Martin Amis - Yellow Dog

‘What do you want, ma’am?’

‘… I want to be a part of the umma. ’

‘The umma , ma’am?’

‘The body of Islam. That’s why they pray five times a day. Shorooq , sunrise, zhur , noon, asr , mid-afternoon, maghreb , sunset, and isha , night. To recommit themselves to the body of Islam. For the act of prostration, the knees first, and then the hands. Brow, nose, both hands, both knees, and the underside of all your toes must touch the ground, and the fingers and toes must point towards Mecca. The conformity is an expression of the oneness of Islam. The umma. ’

‘… If you’ll excuse me, ma’am.’

‘You’re off on your hike. Daddy doesn’t have hikes. Or even walks.’

Her tone, he noted, was softer than it had been. More fond — or at least more proprietorial.

‘Daddy takes strolls. No. Daddy takes turns. ’

‘Yes, ma’am,’ he said, clutching his gloves, ‘I hope to reach Gelding’s Mere.’

Brendan headed north from the Greater House. He was surprised, in a way, by the devoutness of his secularism. Because he feared that his love could not survive it — a truly pious Princess. He could imagine his increasingly formal and detached response. He could imagine falling out of it: falling out of love. Love isn’t blind, then, he thought. Or mine isn’t. And what next, when love was gone? … Brendan sought to calm himself by looking at it practically. He didn’t care which faith it was she turned to; but the immediate task, for political puposes, would be to steer her off towards (say) Buddhism.

The unbroken cloud was thick and grey and low, like under-felt. And he felt beneath, below, under — under the underfelt.

Hal Nine — he found out what this princess wanted.

They were taking a turn, arm in arm, along the trout stream (Henry was a great subliminal believer in the curative power of flowing water). Victoria was in any case much improved — after his epic abjections concerning He Zizhen.

‘If I found out what you wanted and gave it to you, how would you change?’

‘Well I’d stop all this religious stuff for a start.’

He looked at her eagerly, not because the possible outcome was attractive but because this voice, with its forthright calculation, was the voice he knew.

‘Then I must find it out.’

‘You won’t. And even if you do, you won’t do it. Knowing you.’

‘Oh, if I find it out I will most certainly do it. Because then you’ll have to come back to me.’

In the lull before lunch they took to the low table in the library for a couple of rubbers of Vanishing Whist.

‘This is another thing you’ll have to give up,’ he said. ‘No more piggy for breakfast either … Oof. Three. No, four. At least.’ And he fanned them out, the court cards, the kings and the queens.

‘None,’ she said.

And abruptly he folded his hand, and slipped from the stool to his knees, and came round to her saying, ‘Yes of course. Yes of course, yes of course, my dearest.’

* * *

When Brendan returned, at seven, he heard voices in the dining-room. He knocked and entered. And it seemed to him that they were unusually slow to acknowledge his presence: well, a game — or another game — of Scrabble was about to begin. An empty bottle of champagne stood between them on the table, and there was a cocktail-shaker suspiciously close to the King’s brimming glass.

‘Aha, the X,’ she was saying. ‘Which I fully intend to keep.’

‘And I’ve got a Y. Rats. I don’t even go first. You’ll adore this, Bugger. I mean Brendan.’

‘Oh call him Bugger for God’s sake.’

‘You’ll adore this, Bugger.’

‘Sir?’

‘I can see you going all rosy. Procure for me the Instrument of Abdication, if you will! No. Make that two such instruments. One for her and one for me. Yes, Bugger, we’re packing it in. A bit feeble, you could say, but there it is. I sent Boy to the Press Centre and Chippy to Number Ten. It’s accomplished fact. What this princess wants is to stop being a princess.’

‘You needn’t absolutely do it, Daddy, if it’s too horrible for you.’

