by Will Self
‘There “wraaff”!’ Peter Wiltshire signed emphatically, his soloist’s fingers fretting in the limpid breeze. ‘The bugger has the temerity to drag me away from my constitutional. Here he comes now.’
A large, heavy-set chimp in his mid-twenties, with rather long light-brown fur, was advancing towards the crest of the hill. He was still fifty yards off, swaggering along upright and humming to himself ‘The Swagger of the Toreadors’ in a loud, affected manner. Busner was perfectly prepared to dislike Peter Wiltshire’s beta on principle, and sensing the anxiety of his old ally, he made a careful survey of the approaching chimp. Perhaps he could see some weaknesses Wiltshire hadn’t picked up on?
The three chimps greeted one another with stentorian pant-hoots. Peter Wiltshire drummed vigorously on the back of a bench. Busner, ready to lash out at any impropriety, was quite disarmed when Franklin presented to him with great and grovelling alacrity. The big chimp pushed his arse towards Busner, while most of his upper body was hugging the path, flicking the while, ‘ “Hoo” Dr Busner, what a pleasure to encounter you and your magnificent ischial scrag – I’ve been an admirer of yours for many years.’
Peter Wiltshire grunted at this display of sycophancy, but Busner patted Franklin’s rump in a friendly enough fashion, signing ‘Always “chup-chupp” pleased to meet an admirer, especially one with talent and ambition. My old ally has just been showing me how you’ve moved up the hierarchy with leaps and bounds.’
‘ “Hooo” I do try to assist Dr Wiltshire in any way that I can. ’ Franklin’s confusion was more or less transparent. If he is such a threat, Busner thought to himself, then my Peter must really be on the wane; this chimp is hardly that imposing.
‘ “Wraaa”! Enough of this handinage, Franklin, why’ve you come looking for me “huu”? I said I’d see you at the rehearsal rooms at eleven. ’ Wiltshire was staring out over London, his eyebrow ridge creased, one hand grabbing at his head fur.
‘There’s been another pant-hoot from Faludi; he signs Mario may not make it for today’s rehearsals. His throat isn’t any better and he doesn’t want to risk the flight from Milan.’
‘ “Wraaf”! Bugger it!’ Wiltshire was definitely riled. ‘There’s absolutely no point in engaging the greatest “euch-euch” tenor vocaliser in the world if the bloody chimp is so delicate he can’t get on a plane. I’d just as soon we’d stuck with our original casting –’ He broke off and turned to Busner. ‘I’m sorry, old fellow, this really is annoying and I’m afraid I’ll have to cut our impromptu session short.’
‘Is that Mario Trafuello you’re gesturing about “huu”?’
‘The same. Have you seen him vocalise, Zack “huu”?’
‘Indeed, at Garsington last year, absolutely superb.’
‘ “Wraaf” if you can actually get him on the stage, that is – the bugger is more temperamental than any prima donna. Constantly issuing petty directives through his agent, adding clauses to his contract. I’m almost at my wits’ end. But look, Zack, it really isn’t good enough; I want to feel you properly some time soon – will you pant-hoot me, please “h’huuu”?’ Wiltshire’s fingers chopped the air.
‘Of course, Peter, of course. It’s also possible that I’d like your opinion on this chimp I’m going to see now. He’s suffering from the rather unusual delusion that he’s a human. If he turns out to be as intriguing as I think, he could be of interest to you.’
‘ “H’huu”? You don’t sign? Well, my initial reaction would be that it’s a site-specific delusion. You’ll probably find out that he has some history of saving whales, or raiding laboratories. You know how paranoiacs often take their delusional content from whichever current ethical obsession preys on them. I’m sure you’ll find that’s the case with this chimp –’
‘Dykes. His name is Dykes. Quite a well-known artist, I believe.’
‘Dykes “h’huu”? Simon Dykes? Yes, he is. Very well known. In fact, I met him once. There was some possibility of him doing set designs for me, but it never came to anything. All the more reason for you to stay in touch, Zack. If you want to patrol this fellow around like you do your Tourettics and amnesiacs, I’d be as good a place to start as any.’
‘I’ll bear that in mind, Peter.’
‘And now I must go.’
