Phone
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Camilla, throbbing with unfulfilled desire in the palm of his hand.
If he touches her rubberised nipple and presses her lips to his ear,
he’ll hear: Gramps? Is that you? Are you there? We’re both, he thinks,
lost to the world, even as the signals volleying back and forth
between our handheld communication devices, and a perfectly
calibrated network of orbiting satellites … enable us to find one
another. He hesitates, knowing once he speaks their psyches will be
squeezed together – squeezed and squeezed – but the pips’ll never
come! A chilly, sodden-cardboard-smelling wave of nostalgia for old
phone boxes passes over him – and along with it a more uncomfortable
memory: during the awful hours he and Miriam had
spent flinging each other’s infidelities in their faces, she’d laid claim
to all the maturity, all the interpersonal skills – effectively all the
sanity … there was to go round. What clinched it so far as she’d
been concerned was this: If I’ve any worries about the kids, d’you
know who I talk to, Zack? Not you, obviously – it’s never you.
You’re far too busy – and your time is far too precious. No: I talk to
Maurice – talk to him on the phone. Sometimes I rattle on for
ages – just letting it all out. And you know what, he never – and I
mean never – gives the slightest indication he’s bored, or that he’s
anything better to do … Wearily, Busner shoves the mobile phone
back in his pocket – if it’s urgent she’ll call again. If it isn’t she will as
well. The bus plunges past a playing field. An old man with lank
white hair wearing an unseasonal donkey jacket pushes a whitelining
machine towards some rugby posts, seagulls scrumming down
behind him. Besides, what if he does answer the insistent phone,
what’ll he get? Much, much more, in the same vein, of the
saccharine injection she’d administered every day since she forced
the phone on him. For, Camilla Whitehouse-Busner has compounded
the ridiculous conjunction of her name by falling
passionately, improbably … in love. And a woman in love is desirous
above all, not for reciprocation or consummation – let alone
Wagnerian supersession – but simply someone with whom she
can … yak about it on the phone. You don’t blame me, do you, Gramps?
was how she’d told him about her own notional infidelity the
previous Sunday. Guileless, she’d been, in a flouncy old apron, her
cheeks flushed and two chopsticks shoved through the rather greasy
and disordered chop suey of her hair. Zack hadn’t seen either her or
Ben since a Busner family gathering just after Christmas at Redington
Road: Dan and Pat handing round readymade EmmandEss
nibbles … the little pricks! They’d just moved in, and the house had
seemed echoey and musty with old-man-smell – at once empty and
cram-packed with … ghosts. Since then she’d gained weight – or at
least he’d thought so as she ducked down to fetch a saucepan, or
reached up to get some ingredients, because her belly was preggily
prominent. Zack’d wanted to ask then – Busner still does, now –
about her endometriosis, but couldn’t find the right tone, being
effectively retired … until hours later, when, after his strange talk
with Ben, he’d come upon her in the kitchen again, leaning back
against the grotty old units, her face in her hands. It’d been
Zack rather than Doctor Busner who’d gently touched her shoulder,
softly enquired if everything was all right? Although he knew
perfectly well that it never had been and never could be. But when
she’d unveiled her face and her features emerged … they were
luminous – Peek-a-boo, Gramps … she’d said. Peek-a-fucking-boo!
After which she’d said something like, Ben loathed it when we tried
to play peek-a-boo with him – d’you remember, Gramps? He’d
scream and scream and lash out at me … It did me terrible damage,
Gramps, honestly … Tore me up inside – deep inside … the sheer
intensity of his rejection … But she wasn’t feeling rejected any
more, oh no: You don’t blame me, Gramps, do you? Blame her! Blame
her for what, precisely? Mark’s father had seen plenty of his patients
over the years who, having been diagnosed in early adulthood as
chronic schizophrenics … though not usually by me, had nonetheless,
with the onset of middle age, experienced some sort of remission.
The hectoring internal voices fell silent – to be replaced by the
dreary chit-chat of those actually eyearrdoubleyou … But with Mark
things hadn’t gone that way – as his autistic son had grown, so his
conviction that he was an alien spymaster, and Ben – using the work
name, Mandinkulus – the agent he was running, grew stronger.
