into their delusions … faster than Silicon Valley can innovate. Busner’s
younger colleagues – protégés who’d troubled to stay in touch since
his retirement – kept him abreast of such developments: the minute
calibrations of the delusional, who, with transceivers implanted in
their brains, were remotely controlled by the American military’s
global-positioning satellite network, driven this way a few millimetre,
then that, a couple of microns … In Room Five-Twenty,
tottering on tender feet, he’d taken it all in: the bottle of Hildon
Mineral Water standing on a circular glass table with a sign round
its neck reading I cost four quid – don’t drink me! and beyond this
the wall-sized window with its patterning of grey dots – dots
which, when joined together, formed a picture of a contemporary
North British inner-city: a gallimaufry of huge Victorian bricky
things: arched viaducts, humped warehouses, scooped canals – the
places in between them poured full of off-white concrete and roofed
by steel-cantilevered glass. Gazing down to where lousy commuters
scuttled in and out of a Continental-looking tram, Zack had
thought then – and Busner thinks again, now: It might be Marseilles
… or Mainz … or Manchester … Might be – could be,
but then again … All conditioned phenomena are a dream, an illusion
… a bubble … a shadow … like dew or a flash of lightning … You
can always count on the Diamond Sutra, he ruminates, to get
straight to the heart of the matter … and its immateriality. In the
moaning, pressurised bathroom of Room Five-Twenty, Zack had
hung on tight to the sink surround, his nostrils full of synthesised
lavender … lest I be sucked into the void – the void full of all-seeing
eyes and swirling suspicions. Tightly rolled towels were to hand,
each in its own custom-made wooden socket … a cock-rack of carpentered
cunts. He’d looked about and seen … my bits … infinitely
regress in mirroring mirrors, while his face loomed large as he
squatted under its watchful eyes … Dr Eckleburg, I presume, and
did someone else’s business. – The groovy door swings open and
a blushing black secretary girl ushers them in, eyes averted. She
then retreats behind her desk and ducks right down out of sight.
The outer office is panelled with the same bland wood as the rest of
the establishment, and on this there’s a framed full-colour photographic
portrait of a puce-faced, pink-haired old duffer with pigskin
bags under his rinsed-blue eyes – exactly the sort of baggage …
you’d expect the Hilton heir to be carrying. Put wood int’ ‘ole! comes
from the inner office, and when the Pete-the-Podium-Restaurant-Manager
has complied, it resumes: Bring t’dafty in ‘ere, willya …
The sign on the desk reads MR MARSHALSEA, HEAD OF SECURIT,
which strikes Busner as entirely apposite, because Mister
Marshalsea’s head is enormous and secured by a … hairy bastion.
Below this there’s snowy shirtfront sliced by snazzy tie, above it are
amused eyes which regard him through clear lenses set in browline
frames. The beard has a small loudspeaker behind it, which crackles
into life: You can’t wander round my ‘otel wi’ nowt on but your
birthday suit, old chap – Pete here says yer ‘ad yer tackle confused
wi’ t’chipolatas. Are you A BIT CONFUSED, SIR? CAN
YOU REMEMBER YOUR NAME … OR YOUR ROOM
NUMBER? Oh, yes, Busner thinks, I remember my room number
well enough – remembers, too, the ghastly spluttering as he’d let go
and accented the white page of the commode with acutes, graves,
circumflexes and cedillas of liquid shit. When he’d risen to wipe,
Zack saw this lexical explosion, but also a splatter pattern … on the
white tiles to either side … a crime has been committed here. He’d
sighed, Ahhhh! – and continued to alternate between Ahhhs of
disgust and those expressing a strange sort of satisfaction with his
own incontinence, as he wadded toilet paper and mopped the mess
up, conscious all the while of the swollen and hurting rosette …
pinned to my … fundament. Zack’d seen then – Busner reviews,
now – the White Hart Lane stadium … late forties, I s’pose, net
curtains of drizzle hanging down from the floodlights, the pitch a
muddy morass, and the players in long white shorts and bulbous
boots calling to one another as … they pushed and ran. Nicholson
and Burgess marauding at right-half and wing-half – Bailey, the
cheeky chappie, out in front needling the visitors’ defence, Ted
Ditchburn, stolid and sideboarded in the goalmouth, while the
General strolled about in midfield, barking orders. Phillips, the
chauffeur, drove them over from Hampstead for the home games
in the wizard new Bristol Four-Oh-Five. Maurice kept a hip flask
full of sloe gin in the walnut-burled reticule, and, once they were
standing on the frigid terraces, breathing in the Bovril breath of
the multitude – the men mufflered, capped and swaddled in
gabardine macs or old army greatcoats – he’d withdraw it from his
own beautifully tailored cashmere one and surreptitiously pass it to
his eleven-year-old nephew … juniper fumes and white rosettes …
thousands of them … puckering up. At Camilla’s Kilburn flat,
where, once wine has been poured … we’ll watch pretty much anything,
the trio slumped in front of a show called Extreme Makeover
… or somesuch, and stared right into a shameless sphincter,
Zack marvelling at a world in which there could be such a procedure
as anal bleaching. Your starfish is how the Hollywood quack
had encouraged his patient to cultivate his anus – but as he’d
goggled on Zack had sensed the leviathan skulking in the depths of
his own underpants. – Once he’d worn a white rosette pinned to the
lapel of his blazer, but the frenzied baying Come on youuuuuu yiiiiids!