The allies embraced with considerable emotion, and when they broke both of them had tears in their eyes. ‘Well “chup-chupp” it was lovely to see you, Zachary my darling. I’ll miss your scrag all the more for having had this abrupt grooming.’
‘You too, Peter “chup-chupp”. You’re still one of the most beautiful chimps that I know.’
They held one another’s genitals tenderly for a few seconds and then fissioned. Busner dismissed Franklin with a cursory – but well aimed – kick to his broad backside, and he was pleased to see that Peter Wiltshire recovered some of his pride, following it up with a hail of light blows on Franklin’s shoulders as they headed off down the hill.
Busner found the sub-adults clustered around the base of a tree at the Regent’s Park Road exit to the park. They had cornered a squirrel in the upper branches and were throwing stones at it, but none of them so far had attempted to shin up the trunk. ‘ “Wraaaf”! What’s the matter with you lot,’ their alpha signed, coming up behind them. ‘I would have hoped to see you all licking out brain pans by now, not squatting on the ground like a troop of baboons!’
‘We can’t get up the trunk, Alph. ’ Six hands synchronised. ‘There’s some kind of anti-climb paint on it.’
Busner felt the trunk of the tree. It was true. It was covered with a slippery plasticised coating and a notice attached by a loop of wire informed him: ‘Camden Council has intiated a programme of climbing interdiction on Primrose Hill during the replanting scheme for this year.’
‘ “Wraaa” bloody ‘87!’ the old chimp gestured to his patrol.
They all flicked back dutifully, ‘Bloody ‘87!’
‘Nothing,’ their alpha continued, ‘absolutely nothing has had a more pernicious effect on the lives of young chimps in our city than the depredations of the great “euch” storm of ‘87. ’ He paused, holding up an admonitory finger. In lecture mode now, he neglected to notice the three smaller admonitory fingers, that were surreptitiously held up as well, and the three sets of flying fingers that subtly mimicked what followed. ‘Nothing, that is, save for the woeful “euch-euch” and inadequate response of central government. What do they expect the sub-adults of London to do if they can’t even get out and climb a tree when they want to “huu”? It’s no wonder that you lot are turning into delinquents. No wonder!’
There was a rather craven “toot” from the road. Gambol had pulled up in the Volvo. ‘Now,’ Busner continued, ‘we’re heading on down to Charing Cross to see about this chimp. You will all behave impeccably – is that understood “h’huuu”?’
‘Yes, sir. ’ Charles threw a final pebble at the squirrel, who had come halfway down the trunk, then along with the others he followed in Busner’s scut, as the noted authority on chimpanzee nature vaulted the railings, the car parked next to the kerb, and swung himself in through the open window of the Volvo.
Gambol put the car in gear and the Busner patrol continued on its way, in a south-westerly direction.
Chapter Seven
The hospitals of central London exist to serve health requirements of awesome severity. Whether it be the diseases occasioned by poverty – obesity, rickets, tuberculosis, arterial sclerosis, cancer, pollution-related asthma, hepatitis and CIV; or those engendered by wealth – pollution-related asthma, hepatitis, arterial sclerosis, cancer, CIV and obesity – the hospital’s problems remain the same, to make an immovable object – the determination of the electorate to compel their parliamentary representatives to place a curb on fiscal apportionment – bow to an unstoppable force, the determination of that same electorate to have adequate, free provision of palliatives for whatever ails them, whenever it ails them.
The hospit
als of central London – like the prisons – are buildings sublimely out-of-joint with their surroundings. Whether recently built, or dating from the Victorian era, they all have an air of immemorial, institutional dolour. Chimpanzees may come, these edifices seem to sign, and chimpanzees may go; areas may be gentrified and areas may be de-gentrified, but still funguses eat away at nasal bridges, and lonely flyers affix themselves to neglected bulletin boards, while vortical columns of warm, smelly air commingle on auxiliary stairwells.
Charing Cross Hospital is no exception to this sad rule. Since its banishment on the grounds of size, from its previous central location, it has strutted its stuff along a block of the Fulham Palace Road just south of Hammersmith. If you drive down from where the flyover hops on its file of single piles across the heap of shopping centres, bus stations, office blocks and entertainment complexes, you come on to a road remarkable for its failure even to fail.
