by Martin Amis
‘When I come out after me fourteen – that was 1949, so this’d be 1963—I find meself in an awkward situation. That’s what so often happens after you come out: like as not, you’re straight back in. Me sister Polly was at that period the common-law wife of Pongo Droy. A while ago Pongo’ve cut Noel Shortly – who’s nicked him! That’s to say: Noel’s reported Pongo to the Law. Which, for me … Well Pongo’s not having that, is he? He’s pulled three months, which is a bit stiff, because in them days you could go berserk with a blade and expect no more than a ten-bob fine. While Pongo’s away his brother Hughie’s done Duncan Shortly, Noel’s dad. So Duncan’s nephew, Cecil O’Rourke, puts Hughie’s lights out in the World Upside Down. Pongo’s fucking come out, he’s [click] fuck … Ah, fuck it [click] he’s glassed Cecil, and now he’s gone looking for Noel. Who was waiting for him, with a sawn-off. Pongo’s lost both legs from the knee down and Polly’s come running to me. I’ve only been out a week. I wasn’t interested till she told me Noel’d nicked Pongo for the stabbing. That got me off me arse. The result was I drew an eight for Aggravated Manslaughter.
‘It was 1975 when I come out – I served an extra three for me part in the so-called “mangle riot” at Winson Green. And by now I’m going: enough’s enough. As you yourself know, a man has to adapt and change with the times. A further two-year term for Grievous give me more leisure to think. I hadn’t been out for long when I was fancied for a murder [click] which I fucking done [click], the case being dismissed in the absence of any evidence whatsoever. And Life was eighteen years in them days. No, son, I said to meself. Time to turn over a new leaf. Strike out on a different path. I’ve gone and emigrated to the Costa del Sol. And thus began me long and, in the end, tragic association with Keith the Snake. [Click.]
‘Get this in here. [Click.] You don’t know of me personally, but me name might ring a bell. I don’t know – are you a reading man? Me, I never was a reader. Didn’t seem to have the time. Nah: wasn’t that. See, in prison, it’s just another way they can hurt you. “Where’s your book gone, Jo? Bookworms must have eaten it.” And then the little smirk. And then of course you’d do them and they’d do you. Goes with the territory. I never held with reading in the nick. Don’t believe in it. You hear about blokes getting degrees from fucking Oxford while they’re banged up. I never held with that because as soon as they start the reading they get religious and all. Nutters who’ve sliced up families of six going round with they hands clasped behind they back. Praying and that. Don’t hold with it. If I see a con with a Bible they was due a bash. I know what loss of freedom is, what confinement is, but me thoughts are me own. It’s like the Kray Twins, from their book: “Flowers are God smiling at us.” And if that don’t send you to the bog then I don’t know what will.
‘But one day the book trolley come round. As it’s gone past I see the spines and one of them’s only called Joseph Andrews! Me first thought was: someone’s gone and taken a right raging liberty. Someone’s gone and done me uh, me life story with no permission whatsoever. I give the screw a shout – and the slag’s name is Henry Fielding. But of course after a while I’ve calmed meself down. Joseph Andrews was one of the first English novels, published as early as 1742. I got me TV glasses for a read of it and I’ve not made head or tail of the language they use in them days. But there’s something very near the beginning, about a good man being more … influential than a bad. And them’s wise words …
‘Years later I’ve come across another book, in three volumes, entitled Tom Jones. Must be the life story of the singer, I’ve thought, him of “It’s Not Unusual” fame. But no: it was only by the same fella – Henry Fielding. I always was an avid Tom Jones fan, and to this day I’ll get on a plane to attend one of his concerts. “It’s Not Unusual” was his greatest hit, but me own favourite’s got to be “The Green, Green Grass of Home”.
‘I want you to think about that. If you would: the green, green grass of home.’
Click. Joseph Andrews now summoned his amanuensis, Manfred Curbishley: braces, a horseshoe of hair going round the back of his head, mouth and eyes as moist as oysters. He looked as though he’d never left London – never left the bookies’ office in the Mile End Road. And a drinker’s face, with its pattern of heat: its oxbow of oxblood.
