Phone

by Will Self

  thwack! as Kins unwinds and drives the ball right at the screen.

  Then a brief yet disconcerting hiatus, before the ball-playing-the-ball

  appears, hippety-hopping along the perfect fairway, towards

  the perfect pin. Y’know, your grandfather wouldn’t so much as talk

  to me or your Uncle Mike until we could handle a golf club properly,

  is the sort of thing Kins probably said – given he said similar

  things thousands of times throughout the De’Ath boys’ childhoods:

  a maxim, intended to what? Convince them of the contrasting

  warmth of his own hands-on parenting? There were homiletic tales

  as well: any request from the Baker or the Candlestick-maker for

  this or that item of crafty kit would be answered by Kins recounting

  for the umpteenth time how he and Uncle Mike had amused

  themselves for entire long vacs with bat, ball and bails: out on

  Blackheath, in the everlasting interwar gloaming – one boy standing

  in at the crease for eleven men in succession, while the other ran

  towards him, arms windmilling. Or else it’d be how he and Uncle

  Mike would be given a shilling by Sirbert to go to the flicks – A

  shilling, mind, twelve whole pennies. With which the two fanatics

  could gorge themselves on half a day’s entertainment: the Perils of

  Pauline, a magic turn, a refulgent organ rising up from the bowels

  of the Roxy tootling – followed by not one but two features. The

  boys wouldn’t return to the Paragon until tea time – which they

  hadn’t really the appetite for, having had enough change from their

  shilling to get stuffed with sugar buns from the Aerated Bread

  Company … Christ! He was full of shit. So full, he’d had to type it

  all out of him, laboriously on an Imperial Good Companion. Copies

  of the De’Ath Watch, the homemade magazine these two thrifty

  boys published in their reclusion, were still extant during the

  Butcher’s childhood, neatly deposited in a tea chest in the old

  nursery, along with their lead soldiers, their spinning tops and skipping

  ropes. During interminable Sunday lunches, while Kins and

  Sirbert were downstairs in the dim dining room, sitting opposite

  one another at the heavy mahogany table, masticating their way

  doggedly through one of Missus Haines’s parched and stringy

  roasts, the Butcher would be upstairs, flicking through smudged old

  pages. The De’Ath Watch mostly consisted of his father and uncle’s

  test match scores, and Kins’s reviews of such gems as Topaze, with

  John Barrymore and Reginald Mason, in which the part of Coco –

  a loose and fradulent woman – was played by Myrna Loy, an actress

  for whom Kins, aged fifteen, reserved his warmest approbation:

  “sporty”. It’d been the great weight and solidity of this life that

  had borne down on the teenage Butcher … Oh, won’t you roll away

  the stone! so the Redeemer can emerge, clad in grey flannel Oxford

  bags, a thick hand-knitted pullover, a thicker hand-knitted tie, a

  dense and hairy tweed jacket, and shod in brogues carved from

  a single, solid block of toughened cow-skin. For hour upon hour,

  father and son mortified themselves with the stodge dished up by

  Sirbert’s cook, their basal behinds and solid flanks cleaving to the

  worn leather seats of their hefty chairs … I masticate every mouthful

  forty times before swallowing, the Butcher’s grandfather was wont to

  say. The Butcher couldn’t’ve said he knew him well – but, unlike his

  brothers, he wasn’t in the least intimidated by the old mandarin,

  with his ivory dome, upon which – in his later years – there’d often

  be poised several different pairs of spectacles. C’mere, little Johnny,

  the old man would say, beckoning him towards the velvet-lined teak

  box which lay open on his tartan-swaddled knees. The Butcher

  goggled at the rows of gleaming lenses, each upright in its padded

  groove. Sirbert would take one out, clip it in a frame and have

  the boy peer through while he explained about dioptres and astigmatisms.

  Sirbert also had a stereoscope – not a modern toy one, in

  the plastic confines of which you could see Tracy Island, or imagine

  you were on a trip to Marineville, but a serious bit of old Edwardian

  kit made of wood and brass: C’mon, put your physog’ here … Now,

  shut your right eye, and, if I adjust these knobs, what can you see?

  The Butcher saw a Beatrix Potter rabbit sporting a green muffler –

  but when he looked with his left eye, the rabbit had mysteriously

  hippety-hoppeted inside a wire cage. Y’see, boy, Sirbert explained,

  his tone, as ever, even, his accent, as ever, colourless: our shared

  affliction means we lack the attributes of binocular vision – most

  notably stereopsis, whereby the angle of inclination between the

  two eyes allows for accurate depth-perception. You might say, little

  Johnny, that you and I live in a flat and two-dimensional world …

  Yes, a flat world in which information acquired by one eye was then

  vetted by the other. Sirbert liked showing off his lightning-quick

  calculating skills for his grandson by factoring the United Kingdom

  population by the latest farming statistics in order to supply individual

  dietary data … in seconds. The old savant saw the makings

  of a superior mnemonist in little Johnny, noting the boy’s ability to

  achieve a comprehensive visual take at a glance. Sirbert had hypothesised:

