by Will Self
it, maintaining it, losing and regaining it. When he’d clambered
back up into consciousness, the Butcher was laid out on a white
trolley in a white-curtained booth, and Kins had been sitting beside
him, holding his hand, his usually burgundy face … drained –
white. Only much later, when he’d fully recovered, had the Butcher
grasped what must’ve happened: Squilly, who was made of rather
sterner stuff, must’ve woken first. – You gave him what-for, didn’t
you, Squills … (I told him a few, ah, home truths concerning his
extra-marital activities, that’s true enough …) Wo ein guter Hirte
wacht, Squilly (Schafe können sichter weiden, Butch …) At home,
in Saint Albans, in the semi in the very crook of Colindale Avenue,
the Butcher’s younger brothers – the Baker and the Candlestick-maker
– did just that: safely grazing their entire childhoods away to
the electric piano’s bossa nova beat. But the Butcher, while he
may’ve joined in with the orienteering, thwocked tennis balls on
clay courts and sealed valentines with a loving kiss, had already fed
on more piquant fare: the ambrosia of … betrayal. He surveilled
his father with great care, aware of Kins’s tradecraft, but still unsure
of his motivation … who is he, my father? On the rare occasions
the De’Aths went into London to visit the children’s grandfather
in Blackheath, the Butcher saw another side to Kins. With his own
overbearing father, the ruminant plate-glass lecturer nonetheless
gave as good as he got. But old Sir Albert – known familially, although
not affectionately, as Sirbert – brooked no opposition: he beat on his
sheepily synthetic son with a big analytic stick of facts, facts and
still more statistics. They’d argued about everything, Sirbert and
Kins – sitting at either end of the oval mahogany dining table,
beneath ovals of oil paint, out of which swam the oval faces of
the De’Ath Family’s grand-maternal line, who’d been the sort of
mild-mannered minor prelates with modest rural livings whom
Kins revered: The cleresy is what old Trollope called them, he’d
say – before always adding: Y’know, I rather think I’d’ve been
perfectly happy living a hundred years ago – a country vicar, with a
quiet parish. Whereupon Sirbert would snap: You’re deluding
yourself, my boy – what about the Origin of Species, or the Black
Hole of Calcutta for that matter? No, there’s never been an era when
even the most devout are entirely without doubts or other conflicts
of conscience. To the Butcher, in his perspicacious early teens, this
seeming abstraction had been just that, for lying beneath their
superficial badinage he detected the presence of a far more solid
rancour heavier than Missus Haines’s chocolate cake. Understood
this, although he struggled to calculate the peculiar parabola of his
grandfather’s … precipitate rise. Sirbert, who sat in his wing chair,
in his imposing heath-top house, surrounded by all the stuff he’d
acquired during his lifetime – hobbyists’ gadgets and ministerial
gifts, heavy old furniture and silver-framed photographs showing
foreign delegates warily clasping his massive hand. Sirbert, perfectly
bald in speech as well as tonsure … no politesse, whose many degree
certificates – awarded extramurally by the University of London –
papered the walls, had been an autodidact before he was an autocrat:
a beneficiary of the Northcote–Trevelyan principles, whose ever-so-’umble
origins in a Fulham slum had been left far behind by
nineteen sixteen, when he found himself in charge of the Woolwich
Arsenal’s shell production, and, if you added collateral damage and
friendly-fire incidents into the account … the true victor on the first
day of the Somme. By the time the second war screamed into view on
swept-back wings, Sirbert had become Beaverbrook’s permanent
undersecretary and responsible for the island-fortress’s production
of … finest fighter-aircraft. In the fifties, up until his retirement,
the Butcher’s grandfather headed up the Electricity Board – head
being … the operative word. As a child he’d pictured the humming
and crackling high-tension cables of the National Grid radiating
from Sirbert’s condenser, the shiny dome upon which the old man
often arranged several pairs of spectacles with different lenses,
the necessary corrective – or, so he assured the Butcher, for the
strabismus … we both share. Yes, the Butcher thinks as he follows
the dosser on into the Mancunian night, Sirbert and I are the
same: deprived of binocular vision, we’re unable to perceive depth
intuitively, and so are condemned to … gather as much data as we
can. On the plus side, both grandfather and grandson had forever
this beautiful aquiline nose before them – and if you can always
see your nose, there’s very little possibility of your being led by it.
