by Will Self
This was just as well. More perspicacious, trained observers who managed to stay athwart Bell – in, as it were, a potential boarding position – for long enough could gain some sense of his true heft. Beneath the finely woven wool was a body of awesome strength. A minotaur body, half-bull, half-man, thick of bone and intractable of muscle. Bell even held himself as the Minotaur might have done: bent forward from the waist, legs braced against the deck of the Sealink, arms pushed out and forward, so as to occupy the most propitious pyramid of space, so as to make good any lack of gravitas with a perfect centre of gravity.
Then there was the head. Once more, all the angles were well exploited by the man. Hardly anyone really knew that Bell was more or less neckless, that a lithic tier of fat ‘n’ muscle made a pagoda of his upper storey. Hardly anyone – not even those who had slept with Bell, who had had those jutting jaws clamped on their remote (or proximate) sensors – had noticed the prognathous, not to say primitive, cast of that face. Rather, encountering it from the public, the front-of-house angle, they often found him . . . surprisingly pretty.
Glossy black hair hung in loose bangs around a high, white forehead. The eyes were black – but warmly so. The flawless complexion was pointed up by a small, bell-shaped birthmark on the edge of his jaw. The lips were red – but not wet. The nose, though broad-bridged, had fine nostrils. And there was more than enough bone in cheek and chin to supply the suffix. No wonder that Bell scored – and scored often. Scored, more or less, whenever and with whomever he wanted.
Even in a rout of rutting like the Sealink, Bell's penchant for cunt and cock stood out. He liked them both. Some bar dross said the former more, others the latter. Whatever the case, Bell had no difficulties in obtaining supplies. Of course, in his line of work there were the facile, the futile, and the febrile seductions: those loose enough, insubstantial enough, and weak enough for their heels to round under the man's hooded gaze, to find themselves tipping over backwards, knees and thighs arranged automatically into the correct position for effective penetration.
But Bell didn't simply forage on the herbage within reach of his big mouth, oh no. He was also capable of seducing those who attempted to evade him, to outrun the silvered tongue, trajected like bolas to wrap around their lower limbs, pull them down to the plushly carpeted pampa. There were many of these, for – damn it all! – even the denizens of the West End have some pride, some integrity, some other relationship they don't wish to lose.
These Bell particularly favoured with his attentions. It seemed a perfect tonic to the man to seek out some long-established relationship – marriage, cohabitation, or a clandestine affair, even – and interpose his dissolutive bulk between the pair-bonding, unsticking the accretions of years, experiences, children . . . even love.
Innumerable weeping spouses, girlfriends, boyfriends, partners and lovers had raged impotently up and down the stretch of unforgiving pavement outside Bell's mansion-house block in Bloomsbury. Bell never made any attempt to hide his peccadilloes. In fact, that his corporeal column should have as much salience as his printed one seemed to be at the core of his philandering. And he always got his man, or his woman. So much so that once the denizens of the Sealink were aware even that he had drawn a bead on a given target, they knew that it was only a matter of time before there would be tears in the toilets, sobbing on the lobby phone, altercations in the vestibule. Laclos would have had a field day with Bell.
It was one such annihilation of affect that the clique were discussing as Richard tuned in, adjusting his ears to the whine of perfidy. Ursula Bentley was saying, ‘Really, I think she'll have to go somewhere, a clinic . . . whatever, cool off y'know what I mean – ‘
‘But I don't think it's exactly drugs that're the problem.’ This was from a man called Slatter, who ran a clippings service much patronised by Bell.
‘Hng'f’ – ‘ Ursula snorted, her lovely mouth distorted with contempt, ‘if it's not drugs, it bloody well ought to be. Bell says she was banging on the main door of his block at five in the morning, twitching, white-faced, the whole bit. Isn't that right, Bell?’ She turned her radiant eyes to her mentor, who inclined his massive head ever so slightly to indicate that this was indeed the case.
