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Phone

Page 10

by Will Self


  detached and faintly dismal house there’ll be a chilly vestibule

  choked with muddy wellies, old shooting sticks and the golf club

  Pongo saw the burglar off with. They may’ve exiled their only daughter

  to boarding school, yet in the aftertones of their honking and

  braying he’s detected … fugitive elocutionary echoes – they probably

  decant their cornflakes into Tupperware boxes … At any rate, as their

  grandson had grown, the Pettigrew-Whitehouses proved entirely

  lacking in the savoir faire needed to deal either with him or with his

  distressed parents. No – that’d been left to his other grandparents,

  not that Busner had cooperated much with Miriam, the patterns of

  shared-parenting having been for so long in place: the pick-ups and

  drop-offs, the iniquitous entrances and transgressive exits, timed to

  avoid farcical collision – they were easy to apply … unto the third

  and fourth generation. Had he done right by Ben? Busner’s grandson

  was now twenty-seven – he’d picked up a little work at last – online,

  naturally – calculating sporting odds for a bookmaker, but, apart

  from family affairs, his social life remained non-existent … a house

  cat – he shits on his mother’s tea tray. And recently … worryingly Ben

  had begun mouthing – and remouthing – strange, oracular statements:

  The time is coming … The time is coming … When the weak

  will be made strong … When the weak will be made strong … So it has

  been written in the code … So it has been written in the code …

  In Room Five-Twenty, on the evening of his arrival in Manchester,

  Dr Z Bisner, sic, had slumped on the drumskin of his bed – and,

  although his grasp on the finer detail had been shaky, this much he

  did recall with painful clarity: Simon’s hands on Oscar’s throat –

  Simon shouting, You bone cunt! You total fucking zero! If you

  weren’t one of the Doc’s kids, I’d kick the shit out of you and use

  it to paint your fucking poofy khazi! As he’d sat there on the

  bed, Zack’s fingers had gone all fidgety – as nowadays they so often

  do … and photo had succeeded photo on the phone’s screen, each a

  precise vision of … another screen. And he’d thought: There’s a fateful

  symmetry here between these images-of-imaging obsessively

  recaptured – Ben had taken thousands of screen-shots of his own

  gaming – and my own rejection by the flesh-of-my-flesh … For

  Zack the conclusion had been inescapable: they preferred the virtual

  him to the actual one – preferred images and video-clips of him to

  his physical presence … Preferred digits on a bank statement or a

  house-price index to taking any responsibility for his care … Fair

  enough. Possibly Zack’s behaviour had been a little outré – inviting

  Simon and Ann to stay with him while he was flat-sitting for Oscar

  and Vigo, but the lost cat had been nothing to do with them: one

  moment it’d been there – the next gone. Had he put the creature

  out? Or even down? That Oscar and Vigo’s baby-substitute was

  called Schrödinger should’ve made its loss predictable, since you

  didn’t have to be a nominative determinist to believe they’d been

  asking for it … Simon’s hand cinching his windpipe, Oscar had

  screeched, I’m not throwing them out! I’m not throwing them out!

  While his poor old father roared in reply: If they go, I go! againannagain.

  How could he have known Schrödinger was a house cat?

  He’d never heard of such a thing before – and now nobody knew if

  the dumb moggy was dead or alive … Released by Simon, Oscar

  had sat and wept: I told you not to let him out – told you very

  carefully … left a big bloody notice taped to the back door to that

  effect! While Zack shook his time-buffeted head, aghast that the

  flesh-of-his-flesh should privilege fur over blood … There’d been no

  formal arrangement, but Busner had thought everyone … understood

  one another. Now he’d reached the life-stage of renunciation,

  and was divesting himself of all his worldly goods and obligations,

  he considered it well within my rights to pitch up for a few days … as

  and when … as the mood takes me. There were plenty of spare rooms

  at Redington Road – Frankie had one, so did Lottie. There was a

  put-me-up at Camilla and Ben’s, while Oscar and Vigo were away

  most weekends … antiquing in the provinces, which was surely a

  suitable fate for non-breeders … put a few coats of varnish on that –

  no one’ll know it ain’t Chipperfield … There were so very many of

  Zack’s progeny: if he outstayed his welcome at one establishment,

  he could simply pick up his staff and begging bowl and … move

  on to the next. Obviously, given his advanced years and his health

  issues … shat myself – nothing worse, it would’ve been folly for him

  to set out on the noble path during the damp and chill months – but

  the plan had remained: he’d do precisely this once spring came …

  lest you think I never can recapture, the first fine careless rapture. He’d

  had old Lionel’s boy, Dave Wax, make him a suit of yellowish

  tweed. Zack had told the son: The Munis, girdled with the wind,

  wear soiled garments of yellow hue. To which the ageing schneider

  replied, Dunno ‘bout all that, Doctor Busner – but this is a most

  distinctive piece of cloth, I’m sure you’ll agree. He’d hobbled along

  to Smith’s on New Oxford Street and bought a suitable staff – really

  a shooting stick, so he could prop himself up … from time to time.