— There are grafitti tags sprayed across buckled garage doors
and splintering benches – they turn a corner and start down a
road between two long façades of scabrous chipboard. Every third
or fourth boarded-up house has been charred by scallies equipped
with low octane … On the corner there’s a carbonised Methodist
chapel … in my father’s house there’s no insurance policy. Still the
dosser limps on – still the Butcher prowls behind, pausing now and
then to sniff the night air judiciously: the hoppy reek from a nearby
brewery overlays poverty’s rancid fermentation, which bubbles up
from the bottom of the melting pot. Crossing an empty esplanade edged
by a shitty-little shopping parade – bookie book-ended by bakery
and hole-in-the wall bar – there’re eyes on from an aerial walkway,
others from a parked Transit – but it’s only idle dicking …
Manchester rules – not Moscow’s. He walks with one hand in his
jacket pocket, fondling the mobile phone, turning it over and over,
his fingers seeking out the ebony keys and playing soundless
serenades on them … but who should I be serenading? At the office,
where the Butcher’s flash apparel is often noted nice tie, Jonathan –
silk, is it? his cover story is a bestseller that entirely suspends
his colleagues’ disbelief: Young man, you’re too girlie-girlie … The
Butcher is the EyeBee’s most celebrated lothario, and the tales of his
chasing are endlessly retold. How the Butcher managed to score
not once but twice on the new entrants’ course at Fort Monckton:
both a fellow officer – and a civilian actually during a training
exercise. He picked her up in a pub in Fareham, accompanied her
back to her flat, bonked her – and relieved her of her passport
details, which had been his real objective. Legend also has it that,
such was the Butcher’s sexual artistry the girl didn’t even cavil when
he rose pre-emptorily from her futon to spend a full half-hour in
her tiny bathroom showering, shaving and generally grooming,
so when he arrived at the arrvee to be picked up by the minibus
right on time, there w
asn’t a hair out of place on his gorgeous brow.
Legend has it right – and, although he was mildly censured by the
head of the controllerate along these lines – The whole point of
the bloody exercise is to extract information without leaving any
evidence behind! – the Butcher’s insouciant reply – Sir, I’m not a
rank amateur, I used a condom – has also become legendary … One
in Hanover, One down a vere, One she’s a lawyer, One she’s a doctor …
Melissa is indeed a doctor, isn’t she, Squilly? (She is, Butch – a
highly competent general practitioner, I believe.) When the Butcher
met her she was the embassy’s doctor in Geneva – but he didn’t
start fucking her until they were both back in London. He enjoys
booking her last appointment of the day under an assumed name.
She’d be expecting a Mister Hemmings – who was sorely troubled
by his haemorrhoids – but would receive instead … a delivery from
the Butcher, who’d peel away her filmy wrapping before … chopping
her up into choice cuts. The Butcher considers Melissa to be one of
his least irritating beards, and so hardly worth the bother of shaving
off … But although, in office parlance, she isn’t remotely … conscious,
her EffSeeOh experience means she smells something just
a bit off about the Butcher. It is, he thinks, the most tender and
trusting of movements, a gesture performed with legs and buttocks:
the beards rising up so he could smoothly remove their knickers.
With men it’s different – you have to yank their keks offa them …
Melissa’s head dangling off the examination couch, the Butcher
pauses, admiring the smoothness of her professionally depilated
thighs. It isn’t that he needs to fantasise in order to sustain his
erection … it just adds a little seasoning to see her soft and lightly
furred cleft as … an adorable tush. Gripping the vinyl to either
side, the Butcher cranes over and applies tiny tongue-dabs with
consummate artistry. Melissa moans, arches her back – thrusts
against him as he simultaneously eases thumb into vagina and index
finger into anus, then … all hell breaks loose, which is as he intends.
The Butcher takes his time basking in the ruddy conflagration
of her climax – looking at patient information posters pinned to
the consultation room’s walls, seeking out crude diagrams of the
male form and embellishing these with all Tom of Finland’s skill.
Honestly, Squills, he’ll remark, as they step down from the portico
and proceed along the north side of Cadogan Square towards Sloane
Avenue, I do believe I could be aroused by a stick-man – if, that
is, he had a big stick-cock … It’s closing time in the beer gardens of the
West … and an ancient couple exit the hole-in-the-wall bar,
the man leading a Scotty, its front half sheathed in Celtic shirt,
while the woman the mummy of the mummy who cursed the fucking
mummy, says, Gorra nice bit of gammon fer ‘is tea … a scrap of
dialogue the Butcher leaves floating in the dirty swill, beneath
the bench, on the cracked hardstanding … at the world’s end.
As he mounts the first of the short flight of steps leading up to
MEN LOCK COURT, he has a vision of a different dish altogether:
his father’s brawny face, on one particularly alcoholic afternoon …
I should’ve sat in my room, not encountered him on his tenth stagger
back from the car … where he kept a half-bottle of Vladivar. Kins,
kneeling in the hallway, his pullover unravelling, a fag fallen from
his insensible lips burning the Axminster runner. He’d grabbed his
twelve-year-old son’s shaky thighs … strictly speaking that cut is the
loin, and sobbed and sobbed, and sobbed some more. But he never
talked – he didn’t break, because – as the Butcher is now prepared to
acknowledge, he was already broken. So’s the lift – its doors attacked
with the same tool used on the front ones, a crowbar or possibly a
jack-hammer, which punched through the metal sheeting so it could
then be kicked in and yanked out. Cables severed, the lift car’s
wedged at a queer angle in the shaft – its tilted floor supports a
large fresh sweet-smelling human turd, so neatly coiled the Butcher
imagines its creator squatting, his hips gyrating … an artist will be
judged by the resonance of his solitude as he iced an invisible cake …
or the quality of his despair. There’s no electricity in the block: this
is a realm of fire and water – the ruptured tanks on the roof are
still disgorging so that a rill runs down the emergency stairs the
Butcher’s Virgil leads him up, and, at each landing, he sees through
shattered glass … another circle of hell. If this were the Texan badlands
– or some north-western, evergreen waste – agents wearing
crisp, navy-blue windcheaters would be leaping limberly for cover.
