Will Self - My Idea of Fun

‘Excuse me,’ she said hesitantly.

‘No,’ snapped The Fat Controller. He didn't even look up, he was doing something with the cafetière. I gawped at the woman.

The rebuttal had done her no good whatsoever, her face was going blotchy, but she mustered all the sang-froid she could and continued, ‘Since you refuse to be civil I shall not moderate my criticism. I didn't want to embarrass you in front of your grandson — ‘

‘He's not my grandson, he's the son of the woman I lodge with — ‘

‘Be that as it may, perhaps he would like to know that you have completely disrupted our meal. Your voice is as loud as it is insistent and, as if that weren't bad enough, what you speak of is as boring as it is unseemly. You are without exception the rudest man it has ever been my misfortune to share a restaurant with; and I think I can speak for all the others present when I say that.’

Without waiting for The Fat Controller's reaction to all this, she turned and went back to her own table, where she was greeted with little ‘Well done's and furtive shoulder pats from her fellow diners.

The Fat Controller sat stock still while this woman had her say, like someone engaged in a sporting activity that has been temporarily frozen, prior to a replay on behalf of inattentive home viewers. I observed him warily, waiting for the outburst I felt certain was infusing along with the coffee, but he remained impassive and finished the meal by stoically downing a litre or so of the espresso blend, a large tin box of Amaretti di Saronno and eight grappa. He added the bill with a single saccade of his pulsing eyes. It was the first display of his own eidetic abilities I had ever witnessed; before that all his efforts in this respect had been directed at infiltrating my internal visual world. Foolishly, I took it as a good sign.

We walked out into the doldrums of early evening. The Chianti had gone to my head a little but I was a big lad and had done my share of experimenting with alcohol before, so the intoxication wasn't too hard for me to handle. His gargantuan repast seemed to have put The Fat Controller in a better mood and avuncularity seeped back into his tones the further we got away from the pizzeria.

‘There are two reasons why I wanted to be sure that I met up with you after school today.’ He paused to light the green-brown dirigible of a Partagas perfecto with a flickering windproof lighter. ‘You will have guessed the first,’ he resumed, masticating the thick coils of smoke, ‘namely that I wished to inculcate you a little further in the understanding of my true nature, a little further but not too far — keep ‘em guessing is my motto. My other reason was that I wanted to have an opportunity for a more leisurely chat with you about your future. ‘

‘My future?’

‘Quite so. In the absence of your having a father who is disposed to take any interest in you — if indeed he is still alive — I find that I am, as it were, in locus pater. Not a prospect that I relish. My values, my methods, indeed my very understanding of the world, is not, as you know, conventional. Nevertheless, I have as much of a need to hand my legacy on to someone as any biological parent. Your unusual ability for mental imaging marks you out in this context. I have decided — at least pro tem — to enhance your relationship with respect to me, from the purely formal one of “apprentice”, to the potentially more intimate designation “licentiate”. Do you know what that means?’

‘No.’

‘So much the better, be sure to look it up when you get home.’

We entered the public gardens that surround the Royal Pavilion. In the autumn twilight the great building appeared simultaneously shoddy and grandiose. The Fat Controller looked more at home in this context than I could ever imagine him to have been at Cliff Top, or anywhere else for that matter. There was something of the Regency dandy in the way he trailed his cane and rotated his globular head, as if looking out for fellow beaux to salute. Moreover the fluted columns, caryatid gateways and golden domes of the Pavilion suggested to my adolescent self a world of ambiguous pleasures involving him, which I had to suppress my tipsy mind from visualising.

Why ‘The Fat Controller'? I thought to myself. Why not ‘the Fat Controller'?

‘It's important that you capitalise the definite article — even in thought — you understand me?’

‘Y'y'yes,’ I spluttered, amazed once again by the accuracy of his telepathic probing. We banked to the left, following the precisely plotted curve of a bed of flowers, which had been arranged to form a living mosaic of the municipal crest.

‘Fancy a trip to the theatre?’ The question was close to being a statement.

‘I'd — I'd love to,’ I said. And then, quite suddenly, I recognised the people who were walking in front of us through the gardens. It was the complaining woman from Al Forno together with her party. I started talking hurriedly, hoping to distract my companion. I was desperate to prevent the angry outburst that I had expected in the restaurant happening here, in this even more public place.

I said, ‘I want to go to university,’ although, in truth, up until that moment the desire had been incubating, only half-formed in my mind. ‘I'm interested in. . Well, I'm interested in sorts of things — ‘

‘Sorts of things? What d'ye mean, boy?’

‘Well, like products. All the different kinds of products. How you persuade people to buy this sort of thing rather than that sort of thing.’ This much was true, that I often found myself in my mother's kitchen staring at the array of condiments, spices, herbs and tinned foods, wondering why she should have bought this particular kind of split peas, rather than another. It was all incomprehensible to me; and since I had begun to study economics the Marginal Theory of Preference only served to deepen my confusion. For, in a world of such demonstrable irrationality, how could there be a predictable quantification of choice? Since the resumption of my mother's upwardbound course in social orienteering, her purchasing patterns had undergone a profound change. She now cooked with garlic, took an interest in wine and spoke of fricassees rather than fry-ups.

Things had always attracted me, far more so than people. As a small child I had known all the words of Masefield's poem, ‘Quinquireme of Nineveh from distant Ophir/Rowing home to haven in sunny Palestine. .’ Then the cargo was described in loving detail, the sandalwoods and spices, the ivory, the oil, the wine. I was entranced.

‘Haha. Ahahaha. . indeed, that is very interesting. Entirely germaine. Well, you shall go to the university if you wish it.’ The Fat Controller sounded uncharacteristically mummyish. ‘My plans for you are more in the manner of an agency. I do not intend to intrude on your life, or impinge in any direct manner. It is merely my desire that you complete your studies and take up a form of employ that may be useful for my purposes at some time in the future. Other than that I wish to make no claims upon you.’ He paused, the butt of his cigar held against his brow, so that a cataract of white spume dribbled down into his eye socket. The eye behind it remained unblinking. ‘And come to think of it, this isn't so dissimilar to the kind of influence your genetic father might wish to have on you, were it not for the fact that he is such a contemptible Essene, a cloistral nonentity capable of only the meanest interaction with his fellow men. You know, of course, how he spends his time?’

‘No, not really. I haven't seen him for three years or so. Mum told me that he travels up and down the coast by bus, reading in public libraries.’

‘Quite so. And how does that make you feel?’