Will Self: Umbrella

. . Olive , Olive! Oh, I dunno, there’s summat wrong wiv you, girlie, carncher see yer father’s wantin’ izale? Olive turns back to the scullery, limping on the toes of her too-tight boots — she almost lays a hand on the ruddy range to steady herself. Audrey agrees there’s summat wrong wiv that girlie , and moreover: They’re in cahoots , they want her to be like this, lost, confused, a top spinnin’ round ’em . Sam plucks the beaded cloth from the jug and pours a draught into his moustache cup, and there are beads of sweat on Mary Jane Death’s forehead. Above her in the cabbage-steam-fug hangs a sampler Audrey sewed at school. — One, two, three, four, girrrls. One: needle in the right hand. Two: thread in the left. Three: Through the eye. Then four: loop and knot. Now, thimble drill . . Audrey’s hands, not suited to this fine work, twitched and shook in an ague that she felt incapable of mastering, or even to be a part of her at all, but something that snowed down poisonously from the arsenical-green ceiling. . Thimbles on yer thumbs, one-two, thim-thumbs, thimthums, tee-to-tum . . — Out of the eater, she says, came forth meat and out of the strong came forth — Burrrurp! Really, Samuel, Mary Jane says, laughing, mussyer? They’re in cahoots , together they’ve made five now an’ loss none . Stanley laughs at his father’s eructation and says, Judges, Chapter 14, Verse 14 — thass evens, guv’nor. Albert, without looking up, grimaces and Audrey can hear what he hears: the echo of one brother inside the other’s bony cave. I’m inbertween ’em — I’m a prism or a lens. Beams of Stanley, beams of Albert, playing, each on the other brother’s blank face . .

The curious round-’ousing of a big man pulling himself together with his braces — his moustache is wet wiv beer and tobacco-stained above his hidden lip. Hard to imagine that there is a lip beneath it, because Samuel Death’s hair is so fleshy in tone, and, if it weren’t for the reddening of his cheeks, you would think the tache wuzziz lip , while there are waxy skin strands plastered at the back of his bare domed head: Bedlam engraved in the Illustrated London News. — A large worthy-looking body walking along the quayside of a Mediterranean port, a basket of laundry dumped on her head. Four sailors dice in front of a tangle of ropes and spars while gazing at her behind. None of the Deaths know where this racy print has come from — it simply cropped up on the wall, hiding the wallpaper with its criss-cross pattern of violets and pansies, wallpaper that is steam-slackened, torn into strips, and certainly antedates the Deaths, for, when Audrey was a littler girl, she was convinced her baby sister had been named after it. — Violet now clambers on to the chair her father has risen from, and, smuts on her cheeks, reaches up to fasten his collar stud. All of them have been dragooned into his toilet: Stanley sent to fetch the showy coat from the hook in the passage, Olive buckles his gaiters, Audrey and her mother mix tea and gin into his flask. Only Albert remains at table, his eyes triangulating a realm of purer forms, his fork negligently sccccrrrraping gravy shapes. Samuel cries, Get the Coniston’s! A hair tonic he madly applies to the front and back of his dome, as he places first one profile, then the other, before the oval of looking-glass chained up by the door — this, a motion that shows off to its fullest effect the sharp isosceles that, together with his love of swank, has earned him his moniker. Not, Audrey muses, that he’s like the landlord, Silver, who comes attired soberly in bowler, wing collar, impeccably shined and elastic-sided boots — but whose face is sallow, handsome, the features somehow exaggerated, outlined wiv charcoal . The Deaths are plaster mouldings, Romish swags and vine trails pressed into their whiteness. They are pink and blond, brown and blonder, all save Audrey, whose flaming glory and cake-crumb-scattered cheeks betoken. . wot? Or-dree, Or-dree, Ordree’s mammy gorrersel knocked up by a navvy! Howsoever the taint was acquired, these are no distinguishing marks — leastways not up towards the Munster Road, where the houses are all knocked abaht and there’s a family of Irish — or two — in every room, and the ginger nuts are everywhere in the streets. Still, Comes the Jew-boy, Comes the Yid, Comes the Jew-boy for iz gelt . . is sung with gusto on Thursday evening, with whichever of the two little girls is to hand, grabbed and bounced on his knee. Samuel breaks off only when he hears the sccccrrrreeeching of the front gate, then he goes to the door to watch, derisively, as Silver undoes his trouser clips, pulls off his gloves and courteously doffs his hat. From the Horeb heights of the doorstep Audrey’s father hands down a tosheroon, then a second, which is followed — after an insulting interval — by a sixpence. He places the coins in the dapper man’s palm, paying t’be fucking crucified , before, sucking on his own gall, he retreats to the Golgotha of the parlour so that Silver may trot upstairs and do the same to the other tenants.

