Lionel Asbo: State of England (7 page)

He had spent eight hours in the place called World.

‘I’ve been reading the papers.’

‘What papers?’

‘The proper ones. The
Guardian
and that.’

‘You don’t want to read the papers, Des,’ said Lionel, turning the page of his
Morning Lark
and smoothly realigning its wings: Hubbie Nabbed Over Wheelie Bin Corpse Find. With a look of the sharpest disappoval, he added, ‘All that’s none of you concern.’

‘So you don’t follow it – all that … Uncle Li, why are we in Iraq?’ Lionel turned the page: Noreen’s Lezbo Boob Romp Shock. ‘Or don’t you know about Iraq?’

‘Course I know about Iraq,’ he said without looking up. ‘9/11, mate. See, Des, on 9/11, these blokes with J-cloths on they heads went and –’

‘But Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11!’

‘So? … Des, you being very naïve. See, America’s top boy. He’s the Daddy. And after a fucking liberty like 9/11, well, it’s all off, and the Daddy lashes out.’

‘Yeah, but who at?’

‘Doesn’t matter who at. Anyone’ll do. Like me and Ross Knowles. It’s the moron theory. Keeps them all honest.’

Lionel turned the page: Knife Yobs Dodge Nick, Proves Probe. Des sat back and said wonderingly,

‘When it started, Uncle Li. I mean don’t we have allies in the region? They can’t’ve been too happy about it. The instability. Our allies in the region.’

‘Allies?’ said Lionel wearily. ‘What allies?’

‘Uh, Saudi Arabia. Turkey … Egypt. I bet they weren’t too pleased.’

‘
So
? Jesus Christ, Des, you can’t half bang on.’

‘They’re our allies. What did we tell them?’

Lionel dropped his head. ‘What d’you think we told them? We told them,
Listen. We doing Iraq, all right? And if
you
fucking want some, you can fucking have some and all
.’ He levelled his shoulders. ‘Now shut it. I’m reading this.’

And Des entertained the image of a planet-sized Hobgoblin at twelve o’clock on a Friday night. This was the place called World.

‘Gaa. Look, Des. More GILFs.’

The cat was there again. The cat was there again – at the end of the tunnel that led to Grace. Hairless and whiskerless, as bald as a white hotwater bottle, with its soft, ancient, ear-hurting cry … He pressed the bell, and heard the fluffy pink slippers padding towards the mat (as the tape played ‘Dear Prudence’).

‘Gran,’ he was almost immediately saying. ‘The groans.’

‘Groans? What are you talking about?’

He told her. ‘And you
don’t
groan, do you,’ he said. ‘Do you?’

‘… I
do
groan,’ she said carefully. ‘Now and then. You just don’t notice. Ah, old
Dud
, what would he know?’

‘Stop laughing like that! How many Dubonnets’ve you had?’

‘Now you stay just where you are, young sir.’

‘No, Grace … Well get a pillow then. In case you groan. And put the Beatles up!’

Later, as she smoked a thickly appreciated Silk Cut, Grace said mysteriously (and she would not enlarge on it), ‘Oh, Des, you’re gorgeous. But the trouble is … The trouble is, love, you’ve been giving me ideas!’

8

ANOTHER WEEK PASSED. Then it all came to a head – on a day of three-ply horror for Desmond Pepperdine.

Another week passed, and by now Des had more or less given up on Daphne, on Daphne and her counsel. And yet there it was, in the
Sun
on Saturday (on Saturdays Daphne commanded a two-page spread). All the other letters bore headlines (I Feel Like a Tart As I Can’t Stop Bedding Strangers, Trapped in a Man’s Body, I Want to Wed My Dead Hubbie’s Dad, Heartbreak at Text Cheat, Grief Over Mum Won’t Lift); but Des’s plea was untitled, and appeared in the bottom left-hand corner against a funereal background of dark grey.

Dear Daphne, I’m a young man from Kensington in Liverpool, and I’ve been having sexual relations with my grandmother. Could you explain the legal situation?

