Will Self - Grey Area

THERE ARE ONLY eight people in London and fortunately I am one of them.

Of course, when I make that statement I dont mean to be taken literallyheaven forbid! And what would be worse still, I shouldnt want you to think that Im a snob of any kind. To discriminate between people on the basis of birth is inimical to me, always has been. I simply couldnt engage in that sort of conceit.

I can declare with some authority that there simply isnt a snobbish bone in my entire body. If there was I would feel quite confident that the good egalitarian tissue encasing it would tense up, like the lining of a chomping mouth, and spit the slimy thing out without more ado. There you have it in a nutshell: I should sooner be filleted than have it thought by you that I wish to elevate myself in some spurious, unmerited fashion.

But all of this being noted, the fact does remain that there are only eight people in London. Eight people who count, that is. Eight people who matter. I still find it strange to say this. It is so very strange to imagine, for example, that someone like Dooleyfunny that his name should occur quite so readilycounts for anything at all. Even to some long-lost great-niece, or old army mate, what could the likes of Dooley possibly represent, save for an embarrassment? Even his familyI know that he had one, at one timemust have felt that being closely related to Dooley was like being trapped next to someone on a long plane flight, and having them force a glancing acquaintance into intimacy.

Furthermore Dooley smells. Of that much I am certain. Not that I know exactly where he lives, but I have narrowed it down to a particular grid of Victorian artisans cottages in Lower Clapton. I can picture him in one of these ticky-tacky rabbit warrens readily enough. But I dont so much see him as scent him, reclining on a broken-down day bed, with layer after layer of urinedamp underwear compressed between his jaundiced arse and the worn nap of an old army blanket. I can guess as well that, all around him, resting on tables and chairs, the tops of heaters, the mantelpiece and the floor, there will be pots of prescription drugs: sedatives, hypnotics, tranquillisers. For Dooley is a neurotic of the old school. He wouldnt be able to survive without such gross nostrums.

Of course, the reason why I dont know exactly where Dooley lives is because I dont want to. I dont want to know the precise location of any of them. Some might say that this is because I want to hold fast to my cherished illusion. But what does this illusion amount to really? That at such-and-such a time I might choose to see myself as a little more than an equal? A third amongst eight, rather than simply as one of eight? Well, why not? Ive never ever attempted to elevate myself above Lady Bob or the Recorder, but, by the same token, Ill never concede an iota of distinction to Lechmere, Colin Purves or the Bollam sisters. They could all rot in hell before I would give any one of them the satisfaction of believing that I think them quality.

And, of course, its the same for them. I knowits crazy. Crazy that the Bollam sistersthese virtually psychotic twins from St Nevis who sit all day, every day, in a Streatham bedsit knitting dolls of the Redeemer, and who share a bizarre kind of joint mind (speaking in unison, prescience and so forth)should despite everything feel capable of being slighted socially! As if anyone would ever invite those two to any social function whatsoever. A turkey-pluckers whist drive is as elevated and rarefied, in respect of the Bollam sisters, as one of Lady Bobs soires would be for Dooley.

Yet, that being noted, it is an index of just how repugnant everything Dooley does is that even these two weirdo, humanoid knitting machines are still concerned to distance themselves from him.

So it goes on. We all tiptoe around one another, dancing our little dance, the two-step of arrogance and conceit. One of us will orchestrate a calculated snub, and then the rest of us will respond. There will be a rapprochement, an olive branch offered by one or perhaps two of us. A new clique will be constructed on the basis of mutually assured destruction.

We believe in it at the time. Believe that this collusion of interests is for ever, as thick as family blood that has coagulated over centuries. Yet invariably it will all be picked away at within days, weeks at the outside, creating a ragged, exposed patch, a new area of potential healing.

Just occasionally these manoeuvres will get something like serious. Theres a particular L-shaped axis of cliquishness that is dangerous. It begins with the Bollam sisters, snags in Lechmerethe insipid, compliant dunderheadand thenand then (and you really would have thought that this would immediately act as a limpet mine planted on the very hull of their social ambition) the three of them start extending their feelers towards Dooley. Dooley! What a joke, what a sick bloody joke!

To think of it, the Bollam sisters people, many thousands of themat least 150,000 individuals would be requiredapproaching Dooleys people at cocktail parties, union meetings, in bars and restaurants. Then, figuratively speaking, offering up to Dooleys lot the baboons arse of acknowledged inferiority, in some crude way that even Dooleys people can understand. 147,000 invitations here, 270,000 confidences there, a myriad fatuous compliments in the middle. It doesnt matter. Perhaps twenty or thirty thousand of Lechmeres people will be deployed as well, to write grovel letters or open doors.