Phone

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