DAPHNE SAYS: This must end at once! You are both committing statutory rape, and could face a custodial sentence. Write again urgently with a PO address, and I will send you my leaflet
, Intrafamilial Sexual Abuse and the Law.

Des spent the rest of the day on Steep Slope, stumbling from bench to bench. He could hear the brittle fairground music swirling up from Happy Valley; and the air was dotted with spores of moisture that couldn’t quite become rain. Something dark seemed to be growing bigger on the other side of the rise.

* * *

At seven o’clock Lionel shouldered his way into the kitchen with a great load of dog gear in his arms. He halted and his head jerked back.

‘… The tank’s open.’

‘Yeah, I tried it,’ said Des quietly, ‘and the lid just came up. But now it won’t shut.’

‘There you are then.’ With a crash Lionel dropped the tangled mass on to the counter – lunge poles, break sticks, and four thick leather collars with pyramidal steel spikes. ‘You been sitting on it.’

Des’s brow never rippled when he frowned, but tonight his eyes felt (and looked) very close together, like a levelled figure eight. He now saw that Lionel had a newspaper in his sweatpants pocket: not the
Morning Lark
, not the
Diston Gazette
(also a red-top tabloid) – but the
Sun
!

Lionel uncapped a Cobra three inches from Des’s left ear, saying,

‘Dire news about you gran.’

His voice cracked as he whispered, ‘Oh yeah, Uncle Li?’

‘The plot thickens … I had another talk with old Dud. It’s not only groans, Des.’

‘Uh, what else?’

‘Giggles. Giggles. So it’s not
pain
, is it. It’s not
pain
. And you know what else?’

Des was scratching his chest with both sets of fingernails.

‘She’s started turning the music up loud! … Tuesday night Dud said he heard giggles. Then the music went up. And that ain’t the clincher.’ He stuck his tongue out and removed a hair from it. ‘You won’t believe this, Des, but the old …’

Lionel fell silent. He went to the glass door, pulled back the curtain, and gazed down at Jeff and Joe; they lay there side by side, humped in sleep.

‘I placed a bet today,’ he said in a surprised voice. ‘See for youself.’ And with a flourish he produced his newspaper and fanned it out on the table.

‘Reading the
Sun
now are we?’

‘Yeah. Gone uh, gone boffin for the day.’ A new beer can sneezed. ‘No, Des, Page Three Playoffs. And I’ve put money on Julietta. See, she reminds me of someone … I’m not a gambler, Des. Never was. I leave that to fucking Marlon.’

The odds on the gypsyish Julietta were duly noted and briefly discussed. Lionel turned the page, moving on to the
Sun
’s TV Guide. Again he turned the page: Dear Daphne!

‘
I Feel Like a Tart As I Can’t Stop Bedding Strangers
.’ Lionel read on (with his lips slowly shaping the words). ‘Well you
are
a tart, darling. Get on with it … Here, Des. Daphne reckons – Daphne reckons that a bloke dressing up as a bird is uh, is
an attempt to create a marriage of one
… Can a widow get hitched to her father-in-law? … Here. Here Des. There’s this lad from Liverpool … ‘

And Des gave thanks to the half-forgotten dream or dread that had prompted the stuff about Liverpool and Kensington. How was it he knew about Kensington and ‘Kenny’?

‘Gaw. This dirty little Scouse git’s been giving his
nan
one! His own nan … Funny old world, eh Des?’

Des nodded and coughed.

‘… Yeah, too right, Daph. Custodial sentence. Definitely.
Où
, they’ll love him inside. You know what they’ll do to him, Des? When he goes away?’

‘No. What’ll they do?’

‘Well. First they’ll fuck his arse off. Then they’ll slash his throat in the showers. They got nans too mate! … Kensington. “Kenny” – that’s where I did me Yoi!’

The room quietened and stilled as a passing cloud lent it the colour of slate.

‘Mum’s visitor, Des. He comes in, he goes out. Just as he pleases. He comes in, he goes out.’

And Des felt obscurely moved to say, ‘Half the time it’s probably just me, Uncle Li. I’m always in and out.’

