Phone

by Will Self

  there. He saw her mashed on a car bonnet, or her eyes exploded

  into myxomatosis mush – and all … all … because her father was a

  lying, cheating, perverted … sham – a lady who loves Milk Tray … a

  chocolate soldier who’s … hollow … to … the … core. Did he still

  love Jonathan – had he ever? They’d spent the vast majority of their

  relationship … elsewhere, their love … if that’s what it is, was mostly

  chaff – electronic interference. It occurred to Gawain – once …

  twice … a thousand times a month – that in deceiving everyone

  around them … we’re only fooling ourselves. Yes, they were fool’s

  errands, their liaisons – a way for them to experience same-sex

  relations without any fear of exposure: their romantic motto wasn’t

  Amor vincit omnia but … mutually assured destruction. All it would

  need was one instance of cack-handed tradecraft and … that’ll be it:

  he’d come home from a hard day on the phone to find the stunted

  apple tree in the front yard bowed down still more by its crop of

  unseasonable fruit – while Fiona would be standing in their bedroom

  window, chucking out more of his clothes while screaming: He’s a

  fucking poof! My husband’s a fucking poof! And all these years he’s

  been screwing a spook! So, every scrap of paper shredded – every

  call record, text message and email deleted. To begin with it’d only

  heightened the excitement of their affair – evenings, in front of

  some sedative teevee, Gawain would suddenly clutch at his pocket,

  terrified he’d forgotten, and that the back-lit lettering I-LOVE-YOU

  was shining through its material. So he said it over and over

  again throughout the years: I hate the idea – he stroked his lover’s

  saturnine cheek and bestowed several light kisses on it – that if anything

  were to happen nothing of us would remain. It’d be as if …

  as if … none of it’d ever happened … Jonathan rolled sideways on

  to his hip, and, in the sickening radiance of the low-energy bulb

  affixed to the emmdee-eff headboard of some executive bed or other,

  Gawain saw the smooth pale skin slip-slide over his lover’s ribs …

  so very thin – yet so very strong: Oh, I shouldn’t bother about that,

  Teddy Bear – he’d’ve groped for Marlboro and lighter … ‘cause he

  always does – it might be fatal for common-or-garden

  muck-spreaders, but that’s not our style. ‘Sides, I’m a professional, which is

  why I’ve kept everything –. – Everything? Listening to his far-flung

  colleagues … whistling down the wind, he recalls taking his lover’s

  neat chin in his fingers, pressing his thumb into its … dear dimple

  – over!, so summoning this troubling response: Yep, that’s right –

  everything: every phone call and letter, text message and email,

  going all the way back to that first note I sent you – you remember,

  addressed to you in your capacity as Regimental Liaison? Gawain

  remembered it perfectly well then – and can picture it clearly now:

  the manila marketing envelope, its frosted window on a …. chillily

  matter-of-fact morning, then his words – his hot, hot carnal words

  tumbling from the waxen folds: Touching … holding … kissing …

  Such joy! Never experienced before – you don’t seem to know the poem,

  but you are my perfect knight, Gawain dearest – I believe utterly in

  you – your chivalry, your chastity … You’ll stay here, locked up in the

  citadel of my heart … I’ll split myself in two: half of me will go hunting

  for meat for our table, but half of me will stay here in the castle with

  you – stay with you and … in the fly-blown Portakabin a ghostly

  hand lightly brushes the hairs on the inside of Gawain’s thigh,

  glides upwards … tempt you – constantly, insistently … tempt you to

  betray me … – You’ve kept that? Gawain’s had been the indignation

  of the … patronised. How could you keep that note when I bloody

  well destroyed it! – Oh, have you not heard of copies, my only

  dearest one? Sarcasm always leavened Jonathan’s usual flat tones:

