Lionel Asbo: State of England (36 page)

It was Wednesday.

Thursday

JUST BEFORE TEN Lionel entered the flat, immense and telekinetic, like a human chariot. And his steeds, in their spiked collars, were Jak and Jek.

Des stood up with a judder of his chair.

‘Something happened. In the night. Her signs are going, Desi.’ Lionel’s face was raw and pleading. ‘Her vital signs! Come
on
, boy. Where’s you bag? God – Christ –
come on
.’

Fifteen minutes later Des was up in the control tower of the Venganza – bound, at appalling speed, for Stansted Airport.

‘They reckon she had another of her strokes. And in her condition … What you grinning at? Today of all days!’

‘… It’s just so brilliant to be
out
. You’re grinning too, Uncle Li.’

‘Yeah, well. It’s a relief in a way. No more suspense, eh son?’

That morning Des awoke defervesced, fever-free, and astonished by health – health, that mighty power. He had breakfast with the girls, and saw them off, and made more tea and ate on, all the while refamiliarising himself with reality – in a spirit of ponderous gratitude … Then came Lionel, a gust, a squall, untethering Jak and Jek and booting them out on to the balcony (
Call Dawn. The dogs stay here. No choice
), unpacking the stiff-sided shopping bag (Michael Gabriel – the Family Butcher), and noisily rootling for the litter tray as Des grabbed his old satchel and threw a few clothes and toiletries into it.

And here they were in a great yellow flower of summer heat on the open road, with the strobe of the sun blatting through the high trees, and Lionel coldly masterful at the wheel, using the three lanes at a velocity that was all his own, like a jogger weaving through a street full of decrepit pedestrians … He forwent the use of the potent horn – relying, rather, on the kliegs of the headlights.

‘You ever been on a plane?’

‘Yeah.’ Whether speeding up or slowing down, the machine glided through its gradations with seamless surety, as if wired to the road. ‘Yeah. I did the Cumbria Cannibal. And that torturing nanny in Newcastle. The one with the tongs.’

‘You should stick to them, Des,’ said Lionel, using the breakdown lane to overtake a pantechnicon. ‘Stick to them fucking psychos. And lay off the blokes who’re just uh, just trying to earn a …’ They mounted the ramp to Long Term Parking. ‘Earn a decent crust.’

Des said, ‘I suppose we don’t know how long we’ll be gone.’

‘Back Saturday night. If she’s prompt. They got the undertaker lined up. And the vicar or whatever the fuck he is.’

They dropped down from the car and assumed the standard modern posture – faces steeply inclined over consoles held at waist height.

Lionel straightened up and said, ‘Well she’s still here. Thready pulse. Hanging on.’

Des straightened up and said, ‘Dawn sends her love. And she’ll manage Jak and Jek … Cilla’s always asking for them. She keeps saying,
Doh. Doh
.’

‘I’ll be wanting a word with her later,’ said Lionel, ‘about Jak and Jek.’

They flew to Inverness, and then on to Wick in an open-prop eighteen-seater. As they made their second descent, the tenuous cloud cover was already reintroducing them to the tones of the home – bedding, face powder, antimacassars, spray-thickened mist.

‘I was praying. Praying they wouldn’t get a point! In they whole campaign! … Last day of the season. Upton Park. I’m enjoying me prawn sandwich in the directors’ box. And what happens? They go and hold Liverpool to a goalless draw! It
would
be the fucking Reds, wouldn’t it. See, I don’t mind the Pool. It’s from all that time up in Kenny. Doing me Yoi.’

At Wick, in the unserious little airport, there was a liveried chauffeur with a handwritten sign: ASBO. Cape Wrath was still ninety-five miles away. In the limousine Des slept … He awoke to the signs for Thurso, Strathy Point, Tongue. On the outskirts of Souness they queued for nearly ten minutes at a roadworks traffic light, and Des saw, through a lattice of saplings to the left, what seemed to be a druidical graveyard. But the tombstones were not tombstones: they were cropped trees, very old, and all caught in different attitudes of huddled infirmity.

