Martin Amis - Yellow Dog

He worked into the small hours on his starry-eyed profile of Dork Bogarde. Then, to release tension, he pounded out some Yellow Dog. At about noon, London time, he received the following message:

my only 1: thank u so much 4 your e of consol8ion. i don’t no y, but things r clearer now. it feels as if a gr8 w8 has been lifted from me. Even as my father lies in st &rew’s, f8ally unwell … u no what i’m thinking? i think i’m 4lling in love with u, clint. yes u, and no 1 else. u, clint! u, u, u! r u o fait with the poetry of ezra £? as i transmitted this, i thought of the lines: ‘& now i bring the boy in, on his knees, & send this 1,000 miles, thinking.’ i’m mad 4 u, clint. come 2 me on your return. only when u & i r 1 will i feel truly @ peace. 10derly, k8.

ps: i vener8 yellow dog. i lite c&les to yellow dog. i make a god of yellow dog.

Yellow Dog wiped away his tears and settled down to an hour or two of Yellow Tongue.

The third (and final) message from their mole, their enemy’s enemy, took the form of a no-fingerprints communication directed at Brendan’s laptop. Earlier that day a similarly anondot service-provider released six new stills of the Princess, one of which, sensationally, showed her daunted face half-dimmed by the shadow of the intruder … The message Brendan received ran as follows: ‘Ultimatum will be presented on February 10. Strongly advise immediate compliance. Please to reemphasise: the material on the Princess is all light and magic. All light and magic.’ Feeling sick to his stomach, but also wonderfully lightheaded, Brendan issued a contemptuous press-release from Ewelme. Then he had his worst talk ever with the King.

‘Here’s a turn-up, sir,’ he began. ‘Captain Mate has resigned. Effective immediately.’

‘I’m very pleased to hear it, Bugger.’

‘It’s a bit rum, though, sir. We can—’

‘I’ve been meaning to chuck him for years.’

‘Sir?’

‘Yes, Bugger. On account of his physical appearance. But I could never be fagged. Now never mind him, and get on with it. You’ve got that glint in your eye, Bugger. Yes you have. You’re preparing me for something horrid, I can tell.’

Henry looked out of the window of the Royal Train; but there was nothing to see. To be heading north , north from Ewelme with its mists and brown spume, and at the very worst time of year … He thought: the cur moment. I shall have to revisit it, relive it. The cur moment.

‘That’ll be all, Love.’ Henry waited. He said, ‘Do you believe in life after death?’

‘You’re changing the subject.’

‘I’m not changing the subject. It’s practically the only subject there is. With you. These days, darling.’

‘Well yes I do. Do you?’

‘… No.’

‘See? What you have, it isn’t faith. It’s just habit.’

‘Faith … faith is a power. It gets weaker as you age. Like all powers.’

‘You have changed the subject. And the subject ,’ said the Princess, ‘the subject is this. To distract attention from my uh, imbroglio in the Yellow House—’

‘Whatever that was.’

‘Whatever that was. To distract attention, and to win some sympathy from the media and the million,’ she said, ‘we’re going to Scotland to kill Mummy.’

‘Don’t. Be. Silly … Darling.’

After a while he said, ‘Bugger told me that you told him that there was something I could do. Uh, Brendan, rather. He took you to mean that there was something I could do — that would make it all right.’

‘One thing I will tell you is that this isn’t it. Murdering Mummy isn’t it. Oh I’m not going to spring to your rescue. You’ll have to get there on your own.’

Dusk was coming nearer. They rushed to meet it. He sat back, and looked for what comfort he could find in thoughts of He Zizhen.

In his bedroom at Tongue he was woken by the draughts at half past five. He kicked Love out of his army cot and then drank the tea with great gouts of brandy in it until his teeth stopped chattering. A bath of blood heat; a cold-water shave. He put on his black suit, and his hardiest overcoat — inherited from his father, Richard IV, and still a sober tribute to the protective power of cashmere and silk. He stepped out into the morning twilight and the cockcrow.

Unlike his numerical predecessor, who would habitually exhaust a dozen stallions in the space of an afternoon, Henry IX loathed anything that involved horses (with the single exception of Royal Ascot); but Pamela, of course, had been a lifelong equestrienne. Times beyond number he had shaken his head, from a seated position, and watched her trot off, seemingly about thirty feet from the ground … That September, at Tongue, the Queen Consort did not return from her second ride of the afternoon. Her mare, Godiva, returned; but Pamela did not return. The King seized a bicycle in the courtyard and, with much wobbling and wiggling … But now, on foot, in his overcoat, Henry moved from gravel to lawn, beginning to retrace these steps.

He remembered the way the colour of the day changed. At first he was merely very frightened, mostly for himself (the bicycle), and also rather bored (he could already hear the exasperating halloos of normality regained). On the cinder path he pedalled to the shoulder of the slope, and turned: Godiva, riderless in the stableyard. And then the colour of the day changed.

It was he who found her … Pamela had told him about the softened thump of the horse’s hooves as you approached the chalk quarry, and thither he rode — until, with a horrified lurch, he skidded to a halt and assessed the obscenity in his path. A fat snake, already dead, already putrescent: fat, moist, yellow, like the voided boil of some tutelary troll or Friar Rush … Yes, he thought: Godiva could be forgiven for rearing at such a sight. And there, down the brambly slope, Pamela lay, in her boots, her jodhpurs, her tweed jacket, her velvet helmet, arched backwards over a boulder with her eyes wide open. The bike fell with a clatter and a brief purr of spokes. He moved through the snow-scape, the moonscape, of the winter chalk.

‘Oh no, Pemmy.’ But he stressed it on the second and fourth syllables: he said it as he had said it many times before, when being reminded of some recurrent social chore, when interdicting a loud headscarf, or when she brought off a forceful roll at ludo or backgammon.

Then, rhythmically gathering air for his moment, his cur moment, Henry said, ‘At least, at least, at least — at least there won’t be any more bally …’; and it was then that his shoulders began to shudder: ‘… any more bally three-a- clockers.’ And the words enveloped him like an unrecognisable fart, saying: yes, oh yes, this is you, this is you.

Aboard the helicopter they found a faint pulse in her groin, and an hour later she was on the machine at the Royal Inverness.

That was two years ago. In his black suit, his black coat, Henry stood in the white land of the chalk field. It was time to awaken the Princess.

The patient looked like an enormous and ancient squaw, with the warpaint of death on her, but regally breathing.

Henry passed his hand down through the air.

‘Mummy’s …’ said Victoria.

‘But she breathes.’

Victoria pointed to the parallel lines on the screen.

‘But she breathes.’

And she breathed greedily, lustily. Could she still reach up and hold him and draw him in? And he smelt himself all over again — the smouldering smell of the male secret, like a fire doused in rivers of sweat.

‘That’s just the machine,’ said Victoria. ‘It’s the machine that’s breathing.’

‘Turn it off,’ he cried. ‘Turn it off. Turn it off.’