by Will Self
still … puffing away. What would a camera lens have captured as
you gazed out across rumpled fields o’er bog and quagmire, and the
unholy mess of opencast mine workings? P’raps the guilty shadow
of the previous night’s self-abuse, conducted under clammy and
none-too-clean sheets in a cheap hotel near Waverley – ‘cause it was
a two-day commute in the early sixties. Queuing in the porridgey
corridor with hungover travelling salesmen in their striped pyjamas
and blanket-material dressing gowns. Peering out through a lancet
window at Edinburgh Castle, floating on a mound of yellow smog,
as you waited your turn to lie in the enamelled horse trough of a
bath, where candid shots could’ve been obtained of you washing
away the dried fish paste. Then, changing at Motherwell, and waiting
by a huge old wall – anthracite-black and rain-dank – puffing on
yet another gasper, would a camera have captured your innermost
thoughts – your hopes and precious reveries? Doubtful – but it
might well’ve seen you eating the fish-paste sandwich a weepy
Missus Fitz had made for you back in Hampstead, and which
had spent the night on the sill outside your grim room. She was a
highly emotional woman, really – while it was simply extraordinary
the things we used to put in our mouths … Cameras at Wishaw
and Carluke as well, set up to snatch snippets of young Doctor
Zachary Busner en route to his first psychiatric residency – cameras
appropriate to the era: of cream Bakelite, Meccano and black
vulcanised rubber. Cameras that sopped up all your most moist
mercurial moments — see them flow-fuse together, quicksilver
streams of images coalescing in an enormous oddwobbling instant
— a tear welling up in the eye of God … C’mon – Pete-the-Podium-Restaurant-Manager
manoeuvres Busner so expertly through the
press of suits and wheelie-bags by the reception desk that his cup-of-elbow
… doth not runneth over. All is as it was, Busner thinks:
and when at last I get back to where I started from? Well, I’ll’ve
risen because I rose – which is why I’ve risen again: risen into my
rancid T-shirt and ruinous tweed suit. He improves his grip on
staff and bowl, enters the smoglock of the revolving door – round
annaround it goes. Captured from above by seeseeteevee what might
be seen? The akathistic whirr of its glass blades never ending or
beginning on an ever spinning reel … and caught up in it … lagging,
the amnesiac ancient, who at last staggers into the open air, totters
from beneath the glassy portico of the Bethan Tower and, responding
to some dirty-dowsing intuition, turns left down Deansgate in
the direction of the Castlefield Canal. He tastes the alco-crud in his
rusted old throat – feels the mortar crumbling between the courses
of his own … perished brickwork. The paving beneath his sandalled
feet is hard – unyielding. He longs for bed again annagain – any
bed: a cardboard paillasse and mattress of soiled nylon sleeping bag
would do so long as it afforded repose. As for his covering, why, that
could be a rug sewn together out of knitted squares sky-blue …
fraying green … and a pinkish, oldish nylon quilt … spotted by
saliva. As to where I’d lay my head … a charity shop sweatshirt
stuffed with more of the same will be just dandy – especially if set
beside it are a half-full can of Special Brew and a box of Biscuit
Bob’s Dog Treats for early-morning … snacking. He looks up at
the advertising hoarding bolted to the archway above the dossers’
bivouac – a new model car whooshing along an open Highland
road, apparently … the Lion Goes from Strength to Strength – then
back down to find … someone’s been sleeping in my bed! Two some-ones,
in point of fact, whose heads he hadn’t noticed, so surrounded
are they by discarded puffa-jackets and plastic bags full of rubbish.
One of the heads is narrow and electrocuted by a shock of ginger
hair – the other is … brachycephalic – Christ! Will it be these Latin-isms
which survive my decline and fall! and has a disturbing divot of
black hair. This is no coincidence, for now Busner spots, wedged
between biscuits and beer, the flap torn off a cardboard box,
on which has been scrawled: EX-ARMY SOLDIER ON THE RD WAS
25138694 I HAVE PTSD CAN YOU HELP ME TO FIND A BED FOOD
SHELTER THANK YOU’S so MUCH COMPLEX SIMON … Busner’s
kicking the prone form none too gently and shouting loudly enough
for passers-by to stop and stare: What the bloody hell’re you doing
here, man? Are you stalking me? Are you? Answer me! However, it
isn’t Complex Simon who answers him – he awakes with the instant
alertness of a well-trained military man, rolls over and sits up,
blinking – but Ann. Ann, who opens her lashless lids and simply
says, And? – And … And … ? Busner splutters, dancing on the
spot, striking the pavement with his staff: And zoingggg-zoingggg!
