Phone

by Will Self

  against – but I was in all sorts of difficulties already, Jonathan – you

  must understand … What the Butcher understands (I do so wish

  you wouldn’t harp on that – it’s just a silly nursery rhyme) is that

  it’s over. He lets Gawain run on and on … hears him out on the

  matter of his terrible deployment – the impossibility of being promoted

  out of command … His isolation – his sense from the very

  beginning of being embarked on a fool’s errand – doesn’t Jonathan

  remember? All those slightly alcoholic afternoons, when they’d sat

  in hotel rooms, and Gawain had moaned on about his fool’s errand of a

  career … The Butcher hears him out (If you’d only think of yourself

  differently, perhaps you’d do different things – power of positive

  thinking and all that jazz …), fixated on the beaten and broken

  face … of my brother-in-arms. When at last his once beautiful

  cavalryman whinnies to a halt, the Butcher (an unpleasant epithet –

  so suggestive of bloodthirstiness) says this: Swift writes of the

  King of Lilliput that his vision was so acute he could detect the

  movement of a clock’s hour hand. Well, we’d need a sovereign of

  that stamp in order to register the minute gradations in rank and

  preferment which have animated your entire fucking life! Or at least

  starts to say this – but ends up SHOUTING IT! Dry white

  balls of his spit sticking dagtails to the unshaven and sweaty face of

  the … Fighting Ram, as more of the cracked actor’s nauseating

  lines, declaimed on the world stage of the Commons, repeat on

  him: To suffer the humility of failing courage in the face of pitiless

  terror … That is how the Iraqi people live … and how, he thinks,

  Amir Ali al-Jabbar died. Never has Jonathan De’Ath felt quite

  so cursed by his prodigious memory as now – because it’s with the

  thistledown from that summer morning, twelve years since, on

  the banks of the Bridgewater Canal tickling my nostrils … that he

  bids farewell to … my one true love. A farewell which consists of

  Lieutenant-Colonel Thomas – in direct contravention of every order

  he’s received, most notably the ones setting out the implementation

  of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in combat zones –

  racking his woolly brain for the names of every one of his men

  who came into contact with the detainees. When Gawain’s done,

  Jonathan – who the entire time has been bracing himself half

  upright on the arms of the white plastic garden chair – finally

  straightens up … The Provost Marshal will cease any investigation

  of these deaths immediately, he says in the dull tones of an efficiently

  negligent civil servant. Your men will forget about the incident soon

  enough – or, rather, they’ll forget their own lethally irresponsible

  behaviour, because it’s very much in their interests to do so. You

  will return to Ali al-Garbi today, Gawain – as soon as possible. A

  movement order will come in from Brigade by oh-nine-hundred

  tomorrow: you will escort Major Townshend back to the YouKay

  personally. I suggest you use the time you have together to impress

  upon this mentally unstable man the consequences of any more

  loose talk. It’s up to you to find the appropriate leverage – don’t let

  yourself down, Gawain … He’s standing at the entrance to the

  tent, its white plastic flap … in my white plastic hand. He’s looking

  at that dear and guileless face, appreciating – even if disgustedly –

  the new lines which have appeared on it since we last lay together.

  Deep and suffering lines, which will give the Gawain of the

  future – the civilian Gawain, who his former lover already sees

  sporting a ghostly name badge – that attribute which au fond he’s

  always most conspicuously lacked, to whit: character … A fool’s

  errand, Gawain – that’s what your poofy Uncle Rodney called

  peacetime soldiering, and that’s what you’ve harped on about for

  years as well. Well, you may think the significance of the expression

  lies in its ostensible meaning, but I don’t think so: it’s a cliché,

  Gawain, a fucking cliché. I used to find it endearing – your propensity

  for these hoary old idioms – your getting-back-to-the-drawing-board

  at-the-drop-of-a-hat and your eyes-in-the-back-of-your-head,

  which – or so you assured me – allowed you to see if your troopers

  weren’t cutting-the-mustard. But let me tell you, I see your

  idiolect for what it is now: the language of a man who thinks in

  clichés – who, to all intents and purposes, is a fucking cliché …

  Outside, it takes Jonathan a few moments to gain his night-sight –

  then he looks up to a sky that’s a dark violet field scattered with

  periwinkle stars in which a single grey cloud floats. It might, he

  thinks, be the smoke from ordinance that he didn’t hear explode, or

  some altogether more pathetic fallacy … He finds the red cap easily

  enough, skulking by the rack of sidearms, and the man escorts him

  to the Provost Marshal’s office, which is a Portakabin on top of

  two other Portakabins accessed by a metal stairway. You’re up rather

  late … are Jonathan’s first words, as, hand outstretched, he advances

  towards the man’s metal desk. They’re spoken with all the charm of

  which he’s capable, while he simultaneously thinks, How shit a plod

  have you got to be to end up here? The Provost Marshal, a full and

  corpulent Colonel, looks up from the laptop he’s been fiddling with:

  Ah, yes, he says, you must be the EssEyeEss bod Gerry said was

  coming in – have you caught up with this twerp from Ali al-Garbi,

  yet? They shake hands and Jonathan sees what the Provost Marshal

  has been doing, sitting in the Iraqi night, wearing a helmet and

  full body armour ’cause Portakabin versus mortar isn’t good odds …

  He’s been playing Minesweeper, that’s what the Provost Marshal

  has been doing – using his forensic skills and carefully honed powers

  of deduction … to avoid tiny squares appearing to go up in smoke.