had long since died away … I’m a Red Devil now, and, if any
further proof were needed, there’s something diabolical down below:
a red rosette – so red and swollen that when he’d parted his legs
in Room Five-Twenty and tentatively applied the square of toilet
paper, he’d dared not wipe but only … dab, then brought this swab
up for examination. There they were … and by no means for the first
time: bloody-shitty interlocking rings – a sort of … anal smoosh, or,
more fancifully … lavatorial lemniscate, at any rate proof positive
this was by no means his first … date with infinity, now — back to
square one: I’m in Room Five-Twenty, he says to Mister Marshalsea,
here’s my key card. He fishes the thing out from his jacket
pocket and passes it across the desk. Marshalsea’s limpid eyes
flicker in their tanks and he says, Fair enough. The Mancunian
accent has evaporated – clearly it was intended to twit the others –
who remain, awkward presences in an office that’s nothing special:
desk, blotter, brown-vinyl-chair-grouping, framed awards and
certificates, but … no windows – there’re no windows …
He’s a toughguy,
this one … he’s going to tear off my rosette and punch me …
Marshalsea resumes: That seems in order – but what about your
name, you do have one, don’t you? In the silence that yawns between
them comes the low whistling of the secretary girl, who’s on
the phone in the outer office: There’s a fire alarm what’s been set off
in Seven-Fifty-Seven … Busner wonders whether he should say
this to Marshalsea: Designations – and names especially – rarefy
concepts, which can lead to attachment to those self-same concepts,
but the way of the Sannyasin is to let go of such attachments –
with all this entails … but thinks better of it and ventures, Um …
yes, I s’pose so – most of us do, I believe, but I’m afraid I’ve
temporarily forgotten it … I do have these little episodes nowadays,
postural hypotension, y’know. He staggers, but Marshalsea,
unimpressed, clicks a keyboard with beautiful nails … his eyes swim
to the monitor and he intones, Doctor Zed Bisner, Forty-Seven
Redington Road, London Enn Double-you Three – this you, old
boy, is it? A thread of old school tie dangles from Marshalsea’s
rigging … don’t like the cut of his jib. Not a terribly doctorly thing
to be doing, Doctor Bisner, is it, mind … the Head of Security
has a frank look, but, unabashed, Busner simply says, I’m retired.
Just as well, Marshalsea rejoins, I hardly think the GeeEmmSee
would take a positive view of doctors who wander around hotels
stark naked. Technically speaking, Busner back-snaps, I’m only half
naked – then, rubbing his palms on his tweedy belly, he intones,
The Munis, girdled with the wind, wear soiled garments of yellow
hue, they, following the wind’s swift course, go where the gods
have gone before –. All right, all right … Marshalsea flops a
surprisingly camp hand, the forefinger and thumb of the other dive
behind his lenses to massage his jellyfishes … I don’t think we want
anything more out of you just now – bona fides and credit rating
notwithstanding, I could have you nicked – or, if you are as
batty as you seem, call an ambulance … ZACKERGHASTED:
But, Mister Marshalsea! I was only preaching a silent sermon, in
honour of the Lord Buddha – he held up a flower, my own man-one
has been less … RHEUMY OLD EYES SADLY CAST
DOWN … upstanding. Marshalsea’s tone softens: Look, I realise
this must be distressing for you as well, so, this is what I suggest:
Pete here will accompany you to your room and help you get packed
up – in the meantime I’ll get on the blower and see if I can find a
family member to come and pick you up – I’m assuming you’ve
an emergency number in that phone … You can leave it with me?
But no, Zack wouldn’t like to leave his phone with Marshalsea:
he loves his phone, loves the shiny-black inscrutability of its
unawakened screen, reverences the smoothly rounded corners of its
steely casing, admires the leadfeather heft of it in his hand – adores
the mild shock when it throbs into life … Shock Your Friends
with the Amazing Hand Buzzer! One-and-Sixpence plus Fourpence
Post and Packaging … He’s still gripping it when he’s brought
back to earth by the lift’s upward surge. They must’ve obtained
a towel from somewhere, because he’s girdled with one … of a
white hue – a robe readying me for my ascension to … Cloud Twenty-Three
… Manchester’s most iconic cocktail bar … sophisticated …
stunning … stylish … minimalist … There’s a little voice sing-songing
in the corner … You got me slippin’, tumblin’, fumblin’,
sinkin’ … as they rise – Who, Zack thinks, will come to pick me
up? He sees himself standing on the apron of paving outside the
Hilton, looking forlorn, his trunk beside him, his school cap
crammed down on his time-buffeted old head. He sees … the ghost
ship of the Bristol rolling down Deansgate, Phillips’s corpse behind
the steering wheel, Maurice’s cadaver propped up in the back seat.
