Phone

by Will Self

Camilla, throbbing with unfulfilled desire in the palm of his hand.

  If he touches her rubberised nipple and presses her lips to his ear,

  he’ll hear: Gramps? Is that you? Are you there? We’re both, he thinks,

  lost to the world, even as the signals volleying back and forth

  between our handheld communication devices, and a perfectly

  calibrated network of orbiting satellites … enable us to find one

  another. He hesitates, knowing once he speaks their psyches will be

  squeezed together – squeezed and squeezed – but the pips’ll never

  come! A chilly, sodden-cardboard-smelling wave of nostalgia for old

  phone boxes passes over him – and along with it a more uncomfortable

  memory: during the awful hours he and Miriam had

  spent flinging each other’s infidelities in their faces, she’d laid claim

  to all the maturity, all the interpersonal skills – effectively all the

  sanity … there was to go round. What clinched it so far as she’d

  been concerned was this: If I’ve any worries about the kids, d’you

  know who I talk to, Zack? Not you, obviously – it’s never you.

  You’re far too busy – and your time is far too precious. No: I talk to

  Maurice – talk to him on the phone. Sometimes I rattle on for

  ages – just letting it all out. And you know what, he never – and I

  mean never – gives the slightest indication he’s bored, or that he’s

  anything better to do … Wearily, Busner shoves the mobile phone

  back in his pocket – if it’s urgent she’ll call again. If it isn’t she will as

  well. The bus plunges past a playing field. An old man with lank

  white hair wearing an unseasonal donkey jacket pushes a whitelining

  machine towards some rugby posts, seagulls scrumming down

  behind him. Besides, what if he does answer the insistent phone,

  what’ll he get? Much, much more, in the same vein, of the

  saccharine injection she’d administered every day since she forced

  the phone on him. For, Camilla Whitehouse-Busner has compounded

  the ridiculous conjunction of her name by falling

  passionately, improbably … in love. And a woman in love is desirous

  above all, not for reciprocation or consummation – let alone

  Wagnerian supersession – but simply someone with whom she

  can … yak about it on the phone. You don’t blame me, do you, Gramps?

  was how she’d told him about her own notional infidelity the

  previous Sunday. Guileless, she’d been, in a flouncy old apron, her

  cheeks flushed and two chopsticks shoved through the rather greasy

  and disordered chop suey of her hair. Zack hadn’t seen either her or

  Ben since a Busner family gathering just after Christmas at Redington

  Road: Dan and Pat handing round readymade EmmandEss

  nibbles … the little pricks! They’d just moved in, and the house had

  seemed echoey and musty with old-man-smell – at once empty and

  cram-packed with … ghosts. Since then she’d gained weight – or at

  least he’d thought so as she ducked down to fetch a saucepan, or

  reached up to get some ingredients, because her belly was preggily

  prominent. Zack’d wanted to ask then – Busner still does, now –

  about her endometriosis, but couldn’t find the right tone, being

  effectively retired … until hours later, when, after his strange talk

  with Ben, he’d come upon her in the kitchen again, leaning back

  against the grotty old units, her face in her hands. It’d been

  Zack rather than Doctor Busner who’d gently touched her shoulder,

  softly enquired if everything was all right? Although he knew

  perfectly well that it never had been and never could be. But when

  she’d unveiled her face and her features emerged … they were

  luminous – Peek-a-boo, Gramps … she’d said. Peek-a-fucking-boo!

  After which she’d said something like, Ben loathed it when we tried

  to play peek-a-boo with him – d’you remember, Gramps? He’d

  scream and scream and lash out at me … It did me terrible damage,

  Gramps, honestly … Tore me up inside – deep inside … the sheer

  intensity of his rejection … But she wasn’t feeling rejected any

  more, oh no: You don’t blame me, Gramps, do you? Blame her! Blame

  her for what, precisely? Mark’s father had seen plenty of his patients

  over the years who, having been diagnosed in early adulthood as

  chronic schizophrenics … though not usually by me, had nonetheless,

  with the onset of middle age, experienced some sort of remission.

  The hectoring internal voices fell silent – to be replaced by the

  dreary chit-chat of those actually eyearrdoubleyou … But with Mark

  things hadn’t gone that way – as his autistic son had grown, so his

  conviction that he was an alien spymaster, and Ben – using the work

  name, Mandinkulus – the agent he was running, grew stronger.

