Phone

by Will Self

  grasp that young Doctor Busner would be sick with anxiety, lest his

  liberality in the wood-working room be blamed for their escape and

  the killings. Bobby would start out on some mad inconsequence,

  such as, Ain’t it true, Doc – that you’re more likely to suffer from

  mental illness if you’re working class than middle class? To which

  Zack might well angrily object: Professionals! Psychiatrists in particular,

  Bobby – we’ve a higher risk of the major psychopathologies

  than anyone else! But that’s because diagnosis is itself an opportunistic

  … And then he’d flounder, not wanting to say “crime”,

  although when they’d brought Bobby into the room he would’ve

  appeared not cowed but relieved – and Doctor Busner, still being

  really rather young and utterly inexperienced, might have had

  another shot at sympathising with the benighted creature – but it’d

  prob’ly be no use, because looking deep into Bobby’s eyes he’d be

  forced to acknowledge: this was not the relief of a merely craven

  man, who, terrified by the wider world, has fought his way back into

  the system – but the relief of a butchering animal, who, having

  made his kill, slinks back to the wilds beyond the perimeter fence.

  Jonathan eats the sandwich moodily. Was there more to be said?

  Yes, there’s always more to be said – and no matter how effective his

  own intervention, there will be further phone calls and meetings.

  He may well have to see Gawain again in a quasi-official capacity. It

  would be too easy for it to end here, definitively – yet it should,

  because it’s Gawain who’s turned out to be the butcher after all …

  not me. (P’raps I was wrong to call you that …) You were right

  about the other two, though (… it prejudiced your idea of yourself

  – made you rather moody. You never actually did anything that bad

  so far as I’m aware – not personally … Once or twice there was

  some rough stuff … in Manchester, I believe …) Jonathan lets

  Kins bang on as he eats the sandwich: he needs to consider the probabilities

  – has to figure out what the future might hold. The Butcher

  is perfectly accustomed to applying his superior powers of induction

  to the future courses of others – this is the very essence of an

  intelligence officer’s expertise, but somehow Jonathan De’Ath has

  never tried to get a firmer grasp on his own. He stands eating

  the cheese sandwich, seeing not the perimeter fence through the

  Perspex window, nor the magnolia-painted wall of the pod, but the

  cassette tapes, compact and digitally versatile disks, external computer

  hard disks, photographs and photocopies which constitute his

  large data-set: an electroencephalogram of his and Gawain’s entire

  relationship, registering the rise and fall of their passion for one

  another. He’s kept it all sealed up in a clunky-old attaché case. He

  moves it every few months or so – the case will spend a while on the

  topmost shelf of a cash-and-carry in Southall, then get deposited

  in a safe belonging to, say, a solicitor in Nantwich. If you were to

  put him on the spot, Jonathan would probably justify this wild

  irresponsibility in the following way: Living, as I’ve done, a life in

  the shadows, with no emotional security whatsoever, I’ve cleaved to

  this relationship above all others – so I needed a record of it, had

  to be able to hear his voice, read his words, even look at wonky

  seeseeteevee footage of him entering and leaving some of our

  rendezvous. It’s been my touchstone. But now? Now the large data-set

  is too hot to handle – it will need to be extracted from the storage

  cupboard of a corner shop in south Lambeth and … destroyed.

  Yes, destroyed. Jonathan sees himself, a serial killer manqué, his

  victims obsolete three-and-a-half-inch compact floppy disks which

  would require an equally obsolete computer to read the files they

  contain, each of which consists of cut-and-pasted gruff and cliché-ridden

  sentiments: I thought love would last forever, I was wrong …

  Jonathan suspects his violent feelings towards Gawain may well

  moderate, but for now he cannot picture the Fighting Ram’s woolly

  head without just-swallowed processed cheese repeating on me …

  pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood. He turns his attention to

  the holdall he bought in Kuwait City. At the time he was simply

  playing for it. (Playing for what?) For time, idiot! He hadn’t wanted

  to arrive at Shaibah in full daylight and face sliminess of all

  sorts – possibly some political interference. There was this ulterior

  objective – and also winding up his close protection detail, who,

  no doubt, are very handy when it comes to dishing it out, but, as

  he’d suspected, were quite unable to take it. Jonathan dishes out the

  items he requested from the spotty Bangladeshi in his sisal-smelling

  shop on to the shiny bed cover: a khaki boiler suit, a heavy-duty

  rubberised torch, a canvas water bag, a pair of workman’s steel-toe-cap

  boots and a folding entrenching tool. True, this is the sort of

  stuff he might’ve smuggled across a land border in the glory days –

  there’d been a certain erotic frisson to be gained from helping a

  petrified Czech cipher clerk into a boiler suit … fingers fiddling at

  the belt, straying … The pod’s atmosphere is at once foetid and

  astringent … a locker-room ambience. He’d known Amir was dead

  before he left London – so the exfiltration kit had been nothing but

  wishful thinking … reverse all the clocks: let the poor man acquire

  yet more strength and vitality from every blow he was dealt, and so

  rise up from the concrete floor of whichever dark chamber in which

  the Rams had penned him. To die like this! Jonathan sobs aloud, at

  the hands of sheepily ignorant dole-queue-dodgers! Oh, Amir!

