Phone

by Will Self

  responsibility … The outskirts of Wetherby are grim – stony-faced

  buildings on all four corners, their narrow eyes snow-blinded by net

  curtains. Two elderly women cross in front of the car … the halt

  leading the lame, who in turn leads a wicker shopper … closest she’ll

  get now to a beehive. The lights bleed out to orange, and Camilla eases

  down the accelerator … Endometriotic lesions develop their own

  nerves, Zack had told her when his grandson’s difficult birth was

  followed by … further complications. And she’d flung back: My

  geepee already told me that! The truth was, no doctor – not even a

  consulting time lord – could’ve dreamt up such freaky sci-fi stuff:

  the lesions not only grew their own nerves, but those nerves were

  then plugged directly into her central nervous system … G’dunggg!

  G’dungggg! Khhssshhhkkkkhhhhssschhhg’dunggg! So there was the

  disease’s pain to endure, plus the pain of the symptoms it’d given

  birth to … Camilla couldn’t eyeball the lesions deep inside her

  womb – but she could see the eyes that’d been torn from it. It was

  featherweight, Ben’s gaze – it wafted away from her heavy scrutiny.

  He won’t so much as look at me! she’d said again annagain – to

  Zack, to Mark, to all the other members of the disorderly family

  she’d drunkenly fucked her way into. He won’t look at me – it’s not

  normal! All the other babies at the mums-and-toddlers group – all

  the other babies in the world! That’s what they do – stare into their

  mother’s eyes … that’s how they bond – that’s how they know who

  you are … A decade ago, standing in that concrete trench, watching

  her son twitch and flail, she’d shrugged off her father-in-law’s

  assurances for the sixhunnredansixtysixth time. You don’t get it,

  Zack – you just don’t get it, she’d sobbed. Sometimes I think

  he’s like that kid in the horror movie – Damien. I start thinking

  he’s possessed – that he’s the … Devil … The handbrake creaks

  ominously, the engines dies. There’s the silence … of the grave, but

  none of the peace, for father and son are out of the car before

  Camilla’s had time to undo her seatbelt – out of the car, and both

  striding across the supermarket car park towards the same set of

  sliding doors, despite following radically diverging trajectories …

  they’re never together. She remembers the conversation on the balcony

  so well because Ben had been exactly two and a half – and she’d

  organised a half-birthday party for him. Back then she’d believed

  she could jolly him into sociability with party poppers and Hula

  Hoops – but he’d been perfectly indifferent to the three or four

  toddlers and their mothers, who Camilla had artily … craftily …

  lured up from the One O’Clock Club in the concrete bunker

  ludicrously named the William Morris Community Centre. Ben’s

  father had shut himself up in their bedroom – remained there the

  whole time, sulking because she wouldn’t let him wear his Power

  Rangers mask. It was left to Zack to dole out cartons of Um Bongo

  while Camilla wrapped up the pass-the-parcel – left to Zack,

  as well, to make conversation about the drains … rancid sewage

  smell fluting through air vents poxy with congealed old paint blobs and

  the DeeAitchEssEss – both of which he’d been suprisingly well

  informed about. As the afternoon wore on, the mothers – three

  stolid and near-pyramidal Ghanaian women – had grown warmer

  and more garrulous, while the half-birthday boy retreated further

  and further into … himself. Ben had ended up sitting in the dirty

  clothes hamper and screaming as if it were him – not some gilded-bloody-princess

  – who was the most hunted person in the world …

  The Ghanaian mother who tried to pick up Ben to comfort him

  got a Hot Wheels in her eye for her trouble. Eventually, Zack

  gave him half a Valium crushed up in some Um Bongo … not

  strictly speaking ethical, that – another of his phrases which, over the

  years … has caught me, too. Ben ended up half awake, slumped on

  a grubby sag-bag, and clutching the toy car in one hand while

  the other expertly manipulated the buttons which thrust the little

  plumbers up on to moving platforms, or made them jump down

  into yawning ravines … he was only two and a half! Perhaps it

  was on that miserable occasion, after Zack had got a half-bottle of

  whisky from the offie, to stifle their own more silent screams – but

  it might’ve been at any point during Ben’s terrible second year, his

  thunderous third or his fucking dreadful fourth – that this lecture

  was delivered: Autistischen Psychopathen, that was Hans Asperger’s

  term for the odd children he saw in his clinic. He also described

  them as intelligent automata – and he was a humane practitioner!