  D’you not know ours is the age of the copy, the version and the

  simulation? I’m surprised it hasn’t occurred to you before, given

  your status as a … chocolate soldier melting in the high noon of a fool’s

  bloody errand! So, he’d kept it all – but where? Where the fuck was

  it, this … this … Large Data-set, because that’s what Jonathan

  termed it: It’s all metrics and analysis now, Major Dick – everything

  we can know is computable. I can analyse the meta-data of our

  large and loving correspondence – the time and duration of calls,

  the location of both sender and receiver – or I can examine the

  content: your gruff little billets doux, with their oh-so-affecting

  sign-offs: Cheers, Gawain … Your Friend, Gawain … even –

  when you forget yourself in the formalities, my sweet spunky

  sheep – Major G. Thomas, Acting Adjutant … Then, halfway through

  December, the Rams were stood down: The fuckers! The dense,

  stupid, idiotic … FUCKERS! It’d been a rare outburst from the

  Colonel – heard only by his Two-EyeSee, Major Townshend,

  known to his men as Townie … ‘cause he goes up there all the time –

  but to his fellow officers – and his Sandhurst contemporaries

  in particular – as Tizer, Big T, the Orange Drinker, The Frothy Man,

  the Ring-Pull-meister. Tizer, who’d been top-dog for so long it

  was inevitable he’d start … howling on the way down. Not then,

  though – all he’d grunted was, You gotta getta grip, Greeny – to

  which Gawain had snarled: It’s just a farce, Tizer, a bloody farce –

  and the curtain hasn’t even gone up yet … Christmas came well

  wrapped and left in tatters … The Rams, fighting unfit wheezed

  out carols in the camp church, then … headed for the hills. So did

  the Thomas fam’ cell: there was a hotel lunch in Crickhowell.

  Grandad Derek took little Myfanwy on his lap – except that Derek

  Thomas no longer went by that name, but rather styled himself

  Uther and wreathed himself further in the Celtic Twilight by

  wearing a purple velour cloak, with a woman’s white silk slip underneath

  … said it was a kirtle, and strange hessian leggings … or

  puttees he’d cross-gartered to above his … dandling knee. Your lot at

  the right point in the rotation? he’d asked – taking, as he still did,

  a keen interest in his son’s deployments: At the right point to join

  the party, that is? And Gawain gave him the details he required –

  ‘cause it’s all da-da-details for military men. It was strictly against

  orders – and in direct contravention of the OhEssAy, which Gawain

  assumes he must’ve signed somewhere … along the way, but so

  what? Who was Uther going to find to utter it to? How would

  Jonathan have put it … ? Yes: Saddam’s spooks would have to

  insinuate someone under the natural hempen cover of Big Sid’s

  tepee if they wanted to catch Uther, the worse for his potty training

  and … babbling away: Charlie Company was down at Caerfin in

  November. Cla
wed ’em back – and now we’re all ready to go …

  hung out to dry awaiting orders, Dad … And awaiting them some

  more … And some more … A cartoon spider’s web is spun

  between the pink tip of Gawain’s nose and the handle of his spoon,

  as he sits at the breakfast table reading the report on the Prime

  Minister’s speech: according to Blair the fresh intelligence is …

  substantive, authoritative and compelling, while according to Jonathan

  De’Ath it’s … secondary, suspect and almost certainly compromised.

