Phone

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,