  Then, on the way back to Oscar’s in Belsize Park, he stopped at

  Heal’s and purchased a rather nice wooden bowl, which looked to

  have been roughly adzed from some tropical tree and felt pleasingly

  abrasive to the touch. He was still pleased when he reached the cash

  register – but then: seventy-nine pounds and ninety-nine pence for

  a bowl! A bloody tribal salad bowl – whatever the fuck that means!

  It’d been, he thought at the time, a perfectly reasonable response –

  although when the ambulance returned him to Redington Road

  he’d had to concede things had … really got rather out of hand.

  It was incidents such as these … mere contretemps which Daniel and

  Pat, Oscar and Vigo, Frankie and Lottie, all said were … forcing

  our hands, exactly the sort of idiom you’d expect them to use, grown-up

  babies that they undoubtledly are – Daniel, tiptoeing now

  into the hushed zone of retirement, still addresses his father with

  a mixture of cravenness and aggression Daaa-aad! that’s achingly

  adolescent. Toenails grow when you’re dead – therefore I must be …

  down there in the cold earth, with them uncurling from the ends of my

  rotting feet … questing up towards the surface … strange growths …

  Get with child a mandrake root … Sitting on the bed the previous

  evening, he’d felt sanguine enough about it all. They didn’t want

  him – fine, he’d gone. As Maurice would’ve said, Nothing is worth

  having that isn’t … freely given — four quid for water! Four-fucking-quid!

  But in the night, once Niraga – or
Nikki, because that’s what

  she’d called herself: Nikki! – had left, Zack’s mood darkened …

  and darkened some more. From behind the counterfeit O’Keeffe

  there’d come cough-cough-cough-coughulations that’d tangled up my

  mind and choked sleep to death –. – Whozzat? Didja say sumfing, old

  feller? The young security guard looms over Busner, his fresh face

  beaming with malicious glee: Nikki? Didja say, Nikki? Was that the

  name of the brass what you ‘ad up ‘ere last night? Your girrrrlfriend,

  is she – your little bit of fluff? And the old man hadn’t the wit to

  contradict him … I’m an orphaned child still — a rat-baby crawling

  up a rusted drainpipe … I’m the scale accumulating in a kettle … the

  mould on a Wonderloaf – all things crusted … and obscene … although

  he knew then – remembers now – the name of the young British

  Asian social worker, who, moonlighting as a prostitute, had come

  to him in Room Five-Twenty, and who would always be … without

  passion: Niraga, he burps – and the security guard rears away, while

  all the push-and-pull of last night’s vaginal exam … corkscrews into

  me. — Pop! Camilla had poured her Gramps a glass of supermarket

  plonk and commiserated. – I’ve only just this minute hung up on

  Dan. He and Pat’ve found you a retirement community nearby –

  Rosslyn Hill, I think. Anyway, unless the two of you can convince

  them this’ll work they’ll do everything within their power to stop

  you going … This much I remember: Camilla setting down the two

  wineglasses in two neat loops of the computer cabling festooning

  Ben’s desk – Camilla, kindly and concerned and capable of great

  attentiveness so long as she isn’t off … capering in the rosy bower of

  her … vast and improbable love. So, she’d continued, you’d better

  pay thorough attention to what Ben’s saying, whether or not you’re

  willing to admit that you’re getting rather … um, forgetful –. I am!

  Zack interrupted. You are? She’d peered at him with her kindly

  eyes. I am, he’d agreed, I am forgetful – it’s true. I’m also, er, highly

  emotionally labile – this I cannot dispute, Milla. But I’ve spent my

  entire career trying to impress on my colleagues, my patients and,

  especially, their relatives quite how damaging putting a label on

  someone can be. It’s one thing to adopt a term such as Alzheimer’s

  – or autism, for that matter – as a heuristic … an interpretative

  device, a way of explaining … things – but when you say, He’s got

  Alzheimer’s. She’s autistic … it’s so definitive – a label – it makes

  people behave in certain rigid and unthinking ways: You’re senile,

  You’re on the spectrum, therefore you’re like this, and you’ve got

  to take these drugs and live there and do that … He had, he now

  concedes, probably grown rather emotionally labile at this point, but

  Camilla, instead of blurting out, Oh, Gramps, you say things like

  this all the time, checked herself … She’s read the patient information

  leaflet so knows better than to upset someone with Alzheimer’s

  by … drawing their attention to their own forgetfulness with a knick-knack

  paddywhack give a … give a … give a what to who precisely?

