Phone

by Will Self

  indiscretions. Nor are we inclined to paint a candidate up with his

  father’s pinkness. However, one sort of carry-on we’ve absolutely no

  tolerance for whatsoever is … the old spook’s eyes watered a false

  lustre … drug-taking. So, if you’ve so much as taken a pull on a

  reefer – let alone anything harder – we need to know right away.

  The Butcher had nearly laughed out loud with relief – given the

  bigoted temper of the times, he’d been expecting homosexuality to

  fall from those prissy old lips. Lips that surely (Surely!) longed to

  kiss the roast beef of old England? Meat, meat and more meat –

  could it be a surprise to anyone that someone called the Butcher is

  an enthusiastic carnivore? So enthusiastic that when he bends to the

  meal in hand, rather than tear at it toothily, chew it up and gulp it

  down, he’ll hold the hot gobbet in his mouth, tongue seeking the

  stippling of papillae between glans and corpus spongiosum. This,

  he’ll think as he licks and sucks, is true patriotism – I’m eating the

  nation’s manhood, and, just as cannibals imagine they can ingest

  their vanquished enemies’ bravery, so I believe these pricks will

  inoculate me against any moral contagion, for mine is a higher

  purpose! But at that premature feast the loyal toast could not be

  made – after ten or fifteen of the guardsman’s vigorous thrusts,

  the meat-counter trainee had been spluttering … choking. He substituted

  willing hand for wanting mouth – but the guardsman

  wasn’t having it, abruptly withdrew, then represented the dish in

  the serving hatch. Ever a quick study, the Butcher understood this

  gesture well enough – but before he’d time to comply there was

  door-rattling and breathy childish tones … Daddy, I gotta go. The

  guardsman had again pulled out abruptly, clinking and clanking

  followed as he buckled up, then the bolt was withdrawn, to be

  succeeded by the chink-ch’-chink of retreating spurs. The Butcher

  thought he’d earned them. (You think love will last forever – but

  you’re wrong.) I’m not, the Butcher says aloud, as he strides across

  the blank intersection between Carteret Street and Broadway. (But

  he’s far away so much of the time.) What of it? We’ll be together

  eventually – it may take years. (And during those years you may

  well be disgraced – someone could get hold of your large data-set,

  the audio-visual take, the emails … the background material.

  You have it all, don’t you?) I have it all, Squilly – every fucking

  cardboard coaster his lager’s dripped on to, every hurried mobile

  phone call he’s made to me from a lay-by. And yes: I’ve recorded his

  gentle snoring as he softly sleeps as well. (You’re a blithering idiot,

  Butch – where is it? Where is all this SeeEx?) You know where it is,

  Squilly – you were with me when I cached it to begin with, you’ve

  been with me when I’ve moved it to safer locations. (Yes … yes

  I’ve been with you, Butch – with you all the time. Frankly, you’d

  be better advised to focus your affections on me, your constant

  companion, than the headless horseman.) Headless? (Oh, c’mon,

  Butch – can’t you even admit it in the privacy of your own head!

  He’s thick, your love object – as thick and as docile as a – ) The

  Butcher, resplendent in dinner jacket and snow-white shirtfront, is a

  frequent guest speaker at the dinner which marks the completion of

  the new EyeBees’ course. Standing, mellowed by candlelight, at the

  head of the long table, in the lime-washed former magazine of the

  Fort which now serves as a dining room, he would recount tales of

  operations he’d either initiated or conducted – and in many cases

  done both. His grasp of the details was fiendish – and his pacing

  and sense of drama highly evolved. The Butcher’s rhetorical skills

  were just as prized as anything he did operationally, while he knew

  that, despite weeks of being introduced to the utterly routine nature

  of their future employ, the new entrants’ heads would still be full of

  derring-do and techno-wizardry. (Now, pay attention, Butch …)

  Quite so. But then was not the time to disabuse them. (You wouldn’t

  want to kill the magic light – leave the chamber empty of – )

  Delighted to’ve made your acquaintance, he’d say, shaking hands

  all round, subtly shooting his cuffs. He never stayed the night at

  the Fort – he wanted to give them the elegant midnight fantasy,

  not the puffy-eyed morning reality. Powering up the EmmThree

  in his two-eighty EssEe cabriolet, the misty sprites rising up from

  the roadway consumed againannagain by its sharkish radiator grille,

  the Butcher would imagine the new officers gossiping about him

  as they filled in their chits, posted them in the honesty box, then

  glugged more and tawnier port: He was one of the team that

  handled Gordievsky, wasn’t he? And mixed up in that Gaddafi

  business – ‘though I don’t think he likes talking about that one …

  I heard he was also involved in Stakeknife … Don’t be ridiculous –

  that’s Thames House’s beat – them and the EffArrYou. The Province

  is outside our remit – anyway, I expect he only uses one of those

  when it’s spelt properly – he is the Butcher after all … Oh, yes –

  he was, is and always will be “the Butcher” to generation upon

  generation of the huddled, clerkish figures, bent against the wind

  and grit, who flock over Vauxhall Bridge each morning … ready

  to undo so many deaths – or come trotting from under the bricky

  mess of the viaduct, wearing their chain-store suits and ready for

  another long day of getting their political masters … off the hook.

