by Will Self
‘What?’ She was charmingly aghast.
‘Suck it – suck the claw, it’s the only way to get out all the flesh.’
Jane Narborough, whose white beach weeds and prematurely grey hair gave her a shipwrecked air, broke in, ‘I shouldn’t do any such thing, my dear. These creatures are sea rats, complete scavengers –’
‘But nevertheless,’ Dorian baited the vegetarian, ‘scavengers with souls, Jane, that’s what you believe?’
‘Yes, of course, with soul substance.’
‘Is that like soul food?’ said Wotton, who liked nothing better than a good tease.
Dorian refused to admit him and continued, ‘D’you think, Jane, that lobsters have the soul substance of human scavengers with bad karma?’
‘I’m not… er… I don’t…’
Batface came to her rescue. ‘I don’t think metem-metem-metempsychosis works quite like that, Dorian.’
But Dorian had never intended this to be a discussion. He addressed himself once more to his companion, thrusting the white prong right into her mouth. ‘Suck it, Octavia… suck it and find out.’
‘I rather think’ – Batface began collecting up her impedimenta – ‘I better had go and see the Principessa. Why don’t you come with me, Jane? We can stop at Cap Ferrat on the way back –’
‘Oh yes, if you say so, Victoria.’
‘And you, Octavia?’
‘I’ll stay with the boys.’
The florid figure of David Hall, the politician, was set down next to Batface, his lick of chocolate hair gently irrigating his bulbous brow, his barely-in-control eyebrows dewy in the afternoon heat. For his transplantation to the Côte d’Azur he had managed an MCC blazer and cricket whites. He swilled, then swigged the remains of his wine and said, ‘I’ll come with you, Lady Victoria. I haven’t been to Cap Ferrat for twenty years.’
Wotton muttered to Dorian, ‘Not since he gave Willie Maugham a blowjob on his deathbed.’
‘In that case I shall have to take the Jag, Henry – will you three fit in the Volkswagen?’ Batface looked down at her husband with genuine concern.
‘Of course, if Dorian doesn’t mind sitting on Octavia’s lap.’
‘Good, well, we’ll see you back at the house for drinks then.’
Hall and the two women left the table, strolled along the terrace and were gone. Wotton beckoned to a waiter and ordered three glasses of marc de champagne, three double espressos and the bill. He studiously relit his Cohiba. When the drinks arrived, he and Dorian knocked them back with gusto, but Octavia was more ruminative – so far as that was possible for a young woman like her, who looked as if a strong breeze might carry her off. ‘Are you and Batface in love, Henry?’ she said at length.
‘When you fall in love, Octavia, you join the league of the self-deceived’ – Wotton waited a beat – ‘and by the time it’s all over you’ve enrolled everyone else.’ She didn’t understand what he said, though, merely hearing it as a neutral sort of burble.
‘I thought I was in love with Jeremy,’ she mused, ‘but perhaps I don’t have the right kind of personality to be successful at marriage.’ And in return Wotton didn’t pay any attention to the substance of what she said, merely listening for his cue.
‘Marriage has definitely been good for my personality,’ he drawled. ‘Since marrying I’ve acquired at least four more personae.’
‘D’you love me, Dorian?’ Octavia touched his dimpled chin with the tips of her fingers.
‘I’d like to make love to you right here’ – he took them and buffed them with his lips – ‘right now. I adore you.’
‘Quelle bonne idée,’ Wotton put in, ‘but why not wait until these kick in?’ He had three acid blotters tucked in the palm of his hand, which he exposed to the other two as if they were stigmata. ‘They’re Tetragrammatons – see, the name of God is written on them in Greek, Latin and Hebrew. They’re incredibly strong – but mellow too. Just the thing for Aqualand.’
‘Oh, I don’t know…’ she prodded the cardboard squares as if they were alive ‘… it’s acid, is it? I’ve never taken it before.’
‘Have half, then.’ Wotton was emollient. ‘Half of anything never hurt anyone. Trust me.’ To almost anyone who knew Wotton even slightly this would have been an absurd proposition, but Octavia knew nothing at all about anyone whomsoever, so she took the proffered half that Wotton tore off, while Dorian had the other. Needless to say, Wotton himself washed a whole blotter down with the dregs of his marc.
