Phone
Page 1
By the same author
FICTION
The Quantity Theory of Insanity
Cock and Bull
My Idea of Fun
Grey Area
Great Apes
The Sweet Smell of Psychosis
Tough, Tough Toys for Tough, Tough Boys
How the Dead Live
Dorian
Dr Mukti and Other Tales of Woe
The Book of Dave
The Butt
Liver
Walking to Hollywood
Umbrella
Shark
NON-FICTION
Junk Mail
Sore Sites
Perfidious Man
Feeding Frenzy
Psychogeography (with Ralph Steadman)
Psycho Too (with Ralph Steadman)
Phone
WILL SELF
Copyright © 2017 by Will Self
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First published in Great Britain in 2017 by Penguin Random House UK
Published simultaneously in Canada
Printed in the United States of America
First Grove Atlantic hardcover edition: January 2018
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication data available for this title.
ISBN 978-0-8021-2537-8
eISBN 978-0-8021-8939-4
Grove Press
an imprint of Grove Atlantic
154 West 14th Street
New York, NY 10011
Distributed by Publishers Group West
groveatlantic.com
18 19 20 21 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
For Nelly
These arabesques that mysteriously embody mathematical truths only glimpsed by a very few – how beautiful, how exquisite – no matter that they were the threshing and thrashing of a drowning man.
– R. D. Laing, The Politics of Experience
Table of Contents
Cover
By the same author
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Epigraph
Begin Reading
Back Cover
…. …. ! and again …. …. ! two groups of four …. …. !
on it goes …. …. ! insistently persistently …. …. ! not that
one hears it quite so much nowadays …. …. ! If one does it’s a
fake – a recording of an old phone …. …. ! done with a lot
of echo …. …. ! so’s to suggest it’s ringing in a largish, darkish
hall …. ….! poorly lit by tall, narrow windows …. …. !
many little stained panes …. …. ! altogether depicting a square-jawed
medieval knight and his equally mannish lady …. …. !
sword and spear …. …. ! spindle and distaff …. …. ! two
groups of four …. …. ! on it goes …. …. ! relentlessly ….
…. ! Can we make anything mysto-mathematico-significant out
of this? No, probably …. …. ! not – if it were … . . and
then … … ! possibly, for the converse would be the six-five special
coming down the line … … …. and here he comes …. …. !
right on time – but what time? Mid fifties, I s’pose …. …. ! the
mid fifties at Redington Road …. …. ! Somewhere on a
catwalk Sabrina’s forty-two-inch bust is being riveted into her
brassiere …. …. ! Somewhere in a giant hangar the nacelles
of Vulcan Bombers are being embroidered with …. …. !
rivets …. …. ! Wasp-waisted she was – this skyscraper as well
…. …. ! nipped in the middle — the people with the luxury flats
on the upper storeys …. …. ! tits, every man-jack of ’em ….
…. ! Self-satisfied arse I chatted to in the changing room
yesterday evening, blithering on about his terrific views and
high-achieving children …. …. ! From the thirty-fifth floor he
can see all the way to London …. …. ! see them balancing their
bloody chequebooks …. …. ! He turns away from the picture
window …. …. ! turns away from his own self-satisfied
face …. …. ! turns towards his glass-topped coffee table ….
…. ! his black leatherette sectional sofa …. …. ! his stainless-steel
hatstand …. …. ! Stainless-steel hatstand! – always ahead
of the pack, Maurice …. …. ! Remember him coming back
from Heal’s with one like that during …. …. ! the Malayan
Emergency …. …. ! Here he comes now, rounding the metallic
Horn at a steady clip …. …. ! He’s heeling …. …. ! his
tailored sails flapping in the draught — never dealt with the
draughts …. …. ! it was a draughty house until the day he
died …. …. ! Just as well …. …. ! Evacuated Missus Mac’s
Harpic reek and all our cabbage-water farts …. …. ! Then
came the wind of change that changed the winds …. …. !
Poor Maurice …. …. ! didn’t get it – hats were being flung fast
out of fashion …. …. ! No God, see – no need to cover up your
third eye …. …. ! he can’t see inside your mind – he isn’t up
there …. …. ! That one’s up there …. …. ! very flat and shiny
…. …. ! Spreadable tan and paper-white shirt folded in a Swiss
papeterie – I know his name: Eamonn Holmes …. …. ! I hate
that – that I know his name …. …. ! Eamonn Holmes ….
…. ! And again: …. …. ! thick as a chicken – still talking
’though his head’s chopped off …. …. ! No-no-no …. …. !
you must never do a tango with a …. …. ! Native American?