  Gawain hopes Blair doesn’t let his Christian conscience hobble his

  messianic belief in his own destiny – he tries to talk about this

  with Jonathan, but his lover has his limits, his boundaries, his …

  lines of defence: No can do, soldier – I could tell you what’s going on

  at the JayEyeSee – or up any number of Whitehall’s innumerable

  and tightly coiled back passages … I could tell you, sure – but then

  … He’d throttled Gawain’s semi-erect cock and lisped Russian-film-baddy

  … I vooud haff to keel you! — Has Trooper Bessemer

  been to see you, Gawain? Fiona had said at that breakfast … or

  one very like it: Cheerios and toast, skimmed milk for the lonely

  sclerotic heart … home is where the Hostess trolley is. When they

  were first together, Gawain hadn’t altogether appreciated her

  unfussy off-the-peg domesticity: job-lots of fixtures and fittings –

  easy-to-wipe blinds and frumpy soft furnishings. Why would she’ve

  had any better taste … than me – after all, they were both forces

  brats, accustomed to picking up sticks every few years, so there

  was no call for any homely tokens that couldn’t be portaged to the

  next campsite. But, as the years had passed, and they’d been to

  Germany … and back again, to Cyprus … and bloody back again,

  so these never-ending rotations – an infinitely extended run of

  their fathers’ end-of-the-imperialist-pier show – began to torment

  him: for if you simply went round and around, again annagain …

  well, you never actually got anywhere at all … He fixated on the

  porridge-grey louvres hanging in the youpeeveecee frames of their

  married quarters – he fantasised tearing the aluminium rods from

  the stair treads and hurling them in her … tasteless fucking face,

  because his true lover, while minimising his own home decoration,

  nonetheless … knew how it should be done. Yes, if there’s one attribute

  Jonathan De’Ath possesses above all others, it’s his succulent,

  juicy, pink-in-the-middle … taste. Gawain had looked up from the

  fanatically folded bed-block of his Telegraph: she was standing over

  him, dumpy in a novelty apron printed with a caricature of a neater,

  slimmer female form: bared breasts and a naked, neutered belly:

  Why d’you ask, darling? he’d said, entering this endearment in the

  double-entry account, so magically offsetting … a solid decade of

  adultery … semper-fucking-Fi. Before she could reply they’d been

  interrupted by Mark, who propped himself in the kitchen door

  and said, I’m off now, Mum. Mark, who in the months and weeks

  leading up to the deployment … needed me the most. He was at

  that difficult stage in his development when a growing lad is on

  the point of bursting into adolescence. Mark had stood then –

  remains standing now, in the murk of his father’s mind, with his

  soon to be spotty face … and my shifty eyes, standing, his tie yanked

  down into … a hangman’s knot, his blazer sleeves rolled up, an

  Adidas saddlebag bulging on his hip, a hand-me-down Nokia in

  his hand … and what a childish strop he got into about that. He’d

  been a figure-eleven target for fatherly criticism: You may be off

  now, Mark, but I’m also leaving very soon – y’know that, don’t you?

  The boy’s sandy lashes mine, too fluttered. Yeah, he’d said …

  or surliness to the same effect, and his father blazed away: Well,

  you should also know that were I to enter a combat zone with

  your degree of personal hygiene and general readiness, I wouldn’t

  last five-bloody-minutes! When Mark had gone, Fiona said, Do

  you have to talk to him like that? And Gawain came back: I’m

  simply telling him what’s what – he’s old enough to know. Yes,

  indeedy – and old enough as well to hear SeeEssEmm Rowley’s

  parade-ground screech: YeeouorribblefuckinlittlepieceofWelshshitThomas

  Ifuckinhateyouyoulazyslovenlypansy! internalised twenty years since,

  but still howling down the years. Fiona was washing up, so accompanied

  her remarks with duff percussion: And tink-tonk Trooper

  Bessemer, he’s clink-clank old enough to know, is he? – Know what?

