Phone

by Will Self

  defective wishes to be of good report … Just as every psychiatric intern

  looks forward to his day off: a Saturday on which he’s arranged to

  borrow the Superintendent’s Javelin. He’ll meet Isobel off the train

  at Lanark – he’d rather she didn’t come anywhere near Carstairs

  Junction. She quietly regards his chosen career path as that of a failure,

  on course as she is to become Scotland’s first woman thoracic

  surgeon … unum contra Edina. It’s late in the year for fine weather

  in the central belt, but after a dreek week – throughout which the

  State Hospital’s buildings have been bombarded by hale and rain –

  the day promises to be sunny. He has it in mind to drive her to

  Tinto Hill – Isobel’s expressed a wish to ascend this conical eminence,

  the highest prospect for miles around. She’s a red-cheeked,

  high-hipped, long-striding young woman with cornflower-blue

  eyes, spun-gold hair and decided views on the benefits of fresh air

  and vigorous exercise – but it’s Bobby who’s planted this notion in

  Zack’s hot head: that the carnal relation he seeks may be more easily

  achieved en plein air – up on the brae which rises from the rushing

  Clyde, where sheep safely graze and a daughter of the manse

  might very well feel away from the flock. At Baldovan Institution for

  Defective Children the inmates had in fact been old men, most of

  them diagnosed decades before with dementia praecox. The wards

  were high ceilinged, their narrow sash windows bare of curtains –

  the floors highly polished. In between the government green walls

  and below the government green ceilings, Izal disinfectant fought

  a never-ending war against the odours of human dereliction. The

  morning bell went at seven, and it was everyone out of bed and

  to attention: Praise God from whom all blessings flow, Praise Him, all

  creatures here below, Praise Him above, ye heavenly host, Praise Father,

  Son and … the holy ghost of the nurses’ kindness, which had

  long gone, to be replaced by the Incontinence Parade: We’d t’wear

  white moleskins, so everyone could see if ye’d pissed or shat yersel’ – then

  the older boys’d hold ye down and they’d gi’ ye a hammering wi’ a

  sand shoe … The defective children would form up in two lines to

  march into breakfast – old Mister McDougall, who’d been gassed

  at Ypres, leapt about looking for cover from invisible shot and non-existent

  shells, but the nurses in their starched white uniforms

  ignored him … ‘cause he’d been a hero. Bobby, rendered iconic by

  shelves stacked with catering packs of Jacobs Cream Crackers, boxes

  of Angel Delight, one-pound tins of jam, and many wax-paper-wrapped

  loaves, dispensed wisdom along with his life story – and,

  as he’d talked, young Doctor Busner, his woolly head full of Raskolnikov,

  Roquentin, Ravachol … had thought: At last … I’m getting

  somewhere – getting closer to understanding the mind of the Outsider.

  Homosexuality had been, Bobby told him, rife – his exact

  words, and later, after the dreadful incident, when they returned to

  Zack, he cursed his own naivety … a mental defective always wishes

  to be of good report. Give a good report as well – a report carefully

  tailored to fit his listener’s requirements: the evidence of long-term

  abuse in the system was just what I needed. Bobby was kissed and

  fondled by one of the older boys at Baldovan – Baldovan, where

  they went out to work on a local farm, the boys in their blue-grey

  parish tweeds riding the trailer behind the tractor, then, when they

  reached the open fields: we were harnessed up, ye ken six ti’ the plough,

  ye ken – like draught animals. Braw wee ponies, we were … ones

  that needed a proper rub-down at the end of a hard day’s work.

  Thursdays was tripe – Sundays pie – at Christmas there was a feast

  of tatties and mince. The bogey-roll of pipe tobacco twisted around

  his sinewy arm in a figure-eight, the charge nurse made his way

  along the row of men and boys, who were bent over and gobbling.

  The porridge fell – a disgusting grey slurry – from the old madmen’s

  slobbering mouths. Bobby had been the youngest inmate, but the

  nurse still tore off a plug for his pipe … if yi’ were canny yi’ got yersel’

  a protector who’d gi’ you his sweet ration in return fer a rub-a-dub-dub

  … three men in a tub, and who do you think they were?

  He’s spoken aloud, he realises, because Ann looks up from her

  copy of Escapes, the Virgin Trains magazine. And? she queries.

  And? – And what? Busner counters testily. And what’s the rest of

  the rhyme? Is that what you’re asking – ‘cause SURELY YOU

  KNOW? He’s spoken too loudly, he realises, once more attracting

  the attention of their fellow travellers, who, oblivious to the drama

  unfolding outside the train’s windows – the long slopes of the

  Lowther Hills, their heathery covering flaring blue-green in the

  summer sun, the sudden flashes of tumbling burns – are determined

  to get in on the act: The butcher, Ann, the baker, and the bloody

  candlestick-maker! Satisfied, are you? She gives her narrow head an

  Indian waggle of offended assent – and Simon, roused from uneasy

  sleep … what does he watch in the cramped cinema of his mind – what

  dusty, sweaty atrocities? What anguished transformation must he endure

  each time he … wakes? reproves him as severely as any charge nurse:

