Will Self - The Quantity Theory of Insanity - Reissued

We reached Shootup Hill in about seventeen minutes. The facility with which Carlos had led us was unnatural. At every juncture where there was an opportunity for a choice, he took the right one. Time and again we turned one way and I saw in the rear-view mirror that if we had gone the other, more obvious way, we would have been frozen in a tail-back, eroding synchromesh for five minutes or more. Even stranger than that was the realisation that the idiosyncratic directions we did take, always took time off our journey. Carlos had not only apprehended every road, he had anticipated every alleyway, every mews, every garage forecourt and the position and synchronisation of every traffic light. He could not possibly know what he seemed to know — the only way he could have seen the route we took was from the air, and even then he would have had to have made constant trigonometric calculations to figure out the angles we seemed to have followed intuitively.

We were going up Shootup Hill towards Kilburn doing about forty, when suddenly Carlos put his right leg down and yanked the bike round in a tight turn. Jim followed suit, without even looking at the oncoming traffic, and before I’d had time to register the extent of the risk we’d run, we were heading back down and under the railway bridge.

The swish of an underpass, the whirr of an overpass, a long row of wing mirrors reaching out to us, the rise and fall of identically gabled roofs. Jim’s arms — the inside of the forearm pressed against the wheel — insectoid and manipulative. The child’s counterpane world of London’s roads — where a turned corner can mean a distant prospect, a sudden impression of pillows in the distance, or a dip into a hollow can completely enclose you in a tiny world where the light quality never changes and spindrifts of sweet-wrappers chase one another in a tireless pavane.

As we crossed Blackfriars Bridge, the water glinted for a second; to the right a glimpse of banked-up buildings, circumstantially pompous — an encrustation of administration which could belong to any city on earth — and then gone, back into the homogeneous, the undifferentiated London, where twee shopping parade succeeds arterial road, in turn flanked by the dusty parade ground of a municipal park where single, silent figures stand, tied to stuffed dogs.

No frenzy, no hurry. No giving anyone the finger. Carlos weaved and we weaved with him, cutting up whole files of traffic, ignoring feeder lights, insinuating ourselves on to roundabouts. The outward stretch to Shootup Hill had presented itself as an elegant piece of geometry. The downward swipe to Horniman’s Gardens was guile and outrageous nerve. I felt chilly in the stuffy, corrupted car. Chilly and scared.

Through Dulwich Park the Sierra’s engine phutted into the cleaner air and Carlos’s trousers dappled in the sunlight that fell through the trees.

We pulled up at the Hornimans Museum exactly forty-five minutes after we had started from Soho Square. Carlos banked his bike on to the tarmac lip that curled up from the road and we followed suit. Behind us the prospect opened out for the first time since we had crossed the river. In the middle distance a ridge of crenellated, oblong buildings stood out above the sea of tree- and rooftops. Beyond them London washed away towards the northern horizon, bluer and greyer.

Carlos was pulling off his gloves as I jack-knifed myself out of the door of the Sierra in an attempt to jerk myself out of the strange trance. Carlos wore two gloves on each hand. The cheap vinyl of the outer glove had worn away exposing the tufts of the wool gloves inside. For some reason these worn patches fixated me, they were somehow anatomical. The blood rushed to my temples — I stared at the gloves. I felt sick. Carlos leant up against the signboard advertising the museum’s exhibits.

The irritating Welsh voice: ‘You see boy, when I trance like that,’ he rolled his eyes back in his head exposing a network of veins under the pink ball, ‘I assess the flow, at one location, for one brief moment. But because I know, you see, I know so much about this,’ he gestured towards the horizon, ‘it means that all the movement stands still. I know ev-ery-thing.’ He rolled out the syllables with fluting emphasis. ‘All the tail-backs, all the hold-ups, every burst water-main and dropped lorry load in the metropolis — at that moment I realise them all. Take me to any street, any street in London whatsoever where there is a constant traffic stream and just by looking at it I can know the state of every other road in the city. Then there’s no waiting. You understand? I never have to wait.’

The albino’s leeched brow moved to one side, exposing the signboard. A poster was tacked on it, advertising some forthcoming exhibition of Amazonian artefacts. A double-decker bus laboured up the hill from Forest Hill Station. I looked at my watch, it was 1.50. The dreamlike state I’d been in since I met Jim and Carlos in Soho fell away as suddenly as stepping out of a bath. I started running for the bus.

‘Don’t you see!’ Jim was shouting after me, ‘he doesn’t have to wait! Don’t you understand, he’s beyond waiting; however far he travels he’s already arrived! Oh, you bloody fool …’

The last words were a scream. I paid no attention and swung myself up on to the platform of the bus as it pulled away from the stop and started the long descent to East Dulwich.

A week passed and then a month. There was no news from Jim and I made no attempt to contact him. Then a Post-it note appeared stuck to the keyboard of my computer. It asked me to ring a Mr Clifton at a Camden-based legal practice. Before I could respond, Clifton called me. He had an appalling phone manner, breathy and inaudible and his legalese sounded put on.

‘It’s concerning our client Mr Stonehouse.’

‘Oh, yes. Jim. What’s he done?’

‘He has been convicted of failure to stop; one count and two counts of aggravated assault.’

‘Did he do it?’

‘He made a statement to that effect to the police, he appeared before the magistrates’ court at Highgate who have passed the matter of sentencing over to Snaresbrook.’

‘I see, I see. That’s a bit rough. Still, I can’t say I’m surprised.’

‘Surprised?’

‘Well, he had been behaving rather erratically lately.’

‘That’s just it. It would appear that the best course of action for Mr Stonehouse would be for us to apply for further psychiatric evaluation.’

‘What if you don’t?’

‘It could be three to six years.’

‘I see, I see … What I don’t see is where I come into this …’

‘Well, as you said yourself, Mr Stonehouse has been behaving erratically recently and you’ve been a witness to this. A statement in court from someone like you, with your position, could be the deciding factor.’

‘That’s it then — you want me to turn up in court?’

‘And supply us, if possible, with a written statement.’

‘Presumably you want that on a letterhead.’

‘It may well be a decisive factor.’

‘Can you tell me exactly what happened?’

‘I’m afraid not, it would be up to Mr Stonehouse to tell you the details. Were we to say anything, it would be in direct breach of client confidentiality.’

Jim called later that morning. He was wholly unrepentant.

‘Just a little bust-up coming off the Marylebone Flyover. It’s absurd really that the thing’s got as far as Crown Court.’

‘Your brief says that he wants you remanded for psychiatric observation.’

‘Yes, well, err … it does seem the best course of action. Personally, I don’t mind — I mean I could use a few weeks’ rest. You know, making ashtrays and rapping with some jejeune shrinks.’