Phone

by Will Self

  how’d he be getting on at around this time? He and Sally would’ve

  taken on a couple of local school-leavers to help with things around

  their own establishment – which might be doing well enough, if,

  that is, Jonathan were to stabilise his prescription drug habit, acquire

  a small appetite and the skills required to satisfy larger ones. Don’t

  forget the meat order from Lancaster’s! is the sort of thing Sally

  De’Ath might shout down from their bedroom on a cold winter

  morning. To which Jonathan almost certainly would reply, I phoned

  it through yesterday, love, they’ll have it ready for me … If they

  were dependent on the business for income, it’d be a parlous state of

  affairs, but they aren’t – and being the sort of people they are – with

  the invitation to the Lord Lieutenant’s Christmas Eve drinks party

  quite likely prominently displayed on the mantelpiece in their snug

  little sitting room – they’d prob’ly have a bit of money behind them.

  Make sure they’ve put in the sausages and bacon, dear! Sally De’Ath

  could conceivably call down. And it seems fair to assume, given her

  age and class proclivities, that, despite having had just the one,

  she’d’ve put on rather a lot of weight. She wouldn’t exactly be fat,

  though – the riding would keep her firm, if solid. Because she’d

  definitely ride, Sally – and encourage little Gawain to do so as well.

  That the unwanted son he’d named for his discarded cavalryman

  lover would turn out to be a natural horseman might just be one of

  the consummate ironies which sustained Jonathan above the thick

  and oily sump of depression which would – after nigh on a decade

  pretending to be a heterosexual in the provinces – be ever threatening

  to engulf him. Be that as it may, kindness would remain his

  watchword – kindness could be the much needed catholicon, a

  balm to all the moral queasiness which would affect him at times,

  such that looking out of the window of the attic bedroom, where

  he might well keep some mementoes from his Service days in an

  old suitcase, he’d see the sodden acres of mud rising and falling, and

  would stagger a little on the tipping deck of social convention. And

  it might well be then – Sally and Gawain having set out for the

  stables – as he struggled to remember how many guests there’d be

  for dinner that evening, and how many had requested duck breasts

  and how many chicken, that the phone would ring in the vestibule.

  He’d probably take his time going to answer it – why hurry, when

  it’s probably only going to be the Vicar, asking him if he’d consider

  reading a passage from Luke at the carol service … And it came to

  pass in those days, that a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that all

  the world should be taxed … The voice on the end of the line would

  possibly be disguised in some way – either with one of the distorting

  scramblers available commercially or with some more clandestine

  equipment – but probably not: in any case, if the caller were to have

  a verbal tic of some sort – such as palilalia – whereby a phrase is

  repeated immediately, either in its entirety or partially … either in

  its entirety or partially, then Jonathan could be forgiven for thinking

  there was something wrong with the phone. I have your large data-set,

  is a plausibly threatening entrée – especially when immediately

  followed by: I have your large data-set … we need to agree the

  terms under which I’m prepared to return it to you in its entirety …

  we need to agree the terms under which I’m prepared to return it to

  you in its entirety … Given how much Jonathan De’Ath has harped

  on the brilliance of his memory, it might be far-fetched to suppose

  that during all the kerfuffle of the move from Lambeth to Bardney,

  not only had the retrieval of this cache of love tokens and its

  relocation been … fluffed, but that he’d also forgotten all about it.

