Phone

by Will Self

  he says nothing, only chukka-chukks the clove on the chopping

  board with his own paring knife. From deep in the recesses of the

  Baldwins’ large hilltop house comes the unmistable yapping of the

  Simpsons, and for an instant he sees himself: adipose, jaundiced,

  naked – wandering through a dooo-doo-doo-do-d’ two-dimensional

  world not unlike this one. There will be children watching – the

  Baldwins have a brace … possibly three. If the Butcher’s ever in real

  danger of blowing his cover, it’s in the presence of … junior spies.

  He’ll be forty this year – an age at which even the most committed

  of bachelors begins to be stripped bare by mortal anxieties, so chucks

  chins, tousles hair, hands out bigger tips – all preparatory to dutiful

  insemination. The Butcher sips the vagina of Sally – his longest-growing

  beard – as any connoisseur might savour the nose of a

  grand cru – but the information he seeks concerns progesterone

  and estrogen levels. He hears Sally’s laughter now – the trying-too-hard

  cluck of the seriously broody. That’s your Sally, isn’t it, Jonathan?

  Vron Baldwin says, with an irritating emphasis on “your”. Yes, the

  Butcher concedes, and, glancing at the kitchen clock – a doubly

  predictable Swiss Railways Mondaine – wonders who the Baldwins’

  other guests will be. A couple of Nick’s colleagues will attend,

  no doubt. It’s been over two years since their great defeat – and it’s

  amusing enough to observe some of them relaxing into opposition

  by becoming moister and more heterodox. It’s the wives who tend to

  be the most absorbent – at well-set tables in Wiltshire and Gloucestershire

  the Butcher has heard the words as a feminist spoken with

  no irony whatsoever. (You’ve also heard colleagues weferred to as

  gay with little or no opprobium attached – but that’s something you

  don’t like to dwell on, or to acknowledge at all.) Can I have a go?

  Sally says, making her entrance behind a boy of about eight …

  Sam, possibly – or Arthur? who’s manipulating the levers of a remote

  controller, so sending a model car racing across the phone-box-red

  Amtico, round the massive, granite-topped kitchen island and out

  the far door. Dear Sally … he sees her as she was at dawn, arranged,

  naked and bamboozled on the tightly tucked five-hundred-thread-count

  dais of his chopping block, her paler and depilated pubic

  triangle a point of maximum vulnerability, her Lanzarote legs bent

  back. What was it Kins had called her? A sporty girl – that’s right: a

  sporty girl. His euphemism for a girl limber enough to be bent any

  which way … without disturbing the Cindy-perfection of her hair.