With a wag of the head: ‘There’s more, but you can start turning this into English. And take out all the language … Where’s Rodney?’
‘Accompanying Miss Susan to the airport, Boss.’
‘Course he is, course he is.’
The frowning gaze of Joseph Andrews (every mote of age visible in the carbonated air) settled on the green file, which lay open on his desk. Cora, he now saw, had underlined a name in one of the clippings. He adjusted his glasses: Pearl O’Daniel. With an inner murmur he pictured her father: Ossie O’Daniel. A good man, a sound man, a man of principle: never took any fucking rubbish from the screws. Remember once he came into Association in the middle of the day with his privates hanging out. This was at Strangeways. There’d just been an off – someone kicking up. No one said anything about Ossie and his privates, not even the screws. He’d just had twenty-four of the Birch that morning, so you made allowances, and tactfully turned the other way.
7. We two
Brendan Urquhart-Gordon lay in bed with his laptop. The imagery being fed through to him was from Oughtred; it attempted to duplicate, by the use of ‘isosurfaces and volumetric rendering’, the material on the Princess. Emboldeningly, the counterfeits of the first stills could not be distinguished from the originals – or at least not by the unassisted eye; and the four-second loop, where the Princess swivelled in the bath, was an apparently perfect simulacrum, down to the very eddies of the water. But the attempt to morph the enemy’s latest offering, the attempt to carve it out of light and magic, was a clear failure. Here the technology came up against its structural limits. Brendan could feel his body temperature climb: the inner casuist was acknowledging the first great wound in his defence. He thought (again): if the enemy so much as gave the time and place – the Château, the Yellow House … A chimerical mischief would at once become something actual, something to be investigated, and the media …
The new image, anonymously remailed on to the Net that morning, showed the Princess in three-quarter profile. It was an enlargement, and the quality – the definition – seemed relatively weak. Yet this much became clear: she was not alone. It wasn’t a shadow, louring above her. It was an implicit presence, demanded by the demeanour of the Princess. Her crossed hands resting on her shoulders, the angle of her torso minutely averted from the hypothetical entity, her expression … This was what the technology couldn’t capture: it couldn’t capture the complexity of the Princess’s expression. She looked surprised, and shocked too, but not quite startled or fearful; she looked intensely anxious; she looked slightly sick. But it was the eyes and their pitiful attempt at comity, at courtesy, at good manners: this could not be duplicated.
Retaining his pyjamas, and adding all his sweaters, Brendan got dressed and went to the King. He found him in his dressing-room, sitting before the empty grate with his face in his hands. Without looking up Henry pointed at something on the low table. Was it a golf ball? No, it was a crumpled sheet of paper. Brendan didn’t find it pleasant to watch the King flatten and straighten this out, his lower lip pendulous with reluctant concentration, and then pass it on with a sigh that closed his eyes. Brendan asked for and was given permission to activate the one-bar electric fire. Don’t like that colon, he thought, as he settled down to it:
Dear Daddy:
So it’s ‘we two’ now, is it? Mummy will be delighted when she hears. But she won’t hear. Perhaps I could have told Mummy what happened in the Yellow House, even though she would have been much more horrified than you. But I can’t do that, can I? Because it’s just ‘we two’.
I’m so sad to learn that you’re suffering. On the other hand I am absolutely fine. It’s nice to know that everyone on earth is leering at
you. I don’t dare look at any of it, but I’ve talked to my friends, until I stopped daring to do that too. The very air seems full of me; even the wind seems to say my name. But the air and the wind are polluted. When I’m not sleeping, or sitting there with you, not eating, I’m bathing. And even bathing, now, deeply reinfects me. Even the clear water feels like sewage.
I want to get farther and farther away from the thing which is called World.
May I close with a few quotations from your letter? ‘Thoroughly rotten … It’s my poor character … Sweetheart … let us be in this together.’
Uh-huh?
‘I dare not close my eyes for fear of what I may see.’
Oh go on and close them. It’s nothing you haven’t seen before.
I didn’t ask to be born. I didn’t ask to be—
V.
‘I am blind, like a kitten,’ said Henry in a slurred voice. ‘I see nothing. Do you think it possible, Bugger, to do something truly dreadful in your sleep and not remember it?’