Slatter had been shaping a rejoinder, some of his words even ran under the end of Ursula's explanation, but seeing Bell's acquiescence he immediately shut up and fell to examining his nails. He was a beatifically repugnant man, Slatter. Thin and yet sallowly saggy, he always wore off-the-peg suits that appeared cut from fabric with the texture of vinyl (in summer), or carpet underlay (in winter). There were mounds of’ druff on his shoulders, and scurf clearly visible on his scalp. The nails he was examining were so neatly encrusted – each with a dear little dark crescent – that the crud essence was almost decorative. But in spite – or, perhaps, more sinisterly, because – of this, Slatter was Bell's right-hand man, his factotum, his chore whore. It was he who ran errands, took messages, bought cocaine, sold weepy girls down the river to abortionists in Edgware.
His dirty hands guaranteed Bell's clean ones. And as befits a parasite and host who have achieved a perfect modus vivendi, they were in symbiosis, oblivious of who occupied which role.
Bell was still silent; the filaments of unease and control connecting him to the other clique members hummed and pulsed. Who, Richard wondered, would seize this opportunity to advance himself, to take on the responsibility of providing input, material, potential copy?
It was Todd Reiser. ‘You'll never guess,’ he began, ‘what young Richard and I saw just now . . .’ Reiser's collar-length, glossy hair bounced on the collar of his hacking jacket as he leant forward, claiming the web site.
‘You're right,’ whined Adam Kelburn, the Deputy Editor of Cojones, a men's style magazine Richard wrote features for, and a distal – if enthusiastic – cliquer, ‘we won't. Why not tell us, Todd?’
Reiser hunched himself up still further, to form a veritable basis of denim and whipcord, all supporting a Martini glass. ‘We were up in the top room, herherh, and young Richard spotted this character hanging around outside the knocking shop opposite, h'herherher . . .’ Reiser was a once-and-future film director who – naturally enough – made adverts. With everyone he was brusque to the point of rank rudeness – everyone but Bell, that was. ‘. . . So, we thought we'd get a little bet on, as to whether he'd actually go in and poke one of the brasses, herherh'her . . .’ He paused to take a slurp of his drink, and Bell's inky tones stained the atmosphere.
‘How much was the bet?’ As ever, Richard was shocked by the measured evenness of the man,s voice.
‘The bet!’ Reiser started. ‘The bet, well, er . . . a fiver, wasn't it Richard?’
‘That's right.’
‘Anyways, this prannet goes in, trudges all the way up three flights of pokertunity. So I'm thinking I'm quids in – because that's the way I'd figured it – when he turns tail and comes barrelling all the way back down again, h'herherher . . .’
Even Reiser's sniggering exploited women, Richard thought – but then, irresistibly, the opportunity to exploit them himself began to hold sway. ‘Actually,’ Richard dropped into the short-term maw that had opened up to receive this anecdote, ‘he didn't head for home.’
‘Oh no?’ Reiser crammed as much snot as he could into the two nasal vowels.
‘No, he came into the club.’
‘In here? Into the Sealink?’ This was from Ursula. She was talking to Richard – sort of His heart sang.
‘Yeah, in fact, he's standing right over there, gabbing to Julius.’
Six pairs of calculating eyes dipped, panned, and unobtrusively zoomed, so as to get a view of this John, this consummate mark. ‘H'herherh'her,’ Reiser tittered, ‘well I'll be buggered, young Richard's right!’
Everyone ignored him, because by certain subtle, even obscure, movements, Bell was indicating that he wished to speak. ‘OK,’ he pronounced, ‘let's have a little fun. Slatter, go to the front desk and find out bald bo
y's name. Reiser, you go with him. Once you've got hold of the handle, you go across the road. You say he went up to the top floor, well, it's obviously the whore up there who he either wanted to see, or couldn't bear the sight of Give her some dosh, and get her to come back across here, sign herself in as baldy's guest, come into the bar and faire un petit rendezvous. That should stop us all from expiring with boredom, huh?’
Richard was stunned with a vibrating, cacophonous silence. He felt as if someone had clubbed him round the head with a two-pound fillet of wet fish.
He was still stunned three hours later, sitting on a stool in the farthest corner of The Hole, an illegal drinking club in a sub-sub-basement beneath a porn ‘n’ poppers shop on Old Compton Street. Richard was stunned by the sheer, wilful malice of it. He could still remember the expression on the poor man's face when the whore had come into the bar, sidled up to him, put her bruised arm through the epaulette of his trench coat, nuzzled her peroxide brow into his shoulder. Richard remembered the man's face, myopic, hurting, as the red had suffused from his neck, up through the sparse roots of his sparse hair. And Richard felt the shame he had provoked.
