Will Self - Shark

muddling through — a ball that would roll down on top of them all , crushing them all with monstrous and implacable inertia. What if he were to appeal and, instead of standing there mutely, prate on about the exploitation of the common man by forces beyond his control — or lay claim to an exemplary holiness? The end result would, he felt sure, be the same: no donkey ride or palm leaves — no punchy Pilot or Judy Jesus, only the stamp of ill-fitting boots on wobbly cobbles. . nostrils clogging with wet wool . He’d already heard about men in orders who were. . taking them , and, as he stood at the top of the hill beneath tossing white altar candles of flowering chestnuts, this was given to him: I cannot bear the mark of Cain . . — for surely, that’s what it would be: an I for Individualist, branded on the forehead that you’d bear for the rest of your days . Michael received this unction, and also a vision of his brother, shambling by night from village to village, unkempt and unloved, not just for the duration of the war, however long that might be , but forever — a body without a heart, a brain without a mind, missing every part . He gazed over the tight parquetry of Cubitt Town and Millwall and pictured the coming attack: all the individual airplanes subsumed in a single swarm that swept round the bend in the river from Tilbury and buzzed past the inlet of Barking Creek, while oblivious to it all the stevedores, their jolly wives and their Ah, Bisto! kids went on happily singing in all the corner pubs: Then they hear the rumble on the floor. It’s a big surprise they’re waiting for, And all the couples form a ring, For miles around you’ll hear them sing —. Then the city does a somerset so all the porter in all the pint pots drops on to the smoke-browned ceilings, and all the cellar hatches burst open: Roll out the barrel! We’ll ’ave a barrel of fun! — It will be a total annihilation, that’s what every futurist worth his salt — the Coles, Huxleys and Wellses of this world — have been predicting for years, so why not propel yourself above it. . white, whirling thistledown . Why not choose, at least, the manner of your own Daedalus death, if not its place. . or time? — That evening, Missus Pelham, the cook, served cold meats and cold roast potatoes. Just us, Sirbert said — Bumbly was out at a charitable function organised by one of his colleagues, an occurrence rare enough to be. . worrying . Michael supposed in the normal run of things a father might be expected to discuss the tribunal’s decision, and what plans his son had in the light of it. Placing a red ministerial box on the floor by the dumb waiter, Sirbert said: Tact should have the same root as taciturn if etymology had any logic to it — then proceeded to work through supper, his mechanical-grey eyes processing sheet after sheet of paper, his pen’s nib making green-ink annotations so neat and minute that, observing him from the far end of the dining table, it seemed unlikely to Michael that they were consciously willed at all. He knew Sirbert was having troubles with Nuffield — he hadn’t forgiven or forgotten the dispute over shadow factories. He wondered whether it would be politic to remark that at least the motor-car manufacturer was now acting with a certain probity , enlisted in the public service. . gratis . Watching his father at work, he thought better of it: Sirbert’s reluctance to speak of Whitehall went beyond mere professionalism. . in my father’s house there are many mansions . . all of them converted into shadow factories and shadow offices, all of them staffed by clerks and secretaries. All of them disbarred from interdepartmental chitchat . Michael, who had since infancy seen his father perform two or more tasks simultaneously, only now fully formed a thought that must for years have been embryonic inside me . The truth was Sirbert simply has no understanding of what it might be like to be anyone but him . Yes, yes, he did a good job of normal human intercourse, smiling when others laughed, appearing touched when they wept — however, this was a product of rigorous analysis and the amassing of vast quantities of data. Deep in the Sirbertian brain box, there was, Michael imagined, a deftly constructed model of the house. And in this there was a reconstruction of the very room in which they currently sat, complete with balsa-wood furniture, felt rug, a dumb waiter operated by a length of twine, and clever little Sirbert and Michael dolls finicked into being out of pipe cleaners, wax blobs and cotton-wool puffs. As he flicked at his papers, Sirbert manipulated these puppets, furnishing them with a repertoire of hypothetical remarks, so were his son to say anything at all, it would already have been anticipated, and the answer would rise naturally enough to his beetroot-stained lips. Sirbert barely ate — Michael did so heartily, then slept more soundly than he had since his call-up arrived. Slept in the attic bedroom he still shared on occasion with Kins — slept in one of the complicated and unwieldly folding beds that, when Sirbert bought them in the twenties, had been advertised as the latest in space-saving convenience. These were great oak-sided cabinets that disgorged iron bedsteads with tormented sproings — every maid the De’Aths took on complained of being nipped by them. Lying full stretch, Michael could see through the open double doors to the old nursery, and instead of dwelling on the pig-sticking of my whole-hogging pacifism , he decided to inventory its contents. . by way of a sedative . Tea chests and steamer trunks had been piled up into a stepped Aztec pyramid that fitted in under the sloping roof. In these were balls and cups, spinning tops and hoops, mah-jong and Ludo sets, croquet mallets and hoops, cut-down golf clubs and carpet bowls, boxing gloves and cricket pads — all the impedimenta that had cluttered up their busily isolated childhoods. Deep in the core of the mound — although requiring the skills of a Schliemann to disinter them — would, Michael thought, be the large collection of lead soldiers amassed by the three De’Ath males. Sirbert had been as enthusiastic as his sons, and would appear punctually after nursery tea on Fridays with a Britains box in his coat pocket from which he’d extract fusiliers, dragoons or artillery men, adding them directly into whichever column was currently attacking the bastion. This ugly-looking fortification was Sirbert’s handiwork: the towers turned on his small lathe, then glued to a wooden base. Around these he’d built up successive layers of papier mâché, painted brown and grey, until — to his own satisfaction at least — he’d effected a resemblance to Edinburgh Castle’s volcanic mound. Sirbert directed the matchstick volleys fired by spring-loaded guns — Sirbert organised the levees of reinforcements. Sirbert knelt in his striped trousers, his sharp nose. . harrowing through the ranks, his godly fingers pinching out the unfit whose paint had been chipped, or the wounded whose extremities had been bent. He and Kins would’ve discarded these casualties altogether were it not that Michael pleaded for their lives. So they grudgingly allowed him to set up a field hospital behind the lines, in a toy farmhouse left over from more bucolical play. Each time he lifted the roof to add a newly wounded soldier to their recumbent ranks, Michael would be re-infuriated by the way the toy soldiers’ oblong bases and rigid stances prevented them from. . lying down properly . A Scots Guards bugler — in red coat, yellow tartan trews and pith helmet — was especially troublesome. His shoulder joint — a simple pinion — was broken by one of the marbles Sirbert used for heavy ordinance, until, following what almost amounted to a row, Kins persuaded him that they were contrary to the spirit of the Geneva treaties. My, my, Sirbert had snarled, a proper little Dunant I have on my hands. Michael repaired the bugler with some fuse wire, but Sirbert wouldn’t let him be returned to the fray. To allay his younger son’s sense of injustice. .Читать дальше