  Slowly, and with infinite weariness, Jonathan begins to undress:

  first the immaculately tailored midnight-blue, mixed silk-and-linen

  suit – next the Territorials’ tie, then the handmade Charvet shirt

  with the three-button barrel cuffs. He stands naked for a moment,

  in his Zimmerli briefs and purple handmade cotton socks. Wo

  Regenten wohl regieren, he sings in a light, clear baritone – and is

  answered from within by (Kann man Ruh und Frieden spüren),

  sung in deeper, muddier tones. His hand strays down over his

  prominent ribs and flat belly, Und was Länder glücklich macht,

  he breathes as his hand cups the liquid heaviness of his genitals –

  only to be answered by (Wo Regenten wohl regieren). But there’s

  nothing stirring in this mixed merino and long-stemmed cotton

  pouch, no quivering erlang-lang-langet. The methyphenidate and

  the military fuck-up have joined forces and rendered me impotent …

  (Not surprised, old fellow – booze alone’ll do it to you, and there’re

  those pep pills you’re always popping …) It’s true, Jonathan speaks

  aloud, that our relationship is at long last getting on to a better

  hippety-hoppety footing, but that doesn’t mean I have to TAKE

  ANY SHIT FROM YOU! The remainder of his prep
arations are

  carried out in silence, apart from the wheezing of the air con’, and

  the buzzing of a single insomniac fly … or should it be … spy. Stay

  Safe Always Drive Defensively reads the sign beside the rat-run

  which leads to the base’s main gate. Jonathan stands in the shadow

  of the sandbagged walls, hidden by the camouflage netting draped

  from one of the flanking sangars. He’s considered all the possibilities

  that lie in wait … for history is a pattern of timeless moments,

  the vast majority of which can tell you nothing, being dead … Now

  he settles on this, the most probable timeline: he’ll walk, quite

  casually, up to the Paras who’re on drag-stag, flash his diplomatic

  passport and EssEyeEss eyedee, wait for them to scare up Gerry

  Fox, speak to him on the phone, then pass it back to the quite-likely

  jug-eared grunt. Would they be amazed by this sight: a middle-aged

  British man wearing a khaki boiler suit and workman’s boots, and

  carrying a holdall, ducking casually under the first barrier, the

  second – and the third, sketchily saluting the lads in the last sangar,

  then wandering off into the greying Iraqi dawn? Yes, yes – they

  would. Just as the upstanding men – and a few women – of the

  armed forces community would probably be amazed when, in a few

  months’ time, the Prime Minister pays them a surprise visit and

  stands – the smile on his face off-centre, since it’s been pinned on

  him … by the invisible hand of the market. Yes, yes – the military

  would pose alongside him for public consumption, and their own

  uneven smiles might perhaps remain for a while after TeeBee’s

  had gone, but soon enough they, too, will fade … Just as Jonathan

  would’ve faded into the grey dawn six months earlier. And where

  would he go, this antisocial ghost? Why, to the airport of course –

  that’s where he’d go: to Basra International Airport – designated by

  his military brethren as an air point of disembarkation – where he’d

  wangle his way on to the next transport out of Iraq. (And how

  would he get there?) He’d walk there, old man – walk there because

  you’ll be with him, and, dutiful son that he is, he knows there’s

  nothing his father would like more than to stretch your legs and

  your lips simultaneously. (But, I say, Johnny, won’t it be terribly

  dangerous out there – and moreover quite a slog?) P’raps, but Jonathan

  would need the slog – need as well the detoxifying sweat which

  would, soon after he strode off into the slate-grey sands, burst from

  his every pore, because even in late spring the daily temperature

  never falls much below thirty degrees … He’d stride past the hulks of

  burnt-out technicals, left there pour encourager les autres, and at

  the point where the bumpy and tank-tracked tarmac divides – one

  way leading to Basra, the other to the aypod – he’d take the left

  fork. But then, after perhaps half an hour of footing along the roadway,

  the crepuscular light negativing the isolated buildings and

  shaggy palms, he’d almost certainly walk off into the desert – after

  all, risk is one thing, foolhardiness quite another. When Jonathan

  was far enough away from the road to be indistinguishable from …

  a wonky-donkey, he’d get out the phone, which all this time would’ve

  been Sam-sunging softly against my hip … Barry might’ve expected

  him to use any one of its enhanced functions to report the serendipitous

  (For him and his fellow-conspirators, maybe!) debacle to

  the Chief – but all Jonathan would require of this expensively and

  cleverly modified piece of technology is that it give him a compass

  bearing. At his own home, in Vauxhall, he would’ve already sat

  at his computer: a blade of anodised-black aluminium which is

  implanted quivering in the black-metal surface of his bare desk.

