to know a fair bit of
the suburbs, which would cover Mill Hill as well.’
‘Uh huh.’ The fare was satisfied, he’d marked his card, he’d
shown Dave he wasn’t just another dumb tourist who thinks
London is a nine-hundred-square-mile souvenir T-shirt, decorated with
tit-helmeted coppers, red phone boxes, Mohican-sporters, tiara-jockeys and
black-bloody-cabs. The fare looked to the left at the avenue of plane
trees running up to Speakers’ Corner. He looked to the right at the
tiny road-cleaning machine bumping along the gutter, its circular
electric brushes polishing the York stone molars. He was lost,
momentarily, in a reverie provoked by a pair of backpacking lovers,
wet-weather freaks, who were leaning up against the lip of a
fountain, her thighs imprisoned in his. He was thinking about his
family – and Afghanistan.
‘Kinduv weird being in Europe.’
‘I imagine you’d rather be at home, what with all this business – ’
‘In Afghanistan, you bet I would. Sure, it’s crazy to think you’re
any more at risk here, or your family’s any more at risk if you’re
not there, but still – ’
‘You’d rather be with them.’ And so would I, in a small clean family
hotel on Gloucester Place, seventy quid a night, walking tour of Bloomsbury
inclusive. Two big, burger-stuffed kids, plenty of metalwork in their mouths,
Mom in a beige trouser suit. I want his family so I can slot them
into the gap left by my own.
‘I’d booked the flight before 9/11, I figured it would be giving
like succour to the enemy if I didn’t come over.’
‘Gotcha.’
‘Eek-eek’ the wipers went; the cab braked, then heeled over to
join the other rusty hulks cruising around Marble Arch, a reef of
Nash that loomed up out of the silty drizzle. ‘I tell you something,
cabbie.’ Tell me everything, you dumb motherfucker, pour it all out. ‘I
didn’t vote for Bush, but I reckon he’s handling this OK, and it
wasn’t the Twin Towers that set me against these Taliban fellows
– though Lord knows it was a terrible thing – but I knew these
were dreadful people when they blew up those two ancient statues
of the Buddha, you know the ones?’
‘Yes.’ Fellows? Lord knows!?
‘Any folk who could destroy a thing of ancient beauty so brutally
. . . well, nothing they could do would surprise me after that . . .and the way they treat their women too.’
So far as I’m concerned the way they treat their women is the best
thing going for those fuckers . . . keep those bints in line, I say . . . you
take my ex, she’s only gone and slapped a fucking restraining order on
me, now that’d never ’appen in Kabul, I’d have ’er trussed up in one of
them black cloaky things before she could say CSA . . . ‘I couldn’t agree
with you more. Very sad business.’ ’Coz they should go a bit bloody
further – take the kids offa them – no kids, no bloody power over us . . .
Past the Odeon, with its egg-box roof, the cab squealed to a halt
at some lights and the meter – which had been ticking away with
generous increments – slowed to a trickle of pence. After fifteen
years of cabbing Dave Rudman was so finely attuned to the meter
that he could minutely calibrate it with his own outgoings. At the
beginning of each day a spreadsheet popped up behind his heavy
eyelids, and as he drove, picking up and dropping off, ranking up
and driving again – so the figures were instantly calculated to inform
him whether he was ahead or behind, if he could pay for his diesel,
his insurance, his cab repayments, his food, his fags, his booze, his
prescriptions, his child support and his divorce lawyer. At 8 p.m.,
when the second tariff band comes in, the figures alter accordingly;
at 10 p.m., when the third starts, they change again.
But they all oughta be the bloody same: 6 to 2, 2 to 10, 10 to 6. That way, you know
what you’re getting – punters inall. In the future the tariffs will be equal,
oh, yeah. Time, distance and money – the three dimensions of Dave Rudman’s universe. Up above it all was the Flying Eye,
Russ Kane
trying to make a joke out of a fucking lorry what’s shed its load at the
Robin Hood Roundabout . . .
Excerpted from The Book of Dave
by Will Self Copyright © 2006 by Will Self. Excerpted by
permission of Bloomsbury Press (USA). All rights
reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted
without permission in writing from the publisher.