Now, he sat morosely, hanging on to a small plank of sobriety, while all around was a choppy sea of inebriation. Bell was there as well. He was standing
now, standing and chatting, completely at ease, with two huge black guys dressed in string vests and dungarees. Bell was in his element, adjusting his posture to match theirs, and – Richard could just make this out above the background roar – adopting some of their tags, their Whadjas, Safes and Seens, to customise his patter, make him accessible to his listeners.
Ursula was there too. She was still pristine, even at this late hour. Richard could see no reddening of her blue eyes, or lankening of her thick, chestnut swathe of hair. Rather, the long evening of drinking seemed to have given her still more life, more embodiment. He hid behind his drunkenness as if it were a tree, and peered out at her. How could she hang around with these people? How could she witness cruel jokes like the one they'd played on the trench-coated man, without somehow becoming corrupted in her very essence? How could she?
Richard realised he was in danger of making a fool of himself He was too drunk for this. When he weaved across the crowded basement, to take his place in the terminal toilet stall to gush and drain, he banged ankles, nudged paper cups. The imprecations floated into his ears as if from a long way off: shouted across a vale of tears. I'm staying up, he deliberated deliberately as he focused on the precise point at which piss exited from penis, so that she won't go home with him. Will she go home with him? Oh! Will she?!
Of course, Richard knew that she had in the past. There were hardly any of the permanent crew around Bell who hadn't. But it was merely his way of branding them with his mark, a badge of admission. Once he'd done it, he didn't do it again . . . or did he? She was so – so fucking desirable. Perfect figure: large, pointed breasts, requiring no girding or uplift; waist cinched for holding; swivel hips and long, lolloping legs; and that face! The eyes permanently, violet-violently astonished; the brows straight slashes of brown; the whole rounded and yet sharp, with skin of an absolute pink flawlessness stretched over it. Ursula had told Richard – apropos of nothing – that she never wore makeup; that her toilet consisted only of a little moisturiser, and Jicki, the subtle, irrepressibly erotic fragrance created by Guerlain for the Empress Eugénie.
A little moisturiser! Richard wanted to be the little moisturiser. Wanted to be dabbed by a cotton-wool pad against those cheeks, that neck, those breasts. Oh Jesus! She wouldn't cross the road to piss on him, he was certain of that. But he couldn't leave her here. He couldn't . . .
‘. . . Still hanging in, are we, young Richard?’ said Todd Reiser, looming over him. Reiser could do this because Richard was slumped down on the stool. The director was a nice example of praxis: he was short, and he also shot shorts. He also wore irritating jeans, which should have been but weren't creased. He affected shirts of heavy texture as well, and Richard couldn't forbear from imagining still grimmer top garments in the recesses of the Reiser wardrobe – zip-up cardigans, and sleeveless Fair Isle sweaters. ‘You know, I don't think you stand much of a chance in that direction . . .’ Reiser smirked – so it seemed to Richard – his entire body towards the lovely Ms Bentley.
A small compartment full of bile opened up in the back of Richard's throat. ‘W'f, w'reurgh,’ he expostulated, then found himself up on his hind legs, tottering like a foal soused with Campari, and also – equally involuntarily – muttering ‘G'night’ in Bell's, Ursula's and Reiser's general direction. Then he was in Old Compton Street haggling prices with the tribally scarred, clipboard-bearing cab controller, outside the kiosk by the Pollo Bar.
Soon afterwards the cab was heading north, up Tottenham Court Road. Richard slopped around in the back seat, mostly anaesthetised, yet at one and the same time fully alert to the shock of tyre over pothole.