  They sit and chat for a while, Jonathan and the Provost Marshal –

  whose name is Ted. Jonathan feels they hit it off rather well. Ted

  gets one of his staff to make Jonathan a cup of tea. When Jonathan’s

  ready to leave, they shake hands rather more warmly than they did

  initially. The Provost Marshal says, Do you need a burn box for

  those? And Jonathan, who’s borrowed a white plastic bag to put

  the paperwork in, replies, No, I think I can manage, thanks, Ted.

  They stand chatting on the external stairs for a few minutes – Ted

  up above, Jonathan down below. It’s still dark, and the Divisional

  Detention Facility – its blockhouses, wire-fenced compounds and

  walkways – is lit up by sodium lights. From this angle the effect is

  as of a circuitry diagram, and Jonathan thinks this just, because if

  the entire rationale for the Shaibah Logistics Base is to exercise

  power over the inhabitants of south-eastern Iraq, then this place –

  where men are hooded, shouted at, subjected to white noise, forced

  to maintain stress
positions and deprived of sleep – is where you put

  the batteries in … the only problem being that they’re not included.

  That man Thomas, Jonathan says lightly: the Yorkshire Hussars’

  SeeOh – I’ve told him he can return to Ali al-Garbi in the morning?

  And Ted, equally lightly, replies: Not a prob’ – Adjutant

  General’s lot are all over the shop anyway, and when they do get

  their act together there’re umpteen similar snafus to deal with …

  Ted hitches up his webbing belt and accepts the Marlboro Jonathan

  offers him with a Ta, don’t mind if I do, before continuing: Thing

  is … our political masters are on a hiding to nothing: they’ve

  instructed us to incorporate Human Rights legislation into the

  rules of war, but, let’s face it, war’s about depriving humans of any

  rights they may have. Bit loopy, if you ask me – loopy for the grunts

  bracing the Ali Babas and trying to contain the militias, loopy for

  my lot when they end up having to brace the grunts over their,

  ah … bracing. Ted stoops to take a light from Jonathan’s vintage

  Dupont: Mark my words, seven thousand different sorts of bullshit

  are going to be generated by this … um, conflict – your man’s

  particular bullshit will be easy enough to lose track of. Even when

  we do try to investigate something thoroughly – and are given

  the resources to do it – the enquiry’s one embuggeration after

  another: suspects redeployed – posted here there and everywhere –

  while civilian witnesses are getting the frighteners put on them, and

  military ones? Well, we both know the story, the last thing anyone

  associated with the regiment will want is to cast a shadow on their

  deployment – as for the Iraqis, after the shit they’ve been through

  they’re pretty bloody realistic: they’ll take the compo and keep it …

  zipped. Five grand YouEss’ll buy you a lot of white plastic garden

  chairs … Standing in front of the open fridge door, listening to

  its low buzz, Jonathan thinks of his house. (You think of your

  house, not your home – which saddens me, Johnny.) He sniffs the

  musty and over-conditioned air of the pod, then glances round to

  check the holdall he bought in Kuwait City is still there. A small

  shock – a slight prickling of the nape hairs. He popped his

  last thirty-six-milligram tablet of methyphenidate hours ago, just

  before cross-decking into the aypeesee, but most of the dosage is

  time-release … and should still be powering me. But … But … he

  can’t remember having said goodbye to the Provost Marshal –

  has no memory of leaving the DeeDeeEff, can’t recall if he was

  escorted to the pod –. (Or if you made your own way here – d’you

  know, I think you might be lagging …) How d’you know about

  lagging? Jonathan addresses his father’s death mask, which hangs

  from a metal hook screwed into the pod’s metal wall: You never had

  anything to do with computers in your life – let alone computer

  games. (Don’t you remember that driving range we used to go to?)

  The one in Staines? (No, Sunbury – anyway, there was always a

  lag – albeit a small one – between the physical ball striking the net,

  and the filmic one appearing on the screen. What’s that, Johnny, if

  not … lagging?) Jonathan stoops to open the fridge, the Samsung

  phone Barry gave him knocking softly against his prominent hip

  bone. Stooping to open the fridge, the phone Barry gave him – a

  Samsung – softly knocks against his hip bone, which is prominent.

  Jonathan’s prominent hip bone knocks against the phone Barry

  gave him, Sam … sung as he stoops to open the fridge. The Mars

  Bar he remembers being in it is gone. (Of course it is, you ate it in

  that vile tent – chewed it up while standing right beside a corpse.

  Really, Johnny! I mean … really!) He remembers there being a

  Mars Bar in there – but it’s gone. It’s gone: the Mars Bar he remembers

  being in there, and in its place, on a small plate, there’re

  polythene-wrapped cheese sandwiches which they eat at the

  summit, their backs against the cold concrete of a freshly poured

  trigonometric marker. As they swig the whisky-laced coffee, Zack

  explains what it’s for, and the basic principles of the Ordnance

  Survey – information he would’ve assumed was at the tips of her

  capable fingers – after all, what the hell is there to do in Fife, besides

  go for bracing country walks? But no: there are these charming

  lacunae in Isobel’s understanding of the world – ones which he, her

  soon-to-be lover, the thief of her maidenhead, can impart with a

  mature capability he hopes she finds … reassuring. And if he were

  to take that maidenhead here, on top of Tinto Hill on a blowy-bright

  October afternoon? Take it in a charmingly casual way – no

  fuss nae bother … The two of them at first sitting on Missus Kane’s

  paired and folded rugs, their backs against the trig’ point, passing

  the cup of whisky-laced coffee back and forth, wolfing down the

  cheese sandwiches, before falling on each other’s mouths and necks.

  If he were to – and she weren’t to demur. She weren’t to demur … he

  thinks, the whole thing rests on her demurral, if only she weren’t so

  demure. It is, he thinks, a form of the linguistic turn, something he’s

  read about, and understands intermittently, as the Javelin’s antiquated

  indicator stalk lifts intermittently from its housing to signal

  left: Zack could, he thinks, throw his life away on any woman to

  whom the word demure could be applied unreservedly. He sees them

  shuffle along this timeline – it’s an Astonishing Tale right enough,

  Doc: doctors Zachary and Isobel Busner, escalating into the future

  up a spiralling ribbon of genetic coding, their two handsome six-footer

  Scots sons at their side, while enlarged molecular models float

  overhead, symbolising sagacity and the virtues of an enquiring

  mind. All this, and the very heaven of lying promiscuously entangled

  with a completely naked and bewitching Isobel – the two of them

  bundled snugly in the rugs, their clothes having been slipped off

  without let, hindrance or embarrassment and stuffed themselves

  into his vest. Or would it quite possibly have gone dreadfully

  wrong? Ooh, yes – I’m liking this more, Doc … A mistimed attempt at

  a kiss – because, let’s face it, you don’t grab at a young lady when

  she’s trying to talk seriously about Aldermaston. Teeth clash harder,

  more jarringly than civilisations. She wouldn’t like that – and in a

  trice he’d abandon all hope. The day would grow instantly higher

  and colder – the hills would feel alive with storm troopers. He’d

  suggest they walk back down to the car – they might catch the

  matinee at the cinema in Biggar? A two-prong strategy: it’s conceivable

  she’ll unbend a little in cramped, warm darkness – or he

  can cut his losses, enjoy the flick: It’ll probably be some old weepy,

  it’s a tiny circuit – they don’t get the new releases for months … is the

  sort of thing he might well say. Then, having divvied up, an
d been

  escorted past hunched-up crones, chittering weans, cap-crammed

  old fellows in from the kale yard – all of them supporting their

  invalid teeth with sugary crutches – the plan would very likely go

  wrong in this way: his stupid dumb cock – his unabashed penis. All

  the rest of him is flabby – he knows that – and would remain so …

  in any conceivable future, but his prick, his dick, his John Thomas?

  Donald Campbell, skipping across the glassy surface of Lake

  Windermere in Bluebird, spots an object unidentifiable for crucial

  seconds, closing in on his port bow – collision is unavoidable,

  and the last thing he sees before his attempt to beat his own water-speed

  record ends in tragedy is that his nemesis is a rigid, streamlined

  and emphatically Jewish penis, the obscenely domed tip of which

  plunges through the jet-powered speedboat’s hull with all the

  intellectual power of Moses Maimonides … But that lies in the nearfuture

  possibly … If the film showing at the Biggar Rialto pleased

  Isobel, she’d soften – say it was something like The Inn of the Sixth

  Happiness, a nineteen fifty-eight vehicle for Ingrid Bergman, in

  which, faintly preposterously, she plays Gladys Aylward, a humble

  Englishwoman gripped with missionary zeal. Isobel McKechnie,

  upright daughter of the manse, would like that – she’d sit watching

  Bergman make her way through a London fabricated out of well-known

  landmarks, and edited together with two-second bus rides

  and four-second walks. She’d smile faintly as Bergman – a mere

  cleaner in the Chelsea home of Sir Francis, the patron of the

  Missionary Society – agitated meekly to go to China. And Zack?

  He’d sit there in the darkness, listening to Scots teeth being ground

  down all around him, and dealing with the ache of his engorged

  genitals by focusing so intently on every last line of dialogue, were

  he to find himself, over half a century later, on a train heading

  north – a train which passes within a few miles of the cinema where

  he’d likely sat on that October Saturday afternoon – he’d recall

  them better … than my own name, which is? Sundowning, they

  call it – this much he knows: an ugly verbal coinage, he thinks – but

  then that’s the modern idiom all over, with its reckless propensity