Inuit … ? No-no-no – doesn’t sound right at all. Loved her, though
…. …. ! …. …. ! Amelia what’s-her-face, ’specially the little
helium-squeaky bounce in …. …. ! …. …. ! Esss-ki-mo —
He’s turning, Maurice – turning back. He’s turning back – one
highly polished toe flips up the corner of the old Persian rug …
pashas in profile … birds embroidered into cages … traced their
outlines with my finger for …. …. ! ages – tracing ’em still. He
cries: Turn it down, old chap! Before pressing on towards the teak
console table …. …. ! Oh, no-no-no! Trace the leaf-and-blade
pattern of the Sanderson’s wallpaper as well – slip my fingernail
in the crack between the sheets …. …. ! another world in back
of it – hung on the front of it … that map. Old framed map.
Curious mixture of the surveyed and the imagined. Real settlements
– mythical beasts. Little pictograms of villages …. …. !
each one with a steepled church …. …. ! sitting on a titty
tumulus, shad
ed in with cross-hatching. The place names written
in cursive script and full of lifping effs … Fussex … Suffex –
that sorta thing …. …. ! …. …. ! Here he comes – spry
he was … as well as … dapper. Spry. Dapper. Another thing that’s
gone – those words. Maybe gone ’cause he’s … gone – gone with
him, placed in his tomb to ensure he’ll be spry and dapper for
all …. …. ! eternity – except that he was cremated …. …. !
…. …. ! at Golders Green. Whole family burned there – ashes
scattered on the Heath, mingling promiscuously with those of
hundreds of other North London Jews who’ve died of …. …. !
cancer. Here he comes – right hand down … right hand down hard
… swerving and skidding and skittering right out of fashion …
But he was what then? …. …. ! In his early fifties p’raps –
easily young enough to be … my … son. Here he comes and
snatches up the black give-a-dog-a … … – Hello, Hampstead
four-five-oh-six, how may I help you? Then a pause – actually,
more than a pause: a hiatus … Because it was odd, certainly – and
never stopped being so: that abrupt transition from being in the
room … being in the very particularity of the hall at Redington
Road, with the day’s newspapers laid out on the dark, mirror-shiny
wood next to the telephone … the post fanned out beside them –
lots of envelopes, since he worked from home as much as from his
office in Long Acre …. …. ! …. …. ! Mostly manila ones
with little glassine windows on to a world of …. …. ! …. …. !
numbers – a world in which Rab Butler solemnly announces,
We can double the size of the national cake … No doubt a proper
big cake such as Missus Fitz used to bake, using a full tin of
Golden Syrup once it came off the ration …. …. ! …. …. !
real strength from genuine sweetness – none of your asparta– …
asp– … arse-spurting? None of that stuff anyway – those things
… Muff-things … stupid little muff-things – pull off the waxed
paper and half the thing comes with it. Bingo! You’ve halved the
size of the national cake …. …. ! …. …. ! Bitten lips
and bruised eyes. Creased collar – painted-on hair … That’s jolly
serious, the Chancellor of the Exchequer announces from behind
an ornate silver ink stand: the builders have been freed, so the
number of new houses will rise year on year …. …. ! …. …. !
the national cake will double in size, and everyone can have an
extra slice – Uncle Maurice was never a chap for an extra slice …
Spry and dapper, neat and quick – his hair lustrous in the multicoloured
spangles of light tumbling down from the narrow, tall
stained-glass windows …. …. ! …. …. ! What was that stuff
he put on his hair … ? I twitted him … unmercifully. Ponged
as well – not unpleasantly, but a definite aroma, suggestive of
barbers’ shops: singed-hair-shushing-shortie-grey-nylon-coat-hot-
crotch-pressed-against-hard-shoulder …. …. ! …. …. ! something
stiffening in there …. …. ! …. …. ! Will that be all,
sir? …. …. ! …. …. ! Something for the weekend? …. …. !
…. …. ! No need for any of that carry-on now – stand up in the
church, say it out loud. Out loud and proud – that’s what they
are now: Do you, Maurice Busner, take this hairdresser, Henry
Tonks, to be your lawful wedded husband? All jizzed-up to lift the
burlap veil – kiss the cowboy’s chapped lips …. …. ! …. …. !
when some fascist in a black leather overcoat stands up at the back
of the church, whips out a gun and let’s all the cotton-pickin’
faggots have it …. …. ! …. …. ! Times ten tubes at two-and-six
… under plain wrapper … Extra one-and-eleven on the postal
order to cover postage … and … packing. Nuctol! That was it –
Nuctol! Can’t remember my own bloody room number – but I have
that: Nuctol! A Must for Immaculate Men Who Care for Their
Hair! The dressing that nourishes and controls the hair! Your
hair will double in size, along with the national cake …. …. !