The Fulham Palace Road is poorly, but not poor. Run down, but not on the run. Scared, but without even the brio to be scary in turn. Past the Guinness Trust block of flats at the road’s mouth there’s a procession of rancid eateries and fast-food joints. Fish follows chicken, chicken follows fish – each factory-fed on the other. Global geography is discombobulated here so that the Far East precedes the Near East and Indo-China and India trade places, again and again and again.
So cooked-out is this parade of shops, that on a hot summer’s day if there were an inundation of liquid fat, flowing down the sizzling tarmac in a glossy splurge, you could throw the stock of these eateries on to the road and watch it griddle into a communal paella.
The hospital rears up from this trough of low-rent troughing, pushing a façade of pure Bauhausian rationality – glass upon concrete, concrete upon glass – fourteen storeys into the chomped-up atmosphere. But something has gone wrong here – as ever in London. There is too small – or too big, the metropolis is nothing if not ambiguous in the extreme – an extent of forecourt greenery and trapped brown water. There is too heavy and too jutting a pediment above the rank of glass doors; there is too great a mash of metal in the overcrowded car-park to give anything but the impression of an institution under siege, in trouble, its very fabric annealed by the effort of resisting the diseases that assault it from within and without, diseases of the fiscal body as much as the physical.
Inside the hospital an air of corporate endeavour tries to gang up on you. There are escalators, yes. They still thread themselves continually into their hidden spindles, true enough. There are also signs aplenty, pointing out the directions in which you should drag your crapulent body in search of treatment. But head up to the mezzanine, skirt the canteen with its hooting and yammering clientele – comprising one part pasty-muzzled mother to three parts pasty-muzzled infant – push on through double doors, then more double doors, and you will find yourself soon enough in untenanted space. Wards in which the ghosts of patients long departed recline on skeletal neststeads and the broken spirits of long gone junior doctors toe-tap mournfully over the linoleum. Wards in which the trailing tubes and coiling cables of the Tree-of-Life-Giving have withered, becoming rotted lianas, scraggy and dusty.
It’s bewildering, this sense of being both within a hospital and within the shell of what-was-once-a-hospital. Bewildering, and a little discomfiting, for those who have carried their wheezing infants up the escalator and along the corridors, in search of a paediatrician, but finding only a series of crumbling partitions. It’s not so bewildering for the staff, who after all inhabit this building and know the detail of its roominess the way an infant knows the exact green shade of the moss growing between the paving stones outside its group home. The staff move about the hospital sure-handedly, knuckle-walking from one place where work is to be done to the next; and if their ranging takes them through one of these twilight zones they barely notice. They simply delete it and reinsert themselves where appropriate.
The only thing that has flummoxed the staff at Charing Cross Hospital – and only then the staff who have some dealings with psychiatric admissions – is the fate of the emergency psychiatric unit. This service – key for an area in which the ratio of street-conductors to scurriers-past is high – has not so much fallen into decline, or been subject to a budgetary castration – in the manner of the orthopaedic out-patients’ clinic, the fertility clinic and the well-female clinic – as expelled, coughed up, shat out, so that it now lies in a corner of one of the subsidiary car-parks. Here the unit crouches on breeze-block piles of irregular heights. No chip off the proud, futuristic block, merely a Portakabin.
This outpost of the psychiatric department is not however abandoned, or alone. There is too much commerce of souls for that to be the case. Up on the fifth floor of the hospital are the main wards, Lowell for the temporary admissions and Gough for the chronics – the sectioned. Between these two and the unit there is a continual toing and froing, a transposition of different degrees of disturbance. Such that the administrators in charge of the department are always in the middle of an ongoing game of draughts, their hands and feet flying from peg to board, as they shift a manic-depressive from the unit to Lowell, or a suicide from Lowell to Gough, or a sociopath from Gough back to the unit, en route for a special hospital.