‘Yeah, Mum,’ Lionel was muttering to himself. ‘Yeah, you moving house, woman. Change of address. Yeah, it’s the balsa bungalow for you, my girl.’

Rob Dunn Lodge stood under the lee of a hillside on the east wing of Lochinvar Strand. They took possession of the Henryson Suite, where they dropped their bags and washed their faces. Then they were driven up on to Clo Mor Bluff.

The first-storey bay-windowed room, with the sun staring in at it. And seeing what? Seeing the dark screen perched high above the bed, the flashing digits of pulse rate and blood pressure, the metal tree with its fruit of fluid sacs and gadgets that looked like walkie-talkies and adding machines, the plugs and adaptors, the entanglement of wires and tubes. And the wasted woman lying almost flush with the sheets, her face under a mantle of sweat, eyes closed, mouth open. Her son and grandson sat on either side. The first hour was turning into the second.

Breaking a long silence, Lionel said, ‘You see that uh, architect who topped hisself, Des? Sir John someone. His mum pops off and he tops hisself. And everyone goes,
Ah, he was depressed, see, because his mum popped off
. They always say that – and it’s bollocks. It’s not that he suddenly
wanted
to. Top hisself. It’s that he suddenly
could
.’

‘How’s that, Uncle Li?’

‘See, there’s certain things, Des, there’s certain things a man can’t do till his mum pops off.’

Now the second hour was turning into the third. Every twenty minutes or so Lionel sloped out for a smoke. And every twenty minutes or so Mrs Gibbs, all stern and silent, hurried in and checked the valves and the readings. Finding Des alone (it was now gone five), she said without meeting his eye,

‘Your uncle’s going to keep his temper today, I hope. Should’ve heard him the last time. Yelling blue murder. He scared the –’

‘Ah, Mrs G,’ said Lionel as he strolled back into the room, ‘what’s all this then? Taking her time about it, isn’t she? You been slipping her penicillin on the sly?’

Mrs Gibbs gave him a weary glance as she turned to go.

‘How d’you do it, Mrs G? At your age? That chest! You got the figure of a beauty queen.’ Lionel grinned as she bustled past. He called out after her, ‘Yeah, but I bet it’s all off as soon as you undo you bra … Gaa, Des,’ he said as the door jerked shut, ‘remember the GILFs? Horny Hilda. The Bonking Biddies … Jesus Christ.
Look
.’

Her eyes were open. Her oystery eyes were open, and straining up into the red rinds of the lids, with terror, as if she was falling over backward. Falling over backward and trying to see if there was anyone there to catch her when she fell.

Des had time to hope – to pray – that when Grace fell she would fall like a feather falls, in drifting rockabye. But Lionel was already on his feet, leaning over her with his hands in his trouser pockets and tightly saying,

‘Off with yer. Go on. Go and meet you maker. Go and –’

‘
Bill!
’ screamed Grace.

‘…
Fuck
ing hell.’

‘
Bill!
’

‘What she …? Who’s Bill? Another fucking schoolboy?’

‘Bill,’ wept Grace. ‘Love, love. But it’s forbidden!’

‘What’s this, Des?’

‘Chandler reacts badly to predator! Sex, ate!’

And suddenly Des understood: he understood what there was to understand. Not
sex, ate
. Six, eight: 6, 8.

‘Crossword clues, Uncle Li. Remember she always did the Cryptic? They’re crossword clues.’

And Des found he could solve them.
Chandler reacts badly to predator (6, 8)
; anagram:
cradle snatcher
…
Bill, love, love, but it’s forbidden (5)
; bill = tab; love, love = nil, nil = zero, zero:
taboo
.

With a desperate wail Grace cried, ‘Unresisting, even so! Fifteen!’

‘What’s that?’

‘Crossword clue. The answer’s
notwithstanding
.’

‘What’s this
fifteen
business?’

‘Fifteen letters, Uncle Li. Notwithstanding.’

‘Predator. Fifteen. Forbidden … Ah. Here we go.’

This referred to Grace. Who was now engaged in a levitational struggle, with curved back, as if her nerves were being unplucked, a stretching and then a slower unwinding, a sudden retch, a jolt – and the trail of life had frayed.