But this is Hulme, and there’s only the Butcher, who isn’t even
equipped. Anyway, s’pose he were – he doubts he’d have the sheer
balls – as his young soldiering friends might put it – to stop what
he sees going on as they make their way through the flickering
obscurity of the fifth floor: mutant bikers sporting blood-soaked
colours, who’ve got hold of some … poor spade and are roasting his
feet over a fire of chopped-up fire doors … l’amour est un oiseau
rebelle. His cries follow them as they pass more of these lurid
vignettes: a girl lying naked and bleeding – a second being … sorely
used – children huffing glue – others lying unconscious. It is, the
Butcher thinks, a sort of depravity calendar – and at the end of the
corridor … it’s Christmas: a heavily barricaded door in which a
crude serving hatch has been hacked, in front of this a perfectly
orderly queue … whatever else we may be, we’re still British! which
they join, the dosser whispering in the Butcher’s ear, Gear’s in tens,
twennies, quarter-gees – rocks’re twenny … They shuffle slowly
forward, eavesdropping on the he-nicked, she-whored of ordinary
decent criminals. The Butcher takes his turn at the hatch, whispers
his order and passes through four twenties, he receives four
cling-filmed black pearls in return. Next we repair to the smoking room
until it’s time to rejoin the ladies … They climb up to a flat at the very
apex of the derelict block, where crack- and smack-heads recline on
slashed sectional sofas vomiting foam … looking out through the
mangled windows at the speedily receding city’s redshift. The ping!
of the spark-wheel from a lighter lit so long it’s lit itself alerts
the Butcher to the matter of timing, and he checks his Omega
Seamaster. (Time to go, says Squilly, if, that is, you’re wasted
enough …) He is: five authoritative hits on a crack pipe fashioned
from a thirty-three see-el mineral water bottle have transported
the Butcher to … Avalon: a sanctuary lying behind seven veils
of subterfuge, where, undistracted by his clamorous informants –
Agents Sight, Sound, Touch, Taste and Temporality – he can get
on with analysing
the data. (Where d’you think they’ll’ve got to,
Butch?) And the Butcher answers, They’ll be downing their pints
preparatory to leaving the pub. (So we’ll catch up with them at
the New Conti, shall we?) Indeed we shall, Squilly – to which end:
Any fucker in ‘ere got any downers? I’ll pay a fiver for Rohypnols,
a quid for jellies … The crack- and smack-heads stir, scratch and
whine – one rolls over on to all-fours and crawls towards the
Butcher. She’s a young half-caste girl, her Deputy Dawg muzzle
defined by a dark suffering line. Annamit, annamere, gissitere …
she mutters, tipping two blue-and-white capsules from a matchbox
into his hand. — Looking up from the front steps of MEDLOCK
COURT, the Butcher sees the dosser’s pinhead pricking out of a
window on an upper floor: Oi! Oi, mate! floats down into the abyss –
and the abyss, who’s already divvied up one of the black pearls by
way of commission, shouts back, Fuck off! Come after me, an’ I’ll
carve my fucking name on your spotty-fucking forehead! After that
the Butcher’s striding across some waste ground, with Gustav Doré
griffons scrambling behind him – lifting off into the orangey
darkness, their skins stinking … warty … their wings shit-smeared,
their clawed feet wrapped-around with lengths of chain, the links
wreathed in hanks of greasy hair … Squilly’s turning cartwheels
inside the Butcher’s head, and it’s this gyroscopic motion which …
powers me on. He sees a burnt-out Ford Fiesta with a dead crow
spread-eagled on its buckled bonnet – he feels inside the great
lens of his crack high, which magnifies … every thought and
sensation: a fragment of dry-roasted peanut, lodged between molars
at the Britannia, breaks free and becomes … a boulder, rollin’
and tumblin’ around his salty mouth. Poised between fight and
flight, the Butcher has an infinity in which to discriminate between
the sound of a car backfiring as it screeches round the corner of
Spruce Street and Serbian sniper fire … Plodding on past the Kingdom
Hall, he remembers this Armageddon: Searchlights fingering
shattered brickwork – the miserable whimpering of a dying human
animal – a pool of blood and guts in another dark and smelly hallway
