Phone

by Will Self

  My objective isn’t pecuniary, Mister De’Ath – and nor do I have any

  connection with the world of espionage … and nor do I have any

  connection with the world of espionage … Really? he speaks aloud,

  just as he imagines he’d speak if it were ten years in the future,

  and the ship of state was – titularly at least – helmed by an expolitical

  researcher with a face as smoothly pink as a baby’s

  just-smacked bottom. Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose isn’t

  the sort of hackneyed phrase we’d expect a man of Jonathan

  De’Ath’s stripe to come up with, but he might well come out

  with it, sat in the Bardney bed and breakfast he’s been penned up

  in this past decade, watching the world turn only at a remove.

  – Really? – Yes, really, Mister De’Ath, although you’ll’ve realised

  my cyber-capabilities must be considerable simply to have located

  you in your retirement … simply to have located you in your

  retirement … Yes, he’d’ve been sitting there this past decade, hopelessly

  strung out and mired deep in the stasis horrors he always

  feared more than any possible violence or exposure. Sat there,

  shrunken, watching his son grow. Would he love little Gawain?

  Might the perverse choice of name engender or hinder his

  affections? And could the fact that Gawain took after his mother

  result in this sort of freakishness: that as Sally takes him to the

  Lincoln Equestrian Centre for larger and larger jodhpurs, little

  Gawain comes uncannily to resemble his namesake rather than his

  father: blond-haired, round-hipped – his expression, when caught in

  repose, sweetly baffled? On his infrequent trips up to town – which

  he’d undertake to see his accountant or solicitor, one imagines,

  rather than his tailor, the mundanities associated with his entail

  preoccupying Jonathan rather more now than the profundities of

  his shirt-tails – he’d walk through town from King’s Cross. He can

  be pictured, can he not, stopping by the railings of a park on a misty

  October evening, and hearkening to the sound of a former Sergeant

  in the Green Jackets – a man he’d probably fail to recognise – shout

  at twenty or so podgy office workers, Orlright! C’mon, you lot –

  drop and give me twenty, and keep your backs straight! Seeing the

  slogan printed on the T-shirts that cover those arched backs might

  give the man formerly known as the Butcher pause for thought:

  British Military Fitness, mm, I’ve skinned that hump … Yes, skinned

  it – which is why, years after the event, he’s having to dig deep and

  provide plenty of help for cowards … We can hypothesise that in the

  decade following the death of Amir Ali al-Jabbar at Camp Val in

  Ali al-Garbi, Maysan Governorate, southern Iraq, a number of

  similar cases might come to light – it’s not a matter of allocating

  blame or a human rights-induced hissy-fit, simply a statistical

  likelihood that … shit happens. A case might be brought in two

  thousand and five concerning the shootings of five Iraqi civilians by

  British soldiers in Basra in two thousand and three, and the death

  of a sixth in detention. By two thousand and ten the number of

  allegations of unlawful killing and other abuses made against the

  British Army might well have ballooned. A turn of phrase Jonathan

  De’Ath – ruefully recalling the unkind words he spoke in the

  mortuary tent in the Divisional Detention Facility at Shaibah

  Logistics Base – might well find a touch ironic, recalling how eager

  the dear silly old sausage … had been to see … the balloon go up.

  With pushing one hundred and fifty cases of unlawful killing and

  serious abuse registered with the British courts, lawyers involved in

  taking depositions and examining evidence might be expected to

  find that the various techniques used in the so-called harshing of

  Iraqi detainees – techniques which, in one case at least, would’ve

  been proven to’ve led directly to the man’s death – had also been

  applied across no fewer than, say, fourteen British military facilities

  – leading to the fairly plausible claim that this represented systemic

  abuse rather than a few bad apples … an idiom much hated, it can

  be predicted, by a man who’d previously delighted in a rather

  less fructuous sobriquet: And the steaks – don’t forget the steaks,

  Jonathan! Listening to the distance sough down the line – looking

  at the small print of Caistor Sheep Fair circa nineteen hundred,

  which Sally might well have hung above the telephone table,

  Jonathan could be forgiven, surely, for despairing of this provisional

  reality he’s stumbled into. What the fuck d’you have on me, or

  him – you can say right now, or simply get off the line and leave

  me in peace! is what any normal person would say, and, inasmuch

  as Jonathan De’Ath would by then be a householder, a parent and

  mein poofy host, it seems reasonable to accord him this prospective

  normality. To which Ben Whitehouse-Busner – sat in his Kilburn

  bedroom, with its impressive computing power and large quantities

  of stuff – would, no doubt, respond accordingly: The audio- and

  videotapes of the tactical questioning sessions at Camp Val that

  took place in May two thousand and five while your ex-lover was

  in command have, following my acquisition of your large data-set,

  also come into my hands … also come into my hands … Oh,

  yes. They have. Then fa-ancies flee a-way … I’ll care not what men

  sa-ay … I’ll labour night and day, To be a … Walking is what a man

  might well do under such circumstances – especially if he’d a golden

  retriever called something like … dunno – is Bonnie plausible? Yes,

  Bonnie: a silkily supple dog, always smarming round legs and fence

  posts, then dashing across the flooded furrows of winter fields.