Brendan moved closer. He hoped to dredge up words of comfort for his liege lord. Henry had settled on a certain eventuality: ‘What of it, if she had some sort of romp with one of those pretty Arab boys?’ There would be a better time to tell him that the visitor to the Yellow House was an adult, and not just another child.
8. Use Your Head
Chief: Tonight I’ll e you the pilot piece for the column. I suggest the byline ‘Yellow Dog’ (photo of snarling pariah). Then, if anyone asks, we can say it’s satire and comes from Jonathan Swift (the cases I’ll use will be all generic, so nobody can sue). You know like the Modest Proposal where he told the starving Irish to eat their own nippers. Look, there’s a big Vicky story brewing in LA which we can develop without stepping out of line. A flesh video called ‘Princess Lolita’. Humungous hit – what with the timing. Can’t buy that kind of publicity. More later. Weather here still superb high pressure. Saw that three people fucking drowned in the rain in SE England. That’s what I like to hear. Clint.
‘Hey asshole. What’s five times eight?’
Rich said, ‘… Fifty.’
‘Oh yeah? And what’s five times ten?’
Rich said, ‘… Forty-seven.’
There was laughter, in which Clint joined. He was attending class at the Academy, along with nine other denizens. Rich stood naked on a dais at the far end of the room. He was ridiculously endowed, endowed beyond all utility (his head and torso seemed mere afterthoughts: a howdah and canopy tacked on to the trunk), and he was supposed to be a genuine retard. In fact he was a would-be porno star acting under instructions. The Director of the Academy, John Working, had used genuine retards in earlier days, but it was hard to get hold of the right kind, and they were always injuring themselves or molesting the help. At the nightly poolside cookouts, Working also employed a nonorchid headmaster from Central LA who, strolling naked from table to table, knowledgeably answered questions on everything under the sun; the would-be porno star had to stand there too, stupidly eating hamburger after hot dog, while the Academy denizens sat back with their smoked trout and their ewe-cheese salads.
‘Hey shithead. In the Bible. Adam and …?’
Rich said, ‘… Ivy.’
‘Hey dorkbrain. How many Commandments are there?’
Rich said, ‘… Nine.’
Clint was not to be left out: ‘Hey. Who shall inherit the earth, cunt?’
dear clint: so! u have been sent to cali4nia 2 cover the princess lolita phenomenon 4 the lark! it’s just come out here 2, but u can only get it in the 6 shops, and they’re so c-d: i’ll have 2 get my brother (well, 1/2-brother) 2 get 1 4 me. every1’s talking about it: they say the actress is the absolute twin of our vicky (she’s barely 17) & per4ms the usual r&y stunts with stableboys & diplom@s, not 2 mention some 69 with a lady-in-w8ing! that’s what i am, clint: a lady in w8ing … so! k pasa? i’ve never been stateside, but i’ve read some boox. indian
reservations with t-p’s & heap big totem poles? or all very spanish with k-n pepper & “iladas? e me all, dear 1. i can’t tell u how much happier i am without orl&o. i o u 1 4 th@. 2nite i’m @ home with my father. so deliciously sed8! hurry back 2 engl&. i think it’s time, don’t u? k8.
Most birds you meet in the chat-rooms, thought Clint, as he relaxed in his cabana: they’re virtual. They ain’t there, not really: a bootstrap botchjob of mannerisms and affectations. But this one? A real character, a bubbly personality with a smashing sense of humour. And a good family girl, too, who knew her place, unlike some …
Cracking his knuckles, Clint moved to the table and the waiting laptop. He inhaled richly. He felt an unfamiliar afflatus: what was the phrase – taking dictation from heaven?
Yellow Dog’s Diary
• So some nun took a knock from a stolen car and was left bleeding on a zebra crossing.
Now, before we put our boxer pants into the tumble drier, let’s have a look at the other side of it.
The coppers openly admitted that the lad had had a few.
In actual fact he was four times over the limit.
It would have been a miracle if he’d noticed giving her a tap.
So much for ‘hit and run’.
As for her?
Thirty years old and she’s ‘a bride of Christ’.
In other words she’s crossed her legs forever to concentrate on her ‘good works’.