‘How’d he take it?’

‘Hard to say. You never know with him.’ Des sprawled back in his seat and cast his eyes round the Alexander Selkirk Bayview Bar. Seen side on, the waves filed past the leaded window in orderly droves. The lighthouse throbbed above the boulders strewn round its base. In a white tuxedo the beanpole pianist played ‘O sole mio’ with noodly fingers … Lionel was over in the corner, his third bottle of champagne propped in its bucket; he was talking to Mr Firth-Heatherington, and to a Mr John Man – the funeral director. ‘He seemed plain angry at first. But when she went, he just stared down at her and said,
Look at that in the bed there
…’

‘And you, darling?’

‘I can’t tell, Dawnie. Everything seems to be happening to someone else. As if I’m not here. Or only watching. How’s that Horace?’

She said, ‘I’m being good. I’m not getting my hopes up. But Mum thinks he’s wavering.’

‘Well fingers crossed.’

They were about to sign off for the night when Dawn said suddenly,

‘Oh Des – the dogs. They’re not the Jak and Jek we knew.’

‘Yeah, that’s right. They’re not.’

A synchronised tingle in the ears and the armpits made Des realise that this had been in the back of his mind all day – the dogs. Twelve hours ago, when the tearful charioteer swept into 33F, Des’s immediate worry was that Jek and Jak would make much of him in a way that Lionel could be expected to resent. But the dogs just brushed by him with stiff shoulders, Jak turning his head for a moment with a rictus of scorn – a kind of canine false smile. And once they were out on the balcony they rolled into a muscular heap, growling, snapping, champing. Clearly, Jek was one thing, and Jak was one thing too, but Jak and Jek, or Jek and Jak, were something else again.

‘And guess what. They’re queer for each other. And they’re brothers. That’s incest.’

She laughed, so he laughed too, but it came to him like a pang in the brain. Incest.
Insect violation? (6). I scent tangled crime (6). No-no disturbs sin, etc. (6)
.

‘Jak’ll climb on Jek. And Jek’ll climb on Jak. With their back legs quivering. Not that I mind that. Much. It’s the way they look at the baby.’

Des said, ‘Tell.’

‘They look right through me. But with Cilla – they stare at her, all panting and drooling. Not friendly. As if she’s a
rival
. And of course she wants to pet them. I’m not having them in here, I can tell you that.’

‘No, keep them out, Dawnie. Sling them their meat, but keep them out.’

Something made Des turn. Lionel, leaning over him from behind, opened his palm for the phone.

‘Uh, Uncle Li wants a word …’

‘Dawn? Sorry for the uh, imposition, girl. No alternative.’ He nodded as he heard her out. ‘Well. She lived life to the full. Ripe old age and all that … Listen. Give the dogs they steak tonight – but no Tabasco … That’s it. But give them the
lot
tomorrow. The whole bottle … Yeah, well, they on a controlled diet. For the hare coursing. All right? And latch that door. Leave it open even a crack and they get they snouts in there and they
worry
away at it. Keep the dogs out, Dawn. Shut it tight.’

Before very long Lionel led Des to the Dunbar Dining Room.

‘Eat something substantial, son. You’ve lost weight from you flu. Here, have the duck.’
The duc-kuh
. ‘Or the pork.’

‘… Jesus, it’s twenty past nine and it’s still light out!’

‘Mm. Reckon I’ll have game. The woodcock … Okay. Now tomorrow I’ll be doing the necessary with uh, with Mr Man. While you twiddle you thumbs. Take the car, Des. Go to Cape Wrath on the ferry. We’ll plant her first thing Saturday. Be back in London by teatime.’

Their shrimp cocktails came, and the first bottle of claret.

‘You know, I’m ever so slightly concerned’, said Lionel, taking out his phone and briefly and dubiously consulting its screen, ‘about Gina. See, these days, Des … I know it’s naughty, but these days I go and pick her up in the Ferrari. With the roof down. And her poor old lord and master, I make him follow along behind. On a moped … So of course now it’s all over Town. Bit naughty. See, I fancied giving Marl the extra niggle. But now I’m concerned he’ll go and do the obvious.’