  Come along, now, Bonnie! Heel, girl … Morning, Jonathan … Morning,

  Margaret … Dreadful weather, I’m glad to see you’re wrapped up

  well … Oh, I’m only going for a short walk, Margaret – over to Collow

  Abbey Farm … He’d think often – one assumes – of his father

  (Hard not to, really, if he’s somehow completely internalised his

  notion of my psyche), think especially of the long walk Kins had

  taken during the late summer of nineteen forty, down through the

  Lincolnshire fens, then the woodlands and fields of Hertfordshire

  and Cambridgeshire before eventually reaching London – travelling

  by night, and arriving on September the seventh, just in time to

  witness the onset of the second mass raid. He’d told Jonathan that

  as he gained the summit of Pole Hill, the Luftwaffe’s bombers were

  circling over the East End, round and round, again annagain – like a

  chair-o-plane. This image of his father, as a latter-day John Wesley,

  undertaking a strange un-evangelical progress – avoiding the towns,

  preaching not the Good News, but keeping to himself the shameful

  truth of his conscientious cowardice – would quite possibly strike

  deep with eldest son. Out there in the fields, where a crow lies dead

/>   in a cattle trough – and the seepage from a silage hopper stains a

  stony path a toxic green. Or so they say. Bonnie! Bon-nie! Bonnie!!

  Look at her run – you’ve that good a visual imagination, surely?

  If not, you could feed the words golden retriever running into the

  search bar and soon enough be seeing those gambolling legs and the

  fur … fly. Out there in the beet fields, stopping by a five-bar gate

  and leaning over it to examine the lumps of old masonry sunken in

  the turf – evidence of long-gone sanctity. Then undoing, quite possibly,

  your leather belt and slipping your corduroy trousers down off

  your hips. You wouldn’t be wearing expensive Swiss underwear any

  more – Sally’d buy you sensible boxer shorts in packs of five from

  EmmandEss. You’d tuck your tiny nubbin of a Ritalin-shrunk penis

  back between your legs and scream out to the dead crow – and the

  live pigeons which in all likelihood would wheel about the winter

  field – I’m Chelsea Manning! Holding the pose for as long as you

  dared: shirt, pullover and jacket hoiked up – pants and trousers

  down, as a small child does when … pissing in public: I’m Chelsea

  Manning! screamed with all the well-paid conviction of Issur

  Danielovitch playing Kirk Douglas screaming, I am Spartacus!

  Back at Church Lane, at the bed and breakfast known as Wagon

  Wheels, Jonathan might give Bonnie a rubdown, since she’d quite

  likely be drenched – both from the dew and because she probably

  leapt into duck pond. That’s retrievers for you. The old, thatched

  house would be called Wagon Wheels not because of the ancient

  association with the land, and the high farm carts they used to

  bring the harvest in with thereabouts – but because these were the

  premises of a garden-ornament business that limped along for a

  few seasons in the late nineteen eighties, before succumbing to the

  harsh economic reality. It’s conceivable. Just as the soil in this part

  of north Lincs was too infertile for profitable agriculture in the era

  before artificially synthesised fertilisers, so it might’ve been unable

  to sustain much garden ornamentation in the days before … teak

  decking, a phrase that conceivably could’ve stayed with Jonathan

  De’Ath for a decade and a half now – and might well be echoing in

  his head, back in the vestibule, sitting once more beneath the print

  of Caistor Sheep Market as he waits to be rung again by the man

  who’s acquired his large data-set – a man with a breathy voice, who

  repeats the last few words of every phrase … the last few words of

  every phrase – a quirk, which in the few minutes Jonathan has

  already spoken to him, would’ve struck him, n’est-ce pas, as having

  an uncanny resonance with his own (internal voice? I hardly think

  so, Johnny – what I have to say may often seem like old hat to you,

  but I hardly think it’s a mere echo of your own thoughts), which fall

  away to the carpet, to the skirting board, to the phone line pinned

  to that skirting board, to the Dulux Timeless silk emulsion with

  which that phone line has been coated – and to the small blobs

  and flecks of that Dulux Timeless silk emulsion, which, if you were

  to peer very closely, you’d find trapped in the carpet’s pile … you

  just can’t get the staff nowadays. Yes, his thoughts might well fall

  away, but his awareness would remain – his awareness of his former

  lover’s baffled expression as he removes the soiled towels from the

  hopper in the men’s changing room. Strictly speaking, a menial

  task far outside his remit as Facilities Manager, but Bryn is off sick.