  It may well be our ocular peculiarities that make us capable of

  such retentive feats … He believed he’d found a way to compensate

  for the affliction by wearing six pairs of differently lensed spectacles

  at once, so when Maeve told him little Johnny was going to have

  an operation at Great Ormond Street to correct his lazy eye, her

  father-in-law had a rare apoplexy: For God’s sake, woman! This

  boy of yours is a prodigy – do you want to take it away from

  him? Of course she did. On awaking from the anaesthetic, the world

  had been a blur, out of which swam this disturbing vision: Sirbert,

  lying massive and naked, his turtle head propped up against the

  mahogany headboard of his high, hard bed, while with both hands

  he masticated forty times … The Butcher’s prodigious memory was

  unaffected by the operation – but this was something he kept to

  himself, along with the rest of the skills he was acquiring at around

  this time … in Doctor No’s reactor room. The tube rolls downhill

  towards Belsize Park – the carriage is full of American tourists, who

  look – judging by their short pants and transparent-orange sun

  visors – to’ve been for a walk on the Heath. The Butcher, slumped

  on worn moquette, looks past the careworn face of the woman

  opposite, to where his own curves across the window: a fleshy

  blodge that, as he squints, elongates, darkening, until it approximates

  to Kins’s scraggy saggy unshaven red face. His father had been,

  the Butcher now understands, utterly intimidated by the old man –

  and his compulsive, hand-me-down anecdotage was the evidence

  of this, as was his hard work maintaining the cult of Sirbert’s personality.

  Driv
ing the Rover back up Green Lanes past the grotty

  shopping parades of Wood Green, Kins would substitute a younger,

  slimmer and more dashing Sirbert for the frigid patriarch they’d

  left behind in Blackheath. Young Sirbert had been a Fulham

  cockney on the make, his big hands firmly wrapped round the

  greasy pole of … his exploder. D’you remember, Kins would say, the

  story about Sirbert royally besting two higher-ups at his Ministry

  on the links? Ye-es, Dad, we know! The Butcher, the Baker and the

  Candlestick-maker would chorus from the back seat – although

  they also knew it was impossible to switch off this Home Service,

  with its multiple repeats: He didn’t have a full set of his own

  clubs, only –. A mashie niblick and an exploder! the boys chorused,

  while, not in the least put off, their father would go on anon …

  Above the tourist’s head are the laughing eyes of a Sally-alike being

  sensitively dealt with by the British Pregnancy Advisory Service.

  A voice from the crypt intones: This is a southbound train via

  Charing Cross terminating at Kennington … then continues …

  Sirbert strode to the first tee, armed only with his two humble

  clubs – the bigwigs waddled along behind, and behind them came

  their caddies, bent double under the weight of opulent bags. As

  Kins would have it, Sirbert had taken fifteen strokes off the complacent

  permanent secretaries – just as he’d taken thirty off the

  Welsh Wizard and his entire war cabinet, before going on to win

  the war by advancing single-handedly into the Huns’ lines, hurling

  his mashie niblick and his exploder before him … please do not

  leave packages unattended. The Butcher and his brothers had heard

  many variations of this tale, but he knew he was the only one who

  grasped its theme. Kins had never made any secret of the fact

  he’d been a conscientious objector – how could he, when there was

  always someMaeveone there to remind him? Hers was a leftover

  revenge – a congealed and fatty beef she had with him: Your father

  in the war? Let him off scot-free, didn’t they – I expect your grandfather

  pulled some strings … Anyway, your father heard about this

  commune-thingy in Lincolnshire, so he went up there to till the

  land. Maeve De’Ath, a cheerful soul, would beam with disloyalty as

  she undermined her husband: Turned out Kins wasn’t quite as good

  with a hoe as he was with a golf club, so after a few weeks he just

  leant it against a barn and buggered off back to London. While all

  his pals – his brother, too – were saving the world from Hitler, your

  father mooched about the West End poncing drinks and living off

  an allowance … She’d say these terrible things not in his absence

  but while Kins was mooching about the house – or actually in the

  kitchen, standing beside the fulminating Potterton, a teaspoon

  in hand, an uneasy smile seaming his sad scraggy saggy unshaven

  red face. And on the day they visited the driving range in Sunbury,

  that seam had grown wider … deeper, becoming a canyon into

  which … I fell. They’d begun sniping as Kins parked the Rover, got

  out his golf bag, and the two of them entered the low cinder-block

  structure, with its pancake-coloured and pancake-thin carpeting.

  (What on earth possessed you?) I couldn’t go on, Squilly – I couldn’t

  go on … The Butcher had already tried to broach the issue with his

  mother by alluding to Freddie Mercury … or Frederick the Great.

  But that morning he’d finally been explicit. Sat at the kitchen table,

  his weekly reading material propped against the willow-patterned

  milk jug, he’d told his own drab little tale: I’ve been going back to

  Mister Deane’s house after revision tutorials, Mum. He gives me

  almond slices and tawny port and then he … he does things to me.