The odd panting and heaving that accompanies a tall and corpulent man working his way into a full-length overcoat. Oof-oof . The rabbit fur lies slick and rough in the gaslight, the Coniston is sweating offuvim stink up the privyole . Over her father’s shoulder Audrey sees Stanley’s impish expression: a valet, preparing to cuttim dahn t’size , by saying, I say, Pater, that’s a wewwy extwavagant costume for an hexplorer-chappie who ain’t heggzackerly headin’ up the Wivver Congo, only dahn to the ’bus garage by Putney Bridge — say it, that is, if ’e wuz mad . Samuel Death takes a further dekko around the room, then makes a final imposition of paternal discipline: Wozzat?! He snatches the flick-book Violet has just that moment snatched from dozy Olive — Audrey knows which one, it was given away with the Daily Mail on the occasion of the old Queen’s final birthday parade, stiff cards sewn so they could be riffled and By Jingo! The horsemen fresh back from bashin’ the Boer soundlessly jingle across Horse Guards Parade, their mounts breasting the staccato dust-puffs. Samuel peers at it, lets it fall to the painted floor, extwavagantly unbuttons the just-buttoned skirts of his coat. Parts them and reaches in his waistcoat pocket for his watch. Well, pshaw! — the skin curtain billows — You’re welcome to vese guttersnipes, Mary, me old Dutch — she simpers on the chaise — if’en I don’t look lively. . All eyes are on his fumbling fingers, all except Albert’s. Samuel Death holds the timepiece up by its gold-plated bracelet, its face a lozenge of jet eclipsing the present that flows behind and in front of it. He pinches the tiny buttons either side of the casing and peers at the red illumined figures, 08.54, each digit composed with straight bars, bevelled at their ends. Gaol numbers . . I’m in gaol. . in the spike — the booby-hatch, ha-ha-hooo — help me, helpme, hellellellellpme, Stan, Bert’s torturin’ me! Ashuwa-ashuwa . . — The long rubberised strip of tension loops round her middle and stretches in either direction along the corridor, pulling from the past to the future, lashing her to the moment — her belly bulges so bad , she feels queer, like I might. . I dunno . Before she came down to tea she took the piece of calico she had folded into an ’Arrington Square and put it down the front of her bloomers, although not really grasping why every lady should know the greatest invention of the age for women’s comfort . . Stanley releases the semi-inflated tube and it snaps into the bicycle wheel and off I go! Leaping like a pea onna griddle. . the pink ’un in Holywell Street. . stuckinim — stuckinerr. . We only start the generator for the electric from time to time, Miss De’Ath, wouldn’t you agree that candlelight is more aesthetically pleasing? Cables swagging the length of the workshop sheeee-ung-chung-chung-chung! Her lathe-bed ratchets back and Audrey loosens the chuck, switches the bit — a fuse rattles down on top of the others. Then they are streaming out from No. 1 Gate, Where are the girls of the Arsenal? Working night and day, Wearing the roses off our cheeks, For precious little pay . . red-and-green flags come from nowhere and are waving on the tops of ’buses thronging Beresford Square. Shoulders back! Necks straight! Arms swing! We are the munitionettes, the suffragettes, the wild revolutionary girls!