by Will Self
and its pages stuffed into the air conditioner’s grille – it’s a
leaf-riffling reminder, he thinks, of life on the bluey-green dirt-ball
for those of us who plunge through outer-space. A reminder, too, that
no matter how far I may wander I’ll never arrive – I’ll always
be there, on … the blasted Heath! – You know what they get up to
here, don’t you, Busner had remarked as the trio reached West
Heath Road, crossed it and walked on between the lowering trees
with their branches clattery in the chill wind. ‘Course I bloody do,
Simon had said … or words to that effect, it’s the poofs’ adventure
playground – the turd-burglars’ Arden … Busner was on the point
of admonishing him for these cruel epithets, which might – just
might – have been understandable in one of those eras, but no longer,
when Ann had squeaked, Look! A centaur in the forbidden forest!
It was: a snuffly, smoky-breathed, four-denim-legged, leather-torsoed
and tremulous beast that, as they drew closer, metamorphosed
into … two well-spoken men, one of whom wished them a
polite good evening, even as his conjoined companion cracked an
ampoule, releasing … the locker-room chemistry of amyl nitrate
fumes. Zack had retched, staggered – might’ve fallen were it not for
Simon’s supportive arm: You’ve fucked up, Doctor B, he hissed:
you’re a time perv’ – you’ve messed about with time, groomed it –
got it to put its slim young hands on your big old cock. You’re like
all the others – Jimmy and Rolf, Max and the It’s-a-Knockout geezer
– ‘stead of growing older and wiser, you’ve stayed stupidly the
same while yer knackers’ve gone … south! Ann, her puckish face
networked by the shadows of twiggy intricacy, had stopped shushing
through the leaf-fall. And? she’d queried, to which Zack had
replied: And my postural hypotension, and my raised cholesterol,
and my lipids – and my bloody blood pressure! And that gall bladder
flare-up I had a couple of years ago, and the benign melanoma they
scraped off my neck at Tommy’s … And, And, And, And! On his
last trip to the Bartholemew Road Heath Centre, Doctor Zarqawi
hadn’t been available. It’d been a matter of honour, of course, to
take whichever hack of a locum, or wet-behind-the-ears junior, he
drew in the appointment lottery at the local group practice. Still,
sod’s law, he got a dew-picked young Cheltenham Ladies’ College
graduate: Oh, dearie, she’d said … or words to that pitying effect,
and he’d searched her bright face for a scintilla of embarrassment,
while she, fingers arranged, waited for him to detail his symptoms
so she could … initiate data-entry, so allowing a more clinically
experienced algorithm to … feel me up. I want to die … he’d
begun, and hilariously she’d struck a few keys before pulling up
short: I’m sorry? What’s that you said, Doctor Busner, you want
to die? He’d concurred: That’d be the ticket, my dear – problem
is, I’m just too damn healthy … It’d taken a while to manoeuvre
her into the right psychic position, but soon enough she was
reassuring … me I was perfectly unhealthy, running through his
various chronic complaints, reminding him of all the medications
he had to take, and eventually summoning on-screen his Over-Seventies’
Patient Plan, just in case he needed refamiliarising. Yes,
yes! I know all that, he’d cried, but why aren’t I iller? I’ve lived a
life – smoked, drank, drugs even … Eaten what I wanted for
years – exercised precious little … Surely you can come up with
something that might actually bump me off … But no, there was
nothing – nothing but his unnatural vigour, which, despite his
abandonment of the little blue pills, continued unabated … I still
burn with desire! A stinky-old-socks-potassium-permanganate sort
of desire – a lust cooked up in a beaker over a Bunsen burner, drawn
off with a hypo’ and injected directly into … my left circumflex
artery, awakening him again annagain to the grotesque recurrence
of … my lustful and virginal self! In the wood, with his ragged
company, Zack had stood and bayed at the fingernail of new moon
snagged in the Terylene clouds: Oh no, not this – anything but
this! I can cope with disease – death would be a relief … But not
madness, I can’t cope with THAT! His view halloo had been more
evidence … of my time-perving, since it preceeded the phenomenon
it should’ve been a response to: several more faunlike figures hobbling
from ferny cover, their trousers dropped, their hindparts …
pale, gibbous, cloven. But the real shock had been that of … the old.
In the moonlight their faces were corpse-grey, while their hands
shook as they girded themselves up. Don’t worry, lads, we’re not
the Old Bill! Simon had shouted after the elderly cruisers as they
limped away towards Golders Hill Park, while the instigator of the
rout spat out … more despair: When you’re old and infirm, no one
expects you to turn up for life … it’s understood: you’re not you any
more once your body takes revenge … Revenge on your mind
for forcing it, year in, year out, into these humiliating postures!
