by Will Self
to twist and shout, do the locomotion or rise up on a dizzying
theremin fugue. He’d tapped the screen: That one – play me that
one … although he’d no idea why. Doo-doo dooby-doo doo-a-doo-a-doo!
Knick-knack paddy-whack, give-a-dog-a-bone … the
synthesised tootling summoned up the old nursery rhyme’s words
so effectively he’d heard the voices of … scores of marching Chinese
orphans – but why? And why were they singing an English nursery
rhyme? It hardly mattered – the important thing was, being the
possessor of a smartphone with a distinctive ringtone made him
able to … hold the manager at bay, because with thumbs and knees
and shoes and doors the ringtone assembles … a little booth around
Busner: a sequestration within which … I can press Button A …
while the MANAGER remains impotently outside, unable to enter
this very public, private space. Instead they stand and stare, and
Busner wonders if the MANAGER is also preoccupied by possible
meanings of NO CALLER ID, until … on my hi– it stops. The
MANAGER gently grasps Busner’s elbow, and, speaking very slowly
and distinctly, says, Come along now, I hope you aren’t gonna
make any trouble. Slipping the smartphone into his jacket pocket,
Busner replies: Trouble, why would I make any trouble – ‘sides …
why’d’you want me to go anywhere? Come along now, sir, the
MANAGER says, tightening his grip, this is hardly the appropriate
place to be … to stand about in … Oh, bloody hell, man, you’re
naked. – It’s true: Busner has forgotten he’s in … some dishabille …
Or, rather: since coming to consciousness standing at the breakfast
buffet in the Podium Restaurant, he hasn’t until now considered the
matter of … my attire. But with his invisible booth demolished,
Busner’s eyes are compelled to follow the MANAGER’S hand,
which rises, describing a severe arc that takes in: Eamonn Holmes,
the Jack Jones man, tables decorated with single orchids in skinny
vases, some bizarre giant optics full of breakfast cereals, and,
beyond these, in between shoulder-high white pots housing …
giant bonsai trees – how can that be?… the sunny tumult of a summer
morning in central Manchester, before falling to point out the
deeply familiar … alien in its segmented, skin spacesuit that lies on
the counter’s mosaic-tiled edge, seemingly questing towards the
glistening piles of pork with a … Cyclopean eye. Busner is indignant:
I’m not naked! bursts from him, even as he hunches over,
partially hiding his penis with his roomy tweed jacket’s shadowing
skirts, I’m half naked at best! – Mister and Missus Jack Jones are
probably reconsidering their dinner options, Busner thinks, since
the poor MANAGER has succeeded in creating the very scene he was
determined to avoid — and now, slowly-sandily-trickling … minute
flecks of recollection pitter-patter into his mind: Walking down the
long, low, carpeted treads of the stairs from the lobby area …
encountering a dumpy East European waitress with thick ankles,
who asked for his room number, pointed out a table to him, took
his order for a pot of tea, then watched, stunned, as Zack worked
his way between the other tables, his big fat old naked pitted
pitifully-bald buttocks … swinging, before heading over to the
wall-mounted phone behind the counter and calling in this …
public morality strike. Crowding him, the MANAGER goes on:
There’re the other guests to consider, sir, and you’re in danger of
doing yourself a m-mischief. Their eyes fall … Does anyone ever
closely examine a penis besides a clinician? and he stammers on: It
m-m-might get b-burned. I’ll come quietly, Busner says, I’ve no
wish to make problems for you … In fact – he picks up one of the
oiled and wooden-looking sausages and lays it on the tiles beside his
penis, their grid of grout providing an instant means of comparison –
I’ve no desire at all to speak of – not any more. I’ve attained
Sannyasa, y’see – the life-stage of renunciation. But the MANAGER
sees nothing besides … my shvantz, and so Busner further informs
him: Even if I were still potent, it wouldn’t be much of an issue –
I’ve always been a grower, not a shower, frankly, I’d’ve liked
something a little more impressive than this chipo- … chipo- …
chip-o-thing to bandy about in the changing room. He looks up,
sensing a change in the atmosphere: the unionists, their wives and
grandchildren have all retreated behind the chest-high partition
separating the dining area from the buffet, and are lined up there
goggling at … the floor show. As he watches he sees a child’s
madly inquisitive face being pushed down out of sight by an adult
hand … another intolerant beheading … which somehow summons
up the cold comfort of camping with the Eighth Golders Green:
a fat boy called Weiss who wore shorts … lederhosen-tight, despite
which his ging-gang-goolie-wash-washes … were always … winkling
their way out! Lissen, chummy, ‘less you can prove you’re a
guest at this hotel, I’m going to escort you off the premises.