At the junction with the Euston Road a huge hoarding was positioned so as to obscure a building site abutting the Euston Tower. Richard bleared at the thing, seeing dawn flush above its top edge – and then took it in more fully. It was one of those three-in-one hoardings, a rack of rotating triangular bars; and as the cab idled by the lights, a woman's pudenda encased in a flawless, silken second skin started to riffle like a pack of cards being spread for the cut, and gave way to those familiar features, the red lips, the broad-bridged nose. Bell's warm, black eyes looked out at Richard; Bell's big digit tapped Bell's high, white forehead. The advert's slogan was the last thing that the hoarding made legible, flipped over into comprehension: ‘All Through the Night on MW 1053/1089 kHz. Get Hold of That Clapper – and Ring Me, Bell.’
The traffic lights clicked, the parted legs of the green iconic man married, the cabbie engaged drive, the car lurched forward, Richard's head fell back against the seat. Where were those red lips now? Perhaps nuzzling
the silken skin that encased Ursula? Richard groaned throatily; the cabbie scrunged round in the mock-leather confines of his car coat. ‘What yer doin'?’ he demanded, sensing with professional acumen the vomit and bile that were welling in Richard's throat.
‘No – gr'nff – no really, ‘s all right.’
They drove on. Never had Hornsey seemed so much of a haven to Richard.
The following morning Richard was sitting in the editorial meeting at Rendezvous, the loathsome and affected listings magazine he worked for, when one of the subs came in with a Post-it note fluttering on her fingertip. She walked round to where Richard was sitting – next to his superior, the glove fetishist – and transferred the adhesive notelet from her finger to his. Richard squinted down at the scrap of information. It read: ‘Ursula Bentley rang. Please call her on 602 3368. Urgent!‘
Richard hadn't been thinking about Chico Fran-quini's new film Grave Robber, nor had he been giving much attention to the forthcoming Shell Oil Festival of Indigenous Music; the Kandinsky show at the Bankside did not impinge, and neither did Company Corneille's staging at Sadler's Wells of the original Diaghilev Rite of Spring. On the muddy, polluted foreshore of Richard's consciousness, the cultural waves slapped limply; towards the horizon a ruptured tanker wallowed in the curdling sea. Richard had grasped the magnitude of the disaster at dawn, in bed in Hornsey, when he saw the thick slick of wine, beer and vodka gushing from the tanker's hull, and the dark pall of dope smoke overhead.
It was going to be a day of getting through things – endeavouring to persevere. This was not a day when Richard was going to take a fearless moral inventory and remedy his ethical deficiencies. He could just about see his way to feeling the shape of the ulcers his teeth had worried into being on the insides of his cheeks; he would do his best to disregard the phantom fat fingers that encapsulated his own; towards lunch he might counsel the atrocity exhibition of a bowel movement.
The Rendezvous office was hell on hangovers. Under the unphotogenic glare of strip lighting, a more than averagely nasty open p
lan – floor and ceiling tiling clashing and gnashing together, mashing the intervening space – was networked with thorax-high, freestanding bafflers of some composite material, covered in fabric with a rough, oatmealy nap. The journalists, subs, production people, secretaries, designers and gofers who tenanted this stunted maze moved about the place at some speed, fetching and carrying bits of paper; or else bobbed up above the partitions, to shout to some colleague that copy was coming – along the cable tracking.
Gathering by the water-cooler, on the landing outside the toilets, or on the fire stairs, the staff of Rendezvous smoked Silk Cut, and took tiny options on the future preoccupations of the mass of their fellow Londoners. They earnestly debated the opening of themed restaurants, and the demise of experimental opera productions, as if they were matters of millennial import that would define an era. Even on a good day it made Richard feel nauseous.
The apex of this pyramid of ephemera, ministered to by a pretentious priesthood, was the morning editorial meeting. As a deputy section editor, Richard attended this two days a week. These were the meetings at which things actually got done – when it was the section heads alone, they merely intrigued. But after all, Richard thought, what did his work consist of? Reducing some forthcoming event still further than it reduced itself? Producing a kind of stock of the culture? He would write a hundred and fifty words, on a novel, a play, an album, append to it a photograph the size of a postage stamp, and often – in his unhumble opinion – he would have dealt with the subject matter, the themes, better than the original.
This morning's meeting was more than averagely awful. The Editor, whose patter was compounded in equal parts of managementspeak and manipulation, was making it his business to humiliate the editor of the performance section, an unstable man with aburgeoning heroin habit. There would be tears before elevenses, Richard was thinking grimly, when the note arrived.
