Martin Amis - Yellow Dog

‘Well I never did,’ said Heaf. ‘Congratulations, Clint. You handled a difficult situation with considerable delicacy, and it all came out for the best. Jeff?’

‘Tomorrow’, said Strite, ‘it’s Donna’s Story.’

‘Angle?’

‘Uh … She deeply respects the strength of Ainsley’s feelings for Beryl. No way in this world will she press charges. Says the rough stuff shrinks to insignificance compared to the fivestar porking he gave her earlier. You know: have you seen the size of him?’

There’s a word for it. Don’t you worry. Oh yeah, there’s a word for it all right. Contempt.

The men in the locker-room will gasp with envy. Will gasp with envy.

You can take all the shrinks and minders and trickcyclists or whatever you want to call them … It’s down to you, mate. It’s down to you.

One told him he was crap in bed. One called him a crap fuck. At first he didn’t understand, and responded in kind. He invited them to come back and try him again when they’d lost a couple of tons and had their arses fixed. Then understanding began to dawn. ‘Oh. Is this as big as Clint gets?’ — and this, by now, was a Clint preempurpled with Potentium. Raillery, is it? Later that night: payback. ‘Gaw,’ he’d said, as she took off her bra: ‘when you have a baby, you’ll have to get it pissed, you will, before it’ll go near that little lot.’ ‘Oi. Take your ring off for God’s sake,’ she’d said, after a full minute of foreplay. ‘Ring? What ring? That’s me watch.’ But understanding was beginning to dawn. Go on, laugh , he was already muttering as he unbuckled his belt. Get your laughing done with. They didn’t laugh. They said: ‘I’m sorry, love, but I can’t feel you.’ They said: ‘I can’t feel you, Clint. I’m trying, but you’re not there.’ Not there! Those microscopic insects called no-see-ums: they bite. And Clint? No-see-um — and no-feel-um. He’s not there. Where is he if he’s not there?

The men in the locker-room will gasp with envy, gasp with envy. There’s a word for it: contempt.

You have 125 new messages: half of them offered riven virgins and pregnant grannies; the other half offered penis-enlargement strategies — and Clint had tried them all.

Meet the challenge of any woman … you will be in total command … remain your secret … discovered by Dr Trofim Frenkel, MD … why settle for … your maximum potential … herbs found in Polynesia … ‘I feel great about myself (PL, Germany) … natural scents that turn women into … 55 million satisfied customers … piston assembly … non-removable springloaded … pistol-trigger press pump … ‘I am already 12 inches but I’m going for 14′(RB, USA) …

Why stop there, mate? Why not 28? Why not 56? We’d be like the men on the Esso forecourt, with the steel nozzles, the flickering digits, the fat splats of car-sweat.

At home Clint had flexers and extenders, fancy philtres in tubs and tubes, pulleys, lozenges, unguents, humidors, all over the house, in trunks and suitcases and cardboard boxes and tengallon bags. No African scarifier had subjected himself to more thorough and various mortification; down there, Clint had undergone every possible metamorphosis — except growth. There had been temporary, and terrifying, enlargements. But nothing you’d want to keep …

Then of course there was the radical solution. And Clint (while on assignment) had once got as far as the surgery waitingroom of a Dr Christer Ekland in Stockholm; he filled in forms for ten minutes before he burst out through the door. And by now he had heard many sufficiently gruesome stories about Life after the Knife … How the shame — how the shame was predisposed to bring down more shame. Shame came from receiving, from sustaining, that other thing, contempt.

I don’t know, mate, but it’s down to you. They talk about the shrinks, the minders, the trickcyclists … And Clint had always feared such an investigation: he wondered what else they’d find … But you can’t go any further, not down this road. You’ve got to open your head, and let them in.

‘Absolutely glorious weather,’ said Heaf. ‘Today, London will be hotter than Dubai. What we’ll have here is a café society. Like on the Continent.’

Clint said, ‘The big news climatewise, they’re saying, is the Ice Age. Which is coming up. After uh, ten thousand years of decent weather, muck out the igloo, boys, and hunker down for ninety millennia of frostbite.’

‘… Then maybe global warming isn’t such a bad thing after all!’

‘Yeah, they’re saying — yeah: but if you wet your pants at the beginning of a blizzard, it won’t keep you warm for very long. You’re obviously in a brilliant mood, Chief?’

‘Well. Yes, well, it’s true. I can’t be unhappy today.’

Everyone turned to the masterscreen. This was showing the four-second loop of the Princess. Each man present had watched it a couple of hundred times; and the room fell silent as they watched it yet again. The first second : supine in the white bath, the Princess is rhythmically spooning water on to her throat with her left hand. The second second : she pauses, as if to listen; the splashing, the lapping of the water — this has ceased. The third second : she sits up suddenly. The fourth second : she turns her head to the right as her body rotates through ninety degrees, causing the water to slide and swirl across her cocked hip. Then black.

‘For us, that’s a licence to print money,’ said Mackelyne. ‘If the gagging order holds. They can download it themselves but it’s not the same. Our wankers’ll want something to keep — to cherish. And that’s what we’ll give them.’

‘Hold your fire, Mack.’ Heaf joined his hands behind the back of his neck and said conversationally, ‘Donna Strange opened an abortion clinic in Belfast — today at noon … There were protestors, of course, and it was covered on local TV. Donna looked radiant.’

Supermaniam said, ‘What about the black eye and the split lip?’

‘No trace of either.’ Heaf added brightly, ‘We can always claim she put makeup on it.’

‘What, makeup on the makeup?’ said Clint. ‘I can see why you’re not bothered, Chief. After all, April Fool’s Day is only three and a half months off. We can say we jumped the gun.’

Heaf guffawed with his head thrown back. He reached across the table for a tasselled folder, saying, ‘From Tulkinghorn, Summerson and Nice, no less. It seems that we are now faced with the legal question of whether our photocaptions constitute a uh, “an incitement to masturbation”.’ He held up a clipping between finger and thumb. ‘“Does Steffi give you a stiffi? Roll your sleeve up, son, and get to work!” Or the following, from your Blinkie Bob Video Review, Clint. “You’ll be needing a box of tissues for this one (make that a mansize!). And I don’t mean it’s a weepie.”’

‘Tulkinghorn, Summerson and Nice,’ said Clint. ‘Don’t they represent the Walthamstow Wanker?’

‘They do. You see, the “erotic material” being consulted at the public baths on that fateful day was nothing other than the Morning Lark. So the Walthamstow Wanker …’

‘Is a wanker! You’re doing my bonce in here, Chief. Tell you what. Can I have a month’s holiday starting tomorrow?’

‘Course you can, dear boy. The thing is, none of this matters, journalistically, because everyone pretends we’re not a newspaper. Well all that is about to change.’

Heaf stood. They waited.

‘I’m late, I’m late,’ he sang, ‘for a very important date …’

‘Where at, Chief?’

‘At Number Ten Downing Street. By order of the King.’