  No one at the Firm can remember who dubbed him, but no one has

  ever doubted the nickname’s appositeness … least of all me. Yes …

  he thinks now, looking up at the premises the Firm once occupied

  above the tube station … there are only coincidences – whether

  sentient individuals or programmed projectiles, their apparent

  arrival at the same place, at the same time, depends on where you’re

  standing – and what angle you’re looking from. And if neither

  people nor objects coincide? (It’d be impossible to move the action

  on at all …) Contrary to what the trainees might think, the Butcher

  had been in Belfast in June of ninety-four. He can recall the round-cornered

  windows at the Europa Hotel – many bearing the test-card

  patterns of blast tape. Sitting at a wooden pew in a stained-glass

  stall in the pub opposite, he’d drunk late with Prod plods of various

  sorts – the atmosphere had been rancorous, and the Butcher, sensing

  the deep and vicious streak of homophobia running through his

  hosts, held his (Delicious, mobile, artistic … ) tongue. In the

  morning it’d been fitted to his mouth – complete with an underlay

  of nausea. Why’d he been there at all? Liaison was the bullshit term

  used for a lot of the snooping around he’d done on Colin’s behalf at

  the time – yes, chiefs might come, and chiefs would most certainly

  go, but the Firm c
ouldn’t do without its high-class, family …

  Butcher. He’d gone out to Aldergrove with them, then, at the very

  last second – when the Chinook’s rotors were already whipping the

  drizzle – he’d ducked beneath them, shouting to his colleagues, I’ve

  left something at Facilities – I’ll get the Stranraer ferry and catch up

  with you this evening … Oh mist rolling in from the sea, my desire.

  The slipstream from this very near miss remained whistling eerily

  about him for months – and the Butcher can still feel it now … past

  painted deserts the sunset’s on fire. If he’d’ve asked his father about it,

  what might Kins have said? That his son owed his deliverance to his

  Saviour? The Butcher looks up at the carved stone figure which sits,

  legs parted, on the cornicing halfway up the office block’s façade.

  This petrified Saviour, perhaps – who has a naked slip-of-a-boy

  twisted into his arms. The Butcher regards the Epstein sculpture –

  he’s passed it thousands of times but never stopped to stare. (It’s

  not Jesus, Butch.) No, Squilly, I see that. (The broad, saggy,

  scraggy, sand-stony face …) It’s Kins – I get that. (Kins – and you,

  Butchie – you, hugging his neck even as you thrust me out into the

  world. You’re going to betray me, Butch – you’re going to betray me.)

  He turns away from the building, thinking of all the buccaneering

  types who used to hang out here … the camel-drivers, who’d

  believed their own Lawrentian experiences fomenting tribal unrest,

  were the only qualification anyone needed to be of thecret thervice …

  Whatever’s happened to Squilly’s lisp? I’d swear he used to lisp more

  (Lithp). The ickle bunny hops into the cage – its filmic white scut

  disappears down the long green fairway … hippety-hoppety. I’m

  late … I’m late … Checking his Longines again, the Butcher’s

  isoceles nose is congruent with the rotating triangular sign reading

  NEW SCOTLAND YARD. He considers the child’s view of Westminster

  maintained by the generality of sheeple – the papery clichés

  of … Our Island Story. Just after New Year, Sally squeaking on his

  arm, the Butcher had taken a turn on the Millennium Wheel.

  Mounting one of the softly rocking pods, they’d been slowly

  winched skywards. It’d been a bright winter afternoon – and this,

  together with their odd parabolic ascent, gave him the powerful

  illusion it wasn’t they who were moving, but rather London’s principal

  buildings, which were popping up from their bricky bindings

  into full and cardboard relief: the candy-striped campanile of

  Westminster Cathedral unfolded – Millbank Tower sprang forth.

  Staring out over the Thames’s deceptive bend, the Butcher had seen

  an off-yellow amphibious vehicle chugging through the choppy

  waters … vomit returning to its dog. He knew where it was headed:

  the little notch of beach beside VeeBeeArr, where, under the blind

  eyes of the statues ranged along the south side of Vauxhall Bridge –

  personifications of Science, Fine Arts and … (A testimony to your

  pater, I’d say) … Local Government – the Frog Tours amphibian

  would describe its own odd parabola before croaking up the

  muddy foreshore and on to the concrete ramp. Many are the times

  the Butcher has sat in his office on Level Five, Blue Zone of …

  the Aztec Empire and watched through the obsidian mirror of his

  lead-glass window as the doughty little craft … does its bit: moving

  cheerfully from one element to the other – and on each and every

  occasion he’d resisted the analogy: I’m not a dual-purpose piece

  of kit, up-armoured for military as well as civilian use. Yet, left

  behind on the river’s surly surface, were always these: the twin

  circles described by successive Frog Tours amphibians, slowly interlinking

  to form a foamy … lemniscate. We. Will. Be Together. For.