  Mark’s stays in the safe houses earthlings call mental hospitals

  became longer and more frequent. During the brief periods he was

  at the Kilburn flat he was often so disruptive poor Milla had had to

  call the police. Watching his eldest son’s once handsome features

  gradually coarsened as he suffered blow after blow from the liquid

  cosh, Zack often reflected on this grim truth: if Mark was engaged

  in a war against humanity – and, in particular, a war against its

  profligate expenditure of time, a dimension he believed to be in

  cripplingly short supply supply – then for him to prevail would

  require … sich zu Tode siegen. So, in advance of his last attempt at

  being cared for in the community, Miriam had organised a bedsit

  for Mark in Stanmore, and they’d take it in turns to drop by, feed

  him his meds and brush up the Digestive crumbs and shreds of

  hand-rolling tobacco which are his principal contribution … to the

  gross domestic product. It’s horribly claustrophobic and airless in the

  smoke-stunk bedsit – yet paradoxically exposed and vacuous: the

  surface of a distant world, frozen beneath the diamond-studded

  black velvet … of the void. To sit on the mean little sofa for half an

  hour was … an eternity – to listen to Mandinkulus’s controller, as

  he detailed the vital intelligence which was being gathered … a

  torment. So, to Camilla, Zack had said again: Blame you? Blame

  you for what, precisely? Bloody hell, Milla, far from blaming you,

  I’m cheering you on from the terraces. Who is he? How’s it going?

  At the time he’d congratulated himself for not adding: Have you

  told Ben? And now he feels still better about this omission, because

  back in her Kilburn kitchen the inconvenient truths had tumbled

  from Milla’s chapped lips: the object of her desire wasn’t in the

  least bit obscure, but a writer of sufficient notoriety that even

  Zack had heard of him. This, despite the fact that Zack had long

  since waved goodbye to the gleaming ghost-ship of contemporary

  mediatised culture, as, with its snazzy paintwork and crew of

  soon-to-be-cashiered celebrities, and its hack band playing on andon, it

  set course for the day-after-tomorrow. D’you actually know him,

  personally? he’d blurted out in the kitchen – hardly a tasteful

  question to f
ling in the face of a woman hungry for love … but it

  was the right one. Camilla had blushed furiously, applied holding

  therapy to her large breasts, and said: D’you remember that creative

  writing course I went on? Ah, yes, Milla’s creative writing. Oscar

  placed a soft hand on his softer heart, threw back his head and out

  came long and liquid lines of John Dowland – his brother Daniel,

  when he wasn’t dozily doctoring, painted canvases which were large

  and so painfully Fauvist that, on viewing one, his father couldn’t

  help muttering: an unholy bloody mess … a critical truth to which

  Daniel had angrily assented: Of course it’s an unholy bloody mess,

  Dad, because that’s what I’m trying to express, the unholy bloody

  mess which was my childhood! Lottie kept on with her singing –

  and Frankie used to dance, while the twins, pushed by Mummy,

  pursued a panoply of cultural and artistic goals, none of which, in

  their father’s opinion … they’re ever likely to reach. It was perhaps

  unjust of him, but Busner suspected that Milla’s literary ambitions

  had more to do with fitting in with her adopted family than

  any overwhelming desire on her part to render this world – or any

  other – in prose. He’d seen her efforts: folded sheets of narrow feint

  torn from blocky jotters, which, when unfolded, released tentative

  observations … hesitant descriptions … duff dialogue. Exposing

  to ridicule a style so staccato adjectives were st-st-st-stuck to nouns.

  But was it any good? He felt quite unable to judge … because I don’t

  actually care? Quite possibly – which was where the cold slapactually

  had come from. Camilla, reddening still more, stood her ground

  and explained that the writer-he’d-heard-of hadn’t been one of the

  tutors on the week-long course – which was held in a whitewashed

  former farmhouse deeply immersed in creamy Devon – but, rather,

  being something of a celebrity, had arrived on the last evening,

  when the group had pretty much curdled – gone rancid, Gramps –

  there were that many female hormones flying about … But Camilla

  had prevailed, so been seated beside him at supper – Zack could

  imagine the scene: a refectory table, warm bread torn on worn

  boards, the chilly looks of the wannabe women writers, and the two

  of them chatting together … warmly. Warmly enough for her to

  ask for his email address and for him to give it. She’d written on her

  return to London – and he’d replied, and she’d replied to his reply,

  sending the fragment of her own work he’d agreed to read – to

  which he’d replied in turn, saying it showed promise. These had been

  his exact and dismissive words – and Camilla conveyed them to her

  father-in-law all amber … with such praise. Aglow – and in love.

  The bus has stopped by the lights at the junction of Southwood

  Lane, its engine gasping against the window of a fried-chicken

  takeaway. Busner’s forehead is tenderised by the toughened glass –

  his face swells up at him: My old face … my old mottled face …

  I wear the motley of my … face – a tatterdemalion of experience …

  moles … antediluvian acne scars … He sees diamonds of mirror set

  in mirrored batons – he sees the Mandelbrot set of the Formica they

  reflect. On a modular, back-lit menu holder he reads: One Piece

  Chicken and Chips … Ninety-nine pence. Two Piece Chicken and

  Chips … One pound and nineteen pence. Three Piece Chicken

  and Chips … One pound and forty-nine pence. These are, he

  thinks, exact words, but do they … show promise? Appalled, he’d

  stared at Milla as she’d burbled on: I’m not saying he’s in love with

  me, Gramps – I’m not delusional … Poor Milla! Sitting in Kilburn,

  night after night, pouring it all out into her laptop, deluding herself

  that its poorly insulated circuitry can cope with … such gush: I’m

  not delusional – I know it isn’t going to be a normal relationship.