  Possibly. This awareness is a faint, violet-coloured luminescence –

  you’d never spot it, unless you knew what to look for – and where to

  look. When the phone – an ugly contemporary appliance, the

  receiver of which could well be propped up in a sort of socket or

  cradle – eventually trilled into life, he’d answer it with this query –

  or one very like it – already prepared: What do you want? To which

  Ben Whitehouse-Busner’s reply not could, or might, or possibly, or

  likely, or probably, but very definitely would be: I’d like to add you

  to my professional network … I’d like to add you to my professional

  network … If there were any other way of doing this, without being

  quite so manipulative, I’d privilege it … I’d privilege it … a way

  of putting this Ben knows will pique the curiosity of the spook he’s

  managed to hook … on the end of my line. Have you met Ben

  Whitehouse-Busner? No, really, have you made his acquaintance?

  The question needs to be posed, because he doesn’t, as such, have

  any social life. We could go further: he doesn’t, as such, have any

  social existence, preferring to tread water a little bit abaft as the ship

  of time sails on … as the ship of time sails on … You may’ve seen a

  film about an autistic savant calculating betting odds in fractions of

  a second – or read in some fiction or other descriptions of a lummox

  of an autist: pen-portraits of him at different ages, and viewed

  from different perspectives – his mother’s, his grandfather’s –

  and wondered at the egregiousness of their stereotyping … and

  wondered at the egregiousness of their stereotyping … No, no! Don’t

  worry – I’m not going to repeat everything: on the contrary, I’m

  going to explain about the, frankly, wilful palilalia and much else

  besides – including the reason my much loved father refers to me as

  Mandinkulus, and believes me to be his deep-penetration agent.

  But first: some toast. Some prefer nettles … the title in Japanese

  can be phonetically transcribed as, tade kuu mushi mo sukizuki,

  and written in Japanese characters as – pretty,

  aren’t they? And a logo-syllabary points the way, does it not, to our

  own emergent universal grammar of sounds, images and text?

  A language that, when piped through fibre-optic cabling and hosed

  on to the inside of the screen, bears a strong resemblance to this,

  arguably the most complex writing system ever evolved by humankind.

  Young Westerners who become obsessed by Japanese culture –

  usually as a result of their absorption into the comical milieus of

  anime and manga – are called weeaboos, which sounds as derisorily

  silly to the Japanese ear as it does to the occidental one. Each to

  their own – which is the English equivalent of the Japanese idiom

  Tanizaki used for his novel’s title. One that’s translated literally as

  Water-pepper-eating Bugs Will Eat It Willingly, but was rendered

  by the eminent Japanologist Edward Seidensticker as Some Prefer

  Nettles – and what I prefer is the heel of a standard Hovis loaf.

  Always have preferred it – always will. Each to their own. A style of

  life is determined, I feel, as much by these sorts of decisions as by

  any major aesthetic – let alone ethical – ones. The choice of foodstuffs

  and their preparation: the application of the butter, smoothing

  it out to the edges of the bread as an expert plasterer plies his hawk.

  The great advantag
e of the heel is that it has a sort of inbuilt

  rim, such that, once the jam or marmalade has been added to the

  butter, the by now semi-liquid morass can be sufficiently contained

  to enable me to raise the heel to my mouth and take a large bite

  without its disintegrating into crumbs, buttery blobs and spatters of

  confiture – which would upset Milla. Here she is, leaning into me

  for a brief hug as she squeezes past to half fill from the kitchen tap

  an old mug which came to us, two Easters ago, with a Cadbury’s

  Milk Tray egg laid in it … Aaaah! Your mother’s smell, they say,

  you never forget – on your death bed it’ll return to you, performatively:

  odours of breast milk, lipstick and Avon Skin So Soft each

  playing their unfaithful role, betraying your high, loving purpose

  with this low and fatal blow. Getting angry ain’t my style – nor

  am I the empathy-free zone beloved of dualistic psychologists,

  who autists believe incapable of realising the inner worlds of

  others. What inner world? What others? Pah! I embrace Milla –

  she snuffles into the hollow of my shoulder – I hear the faint spatter

  of water drops on the lino at our feet. I know she’s sublimated

  her love for me into her romantic obsession with the orfer these

  past five years, and, being Marshall’s child quite as much as I am

  Mandinkulus, I understand the message: her sexual feelings are

  now so much digital scrim, leaving her nestling in my arms …

  Mm-hm, just having a bit of toast – dunno, round five, maybe? She

  frees herself, turns, heads back out of the kitchen and along the

  corridor to the front room. Freed, she turns – along the corridor

  she heads, from the kitchen to the front room. To the front room

  she heads, freed from the kitchen along the corridor. Chiasmus

  mirrors semantically the rubric of public key encryption used for

  secure internet communication: consider each clause as a prime

  number, multiply them together and not even the most powerful

  quantum computer conceivable could factor out what it really

  means … The actions of humans – wildly unpredictable despite

  their instinctual basis – are like this. Milla and Gramps have always

  seen me as stimming – whereas from my vantage it’s them who’re

  ever attempting to manage chaos by doing the same senseless things