  A saint compared to Kanner – who I met at a conference once and

  found to be a bumptious-bloody-blowhard … Manipulated his

  trial data as well. As for Saint-bloody-Bettelheim – well, it’s all

  coming out now. Far from his “Orthogenic School” being some

  haven of creativity and self-expression, turns out it was an abusive

  snake-pit – while he was just another self-hating Jew turned

  Konzentration Kamp Kommandant… — The sign on the car parked

  in front, BABY ON BOARD, is boring into Camilla. Her hands still

  gripping the steering wheel, she sees the baby – not bored, but

  hysterical inna rape field … Lying there – convulsed, puce, screaming

  the way only babies can, on and on, their razor-sharp tongues

  revolving mechanically as they process this misery-food. On and on

  – boring into you, on and never off – can’t turn ’em off, no off-switch

  … Can’t turn ’em off-and-on, which usually fixes the problem …

  You’re not bored, though? Sorta phonics he’d come up with – and not

  fee-say-shuss-lee … Bored? Her voice, her words – spoken during a

  summit meeting they’d held at the peak of one of Ben’s crises:

  Bored? I’m not fucking bored, Zack, it’s gone way beyond boredom

  – I’m gonna kill myself … Her baby is always on board – suckered to

  the windscreen by its Um Bongo-sticky hands … they kill them in

  the Congo. Suckered there like one of those dumb stuffed Garfields

  there was a craze for – sending out short, savage bursts of misery

  and distress only I can receive … Ben, aged twelve, still sleeps in her

  bed – and on one … or several … loathsome occasions, Camilla

  has woken in the night to feel the hot tip of his rigid penis pressed

  against her thighs inna rape field … Can she bear to be bare behind

  flimsy partitions … smearscrape-moppitupp? She can – she must.

  Squatting and squitting in the cubicle, she hears, Loadsa love –

  chat t’yer later … And thinks, Coming soon! To a rockin’ Portaloo

  near you! An epic tale of luv-’n’-loss in fully-phoney Dolby Surround-sound!

  – We do have money behind us, you know … Such an odd thing

  to say! Camilla remembers him saying it for the first time in the

  Sainsbury’s
near Brook Green. Would’ve been a couple of years

  after the Power Rangers party, and their fake little family had

  moved to a sheltered block run by a mental health charity near

  Ravenscourt Park … Ben at that age galloping round annaround

  under the railway arch, his outstretched arm waggling, his hand

  circling, his fingers flickering as he’d … stimmed. Dollops of duck

  and goose shit all over the sad lawns surrounding the milky-watered

  pond never forget it … Ben sitting on a badly carved wooden

  wombat, momentarily stilled – a carton of juice in one hand, a

  flapjack in the other, a mumble of cabbalistic numbers sixhunnred-ansixtysix

  … slipping from his sticky lips … We do have money

  behind us, you know. Such an odd way of putting things – then, as

  now, Camilla had pictured a game of Gramps’s footsteps: load-samoney

  creeping behind her – a rustling wad, ill concealed in a hide

  woven from banknotes. He’d also said things like, You’re not too

  proud? To which she’d snorted: Don’t make me laugh-arf-arf! and

  clapped her flippers in the Sainsbury’s salad aisle, as Zack turned to

  her, a ready-made one in his hand, his puckered facebag full of healthy

  concern. He remains, she thinks, endearing – the word appears in

  her hurting mind, as she rocks and rolls and squitsan’shits, its letters

  wreathed in radicchio and rocket leaves. Back then he’d still been

  in his prime: a figurehead of Psychiatry, in his habitual corduroy

  jacket and grey flannel trousers, bolted to the prow of … a shopping

  trolley. We – the family, that is – have money behind us … To

  which she undoubtedly would’ve replied: You’ve always paid our

  rent – we’re very grateful. To which he would almost certainly have

  countered: And am happy to do so – and to offer more help, if

  required. More! Yes, more! That’s what little Ben had needed – more

  high-dose vitamin supplements, more minerals and enzymes –

  more probiotics and anti-fungals, more Bio-Chelat rice bread spread

  with yum-yum almond butter, more glutathione cream rubbed on

  his swollen tummy – and especially more Risperdal crushed into

  his first morning spoonful of Marmite, a practice that – when his

  Grandfather got wind of … he blew: D’you know what this rubbish

  is? Shaking the pill pot to a bossa nova beat: It’s an atypical antipsychotic

  developed for the treatment of schizophrenia in adults –

  if anyone should be guzzling this dangerous pap, it’s Mark, not

  Ben … Such conviction, she believes now, was only born of confusion

  – those first few years of Ben’s life … we were all making it

  up. It was a burgeoning subculture – it wasn’t only the Whitehouse-Busner

  Family who were dancing to the autists’ beat: there were all

  the other parents, carers and assorted practitioners who’d to tend

  and toilet their ceaselessly self-stimulating toddlers. In waiting

  room after waiting room, with Ben squirming on her lap, she’d

  bitterly ruminated: For once I’m trendy – hip, even … Too young

  for punk – too old for acid house, Camilla had cleverly managed to

  give birth to … my own rave scene. But then, that’d been before the

  rumours of a new and devastating form of autism, one marked by

  the most dramatic behavioural regression imaginable. Panic ripped

  through the online forums she didn’t so much frequent as … lived

  on, the whole fucking time! Late at night, staring into the ghostly

  furniture of their back-lit pages, she read about children who’d once

  prattled away now falling stonily silent – others who’d seemed quite

  continent shitting themselves in droves … What frail hope Camilla

  had rested in Ben’s Jolly-fucking-phonics: he spoke – and not just

  the sporadic words and disjointed phrases to be expected at his

  age, but entire, well-formed sentences … Tarzan was a very good

  film, Mummy, and precociously early: Moreover, if he was “high-functioning”