  Sat there, the buzz fizzing through him as he laboriously examined

  the off-road route between Shaibah Logistics Base and the aypod,

  using a combination of satellite photography obtained by the Firm,

  and rather more homely Google Earth images … see the little boys,

  caught on the pedal-operated irrigator, and flattened across a ditch by the

  eye-in-the-sky ? People who search for Saddam Hussein also search for

  Osama bin Laden … (Why, why would you’ve done that, Johnny?)

  Oh, Jonathan might well say, I’d a hunch we’d need to exfiltrate

  ourselves with some subtlety … Then he’d strike out towards a

  horizon against which would be outlined just a few of the thousands

  of defunct oil derricks scattered across the Iraqi oil fields. And Kins,

  observing these anodised-black hammer-shapes, quivering in the

  convection waves which would already be rising, might well make

  some allusion to Mjölnir, and how an analogy might be drawn

  between the thunder and lightning of the Wagnerian cosmos and

  the shock and awe of the Coalition’s assault on Saddam’s regime.

  And, as his son made for the horizon, in all likelihood Kins would

  continue in the same vein, speaking gently but insistently about the

  nature of good and evil, and how he’d known things were seriously

  awry from pretty early on … never personally lending any credence

  at all to the government’s claims. (Forty-five minutes!) he’d expostulate

  in Jonathan’s heating head (I couldn’t drive into Hemel and

  buy a few groceries in forty-five minutes), and, although his son

  would try to explain that readying long-range artillery shells with

  biological or chemical warheads to be fired might well take considerably

  less time, Kins’s dander would be up by then: he’d seize

  the opportunity afforded by this unprecedented situation to speak

  his mind. (It might help you, Johnny, to really understand the true

  consequences of all these epochal events if you just tried sympathising

  with the fate of a single man.) And, although Jonathan would

  very likely try coming back at him, dragging up Kins’s homophobia,

  his adultery and his failure to protect his sons from their mother’s

  abuses, this would be a mistake – for when it comes to the logical

  nit-picking humans term “ethics”, who’s more likely to be a past

  master: a middle-aged homosexual spy with a dependency on prescription

  drugs or a dead sociology lecturer? (Hypocrisy is what

  you’re accusing me of, Johnny) would be a familiar enough line of

  argument from Peter De’Ath (But you ain’t comparing like with

  like, old boy. There’s a distinction to be drawn here between cultural

  values – which do indeed change with time and place – and core

  morality, which, while perhaps not reducible to some fundamental

  aspect either of people or of the world, nonetheless remains remarkably

  consistent over time – think of the Golden Rule and the

  Categorical Imperative …). And because this is the beginning of a

  beautiful friendship, with the two of them stumbling over low and

  gritty dunes, the sun coming up behind casting their shadows far

  out into the future … Jonathan De’Ath wouldn’t lose his temper, not

  even if Kins strayed beyond hi
s remit and began chiding him over

  Kelly. (You can easily imagine the sort of man he was, Jonathan –

  dutiful, compassionate. He belonged to that odd religion, didn’t

  he?) Baha’i. (That’s the one – and what do they believe in?) The

  One True God and the spiritual unity of humankind (Sounds jolly

  familiar to me, Johnny …). By now – an hour or so after waving

  goodbye to the grunts in their sangar, Jonathan could well be tiring

  (I do wish you’d see a doctor about this pep pill thing of yours …),

  and so would likely take another pill … or two. The multicoloured

  and ever mutating vortices into which human movement can be

  transformed by the application of motion-capture might make of

  these minuscule actions – the popping out of pills from blisters

  of plastic-and-foil – a thrilling arabesque, but Jonathan would

  think of Kelly, propped up against his tree on Harrowdown Hill,

  his trusty penknife open beside him, his fingers busily and efficiently

  at work … poppety-pop goes the weasel. Think of Kelly and his lonely

  trudge into an unredeemable future – one Jonathan might be seen

  as having assisted in summoning. Yes, he’d think of this, and,

  hearkening to the wild dogs barking at the rising sun, he’d pick

  up the holdall and press on. (I don’t think I ever told you much

  about my experiences during the war …) Is the sort of sally to be

  expected from Kins, who’d be carried along as well – while his son

  would very likely think back to the baby, held aloft at Terminal

  Four security, speculating that everyone deserves his own particular

  mind-child … Barking dogs and mounting heat – the maddening

  split-second substitutions of flies for grit: one moment here, the

  next … not, and then the pathetic realisation, old leg-man that he

  is, that Jonathan has forgotten the canvas water bag, in which case

  all at once the scarred desert will be at one with his sore throat …

  His resignation would be in John’s inbox before the Herc landed

  at Brize Norton – he’d’ve at least made this much use of Barry’s

  Samsung, surely? And then what? Sitting in the transport’s booming

  fuselage, listening to the squaddies clustered round a laptop,

  who’d be watching one of the video montages it’s become de rigueur

  for your comrades to compile when you finish your tour: footage