  Gawain had been back in the newspaper, which he only ever

  read on a need-to-know basis, scanning anything which seemed

  operationally relevant … His fiancée, girl called tink-tonk Carol,

  came to see me … Yes, Gawain had thought: yes, of course she’d

  gone to see the regiment’s … real SeeOh. Despite this professional

  rivalry Gawain remained grateful to Fiona – grateful for her

  mothering of all these lost boys … our own sons included. So

  pathetically grateful that every time he’d cause for more gratitude –

  which in the run-up to the deployment was a daily occurrence – it’d

  stiffened his resolve: She will never, ever find out … Her husband

  would maintain the eternal vigilance of a simple man leading …

  a sophisticated double life. Fiona had pressed on: Any-tink-way,

  she’s a tonk sensitive clank soul, this clink Carol, and she wants to

  do right by her trooper. She’s fallen pregnant, you see … An odd

  expression – whenever Gawain heard it, he’d see in his mind’s eye a

  tiny Missus Icarus in a Mothercare smock, with melting Fisher-Price

  wings, tumbling out of … a Clearblue sky … and she doesn’t

  know what to tell him before he heads overseas. Standing, folding

  his paper, grasping the hem of his tunic and yanking it down …

  I am the very model of a modern major-gen-er-al! Gawain had said

  words to this effect: Really? I’d’ve thought she’d be keen to let him

  know – nothing better than impending fatherhood to make a man

  mind his back in a war zone. – Except he isn’t a man, is he, Greeny?

  … Fiona would wheel out the nickname whenever she wanted to

  make a serious point – why? Because she understands that, while

  Gawain-the-man may be emotionally absent, Greeny-the-Ram is

  always … operationally present: They shall not return to us, the resolute,

  the young … He’s a boy, and this Carol knows her boy well enough –

  knows he isn’t likely to cope with the truth. – The truth? What

  truth? – The truth that she isn’t carrying another little Bessemer …

  What’d been the upshot of this unscheduled Regimental Parents’

  Meeting? Sat staring at the Iraqi bint’s preposterous minge, Gawain

  reflects: parenting has always been a major component of any

  SeeOh’s job in peacetime – quite possibly the main one. And in

  time of war, what kind of parent was he becoming? One who

  sent his much loved children fo
rward to be torn apart by a camel’s

  head exploding through the un-armoured chassis of their Land

  Rover … abusive – an abusive parent. And if they knew his truth –

  that he was queer? Why, to these lads it’d be as bad as their finding

  out their SeeOh’s a nonce – a kiddy-fiddler … a paedo … deserving of

  petrol-soaked rags through the letter-box … It was the son wot he done

  it to … Yes, I’m an abusive parent and a hands-on dad, Gawain

  reflects, staring at his hands sunbursting on the vinyl blotter, which

  in turn rests on the metal desktop. One of the containers they’d

  dragged all the way from the aypod turned out to be half full of

  office furniture. The sign on the tailgate read KEEP BACK! ONE

  HUNDRED METRES! WARNING! in both English and Arabic – why?

  ‘Cause if you’re dumb enough to pull up to my bumper, baby, in

  your dirty-white Toyota pickup, we’ll riddle your stinking knobblyrag

  ‘ead with point-seven-six-five rounds … You touch our office

  equipment and you’ll be wrapped in your shroud with a ball of hard-packed

  earth under your near-severed head, ready for planting

  before the first call to prayer, so help me, Allah! Yes, a hands-on dad

  who’s been keeping an eye on Bessemer: Everything all right,

  Trooper? Bat ears – burnt face fatty-greasy bacon beneath the camo’

  netting – larking about, he was, ‘til being surprised by the SeeOh:

  Everything all right, Trooper? His playmates, the gooey ends of …

  lollipops poking from their chapped lips, flies in their eyes … stop

  goosing Bessemer as Gawain comes up. – Sir? Eyes front, expressions

  sniggerserious, eyeing their SeeOh, who stands before them,

  legs slightly parted, beret at an exact thirty degrees to the … sandy

  horizon of my own brows, one thumb tucked in webbing belt, the

  other precisely aligned with the butt of his nine-millimetre Sig

  Sauer … ally as I’d be in my Guccis: there’s a bit of the dandy in all of

  us, eh, Rodders. Making sure you’re getting enough fluid down you,

  lads? Plenty of wets – helps with the heat. Those rehydration salts in

  your field packs – they’re pretty much essential in this heat … It’s

  only oh-seven-hundred but under this water-tight tarp’ of concern,

  Lieutenant-Colonel Thomas is … melting, his underpants are