Mark’s stays in the safe houses earthlings call mental hospitals
became longer and more frequent. During the brief periods he was
at the Kilburn flat he was often so disruptive poor Milla had had to
call the police. Watching his eldest son’s once handsome features
gradually coarsened as he suffered blow after blow from the liquid
cosh, Zack often reflected on this grim truth: if Mark was engaged
in a war against humanity – and, in particular, a war against its
profligate expenditure of time, a dimension he believed to be in
cripplingly short supply supply – then for him to prevail would
require … sich zu Tode siegen. So, in advance of his last attempt at
being cared for in the community, Miriam had organised a bedsit
for Mark in Stanmore, and they’d take it in turns to drop by, feed
him his meds and brush up the Digestive crumbs and shreds of
hand-rolling tobacco which are his principal contribution … to the
gross domestic product. It’s horribly claustrophobic and airless in the
smoke-stunk bedsit – yet paradoxically exposed and vacuous: the
surface of a distant world, frozen beneath the diamond-studded
black velvet … of the void. To sit on the mean little sofa for half an
hour was … an eternity – to listen to Mandinkulus’s controller, as
he detailed the vital intelligence which was being gathered … a
torment. So, to Camilla, Zack had said again: Blame you? Blame
you for what, precisely? Bloody hell, Milla, far from blaming you,
I’m cheering you on from the terraces. Who is he? How’s it going?
At the time he’d congratulated himself for not adding: Have you
told Ben? And now he feels still better about this omission, because
back in her Kilburn kitchen the inconvenient truths had tumbled
from Milla’s chapped lips: the object of her desire wasn’t in the
least bit obscure, but a writer of sufficient notoriety that even
Zack had heard of him. This, despite the fact that Zack had long
since waved goodbye to the gleaming ghost-ship of contemporary
mediatised culture, as, with its snazzy paintwork and crew of
soon-to-be-cashiered celebrities, and its hack band playing on andon, it
set course for the day-after-tomorrow. D’you actually know him,
personally? he’d blurted out in the kitchen – hardly a tasteful
question to f
ling in the face of a woman hungry for love … but it
was the right one. Camilla had blushed furiously, applied holding
therapy to her large breasts, and said: D’you remember that creative
writing course I went on? Ah, yes, Milla’s creative writing. Oscar
placed a soft hand on his softer heart, threw back his head and out
came long and liquid lines of John Dowland – his brother Daniel,
when he wasn’t dozily doctoring, painted canvases which were large
and so painfully Fauvist that, on viewing one, his father couldn’t
help muttering: an unholy bloody mess … a critical truth to which
Daniel had angrily assented: Of course it’s an unholy bloody mess,
Dad, because that’s what I’m trying to express, the unholy bloody
mess which was my childhood! Lottie kept on with her singing –
and Frankie used to dance, while the twins, pushed by Mummy,
pursued a panoply of cultural and artistic goals, none of which, in
their father’s opinion … they’re ever likely to reach. It was perhaps
unjust of him, but Busner suspected that Milla’s literary ambitions
had more to do with fitting in with her adopted family than
any overwhelming desire on her part to render this world – or any
other – in prose. He’d seen her efforts: folded sheets of narrow feint
torn from blocky jotters, which, when unfolded, released tentative
observations … hesitant descriptions … duff dialogue. Exposing
to ridicule a style so staccato adjectives were st-st-st-stuck to nouns.
But was it any good? He felt quite unable to judge … because I don’t
actually care? Quite possibly – which was where the cold slapactually
had come from. Camilla, reddening still more, stood her ground
and explained that the writer-he’d-heard-of hadn’t been one of the
tutors on the week-long course – which was held in a whitewashed
former farmhouse deeply immersed in creamy Devon – but, rather,
being something of a celebrity, had arrived on the last evening,
when the group had pretty much curdled – gone rancid, Gramps –
there were that many female hormones flying about … But Camilla
had prevailed, so been seated beside him at supper – Zack could
imagine the scene: a refectory table, warm bread torn on worn
boards, the chilly looks of the wannabe women writers, and the two
of them chatting together … warmly. Warmly enough for her to
ask for his email address and for him to give it. She’d written on her
return to London – and he’d replied, and she’d replied to his reply,
sending the fragment of her own work he’d agreed to read – to
which he’d replied in turn, saying it showed promise. These had been
his exact and dismissive words – and Camilla conveyed them to her
father-in-law all amber … with such praise. Aglow – and in love.
The bus has stopped by the lights at the junction of Southwood
Lane, its engine gasping against the window of a fried-chicken
takeaway. Busner’s forehead is tenderised by the toughened glass –
his face swells up at him: My old face … my old mottled face …
I wear the motley of my … face – a tatterdemalion of experience …
moles … antediluvian acne scars … He sees diamonds of mirror set
in mirrored batons – he sees the Mandelbrot set of the Formica they
reflect. On a modular, back-lit menu holder he reads: One Piece
Chicken and Chips … Ninety-nine pence. Two Piece Chicken and
Chips … One pound and nineteen pence. Three Piece Chicken
and Chips … One pound and forty-nine pence. These are, he
thinks, exact words, but do they … show promise? Appalled, he’d
stared at Milla as she’d burbled on: I’m not saying he’s in love with
me, Gramps – I’m not delusional … Poor Milla! Sitting in Kilburn,
night after night, pouring it all out into her laptop, deluding herself
that its poorly insulated circuitry can cope with … such gush: I’m
not delusional – I know it isn’t going to be a normal relationship.
