Phone

by Will Self

  In the coldly echoing, diesel-stinking, corporately liverish coach

  station, they’ll be standing with their ironed-brown-paper-bag

  hands folded. Coldly they stand, in the diesel-engine-echoing coach

  station – and they stink. If you were to unfold their brown-paper

  clothes they’d release the exhausted reek of … parsimony: Would

  you like the parson’s nose, Camilla? Said with the only genuine feeling

  they possessed … as if, as if … a greasy blob of chicken arse

  could make for … any of it. There’s obviously no room for them

  in the Mowbray Road flat – even if there had been, they’d never

  sleep under my immoral and Semitic roof. Not that the Pettigrew-Whitehouses

  are especially pious or bigoted – it’s more that they’re

  creatures of habit: for years regular attendees at the local See-of-Ee

  church, Saint Alphege’s, a millennium-old aircraft hangar, they

  have, in recent years, transferred their loyalty to the evangelical potting

  shed, which opened for business at the end of their road. Here

  they stand, Sunday-after-Sunday, listening to the rasping of their

  fellow worshippers, as they speak in sandpapery tongues. They’ll be

  at it now, Camilla thinks as she moves towards the exit, buttoned-up

  tight beside charismatics who wave … one wooden arm aloft.

  Then, tomorrow, they’ll take the bus into Birmingham to catch

  the coach – yet another thrifty feat, that, if unacknowledged by

  her, will summon from her father … Aren’t I clever, Milla, darling?

  This, perhaps the most deranging of Mister Pettigrew-Whitehouse’s

  many foibles: his self-referential endearments – and his hand-me-down

  vocabulary: the darlings, awfullys, beastlys and napkins of his

  genteel upbringing, all of which Camilla carried with her to school

  and … flushed down the lavatory – NEVER the toilet! How exactly

  her father came down in the world, while her mother rose, Camilla

  had never found out. For a while, in her Milla Tant teens, she’d torn

  at their weedy gentility, trying to expose the rusting social seesaw

  they’d sat on – but then it happened inna rape field, and happened

  again inna squat, after which Camilla’s origins seemed a lot

  less important to her than the shit I was in … Twice-yearly for two

  days. They put up at the Kerry Guesthouse on Mapesbury Road,

  run by that Whore of Babylon, Missus Donleavy, who, besides being

  endlessly obliging, hadn’t increased her rates for years. Four days

  per annum – two of which were Sundays. A break in routine for

  the Pettigrew-Whitehouses, who, instead of receiving communion,

  ate dry, tasteless and wafer-thin chips at the Golden Spoon on the

  High Road. Joyless meals they paid for with coins slid out, one by

  one, from the recesses of her father’s horseshoe-shaped leather

  purse. A break in Camilla’s routine as well: twice a year she got to

  sit in silence across from her parents, instead of having to share the

  long one, which, every other Sunday, stretched from pole to pole all

  the way from Solihull to Kilburn. Camilla made these calls sat on

  the crocheted blanket she’d thrown over the squashy old divan she

  and Mark had dragged back from the People’s Dispensary for Sick

  Animals’ furniture repository in Cricklewood. Camilla prodded

  the buttons, and waited until one or other of them stirred. Then

  waited some more. News of their grandson or Mark – which was

  seldom jolly, although occasionally amusing inna bleak kinduva

  way – left them as it found them: cold … It was understood by all

  three – although, in common with so much else, never spoken of –

  that it was Camilla’s responsibility to call them, never the reverse.

  After all, it’d been her who’d run away – dashing along dirty verges,

  scampering through the spaghetti of arterial roads, to a rendezvous

  with a man from the motor trade … Lucas Industries in Shirley, to

  be precise, which ran a restart programme for youngsters who’d

  dropped out of secondary education. Camilla sat in an office block

  beside the EmmFortytwo construction site, itching her bare feet on

  nylon carpet tiles and watching as the whiteboard filled up with

  numerals and brackets I could never factor in … She’d met Mona on

  the restart programme, and gone with her to Warwick University,

  where Camilla lasted only a year. Zack says supportive things such

  as, You’ve got a good mind, Milla, and, I really think you do yourself

  down … Yes! Down! Down-down, deeper and down … to where

  greasy locks toss between denim thighs. No – she’d lasted only a

  year, and she doubted her father-in-law’s estimation, because the

  thick syllables and crusted consonants of Middle English … stuck

  in my craw al stuned at his steven and stansil seten … In a swoghe

  sylence through the sale richei. She hadn’t done anything as dramatic

  as dropping out – only drifted away … behind the whitewashed

  window of a defunct sub-post office in Leamington Spa … rubber

  stamps and rubber bands scattered on the parquet where she writhed

  with an unsuitable boyfriend. The following year saw her in a squat

  in Ipswich, with one still more so – which was why … inna rape

  field – I won’t … ever again … think his name … Last night Mona

  had sat up on the couch and Ark-Ark! asked, Did you get through?

  Then Ben – who can hear with spooky acuity when he wants to –

  looked up from his Game Boy and said, Numbers of confirmed

  autism cases increased significantly in the eighties – long before the

  introduction of the combined measles, mumps and rubella vaccine

  … long before the introduction of the combined measles, mumps and

  rubella vaccine … That’d been it: Ben’s first and last words on the

  subject of himself. His mother took them to be his way of reassuring

  me. Yet how much better it would’ve been if he’d put his arms

  around her – if only for a moment – and said something like, It’s

  okay, Mum, it’s not your fault – ‘sides, I’m happy with the way

  I am. If I weren’t like this I wouldn’t be … me … I wouldn’t be …

  me … But this is, she thinks, all bollocky-bullshitty-wishfully

  thinking on her part. Pacing up and down under the portico of

  the Where-there-bee Tesco’s, staring with mounting anxiety into the

  Perspex dome of the gumball dispenser, then at the multicoloured

  scraps of foil beneath her sandalled feet – the scrabbled shells of

  Cadbury’s Creme Eggs. Because it’s Easter – and a time of rebirth,

  when fluffly little lesions grow new nerves, and start to peck-peck-peck

  at your underparts. Reaching the end of the glassy portico, Camilla

  hears shtooms! and peeeowws! and k’tannngs! On the far side of the

  road, she sees scraped out of the black paint slapped across a shopfront,

  the letters H-O-L-L-Y-W-O-O-D-A-R-C-A-D-E pulsing with

  the lights flashing within. Inside the noises are far louder – and

  there’s also the clackattack of air hockey and the whip-clop!-rumble

  of pool. Gormless Northern lads loiter, just this minute hatched

  from their cracked shell suits – be
cause it’s Easter and a time of

  rebirth … when you spend your child-support on cheap booze. She finds

  her own chicks in the far corner, between Maximum Force and

  Licence to Kill. They’re in profile: cradling their plastic machine-guns,

  and she sees the family resemblance which otherwise eludes

  her: bulbous tips to noses big and small – the froggy lips they share

  with wide-mouthed Zack. Mark’s smoking one of his toothpick-thin

  roll-ups, while his son sucks on an actual tootmhpick – of which he

  has a score about him at any time, available to be twirled in front

  of his startling eyes for yet more stimming. Both are furiously concentrating

  – trigger-fingers twitching out cheeowww! cheeowww!

  cheeowww! until a deep American voice bellows: RELOAD! and

  they pivot neatly to the right and the left, POINTing THE CONTROLLER

  OUTSIDE THE SCREEN TO RELOAD!

  then pivoting neatly back to resume their carnage. They are, Camilla

  realises, utterly unaware of me – I could collapse on to this grubby

  carpet and they’d never notice … She peers closer, trying to make

  out what it is they’re killing so concertedly, and sees cartooned

  body-builders with bandanas wrapped round their fat heads leap

  from helicopters and tumble from tanks – RELOAD! and her

  menfolk carry on dutifully culling the beefcake … Yesterday afternoon

  the boatman landed them all at Seahouses and they’d plodded

  along the beach back to the cottage, Mona and Camilla arm in arm,

  the three males in their party … not really with us at all: Mona’s

  bloke way ahead – Ben far behind, and Mark slopping in and out

  of the wavelets, his wellies crunching a wrack of mermaid’s purses

  and mineral-water bottles, his plainchant borne to them on the

  breeze: And this little piggy’s brain rotted ‘cause it’s tummy was fulluv

  roast beef, whee-whee-whee … or words to that dismal effect. Her

  arm tightening in Camilla’s, Mona had said: He picks up on things,

  doesn’t he – I’ve noticed that. What he just said then – pigs eating

  beef … We bought the cottage the year of the bee-essee crisis …

  mind you, that was beef eating itself. Anyway, when we were walking

  along this beach late that summer, inland there must’ve been,

  ooh, I dunno – twenty, maybe thirty … Loads of big fires – or

  pyres. Locals were pretty cynical – said farmers were loading their

  cattle on to transporters and driving them from farm to farm,

  hoping to pick up the virus. Said there was more to be gained from

  government compensation than at market … Camilla had looked

  at her friend – the only one she’s managed to hang on to from her

  youth: was Mona making some sort of elliptical comparison? Saying

  Camilla, by analogy, was also a farmer, driving her diseased beefcake

  from hospital to therapist, and in the process picking up … Zack’s

  compensation, which was what Mark’s dour and darkly beautiful

  mother, Miriam, insinuated when she deigned to visit the Kilburn

  flat? But no, all this had simply been a preamble, because Mona

  had then blurted out: I just don’t know how you cope with it, Milla.

  I honestly think I’d have a breakdown if I had to deal with a fraction

  of the stuff you do … And Camilla, her eyes on the fantasia

  of Bamburgh Castle, shimmering through the sea fret, had gasped

  romantically: I-I love him – and I hate him … She wonders now,

  as she watches the surreal slaughter, if she could ever explain to

  anyone – even Mark’s father – how, as she bent and shaped her

  affection to match the distortions of his psychosis, so it had become

  two-sided: love and hatred were now inseparable … just like us.

  RELOAD! The plastic muzzles swing away from the screen then

  back in … perfect harmony. They find each other, Camilla thinks,

  in this neon jungle – they’re content so long as they don’t have to be

  themselves at all, only fellow Rambos – RELOAD! But this time,

  as he swings Ben sees his mother and the spell’s broken. He carries on

  slaughtering but his actions are mechanical, as is his speech: Dad’s

  pretty good, but I always beat him … I always beat him … ‘cause he

  doesn’t understand how the machine’s been programmed … how

  the machine’s been programmed … The attackers come from different

  places, but they always end up in the same bit of the screen … in

  the same bit of the screen … All you gotta do is keep moving the gun

  like this as you fire it … like this as you fire it … You don’t have to

  aim it at all … have to aim it at all … But you get just as many …

  just as many … GAME OVER! Camilla says, C’mon, you two,

  we’ve still got a long drive ahead of us. Back in the Vauxhall, with

  Ben inserted into the envelope of his laptop and his ears plugged to

  it, Camilla begins to ask Mark: D’you think that –? then stops,

  because her question would require him to think about now and

  then, and at the moment there’s nothing more aggravating to Mark’s

  condition than … time. He howls at any reference to the past or the

  future, for as far as he’s concerned … they don’t exist. It’s always

  now! he screeches, curling into a ball and rocking on his bony

  fulcrum. It’s always nooooow! The alarm call of the wild is what she

  privately calls it – and it’s a near-daily occurrence, yanking her

  forcibly back from past regrets and future anxieties to this: the

  groan of the car’s engine … the moan of her own troubled guts –

  and the flickety-click of her lost boy … fimbling around in virtual

  space. The motorway ahead darkens – onrushing cars and lorries in

  the other carriageway shrink to small, white dots. The screensaver

  on the first computer Camilla ever used – in an architect’s office

  where she was temping – returns to her now: Interstellar Voyage,

  it was called – but, planted at a mushroom-coloured workstation

  as she bored into outer space, Camilla – then, as now – had been

  boldly going … fucking nowhere. What is it she wants to ask Mark?

  Yes … Can he remember – even roughly – when it was their

  son had got to third base with his beloved computers? No longer

  simply touching them up, but shoving his grubby fingers right inside.

  Friends – well, Mona – say there’s virtually unlimited pornography

  out there … in there? Camilla’s eyes slide to the rear-view mirror,

  which frames Ben’s square face and straight blond fringe. He’s

  ripening, perhaps … but isn’t oily yet, not yet matted-shatted, shit-heel

  – yeah, yeah, inna rape field shit-heel – You lookin’ at me, shit-heel?

  Walking in through my eyes, shit-heel – dragging in with you all the shit

  you picked up in that rotten rape field … Christ, Camilla concedes,

  I feel rotten. But no, it wasn’t some Botty Venus Ben slammed the

  clamshell shut on when she sidled up behind him, but the numerals

  and digits striping its screen. What’re you doing? she asks him, and

  every time his answer is the same curt, Coding, Mum. His mother

  remembers boys putting little plastic pegs into little plastic peg-boards
r />   – Mastermind or Mindmaster they called it. And what about

  the girls? We skipped it and skipped away … They played all sorts of

  code-breaking games back then – spying was sorta sexy: secret

  agent running across the fields with a girl … pulling her down …

  down to the ground … inna rape field … No, no – not sexy at all,

  with his wiry chest-pelt and grease-painted-brows – but no commie

  toff, that one – not numbered third, fourth or fifth man, nor letter-designated

  – Colonels A and B, Informants C and D like Ben’s

  First Word Book, Dee-dee-dee we bang the drum! Dee-dee-dee!

  It’d been more than ten years since the Wall crumbled … a victory

  for the spooks but no retirement plan. Ha-ha, turns out his Dee-BeeFour

  was on the aitchpee – he’s no vee-eyepee status any more,

  so he’s shaken the shit-stirrer – the shit-heel, onna crushed cardboard

  box, flap in hand, FORMER SPY. I HAVE NO HOME AND

  NO SHELTER. PLEASE HELP. Fat chance – evil fucks. Anyway,

  that’s not what Ben’s up to – he’s only fimbling about in there,

  fimbling about with strings of letters, piles of digits … lifting

  them … sifting them … through his … digits. Harmless, really.

  When he was very small boy it was sharks, Star Wars, birds-of-prey,

  all normal – perfectly normal. True, he was a bit obsessional –

  had to know every last thing about his chosen subject. Had to

  take him up to the Charing Cross Road. Foyles. Had to buy him a

  book on ospreys. Specialist book costing thirty-four pounds and

  seventy pence. Had to. To the credit of his customised brain, he got it

  down pat, and pattered along beside her for weeks – weeks! She’d

  had a smock dress at the time. Quite nice. With frogging at the

  breast – he hung on to the hem. Never got the shape back. Seen in

  flight from below the osprey has white or mottled underparts …

  white or mottled underparts … Which was how, aged four, he

  must’ve seen me, staring up from below at my face, mottled with

  angry red patches. He was a junior spy forever birdwatching – So it

  goes on, the acid-yellow rape fields sweeping past the Vauxhall’s

  mottled windows, then the lardy-arse cooling towers of the power

  stations clustered around the Humber … And then, not exactly

  nothing, but an increasingly maddening confusion of signs and