  for a child with Asperger’s – a term beloved of the

  clinical psychologists who ticked boxes and flipped charts for a

  living! – he was also well in advance of his “normal” peers, who

  were gooing and gaaing while he was already issuing precise

  bulletins from his metallic world: These are vee-eights and they’re

  super-fast – these are special rockets and they fly very high … and

  issuing them again: and they fly very high … He might look straight

  through her a thousand times a day, but he gave her the gift of his

  words – which had been a … relief. Relief! She tenses her buttocks

  experimentally, feeling the sharp-edged corona of the flimsy toilet

  seat … cutting into me. All done? Yes … yes, she clenches, she might

  well be … done. Mute and moaning – that was the alternative: she’d

  seen those autistic children who took the crooked roads that led to

  cul-de-sacs of incommunicability, where they rocked and rocked –

  and rocked some more … but never rolled. And now the internet

  was seething with speculation: This doctor – at Heath Hospital no

  less! had definitively established a link between the emmemmarr

  and autism. The publicity given to his study had produced a great

  howl of new cases – parents who screamed that within heartbeats of

  their children being immunised their little bodies had convulsed,

  and it was closing time as their minds … their spirits – their souls …

  whatever … went … west. When their parents got them home,

  instead of the light fever expected, there was a heavy one – hallucinations

  followed … Fimbles fumbling – fucking, I dunno … and

  when the poor mites finally recovered themselves, that was all

  they had: themselves … Now the online forums resounded with the

  despair of parents whose once lively, outgoing and empathetic

  toddlers were imprisoned in the most terrible solitude, locked up

  inside in the red plush padding of … their own brain cells – Hullo?

  Yes? Hi – sorry … we got cut off … again … reception’s …

  patchy … Well, indeed! Why wouldn’t the reception be patchy

  if you make a phone call right beside a woman doing a shit! The

  night after Ben got shot, he’d galloped up and down the trench

  of the balcony, around annaround the cramped little flat – a headless

  horseman, neighing and neighing and neighing some more –

  Oh, Christ-fucking-Mary-Maclary-from-Donaldson’s-Dairy, why did

  we DO IT! In the resonating toilet stall, in the rockin’ Portaloo, in

  the grim-faced Northern market town, the distressed woman rolls

  around on the toilet seat. Camilla knows she isn’t truly ugly –

  she thinks: I’ll see it when I’ve wiped myself, pulled up my knickers

  and tights, pulled down and straightened my dress, unbolted the

  door and am standing in front of the soap-smeared mirror – see

  my fat cheeks, snub nose, thin lips and yellow-bloody hair. Camilla

  has – or so she’s been told – lovely eyes: wide, bountifully lashed and

  baby-doll blue-ooh … She’d once been chucked on the barbecue of

  male regard, they like their flesh … flame-grilled. But now? Camilla

/>   sobs – and then plops: healthy round-sounding pebble-dropped-in-a-pond

  plops. But when she rises Look behiiind youuu! there’re blood

  and mucus in there as well. Pretending it doesn’t exist, she knows,

  is not an option – but living in the full knowledge of it doesn’t

  make things any easier, given the condition … isn’t, I’m afraid to

  say, treatable – unless you’re prepared to have a hysterectomy – although

  we can provide quite effective symptomatic relief. These last the words

  of Doctor Glazer, a specialist who billed pretentiously in guineas

  and consulted floating high above the leafiness of Montagu Square.

  Not that Camilla ever saw the bills, because … we have money

  behind us. Paying her and Ben’s private medical bills was something

  Zack candidly admitted he would never – could never – do for his

  own children … not strictly speaking ethical, that. Doctor Glazer

  specialised in the laying on of his own long and waxen hands – but

  the premium price-point was determined by his plumminess. My

  patients don’t die with endemetriosis, Mzz Whitehouse-Busner –

  let alone of it. No, my task is to make it possible for you live

  with the complaint until, in the fullness of time, you reach the

  menopause, and are naturally relieved … the fucking shit. Framed

  degree certificates and watercolour sea scenes of … dumb Cowes,

  and mood-music tinkling from concealed speakers. Glazer had

  thrust his tapering fingers into Camilla’s tummy and tum-tummed

  along to Pachelbel’s Canon – I’d’ve liked to’ve lashed him across

  its muzzle and fired the fucking thing! Which would’ve been a

  sweetly melodic death, and far better than he deserves … Standing in

  the chilly-damp Portaloo, staring directly into her own exhausted

  eyes … without flinching, Camilla is able to muster a certain objectivity:

  And you, she interrogates herself, what exactly is it you

  deserve? She’d tried her best – she’d loved her son, and ministered

  to him assiduously … my little Tamagotchi, responding to each and

  every one of his electro-peeps and synthesised cheeps. So caring

  had she been towards this intelligent automaton that she’d neglected

  to … keep myself alive … It’d been a rigid corpse of a woman

  propped up in the passenger seat of Charlie’s BeeEmmDoubleyou,