Will Self - My Idea of Fun

‘Why yes,’ said Ian. ‘I suppose I do.’

‘I'm dreadfully sorry to bang on about it like this — you must think me a frightful bore but it's so rare that I get the opportunity to talk to anyone.’

‘What about Pinky?’ said Ian with a creeping sense of déjà entendu.

‘Oh my dear boy, he's far too tied up in his own problems to have any concern for mine. Somehow that's the way that things tend to be here. Come now, get up and I'll take you for a bit of a tour — you'd like that, wouldn't you?’

Doug gave Ian his smooth hand and assisted him to stand. Throwing off the covers, swinging his legs sideways and then standing up, these actions brought Ian still further into the reality of the Land of Children's Jokes. He found himself upright, fully dressed, next to the man with the spade in his head, within the bounds of the fan of light that spread out from the windows across the lumpy floor. Still holding him by the hand, Doug led him away into the dark.

Doug wouldn't let go of Ian's hand. He pulled him gently but firmly into the crepuscular hinterland of the giant shed, if that's what it was. From somewhere in the distance Ian could hear faint noises that might have been cries but they were too indistinct to make out.

‘I ought to warn you,’ Doug threw over his shoulder, ‘we're going to see some things that may disturb you.’ Ian grinned to himself, he was beginning to get the hang of the Land of Children's Jokes.

At that moment there was a squeal in a dark corner some twenty yards off to their right. Ian jumped. ‘What's that!’

‘The first of them, I suppose, come on, we'd better take a look.’ The man with the spade in his head pulled a torch from his pocket and, using its pencil beam tentatively, guided them through the maze of rubbish that littered the floor.

They rounded a low bank, which as far as Ian could make out was composed of tumbleweeds of swarf, dripping with oil and frosted with sawdust. Behind it there was a bloody baby. Doug's torch gave the baby's head a weak yellow halo. It was around nine months old, wearing a terry-towelling Babygro and sitting solidly on its broad-nappied base. Its chin, its hands, its Babygro, even the beaten floor beneath it, were all covered in blood. Something glinted in the baby's tender pink paw, something bright which travelled towards its budding mouth.

‘Jesus!’ cried Ian. ‘That baby's got a razor blade!’ But immediately he saw the stupidity of saying it, for scattered at the baby's feet were ten or fifteen more razor blades, all within easy reach. While they watched the baby raised the blade to its mouth, opened wide and inserted it vertically. The baby's blue eyes twinkled merrily at Ian as it bit down on the blade, which straight away sliced through lip and gum at top and bottom. Ian could see the layers of flesh and tissue all the way to the bone; he screamed weakly and Doug squeezed his hand as if to reassure. Thick plashes of blood gave the baby a red bib, but it continued to sit upright and was even happily burbling.

‘What's red,’ Doug asked, ‘and sits in the corner?’

Up above them some sort of dawn had begun to break. In the vaulting of the high ceiling Ian could descry rhubarb girders bursting from a piecrust of concrete. ‘Come on.’ Doug tugged at his hand. ‘There's someone else who wants to meet you.’

They walked for what seemed like hours through the echoing space, sometimes crossing wide expanses of concrete, other times crouching to make their way through twisting tunnels lined with chipboard, or Formica. Everywhere there was evidence of failed industry. Defunct machinery lay about, dusty and rusty. Bolts, brackets, angle irons and other unidentifiable hunks of metal were scattered on the floor; a floor that changed from concrete to beaten earth and in places disappeared altogether underneath a foot or more of water.

The Land of Children's Jokes was locked in the bony embrace of winter, the limitless building must have central unheating, Ian reflected miserably. It was also awkward walking hand-in-hand with Doug, who often had to proceed with extreme caution in order to avoid knocking the spade in his head. Eventually they came to a tunnel that was different to all the others. This one was tiled. It was, Ian realised as they splashed through a footbath, set in its slippery floor, the sort of tunnel you go through on your way from the changing rooms to a public swimming pool.

He was right. When they emerged they were standing at the side of a swimming pool, an old-fashioned thirties’ pool with magnolia tiling everywhere, a couple of tiers of wooden seats for spectators and green water lapping at its sides. Doug said, ‘I have to go on a bit and check that everything has been prepared. If you don't mind I'd be obliged if you'd wait here for a while.’ Before Ian could object, or remonstrate with him in any way he was gone, back through the footbath.

Ian sat down in one of the seats. This, he thought to himself, is no dream. It's too cold, for a start, never mind its terrible lucidity. There was a splash and an explosion of breath from the pool — there was something, or someone in it. Ian rushed down to the edge and peered in. Nothing. The greenish surface of the water lapped towards him and then away from him again. But then he saw something move, right down towards the deep end where the gently sloping bottom suddenly took a dive. It looked like a piece of statuary, a bust or torso of some kind, although not quite the right shape; and anyway, Ian observed, a trail of tiny air-bubbles linked it to the surface.

It lurched, then shot up from the bottom of the pool in a shroud of air and water — whoosh! Ian recoiled, it was bobbing in the open air, the torso of a man, quite a small man with collar-length dark hair. The armless and legless man wriggled his torso feverishly to remain upright in the water, his breath came out in hard ‘paffs’.

Ian was a little blasé by now. ‘You must be Bob,’ he said.

‘Aye — that's me,’ replied the quadra-amputee, still jerking spasmodically. He had a pronounced Strathclyde accent. His limbs had been chopped off right at the joins, shoulder and groin. Ian could see distinct ovals of recently grafted skin framed by the empty legs of his blue swimming trunks. For some reason the most revolting thing about Bob was this, that he had troubled to clothe his bottom half; the empty legs of his trunks stretched down from his groin, under his perineum and up his arse cleft at the back, framing the scar tissue with shocking clarity in spite of the ultramarine wavering.

Bob had managed to stabilise himself. He was sufficiently buoyant to prevent the water from coming above his nipples and he was now keeping himself upright with nice twitches of his hips and buttocks. Ian examined him more closely. He had the sharp features of a Gorbals hard man and the razor scars to go with them — thin blue capillaries radiated across his face from his nose. His narrow hairless chest — and indeed the rest of his body from what Ian could see of it — was packed with taut muscle under a pale freckled skin.

‘Did yer mother never teach you that it's rude to stare like that at the disabled?’ Bob snapped.

‘Oh God, I'm sorry, I'm a bit disoriented, you see. I've no idea either how I got here or what the hell it's all about.’

‘You can be forgiven for that,’ said Bob, mellowing. ‘I dinna’ ken anyone who rightly knows how he came here.’ He moved his head around to indicate the place they found themselves in. It was an amazingly expressive gesture, as if his neck were an arm and his face a hand he could talk with. ‘Ahm from Scotty Land — originally like.’

‘Oh,’ said Ian.

‘D'ye ken it?’

‘Well, I went when I was a child, to Edinburgh on a school trip.’