Shortly, the mismatched trio found themselves in a strange kind of interior. They were caught up, like three Jonahs, within the iron ribs of the miniature submarine that plied a five-minute course across the harbour to the artificial island protecting it from the Mediterranean. The submariners sat in a row, on a metal bench which spanned the hull of the vessel, swinging their legs. In truth, it wasn’t much of a submarine, more of a demi-sub dabbling its nether regions in the ocean. Through the upper portholes there were splashed-upon views of bikini-clad yacht girls and kids mucking about in inflatable boats; while through the portholes in the bottom of the hull could be seen weedy outcrops of old Evian bottles set in sludge. The Nemo who piloted this clip-joint Nautilus one twenty-thousandth of a league under the sea was poised on a bench up in the bow, his tanned legs dangling, his espadrilles kicking. Octavia concentrated on the straw whorls as they appeared in the green gloom, first the right, then the left. First the right, then the left.
‘Are you going to stay at the villa?’ Wotton asked Dorian conversationally.
‘I’m not sure that would be wise, Henry – can Hall or the Duchess be trusted?’
‘They can be relied upon to be dull.’
‘Why the fuck d’you put up with them?’
‘Simple. Batface likes them – they talk history and religion and politics together – and they’re good front – Hall’s a minister now – and their being here makes it curiously less punitive undergoing the necessary health regime.’
‘Are you off smack, then?’
‘I always kick in the summer hols, Dorian – you know that. No drugs at all to speak of, just a little weed, a few hallucinogens and some fine wines. Self-control is always easier to practise in the country, after all – there’s nowhere for the self to escape to.’
Octavia’s periscope spotted what was bearing down on her and she resurfaced into the conversation. ‘Hall knows Jeremy – they belong to the same club.’
‘They’re certainly both clubbable,’ Wotton said.
‘Dorian,’ she pressed on, ‘perhaps it would be best if we stayed at a hotel?’
‘Nonsense,’ Dorian huffed, ‘we’re here perfectly legitimately. We’re friends. Jeremy’s flying down to join you in a couple of days; you decided to visit Henry and Victoria with me. We’ll occupy separate rooms. For Christ’s sake, Octavia, anyone would think this was the eighteen – rather than the nineteen-eighties.’
‘You and Henry have no idea what people say about you, have you?’
But if she had been about tell them she was denied the opportunity, for the hull bumped then grated on concrete, and the Captain sang out, ‘Nous voici, Madame, Messieurs; l’Île de Bendor. Nous sommes arrivés.’ They ascended through a hatch, and the cinematically dim interior of the miniature submarine was eradicated by the flashbulb intensity of the afternoon sun. The three stood on the dock, teetering and momentarily stunned, while the craft bumped and grated about, before churning its way back.
Dorian and Henry adored Bendor. They often took guests there to savour its utterly chichi falsity. The islet was a mere crenellation of concrete, encrusted with mock-Moorish pavilions and implanted with palms. Tennis-court-sized courtyards were overseen by hidden balconies, and there were niches within grottoes within turrets. The folly was the creation of a pastis millionaire and it was a load of aniseed balls. But then that’s the French, simultaneously the most stylish and the most gauche people imaginable.
Not that there were any French in
evidence on that particular afternoon; the trio had the pseudo-place to themselves. Which was just as well, because as they frolicked up into its tiny interior – holding hands, cavorting, the two men swinging Octavia between them as if she were a child – it became increasingly obvious that the acid was getting a grip on them. They came to a halt, giggling with the unaccustomed exertion, and propped themselves along a balustrade in an archway which looked down on a little enclosed courtyard.
‘I feel awfully peculiar,’ Octavia said.
‘So do I,’ Wotton added, getting out a packet of Boyards Maïs and sticking one of the thick, bilious cigarettes in his thin, pale lips.
‘You always feel peculiar,’ Dorian put in.
‘Excepting…’ Wotton emitted smoke and twisted self-regard in equal measure ‘… when I feel someone more peculiar than me.’
Octavia was examining her outstretched fingers intently, as if seeing them for the first time and puzzled as to their function. ‘D’you think…? My hands… they feel like skin gloves stuffed with meat…’ Even in the harsh sunlight her pupils were monstrously dilated, completely eclipsing her green irises. ‘Are we all simply skin suits stuffed with meat?’