what!? To which Complex Simon calmly observes: And we’re
reporting for duty, Doctor Zebadius Obadius Anthraxobadus, all
present and … sorta … correct. – It takes Simon and Ann only a
couple of minutes to bundle up their stuff, and then all three of
them are down on the towpath, looking out across the confluence of
canals to a patch of waste ground on the far side, where other ladies
and gentlemen of the road have pitched their hump-backed and
DayGlo tents. It’s a peaceful scene, Busner says, could be a campsite
in some area of outstanding natural beauty. To which Ann predictably
conjoins: And? – And nothing, Busner replies, striking out
tents, viaducts and the looming wasp-waisted Bethan Tower with a
stroke of his staff. Lissen, he continues testily, what’re you two
doing here, and what’re your intentions … ? Simon’s about to
answer when this old man, he played one he played knick-knack on my
thumb, With a knick-knack paddy-whack, give a – I’m sorry, Busner
says, groping through his many pockets … I am Kali, answerer of
phones – why, why won’t he stop? Stupid bloody boy–. Ben’s been trying
to call you, Doc . . . Busner’s warder, his PeeOh, my ruddy-fucking
screw, spits out: Trying to tell you he’d given Ann ‘n’ me some
squids, fortyish – nothing stupid. Put us on the coach up here to –.
To do what precisely? Busner counters – but the fight’s gone out
with the proud ships and a used condom short-circuited eel floats
on the scuzzle … the scummle … the scuds … And? Ann ands, puffa-cuff
in lips all cold sore NO, NO! BEEN HERE DONE THIS! To
which a small but prissily officious voice – repellent yet so familiar
as to be mine all mine – pipes up: Yes, but you’ve never really seen it
from the mentally ills’ point of view – not fully. You’ve flirted with
madness, made a fetish of it, used it for your own ends – but even the
psychosis Freud accorded everyman eluded you. Fond of ’em, aren’t you?
A whimsical wee thing your precious fondness can be … then the voice
further modulat
es – becoming shriller and more convinced of itself,
its timbre that of stone … and tablet. Which, I’ll grant ye, may well
be a sweet little meat – but when it’s tucked under an idle wagging
tongue, confectionery is a crutch, just as alcohol is a crutch, and the carnal
relation is … a crutch. Why, religion itself may be abused by being used
as a crutch – but the worst crutch of all … the voice descends into
weaselly quibbling … the one thass truly an abomination in the eye
of Almighty God, is pride! Busner, shaking shaggy his wispy locks,
seeing satisfaction in the morning midge cloud dancing on the
duck-shit-dappled canal, is so relieved the sermon’s object is collective
rather than only me … personal, like, that he salutes with his
staff the heads which thrust through the glistening surface tension
of the present, hatted and capped against the chapel’s notorious
chill, and unable to remove them since their shoulders, arms and
hands – all remain trapped in the past. It’s the chapel … is as far as
Busner’s prepared to go – and when Simon and Ann take him under
either arm and begin walking, willy-nilly, he doesn’t mind. Yes,
Simon resumes, Ben’s worried about you – Camilla, too. They’ll feel
better if we, like, sorta –. Escort me? Busner objects: Take me to a
bloody Buddhist retreat like a prisoner in chains? You know what
you are, Simon, you’re a ruddy-fucking screw, and all screws are
nonces – it’s a well-attested fact no innocence, never was – and after
chapel in his tuck-shop cubbyhole, what did he say to you then? Said:
Every boy wants to be of good report. And what did you say?
Said: What d’you mean by that, Bobby? ‘cause that was me name,
auld man, wasnae it? It was. Say it. Say what? SAY IT! Your
name was Bobby – and Simon, walking ahead of Busner along the
towpath, turns back, his hydro- … hydro- … hy- … round head
so … so … incredibly … round: You all right, then, Doc? – Oh,
yes. Busner’s right at home now, surrounded by derelict old warehouses
and the solidified grime of inner-city dereliction … You
wannin’ the cludgie? Clock this: big man here too sissy to come out wi’
it … He remembers the alleyways scored between the tenements
down Leith way – alimentary canals, carrying everything even this
thriftiest of cities couldn’t choke down … D’ye wanna tap, s’only five
bob? For a knee-trembler – a ruddy fuck up against the cludgie or
some other shit-hole, his balls puckered-up … sloes … the cold
wind blows on hawthorny little pricks, and the rub of the … bricks
… Aye, coming back to you now, is it? With you now, is it? As much to
silence the voice – and obnubilate the visions of the chapel at State
Hospital, Carstairs, Lanarkshire, on that fateful October Sunday in
nineteen whenever, Busner, although he plods on, staff marking
each dyad of paces with a sure double thwock on the hard-pocked
mud-path, answers, Yes, I’m good enough, Simon – and happy to
have you along. Yes – and you, too, Ann, you, too – happy to have
you both along for the journey. But I’m jiggered if I know what
you’ll do once we get to Holy Island, beyond turning round and
heading right back – and that wasn’t what we agreed for you …
Simon, who’s pacing ahead, with Ann trailing from one capable
arm, while his sleeping bag’s a stole draped all ladylike over the
other, throws back: Well, we’ll worry about that as and when, shall
we, Doc – as and fucking when … Upon which Bobby, sitting in
his nineteen whenever cubbyhole, comments: Every mental defective
wishes to be of good report … And Busner whispers, Not Simon, I’d
fixed it all up for him – and Ann. Mukti at Saint Mungo’s said he’d
take them on … group therapy and meds for his peetee-essdee …
Sort out some sheltered accommodation for them both as well – yet
here they are. Every mental defective wishes to be of good report …
Bobby whispers … dinnae fash yersel’ – you’re no daftie, Doctor B, but
you’re still trying to be the big compassionate man, eh. Bobby, a homunculus
really – wizened, a child-man born of the system, with the
squeaky voice and painted-on features of a ventriloquist’s dummy.