For a start, we can’t be together – not physically, ‘cause we’re both
married – ‘though I don’t think Mark would … mind. Once more
Zack had had to bite down on bitter merriment: Mind? Mandinkulus’s
controller? The first inter-specific double-agent known to
humankind, mind? He scarcely has a mind – but then nor did
Milla, or so it seemed: He lets me write him one long email every
week – that’s all the contact we’re gonna have … I did go to some
of his readings and lectures and stuff, but he told me he isn’t comfortable
with that, and it would be better – sorta purer – if we just
corresponded … ‘cept … well … Out came more desperate dribs
and disillusioning drabs: the writer-Zack’d-heard-of wouldn’t reply
to the missives Milla sent whooshing through the ether – some of
which, she admitted, ran to several thousand words – but he assured
her he’d remain hooked on the very end of the very last line. Zack
would’ve said something sharp enough to … nip it in the bud, had
Milla not at this point uncrossed her arms and arched her back,
so that her heavy breasts lifted and her chopsticks clacked against
the spice rack. She’d shuddered deliciously – and it’d occurred to
Zack that this was some weird climax, brought about by her own
onanistic literary activities: her ceaseless jabbing … at the slick little
buttons. Why? Zack had asked of her then. Why? Busner asks aloud
now – or, rather, lows pitifully as the bus surges up East Finchley
High Road past the Bald Faced Stag: Why? Why? Why? Penitent,
he applies the lash: She was raped … inna rape field … and, while he
knows he wasn’t her rapist … I am her sorta therapist. And what
manner of therapist – even when relatively young – knowing as
he does no means no, nonetheless wilfully misunderstands … The
well-worn liberal cri de cœur … We’re all to blame! echoes through
his hurting head, for if you added up those misunderstandings
they’d certainly be sufficient to make a single, devastating violation
… He remembers all manner of pushing, pulling and tugging –
and, on one occasion, tearing – appalled, he sees it, mounting
up massily in the direction of Muswell Hill: the stopped dandelion
clock of her petticoats and her shocked-white face. And now …
and now … the entire world had long since pushed into and pulled
out of Milla – pushed and pulled againannagain, until her generative
parts had begun to … bleed, poor Milla! and gone on flowing
into all the internet’s multitudinous tubes. Busner sits miserably
arraigned before a jury of white-faced Columbines in the court of
tragicomedy, their beautiful lips smeared … with the greasepaint of
our lust – It’s my fault! His fault her insides haemorrhage – his fault
she’s no thought of a happily uncomplicated and cuddly liaison.
Delusional, she emphatically is – and he’s always known and made
use of it. For who else but a delusional person would care so
delusionally for Mandinkulus – and not just during childhood, but
once he’d reached his majority as well. She s
till accompanies him on
weekly trips to the nutritionist – to the occupational therapist, to
the fraudulent cranial osteopath. She maintains the great go-round
of impersonal encounters constituting Ben’s asocial life. Associative
mating – that was the explanation du jour for the massive increase
in autism diagnoses. Might Mandinkulus’s controller be an autist
as well as schizophrenic? He’d certainly been a systematiser as a
child – a sorter-out, a colour-coder and a liner-uper. Busner searches
the basement of his own memory, where nothing any longer seems
to be to hand. Had Mark looked into his eyes when a child? He
cannot remember – and this summons a tear … light, fresh and …
coolly rolling down his cheek. It’s Camilla, he knows, who keeps
Ben’s own museum-of-everything in order, adding in plastic-bag-loads
of more plastic to the dry-stone walling of seedees, deeveedees,
records, cassette tapes, books, magazines, toys and obsolete computer
equipment that fills the Dexion shelving units, which in turn
fill the Kilburn flat. Was this evidence of her own Aspie tendencies?
Tendencies that’ve now come to full and frenzied fruition in the
weekly email she sends to the man Ben calls the orfer? Ach! Busner
cries aloud to the empty top deck, such meshugas! The bus is
accelerating along Queens Avenue towards Muswell Hill – soon
it’ll reach sufficient velocity to escape the poisonous atmosphere of
central London. Sensing the outer space beyond the asteroid belt
of suburbia, Busner pulls hairy lapels up to stubbly cheeks … Mm,
scratchy. Which is the name of Ben’s cat, a more than averagely
dumb moggy which occupies the sofa in the front room, where it
fulfils its nominative destiny by rendering both upholstery and
its own coat more and more threadbare. But then: a balding narcissist
… could there be anything more human? He’d boarded the bus
unthinkingly – committed to the rubric of the random, but now he
sees where it’s all been headed, for his own head is strapped into
some sort of brace … or restraint! And he cannot prevent himself
from staring down all one thousand, eight hundred and eighty-four
rigidly straight feet of its mind-bending central corridor …
he longest in Europe! And cannot stop himself, try as he might,
from seeing this unearthly vision: his post-encephalitic patients at