‘Don’t tell that to poor Jane,’ Wotton chortled; ‘she wouldn’t like the idea at all. Far better that you tell her we’re stuffed with grain – then she can slit our bellies, decant the stuff into sacks and send it to the poor Ethiopians.’
‘Yes, that’s what they need…’ Dorian had pulled up the front of Octavia’s dress and was blatantly caressing her naked belly ‘… belly-aid.’
‘I feel so strange…’ she moaned. ‘Everything’s too big or too small, and it’s all sliding in and out of itself, as if the world were a trombone.’
‘That’s very good, my dear’ – Wotton also patted her belly – ‘a very nice image.’
‘I never knew before’ – she slumped a little, groping for Dorian’s hand – ‘that the world has a pulse.’
‘Perhaps, Henry’ – Dorian fastidiously removed Wotton’s hand from Octavia’s belly – ‘it would be sensitive of you to leave us at this point?’
‘Perhaps…’
It would have been entirely in character for Wotton to have insisted at this juncture on a grotesque form of droit de seigneur, as if, having brought Octavia to Bendor, he had first claim on her hallucinogenic hymen. Instead, he wandered off without a backward glance, strolling through the deserted courtyards, past the mini-minarets, and down some steps to a rocky shoreline, where he squatted and, clearly hallucinating madly, became wholly focused on the wavelets breaking at his feet. In Wotton’s inner ear great whirls and skirls of electric guitar slashed and meshed and crashed, as if a vast orchestra of Jimi Hendrixes were playing the Siegfried Idyll.
Back at the balustrade, events took a nauseating course:
—Most people are dead, aren’t they, Dorian?
—They’re certainly a rotten bunch. He was still caressing her, but at the same time encouraging her out of her silk briefs. He wound her dress up around her armpits and fastened it there with a firm twist. He lightly touched her exposed breasts, as if they were objects.
—But you’re not dead, Dorian; you’re so beautiful – you’re so alive. She was fixated by his face – seemingly his beauty was the one thing checking the very dissolution of her ego. Which was why it was all the more cruel when Dorian turned her away from him, and bent her upper body over until she was face down across the balustrade. Her vacant visage was now in a position to babble at some lichen, You’re green and small and slow and so old, so very old.
But then, as Dorian did things at the other end of her, Octavia’s face became contorted with awareness, and her spaced-out vacancy was overwritten with the most earthy of violations.
It was twilight in the hospital. Wotton stubbed out his umpteenth cigarette, twisting the stub as he twisted the end of his tale. ‘It certainly wouldn’t have been my wish to bridle Dorian’s instincts in any way. I concede, she did seem distressed, but there was nothing untoward about that – it was bloody righteous acid. You have to remember, Baz, at that time the disease was very much the new kid on the viral block. There’d only been a few score actual deaths in Britain, and as far as we knew they were all renters and street junkies. I had no reason to connect her demise – it was pneumonia, I believe – with Dorian.’
‘But it was connected, wasn’t it?’
‘And we never made it to Aqualand that day. I had to dose the poor waif up with brandy and Valium before we could even get her into the mini-sub.’
A large plump Rastafarian came into the cubicle, bearing a Fortnum & Mason’s bag in one hand, while the other clamped a handkerchief across his nose and mouth. His dreadlocks were fastened in a tricoloured sweatband (red, yellow and green); he sported dark glasses with Lion of Judah hinge bosses and wore a lucent tracksuit.
‘Ah, Bluejay!’ Wotton exclaimed delightedly. ‘Come here and show me what you’ve brought for my little picnic.’ He yanked the Anglepoise round so that it shone down on to the apron of covers between his parted legs.
But Bluejay displayed a marked unwillingness to advance any further than the door; instead he merely tossed the bag over. It fell limply on to the bed. Seizing it, Wotton emptied out five or six nodules of heroin and crack cocaine, all tightly wrapped in plastic. Baz rose and went over to the ghastly little window, the better to ignore the transaction.
‘Excuse me, my dear Bluejay, while I arise from this semi-recumbent position.’ Wotton struggled up on an elbow.
‘Don’ get nowhere near me, man!’ He warded Wotton off with a be-ringed hand and partially retreated out of the door.
‘Oh come now, Bluejay, you cannot be so credulous as to believe that I’ll infect you with my touch or…’ he gently exhaled ‘… poof… my breath?’
