Grey Area (9 page)

To the Bathroom

‘Like, we’re considering the historic present – ?’

‘Yeah.’

‘And David says, “I want to go to the bathroom.”’

‘Yeah.’

‘So, like we all accompany him there and stuff. Cos in his condition it wouldn’t like be a . . . be a –’

‘Good idea for him to be alone?’

‘Yeah, thassit. So we’re standing there, right. All four of us, in the bathroom, and David’s doing what he has to do. And we’re still talking about it.’

‘It?’

‘The historic present. Because Diane – you know Diane?’

‘Sort of.’

‘Well, she says the historic present is, like . . . er . . . like, more emotionally labile than other tenses. Yeah, thass what she says. Anyways, she’s saying this and David is, like, steaming, man . . . I mean to say he’s really plummeting. It’s like he’s being de-cored or something. This isn’t just Montezuma’s revenge, it’s everyone’s revenge. It’s the revenge of every deracinated group of indigenes ever to have had the misfortune to encounter the European. It’s a sort of collective curse of David’s colon. It’s like his colon is being crucified or something.’

‘He’s anally labile.’

‘Whadjewsay?’

‘He’s anally labile.’

Labile, labile. Labby lips. Libby-labby lips. This is the kind of drivel I’ve been reduced to. Imaginary dialogues between myself and a non-existent interlocutor. But is it any surprise? I mean to say, if you have a colon as spastic as mine it’s bound to insinuate itself into every aspect of your thinking. My trouble is I’m damned if I do and I’m damned if I don’t. If I don’t drink vast quantities of kaolin and morphine I’m afflicted with the most terrifying bouts of diarrhoea. And if I do – drink a couple of bottles a day, that is – I’m subject to the most appalling undulations, seismic colonic ructions. It doesn’t really stop the shits either. I still get them, I just don’t get caught short. Caught short on the hard shoulder, that’s the killer.

Say you’re driving up to High Wycombe, for example. Just out on a commonplace enough errand. Like going to buy a couple of bottles of K&M. And you’re swooping down towards Junction 3, the six lanes of blacktop twisting away from you like some colossal wastepipe, through which the automotive crap of the metropolis is being voided into the rural septic tank, when all of a sudden you’re overcome. You pull over on to the hard shoulder, get out of the car, and squat down. Hardly dignified. And not only that, destructive of the motorway itself. Destructive of the purity of one’s recollection.

That’s why I prefer to stay home in my kaolin-lined bungalow. I prefer to summon up my memories of the motorway in the days before I was so afflicted. In the days when my vast
roman-fleuve
was barely a trickle, and my sense of scale was intact. Then, distance was defined by regular increments, rather than by the haphazard lurch from movement to movement.

This morning I was sitting, not really writing, just dabbling. I was hunkered down inside myself, my ears unconsciously registering the whisper, whistle and whicker of the traffic on the M40, when I got that sinking feeling. I hied me to the bathroom, just in time to see a lanky youth disappearing out of the window, with my bathroom scales tucked under his arm.

I grabbed a handful of his hip-length jacket and pulled him back into the room. He was a mangy specimen. His head was badly shaven, with spirals of ringworm on the pitted surface. The youth had had these embellished with crude tattoos, as if to dignify his repulsive skin condition. His attire was a loose amalgam of counter-cultural styles, the ragged chic of a redundant generation. His pupils were so dilated that the black was getting on to his face. I instantly realised that I had nothing to fear from him. He didn’t cry out, or even attempt to struggle.

I had seen others like him. There’s quite a posse of them, these ‘model heads’. That’s what they call themselves. They congregate around the model village, venerating it as a symbol of their anomie. It’s as if, by becoming absorbed in the detail of this tiny world, they hope to diminish the scale of society’s problems. In the winter they go abroad, settling near Legoland in Belgium.

‘Right, you,’ I said, in householder tones. ‘You might have thought that you’d get away with nicking something as trivial as those bathroom scales, but it just so happens that they have a sentimental value for me.’

‘Whadjergonna do then?’ He was bemused – not belligerent.

‘I’m going to put you on trial, that’s what I’m going to do.’

‘You’re not gonna call the filth, are you?’

‘No, no. No need. In Beaconsfield we have extended the whole principle of Neighbourhood Watch to include the idea of neighbourhood justice. I will sit in judgment on you myself. If you wish, my court will appoint a lawyer who will organise your defence.’

‘Err – ‘ He had slumped down on top of the wicker laundry basket, which made him look even more like one of Ali Baba’s anorectic confreres. ‘Yeah, OK, whatever you say.’

‘Good. I will represent you myself. Allow me, if you will, to assume my position on the bench.’ We shuffled around each other in the confinement of tiles. I put the seat down, sat down, and said, ‘The court may be seated.’

For a while after that nothing happened. The two of us sat in silence, listening to the rising and falling flute of the Vent-Axia. I thought about the day the court-appointed officer had come to deliver my decree nisi. He must have been reading the documents in the car as he drove up the motorway, because when I encountered him on the doorstep he was trying hard – but failing – to suppress a smirk of amusement.

I knew why. My wife had sued for divorce on the grounds of adultery. The co-respondent was known to her, and the place where the adultery had taken place was none other than on these selfsame scales. The ones the model head had just attempted to steal. At that time they were still located in the bathroom of our London house. After the decree absolute, my ex-wife sent them to me in Beaconsfield, together with a caustic note.

It was a hot summer afternoon in the bathroom. I was with a lithe young foreign woman, who was full of capricious lust. ‘Come on,’ she said, ‘let’s do it on the scales. It’ll be fun, we’ll look like some weird astrological symbol, or a diagram from the
Kama Sutra.
’ She twisted out of her dress and pulled off her underwear. I stood on the scales. Even translated from metric to imperial measure, my bodyweight still looked unimpressive. She hooked her hands around my neck and jumped. The flanges of flesh on the inside of her thighs neatly fitted the notches above my bony hips. I grasped the fruit of her buttocks in my sweating palms. She braced herself, feet against the wall, toenails snagging on the Artex. Her panting smoked the mirror on the medicine cabinet. I moved inside her. The coiled spring inside the scales squeaked and groaned. Eventually it broke altogether.

That’s how my wife twigged. When she next went to weigh herself she found the scales jammed, the pointer registering 322 lb. Exactly the combined weight of me and the family au pair . . .

Oh,
mene, mene
,
tekel, upharsin
! What a fool I was! Now fiery hands retributively mangle my innards! The demons play upon my sackbut and I am cast into the fiery furnace of evacuation. I am hooked there, a toilet duck, condemned for ever to lick under the rim of life!

The model head snapped me out of my fugue. ‘You’re a Libra,’ he said, ‘aren’t you?’

‘Whassat?’

‘Your sign. It’s Libra, innit?’ He was regarding me with the preternatural stare of a madman or a seer.

‘Well, yes, as a matter of fact it is.’

‘I’m good at that. Guessing people’s astrological signs. Libra’s are, like, er . . . creative an’ that.’

‘I s’pose so.’

‘But they also find it hard to come to decisions – ‘

‘Are you challenging the authority of this court?’ I tried to sound magisterial, but realised that the figure I cut was ridiculous.

‘Nah, nah. I wouldn’t do that, mate. It’s just . . . like . . . I mean to say, whass the point, an’ that?’

I couldn’t help but agree with him, so I let him go. I even insisted that he take the bathroom scales with him. After all, what good are they to me now?

Lizard

Epilogue. Many years later . . .

If you want to walk round the Lizard Peninsula, you have to be reasonably well equipped. Which is not to say that this part of Cornwall is either particularly remote (the M5 now goes all the way to Land’s End) or that rugged. It’s just that the exposure to so much wind and sky, and so many pasties, after a winter spent huddled on the urban periphery (somewhere like Beaconsfield, for example), can have an unsettling effect. I always advise people to take an antacid preparation, and also some kaolin and morphine. There’s no need any more to carry an entire bottle, for Sterling Health have thoughtfully created a tablet form of this basic but indispensable remedy.

One other word of warning before you set out. Don’t be deceived by the map into thinking that distances of, say, eight to ten miles represent a comfortable afternoon’s stroll. The Lizard is so called because of the many rocky inlets that are gouged out of its scaly sides, giving the entire landmass the aspect of some giant creature, bound for the Atlantic vivarium. The coastal path is constantly either ascending or descending around these inlets. Therefore, to gain a mile you may have to go up and down as much as six hundred feet.

I myself haven’t been to the Lizard for many years, in fact not since I was a young man. Even if I felt strong enough to make the journey now, I wouldn’t go. For those younger than I, who cannot remember a time before the current Nationalist Trust Government took power, the prospect may still seem inviting. But personally, I find that the thought of encountering the Government’s Brown Shirts, with their oak-leaf epaulettes, sticks in my craw. I would bitterly resent being compelled by these paramilitary nature wardens to admire the scenery, register the presence (or even absence) of ancient monuments, and propitiate the wayside waste shrines with crumpled offerings.

Of course, we aren’t altogether immune from the depredations of the Trust here in Beaconsfield. Last month, after a bitterly fought local election, they gained power in almost all of the wards, including the one that contains the model village itself. There have been rumours, discreet mutterings, that they intend to introduce their ubiquitous signs to the village. These will designate parts of it areas of (albeit minute) ‘outstanding natural beauty’.

But I am old now, and have not the stomach for political infighting. Since the publication of the last volume of my magnum opus,
A History of the English Motorway Service Centre,
I have gained a modest eminence. People tell me that I am referred to as ‘the Macaulay of the M40’, a sobriquet that, I must confess, gives me no little pleasure. I feel vindicated by the verdict of posterity. (I say posterity, for I am now so old that hardly anyone realises I am still alive.)

I spend most my the days out on the sun porch. Here I lie naked, for all the world like some moribund reptile, sopping up the rays. My skin has turned mahogany with age and melanoma. It’s difficult for me to distinguish now between the daub of cancerous sarcoma and the toughened wattle of my flesh. Be that as it may, I am not frightened of death. I feel no pain, despite having long since reduced the indulgence of my pernicious habituation to kaolin and morphine to a mere teaspoonful every hour.

With age have come stoicism and repose. When I was younger I could not focus on anything, or even apprehend a single thought, without feeling driven to incorporate it into some architectonic, some Great Design. I was also plagued by lusts, both fleshly and demonic, which sent me into such dizzying spirals of self-negation that I was compelled to narcosis.

But now, even the contemplation of the most trivial things can provide enough sensual fodder to last me an entire morning. Today, for example, I became transfixed, staring into the kettle, by the three separate levels of scale therein. First the tangible scale, capping the inverted cradle of the water’s meniscus. Secondly, the crystalline accretions of scale that wreathed the element. And thirdly, of course, the very abstract notion of ‘scale’ itself, implied by my unreasoned observation. It’s as if I were possessed of some kind of Escher-vision, allowing me constantly to perceive the dimensional conundrum that perception presents.

I am also comforted in my solitude by my pets. One beneficial side-effect of the change in climate has been the introduction of more exotic species to this isle. But whereas the
nouveaux riches
opt for the Pantagruelian spectacle of giraffes cropping their laburnums, and hippopotamuses wallowing in their sun-saturated swimming pools, I have chosen to domesticate the more elegant frill-necked lizard.

This curious reptile, with its preposterous vermilion ruff, stands erect on its hind legs like a miniature dinosaur. When evening comes, and the day’s visitors have departed, I let it out so that it may roam the lanes and paths of the model village. The sight of this pocket Godzilla stalking the dwarfish environs, its head darting this way and that, as if on the look-out for a canapé-sized human, never fails to amuse me.

However, not every aspect of my life is quite so easeful and reposed. The occasional dispute, relating to a lifetime of scholarly endeavour, still flares up occasionally. It is true that my work has a certain status here in England, but of course all this means in practice is that although many have heard of it, few have actually read any of it.

In the ex-colonies the situation is different. A Professor Moi wrote to me last year, from the University of Uganda, to dispute the findings of my seminal paper ‘When is a Road Not a Road?’
*
, in which – if you can be bothered to recall – I established a theory that a motorway cannot be said to be a motorway unless it is longer than it is broad. I was inspired to this by my contemplation of the much maligned A41 (M), which at that time ran for barely a mile. Moi took issue with the theory, and after I had perused the relevant Ugandan gazetteer it became clear to me why.

The ill-fated Lusaka Bypass was to have been the centre-piece of the Ugandan Government’s Motorway Construction Programme. However, resources ran out after only one junction and some eighty feet of road had been built. Faced with the options of either changing the nomenclature or admitting failure, the Ugandans had no alternative but to take issue with the theory itself.

But such episodes are infrequent. Mostly I am left alone by the world. My children have grown up and disappointed me; my former friends and acquaintances have forgotten me. If I do receive any visitors nowadays, they are likely to be young professional couples, nascent ex-urbanites, come to enquire whether or not the bungalow is for sale.

It is a delicious irony that although when I first moved to Beaconsfield the bungalow was regarded as tacky in the extreme, over the years it has become a period piece. The aluminium-framed picture windows, the pebbledash façade, the corrugated-perspex carport: all of these are now regarded as delightfully authentic and original features. Such is the queer humour of history.

And what of the M40 itself, the fount of my life’s work? How stands it? Well, I must confess that since the universal introduction of electric cars with a maximum speed of 15 mph, the glamour of motorway driving seems entirely lost. Every so often I’ll take the golf buggy out and tootle up towards Junction 5 (Stokenchurch), but my motives are really rather morbid.

Morbid, for it is here that I am to be buried. Here, where the motorway plunges through a gunsight cutting and the rolling plain of Oxfordshire spreads out into the blue distance. Just beyond the Chiltern scarp the M40 bisects the Ridgeway, that neolithic drovers’ path which was the motorway of Stone Age Britain. It is here that the Nationalist Trust has given gracious permission for me to construct my mausoleum.

I have opted for something in the manner of an ancient chamber tomb. A long, regular heap of layered stones, with corbelled walls rising to a slab roof. At one end the burial mound will tastefully elide with the caisson of the bridge on which the M40 spans the Ridgeway.

It is a fitting memorial, and what’s more, I am convinced that it will remain long after the motorway itself has become little more than a grassed-over ruin, a monument to a dead culture. The idea that perhaps, in some distant future, disputatious archaeologists will find themselves flummoxed by the discovery of my tomb, together with its midden of discarded motorway signs, brings a twitch to my jowls.

Will the similarities in construction between my tomb and the great chamber tombs of Ireland and the Orkneys lead them to posit a continuous motorway culture, lasting some 7,000 years? I hope so. It has always been my contention that phenomena such as Silbury Hill and the Avebury stone circle can best be understood as, respectively, an embankment and a roundabout.

And so it seems that it is only by taking this very, very, long-term view that the answer to that pernicious riddle ‘Why are there no services on the M40?’ will find an answer.

In conclusion, then. It may be said of me that I have lost my sense of scale, but never that I have lost my sense of proportion.

*
British Journal of Ephemera,
Spring 1986