Grey Area by Will Self Read Free Book Online Page A

‘gletch!’ a squiggle of calimari wrapped around a lamp bracket.
    ‘I’ll give you notes from underwater! I’ll give you a bloody lobster quadrille’ – he was doing something unspeakable with the remains of a sea bream – ‘this is the fin of your fucking siècle !’ He was still ranting as we backed out into the street.
    ‘Jesus Christ.’ Gerard had turned pale, he seemed winded. He leant up against the dirty frontage of a porn vendor. ‘That was awful, awful.’ He shook his head.
    ‘I don’t know, I thought there was real vigour there. Reminded me of Henry Miller or the young Donleavy.’ Gerard didn’t seem to hear me.
    ‘Well, I can’t go back to the office now, not after that.’
    ‘Why not?’
    ‘I should have done something, I should have intervened. That man was insane.’
    ‘Gerard, he was just another frustrated writer, it seems the town is full of them.’
    ‘I don’t want to go back, I feel jinxed. Tell you what, let’s go to my club and have a snifter – would you mind?’ I glanced at my watch, it was almost four-thirty.
    ‘No, that’s OK, I don’t have to clock-on for another hour.’
    As we walked down Shaftesbury Avenue and turned into Haymarket the afternoon air began to thicken about us, condensing into an almost palpable miasma that blanked out the upper storeys of the buildings. The rush-hour traffic was building up around us, Homo Sierra, Homo Astra, Homo Daihatsu, and all the other doomsday sub-species, locking the city into their devolutionary steel chain. Tenebrous people thronged the pavements, pacing out their stay in this pedestrian purgatory.
    By the time we reached the imposing neo-classical edifice of Gerard’s club in Pall Mall, I was ready for more than a snifter.
    In the club’s great glass-roofed atrium, ancient bishops scuttled to and fro like land crabs. Along the wall free-standing noticeboards covered in green baize were hung with thick curling ribbons of teletext news. Here and there a bishop stood, arthritic claw firmly clamped to the test score.
    I had to lead Gerard up the broad, red-carpeted stairs and drop him into a leather armchair, he was still so sunk in shock. I went off to find a steward. A voice came from behind a tall door that stood ajar at the end of the gallery. Before I could hear anything I caught sight of a strip of nylon jacket, black trouser leg and sandy hair. It was the steward and he was saying, ‘Of course, Poor Fellow My Country is the longest novel in the English language, and a damn good novel it is too, right?’ The meaningless interrogative swoop in pitch – an Australian. ‘I’m not trying to do what Xavier Herbert did. What I’m trying to do is invigorate this whole tired tradition, yank it up by the ears. On the surface this is just another vast Bildungsroman about a Perth boy who comes to find fame and fortune in London, but underneath that – ‘
    I didn’t wait for more. I footed quietly back along the carpet to where Gerard sat’ and began to pull him to his feet.
    ‘Whoa! What’re you doing?’
    ‘Come on, Gerard, we don’t want to stay here – ‘
    ‘Why?’
    ‘I’ll explain later – now come on.’
    As we paced up St James’s Street I told him about the steward.
    ‘You’re having me on, it just isn’t possible.’
    ‘Believe me, Gerard, you were about to meet another attendant author. This one was a bit of a dead end, so I thought you could give him a miss.’
    ‘So the gag isn’t a gag?’ He shook his big head and his thick fringe swished like a heavy drape against his brow.
    ‘No, it isn’t a gag, Gerard. Now let’s stroll for a while, until it’s time for me to go to work.’
    We re-crossed Piccadilly and plunged into fine-art land. We wandered about for a bit, staring through window after window at gallery girl after gallery girl, each one more of a hot-house flower than the last.
    Eventually we turned the corner of Hay Hill and there we were, on Dover Street, almost opposite the