Bluejay recoiled still further. ‘I dunno nuffin’ ’bout that Henry, I jus’ don’ want you near me, man. Take the fuckin’ gear an’ gimme the dosh. Dis place gives me the fuckin’ ’orrors.’
‘I don’t think you’d find many who’d dissent from that. So be it, here’s your dosh…’ he chucked a sheaf of notes on to the bed and Bluejay retrieved them with a flinch ‘… and I trust when we meet again it will be in more salubrious circumstances.’
‘I ain’t comin’ here again, Henry.’
‘Well, you and my medical gaolers are in concurrence then. A tout à l’heure.’
As soon as the Rasta had left, Wotton, with trembling hands, began to unpick one of the nodules. Baz turned from the window. ‘I can’t believe you’re still using drugs, Henry – don’t you realise how severely they compromise your immune system?’
‘Compromise? What an absurd expression – how can my immune system be compromised? It’s not an adulterous husband caught with its trousers down in a bedroom farce. Really, Baz.’
‘Listen Henry, your only chance of staying alive is to live as healthily as possible, eat organic food, drink pure liquids, exercise regularly. You must understand that.’
‘Oh, but Baz, I assure you, I do regard my body as a temple. It just happens to be one where the ceremonies are orgiastic and conducted using mood-altering drugs.’ Wotton remained a punctilious officiating priest at these ceremonies: despite his tremors he’d already managed to chop out a couple of lines of smack on a handy plate. ‘Baz, you’ll indulge?’ He looked up at his old friend with an eyebrow arched interrogatively.
Basil Hallward shuddered. ‘I haven’t touched the stuff for five years, Henry; I’m not about to now.’
‘I see; well, I suppose it would be remiss to chide you for a sin of omission. You’ll have a drink, though?’ He sloshed the remains of the ’poo.
‘I haven’t drunk alcohol for five years either.’
‘That’s absurd…’ he snarfed up first one line ‘… incomprehensible…’ and then the other.
Baz pressed on with his inquisition. The only way – he reasoned – to keep his sobriety in this den of disease and derangement w
as to focus on what mattered. ‘But you didn’t see Dorian only on the Riviera, did you, Henry?’
‘Oh no no, I saw him in town as well. Not that he’s always been pleased to see me. As I know you appreciate, Baz, Dorian is a social chameleon, adapting himself perfectly to whatever background he finds himself standing against. In London that Christmas – as he has been for every subsequent one – Dorian was at the very epicentre of what passes for a season. He’d moved to a mews house off the Gloucester Road, and acquired a silly little sports car to jiggle over the cobbles. He drives it with superb recklessness – as if he were immortal – and with the top down whatever the weather. But his real coup de théâtre has been to infiltrate the select little circle of faggots who stack themselves around the Windsors’ stake. Not, you understand, that Dorian’s on anything but curtsying terms with the Queen herself, but he has managed to ingratiate himself with Her Royal Regurgitation, the Princess of Clothes.
‘Dorian has always been a harlot high and low. Whether he’s in the darkness of a box at Covent Garden, or the darkness of a toilet stall underneath the Strand, his behaviour remains the same, intriguing and besmirching. He’s developed a particular affinity with Thickie Spencer, because like her he’s a psychological parvenu. After all, both of them have bona fides aplenty to be themselves in the beau monde, yet they prefer to act. They find acting so much more real than reality.
‘Personally, I’d never allow myself to kowtow to the Windsors. Ridiculous. But Dorian’s intent on being the ultimate fag – and she’s the ultimate fag hag. There’s that, and also, to his credit, he understands how her particular act – her grazed heart crying out for a Band-aid, while she shops ’til every last equerry drops – constitutes the very Zeitgeist itself. Remember, Dorian can be whatever you want him to be – a punk or a parvenu, a dodgy geezer or a doting courtier, a witty fop or a City yuppy. I tell you, Baz, the eighties was Dorian’s decade – he revelled in every opportunity that London offered him to assume an imposture. Sometimes I think,’ he snorted, ‘that it’s Dorian who’s the true retrovirus. Because throughout everything, his true self has remained inviolate… Yes… If Dorian has a heart, I envision it as being like this… this dear little iceberg of… crack… cocaine.’