Will Self - My Idea of Fun

‘Edinburgh! Pshaw! Edinburgh! Thass no more Scotty Land than the bloody Tyne, man.’

‘Where are you from?’ asked Ian, sort of knowing that this was the right thing to do.

‘Glasgie, man, Glasgie, not that that's necessarily yer real Scotty land, ahm not claiming that because anyone from north of the Gramps always says that they're the real Scotties and I can see their point.’ Bob finished this speech by arching his pale body right out of the water like some hideous Rainbow trout, then he plunged his head down into the pool, so that his foreshortened rear end shot up in the air. The arch was followed by another and then another. Ian watched dumbfounded as the amputee propelled himself the length of the pool by exercising this limbless butterfly stroke.

Bob reached the shallows and regained his equilibrium in the far corner of the pool, his narrow shoulders jammed up against the rails of the ladder. There was a splashing from the footbath — Ian turned and saw Doug emerging spade-first.

‘About bloody time!’ hooted Bob.

‘I'm sorry?’ said Doug, urbane as ever.

‘You leave the bloody man in my pool without so much as by your leave — what kind of manners are those then?’

‘It was only for a couple of minutes — ’

‘Dinne give me that crap, many mickles make a muckle; and you can tell his fucking nibs from me, that ahm no afraid of him neither. There's little else he can do to hurt me, now is there?’

‘I'm sorry if I offended you,’ said Ian. He couldn't say why but he rather liked Bob. There was something truly admirable about the way the spunky Scot had overcome his terrifying disability.

‘Oh dinna you worry, lad, I was jus’ letting off some blather. You run along now; and as the medieval knights used to say to one another on parting, “Be-sieging you!” Ahahaha! Hahah'ha!’

And it was this cackling laughter that followed Ian as he splashed his way back through the footbath behind Doug.

But either it wasn't the same footbath, or else someone had been indulging in scene shifting on a prodigious scale, for this time, after tramping through some changing rooms, they emerged into what was clearly the reception area which properly belonged to the swimming pool. A long low space, a checkerboard of blue-and-brown carpet tiles spread out towards a row of glass doors at the far end. There were cork boards all the way along the breeze-blocked walls and attached to them the usual notices advertising the times for the Junior Ducklings Club, aerobics classes and the water polo heats.

It was as if the swimming pool had been some kind of air-lock in between the Land of Children's Jokes and a less problematic reality, the reception area was so mundanely institutional. And for Ian, underscoring this paradigm shift was the sight of two familiar figures, sitting on a couple of tiny chairs that were set beside the information desk near the glass doors. One of the figures was Dr Gyggle and the other was The Fat Controller.

‘What's your name?’ called The Fat Controller, turning to face them.

‘Doug,’ Doug replied.

‘Of course — ha, ha! — “Doug”, that's rich. All right, Doug, bring him over here and then lose yourself, exit, scram, got the ticket? Good, good, in fact, capital!’

Ian took his time strolling down to meet his two mentors. He knew now that he had all the time in the world.

‘Come on, Ian, don't dither,’ said The Fat Controller. ‘We haven't got all the time in the world, you know. What's that you say?’ Poor Doug had banged the haft of his spade against a fire bell; it was this tinging noise that The Fat Controller was responding to.

‘Sorry,’ said Doug, ‘I didn't say anything, it was just my spade. .’ He trailed off and gestured up to the ceiling in a rather helpless fashion.

‘I thought I told you to go away, Dougie — so do it — and on your way back give that coon-boy a shake, got that?’ barked The Fat Controller, who had a charmingly off-hand sort of way of voicing racist sentiments.

‘So here we all are,’ said Ian once Doug had departed. ‘All together at last.’ He pulled up a tiny chair for himself and sitting down went on, ‘I'd like to take this opportunity, Dr Gyggle — if indeed that is your real name — to thank you for all the wonderful help you've given me over the years. I don't know what I would have done without you.’ Gyggle shifted uneasily on his dwarfish seat — it was so low that his bony knees were stuck right up inside the billowing end of the beard.

‘Don't get chippy, Ian, there isn't any call for it. Hieronymus Gyggle is a trusted confrère of mine and I was hardly likely to leave you unsupervised while I was away, now was I?’

‘S'pose not.’

‘“S'pose not” isn't good enough, it never is. It wasn't good enough when you were a spotty little twerp and it isn't any better now that you're a grown man. I do wish that you'd buck up a bit, Ian, and face your responsibilities. You aren't the only person in the world that matters, you know, and anyway, we aren't here to maunder on about your distinctly minor problems, we're here to talk product.’

‘Why? Why bother?’

‘Because your agency D.F. & L. Associates has been contracted to handle the marketing for my new financial product, which as you know is beset with numerous problems, not least among them this naming business. Have you managed to do anything on that yet?’

‘I've set up a naming group.’

‘Oh good, well that's all right then, you've set up a naming group, how perspicacious of you. Cretin! Fool! Booby! When did a naming group ever settle a problem like this, I ask you, you're no better than your father the Essene.’

‘Well, we came up with the name for the Painstyler in one of these groups and I've managed to get the same people along again.’

‘Harumph! Well, I admit that does sound a bit more promising — pass me that ashtray, will you, Gyggle.’ The lanky shrink handed him one of the tinfoil doilies that pass muster for ashtrays in such places and The Fat Controller stubbed out his Voltiger. The three of them sat in silence while he invented fire with his primitive lighter and then used it to light another.

‘Now, Ian,’ he resumed, thick smoke gushing from his rapacious mouth. ‘There are several tricky aspects to all of this and although I don't expect you to follow the many dizzy twists and scale the haunting crags of my reasoned plotting — genius is after all a lonely estate — I do expect you to apply yourself.

‘Firstly the matter of this young woman — what's her name, Gyggle?’

‘Jane,’ said the shrink. ‘Jane Carter.’

‘That's right. Now this Jane Carter, you can have her if that's what you want — you can even marry her for all I care. Of course, you'd be wise not to tell her about your little outrages, I don't think she'd take too kindly to them, it might put a bit of a crimp on your relationship, hmm?’

‘Little outrages? I'm not sure I follow you.’ Ian was non-plussed.

‘Well, the woman you killed with the poisoned umbrella at the Theatre Royal for a start; and then there was that other chit, what was her name? Ah yes, it's coming to me now, June. Jane and June, not very imaginative when it comes to your playmates’ nomenclature are you?’

‘I don't know what you're talking about. I never killed anybody, you killed the woman at the Theatre Royal and I never did anything to June — ’

‘You sexually assaulted her.’

‘No I didn't.’

‘Did.’

‘Didn't.’

‘Did!’

‘Gentlemen, perhaps I could assist?’ Gyggle had regained his professional composure and was speaking once again in the honeyed tones of his consulting room. ‘Ian, I do think Samuel is being a little unfair to you but I'm afraid that the substance of what he says is true. The only way I can explain this to you is to adopt a schema from somewhere else — the cinema or detective fiction, perhaps. You see, Ian, all your adult life you have been committing these little “outrages”. It has been Samuel's — and latterly my own — responsibility to cover things up, to clear up the mess. I don't mean literally, of course, although many of your activities have left quite a few stains, I mean clear up the mess in here.’ And then Gyggle made a gesture identical to the one The Fat Controller had, all those years ago. He tapped his temple with his bony finger, forcefully, as if requesting admission to his own consciousness. ‘We didn't want you to suffer the torment of your own behaviour, Ian, because you had no option. You are, I fear, chronically ill equipped in the self-control department but you do have a conscience — ’