Simon had said something about how cruising was a declining
sport, really, bit like county-level test cricket – but Zack wasn’t
having any of it: It’s a curse or a spell of some sort, he sobbed, stop
my life – I want to get off! But toenails keep growing after you’re
dead … therefore I must be … dead — Must be, because Busner’s
going towards the white light, while the angelic, green-uniformed
angel trumps, Youse a mucky little pup, aintcha, old timer … as,
nose pinched, he plucks Gideon Bible pages from the whiffling
vent … the Spirit of God moving upon the face of the waters. Busner
stands there, an old and incontinent man – but Pete-the-Podium-Restaurant-Manager
has seen it all before, he knows how to evaluate
a wrecked hotel room for material rather than moral damage.
He ignores the ripped-apart cushions, he disregards the witch’s hat
lampshades that’ve been removed and married together on top of
the glassy table. Next, Busner hears his gasp from the bathroom,
Fucking hell! There’s more shit on the walls in here than there is
down the bog! He’s back – and spots something under one of the
bedside tables which he stoops to examine, then recoils from: What
the fuck! Used condoms! Can’t bloody believe it – you ‘ad a tart
up ‘ere, old man, didja – or what? Or what? Or a whatnot – or a
poin-what-settia on a thingamajig … a whatnot… — She must’ve
felt his eyes on her, because as she’d turned from the window he’d
been appalled by her pallor … and her pride: Juss ’cause you’re
on the game, don’t mean you can’t keep fings nice … Terrified
he’d soil himself – and by extension the room – Zack was forced to
concede that fings, as they were, were perfectly nice. Your first time
is it, love? she’d flung over her shoulder as t
hey clumped up linoleum
treads to where a gas meter hunched … clucking, on a small shelf
beside the door that she unlocked and opened to reveal her carefully
dusted … fings. Missus Fitz’s treacle tart, baked Alaska and jam
roly-poly were all … nice enough, but, aged seventeen, intellectually
and experientially omnivorous, well aware already of his uncle’s
illegal predilections, Zack wanted his … just desserts. Yet the pathos
of Daily-Express-reader-offer china statuettes ranged on the
windowsill and a glossy photo of the Princess and the Captain,
snipped from a magazine and framed courtesy of Woolworth’s,
reduced him to nothing but … intestines and lachrymal ducts …
When he’d spotted the tartan slippers on the oval crocheted rug
beside the single iron bed, he’d been almost … completely undone.
Especially when he should’ve been in Wembley with Godley Godfrey
and some of their other friends, who, out of sheer curiosity
rather than any quest for salvation, were heading for the stadium.
During what had followed – the business, because that was the
word she’d flung into his mind on Romilly Street: Business, love? –
he’d tormented his conscience with visions of the paradise he’d
abandoned. The torture had begun as he removed the trousers of his
twelve-guinea suit … you can never go wrong with three made-to-measure
pieces, folded and shakily draped them over a bentwood
chair. This much he recalls: they slid straight off! His contemporaries
had got their first suit for their first job, or their confirmation,
or their bar mitzvah … mine was for my first fuck. In Croydon, the
Great Awakener’s carefully crèmed hair was a cross planted on the
Golgotha of his bare brow, and his index finger admonished as it
kept time for the heavenly choir: We’re longing for a creed to
believe! Pom-pom! We need to sing to believe! Pompety-pom! A song
of salvation! Pom-pom! So we may turn in repentance of our sins!
Pom-p’pom-pom-schshhhh! Zack had waited in his underpants while
she disrobed behind the half-opened wardrobe door. He heard
rustling, oofing, the snap of a suspender. But when she emerged she
was in a floral-patterned housecoat, of which, as she arranged
herself over his prone form, she parted the sides, exposing her
deflated breasts, their nipples heavily recessed, and the machine-gunned
barrage balloon of her belly. Rubbing against him, mouth
open … and opener, her face was blanched in the light of an
indifferently shaded bulb. Struggling up, Zack had attempted
to place his mouth against hers – she’d administered a deft slap,
together with words … I’m not your Locarno sweet ‘eart, love … that
remain with him to this day, while simultaneously and expertly
fondling on the French letter, a prophylactic he couldn’t remember
her retrieving from pocket or purse – a prophylactic he wishes had
been stretched and stretched and stretched, until its chalk-dusted
manifold encased … all space, all time — so affording him complete
protection from Pete-the-Podium-Restaurant-Manager’s fulsome
and ever multiplying contempt. For, even as the Romilly Street tart
begins to seriously rock ‘n’ roll: Well if you wanna ride it you gotta ride
it like you find it, he holds up two of the sad saggy things, wondering:
What’ve you done with these johnnies, mate? They look like
fucking elephant’s ears … Then his eyes slide to Busner’s exposed
crotch area, and, despite all the smelly dreadfulness of plastic-laminated
info-sheets torn from their ring binder and shit-smeared,
he summons the fine muscle control needed to lift a single eyebrow.
