by Will Self
of the grunt footing it down dusty alleys, bracing a few rag
heads, rattling around in an aypeesee and playing videogames – all
to the accompaniment of the tinny-synthy chorusing you’re outta
touch – you’re outta time … Kins might well want to discuss this
unprecedented phenomenon – the mediatised twisting of reality
implied by this: young men returning from a war zone, where they
mostly pretended to be in another war zone, watching video footage
of themselves simulating combat. In his clumsy, slightly crass but
for all that well-meaning way, Kins would quite possibly use the
opportunity to begin speaking a little about his time in Lincolnshire,
at Collow Abbey Farm (Not far from Bardney, where I believe
you’ve taken to putting up with your, ah … friend). Jonathan,
however, while not wishing to offend his father, would nonetheless
ignore him and instead ponder this new future on which he’s
embarked: True, superannuated spooks who’ve specialised in hum’
int’ aren’t exactly at a premium in today’s highly sophisticated,
computerised workplace, but the show must go on … (You could do
worse than think about a move into academia) is the sort of thing
his father might well suggest (after all, you were a full scholar …),
but all bets would, pretty bloody obviously, be off, the second Sally
put her cards on the table. At the Wolseley, almost certainly – a
favoured haunt of the old Butcher, who’d be greeted fawningly by
the maître d’ and led straight to it. The old Butcher believed, not
unreasonably, that Wolseley’s Art Nouveau decor and lacquered-red-and-gold
colour scheme complemented his own soigné
appearance: the heavy gold signet ring on his crooked pinky Brandy
Alexanders, I think today, Rafael … the hint of crimson silk in the
lining of his jacket, the whiff of brimstone on his breath … However,
that was the Butcher that was – Jonathan would fidget with
the menu, order something bland … and eggy, sit there sickened
to the core of his fastidious being by Sally’s break-out! A line
of pimples across her pretty forehead – at least seven or ten, of which
four have bilious-yellow heads: the insignia, he’d realise soon
enough, of a long-haired general, who’s just received her two-up promotion
… Jonathan would’ve seen the Chief and Personnel already.
In fact, the procedures associated with the retirement of a senior
EssEyeEss intelligence officer are, you’d probably be right in assuming,
blandly routine. You’d probably be right in assuming the
blandly routine procedures the retirement of a senior EssEyeEss
intelligence officer are associated with. Routine procedures – bland
ones – are in fact associated with senior intelligence officers’ retirement
from the EssEyeEss. (A full-salary pension, I believe – there
remains at least some value attached to public service …) Although
not, in your case, to the most public service of all. (I was a very
young man – just twenty. My call-up papers came the week I went
up to the varsity. You can have no idea of the agonies I went through
that week before applying to go before the tribunal.) But surely it’s
as Maeve has always said: you can’t’ve been unaware of the existential
threat Nazi Germany represented … (There’s knowing and not
knowing, Johnny – you more than anyone should be aware of that.)
There’s also passing the egg-test, and failing it: when – in an onrush
of tears and nervous hilarity – Jonathan learnt from Sally he was to
become a father, how might he react to this blow, so long anticipated
it was effectively preceded by its own impact? Put one hand
on the next rung of the cold climbing-frame p’raps … and smell
old dried blood … Sally would smile at him through her tears of
contentment – and Jonathan would wonder if he’d ever be able to
touch her again, while inside he’d be falling, tumbling down
through the open framework of his now exposed life: Bong! Bong!
Bong! Even as the far from exemplary sentences were, quite possibly,
being handed down on Cooley, Kenyon and Larkin for the prisoner
abuse they perpetrated at Camp Bread Basket in two thousand and
three. What could Gary Bartlam have been thinking of when he
left the films to be developed at his local branch of Snappy Snaps?
Presumably, he’d a vague notion the process was fully automated,
and no human operative would see the pictures of Iraqi detainees
lying in pools of their own urine, or being shifted about the place on
the prongs of a forklift truck – so much discounted stock. The Butcher
was the sort of amoral cynic who’d’ve very likely arraigned Bartlam
for the crime of computer illiteracy, rather than being an accessory
to prisoner-abuse. For, if you wanted to capture and conceal such
fugitive images, the digital realm is where you would logically go.