  An. Eternity. – The Butcher is walking along the cobbled defile of

  Strutton Ground, past shuttered sandwich shops and heel bars,

  aiming for the old cast-iron-and-clapboard pissoir on Horseferry

  Road, where he unzips and unconstricts, aaaah … ! I’ve never had a

  friend, he moans at the splashback. A gay best friend with whom

  I could discuss my … relationship. (You’ve got me, Butch – I’m

  right to hand.) Someone who could give me advice, and a shoulder

  … to cry on. (There’s me: now shake me dry, old chap.) Passing by

  the Regency Café, the Butcher rubs his sore tongue … too many

  fags last night gottagivvitup over his ground-down teeth: not long

  now – not long before it will be describing its own eternity rings:

  beginning at the clitoral glans, swirling around that noble head,

  licking down the veined shaft, then circling back again annagain,

  until Lieutenant-Colonel Gawain Thomas, TwoEyeSee of the Yorkshire

  Hussars, clenches his insides, forcing the very real fingers his

  ghostly lover has thrust deep into his rectum to close … agonisingly

  … ecstatically … on his prostate. Not long now – and not far either:

  hurrying along Page Street, the Butcher pictures his sharp, black

  profile static against the flats’ chequerboard façades, and agonises

  he’ll be … stuck here forever – stale-mated on this spot-spot-spot. And

  when had these pesky ellipses become so ubiquitous? They bedizen

  the windows of VeeBeeArr, and, turning into Marsham Street, he

  sees them spattered across the windows of Shepherd’s Wine Bar …

  parenthesising the plate glass. It doesn’t matter how vigorously he

  strides, he’ll be caught … forever … in this … hiatus … squitting

  on my square – it’s ‘Stan all over again — the tumbled-down mountains

  of tinkling scree in ancient shades of dun and ochre, the

  pair of raptors wheeling high overhead in the crystal sky-dome

  above the Hindu Kush: courting falcons, oblivious to the world

  below, whose widening gyres almost … but never quite touched.

  At Colin’s behest the Butcher had accompanied the team delivering

  the Blowpipe missiles. He’d been in Slammers anyway – tidying up

  a pile of doggie-doos done by the Second Secretary, an incontinent

  idiot who’d been honey-trapped by the Soviets. The Butcher shivers,

  remembering the long drag in: frigid nights bumping over rutted

  tracks, headlights off, the EssEff drives bug-eyed in night-vision

  goggles. The Butcher recalls trying a pair on for the first time,

  and entering an aqueous realm, across which the heat-signatures

  of warm-blooded creatures were anonymously scrawled – recalls

  this, as well as thinking at the time: This is what it must be like for

  the normals – condemned to try to understand the world on the

  basis of such meagre data. Their final day-stop was at a hilltop eyrie

  of a compound … absurdly lyrical – all around the white-capped

  mountains swept up … strophe, and tumbled down … antistrophe.

  The Mujahideen who’d been sent by Hekmatyr to meet the British

  convoy arrived at dawn – and came upon the Butcher squatting

  and squitting over the cliff-edge, his diarrhoea raining down on

&n
bsp; the scrubby bushes far below, where sheep … precipitately grazed.

  Of course, the Brits already knew the missiles were … shit: the

  Butcher had maintained his sang-froid as he wiped himself with

  the foliage to hand, and adjusted his nondescript salwar kameez

  (Sooo drab!) before joining the others, who were preparing the

  demonstration, trudging about on the tinkly scree. Barry from

  Queue-branch had brought a portable video-camera, and once

  the ArrEssEmm commanding the EssEff detachment had fired

  a parachute flare in lieu of a target … he started rolling. One of

  Massoud’s men – who’d come from the Panjshir especially for this –

  fired the missile, and a second began fiddling with its handheld

  controller … sweat-worm – snail-trail, complications of shirt-tail …

  The Butcher looks up above the wine bar, and sees the missile

  incandescing between the steeply pitched roofs of Arse and Crack

  buildings – he looks across the road and spots the Mujahideen with

  the controller in front of the dry cleaner’s on the corner of Page

  Street. The Butcher observes his frantic hands, then follows his

  desperate gaze to where, in the near distance, the Blowpipe’s slim

  white nacelle flicks, twists, corkscrews crazily, before disappearing

  in the direction of Smith Square … where it’ll probably wipe out

  a few of Nick’s researchers. The Butcher pinches his nose hard: the

  insight he’d been given at the Baldwins’ hilltop eyrie, watching

  little Arthur playing his computer game, was nothing new: it’d

  been the same on that remote hillside – Massoud’s men may have

  been disillusioned with the Brits’ kit, but they’d remained confirmed

  in their user illusion: that they were moving things about

  in the real world, when, as the Firm’s team saw for themselves

  when they got back to the station in Slammers and played back the

  wonky veeaitchess tape, the reality was … the world turns around

  them. (And still does: you’ve seen the latest SeeEx out of Kuala

  Lumpur – a summit meeting of the heirs to the pious ancestors.)

  You know I have! the Butcher snaps, pinching his nose still harder.

  (Trying to get rid of me, are you? Fat chance.) Cornering into

  Herrick Street, he extracts a heavy bunch of keys from his trouser

  pocket, and, as he enters the courtyard of the block where the Firm’s