Pass the sickbag someone.
Word from the hospital is on the grim side, so at least she’ll be off the streets for a year or two.
But what about the others?
We ‘re the ones that have got to look at you, darlings.
Never had the strength of a man in you and it shows.
So when you go out in public, get your hair done and put some powder on that ugly old boat, for f**k’s sake.
• So a so-called ‘referee’s assistant’ (‘linesman’ was good enough in my day) got kicked to death by players, management and crowd after a disputed decision at the North-East derby at the Stadium of Light, where they really care about their football.
Yes, care.
That’s C-A-R-E, alright?
True, video replays leave little doubt that a red card was in order, and that, given the career-ending injury that resulted, a yellow would not have sufficed.
But they don’t f**k about up Tyneside way.
If you so much as
Clint worked on. Then, having filed, he sat down on the sofa and empowered the TV and the VCR. He was looking forward to seeing Princess Lolita. But normal porno was forbidden at the Academy: you had to watch the stuff they provided as part of your kit. Academy porno, true, had much in common with normal porno: the acting, for example, was free of all conviction. So you had to wonder, when the bloke stripped down, at the bird’s gasp of gratitude and awe. There she was now: swooning at the sight of another no-see-um – another inverted exclamation-mark (in, what, fourteen-point?). And the next bit, there, look. What was she doing – picking her teeth? Clint was supposed to pay special attention to the thirty-minute cunnilingus sequence that followed, but he found himself reaching for the remote. And you had to suspend the old disbelief entirely when at last he plunged into her: the way she twists and judders and starts singing Wagner. To be fair, the women in Academy porno were among the smallest he had ever seen. Not kids or midgets – just incredibly small. Real throwabouts …
‘Use Your Head’ was the Academy motto. Much of the class activity was overseen by a retired porno star called Dimity Qwest, now a respected activist and therapist, who showed you how to work the fake quim they doled out to you on arrival. In time, they all became slobberingly proficient at the art of oral love. Clint had found it a low moment, to be sure, when Dimity told him to regard his organ as a middle finger without the nail; but then she cheered him up by touting the likelihood of anal bliss, increased access to the tradesmen’s entrance being something the smaller bloke could legitimately expect. You were meant to practise in your cabana. The thin
g had a ‘pleasure meter’ on it, about halfway to the hypothetical navel, which showed you when you were getting warm.
If asked, Clint would have said that he was responding to the treatment. Definitely. After all, nobody’s perfect and everything’s relative. And the lads at the pool, during the nude brunch: a good few of them put a spring in his stride. Several denizens, moreover, during workshop, tearfully lamented the shaming meagreness of their ejaculations. Clint chipped in, saying that this was a department in which he happened to shine, and going on to describe his heroics with Rehab.
Now he cleaned his teeth in the scaled-down bathroom: the basin was no bigger than an ashtray. His artificial smile briefly quickened with sincerity as he thought about the porno interviews he’d lined up in Lovetown. Looking forward to Princess Lolita: see some decent todgers for once in his life. The absolute twin of our Vicky. Looking forward to Kate: lady in waiting.
9. Epithalamium
By now there were torn creases in the sheet of paper which winked at him whenever he picked the thing up. Through them you could see the other world – or so it seemed. The letter was now a week old; and there had since been the incident with the fox.
* * *
My dear Xan,
It would not be true to say that you raped me last night, but it would be true to say that you tried. I know this is a question you must in general be tired of hearing. Still, I must ask it. What do you remember?
It was about 2.20 when you put on the light. Then you crashed down on me and forced your tongue into my mouth and your hand between my legs. As well as being an amazing stinkbomb of cigars, beer, curry, vomit, and shit, you ‘reeked of cheap ponce’, to use your own phrase (you had just helped me out of a minicab – this was, or seems, years ago). I hit you on the head with closed fists about eight or nine times as hard as I could. I’m sorry. Your poor, poor head. Then I got out and ran upstairs and locked myself in with Baba. You followed, and battered on the door. Baba, incredibly, slept through it, but Billie woke up and sat down crying outside Imaculada’s door, and she woke up too. She said that if she’d had a phone in her room she would certainly have called the police.