…. …. ! In two-and-six tubes and three-and-six jars … Total
swizz – prob’ly made up from a job-lot of wholesale hair cream
… portioned out in a Billericay bike shed or a Grays Thurrock
garage …. …. ! …. …. ! Utter, utter, swizz: but he swore by
it – Remember him dying on the medical ward at Heath … Very
brave – I shan’t be …. …. ! …. …. ! easy way out – here
and happy, then there and … nothing. Not poor old Fred – not
that. Very brave – bore everything without a murmur so long as
he’d his Nuctol …. …. ! …. …. ! Will you be a dear chap
and fetch me my Nuctol from that cabinet-thingie … ? Last thing
I did for him – my father … Who was he, my father? Always
wondered that – worried at it: Grrr … Grrr … Grrr … side to
side … up and down … Grrr … Grrr … Grrr … bit of meat –
bit of gristle …. …. ! …. …. ! The gristly truth – caught there,
between my teeth and swollen gums: Maurice – Maurice was
my father – not biologically but in every other way – and my
father was one of the Immaculate Men Who Care for Their
Hair …. …. ! …. …. ! Had to be a euphemism – or, more
properly, a sign. Later on … seventies, I s’pose … it was other
things: a pierced ear, or a spotty handkerchief in your back pocket.
But back then it was all just that little bit … subtler – you’d
to reach out through the postwar fog …. …. ! …. …. ! feel
tentatively for the touch of another Immaculate Man … Spies they
were – agents from Ganymede. All part of the same frigid conflict
– until they touched and it caught fire …. …. ! …. …. !
One second you were reading the carefully worded advertisement
in Reynold’s News, the next you were in a bedsitting room in
Hainault, naked on a cold and quilted bedspread … One sec’ you
were in the hall at Redington Road …. …. ! …. …. ! the
next you were in a velvety void with a stranger’s lips nibbling at
your ear – while your tongue tasted wax as it wriggled around the
alien whorls …. …. ! …. …. ! No-no-no, oh dear, no – if
you do you’ll get a breeze-up, and you’ll end up with a freeze-up!
The bewilderingly intimate oddity of a call on a private line in
an era when it was still Mister Busner and Missus Mac – even
after she’d been mopping up after him for a decade …. …. !
…. …. ! Suddenly, here he is: in the fuzzy darkness … and
I’m in there with him. On the radio the other day some dis–embodied
voice said, Virtual reality is where you go to when you
make a phone call …. …. ! …. …. ! Where you go to
now, p’raps – but then? There was nothing either virtual or actual
about it at all – only invisible mouths and immaterial ears tangoing
together in a numb clinch, no-no-no …. …. ! …. …. !
Hampstead four-five-oh-six, he says again – and that being the
; way of things then, and the necessary being right to hand, he gets
out a cigarette from the split-bamboo box and lights it with one of
the job lot of Dunhill gold lighters he bought from Bramlow’s in
Camden Town when it went under … fifty-two, was it, or possibly
fifty-one? …. …. ! …. …. ! And whoever was on the other
end of the line prob’ly lit up, too – way of it then …. …. !
…. …. ! Old Kay-sixes still about – interior surfaces were
Bakelite-faced plywood … there was an ashtray-cum-pipe-rack,
and a prominent hook at groin-level for your um-ber-ella …
Umbrellas! Umbrellas for men … Men’s umbrella, lady … Mend
by hand, lady … Umbrellas to mend … Toodle-uma, luma-luma
… Toodle-uma, luma-luma … Toodle aye-ay … Any umbrellas –
any umbrellas to mend today …. …. ! …. …. ! People,
I recall, used to pride themselves on all the phone numbers they
could remember – not any more, no need for that carry-on. Used
to say, Ooh, I can remember the phone number of every house
I’ve ever lived in …. …. ! …. …. ! a mnemonic exercise
that, finger-in-dial, connected them to the world. Still, it was
understandable, given telephone directories steadily grew fatter by
the year …. …. ! …. …. ! The ones at Redington Road
were kept shelved in the console table, behind glass – big fat paperback
books that made for dull reading …. …. ! …. …. !
plot-wise – although if you sat and scanned the columns of minute
print they could be really rather frightening …. …. ! …. …. !
All those people – all those Busners. Despite being orphaned,
Henry and I soon came to realise we were part of a wider
Busner community spread throughout Greater London …. …. !
…. …. ! most of ’em immediate relatives, but some – those
bedevilling Ponders End Busners, for example – were quite
unknown to us …. …. ! …. …. ! Then there was that junior
registrar at Saint Mungo’s – O’Shaughnessy? Said his name
was far less common than my own – and they were Lords of
Tara, or some other hazy Celtic Twilight nonsense. Got a bit
aerated – drink had, I believe, been taken …. …. ! …. …. !