Are you, chummy? Can you show me your key card? Key card, card
key … carkey … Karpov … massive intimidation – staring the poor
little Short down, a million calculations going on behind hooded Russian
eyes … drinking and drinking and drinking glassafterglass of water, a
thick and corded stream powers the irrigation wheel … out there on the
Deccan Plateau … Keccan Cocteau … Ke-ca-nate … Ke-carnate …
Key card, car key – Come along now, chummy, you clearly ain’t
got it … Oof! They’ve collided … we’ve collided … with a pair
of security guards, whose squawking walkie-talkies and general
jobsworthiness surround Busner and the MANAGER, so it’s as an
awkward squad that they negotiate the tables and gain the ramp up
to the lobby. This is a bit of a mither, says the younger security man,
who has nibbled cauliflower ears, where’ve his bloody keks got to?
The MANAGER is indignant: How should I know – I just got an
eyeful of his bits dangling down on the sausages … Called Marshalsea
– ‘e said get the old loony to his office and he’ll look after it
from there … Busner supposes he should be offended by being
referred to as the old loony, but he isn’t – his eye shoots from its
socket, rolls up the ramp and across the lobby, then bagatelles around
the spiral staircase up to the mezzanine … Fitness Centre – and
now he remembers yesterday evening: swimming in the hotel’s pool,
a hot trough of sweat and chlorine he’d swilled about in for half an
hour, quite enjoying the odd sensation of being at once semi-naked
and floating over the workmen erecting a scaffold in the shadowy
alleyway below. Less enjoyable had been the braggart in the
changing room afterwards, going on about his luxury apartment
thirty floors up … With his bins he could see walkers on the
High Peak … With his telescope he could see his over-ach
ieving
children down in London … coining it. With his t’riffic financial
acumen he could see the shape of capital to come … his way.
The man, recently retired, had rubbed his towel gently between
his wobbling breasts, revolved it over his bulging belly. Zack had
shuddered then – Busner shudders now … clap-clap his feet applaud
the cool lobby tiles … flip-flop his scrotum flaps from thigh to
thigh … click-click his nails are in a shocking state … Busner’s
buggered old knees near-buckle as the odd trio limp on across the
lobby area of the Hilton Deansgate, the MANAGER holding one of
his arms, the security guard the other. There are burly young men
in well-pressed T-shirts leaning against mighty pillars, making
phone calls – there are screens behind the concierge’s desk displaying
the departure times of flights from Manchester Airport.
There are clocks designed to resemble the binnacles of ocean
liners in the Blue Riband era. All places, Busner hypothesises, now
exhibit the characteristics of hotel lobbies: at once somewhere,
nowhere and everywhere – simultaneously then, now and … whenever
the zoetrope of style stops spinning. While all people feel like
paying guests, checking in, checking out, never truly … at home in
this world … I’ve got a home on high … Shalluz gi’ t’dibble a bell,
Pete? says the security guard – and the MANAGER is terse: Think
we’ll leave that up to Mister Marshalsea, shall we … Yes! Zack
remembers his room number now: Five Hundred and Twenty –
revisits knick-knack the hellish chamber’s sprayed-on soullessness
… Recalls how he’d sat on the edge of the bed, staring down at his
Melba toasty old toes, crusted with calluses and corns, and thought,
Those need clipping … toenails go on growing after you’re dead …
therefore … I must be dead. He’d carried on examining his feet …
which is the first thing any remotely competent doctor should do for
an elderly patient … both little toes had been farcically broken at
different times: the left catching-then-snapping on the leg of a
coffee table when, naked, he was actually fleeing an irate husband –
the right, decades later, as he’d been hobbling from a podiatrist,
verruca just excised, and tripped over a kerb. So it was they’d ended
up ironising their fellow “toes”, which, blobby and misshapen, hardly
seem fit for purpose … any more – Bunyan, Busner thinks, he was a
walker … striding from village to village, preaching from the hip.
They were all t’riffic walkers, those Protestant proselytisers … the
Sannyasins of their day, stepping out gaily towards the next world
… certain as … as … nail clippers – their anodised legs levering
together … closer and closer … marrying with a loud … snick!
It occurs to him: Once upon a time I was married … three fairytales,
actually … and when he’d been in this estate he’d had lots of possessions
… a set of autographed Jack Nicklaus championship golf
clubs … why? along with flats and houses to hold them – but that
was all over now: the varicose veins bunch so heavily on his calves
he can feel them … squidging as he hauls one leg in front of the
other … will they carry me? Yesterday evening, when he’d arrived at
the Hilton Deansgate, the Duty Receptionist was waiting for him,
behind the L-shaped desk in this same vast lobby – there’d been
a conga of young people queuing for the express lift to the cocktail
bar on the twenty-third floor, the men honking of aftershave and
with short sleeves exposing their pumped-up biceps, the women
in the miniest of skirts, their unhosed thighs mottled with fake
tan. The Receptionist had been … a fairy in the same dark green
suit as the Podium Restaurant’s MANAGER: six-button cuffs and
a butterfly collar … who rubbed Zack up with the high polish of
his indifference, then shined it still more … with his bounteous-bloody-hair.