  For a start, we can’t be together – not physically, ‘cause we’re both

  married – ‘though I don’t think Mark would … mind. Once more

  Zack had had to bite down on bitter merriment: Mind? Mandinkulus’s

  controller? The first inter-specific double-agent known to

  humankind, mind? He scarcely has a mind – but then nor did

  Milla, or so it seemed: He lets me write him one long email every

  week – that’s all the contact we’re gonna have … I did go to some

  of his readings and lectures and stuff, but he told me he isn’t comfortable

  with that, and it would be better – sorta purer – if we just

  corresponded … ‘cept … well … Out came more desperate dribs

  and disillusioning drabs: the writer-Zack’d-heard-of wouldn’t reply

  to the missives Milla sent whooshing through the ether – some of

  which, she admitted, ran to several thousand words – but he assured

  her he’d remain hooked on the very end of the very last line. Zack

  would’ve said something sharp enough to … nip it in the bud, had

  Milla not at this point uncrossed her arms and arched her back,

  so that her heavy breasts lifted and her chopsticks clacked against

  the spice rack. She’d shuddered deliciously – and it’d occurred to

  Zack that this was some weird climax, brought about by her own

  onanistic literary activities: her ceaseless jabbing … at the slick little

  buttons. Why? Zack had asked of her then. Why? Busner asks aloud

  now – or, rather, lows pitifully as the bus surges up East Finchley

  High Road past the Bald Faced Stag: Why? Why? Why? Penitent,

  he applies the lash: She was raped … inna rape field … and, while he

  knows he wasn’t her rapist … I am her sorta therapist. And what

  manner of therapist – even when relatively young – knowing as

  he does no means no, nonetheless wilfully misunderstands … The

  well-worn liberal cri de cœur … We’re all to blame! echoes through

  his hurting head, for if you added up those misunderstandings

  they’d certainly be sufficient to make a single, devastating violation

  … He remembers all manner of pushing, pulling and tugging –

  and, on one occasion, tearing – appalled, he sees it, mounting

  up massily in the direction of Muswell Hill: the stopped dandelion

  clock of her petticoats and her shocked-white face. And now …

  and now … the entire world had long since pushed into and pulled

  out of Milla – pushed and pulled againannagain, until her generative

  parts had begun to … bleed, poor Milla! and gone on flowing

  into all the internet’s multitudinous tubes. Busner sits miserably

  arraigned before a jury of white-faced Columbines in the court of

  tragicomedy, their beautiful lips smeared … with the greasepaint of

  our lust – It’s my fault! His fault her insides haemorrhage – his fault

  she’s no thought of a happily uncomplicated and cuddly liaison.

  Delusional, she emphatically is – and he’s always known and made

  use of it. For who else but a delusional person would care so

  delusionally for Mandinkulus – and not just during childhood, but

  once he’d reached his majority as well. She s
till accompanies him on

  weekly trips to the nutritionist – to the occupational therapist, to

  the fraudulent cranial osteopath. She maintains the great go-round

  of impersonal encounters constituting Ben’s asocial life. Associative

  mating – that was the explanation du jour for the massive increase

  in autism diagnoses. Might Mandinkulus’s controller be an autist

  as well as schizophrenic? He’d certainly been a systematiser as a

  child – a sorter-out, a colour-coder and a liner-uper. Busner searches

  the basement of his own memory, where nothing any longer seems

  to be to hand. Had Mark looked into his eyes when a child? He

  cannot remember – and this summons a tear … light, fresh and …

  coolly rolling down his cheek. It’s Camilla, he knows, who keeps

  Ben’s own museum-of-everything in order, adding in plastic-bag-loads

  of more plastic to the dry-stone walling of seedees, deeveedees,

  records, cassette tapes, books, magazines, toys and obsolete computer

  equipment that fills the Dexion shelving units, which in turn

  fill the Kilburn flat. Was this evidence of her own Aspie tendencies?

  Tendencies that’ve now come to full and frenzied fruition in the

  weekly email she sends to the man Ben calls the orfer? Ach! Busner

  cries aloud to the empty top deck, such meshugas! The bus is

  accelerating along Queens Avenue towards Muswell Hill – soon

  it’ll reach sufficient velocity to escape the poisonous atmosphere of

  central London. Sensing the outer space beyond the asteroid belt

  of suburbia, Busner pulls hairy lapels up to stubbly cheeks … Mm,

  scratchy. Which is the name of Ben’s cat, a more than averagely

  dumb moggy which occupies the sofa in the front room, where it

  fulfils its nominative destiny by rendering both upholstery and

  its own coat more and more threadbare. But then: a balding narcissist

  … could there be anything more human? He’d boarded the bus

  unthinkingly – committed to the rubric of the random, but now he

  sees where it’s all been headed, for his own head is strapped into

  some sort of brace … or restraint! And he cannot prevent himself

  from staring down all one thousand, eight hundred and eighty-four

  rigidly straight feet of its mind-bending central corridor …

  he longest in Europe! And cannot stop himself, try as he might,

  from seeing this unearthly vision: his post-encephalitic patients at