Will Self - Liver - A Fictional Organ With a Surface Anatomy of Four Lobes

The mirror behind the sink doubled the pill pots, the bottles, the tubes and the blister packs that Joyce had shakily laid out when she arrived the previous afternoon. It was the same device that cocktail bars used to convince drinkers of their alcoholic largesse.

Diuretics and antacids, sleeping pills and drugs to tamp down anxiety, painkillers and dietary supplements — marmalade snatched while falling . She had never properly questioned the justness of all these before: this was what you did , you took what you were told to take.

In the window of a pet shop at the shabby shopping parade in Selly Oak, she had seen them: Scottie’s Liver Treats . Shrivelled, blood-dark excrescences packaged in cellophane. That’s what’s going on inside me . To begin with she had been accusatory of her own body as she watched it wasting in the pier glass she had inherited from her own rangy mother. Is it you, or you, or you? Breasts and bones and blood. But then Phillimore had confessed: he had no real idea where Joyce’s cancer had originated.

‘Although the most obvious, ah, tumour is in your liver, this is not where the cancer began — primary liver cancer is almost unknown in the developed world, Jo.’ Phillimore seemed to be taking personal responsibility for this. ‘Except among alcoholics and people with Hepatitis C.’

‘So. where?’ She was dreamy during these day-mares.

‘Usually, when — as with you — we’ve done a biopsy, we can analyse the cancer cells and discover their origin, but in anything up to 15 per cent of cases this will remain occult.’

‘Occult?’ What was he talking about? A silver-bearded wizard? A voodoo priest?

Phillimore smiled at her consternation — how she loathed him. ‘That’s merely a medical term for something we don’t know — yet.’

Yet, looking at all these useless salves and inadequate physics, then recalling the lead apron, the scattered footfalls, the spooky hum — it struck Joyce that ‘occult’ was precisely what Phillimore’s treatment of her had been. I. I. It was difficult to grasp — peering through the eye holes of her old woman mask, at the woman in the mirror wearing the old woman mask — but in the suicide flat Joyce had somehow begun talking again with her body; they had recommenced a conversation that was reassuringly prosaic, full of itchy chatter and punctuated by companionable burps. This was a dialogue that excluded Joyce’s questioning mind — for all her body demanded was a compliant listener, prepared to sit and nod, and occasionally mutter, ‘Yes, yes, of course, dear’ in response to its own moany self-absorption.

The capsules popped from their blisters straight into the toilet bowl; the pills plopped after them, followed by coils of ointment and splashes of linctus. Then she flushed five times, until the whole business was done.

There was one thing left: the Oramorph, a sticky solution in a squat bottle. I’m in pain, now — the pain of having to lug Isobel around with her, she even has Derry’s mouth. His mouth! Decisiveness mutated into a deadly impulsiveness; she clenched and twisted the safety cap until it yielded, then took a swig.

What? To cease upon the Swiss lunch-time? She tittered, then wove through the Teutonic symphony of blond wood and clashing mirrored surfaces to where clean white linen offered quiet sanctuary. She fell across the bed and directly into her own fugue. Mors slopebit et natora, Cum resurget creatura, Judicanti responsura. Scoresby, naked, working himself up into a right old tizzy , bearing down on Joyce, quiff flicking like a baton; his blue-veined marble torso smashed against the bedside table and crumbled into dusty chunks. He’s only plaster! Her horsey neigh took her back and back to the paddock of puberty, where she watched with a queer hot thrill older, richer girls posting up and down . Their jodhpurs stretched into hide, the girls transformed into centaurs with ponytails, their ponytails fanned out, iridescent, becoming peacock tails. The peacocks’ beaks thickened into dolphins’ snouts, the dolphins arched and dived into oceanic tea cups that shrank into dancing Disney crockery. Scoresby chased the string section up a spiral staircase, while ahead of them scampered the Singers. Liber scriptus proferetur, In quo totum continetur, Unde mundus judicetur . Even in drugged sleep, it seemed to Joyce that such a fantasia was pitifully wasted on a dying woman.

Her watch said it was five when she awoke; she didn’t look at the 24-hour digital clock, and so assumed it must be the following morning, so deeply refreshed did she feel. She picked up the phone and dialled Isobel’s room: no answer. She got up and opened the curtains: fog still nuzzled the panes. She dressed carefully, then further adjusted her clothing in the mirror, turning this way, then that, paying strict attention to the lie of her skirt — was it becoming ? She had brought hardly any make-up, only lipstick, and blusher to give life to her moribund complexion; but it didn’t really work, not on such jaundiced skin. Nevertheless, in the bathroom she applied these, marvelling at her own girlishness. Death and Nature shall be astonished, When all creation rises again, To answer to the Judge .

Going along the carpeted gantry to the lift, Joyce discovered Isobel slumped on a leather-padded bench. She was plainly drunk, her mascara smudged, her lipstick smeared, and her cheeks — without the assistance of blusher — as pink as any Heidi’s. There was a stiff paper bag between her slack calves. I see, a little retail therapy .

‘Mum, oh, Mum,’ she gasped. ‘I wanted them — I didn’t know. I wanted them to go into your room — but you’d locked it inside.’ Then, using Joyce’s own thrift in recrimination: ‘We missed the flight.’

Joyce came straight to the point: ‘Well, you’ll have to get another one, then — and pay for it yourself.’ A book, written in, will be brought forth, In which is contained everything that is, Out of which the world shall be judged .

‘Mum. ’ Those grovelling tones. ‘What’s happened to you?’

‘Nothing much, but I’ve decided to stay here. And, Izzy, I may not have killed myself, but I’m still dying.’

Isobel was too saturated to absorb her mother’s news, or note the rare diminutive; she slid down further on the bench, a cashmere heap.

‘You’re thirty-three years old,’ Joyce couldn’t forbear from reminding her. ‘I can’t go on carrying you for ever — and I don’t want to.’

After that, for a while, she stood and listened to her daughter’s sobbing, and the heavy whoosh of the approaching lift.

At reception Joyce handed her key to the concierge. He wore a cod-antiquated waistcoat with gold facings and striped sleeves. He had a 17.00 hours shadow and regarded her with the detachment of hotel staff the world over. ‘Madam,’ he began, ‘we tried — ’ but was interrupted by a manager, a wispy man with a high-domed forehead, who appeared at his shoulder.

‘Your daughter, Frau Beddoes, wanted us to enter your room — but I was not wanting to do this; it would have been second time in your stay.’

Joyce said, ‘I didn’t realize there was a quota.’

‘Madam — please?’

‘Nothing — really, nothing. I’m going for a walk now.’

‘Do you know how long you will be making the stay with us? Your reservation is for one night, only.’

‘I–I don’t know. not indefinitely; why, do you need the room?’

The manager consulted the screen that peered up at him from beneath the brow of the desk. With one waxy finger he picked out a monotonous tune on the keyboard. ‘I can let you have the room until Sonntag — Sunday — but then there is a higher rate for the Friday and Saturday nights.’ He gave Joyce an avaricious smile, top lip tucked under lower for safekeeping.