Remember the seven pees – Jonathan does. He learnt them during
his youthful days as a yomping stab – and, although by the time we
could theoretically place him in the Wolseley, hearing the news
of his impending paternity, he’d’ve long since stopped attending
regular refresher courses and training weekends, he’d remain, nonetheless
… on the reserve. That prior planning and preparation
prevents piss-poor performance is a given for the ageing roué – quite
as much as the juvenescent soldier – who must go equipped with
Tadalafil or Sildenafil in jelly or pill form. The irony that the tumescence
which led to this procreative act had been artificially induced
wouldn’t be lost on him – nor would the fact that he’d become
heavily dependent on fluoxetine, initially prescribed for him by the
medic at VeeBeeArr, with a view to ameliorating the depression
many active men face upon retirement. Why ironic? Because
Jonathan De’Ath, being the man he might’ve been, would know
that selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors are – according to the
meta-analyses of trials big pharmaceutical companies would rather
didn’t receive too much media attention – little more than nocebos:
drugs which convince you of their organic efficacy by psychically
bamboozling you with their side-effects: Mmm … I feel shit –
therefore I must also be feeling … happy. The eggs Florentine Jonathan
would’ve ordered could lie there in their little dish – so much
expensive vomit, quite likely anticipating the smelly mess of coldly
coping Lincolnshire mornings. Because if you’re already prepared
to subject yourself to this counter-intuition: Mmm … I feel shit –
therefore I must also be feeling … happy, running a bed-and-breakfast
might well seem a good idea, especially one in a fairly remote
village, the owners of which – having rather failed to make a go
of it, but being a bit older, and with pensions of their own – might
be considering a move to … Marbella. Jonathan wouldn’t regret
leaving the Firm too much – couldn’t conceivably miss the mandatory
Friday-evening drinks, when the officers and their auxiliaries
/> gathered on the terrace of VeeBeeArr to congratulate themselves on
the control they surreptitiously exercised over the world’s events,
even as they lost control of their own minds – and eventually, in the
case of some older and younger officers alike, their bladders. No,
he wouldn’t miss this – any more than he’d miss the innumerable
intrigues and the ceaseless undertones of secret conversations,
which, towards the end of his career, were being entirely digitised –
such that loyalty became a function of the impossibility of factoring
prime numbers rather than a chap’s inner decency and manifest stiff
upper lip. We might picture the Butcher, as was, transforming
in these latter years into mein poofy host … since it’d be perfectly
obvious to these Lincolnshire hicks … who wears the trousers. We
might see him on any given day, spooning the jam and marmalade
from kilo-size catering tins into the small aluminium dishes they
place on the guests’ tables. We can conceive of him taking orders: so
many eggs – so much bacon. He might well lick the stub of a pencil
before bending his shell-like attentively to these decent-looking
men and their equally decent-looking wives, for, coming from where
they do, with their vague air of being ex-forces or something of that
ilk, the De’Aths would attract a certain sort of clientele to Wagon
Wheels: couples in their late fifties and early sixties – on the verge
of retirement but still active, the sort of folk for whom sensible is a
positive virtue, in shoes and people alike. Yes, the ageing couples
would clear out for the day – garlanded with binoculars, to tramp
the sodden fields and perhaps visit the little church of Goltho,
all that’s left of the medieval village which struggled to survive here
for centuries, farming the marginally productive land, before succumbing
to economic forces beyond their control. If you were to go to
Bardney, and stay there, you might – in the decade, say, between
two thousand and five and two thousand and fifteen – be able to
raise a child relatively unaffected by developments in the outside
world. A task that’d be rendered easier because this remote area of
northern Lincolnshire could well remain throughout these years
under-penetrated by the burgeoning network of high-speed
fibre-optic broadband – and something of a desert for mobile-phone
reception as well. Of course, it’d be pretty rough on poor little
Gawain De’Ath – which is what, conceivably, Jonathan would insist
on for the child’s name: his quid pro quo for having to have the
fucking sprog in the first place! (Now, now, old boy – there’s no call for
such histrionics. Such a bore.) It’d be pretty rough at the village
school, where Gawain would be the only real bumpkin – since all
the rest would have eyePads and eyePhones, and computers at
home. But then, at least as Gawain got older, he might be able to
explain to such little friends as he did have that his dad hates the
news and won’t have so much as the local rag in the house. This
despite the fact that – as he’d undoubtedly tell young Gawain –
Jonathan had worked in regional journalism himself before taking
early retirement. Yes, Bardney would be good place to raise a child –
and to shelter from the fallout of the successive government
enquiries which would, one assumes, necessarily follow the debacle
of Britain’s involvement in the occupation of Iraq. (I still think it’s
pretty iffy – calling your son after your boyfriend. A boyfriend you
seem to’ve pretty comprehensively rejected.) I can understand that,
Dad – but I am pretty iffy. And I think, were I to have a child under
such circumstances, giving him the name Gawain would be an
aide-memoire. (Explain?) It’d help me to remember to protect both
him – and his namesake. The Iraqis could be bought off – Amir’s
people as well. No one on the Brit side would wish to look too
deeply into the murky business of prisoner and detainee abuse – as
Lieutenant-Colonel Thomas would likely put it: they’d be keen to
kick it into the long grass … (Well, I think they should investigate
all the allegations properly – it’s an absolute scandal, yet another
way in which this entire illegal conflict has perverted the British
people’s moral natures, so they’ve accepted – quite uncritically –
such atrocities as torture and arbitrary detention. Your colleagues
were responsible for sending dissidents back to oppressive regimes
we wished to kowtow to – which makes them both accessories to
torture and … murder.) For my colleagues I’ve some sympathy,
Dad – the Great Game is always difficult to play: the pieces either
animated or unwieldly – scampering away across the chequerboard
or suckered fanatically to their squares. For Gawain and his troopers
I’ve more sympathy still (But yet he disgusts you?). Now, yes, he
disgusts me – by the way, what d’you think that thing is over there,
behind the concrete structure with the sort of pylon on top of it?
