Dear Bosie

It’s funny that you should have written to me when you did for something said to me by Henry Kissinger yesterday had just brought you to mind. He and David Blunkett and I were pulling the limbs off coloured babies, when the Doctor said, “Do you remember Bosie from school? Came into some money?” Of course I remembered because you had nearly been expelled for the disgusting habit. Blunkett owned that he knew you too; he tried to show us a scar, but continually failed to point to it.

I hope you will be pleased to hear that, for the first time in many years, I feel whole again. I can’t begin to describe my joy when it first happened, but it is a distinctly mixed blessing. I realise that you don’t know the whole background of this, all the ‘David Copperfield kind of crap’, which I don’t want to go into to tell you the truth, but I suppose I must.

For most of my life I, Elliot Mantle, have been only half a man. It is a shameful admission, but in time I have learned to live with it. The problem occurred when I was three years old. I was a normal and healthy child, though somewhat prone to rabies. My life was a happy one until the divorce of my parents. The separation was a bitter one; my mother and father both fought hard for custody of Cunnilingus the dog, insisting that the other look after me.

It was boasted at the time that the magistrate was the wisest in the world and if an equitable solution could be reached he was the only man who could reach it. He had, allegedly, rejected vast wealth to acquire his wisdom and he was determined to use it for the good of the world. Alas, it was his last case, for as a consequence he retired immediately afterwards. My father, Mr Gloria Wattles, was awarded custody of the dog, while my mother, using again her maiden name, Ms Thomas Genghis-Khan, had the opportunity to enjoy Cunnilingus on Wednesdays and every other weekend.

Even at such a tender age, my powers of observation and memory were precocious. I had then, of course, two good eyes and a fully operational brain. I quote verbatim the events of that day, now almost half a century ago, the ruling given and the responses to it of the principal characters:

The bailiff called on the court to stand for the entrance of Mr Solomon Frangipani, RM. He took his seat and signalled for the rest of us to sit. He cleared his throat, “This has been one of the hardest judgements I have had to make in all my years in this position. It is clear that both parents love the little bas-, sorry, the child very much, and that each can offer a very high standard of living. To be with one and not the other would not be fair, and I have just not been able to make a decision in favour of one or the other. Therefore, what I have decided to do is to cut the child in half and each parent can have one half each.”

The gavel fell. Silence descended on the court room as everyone pondered the consequences of this decision. My father was the first to speak, “Yes, OK, I think that’s fair.” I looked over at my mother eagerly; she raised her head smiling, “That seems alright to me.”

“No. No, wait,” said Mr Frangipani, “You were supposed to say… I mean, it was a …” But my parents had made up their minds and they were not going to be talked out of it. My own protests fell on deaf ears, and seeing how happy my parents were (it appeared as if reconciliation might be on the cards), I soon fell silent.

Therefore, I was taken, not yet forty months old, and using pioneering surgery and experimental anaesthesia, I was cut in half down the middle. The right hand side of Elliot Mantle (that is to say, me) went to live with my mother in Europe, and the other, now rechristened Beverly, went to live in South Africa with my father.

For the next forty-eight years I had no word from him; no news of him at all for my father was soon dead. I had so much forgotten his existence that my right hand literally did not know what the left was doing. In the intervening years, wherein I established my modest reputation and fortune, Beverly led a life much more sinister. The story of how we came to meet up again is a long one, leading from the gothic splendour of Geneva through the river systems and jungles of the Democratic Republic of Congo to the barren ice tundra of the Arctic.

I had moved to Geneva when I was nineteen and got in on the information technology revolution on the ground floor. I produced some of the finest computer accessories through my company Digital Machine Supplies & Repairs (DMSR). That enterprise folded when my business partner Jamie Star fled with all our holdings. I decided to downsize; working alone, I started a little company called The Time, mending cuckoo clocks. The Vanity Six is so sweet; it is easily the most elegant, and by far my favourite type of clock.

At the beginning of last year I began to worry that I was losing my mind. Imagine that you are being followed and then that the person following turns out to be yourself. Imagine that your friends begin calling you up to thank you for acts of kindness that you haven’t performed. Imagine seeing yourself on television judging a beauty pageant, when you know for certain on that day you were ill in bed. The stuff of nightmares it may seem, but that is what was happening to me.

Only slowly did it occur to me what was happening: Beverly had come to Switzerland and was looking for me. I was excited and appalled in equal measure for his intentions did not appear to be fraternal. I have never been the sort of man to shirk difficult decisions, and so I made up my mind to turn the tables: I would begin stalking him! The result of which was that, after two days, he fled. I decided to push my advantage – I would follow even to the ends of the earth.

