Will Self - My Idea of Fun

Back at Cliff Top The Fat Controller was no longer in permanent residence. The winter after the incident at the Theatre Royal he had started to absent himself. Initially for a few days at a time, then for weeks, and eventually whole months. It was like a rerun of the reel in which my father was edited out. His explanation was ‘business interests’ and indeed, I did start to see discrete references to him, under his working name ‘Samuel Northcliffe’, in the financial and economic sections of the newspaper. It appeared that his alter ego was an international financier of some kind. The name Northcliffe was linked with raising equity on all five continents but not in such a conspicuous way that he himself garnered personal publicity. I never saw a photograph of him published.

You might have thought these further disclosures would have had a powerful effect on me but, of course, I was inured to surprise where this man was concerned. I also knew better than to seek him out. On the contrary, given the formidible powers he had shown to me, I rather suspected that even during his absence he was keeping me under observation. I was right.

The autumn of my second university year then. Another autumn and another life-change. Everything of importance has always happened to me in the autumn, every new departure has always presented itself within a dying context.

I saw a girl who I really fancied, I mean really. Well, this was nothing new. I knew what to do, incorporate her into the mass grave of my fantasy world; there her real charms would soon decay and get jumbled up with my rather more rotten visions. Once she had been tarnished by my imagination, she would cease to have any power over me.

But I was slow to get started on this project and before I could something unforeseen happened. She took a liking to me. We were taking the same course module, ‘marketing and statistics’. She was another young conservative, I guessed from a rather sheltered background. Her sensible shoes, neat skirts and pressed blouses spoke of home-baked shortbread and Sunday school but she wasn't as naive as I imagined. She was fine-boned and delicate, with auburn hair tied back in a leather clasp. Her neck was perhaps a trifle long and her head rather small but her features were symmetrical and her brown eyes large. Her name was June Richards.

She sat at the front during seminars and posed questions to our tutor that were more like statements. She would raise her hand to gain his attention and then use a biro to punctuate what she said with a series of invisible bullet points. The other students were all Cro-Magnons, Heavy Metal fans who scrawled graffiti on their course binders. She was different, well informed and, still more attractive, she had a real enthusiasm for the idea of marketing. She could illustrate her arguments with clever examples drawn from the real world of commerce. After only three such seminars I was smitten.

June must have noticed me staring at her. It was true, I couldn't keep my eyes from sprinting up her slim ankles, and fell-walking the contour lines of her sharp shoulders and her breasts, breasts that were improbably close to her scenic collar bone. But when she came up to me after that third seminar I was so shocked and embarrassed that I could barely speak. I started shaking and my shoes squeaked with apprehension as I shuffled on the lino.

‘You're Ian, aren't you?’ There was something clipped and ex-colonial in her accent.

‘Y’ yes.’

‘My name's June. I'm doing the marketing module as well.’

‘I–I know.’

‘I'm sorry to bother you. It's just that Mr Hargreaves says you keep excellent notes and I missed the tutorials last year for the econometrics module. He thought you might be able to help out.’

‘Why weren't you here last year?’ I regretted the question immediately but there was no pulling back. It sounded so intrusive, like the beginning of an interrogation, but she didn't seem to mind.

‘Well, my parents live in Kenya and I was going to study in Nairobi, but Moi has suspended the classes at the university for this year, so I applied to come here.’

‘Oh, I see.’ Kenya, Nairobi, Moi. How exotic, how improbable.

‘These notes then?’

‘Yes, yes, of course. I'm afraid I don't have them on me, but I can bring them tomorrow.’

The next day we companionably photocopied the notes together. I had got up early that morning and done my best to make myself look presentable. I still had no thought — for obvious reasons — of making any move on her but I felt it would be enough if she wasn't repelled by me.

She wasn't. Perhaps the toner fluid intoxicated her — there were over a hundred sheets to copy — or maybe it was the lack of air in the photocopying room, but after we had done and she had commented favourably on the comprehensive and detailed nature of the notes, she asked me to go out with her. Like a fool I accepted.

We went to some art-house cinema in Brighton. I couldn't concentrate on the film at all, I was so aware of her presence beside me in the flickering darkness. I had to repeat whole sections of my ‘ritual register’, to stop myself from eidetiking, to stop myself from spoiling her image. I sat tight in my seat, my big knees grating against the row in front, trying to ignore the agonising cramps that tore up my thighs.

Afterwards we went for a pizza at — of all places — Al Forno. I hadn't set foot inside the place since my visit with The Fat Controller. Despite this I was recognised. Tommaso appeared as we came in from the street, hamming it up just the way I remembered.

‘Ah! Meester Northcliffe's friend, you no come to see us for an age. Whassamatter, you no like our pizza?’

‘Oh no, no, Tommaso. . ‘ I slipped into character as well.

‘And with heem a pretty lady. Welcome, welcome. You shall have the best table. Meester Northcliffe's special table.’

I could tell June was impressed. Tommaso made me look like a mature man, an important man. I wasn't taken in. There was more complicity in his winks than was warranted. As I had grown some six inches since he had last seen me, I didn't for a moment believe that his recognition was unprompted.

Over food and wine I drifted into intimacy with June. Initially we talked of our course and our fellow students, but soon the conversation veered off into more personal matters. June alluded to an unhappy affair with a boy back in Kenya, plainly giving me a message. I found myself acting the part of a wooer only too well. No matter that I had no experience, I had rehearsed this role for years, blocking everything out right down to the way I would sit, ministering to the words of the desired object — yet never believing that I might actually perform.

‘He was a shit really. I think he just wanted to use me.’ Her fingers drummed the table top. She wore red nail varnish. ‘So I told him it was over. I guess that was just another reason why I wanted to get away.’ Her cuticles were frayed, perhaps the nails were false? I resisted the urge to take an eidetic peek by recollecting the pincered click of my own manicuring habits. ‘My aunt lives in Hastings, so my bloody overprotective parents thought it would be OK for me to come to Sussex. I live with Auntie, she keeps an eye on me.’

‘Oh I see.’

‘You're a local, aren't you, Ian?’

‘Yeah, I live near Saltdean, always have.’

I told her some Cliff Top stuff, about my sort of over-protective mother and my absent father. I knew I shouldn't but I couldn't help it. It seemed so right, the low burr of two voices in the pool of candlelight.

The waiter brought coffee and some amaretti. June unwrapped the flimsy tissue paper from one of the almond biscuits and rolled it carefully into a tube. She was tanned and her hair was fairer at the roots. I could make out the tracery of blonde down on the edge of her cheek.