(Looks like just another one of those oil derricks our brave boys
managed to destroy while helping these benighted people reconstruct
their nation.) C’mon, Dad, you’re being, hic! facetious.
(What’s that you’re swigging from, Johnny – have you got a bottle?)
It’s whisky, Dad – your preferred tipple, I believe … You always
loved the heat of a shot gouging down your sad and scraggy red
neck, now didn’t you … (There’s no need to be insulting, Johnny –
where the devil did you get hold of it?) In Kuwait City, at the
Hilton. I popped in to see an old colleague … (Well, you might
offer a fellow a wee dram, since he’s along for the ride.) Don’t fret,
old man – you’ll get yours in good time: it’ll just sort of seep into
you – you wait. (And justice for the abused Iraqis and their families
– that’ll just seep into them, will it?) Jonathan De’Ath, would, one
assumes, keep plodding on as the sun rose in the shocked sky. Every
few hundred metres he’d either find or create sufficient shadow
to check the erlang-lang-langet on the Samsung to ensure he was
maintaining the right bearing for the aypod – then he’d plod on,
bickering with his father’s imago: The more flagrant malefactors –
those whose crimes were, say, exposed at Snappy Snaps – they will,
of course, be punished – but war is, Dad, by definition a brutal
business. What can you expect of nineteen-year-old boys, mostly
from disadvantaged backgrounds, called upon to police a failed state
in which every adult male goes equipped with an automatic rifle?
(Go on! Give us a top-up, there’s a good chap – anyone would think
you were enforcing a two-can-bloody-rule!) It was just another of
the Narcissist-in-Chief’s fantasies that the Universal Declaration
of Human Rights could somehow be applied on the battlefield and
to its aftermath – utterly delusional: there can be no rights where
there’s no authority capable of enforcing them. But, hic! anyway,
gi
ven the way their political masters dumped them in it, I think
they acquitted themselves well enough – and certainly behaved
with far less brutality than almost any other army would in similar
circumstances. (But there were abuses, you can’t deny that?) I can’t –
and I don’t seek to: I wish only to protect the reputation of a man
I loved for nigh on thirteen years – a decent if weak man. A man
who would, I wager, when he realises his lover has managed to cover
up his and his men’s, ah … indiscretions, quietly resign his commission
and slip sideways into civilian life. (I can’t imagine it’ll be
easy for him to find a job that’ll both satisfy him and allow him to
exercise his skills as a tank commander.) Ye-es … that would be a
tall order, but really Gawain’s abilities have always been more pastoral
than martial, don’t you think? (So … what, the priesthood?)
Don’t be bloody ridiculous, Kins – not everyone longs to decay away
in Little Piddling-in-the-Marsh with your beloved cleresy. No,
I see him doing something people-centred, which also allows him
to maintain his splendid physique. (He could set up a keep-fit business
of some sort – there’s quite a premium placed on an ex-military
man. At Lancing all our peetee instructors were old soldiers …)
No, no … No, no … Muttering away to himself, Jonathan would
carry on north-north-west … That’s not it at all – can’t see him in
his combat keks and khaki T-shirt, pacing up and down in front
of a lot of dismounted desk jockeys, bellowing at ’em to give him at
least one, if not twenty … Jonathan would see instead: Colonel
Thomas installed as the manager of a leisure centre on the outskirts
of a small Welsh town – although he hopes Gawain would never be
so crass as to style himself so in civilian life. No, but the Rams’
regimental blazer probably would be worn, with a plastic namebadge
reading MANAGER on its lapel – he’d look the very picture of
a modern major-general, having received this two-down demotion:
picture him inserting the letters into the peg-board: FTNESS CLASS
FOR MUMS AND TODDLERS IN THE SMALL POOL – then clap his
hand to his forehead, having spotted the typo: he’d have to un-peg
them all and start again … And Jonathan De’Ath, over in Bardney,