  Maeve, who’d been washing up, said nothing – but the Butcher saw

  her fat back stiffen. It’d been sheer folly – yet he’d pressed on, after

  all (An ickle boy always wants hith mummy to understand): He

  says he wants to do other things to me, but I don’t want to, Mum

  … I mean, I know you know I’m gay, Mum, but you never say anything

  about it … is it that you … don’t … mind? The thermostat

  clicked, the Potterton puttered to a halt, the temperature dropped

  by five degrees – all Saint Albans had been … eclipsed. Maeve

  De’Ath had turned from the sink, her hands dripping with bloody

  suds: Have you finished? she’d said – followed by words to this

  effect: So long as you never speak of this matter again, nor shall I.

  So long as you make a pretence of being normal, I shan’t enquire

  into how far you’ve deviated. But if you persist with this sickening

  effeminacy, or ever speak to me directly of such perversions again,

  you’ll be dead to me – you hear me: dead. The Butcher had sat

  there at the kitchen table, his head seemingly thrust into Sirbert’s

  stereoscope, where a pink-nosed bunny hopped inside a cage forever.

  That afternoon Kins had locked it. To his father, who’d been preoccupied

  by balancing his Penfold Number One on the little plastic

  pyramid there was in lieu of a tee, the Butcher had tried being more

  circumspect: You must’ve noticed, Dad, that I get Gay News every

  Saturday … Kins had winched his big torso back upright, waggled

  his driver, looked towards the faraway nearby of the screen, upon

  which a sylvan scene had been projected: an avenue of lush trees

  with a strip of emerald fairway running between them all the way

  to the flag flickering on the two-tone green. The Butcher wondered

  then – and wonders now, as the tube doors open at Camden Town –

  how exactly the equipment had worked. The blasé attendant had

  explained it in general terms: when the ball hit the screen, sensors

  recorded velocity and trajectory, then transferred this information

  to its filmic representation – the white scut which went bob-bobbobbing

  along … There’d been a grunt, a swish, a crack! and, as

  Kins’s championship ball metamorphosed into an image-of-itself,

  the Butcher had experienced all-consuming vertigo: the pancake-thin

  carpet split asunder, while between his scruffy trainers the

  great yawning abyss of Kins’s non-acceptance opened up. Au fond,

  the Butcher has always cordially detested his mother (We’d never

  have guessed) – but Kins? At sweet sixteen the Butcher still clung

  to this sickly illusion: his wayward father would understand my

  own waywardness … Yet Kins had said nothing, only gone on

  whacking balls into the green closet while his son looked on. Later

  the two of them occupied a trestle table outside a riverside pub.

  Kins – who’d been liberal in this regard at least – bought them

  both pints, and had doubtless wiped the froth from his wet-red lips

  with the back of his hand … ‘cause he always did, before finally

  speaking: Have you read Orwell’s essay Such, Such Were the Joys?

  Or Graves’s Goodbye to All That for that matter? Thing is … I was

  at prep and public school during the same era, but I never witnessed

/>   any such … behaviours. The boys I was at Lancing with were a

  fairly normal lot – mostly civil servants’ and clergymen’s sons.

  Some were really rather pious – not least me. D’you know, Johnny,

  I think on the whole it’s very much exaggerated – the sex relation.

  It’s the temper of the times – Messalina would be right at home.

  Nowadays, everyone wants to make a big deal out of their sex relation

  – brute it about. But you’ve only to consider Cousin Minnie

  – or Cousin Elfreda for that matter. You can’t tell me old spinsters

  like these were driven by some sort of repressed sex-drive. I don’t

  believe either of them’s ever given the matter any thought at all …

  No, no thought: the Butcher’s head separates into two whitish

  blodges, connected by a smear of sentience: Squilly and me. He

  looks to the right and sees the next carriage, rotating clockwise

  on its coupling. He looks to the left and sees the carriage behind,

  rotating anti-clockwise on its coupling, as, boring beneath London,

  the train describes … this eternal figure-of-eight. A quarter-century

  ago, at the futuristic golf range on the outskirts of Staines, beneath

  the screaming flight path: the clocks all stopped, the phone line was

  cut, and the mutt choked to death in the corner … on a juicy bone.

  As he’d followed his father back across the car park, the Butcher

  looked up to the sky and saw inscribed there by the disintegrating

  contrails of jets lifting off from Heathrow love is dead. The three

  of them had never spoken of any of this again – not even years

  later, when accident rather than design brought them together on

  a Sunday afternoon, a fine cast of British character actors, to watch a

  similar ensemble at the Rex in Berkhamsted. Ra-ra skirts and horsy

  accents cantering through a succession of country-house hotels,

  breaking and bonding. Then at the funereal end, a Scots actor

  with thick eyebrows had intoned, My noon, my midnight, my talk,

  my song … and at this moment the Butcher supposes Kins must

  have glanced along the row and seen his son’s cheeks, wet with

  sentiment. When they were standing back in the sunlight, beneath

  the cinema’s decaying Nouveau façade, Peter De’Ath had turned

  to his wife and said, quite loudly, I’ve no idea why anyone would