Martin Amis - Yellow Dog

When it was over he went through it again, availing himself of the remote control. Watching pornography, watching the sex of others (this was already clear to him), you were constantly saying, No don’t do that — do this, stop, don’t stop, proceed, desist. The viewer was helpless before the spatial dimensions, but the remote control gave him power over time. Deploying this power, Brendan concentrated on freeze-framed close-ups of the actress’s face. From certain angles, yes, remarkably like, remarkably like. But older. And not just a year older … If Princess Lolita had shape or form, then power was its pattern. The exertion of that power remained symbolic, and counterintuitive: it was the handsome derelict who pinioned the Princess with a pair of paper handcuffs; it was the sleek grandee who followed her about on all fours, led by a gossamer leash. Yet always this moment at the end, when power was no longer held in balance. The face, smiling, with male seed dripping from it, hanging from it. Brendan didn’t like this spectacle. But his blood did.

It was with a sense of himself revised dramatically downward that he stood, and pressed the eject. For a moment he entertained the informed certainty that the machine would now seize (trapping its contents for later delectation — Henry’s, Victoria’s), and he would have to wrench it apart with his teeth and fingernails. But here it came, disgustedly expectorated on to the tiled floor … On the way to his room he came round a corner and almost fell over her: the Princess. He flung out both hands in her direction, to catch or steady her, and so released what was lodged beneath his armpit: and in clear contravention of all life’s laws (which demand that every dropped object lands the wrong way up), Princess Lolita came to rest face-down, and in near silence, on the tussocky pelt of the carpet. Even so he had time to think that his greatcoat and dressing-gown would now fly open, to reveal not the full complement of his pyamas but a pair diligently savaged by scissors, with the trousers, secured by elastic bands, ending just above the knee.

‘I’m so sorry, ma’am. I do apologise.’

Victoria hugged her robe to her. Plainly she was heading for the cavernous bathroom which the three of them shared (along with the rabbits and the archery sets). He expected, as he focused, to find her poetically pale, as pale as the weak dawn that was now almost upon them. But she wore an uneven flush and a roseate brocade on her upper lip and septum — she had not been well, was not well, was of course not well, this Christmas, this long January …

‘Oh never mind ,’ she said, and stepped round him. At the corner she bent and turned, saying, ‘Brendan — you know there’s only one thing he can do.’

‘I’m sorry, ma’am?’

She flipped a hand in his direction, and was gone.

An hour later Brendan was still muttering into his pillow … How did it go again? Oh yes: work. That’s all you were doing. Making ‘headway’, was it? And rousing yourself from the enforced torpor of Ewelme … Working is what they’re doing and that’s why they look so old: old in the eyes. Is pornography just filmed prostitution or is it something more gladiatorial? Those hospitalic condoms: they don’t keep them on at the end. And the face has holes in it … Gladiators: were slaves. But could win their freedom. What exactly has happened to you? he asked himself. Slave, thou hast slain me. Villain, take my purse. If ever thou wilt thrive, bury my body … Tori Fate turned seventeen on January 3. Princess Lolita was begun on January 12 and released on January 19, the day after the Victoria story metastasised. So hard upon — it followed hard upon. And thus the phenomenon explained. At the back of the common mind, for reasons fair or foul, was a virgin princess. A fifteen-year-old girl — but the most brilliant edition.

* * *

‘Did you dear? Did you dear? Ah. I trust me wreath was in its proper place? Ah. Did you dear? Did you dear? Ah. He’s coming is he? Handsome. Yes dear. God bless.’

Joseph Andrews put down one instrument and picked up another. Click.

‘Going through what I done so far, I think I could’ve give the wrong impression. You must think I’m a stubborn sort of so-and-so — a bit too stubborn, sometimes, for me own good! And it could be you ain’t that far wrong. On the last day of me eighteen months for [ click ] Jesus. Oh yeah [ click ] for uh, for Affray, some bloke come up to me and says, “Fancy a run at the wall, mate?” They had a uh, refectory table in the yard — must have been fifteen feet, we’ve reckoned, on its end. So I said I’d be absolutely delighted. I fancied it the more as they’d already give me me civvies. In a pillowslip. Lob it over — up and away. As it was we was only gone half an hour. And of course, when they’ve dragged you back in, they lay about you with a will. Course that : does the bear do its business in the woods? They’ve stuck me with the eighteen months again plus another six for the break, plus another year for what we done to the couple whose car we’ve took. Now I’ve said at the time that having a run at the wall was the right thing to do and I’d do it again. You got to keep on having a go at them. You got to keep — kicking up, we call it. But then it comes over you that … that prison is like the sea. You can be the strongest swimmer there ever was and you can keep kicking up, and kicking up, and kicking up, like grim death with all you got till your very last gasp. But the sea is the sea. It’ll stay where it is and it’ll never tire. [ Click … Click. ]

‘So when I come out from doing me eight I threw in me lot with Tony Eist and Keith the Snake. Import-export business on the Costa del Sol. Me and Tony’ve gone back a way, through Wormwood Scrubs, Borstal, Detention Centre and Approved School. But this Keith the Snake was a new one on me. And you know what? Don’t ask me why, but there was something about Keith the Snake that I didn’t quite … Call it a sixth sense, if you like. I couldn’t put me finger on it, but there was something about Keith the Snake that come over a bit offo. Lovely dresser, Keith the Snake. Not flash. Smart. Always beautifully turned out.

‘What we was doing was we was … Now I liked a drink, in them days, but I’ve personally never held with drugs. Offer me an aspirin and I dash it from your hand. And drugs — they pose a danger to the young. Then again, you got to adapt and move with the times, as you yourself know fully well, and you can’t keep clinging to the past. We had eighteen powerboats shifting two ton of heroin through Puerto Banus per month. What we was doing was we was making runs, twice a night, to Algiers, where the gear come in from the Pakis and the Afghans. We had it going up the coast and flooding into Europe through Marseille. It was a highly lucrative trade — but then there’s always the human element …

‘Now we was none of us model citizens, but Tony Eist … he just wasn’t normal. In the old days, he’d have himself committing crimes even in his alibis. He’d go: “I was never in on the Brink-Mats lark. I was busy flogging this condemned Argie beef.” Or: “How could I have been in on the Waterloo jewellers? I was up West, demanding with menaces.” A very dishonest man, Tony Eist. So one day Keith the Snake come up to see me in me villa. He’s said he’s done his sums — and Tony’s been hiving off millions for hisself! Well I wasn’t having that now was I.

‘I’ve gone over there and we’ve had it out. And I’ve done him. Then, not content with that, he’s got hisself mangled up in his lawnmower. Diesel. Two-seater. And his wife, she hasn’t done the sensible thing and said she’ve run him down by accident. She’s gone and shopped me to the Spaniards! [ Click. ] Go on then. [ Click. ] See, there was complicating factors. I’m not about to go banging on about the Other or the Urge or whatever you want to call it. For me, there’s too much of that kind of thing as it is. But we’re talking man to man, and, well, I’ve been giving Tony’s wife Angie one. If I did have a regrettable habit, back then, it was that: giving me mates’ wives one. [ Click. ] And they daughters and all, in them days. Little Debbie. And she’s gone and grassed me up to Angie! [ Click. ] So a bit of malice there, I’d reckon. Oh yes, a little bit of spite. The Spanish coppers was all bent as arseholes of course, but what could they do, with that bloody great swamp on the front lawn and no Tony? Me and Keith the Snake’ve grabbed what we could and roared round to Alicante, flogged the boat, and hopped on a tanker to Belfast.