Will Self - Shark

it’s quieter than the grave, old man — picture villas with picture windows picturing more villas with picture windows, and no bathing to be had unless you fancy getting your balls blown off by a mine . . but with some t’rific girls who by day were living statues in a nearly nude revue at the Whitehall, and by night were occupied. . rather more energetically . I told ’em to keep an eye out for you, Simmy had said as he hefted his leg into the monococque of his Armstrong Siddeley, and Michael thought: Lucky bugger! — He’d almost suggested to Kins they pop round to the stage door when they were in the Whitehall’s vicinity, but his brother’s mood seemed. . so volatile . There was also this other business to conclude: the orders folded into the pocket of his battledress. . my wings awaiteth me — and they’re not angelic ones . He’d only spoken the truth — but not all of it: he was to report to Withernsea. However, if the grapevine was anything to go by, this meant he was destined for heavy bombers — most likely Whitleys. His compensation would be more personal: most of the squadrons were up in Lincolnshire — he was reliably informed there was one at Goltho, only a couple of miles from the CLTA outfit at Collow Abbey Farm. We’ll be near-neighbours . . popping round to see each other . . drinking sharp cider in the shadow of haystacks . . He imagined a rekindling of their close fraternal relationship — and through this agency a funny sort of matchmaking of RAF men and conchies . . Of course, when Michael analysed this pipe-dream it was. . utter tosh , nearly as ridiculous as the visit he’d paid to the town hall shortly before enlisting. The Registrar seemed totally uninterested, asking him only to be so good as to sign here. . and there. . and there also, before rubber-stamping De’Ath to death. Then he used a rusty dipper to copperplate in, Lincoln. — Now, observing his red-faced brother, who’s squinting at the an ornate antique clock through the strips of tape on a jeweller’s window, Michael doubts there will ever be a right time to reveal the extent of his romanticism, his imagining that. . I could in some peculiar way stay beside you tending the peaceful garden, even as I rode Pegasus aloft with a saddlebag full of HE . . Kins says, We’re going to the pub, you silly-billy, but such are our prehistoric licensing laws — they order these matters, don’tcha know, far better in both Frances, unoccupied as well as Marianne enchained — there’s little point in hurrying. You don’t need to be conversant with the Eleatic paradoxes to understand the peculiarities of British boozers: we may go as swiftly as we like, we’ll only cover half the distance to the Marquess of Granby, then half the remaining distance, then half of that distance in turn — just as opening time is miserably and endlessly deferred, so will our arrival be. Better we maintain the tortoise’s slow and steady progress towards its favoured dandelion patch. And is it? Michael asks. Is it what? Kins snaps back. Is it your preferred. . dandelion patch, the Marquess of Granby? I have, Kins says, no favourites as such, rather, I love ’em all: the Granby and the Beer House, the Burglars’ Rest and the Black Horse. We might venture so far as the Wheatsheaf — if, that is, you’re in the mood for a strenuous hike — Kins brandishes his stick — Though I’ll have to insist on stopping at the Highlander on the way to take on the necessary, ah, ballast. — Tightening his arm in Kins’s, Michael brings their slow and steady progress . . to a complete halt: Is this what you want, Ape, this pub crawl? I mean, you seemed a bit stinko at Victoria and now you’re getting plastered again —. — Don’t be deceived — Kins brings his hot face to within inches of his brother’s — by my proposed itinerary: this is a pub crawl in outline only, while the libations are purely incidental. No! this is a quest! — He yanks them on, declaiming, I must find the lovely maiden, clothed in white samite, and lay my poor aching horn in her tender lap! — In the Highlander, which smells of fried onions, there’s no bitter on tap, so they have bottled ale instead. Michael sits powerless to exit his brother’s dramatics. . He is the Hands of Orlac, I sit and watch while they play . Mine host, whose waxed moustaches echo the oiled wings of his centre-parted hair, says, D’liveries are gettin’ erratic to say the least, gentlemen. Dray hoss lay right down in Warren Street — shell shocked they say. First on ’is knees ’fore ’is back legs go — then ’e rolls over gentle like, but ’is great weight cracks the shafts. Drayman gets down, goes to see what’s wrong — hoss is stone-fucking-dead without a mark on ’im, an’ that’s a big and noble beast. Kins says, sotto voce, As if size had anything to do with it. — He’s spinning a coaster between his thick fingers, and when it stops Michael’s momentarily taken by this small irony: GUINNESS GIVES YOU STRENGTH! before Kins says out of his blue fag smoke: She’s a t’riffic kid, Annette, I’d like you to meet her. Funny thing, though, for a serious girl she’s running with a rather fast crowd. — Michael thinks of the Dornier that was shot down during the raid that damaged Buckingham Palace. There was a photograph in the Express of its anodised wing lying in the wreckage. . white and severed — the Hand of Orlac . He says casually, Have you seen much of her since you both came up to town? And Kins grabs his wrist: You don’t get it at all, Ape, I can’t possibly see anything of her: I’m inside her mouth! — In the oaken cave of the Marquess of Granby, the potman, wearing a holey reefer jersey, puts up the blackout boards: I’d be obliged if you gentlemen move temporarily like. . And at the bar they swank it with scotch and sodas. Kins says, On my way through Lincolnshire I holed up for a day near a village called Helpringham — and they were very helping of him, I can tell you. It’s Fen country, you see, divided up by long drainage channels into a sort of enormous chess board — a bugger to find your way through, had me stumbling around like the White Knight. . — In the morning, when they’d met at breakfast, there’d been considerable awkwardness, Annette announcing out of the blue that a friend of a friend had offered her some sort of job in London working with refugees, and on balance she thought it was probably for the best if she took it. Best for whom? Kins said ungraciously — then, to hide his upset, he went out into the farmyard and began to pace up and down, picking up tools and letting them fall with dull tinks and cretinous clanks. She came out ten minutes or so later, packed and ready to go. . obviously it’d all been set up in advance . The post van pulled up at the gates, and Annette said, Cheery-oh, then, and held out her hand in a comradely sort of way . Kins pulled himself together and asked for her address, said he’d write, and held on to her hand until she took it away from him and picked up her case with it. After that he paced some more, and picked up a hoe with the intention of going off somewhere to do a little ineff ectual weeding . . But then, as he told Sirbert. . I simply leant my hoe against the barn and, well, sort of wandered off . He stopped in the attic room for as long as it took to stuff some underwear in his knapsack, to finger the faded muslin of the curtains and to scrutinise the flies taking off and landing on the airy strip of the window. He took four apples sticky with juice from the bowl in the kitchen — then he slipped away into the inky shadows under the lime hedge, thinking of Fox and how he’d walked abroad in solitary places for many days, and sat in hollow trees and lonesome spots until night came on. Kins, stopping by the gamekeeper’s pole to touch the shot-pulped breasts of buzzards and hawks, understood this:Читать дальше