  Longest-growing beard, Sally is – and consequently ticklish … Two

  steps and she’s on him, her lips nuzzling his ear, her pearlescent

  teeth nipping its lobe, her Prosecco breath whispering, That

  man Fiddes, Jonathan, such a bloody bore – I’ve been forced to play

  with the children! She scampers away and strikes an illustrative

  pose in the doorway: one leg cocked at the knee, a finger to her

  pouting bottom lip. She’s wearing long white ribbed socks, a pleated

  navy skirt, a pale blue linen blouse and a nautical scarf – and, as

  she weighs anchor and sets off in the child’s wake, the Filipina

  marooned on the kitchen island cannot prevent her entirely justifiable

  expression of … contempt. Whatever the wipeable, durable and

  impermeable character of contemporary kitchen worktops, there

  remains a crack in everything … through which … the derision gets

  in. How old precisely is Sally? To say forty if she’s a day would be to

  make of yourself precisely the cliché she’s fast becoming: a sporty

  girl, who, by all that’s right and proper, should long since have had

  a pair of her own sporty girls, with blonde forelocks of their own,

  whom she could trot along to gymkhanas and all the other dressage

  of contemporary upper-middle-class English social existence. Of

  course, it’s precisely, painfully, paradoxically because of this that

  she’s the Butcher’s longest-growing beard: Sally fits in – she’s sporting

  as well as sporty – her county accent precisely counterpointing

  his own colourless tone. Blended we are into the right Farrow and

  Ball shade – fitted we are, bespoke even: and perfectly coordinated

  with the increasingly threadbare British class system. Cheltenham

  Ladies’ College? Absolutely! But not a Registry Girl. Even for a

  funambulist such as the Butcher, this would be too taut a tightrope

  to toe – or strip the Rigby and Peller lingerie off … Oh! Really,

  Jonathan – really! Her response to the subtle scrape of the bedside

  table’s drawer is Pavlovian: a puckering-up of her shy little starfish,

  long before the sharkish finger, slathered with Vaseline, angles in for

  the kill –. – Bloody hell, Jonathan, I see the wife’s got you on cookhouse

  patrol! Right on cue Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme appears in the

  opulent kitchen, and stands twirling the handle of some Starck-new

  corkscrew. Nick Baldwin is a lanky, twisted nervy figure – bald by

  nature as well as name. Wouldn’t you, he asks, be interested in

  doing something a little more interesting? Which is exactly what

  Doctor Opie, the Butcher’s tutor for Sub-Saharan African Politics,

  said to him at the end of their last tutorial before his finals, sitting

  in his opulent study at Saint Antony’s. A little more interesting than

  what? he replies now, as I did then. More interesting than chopping

  bloody garlic! Baldwin spumantes – he’s had a few … he’ll have a

  few more. The Butcher, while careful to control his own alcohol

  intake in operational contexts (Of which this is surely one …),

  Thank you, Squilly, nevertheless appreciates the effect it has on British

  policymakers – without its heady fumes to cloud their judgement

  they’d never do anything at all. Don’t just do something …

  would be their motto … sit there! Honestly, Baldwin spittles on,

  I don’t know why Vron insists on dragooning our guests into

  performing these, ah, menial tasks … Possibly – the Butcher is

  judicious – she thinks it’s a good idea for us to undertake at least

  some of the practical work required to put meat on our tables – and

  clean clothes on our backs for that matter … Every time Gawain

  takes off his shirt, his lover marvels once again at the beauty of

  his rumsteck. This is the moment the Butcher savours the most:

  the piquant taste of Gawain’s skin as the tip of his tongue circles the

  scattering of brown moles between his basses-côtes and his queue.

  Fancifully, one hand firmly encircling Gawain’s penis, the other

  stroking his back, the Butcher imagines them one and the same and

  so cranes to kiss his blushing glans … You’re sounding distinctly

  pink, Jonathan! Baldwin guffaws, and the Butcher answers his host

  levelly: My father always made a point of polishing his own shoes –

  he did it, ah … religiously. On religiously he runs his hand through

  his thick, lustrously blue-black and perfectly
coiffed hair – a subliminal

  command Baldwin responds to by smoothing his own

  smoothness. This purely physical act encodes the secret message

  of … superiority – we’re devious, aren’t we, Squills … (I prefer to

  think of it as good tradecraft, Butch). Explain? (It’s not just her

  accent you prize Sally for, Butch.) Go on. (Every time you sneak

  into White’s, the Beefsteak or the House of Lords tea room …)

  Sensational crumpets … (… you’re dangling beneath her, and the

  cyclopean knob-head standing guard feels the cashmere back of just

  another Fighting Ram.) Cashmere comes from goats, I believe, Squills.

  (Whatever …) Whatever, indeed. – The Butcher looks up at his

  host. He’s been in meetings at which Baldwin has been present –

  just another of the semi-conscious drones the Butcher’s introduced

  to as “a friend” (A friend indeed!), and thereafter referred to – as

  friends usually are – solely by his Christian name … Jonathan,

  perhaps you’ve something to add? There are, of course, those at the

  EssEyeEss, at the EffSeeOh – in fact, throughout AitchEm-Gee

  – who know De’Ath’s pater was … a bit of a pinko, while his

  mother, despite all her striving, remains very much … bottom

  drawer. Then again, it’s those selfsame Westminster Village gossips

  who also know his grandfather was Sir Albert De’Ath – Sirbert to

  his intimates (not that he had any beyond the family), at one time

  Chairman of the Modern Churchmen’s Union, a lay preacher and a

  mandarin of unimpeachable standing. Sirbert had been responsible

  for shell production at the Woolwich Arsenal during the first show,

  then, as Beaverbrook’s permanent undersecretary, oversaw aircraft

  production throughout the second. As a child, the Butcher was

  always a little perplexed by the obvious pride Kins displayed when

  referring to his father’s KayGee – it sat oddly with his professed

  egalitarianism. But, as the Butcher grew, acquiring his own sensitivities,

  he began to understand that even the most pacific English

  vegetarians retain a lust for blue-blood … just as the English upper

  class are always gagging for cockney claret. Rightly so, since without

  regular infusions they’re ever in constant risk of being choked by the

  ingrowing branches of their own … family trees. That his grandfather

  had been a Knight of the Garter – a member of a select

  band, numbering only twenty-four at any one time, and personally

  appointed by the Sovereign – would’ve buoyed the Butcher up as

  well, were it not that every time it reoccurred to him he saw this

  same childish vision: Sirbert, half naked in some golf club changing

  room, yanking up a thick, hand-knitted woollen sock and snapping

  it into place with … a frilly band of elasticated white lace –. He was

  a religious man, wasn’t he, Jonathan? For a moment the Butcher’s

  flummoxed – who can Nick Baldwin be referring to? Moreover,

  why such an intimate tone? As the years pass, and the Butcher’s

  vast data-set grows exponentially, he occasionally has difficulties

  with random access … and so for fractions of a second forgets the

  precise tenor of long-standing relationships, whether professional

  or only semi-so. He’s known Veronica Baldwin (née Prodger) since

  they were at Oxford together – I punted her up the Cherwell a few

  times, true enough (And wore her as a beard to the May Ball in

  ‘eighty). Thank you, Squilly. No wonder her bird-brained husband

  knows about Kins’s slow-hand-clap Christianity. So, to Baldwin the

  Butcher replies: Yes, fairly God-fearing – though he was rather

  better at keeping his shoes immaculate than his … soul. Baldwin

  laughs – a gurgling catarrhal laugh suggestive of … Macmillan

  nurses to come – and spills out, All right for plonk, are you? Which

  the Butcher sops up with a simple, Fine, thanks, before bending

  back to his task – anything’s better than looking at Baldwin’s idea

  of Sunday casuals: a pink shirt from Pink’s, equipped with white

  collar and cuffs and savagely tucked into a pair of viciously ironed

  black Levis, no arbiter elegantiarum, him. The Butcher thinks

  of that cracked actor the PeeEmm. Richard dragged the Butcher

  along to one of his Downing Street briefings … tepid, over-stewed

  cafetière coffee and Duchy-fucking-Originals. Then, because TeeBee

  was in a frightful rush (But really in order to spook the spooks, eh,

  Butch …), he asked them to go with him in the car to Northolt.

  The Butcher recalls TeeBee clambering up into the back of the

  armoured Range Rover and arranging his mannish boy’s mush in

  the best possible light … TeeBee and Richard carried on about

  Kosovo – could they square the circle? Was it significant that

  Khaled Sheik Mohammed was thought to be operating there?