  Keep a lid on it, Doc – you’ll get us thrown off the fuckin’ train!

  a telling-off itself interrupted by: This old man, he played two, he

  played knick-knack on my shoe, with a knick-knack paddy-whack,

  give a dog a … Busner, having fumbled the phone out of his pocket,

  stares uncomprehendingly at NO CALLER ID, a phrase … or slogan

  which has, he realises, been bothering him for a while, implying

  as it does that whoever’s trying to reach him is the coldest of creatures

  – some billion-dollar brain lacking the idiopathic substratum

  from which all instincts – murderous, sexual – arise … Stares and

  stares, while the ringtone reels in more and more opprobrium: Give

  a dog a bone, This old man came rolling home, This old man, he

  played three … Busner sees it on the faces of his fellow travellers,

  their outraged expressions as they swivel away from … these ancient

  yet manmade landscapes, to glower at this poor aged man struggling

  to find REJECT CALL … He does, and, in the after-tone of the

  ringtone, Complex Simon … it’s a soft diagnosis, really – either he’s

  traumatised or he ain’t, says, Some other fucker’s trying to get hold of

  you, Doc, and they aren’t giving up – have you got any idea who

  it is? And Busner, speaking through the fog which blanketed

  the chainlink fences of State Hospital on that Saturday morning in

  October, nineteen hundred and black and white, says, Really, Simon,

  I haven’t the foggiest. – Well, why don’t you answer it, then – put

  us all out of this knick-knack misery? To which Busner rejoins,

  The phone’s really only an aide memoire, Simon – you know that.r />
  Ben set it up as a sort of auxiliary memory, because, I must confess,

  I’m finding it a little difficult to remember things … aye, ye havenae

  been rememberin’ yer auld pal Bobby at all these past, ooh … how long’s

  it been, Doc? My past, Simon, nowadays it seems increasingly

  tangled up in the present – and it’s the present that’s the loser.

  All I need now in order for me to lose the plot entirely is for the

  future to begin impinging … Simon, round head rolling as the

  train heels into a curve … have they always done this, like … like …

  motorcycles? says, I don’t suppose you can remember, then, why the

  fuck you picked on that knick-knack shit for your ringtone? Busner

  ponders this: I’m too long in the toenails to be startled by any

  coincidence – after all, they keep growing when you’re dead, and if

  you go round a second time everything’s bound to recur … and

  yet … and yet … The decision to head for the mindfulness retreat

  had, he thought, been Milla’s – it would, she’d implied, be a sort of

  soft entry to the hard business of being a Sannyasa: I’ve volunteered

  there a couple of times, Gramps, they’ve got a fantastic vegan cook,

  and the island itself is really lovely – if you find the meditation

  practice a drag you can chill out in the peace garden, get your

  strength together before you strike out on your own. Have a look

  here on their web site – see … lovely setting. I’ve printed off some

  sheets which’ll tell you what happens on a retreat, why don’t you

  have a read of them … It had looked for a while as if Daniel

  and Pat were going to try to put a restraining order on him – have

  Zack declared mentally unfit in some way … maybe even put me on

  a section – such larks! Milla’s plan had mollified them – so once spring

  had uncoiled, the cherry blossom leaping from hilltop Hampstead

  brighter and gayer than … any previous year, and Simon and Ann

  had been, he thought, halfway housed … he’d set off for Scotland,

  with an overnight in Manchester, because Ben seemed to feel two

  days’ travel would be rather too much for me … and since Ben, in

  the weeks before his grandfather’s departure, had stepped forward

  from the shadows of his own affliction to … take matters in hand –

  most surprising, that … Zack hadn’t demurred, although it’d seemed

  an … awful fag – I’m fagged right out … hung over, too … Christ

  knows what happened last night … Night was the best time to

  abscond from Baldovan as well – or so Bobby said. Moreover, given

  the M’Naghten rules, once a mental defective had turned sixteen, if

  he could survive on his own outside the institution for a month,

  he’d be considered discharged. The rub-a-dub-dub didnae gi’ the

  boak to Bobby … I realised I were homosexual me sel’, Doc – are ye

  shocked? An’ honestly, if it weren’t fer those activities I’d’ve had no

  human contact at all, year in, year-bloody-out … But the incontinence

  parades remained a daily ordeal … ah couldnae control me sel’…

  which made the nurses’ sanction doubly binding: … croton oil,

  Doc – oh, jeezo, thass filthy pap, so it is … three long-stemmed, tulipshaped

  glasses filled with the vicious purgative, then drunk down

  under the watchful eye of the Sadist-in-Chief – and this on top of

  the tin mugs of liquorice water she doled out to everyone each evening

  … ye’d be on ti’ cludgie fer the best part of a day, no kiddin’ … No

  kidding, because he’d had no childhood – and no education beyond

  a general cert’ in institutionalisation. Bobby went further and

  further each time – the flight from Perth to Glasgow had been a

  failure, he’d ended up turning himself in to the police at the station

  on Saint Vincent’s Road, but the next time he was determined to

  win his freedom. He assembled his supplies in the gardener’s shed

  … Pa Broon was a good sort – gave him me baccy ration … spare keks,

  a doorstop ham sandwich wrapped in waxed paper, and an old

  Winchester bottle full of water … which still honked of paraldehyde.