To either side guests had been checking in: curt queries
were being punctuated by monosyllabic replies – while for him it’d
proved a lot more testing: Can you provide me with a credit card,
please, Doctor Bisner? Laboriously, he’d worked his way through all
twelve pockets in all three pieces of his yellowish tweed suit looking
for the smartphone Ben had given him, and his reading glasses …
must get some bifocals! How very maddening it is to have to interpose
a glass surface so’s to see … a glass surface … As he’d rummaged,
his grandson’s breathy monotones returned to him: It’s got touch
eyedee, all you gotta do, Gramps, is place your thumb here … and
returned to him again: All you gotta do, Gramps, is place your thumb
here … because however great the progress Ben had made in coping
with his disability, he remained … profoundly palilaliac. Retrieving
the enigmatic little slab from his right-hand trouser pocket, Zack
did indeed do as he’d been told and … I’ve set it up so the very
first thing you’ll see on the screen will be your schedule … and if you
scroll down like this … a further top-up tutorial on how to use the
phone’s other functions … on how to use the phone’s other functions …
There it’d all been: his itinerary – his train and ferry times, his
accommodations and their locations, a list of the pills he needed to
take, how many and when … And all the host of heaven shall be
dissolved, and the heavens shall be rolled together as a … scroll …
Under the mocking eyes of the Receptionist, he’d scrolled through
his own immediate future, still marvelling – as he had ever since
Ben had introduced him to the wonders of capacitive touch – at the
way his fingers intuited how to prink, palp, pinch and wipe … the
Gorilla Glass – it’s just one old silverback stroking another … I’m an
ape-man, I’m an ape-ape-man … There, right beside the Hilton’s
name and address, had been this stentorian slogan: YOUR ROOM
AND BREAKFAST HAVE BEEN PAID FOR IN ADVANCE, so he’d
relayed this to the Receptionist, while thinking, Just as well – since
I am Bhikku, one who lives by alms alone … Then he’d been asked
to sign … here, here and initial there … before the Receptionist
enquired if he’d be needing any assistance with his luggage. Zack
hadn’t been able to suppress the little warm thrill of … pride – yes,
pride: Oh no! he’d cried, since I am Sannyasa I carry only these …
He’d held aloft his walking stick and begging bowl, but the Receptionist
carried on … reading from his training scroll: Will you be
needing any assistance with them, sir? Which was no good at all –
not even palilaliacally. No doubt, as soon as the Receptionist had
handed over the key card in its little card folder, he forgot all about
the funny old codger in his eccentric get-up – When Ben found the
material online Camilla had guffawed, Don’t be bloody ridiculous!
Granted that’s tweed, Gramps, but it’s not stuff for clothes – it’s for
covering furniture and that sorta stuff … Zac
k loathed the way
they both called him Gramps – loathed equally Camilla’s hippy-dippy
bullshit and her syntactic mangling, which reminded him of
a broadcaster called upon to extemporise … the situation for David
Cameron is difficult, although not as difficult as difficulties he’s had to
cope with in the past … By contrast her son’s sentences were always
well formed and cogent – he simply repeated them word for word,
sotto voce. Still slapping across the wipeable white floor of the lobby
with his burly escorts, Busner ponders the matter further: Was it
her constant proximity to Ben that had done it to Camilla? Having
to communicate with an autist – even a high-functioning one – was
always an oddly alienating experience, some would argue more like
transmitting than truly communicating. Did she p’raps experience
their life together, sequestrated in a flat off the Kilburn High
Road, as a broadcast that had run … decades over time? He knew
her well enough – knew she often teetered on the edge of delusion,
sometimes stepping over its threshold into outright fantasy. He
knew also this was why he’d taken to her in the first place – long
ago, long before he’d swung on to the Via Negativa and embraced
… the logic of not, he’d had a professional interest in such borderline
mental states: I was a sigh-kaya-tryst … the syllables are strange
to him now – it was a line of work he’d fallen into … for want
of any great impulse towards anything else, but which in hindsight
had turned out to be … a haven for me. Back to Redington Road,
where the seventeen-year-old Zack had spent the summer holidays
of nineteen fifty-five – his last before embarking for medical training
at Heriot-Watt – trying to talk Ben’s great-uncle down from his
dizzying psychotic spirals … he believed himself to be a kite, spinning
at the end of its string high over West Heath … and it was Zack who’d
held the other end … my words came to him in pulses as I jerked on
its fraying end. It had been a tragic situation … although not as tragic
as tragedies I had to cope with in the future. A future now long in the
past … he played knick-knack on my thumb … When he’d eventually
reached Room Five-Twenty the hotel’s general manager had been