Utterly institutionalised, taken away from his family in Perthshire
when he was a troublesome wean … at the Perth Special school they
hadnae objection if parents wanted to remove their children, but no one
ever came for me, Doctor Busner. Me mammy wrote – monthly at first:
news of her new husband, my half-brother and sisters – but then she
musta got fed up, aye … For a couple of years there were bags of
sweets at Christmas – but these had to be shared – then nothing.
Bobby had absconded – absconded again. Ran away to Glasgow,
met a man at coffee stall near George Square. Went back with
him to a cold old tall house on the edge of the Gorbals. Up five
flights the man put him to bed on an iron bedstead in an attic
room beneath an uncurtained dormer. Strip of lino on the splintering
floorboards. Piss-pot under the bedstead. His hot hard prick
between Bobby’s buttocks in the middle of the night served me right.
Sitting with him after chapel in his Aladdin’s cave – the prisoners’
tuck shop he’s made his domain – young Doctor Busner is prepared
to listen. Listening, he already understands, is the best he can do for
any of the patients, who for the most part are deeply submerged in
the Chartreuse pool of Largactil which fills the harled and white-painted
detached villas of State Hospital. He has ideas, though,
does the freshly minted psychiatrist – and he’s on his own: the Chief
Psychiatrist, appointed by the Scottish Office, comes at best weekly,
and they administer electro-shock treatments together – a perverse
ceremony, conducted wearing nylon robes and rubber aprons: False
teeth out, rubber stick between rubber gums. No pre-med – and the
rubber earplugs for doctors McClintock and Busner rather than the
patient, who, as the current lances between his temples, is at first
galvanised into a series of hideous spasms, then goes all rubbery …
sweaty. Doctors McClintock and Busner suck on bulls-eyes, lemon
sherbets … toffee bonbons – sometimes tablet: in short, any crutch
they can find to take away the taste of that rubber. In winter, the
lights dim – not just in the room where the treatment’s administered,
but in the entire unit, which goes dark as the patient’s screams
echo along its distempered corridors. Busner thought it was all
wrong at the time – but knew better than to question McClintock’s
methods: he was too busy passing … Passing at his digs, where he
did nothing to disabuse his landlady, Missus Kane, of her peculiar
notion that his origins were Belgian – passing at State Hospital,
where he made it his mission to … understand – not judge. Since
judgement might well be seen as … the mark of the Hebrew. Understand
the scene in the day-room, where the patients sat, volleying
invisibl
e balls … the Largactil kick, they called it. Passing in the
meetings – which were entirely pro forma: the rubber stamp for
the rubber stick – and all the while reading voraciously: Sartre and
Freud … Camus and Jung – Ronnie’s paper on his rumpus room at
Gartnavel, which gave the young intern his big idea to do something
similar for Bobby and the other lost boy-men: treat them as
individuals, not pathologies. To be mad is an affliction, says Doctor
McClintock – and to be bad is a curse, but to be both mad and bad
is to suffer the torments of the damned … Dunno why you say that
Doc, Simon chimes up, it’s the way of it nowadays … Somehow
they must’ve swum through the mercurial morning to Piccadilly –
Busner has a wan recollection of waving his staff at the memorial
for Aids victims beside the canal, and delivering an extempore
lesson – words to the effect that: progress in human conduct – while
intermittent and piecemeal – nonetheless does occur, and here was
the evidence: an acceptance of same-sex love all the more profound
for being prosaic – we’re out and we’re … dully municipal. To which
Ann had remarked: And? Then they’d presumably been on the
station concourse, faffing out tickets from the machine – and now,
as in epic films hymning the long samba of trains through the
twentieth century … ‘Stamboul, Vladivostok – all points East …
Busner stares out of the window at the grey-and-red carriages
swaying their way between the piebald flanks of the bare hillsides.
He’s hooked on this worn-out line: I’m on the train and we’re past
Lockerbie so the … I said WE’RE PAST LOCKERBIE AND
THE RECEP–. It’s the torment of the damned, Busner remarks
to the carriage at large: having to listen to one side of a conversation,
because, unlike listening to two people talking, with a mobile
phone call you’re compelled to supply THE OTHER SIDE OF
THE CONVERSATION! Eyes swivel round and lock-on –
earphones are squelched from waxy ears. The carriage lights dim as
the shock passes through them all. It’s a Bateman cartoon, Busner
thinks, observing round mouths and ink-spot eyes: The Man Who
Objected to the Mobile Phone Call … And Simon whispers: Shut
the fuck up, Doc, you’ll get us put on report … And every mental