Lionel detonated another Cobra. ‘You? Oh, sure. Listen. When you go calling on Grace, Des, is it you habit … Is it you habit to come in whistling at half past midnight? And go out whistling at ten? After another quickie and you English breakfast?’

She came hurrying down Crimple Way, quicker, busier, head tipped forward but chin outthrust, she’d had her hair shaped and trimmed and tinted, she wore a red sweater and a tight trouser suit of metallic grey. The gripped thinness of her mouth and the scissors of her legs were asserting something – asserting her determination to thrive. And she looked younger, he thought (he was leaning on her gate); but now, as she crossed the road, every six feet she got six years older.

‘Des,’ said Grace quietly as she moved past him. ‘Well come in, love, but you won’t want to stay.’

She laid out the shopping on the kitchenette counter: bread, eggs, tomatoes, a packet of bacon, a tin of baked beans (and her Silk Cut and a fresh bottle of Dubonnet). She was eyeing his reflection in the window above the sink.

‘What’s going on, Grace?’

‘Don’t say another word, dear. Everything’s as it should be.’

‘No, Grace,’ he said with his pleading frown, ‘everything’s changed. Lionel – he’s got old Dud with his ear jammed up against the wall!’

‘Lionel?
Bugger
Lionel. Listen. I’ll be forty any minute and all right I’m past it – yeah, past caring! … Ah, Des. I’ve got something to tell you, dear. I’ve got something to tell you.’

Outside, it had rained and grown dark under a lilac sky, and a film of water swam on the flagstones. Orange blotches of mirrored streetlight kept pace with him as he walked down Crimple Way. The awe of his relief was sumptuous, hallucinatory … Des Pepperdine was fifteen years old. And he supposed it was a good thing to get this learned early on. Now he bowed and threw his head back and almost laughed as he consented to the Distonic logic of it.

It’s better this way, Des. You can start calling me Gran again. You and me, we’ll just go back to how we were before. And no one’ll be any the wiser. It’s better this way
.

It is. It is. But
Gran
. Think. He’s on to you and your new friend. Uncle Li knows!

Oh yeah? He doesn’t give a monkey’s about his mum. I haven’t seen him this century! And what’s he going to do about it? If this gets out, who’ll suffer more?
Him
! What’s he going to do? What’s he going to do?

9

LIONEL HAD A lock-up or godown on Skinthrift Close. You approached it crunching on a snowfield of shattered glass, and skirting your way past scorched or smouldering mattresses and swamps and copses of outlandish junk and clutter, including a wide variety of abandoned vehicles. Scooter, camper, tractor; there was even a dodgem, clog-shaped, its electric pole like a withered shank; and a lifesize rocking horse, with the eyes of an ageing barmaid … Des was summoned to this address by mobile phone: his sixteenth-birthday present had been brought forward, in response to the general emergency (and issued to him like a piece of military equipment).

‘I’m in here!’

The shop, as Lionel called it, was not looking its best – partly because Lionel had just finished smashing the place up. It comprised a double garage (housing the sooty Ford Transit), a congested office, and a chilly cubicle containing a deep sink and a cracked toilet. Des heard the jerk of the chain; and now a singleted Lionel emerged, mopping himself down with a length of kitchen towel. He said equably,

‘I’m over it now.’ He pointed to his left: a broken chair, splintered racks and brackets, stoved-in tea chests. ‘Because this isn’t a time for anger, Des. It’s a time for clear thought. Come in here.’

Lionel’s office: heaps of jumbled drawers full of watches, cameras, power tools, game consoles; a low bookcase full of bottled drugs (for bodybuilders – synthetic hormones and the like); a fruit crate full of knuckledusters and machetes. All of it swiped, blagged, hoisted … How intelligent was Uncle Li? Even the most generous answer to this question – which had bedevilled Des since the age of five or six – would have to include a firm entry on the debit side: there was no evidence whatever that Lionel was any good at his job. He was a subsistence criminal who spent half his life in jail.