  — Put these on, you nutter, says the security guard, handing him

  his tweedy trews. And as Busner stands, angling his foot, he

  teeters … totters, and might fall were it not for Pete-the-Podium-Restaurant-Manager,

  who, taking his elbow, dismisses his colleague:

  There’s no call for talk like that, Dave – this man’s still a paying

  guest, you can get back to your other duties now, I’ll manage Doctor

  Busner just fine. Once the door to Room Five-Twenty has shushed

  shut, he resumes: Better do up your flies … You aren’t too steady on

  yer pins, are you, I’m surprised your people let you run around like

  this … And Busner, once he’s succeeded in fastening his trousers,

  waistcoat and jacket, feels sufficiently buttoned up to reply: I’d rather

  have bruises than bedsores, young man – and yes, my people are

  trying to get me put away, you’re right on that score … He sees the

  his staff poking out from behind the counterfeit O’Keeffe, and,

  stooping to retrieve it, adds, If it weren’t for my grandson they’d

  have me in a bloody care home … He struggles back upright and

  flourishes it: He’s an utter whizz at computers, my Ben – he’s

  devised this system for his old Gramps, it’s all here on this mobile

  phone … Busner summons the talisman from his pocket – holds

  it up so Pete-the-Podium-Restaurant-Manager can see … That’s

  him, together with his parents, anyway … Anyway, Gramps, Ben’s

  words return breathily, Anyway, Gramps, it don’t matter ‘bout labels

  an’ stuff – not now. Thing is, s’long as you don’t forget the phone

  you won’t forget anything else – ’cause it’s all in the phone … All

  of it: what you gotta do – when you gotta do it … what you gotta

  do – when you gotta do it … Actually, speaking with the precise

  meaning of semantics, Gramps, it isn’t all in the phone – it’s there,

  it’s here on my computer, it’s spread throughout the entire world

  wide web … spread throughout the entire world wide web … ’cause

  they all sorta interact, right. So, my computer’ll send your phone

  updates … pushes … alerts. The phone’ll vibrate, and all you gotta

  do is touch this button with your thumb and there it’ll all be on the

  screen … and there it’ll all be on the screen … But here’s the really

  cool thing … Ben had petted the mouse, his eyes slippin’, tumblin’,

  fumblin’, sinkin’ down the screen as he thrilled: See here, these’re all

  the cognitive exercises I’ve put together for you. Some’re simple

  sorta tests – general knowledge, crosswords and acrostics, Sudoku-type

  puzzles … crosswords and acrostics, Sudoku-type puzzles … And

  if you look here – here’re more interactive games-type things,

  with these you can improve your hand-eye-coordination … fine

  motor-control … that sorta thing … hand-eye-coordination … fine

  motor-control … that sorta thing … Zack had studiously maintained

  eye contact with Camilla while addressing them both: So, so

  long as I’ve got the phone, it’s like you’re looking after me? Ben

  nodded – rapid little dips of his big head: Yeah-yeah, always

  connected – plugged into and rooted through the great mirror of

  being … Always connected … Always connected … I might be

  wandering, Busner thinks, terribly confused, yet I’ll still be sending

  that craziness back, with hey, ho, the wind and the rain, to the big

  executive brain for which all foolish data is … but a toy. There is,

  he thinks, a certain retributive justice about this: it is, perhaps, a

  fitting punishment for the self-absorbed knave they … shut their

  gates ‘gainst, for the terms of endearment have, he realises, been

  completely reversed … With all his children, at some point in their

  adolescence, lying awake in the master bedroom at Redington Road
r />   beside the wife du jour, he’d experienced this dread awareness: the

  child was out there in the world, its burgeoning sexuality a sort of

  barrier, or … firewall – that’s what they call it, cutting off the intense

  physical sympathy he’d had for them in earlier childhood, when he

  could make-believe his hug would protect them from all humanity’s

  evils. Now this child was exposed to it all – yet still vitally connected

  to him by a tendril, a feeler … a pseudopod, which had

  extended from the ruptured cell of the family to probe about in the

  wider world. A pseudopod he’d no way of controlling any more –

  yet which sent him back confusing perceptions. Data he would

  analyse and find constituted experience, occasionally of pleasure,

  but often of … pain. It had been agony! Yet it was altogether just –

  for what were relationships between parents and children if not

  passionate love affairs experienced in reverse? Liaisons that began

  with the most intense physical intimacy – and ended, decades later,

  with the parties involved sighting one another, at a dull party, across

  a crowded room, and thinking … She looks vaguely familiar. His

  children had gone slippin’, tumblin’, fumblin’, sinkin’ into emotional

  quagmires and pub brawls, regardless of the thick hanks of nerves

  still … plugged straight into my cerebellum! He’d writhed, he’d

  sweated and, ignobly, he’d longed for the day when they’d receive

  just a little of his own … desolate data – for this, too, was an agony,

  this slippin’, tumblin’, fumblin’, pissin’, crotch-dampenin’, stumblin’

  sudden old age. And his mind – what was it now, save a whirlpool

  in which past-present-and-future all revolved, together with a

  mess of shit-and-piss-and-shit-smeared-paper, leaving his body

  squatting here in the moment. – They look like a nice lot, says

  Pete-the-Podium-Restaurant-Manager. Now, if you’ve got all your

  bits, we’ll get you checked out – ‘less you’ve changed your mind,

  and you’d like Mister Marshalsea to get hold of your folks …

  Get hold. Indeed, because getting hold of people and, still more

  pertinently … being held by them was all that mattered. Last night,

  when he’d poked the words escort agency into the search engine

 

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