Will Self - Umbrella

— Sir? Her coquettishness, such as it is, is all in the Oxfordshire burr and the hip she tilts with her own hand. They are alone in this far-flung sector of the extensive gardens — the others will be at tea and talk under the fruit trees on the far side of the house. Alone in a cacophony of cucumber frames, a volley of raspberry canes. . over there will be loads of eats, ham gashed open on a plate beside a loaf with a healed scar and a mess of stewed fruit brains . Lording over the tea things will be the skull-head who, Adeline had told him, was indeed an earl. The housemaid isn’t pretty and there are blackberry stains on the hand that holds the hip Wallie, Wallie, Wall-flowers, Growing up so high — All these young ladies, Will all have to die , but she is young and fresh and for once he does something simply because he can, and because he is angry with Adeline — boldly, he is upon her, her cry choked off by his mouth. There is a moment’s resistance — time for him to taste the tartness on her teeth, smell the purloined Pond’s on her suet cheek — then she yields, We shall want you and miss you, But with all our might and main, We shall cheer you, thank you, kiss you, When you come back again . .This, Stanley thinks, I will take back with me: her dove’s tongue darting timorously, her small hand finical, trapped in mine, the hollow of her back fitted to my forearm and arching . . back , layers upon layers of cloth sliding in all their secret ways. The housemaid accommodates her body to his, nesting in, relaxing, going . . all at once limp. Jack Johnson KO’ed in the 26 th round — there is no articulation to her limbs any more — all the tendon strings have been cut. Her tongue slops on his lip, and as he tastes, then gags, on the saltsplash of her blood he hears the unmistakable sound whip-cracked-into-suet: a head-shot echoing around the flinty trench . Her forehead and one eye are gone, her mob cap lies on the earthen pellets between the thorny stems of the roses, escaping from its tripe frills are hanks of her khaki hair, beneath which is the stewed fruit of her brains. Stanley lowers her down to the ground gently, swaddled, she is — in death . — I propose this, says the skull-head they all call Bertie, that when boys have attained the age of eighteen they should be sorted into three categories — quite arbitrarily. . He speaks like this: in perfectly ordered sentences , the words marching out from his bony hole in single file . . — Those in the first category should be put to death painlessly in a chamber filled with lethal gases, those in the second category should be deprived of a limb — or possibly an eye — while the unfortunates in the third category should be exposed both night and day to the most deafening noises conceivable. This must be continued, the Donner und Blitzen of shells falling, the mechanical turmoil of the machine guns, until they have all succumbed to nervous affliction — deafness, mental blindness, speechlessness, all the way unto madness. . Bertie pauses long enough for Willis to put his oar in: And then? The skull-head’s sockets swivel towards him dark with understanding — still, he takes his time to respond, carefully anointing a triangular slice of bread with butter, then blackberry jam, before tucking it under his top teeth. — Presently — he chews on the scrumptious irony — they shall be liberated to form the virile future manhood of the Britannic nation. This scheme of mine will, I think, be assented to by the great majority as being altogether more humane — and certainly œconomical — than the present mode of prosecuting the war. They sit opposite Stanley on an uncomfortable-looking high-backed wooden bench with asphodels carved into it: Bertie beside Adeline, Adeline beside Willis. Their heads are almost entangled in roses that twine themselves around a trellis. Their hostess — whose name Stanley caught, held momentarily, then lost — had excused herself a while since, saying, I must go and lash those Jerry corpses together with wire so the farm-hands may drag them away to be rendered down into tallow . .He had thought her haughty in spite of the painted-over curse spot on her long top lip. Haughty and draped in yards of creamy chiffon — he was bemused as to what assistance the two odd hounds could give to her war work. Short-coated on their backs and heads, shaggy at their haunches, they bounded ahead of her as she swept through the orchard and disappeared behind the rounded end of a double-decker yew hedge.

— Mister. . Corporal De’Ath? Stanley, hearing the rising note of Bertie’s interrogative, looks at him, although he is not certain it is he who’s being addressed. He enlisted at the Mitcham Road barracks as Death, the bruiser behind the counter telling the boy in front of him, Clear off — come back tomorrer an’ see if you’re nineteen. As Death he took his shilling and his one-and-ninepence ration money, and as Death he attested that he would fight for King and country. As Death he drilled with a dummy rifle and mimed fifteen rounds rapid fire — and no one thought it queer. He lay in the bell tent at night with the others’ piss dribbling on his face, yet none of them said, I’m pissing on Death. As Death, 5665, private, Royal West Surreys, he marched to Aldershot — officers rode alongside, they wore stiff white collars and tan riding boots, and they dismounted from time to time to kick up the dust with their spurs and flash their monocles in the faces of the raw recruits. Private Death’s father came up from Devon to see him, having finagled a pass in his usual way — and there was some confusion and not a little mirth when he introduced himself to the RSM as Samuel Deer, but that was soon submerged by many, many tin mugs of beer at tu’pence a mug — the grand spiflication continuing all that night, up and down the high street, with his new mates bellowing, He is a deer inall! for Rothschild had lost none of his easy charm. But it was as Death! that he awoke late and hung over, only to be accused of dumb insolence. And it was feeling like it that he did his jankers, took his pannikin up for his spoonful of bodge, choked it down — then chucked it up again. In the huts, at Sandling in Kent, Stanley lay in his bunk loathing the faint chinks in wooden shutters and waiting for the order to Stand to! Now dress by the right boys and get in line, First by the numbers an’ then by judgin’ the time, For you whips ’em out an’ you whips ’em in . . His cock is in his roughened hand, pulsing: she puts a cylindrical cushion on the high-canopied bed and puts her derriere on this and bades him whip it in and let it bide a while. . That’s the way you fix yer bayonets in the mornin’! But when he told her what he had done, she clawed his neck and screamed at him, You’re dead to me now! Sausages and mash, liver and bacon — all for fivepence. In barracks they lived like fighting cocks, but when they formed up and the GOC Aldershot came, together with Kitchener, to inspect them, it was as Death that he stood there, eyes front, and watching the baggily grey old men make their way along the line, taking sidelong glances at the gravestone faces. As Death he sneered when the MO lectured the company on the horrors of gon and syph, as Death he sat dulling his tunic buttons with acid, as Death he reported to the QM, who introduced him and six others to their new love — Vicky . Death and his section were taught to dash forward when the whistle blew, release the ratchet that secured her front legs so they could be swung open and then fixed by tightening it again. Sitting there, as Death, Stanley removed the pins from her raven hair , and the Number Two ran up and placed her body on top of her legs, her body — her death-dealing body, her 28-pound body. As Machine-Gunner Death he looked on while Number Two fiddled the first round of the belt into the feed block. As Death he flicked up her safety catch, as Death he grasped her hips and, staring her full in her steely eye, gently touched her trigger.