  But the best-laid plans of men reduced to the status of mice are

  always crummy: a couple of miles away from Baldovan, he’d met a

  man on a country lane – a simple man, Bobby said, simpler than he

  himself, who was walking along all alone, blond hair all wispy, eyes

  full of sweet-smelling hay, the wide legs of his shiny-kneed black

  suit flapping in the breeze: We lay down on the grassy brae and took

  sexual satisfaction from each other – juss rabbin’, but jeezo, I shot aff fast.

  Then I set about attackin’ him – and there wass an old branch lying there

  to hand, so I let him have it wi’ tha’ an’ his heid began bleeding profusely.

  Aye, we musta been a strange sight, right enough: me holding up this

  person who’s still bleedin’ and tryin’ t’ flag down a car … No wonder no

  one stopped…. Bobby’s account has, young Doctor Busner thinks,

  the surrealistically inverted logic of a dream rewound: Why yes – of

  course: no wonder nobody stopped, given his victim was bleeding

  profusely, which in turn implies it’d been perfectly logical for Bobby

  to’ve hit him with the branch – which in turn exposes the necessity

  of their taking sexual satisfaction from one another. And really,

  isn’t this what everyone – mentally defective or not – wishes for: to

  be of good report – and that good report to be of a life well lived,

  which means with hindsight: the clotted blood liquefies – flows

  back into the Perthshire simpleton’s veins, he walks backwards up

  the lane – Bobby trots backwards to Baldovan … His Mammy

  arrives to take him home … My own umbilicus retracts … a tape-measure,

  pulling Baby Busner bouncy-bouncy back into Mama

  Busner’s sheltering womb. This, he thinks, is the Samsara we really

  seek – not eternal recurrence, but a very provisional revision of our

  own lives: the spin-cycle spun the other way until it … all comes

  back out of the ging-gang goolie-goolie wash-wash! There’s a moment

  of silent contemplation on the eleven twenty-four Virgin Pendolino

  service from Manchester Piccadilly to Glasgow Central – the long

  carriage rocking back and forth, the passengers seated in modular

  pews telling their plastic beads – a mobile prayer session: he sees

  rising from their bowed heads a plume of ones and noughts – their

  digital being, refracting through the train’s tinted windows, scattering

  into the sky, rising up and up into diaphanous curtains of

  data … our Fata Morgana – our delusional … event-horizon. Yes, a

  moment of silent contemplation, as the Virgin steward makes

  his way along the carriage, dispensing Styrofoam beakers full of

  hottish water with individual sachets containing single tea bags – a

  moment in which to appreciate that this is happening to me – and me

  alone … Yes, Busner thinks, it’s pretty much high-noon but I’m sundowning

  – the sun is going down on my tired old mind. What

  was it Bobby said they sang at Baldovan? Now I lay me down to
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  sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep … Yes, and I pray to die as well,

  because this mental disintegration isn’t funny any more: the past

  showing through into the present … a ghostly image, which remains

  on the screen … long after it’s been switched off! Off they go, bowling

  along the lanes. He can tell she’s impressed by how well he handles

  the Javelin – impressed also by the very fact he’s been able to borrow

  it: This chap Hillier – he must think very highly of you, this is a

  fancy motor. Zack explains: in the two months since arriving at

  State Hospital he believes he’s begun to make great strides. There’s a

  willingness, he tells her, to consider new approaches – after all,

  State has been established to deal with all of Scotland’s criminal

  lunatics – and what should you do with such patients when you have

  them concentrated? Why, euthanise them! She laughs merrily – and

  he grips the Javelin’s steering wheel a little tighter. He knows she’s

  twitting him – knows she’s subtle enough to make this complex

  allusion to his own origins, the matter of which is otherwise,

  obviously, beyond the pale … wish I was. She’s clearly attracted to

  him, and, while they aren’t exactly walking out together, they’ve

  been mucking about now since their final year at Herriot-Watt –

  mucking about in fleapit cinemas and train compartments. Mucking

  about – his fingers advancing and retreating, circling, then advancing

  some more. From his close readings of Sexual Behavior in the

  Human Female, Zack believes Isobel may’ve achieved climax on

  more than one occasion – he doesn’t trust his own inexperienced

  senses to tell him. She won’t touch him in return, though – not, that

  is, until it becomes necessary to restrain him. Tush-tush, she says,

  and, Now-now … Och, no! she’s exclaimed on several occasions,

  while Will you mind yourself! is a phrase he now uses to remonstrate

  internally: Will you mind yourself! is what he thinks when Mister

  Hillier or Doctor McClintock say something so crassly insensitive –

  no! vicious! Zack worries he’ll … blow, ‘cause, after all, We’re all Jock

  Tamson’s bairns … even the mental defectives amongst us … even

  the Jews. Isobel, sitting in the Javelin’s passenger seat, the hedgerow