‘Yeah yeah.’
The trouble is, the whole trouble is, Selina’s too clever for me. I tried to change the subject. In my experience, with Selina, the only way to change the subject is to go down the Butcher’s Arms. How can you change the subject when there’s only one subject? Oh yeah — violence. That’ll change it. That’ll do the trick, for a while. But of course violence is no longer an option. I didn’t even consider it for more than a few seconds. I’m serious about this new self-improvement course I’ve put myself on—very serious. Self-discipline. A more civilized existence.
So I just got out of bed, told her to shut up, and went down the Butcher’s Arms.
Tonguing my tooth and twisting my neck for taxis, I now stroll the length of the dental belt, through the stucco of the plaqued streets and carious squares, past railings, embossed porches, pricey clinics, tranquillized Arabs, groggy mouth-sufferers in their Sunday best, their women wearing fur coats and Harlem lacquer, their spruced kids either pained or happy — across the bus-torn slum of Oxford Street into Soho, the huddled land of sex and food and film, down narrowing alleys until I reached the glass preserve of Carburton, Linex & Self.
For me, now, Carburton, Linex & Self is another kind of waiting room. But what a place! You should see how much money we pay each other, how little work we do, and how thick and talentless many of us are. You should see the expenses claims, the air-tickets that lie around in here, and the girls. C. L. & S. was a breakthrough when we established the company five years ago. It still is. A lot of outfits tried to do what we did. None of them made it. C. L. & S. is an advertising agency which produces its own television commercials. Sounds easy. You try it. I myself was the key figure in all this, with my controversial TV ads for smoking, drinking, junk food and nude magazines. Remember the stir in the flaming summer of ’76? My nihilistic commercials attracted prizes and writs. The one on nude mags was never shown, except in court. The publicity and its attendant heft empowered us to make our breakthrough, our breakaway, and we never looked back. Our moneyman Nigel Trotts, down in the basement with a chick, a xerox and a bushel of instant coffee, is the only guy here who works a full whack. And Nigel is a moneyman who does it all for love.
‘Nigel has gimmicked a bag-carrier for the Dutch Antilles,’ people will say to me at my desk.
‘Beautiful,’ I’ll whisper back, as you’re bound to do.
We all seem to make lots of money. Man, do we seem to be coining it here. Even the chicks live like kings. The car is free. The car is on the house. The house is on the mortgage. The mortgage is on the firm — without interest. The interesting thing is: how long can this last? For me, that question carries an awful lot of anxiety — compound interest. It can’t be legal, surely. You can’t legally treat money in such a way. But we do. Are we greedy! Are we shameless! I once saw Terry Linex, that fat madman, take a grand out of petty cash for a weekend in Dieppe, He got his wife’s hysterectomy on X’s — and his daughter’s orthodontic work. He even gets the family poodle shampooed against tax: security expenses, with Fifi doubling as a guard-dog. We estimate that Keith Carburton spent £17,000 on lunch in fiscal ’80, service and VAT non compris. You should see their freehold townhouses and bijou Cotswold cottages. You should see their cars—the Tomahawks, the Farragos, and Boomerangs. I’ve been ripping off the firm and the government too, for five years now, and what have I got? A hired sock, a Fiasco, and the prohibitive Selina. What did I ever do with it, the money? Pissed it away, I just pissed it away. And somehow I still have lots of money.
‘I told my wife,’ said Terry Linex, parking half his heavy can on my desk,’ “you can have any domestic appliance you want. But when it goes wrong, don’t come running to me. Do we understand each other?” I come home Friday night. I go into the kitchen — I said, “What’s this, a horror film?” There’s a brand-new washing-up machine and all this fucking black gunge all over the floor. “Get on the fucking phone,” she says. “Fix it!” So what did I do.’