Standing, preposterously, on his dignity, Busner remarks, I’m a
grower – not a shower … Balling and dropping the condoms
into a waste-paper basket, Pete-the-Podium-Restaurant-Manager
becomes all … business: You do realise, don’t you, that it’s illegal to
pay for sex on licensed premises? Shalluz phone the dibble, then,
Pete? interjects the security guard, who won’t be happy … ‘til
I’m led away in chains. But his superior remains so: But, given your
age and medical condition, and having established there’s no permanent
damage to fixtures and fittings … to fings, you mean …
I … Well, I’ll have to run it up the chain, but I reckon they’ll back
me up. Back you up concerning what? Busner says guilelessly, as
he drops heavily down on to the mattress, and head in hands contemplates
their … unnatural persistence in growing. My decision,
Pete-the-Podium-Restaurant-Manager says sententiously. Which
is? – Which is exactly what Mister Marshalsea decided when you
wouldn’t give him your phone: pack up your bits and bobs, put
your bloody trousers on and GET THE FUCK OUTTA MY
HOTEL! Busner is conflicted. Shouting at an old man – a paying
guest, no less – isn’t what you expect from the managerial-level
employee of an international hotel chain, but then it occurs to him
– for the first time since he materialised to find his grower resting
on the breakfast buffet – that before he protests he should at least
try to remember exactly what did occur in Room Five-Twenty the
night before. The past, Busner thinks, is an international hotel
chain: it doesn’t matter where you are in the world, the corridor
looks exactly the same – simply consult the little card-folder your
key card’s in to find out which room you were allocated … The
world of yesterday seeps up from the soaked mattress, and Busner
sees himself doing the things he so recently did: taking the lift from
the lobby, reading the advertisement for the cocktail bar, buffing old
brown brogues … not bare feet, inserting the key card, opening the
door, and encountering a homogeneous mass of cushions, upright
lampshades, the taut, navy-blue cover of the tightly made bed and
the beautifully bound Gideon Bible … no thought for the morrow,
for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself. The O’Keeffe
parody had been securely on the wall, the minibar chock-full and
the ashtray empty. The television had softly sung, You got me
slippin’, tumblin’, fumblin’, sinkin’ … until he found the remote
control, read the on-screen salutation: THE HILTON DEANSGATE
WELCOMES DR z BISNER, and, after much fumblin’, negated its
inhuman error. It’d been late afternoon when he’d first entered
Room Five-Twenty, and, for a long while, after he’d put down his
staff and bowl, he’d stood by the floor-length windows staring down
at the men wearing white hard-hats who, four storeys below, were
doing things on the scaffolding attached to an old viaduct. What
exactly is it they’re doing, Busner had wondered – and, still more
superfluously, P’raps I could do that? For the past two or three years,
in line with his preposterous physical rejuvenation, he’d experienced
an equally bizarre resurgence of this adolescent omnipotentiality …
gissa job – I could do that – and do it well, rising up the professional
ra
nks, despite natural disadvantages of birth – and now age – at a
meteoric rate. Doctor, lawyer, deep-sea diver – all were possible.
But no – he’d been laid off, and this was therefore the dropping-off
point, when, all the inertia of a lifetime’s Sunday afternoons having
finally accumulated, he shot down the sickening and fatal slide …
In Room Five-Twenty … then, as now, doubly exposed, he despairs:
What am I doing in Manchester? A city with which I’ve no great
connection … Then, as now, his grandson’s breathy instruction had
returned to him: When in any doubt about what you’re doing or what
you should be doing … and returned to him again: When in any doubt
about what you’re doing or what you should be doing … together with
the rest of his tutorial: the detailed schedule, stored in the phone’s
diary function, was itself interactive, so he could finger out more
facts about the future. Ben had also told him that programmed
into his own computer, at home in Kilburn, were instructions to
send his grandfather’s phone nudges … alerts … pulses – pushes …
and even to make automated calls. It is of no account, Gramps, how
the symptomatic panoply manifested by Alzheimer’s affects you, so
long as it remains the case that the phone is in your possession …
so long as it remains the case that the phone is in your possession … Did
he truly speak like this? Yes – yes, he did … and does, an odd mix
of profundity and pretension that in anyone else would be ironic,
but which for Ben seemed to be a sort of … collaging, the bits and
pieces of his idiolect snipped from newspapers, textbooks, broadcasts
and, latterly, the web, and rearranged into communicative
bursts so long as it remains the case that the phone is in your possession
… It’d been Ben who’d counselled the rest of the tumultuous
Busners to accede to their patriarch’s self-abnegation and cease
blocking his mendicant path … tumbly-tumbly, neatly bumbly, slippin’
… slidin’ … Not by appealing to their sympathy, nor their
reason – and certainly not to their own dormant spirituality, but
simply by shouting: IT’S FINE! I’LL GET HIM TO TAKE
A PHONE! Then … as now, in Room Five-Twenty, the senile
and electronically-tagged former psychiatrist wiped, swiped, then