— If he goes, Zack had shouted at his own bullying and ungrateful
progeny, I bloody-well go with him! Daniel, quick, slight, dark …
and pretty like his mother, Oscar … with my own flabby face-mask,
Lottie and Frankie – the former a mutation, the latter a clone, of
their etherially beautiful mother, Lalage herself … boss-eyed and
bamboozled, stolid social-working Pat and venal, conniving Vigo –
they’d all stopped yakking and freeze-framed with mouths stretched,
arms and legs akimbo, a jumble of shattered spars and tangled
emotional rigging, at the centre of which I sprawled, accepting it all:
Kiss me, Hardy! And roll out the brandy barrel! It being the Euston
School time of year, Zack had been wearing all three pieces of his
earthen suit. Just as well – the speech he’d delivered required the
accompaniment of thumbs hooked in waistcoat pockets: And by
go with him, I mean go entirely – that’s right! I’ve had the papers
drawn up for some time – they’re at Marcus Rotblatt’s office, I went
by this morning and signed them – yes! Signed them! All of you –
especially you, Lottie – have now got what you wanted: the house
will henceforth be jointly owned by you all, with Mark’s share held
in trust, managed by Rotblatt on his, Camilla’s and Ben’s behalf …
As he’d been speaking – and this was sort of heavenly – after decades
of listening to them squabble, shout at him and, in the boys’ case,
swing the occasional mistimed punch or roundhouse kick, he
realised he had their full attention – that it’d taken the gift of an
entire desirable London property to obtain seemed … appropriate.
You’ve all seen the changes I’ve been making these past few
years – unburdening myself of possessions, giving up my ex-officio
consultancy at the Heath, withdrawing from worldly affairs, and
yes, slipping from social conventions … Well, this process has now
reached its logical end-point: I have achieved the life-stage of
renunciation and become Sannyasa! Then … then … nothing –
sod-all: they’d just gawped at him for a while, until Daniel, tugging
at the fleshy folds of his chinlessness he did it as a child … stammered
out, N-Nothing will c-come of this – n-nothing g-good
at any rate. Nothing good can come of something so … so …
nothingy. Zack had stood staring at his second son – it was difficult
not to pity him: at his age I’d already been a consultant for a
decade – despite my disciplinary problems … while he … he has
no specialism … picks up locum jobs where he can – and there was
that murky business of the anorexic woman who complained to the
trust … So many children he has the notion he’s some sort of
patriarch, so he tries to patronise me. Are you saying, he’d flung
back in Daniel’s sententious face, I don’t know my own mind? Oscar
then entered the lists, sneering: Well, you only just now reminded
us you’ve given up your practice – your only insights into anyone
were professional ones. Now you aren’t a psychiatrist any more,
you can’t even look inside your own shrunken head … And after
this Simon had … stuck his own oar in: Smarty-arty-leathery-pants
here – he’s gotta point … Iss like … Iss like you’ve unwhatsitted
yourself of all this stuff, including your own mind, yeah – and
your mind’s sorta grown legs and put poncey leather keks on ’em,
and grown a dumb hipster beard making it look like A FUCKING
ARSE! – And after this things had got rather out of hand,
with Oscar screeching, Yeah? Yeah! Who the fuck’re you to tell
me who I am, you fucking homophobic bastard – what’ve you
got going for you, an ex-bloody-squaddie with mental health problems!
And Simon shouting back: I served my country! I served my
fucking country! What’re you, jeeze: fucking nothing, a big fat
zero still living off your old man in middly-bimbly-bumbly age!
In the lift, remembering the unpleasantness, Busner shifts from
sole to sole, toenails grow when you’re dead … therefore … If it’d only
been a person-to-person row, it might’ve been contained … but
we had a party line, and Lottie had then chimed in: Whaddya
mean, Dad, especially me? Why especially me? And her father had
flustered, You’re always saying you want to have a child, Lottie,
but you’ve nowhere suitable to bring one up. Now, I thought …
well … I thought you could do it … well, here. She’d groaned
theatrically, Ohhhhmyyyygaaawd, and, grabbing fistfuls of tumultuous
blonde curls, inveighed, You know nothing about my life,
Dad – fuck all. I’m with Oscar on this: I’ve been trying to get
pregnant by donor-insemination for months now, a small fact you’re
in complete ignorance of. As for having my baby here … up she
went an octave, across the Atlantic and into a cartoon: I don’t think
so. You may be blissfully free of troubling memories, but for me and
Frankie this is a house of horrors … She’d rounded on Lalage:
Always late picking me up from school, always stoned … Nothing
in the fridge but your flying-fucking-diaphragm on a saucer!
Whereupon Lalage … histrionic as ever had begun sobbing hysterically,
I tried my best! I tried my best! I tried my best! Rooted,
Zack had reeled as his adult children turned on each other – but
while he watched, slightly awed, his progeny had ceased bemerding