‘No no. All or nothing. All for love and the world well lost. Look. Look! He’s all rosy … But no, when you stop to think for a minute, it’s about time we all grew up, wouldn’t you say? The people will have to grow up. I’ll have to grow up. And if I can grow up, they can grow up. And then she can grow up. Uh! And the boredom. Uh! Night mare … And you know what’s absolutely impossible about the monarchy, Bugger? It’s such a … Darling, go and find Love and ask him for another one of these. The impossible thing is that it’s such a …’ He held up a hand until his daughter was perhaps a kilometre distant, and said in a fading whisper, ‘It’s such a …’

‘Such a what, sir?’

‘Such a …’

‘I’m sorry, sir, such a …?’

‘Such a …’

Brendan said desperately, ‘Such a belly wink , sir?’

‘ No , Bugger! Such a bally wenk !’

Then her musical laugh in the doorway, and Henry coughing and turning aside.

‘And did you reach Gelding’s Mere, Brendan?’ she asked.

‘I did not, Victoria. The mind was willing …’

He contemplated Victoria England and formed a rough plan for the rest of his life. She would actually need him more now — and Henry would need him less. He would love, and she would never know. So then: twenty or thirty winters without a kiss, a touch, a considering glance. And this love of his would be a hundred, no, a thousand times more than he deserved.

‘well, clint, how’s trix?’ asked k8. ‘it’s so nice 2 actually c u in the flesh. now u just relax & make yourself completely @ home …’

‘Little house-present,’ said Clint coolly. ‘Moisten the piccolo so to speak.’

‘how giving u r, clint. & this ruddy gr8 cr8 of goodies! now. u get the top off th@. & i’ll b mother.’

His first thought was: Shelley. The undulant frizz of hair, the daunted orbits of the eyes, the sharp lips. She wore a black tanktop T-shirt and a Union Jack miniskirt — but then of course she had already mirthfully warned him about the girth of her thighs.

‘How’s your father, love?’

‘decim8ed. all the way from caecum 2 rectum.’

‘It never rains … Precipitation, then lovely weather for ducks.’

‘bottoms up! here’s mud in your i.’

It was around now that Clint started to feel really tragically ill. As they moved from the sink to the armchairs, and as she smoothed down her skirt with her sizable feelers, another gangrenous lunge passed slowly through him.

‘1st, the $64,000? clint: 6. u needn’t worry. it’ll b a relief 4 u 2 no this: i’ve never had a., clint.’

‘A what? … Period?’

‘i’ve never had a., clint. that’s y i was so tickled th@ u seemed 2 want 2 initi8 a deb8 about children. as if i want a br@!’

‘And I’m relieved, am I?’

‘4 you’re not th@ way inclined, r u, clint.’

‘Why do you say that?’

‘y? in scribendo veritas, yellow dog. it’s all in h&, clint. i’ve been under the nife. but not 2 destroy—2 cre8! i’ve got tits & a 21, clint. they do an operation where they w.’

‘What did I hear you say to me?’

‘They w, clint … clint, what r u thinking ?’ said k8. ‘i kill it now? i kill it now?’

When he came out into the street (he hadn’t touched her: just edged by with his arms shieldingly raised) he found that a grimy white van was doubleparked on the Avenger. ‘How Am I Driving?’ said its sticker. ‘Like A Cunt,’ someone had written in the dust. After a lot of parping and yelling and twisting about, Clint mounted the gutter, taking a left from a lamppost and a right from a railing, and ploughed through a hill of black rubbish-bags and on to the street. With his leg stretched straight over the pedal, in a yowl of revs, he shot through Mattock Estate and skidded into Britannia Junction, where he joined the ten-mile traffic jam that would, eventually, deliver him to the Bends and the open road he craved. He kept tearing off up sidestreets, kept buzzing round culs-de-sac like a hornet in a jamjar — like a particle in a cyclotron; then back to the bumper-to-bumper, where he hogged and jockeyed and lane-hopped. Down came the window for many a white-lipped slagging — the evil eye, the crackling fist; at one point, in hopeless gridlock, he jumped down and briefly chased a young couple on an old scooter — and was of course easily outstripped, the man turning to give the tosser sign with a gauntleted hand. Weeping, twisting, brutally honking, he flanked and tacked through Thamesmead, Hornchurch, Noak Hill.