Will Self - The Quantity Theory of Insanity - Reissued

‘Jim, don’t you think you’re letting all this rather get to you? I think you’re overtired and overworked. I’m sure you’re not spending enough time with Carol. Why don’t you take a rest for a few days? If you’ll forgive me for saying so, the world will wait for you.’ His response surprised me.

‘Well, yes, er … you could be right. She has seemed a little distant recently. She can’t cope with my insomnia, you know. Perhaps you are right. But even so, you should meet Carlos, he isn’t a crank, or a freak. His powers are real enough, believe me. I’ve never had any truck with any kind of cults or mystical twaddle, have I?’

No, he never has, I thought to myself, after we had parted and gone our separate ways. And perhaps there is something in what he says. My eyes flicked across the tracks, between which lay the typical refuse. I picked out Jim’s figure at the far end of the platform. His shoulders were hunched and he’d inserted his body between a dangling sand bucket and a coiled, canvas hose in a wooden cabinet. It was as if he was trying to restrain himself. It was clear from his posture and his blank stare what he was doing. He was waiting for a train.

I tried not to think about Jim for the next couple of days. If he was having a breakdown of some kind there was probably very little I could do for him — and if he wasn’t. Well, after Norfolk and Stein’s lecture I didn’t really want to see him for a while, anyway. I needed a change of company; I needed to spend some time with people who were a little less heavy. I went out in the evenings to films and parties, I got tipsy, I had yelping conversations with people I had just met. Conversations in which each yelp seemed, at the time, a touchstone of empathy. At the time, that was.

But try as I would I couldn’t shake Jim. He nagged at me and I knew it was because I should at least try and help him. The image that stayed with me most clearly — appearing as a flickering ghost when I switched on my terminal in the morning — was of Jim in the old lecture theatre, his arms clutching the seat back, his face distorted.

After a week I was really anxious. Jim hadn’t been in touch, which was unlike him. I resolved to go and see Carol, his wife. After all, I reasoned, before the whole ‘waiting’ thing took off we used to see quite a lot of one another. I had been in the habit of regularly having dinner at their house. Childless couples have a tendency to adopt single people and try and feed them up and marry them off. And this is the way it had been. Carol had invited me to a series of Tuesday evening affairs where I’d eaten spinach and tomato lasagne and met a number of her female colleagues.

After a while the Tuesdays had petered out. I missed them. I missed the atmosphere of somewhere where people cooked on a regular basis; and I missed seeing Carol, who I liked. And who, despite my failures as a potential pair-bonder, never seemed to judge me. She was one of those people who had a tremendous sense of containment about them, her physical presence constantly emitted the quiet message that she was fine just as she was, she was content to do x or y, but it wasn’t really necessary. When she and Jim had married their friends had called it ‘a marriage of opposites’. It was significant that over the years no one had seen fit to add to this observation.

Carol worked at home as a freelance editor. So I could be sure of finding her in if I called unannounced. I took the morning off work and the train out to Wandsworth. Their flat was across the Common from the station. As I walked over I felt the morning’s catarrh slop and gurgle in my chest. I had a bitter, old iron taste in my mouth and felt considerable premonition.

Jim’s Sierra was crouched on the steep camber of the road outside their flat, like a beetle redesigned by committee. I walked up the tiled path along the privet hedge and pushed the intercom buzzer. After a while there was a crackle on the speaker.

‘Who is it?’

‘It’s me, Carol. I need to talk to you, about Jim.’

‘Hang on a minute, I’m not up yet.’

I waited for more than a minute. But when I saw, through the glass door panel, the door of their flat swing open, it wasn’t Carol who emerged. It was a young man. A tall young man, who came to the door, opened it, and walked past me with a cheery nod and a cheerier ‘Good Morning’. He tucked his arms energetically into his windcheater and jauntily walked off down the road, implying that he was off for a day’s hard work. One that he was looking forward to.

A few minutes later Carol came and let me in. She was wearing a dressing gown patterned with pastel blooms. She was superficially groomed but there hung about her the subtle, sour smell of someone who’s been making love in the morning. I followed her down the corridor and while I sat at the kitchen table she made me a cup of coffee.

‘So what about Jim?’ Carol panted, vigorously depressing the stainless steel plunger of the cafetière.

‘Just that I think he’s having a breakdown, Carol. I think he needs help of some kind. I haven’t seen him for the past week; the last time I did he was absolutely raving.’

‘I haven’t seen him either. I haven’t as much as clapped eyes on him. You know he’s cabbing in the evenings now?’

‘Cabbing? What on earth for? Not for money, surely.’

Carol laughed and pulled a twist of inky hair away from her face. ‘Oh no, not for money. To relax him. That’s why he does it. He says it relaxes him.’

‘He’s mad.’

‘Maybe, maybe, but you can’t help someone who doesn’t want to be helped, believe me.’ She said this earnestly, and sat down opposite me, an identical coffee mug cupped in her hands.

I believed her. Whatever part the young windcheater played in her life there was no doubting her affection for Jim. If she couldn’t influence him, no one could.

‘He comes back from work every evening and goes straight out again. I don’t think he actually takes a lot of money. He’s more intent on keeping in touch with his friend Carlos.’

‘So you know about that.’

‘Oh, yes.’

‘And the despatch riders. What do you think?’

‘Well, strictly speaking, I suppose he could be right, but it strikes me that there’s enough that’s obviously wrong with the world without becoming obsessed by the intangibles.’

I took the train back into town. I had a couple of hours to kill before I was expected at work. I thought I might walk into Soho and drink some espressos at the Bar Italia. The clear, sharp light of the morning had given way to the kind of intense sepia tone and gritty air that precedes a summer storm in London. The sense of rising barometric pressure was tangible. I felt oppressed and confused by my talk with Carol. I still couldn’t accept that there was nothing to be done for Jim. It was if those who loved him were just waiting for something awful to happen.

I trailed my damp, stinging feet along Oxford Street and turned into Soho Square. There was a gust of wind and a peppering of grit flew into my eyes. For a moment I was blind. I leant against a wall while the tears gathered and flowed down my face. When my vision cleared I saw Jim.

He was standing, leaning on the inside of the door of his car, talking to another despatch rider. This despatch rider was even more singular than the others I’d seen with Jim. He had the regulation jacket and bright, vinyl tabard. But instead of boots and leather trousers he had on baggy, green cords and battered trainers. He was propped on his bike, a battered, black 250 MZ, regarding Jim with slight disdain. His head was quite repulsive. He looked like a failed albino. His hair was the palest of gingers, his face putty-white, his features were soft and vestigial, his eyes the pinkiest of pinky-blues.