I had barely time to scribble a note to my wife explaining what I was doing. His trail was not difficult to follow. I realise now that it was deliberately so. Nevertheless, it was almost four months before I tracked him down to his lair at the very North Pole. The door closed quietly behind me and I entered a large room, minimally furnished with only a desk and chair and a very large monitor. The chair swivelled, and in it sat Beverly, stroking a white cat, “Ah, Mr Mantle,” he said, “I’ve been expecting you.”

At last I had come face to face with my nemesis. “What do you want?” I asked. It was then that I learned what had happened with him over the last half century, by the end of which I was weeping.

In contrast to the relative comfort and happiness of my life, the lot of Beverly was not a pleasant one. Ironically for such an unhappy individual, he was employed his whole life recording canned laughter for television situation comedies. He hated it; unable to bear being around people laughing with joy, he devised some pioneering recording techniques. For the first series of ‘Piss on me! I’m on fire!’, for example, the laughter was provided by nihilistic convicts on death row in Pretoria, who had been shown mocked up pictures of themselves and their family as old men and women.

It must be true that misery loves company, for Beverly was married four times. Each time the marriage ended in tragedy. His first wife, Emily, was assassinated by a member of the cast during a Broadway production of Starlight Express. Maud, his second wife was trampled to death by a ladies basketball team that had failed to see her in time. His third wife, Pamela, was discovered mutilated and missing parts of her internal organs, believed to have been ripped out and eaten. No one knows for sure what happened, but suicide is suspected. His last wife, Emily, was also his first, for he married her again when she was already dead for more than eleven years.

“For as long as I can remember,” he continued, “I have felt nothing but sadness and pain. The part of the brain that controls happiness is on the right hand side – the side you have. What is worse is that our penis was not cut evenly in half and somehow you got it all. For Christ’s sake, 88% of men dress to the left! The penis should have been mine. For that you must die. I intend to kill you and to take your place and I will be happy. No one will notice.”

“Pull yourself together, man,” I said, “But of course people will notice. Faces are not symmetrical and you look nothing like me. They will wonder how I had suddenly become left handed and evil. And it will not make you any happier if you still do not have the faculties or the balls to be so. You can’t kill me. You need me. You should join me. Let us use your laboratory here and invent a machine that can put us back together. Together we can experience again the full range of human emotion.”

“I suppose you are right,” he sighed, “I had considered that possibility. I have even built such a machine, I enjoy tinkering with instruments and mechanical devices. I call it the CHANGANDENGINATOR™. It will hurt, although it doesn’t have to. I could have built it to be far more comfortable, but I want you to feel how I have felt since we were separated. You can not imagine the horror. The horror.” He ran his hand over his shaven scalp.

I agreed to his condition. The operation was long and painful and for some time afterwards there was a possibility that we would not survive – that I would not survive, I mean. Survive I did though and as soon as possible I returned to my old life in Geneva. Many people remarked how much better I looked. I looked, in fact, a dead ringer for Jeremy Irons.

Before the operation we had decided that our new entity should have a new name. I would pick the first name, he the second; I would pick the first syllable of the surname and he the second. A democratic, yet as it transpired, cumbersome way to pick a name. Hence I will be known by the name you will see signed at the bottom of this letter.

Bosie, that is how I became a full and more rounded human being. I know misery and pain and wickedness, but joy and love as well. I have learned for the first time how to ride a bike; my boxing is much better; I no longer fall over every time I kick a football and I am remarkably ambidextrous.

Disadvantages, for there are some, include meeting all the old friends of my left side – Blunkett and Kissinger, for example. I am occasionally morose and given to murderous fits of pique. I developed, for reasons that no one can explain, tourettes. In speech it is extremely inconvenient, and I must review carefully every sentence that I write to remove the involuntary swearing. My wife’s death in a bizarre gardening accident was also a set back.

In all, though, I must admit that I am happier now than I can ever remember being before. Happier even than the time that you accidentally shot your off your testicles when shooting with minor European royals. Perhaps only the lingering, painful death of Margaret Thatcher could make me feel any better. What am I saying? Of course that could make me feel better.

I must finish now, for I have scheduled the next hour as time to wallow in self pity. Then I have to practice masturbating with my left hand. And then I’m going to get pissed.

I am not your friend, I’m not your only friend, but really I’m not actually your friend, but I am,

Henry Henry Cruel