The staff of the department, under the redoubtable leadership of Dr Kevin Whatley, MD, FRCPsych., have grown accustomed to the perpetual motions involved in their work, the toting of this loony here, the portage of that loony there. So accustomed that a whole series of in-jokes has grown up about the unit and its awkward situation. ‘I’m just off to the Gulag,’ they’ll cheerily gesture to their colleagues, as they scrawl their initials on the requisite docket for the restraints, or the haloperidol, or the Largactil. ‘Need anything from the mother ship?’ they’ll enquire on quitting the Portakabin, an egress that invariably results in the whole structure rocking on its mismatched supports.
The staff are also inured to the plethora of different maladjustments that they witness in any given day; and the maladjustments of those maladjustments the underfunding has forced on the department. It is not uncommon for chimps who are little more than mildly claustrophobic to be confined in small rooms with chimps who believe themselves to be alien warlords. Nor is it by any means unknown for chimps who have been sectioned for unspeakable acts involving barnyard fowl to find themselves wandering around Lowell, with no barrier to their leaving the ward, save for a couple of neurasthenic old biddies playing crib.
But in some aspects of its work the psychiatric department at the Charing Cross Hospital retains a clinical reputation second to none. Particularly as regards its ‘crash team’. This team – which operates out of the Portakabin, but takes orders from the department – is the most rapid emergency psychiatric team in London. It has been known to quit the hospital, enambulance, drive to the furthest reaches of the catchment area, bag, tag and sedate a mad chimp, and have him on Gough spraying shit at the cleaners, all within half an hour.
Such a formidable track record has brought with it certain benefits, and the team attracts both junior doctors who wish to specialise in psychiatry and newly qualified psychiatric nurses, all of whose demarcated desire is to practise not necessarily thoroughly, but at any rate at great speed. Speed, they might sign, is the essence.
So, on this particular late-summer morning, when the red ‘phone in the team’s office-cum-cubbyhole clattered into life, and the screen first filled, then emptied of static to show the familiar features of the dispatcher at New Scotland Yard, the five members present were galvanised into activity even before they knew where they were headed. ‘ “Aaaa”! I’ve got a chimp here who’s had a psychotic breakdown. It’s right on your patch,’ signed the police auxiliary.
‘Address “huuu”?’ countersigned the duty psychiatrist.
‘63 Margravine Road, ground floor.’
‘Any details “huu”?’
‘Not really. Some kind of acute breakdown, male, late twenties. We were pant-hooted by the
consort who’s in a bad way herself.’
‘Drugs “huu”?’
‘We don’t know –’
‘Any idea at all of whether he’s violent “huu”?’
‘He has tried to attack the consort, but he hasn’t managed to hurt her. She signs he’s very weak.’
‘Weak “huu”?’
‘That’s right, weak.’
‘OK, we’re on our way.’
The receiver was slammed back on to its cradle. The duty doctor, whose name was Paul, waved to his two nurses. ‘It’s Margravine Road “euch-euch”, hardly worth bothering to take the vehicle –’
‘What do you suggest then “huu”?’ Belinda, the new female on the team, scutted in. ‘We knuckle-walk round there and get him to carry us back again?’
‘This is no berserker – in fact he’s weak according to the consort who made the emergency pant-hoot.’
‘Weak “huu”?’
‘That’s right, weak. ’ Paul looked at Belinda; her short white coat rode up exposing her nether regions. Nearly there, he thought, funnelling his top lip and sucking in the must of her; another couple of days and that swelling will be positively oozing – can’t wait to mate the little creature. For the time being he filed the lust – the three other members of the team were already outside and Paul could hear the ambulance hacking and hawking into life.
Simon Dykes, the artist, awoke, his consort’s hard teat cushioning his cheek. He sighed and burrowed down into the shaggy sweetness of her. The disturbing cadences of the lucid dream had faded, replaced on waking with the remnants, the cool leftovers of their lovemaking, which cancelled out the worst of the hangover, the maculate froth from the spilt beer of last night’s debauchery.
Warm water, thought Simon, that’s what I need. Warm water, warm salt water up the crud-filled nose. Then coffee, then juice, then work. It would all begin in the rhinencephalon, that most ancient of neural pathways, which stretched across the front of the cerebellum, jerry-rigged by selection, the very embodiment of the individual, the cultural, peeling away from the phylogenetic, the primitive, the primateive.