  Should Blix’s appointment at Unmovic be seen as a good … or a

  bad thing? From time to time, one of them would turn to the

  Butcher and ask his opinion – and he punctiliously obliged, while

  TeeBee stared covetously at his two-button French cuffs. Once

  or twice, the Butcher had thought he was about to ask where I’d had

  my shirt made … (Fucking Charvet of course – he’s such a big girl’s

  bloody blouse). Richard, by contrast, was utterly enthralled (And

  enthwalled by how enthwalled TeeBee was by him – I think this

  is the beginning of a beautiful friendship). Khaled and Kosovo …

  The Butcher remembered then – remembers now – Gawain’s gruff

  accounts of his YouEnn deployment almost a decade before: the

  tight joinery of frozen corpses on the back of a lorry, blue tongues

  stuck in bluer grooves … His SeeOh so pissed that one morning

  out jogging he fell headlong into a ditch. The Fighting Rams had

  been penned up in an abandoned paint factory. One night the Three

  Degrees arrived to entertain the troops: Sheila Ferguson shoving

  her spangly bits in all those hungry faces (When will we share

  precious moments, eh?). Onanon went the world leader to his spymaster

  – but the Butcher was more taken by the odd gyrations of

  the PeeEmm’s security detail. The two other Range Rovers kept

  over– and undertaking their own vehicle, round annaraound all the

  way along the constipated Western Avenue. Force protection? More

  like a suppository action, since all the other drivers shat themselves

  struggling to get out of the way. TeeBee talked with his hands –

  hammy gestures: riffling invisible cards, karate-chopping immaterial

  bricks, pointing an adamant finger towards the heavens … he’ll

  be at home there. The Butcher thought of the bubbles in foreign

  stations – air-gapped little cubicles jacked up on bricks, old railway

  sleepers – whatever was to hand. Inside, spooks, diplomats and

  visiting pols would sit shit-stirring in the increasingly smelly atmosphere.

  The Butcher sensed it’s like this for TeeBee even more than

  most prime ministers: he inhabits a bubble-world wreathed in an

  atmosphere poisonous to all but … sycophants. Usually, security

  measures are designed to keep eyes an
d ears out – but for him

  they were required more to keep his febrile self-regard … in. The

  Butcher has been up close and personal with plenty of those who

  wield power … or fantasise they do. In his own tidy, binary mind he

  classifies them simply either as rulers … or as sheep. The sheep are

  indeed a problem (They imagine they may safely graze, don’t they,

  Butch?). Wo Regenten wohl regieren, Squills – although rather forgetting

  it’s they who’re meant to be doing the regieren. But it hadn’t been

  sheepishness that bothered the Butcher as, in the ulterior light of

  the Hanger Lane underpass, he gazed upon TeeBee’s beautifully

  glazed chops, but the sempiternal sheen of … sanctimony. He’d

  seen it from afar – everyone has – but observing Richard, in thrall,

  adjusting his donnish style to fit his idea of what TeeBee might

  want in a spymaster – all hit-this, cut-that, thrust-there – the

  Butcher had been really rather alarmed … Never more so than when

  the PeeEmm, in response to a particularly pressing query … It’s

  plausibly deniable – can we go ahead? … which related to one of the

  Butcher’s own assets, graciously inclined his head (Adjusting his

  bloody halo …) and checked to see how this looked in one of the

  wing-mirrors before answering. The Butcher, seeing TeeBee groping

  blindly forward into the unredeemable future, gripped by the

  delusion that all is perfectly visible … in the searchlight of Providence,

  silently sing-songed, There may be trouble a-head… — Oh, is that

  the time? Nick Baldwin’s returned, and the Butcher thinks: if

  the Tories ever want to get back to Number Ten they’ll have to

  haul their fashion sense kicking and screaming into the new millennium

  … You better get a move-on with that garlic, Jonathan,

  Baldwin says superfluously, Vron wants the lamb in toot-sweet …

  Yes, time is indeed of the essence: when the Firm made its move

  from Century House, Cumming’s clocks went with them. Now,

  when the Butcher goes to see Richard in his bland new sanctum,

  the spymaster’s own rapidly ageing face sags in amongst all these

  silently ticking ones: I’m very glad you could make some time to see

  me, Jonathan, Richard had said earlier that week – and the Butcher

  replied: Timing is my business, Richard … Which was true