  But he had. (I’ve always rather thought you made too much of your

  photographic memory, Johnny – it seemed to me more of a parlour

  trick than anything else. Granted, Sirbert was formidable at mental

  arithmetic – and I daresay you inherited a little of his facility –

  but the almost mystical construction you’ve placed on all this …

  Well, it’s the sort of nonsense you’d expect from a drug-addled

  hippy …) Memory loss can indeed be a side-effect of prolonged

  use – both of methyphenidate and selective serotonin reuptake

  inhibitors such as Fluoxetine. If that use is combined with steady –

  albeit not excessive – alcohol consumption, the effects could be

  considerably worse. Sitting in the vestibule of Dunbuggerin’ with the

  dog-and-bone pressed against his shell-like, Jonathan could well

  experience a dreadful little turn. All the horse brasses and brass

  bed warmers they acquired from John and Brian along with the

  business – and which Sally prevails upon the school-leavers she pays

  five quid an hour to polish – could well begin to spin round his

  weary head. He might think back to the last trip he’d made to

  Mohandra Patel’s corner shop on the South Lambeth Road, where

  he’d picked up the heavy old nineteen eighties attaché case, with its

  two hasp combination locks. If there were such a man as Mohandra

  Patel – a mustachioed, morose and paradoxically smiley-faced refugee

  from Kenyatta’s Kenya, who’d been prepared for trifling sums

  to do a number of small jobs over the years for the man he knows as

  Dave Kendrick – then, Well, I hope you’re enjoying it out there in

  the sticks, Dave, is the sort of thing he could be expected to say as

  he took “Dave’s” twenty-pound note and slipped it into the back

  pocket of his jeans, followed by: You going next door for some

  tapas? Sitting in Rebato’s, a rustically themed Spanish restaurant

  next door to South Lambeth News, Jonathan De’Ath could surely

  be forgiven for having a large glass of Rioja, followed by several

  more. This would, after all, be his swansong (Kann man Ruh und

  Frieden spüren, eh, Johnny), and, while his father had in point

  of fact had appalling taste in music – preferring to hum numbers

  from Showboat rather than attempt the sublimities of Bach – at this

  decisive juncture in his life, he might well hear Kins’s familiar tones

  fluting in his inner-ear (Wo ein guter Hirte wacht!), and so reflect

  on his twenty years of herding sheeple for the secret state. He might

  meditate on the increasingly febrile nature of that state, which, as

  he sits beneath the darkly varnished decorative wagon wheel bolted

  to the artisan-roughened white plaster, revolves around his clotting

  head, making of Rebato’s … a home from what’ll never be my home.

  The unavowed special EssEyeEss electronic surveillance unit

  inside British Telecom’s aluminium-faced office block, Keybridge

  House – the secret tunnels which do indeed vermiculate the entire

  subsurface of Vauxhall Cross, and which EssEyeEss employees use

  to transit between VeeBeeArr and Tintagel House, the nondescript

&n
bsp; adjoining office block. The back passages and dirty alleyways linking

  together the Hoist, the Vauxhall Tavern and Chariots Roman

  Spa – amongst a number of other local, gay-friendly businesses –

  these had been his stomping ground, and now he’d be stomping

  away … If only he’d visualised this: a dark-haired man in his mid

  forties, running a little to fat, but still upstanding – elegant, even –

  walking purposefully towards Stockwell tube station, a chunky

  outdated attaché case firmly gripped in his right hand. But after the

  full bottle of wine he’d probably’ve drunk, Jonathan – in common

  with his former colleagues – wouldn’t be capable of visualising

  anything, so might well simply abandon the case on the quarry-tiled

  floor and wander off in the other direction. Back towards the

  river for a valedictory look at the deceptive bend, before tottering

  to King’s Cross in time to catch the two-forty-eight to Lincoln.

  (If it’s running – the engineering works on the East Coast line

  are a national disgrace. But anyway, Johnny, I find your scenario

  pretty implausible: tipsy or not, you’d hardly be likely to forget

  this cache of love letters and associated material – a secret trove

  you’d been assiduously concealing for years.) He’d be demob

  unhappy, Jonathan would – freed from secret service and secret

  affair alike. Hakuna matata … is reassurance easily offered when all

  that bothers your life-partner, and the mother of your son and heir,

  is that you remember: We’ve eight for dinner tonight … He would’ve

  remembered that – remembered the steaks – fillet and rump, too.

  Ensured the presence in the cardboard box of the ham-hock pies

  Lancaster’s do so well – not forgotten white and black pudding,

  some veal, too. Most important: he’d never neglect the beef –

  because they’d have to have the beef. If Jonathan didn’t bring home

  the beef we’ve both had it … He’d realise he’d lost the large data-set

  on the train, as it was shuttling across the fenlands. Quite possibly

  he’d be staring blankly out of the window at the blank sky and the

  bare ground, and the very many piggeries, when he’d recall, say,

  that Javier had offered him a complimentary portion of pigs’ livers

  wrapped in bacon. A titbit he’d enjoyed so much, he’d quite forgotten

  about the attaché case. No panic. He’d get on the blower as

  soon as he reached Bardney – but no, Javier had less memory of

  Mister Kendrick’s case than Mister Kendrick did. As lunchtime

  had gone on, the restaurant might’ve got busier – there could’ve

  been a party in from a nearby office, celebrating some hysterical

  compliance clerk’s engagement, or health-and-safety officer’s charity

  freefall. It’d be a falling sensation Jonathan De’Ath would experience

  listening to the breathy voice of my blackmailer … He’d

  think back to the first few days after the loss of the large data-set,

  when – being analytic to a fault – with each successive hour that

  passed the tension would in all likelihood have eased out of him.

  Scrawled postcards and notes, unlabelled Dictaphone cassettes and

  compact floppy disks which would be entirely obsolete, unless you

  happened to be the sort of hoarder who also hung on to contemporaneous

  computer equipment – none of it could’ve appeared

  particularly interesting to an opportunistic thief, who’d quite likely

  dump it all in the nearest skip, take the attaché case over to Electric

  Avenue and flog it to one of the bric-à-brac stall-holders … might’ve

  got a fiver for it. Yes, after a week or so, Jonathan De’Ath could

  well have begun to relax a little. With each subsequent month

  he’d likely relax a great deal more. Years could well go by during

  which the whole immense and ulterior realm of cyber-surveillance

  would come, kicking and screaming into the light – yet with each

  one, Jonathan De’Ath would think himself and Gawain more

  secure. Bradley Manning and Wikileaks – Snowden, and his

  revelations – the slow welling up of oily calumny from the gutter

  press concerning Camp Breadbasket – the ongoing enquiries into

  Baha Mousa’s death and the fallout from the Battle of Danny

  Boy: all were the result of agents in the field not observing a basic

  protocol and writing things down … Careless whispers cost lives:

  Yes, he’d kept the things his son’s namesake had written down and

  spoken – but their love hadn’t lasted forever, and by now that postcard

  of the Pontcysyllte Aqueduct – together with scores of other

  scenic views – would’ve entirely rotted away in the Essex landfill

  site the contents of the notional skip had, almost certainly, been

  added to. The important thing is that the bulk of this data had

  been in analogue forms. Yes, yes, of course there were a few digital

  traces, cirrus scratches on the surface of the ever swelling cloud, but

  there was no conceivable way that any entity – biological, machine

  or cybernetic – could have gathered together the call logs from

  North Yorkshire public phone booths in the mid-to-late nineteen

  nineties, or the records of Bradford internet cafés during a similar

  period, let alone correlated them with the movements of two given

  individuals – no matter that those individuals were themselves

  instruments of the state. I have your large data-set … we need to agree

  the terms under which I’m prepared to return it to you in its entirety …

  we need to agree the terms under which I’m prepared to return it to you in

  its entirety … To which a reasonable response might be: How the

  fuck d’you know I called it my large data-set? To which the breathy

  blow-back could well be: You wrote it on a file card, Mister De’Ath,

  that you sellotaped to one of the folders full of letters, postcards

  and photographs – some of which are quite candid, naked shots of

  a largish, blondish man who I’ve obviously been able to identify as

  Gawain Thomas, formerly a Lieutenant-Colonel in the British

  Army, now the manager of a leisure centre in Crickhowell … now

  the manager of a leisure centre in Crickhowell … Others of which are

  of nothing more significant than white plastic garden chairs …

  nothing more significant than white plastic garden chairs … Are you

  working for a state or non-state entity? could well be the sort of

  question his former lover would’ve described as bone – but, sensing

  this was no ordinary contact, Jonathan might nonetheless ask it,

  and be rewarded with: I assure you, Mister De’Ath, I am entirely

  freelance – what I do, if you’ll forgive a little spiritual pride, is

  for the benefit of all humanity, and I do it entirely on my own cognisance

  … and I do it entirely on my own cognisance … Given the

  aspiration – both breathiness and blackmailing-wise – Jonathan

  might be forgiven at this point for picturing his interlocutor as a

  man wearing a Nehru jacket with a white Persian cat in his lap, who

  sits in the splendid reclusion of his futuristic secret lair: a great

  cavern full of helmeted men i
n uniform jumpsuits, carved out of

  a solid block of Polystyrene and sunk deep beneath the ocean.

  Forgiven, because in all likelihood his interlocutor would be a

  man wearing a Nehru jacket – albeit one he picked up for three

  quid in the Mind charity shop on the Kilburn High Road – and

  sitting with a cat on his lap, albeit a moulting, tabby one with an

  unimaginative name such as … Scratchy. How might Ben White-house-Busner

  – bulky by name, bulky by nature – have acquired

  Jonathan De’Ath’s large data-set? (Well … in any number of ways,

  I s’pose. I mean, it does strike me – although I’m no expert on the

  matter – that the computerised retrieval of data, the use of global

  positioning satellites for navigation and even the integration of

  utilities and retail distribution systems into the internet, has rather

  bamboozled us all, such that we regard the persistence of material

  objects in the real world as really rather, um … well … spooky.)

  Yes, indeed – spooky. The world is big – humans and objects are,

  for the most part, small. But both humans and objects persist in

  time, and the stereotyped and repetitive behaviour of the former –

  who will persist in doing the same things over and over, again

  annagain – means that the coincidence of the two can quite often

  be statistically correlated so as to produce at least rule-of-thumb

  predictions – how else do you imagine economists make a living?

  (I really don’t see what you’re driving at here, Johnny – and, by-the-by,

  how d’you know about Wikileaks and Bradley Manning and

  Edward Snowden, if it’s two thousand and five and we’re walking

  the fifteen sad, scraggy red-faced miles from Shaibah Logistics

  Base to the British Army’s air point of disembarkation?) Shut the

  fuck-up, old man! How do you know anything at all – given you’re

  dead! Jonathan bellows, words plucked from his mouth by hot

  zephyrs and … shredded. Yet he’d also scarcely believe he was walking

  through the sad, scraggy red-faced desert of southern Iraq, if it

  weren’t for the creak and bang of tumbledown corrugated-iron pens,

  and the baaing of oblong-eyed goats and oil-blackened sheep –

  weren’t for all this, and also for the breathy voice which speaks to

  him from out of a possible future, and straight into his inner-ear: