Tough, Tough Toys for Tough, Tough Boys by Will Self Read Free Book Online Page B

like a host of angels. Before Jonathan could react they had blanketed his face with soft, faintly damp wings. He felt their tiny mandibles pluck and nibble at the crusted matter on his lips and eyelids. He lay back on the pillow and let the insects give him what amounted to an entire facial. When the butterflies lifted off, regrouped and flew out the open window, he arose, refreshed and ready for the day.
    All morning the insects proved as good as their command of words. Whenever Jonathan needed something, a pencil or a computer disk, he had only to point to it for an insect formation to arrange itself in the air, lift the required object, and port it to where he sat, labouring at the Macintosh. Once their task was completed, the flies quit the room, leaving him with blissful quiet. No noise of miniature timpani, as tiny heads butted giant panes.
    The sight of a clump of blue-black flies, holding within their midst such quotidian human artefacts, was also, in and of itself, a kind of displacement activity. Jonathan found that with these little breaks in the work to entertain him progress on the index was effortless. He was on to ‘rood’ before the end of the morning.
    At lunch he had a protracted dialogue with the draining-board. ‘OK,’ he told the silverfish, ‘I accept that so far you have acted in good faith. I will throw the Vaponas away!’
    HOORAY ! wrote the silverfish.
    ‘I will also remove the spiders’ webs I have allowed to be established around the cornices and the architrave.’
    THANK YOU! THANK YOU! WE WILL CONTINUE TO SERVE YOU.
    Jonathan was using the broom to knock out the last of the webs in the spare bedroom when Joy rang. ‘Everything all right?’ she asked.
    ‘Fine, fine.’ For some reason he found the very sound of her voice, vibrating in the receiver, intensely irritating, as if she were somehow trapped there, her nails rap-rap-rapping against the Bakelite.
    ‘Insect life not getting to you then, is it?’ She laughed, another tinkly, irritating noise.
    ‘No, no, why should it?’
    ‘Well, it's been bothering you all summer. And frankly I can't tell you what a relief it is to be in London, away from all of that bloody nature . . .’ She paused, and Jonathan bit his lip, restraining himself from pointing out that ‘bloody nature’ could just as well do without her. ‘. . . Still, I'm sure I'll be longing for it by Friday. I'll be on the three-forty train, would you get a cab to pick me up from Sax?’
    Jonathan filed this request away, but as soon as he hung up, Joy vanished from his mind. He was finding Flytopia an exhilarating place to live in. They left him well alone in the study, but whenever he emerged he found orderly teams of insects going about their business of assisting him elsewhere in the house. Neat phalanxes of beetles trundled across the carpets, their mandibles seeking out whatever detritus there was. Similar teams of earwigs were at work in the bathroom, and in the kitchen all signs of his breakfast, right down to the ring of coffee powder he had left by the jar, were eradicated by the industrious ants.
    At lunch he took down the remaining fly-papers, and had a more protracted dialogue with the silverfish on the draining-board. AS YOU ARE NO DOUBT AWARE . . . they began, to which Jonathan expostulated: ‘I'll thank you not to adopt that high-handed tone with me!’ The insects immediately reformed into a demurral:
    SORRY! WHAT WE WANTED TO SAY WAS THAT WE DON'T LIVE IN YOUR COTTAGE OUT OF CHOICE. WE COME INSIDE BECAUSE IN THE NORMAL COURSE OF THINGS THERE IS USUALLY SOME CARRION WITHIN WHICH WE CAN DEPOSIT OUR EGGS, SO THAT OUR LARVAE MAY GROW AND BECOME FULLY FUNCTIONING AND WELL-ADJUSTED MEMBERS OF FLYTOPIA.
    ‘I see.’
    HOWEVER, IF WE ARE CLEANING EVERYTHING UP FOR YOU, WE'RE RATHER DOING OURSELVES OUT OF A KEY COMPONENT IN OUR OWN ECOSYSTEM.
    ‘I understand that, of course.’
    WHAT WE WONDERED WAS WHETHER YOU MIGHT CONSIDER TURNING THE SPARE BEDROOM OVER TO