Lionel Asbo: State of England (10 page)

We never had a chance to say goodbye to Dashiel. We know he is resting, he is safe and he is at peace. I heard once that grief is the price we pay for love
.

Desmond’s head wagged back … When Cilla fell that time – it was just a little slip, just a little slip on the supermarket floor. Down she went on her elbows and shoulder blades, and her head wagged back. But she was laughing when she got to her feet. And then the next day she wouldn’t wake up. He smoothed her, he pinched her, he shook her. He kissed her eyes. She was breathing, but she wouldn’t wake up.

… Minutes later, as he stood wiping his cheeks and chin and throat with a kitchen towel, he looked out through the glass of the sliding door. The dogs: their sloppy faces, their tongues hanging from the corners of their jaws like something half-eaten, their blind eyes and staring nostrils, their forelimbs planted stupidly far apart. They thickly barked. And they weren’t barking out – they were barking in.

Fuckoff
, said Joe.

Fuckoff
, said Jeff.

* * *

XII

NOTHING REALLY OUT of the ordinary happened between 2006 and 2009.

Lionel Asbo served five prison terms, two months for Receiving Stolen Property, two months for Extortion With Menaces, two months for Receiving Stolen Property, two months for Extortion With Menaces, and two months for Receiving Stolen Property. There was also, in the spring of 2009, his arrest and incarceration on the rare charge of Grievous Affray (plus Criminal Damage) – but that’s another story.

When Des turned seventeen (by that time he had found a way of coexisting with his conscience), Lionel gave him a course of driving lessons in the Ford Transit. Quietly discounting Lionel’s general advice (overtake whenever you can, use the horn as often as possible, never stop at zebra crossings, amber always means go), Des saved up for the Test, memorised the Highway Code, and conducted himself, on the day, with elderly sanctimony – and passed first time! … It was the way they’d always seemed to manage it. The anti-dad, the counterfather. Lionel spoke; Des listened, and did otherwise.

During these years Grace Pepperdine’s life became a monothematic saga of anxiety, weight loss, heart palpitations, insomnia, depression, chronic fatigue, and osteoporosis. In addition, she kept mislaying things. Her phone would find its way into her bathroom cabinet; her doorkeys would hide behind the frozen peas in her fridge. Someone went round there every day – almost invariably Des, but often Paul, and frequently John, George, and Stuart (though seldom Ringo, and never Lionel).

Joe was shot dead by an Armed Response marksman in the summer of 2008. Out for a stroll with Cynthia (Lionel was away), Joe attacked a police horse, with a policewoman on it, in Carker Square. He was under its clattering hooves for the entire length of Diston High Street and for seven and a half miles up on the London Orbital, with the heavy chain slithering and scintillating in his wake. With Joe gone, Jeff inconsolably pined and sickened. And when he was next out of prison Lionel decided to make a fresh start. He sold Jeff for a token sum to one of Marlon’s brothers (Troy), and purchased two pedigree pitbull pups – Joel and Jon.

There were no further developments in the Rory Nightingale case (which, all the same, was not yet officially closed) … Des started calling on Rory’s parents, Joy and Ernest; he drank a mug of tea with them every couple of weeks, and ran errands; they said they found comfort, and not anguish, in his youth, his purple blazer, the space he filled. During his visits he thought many things, most often this: what an hourly mockery and misery it could be – the name Joy.

Meanwhile, Des had set about astonishing Squeers Free. In 2006 he sat his GCSEs – and got eleven A’s! He was transferred, on the Gifted Programme, to Blifil Hall, where, in 2007, he sat his A-levels – and picked up four distinctions! He was sixteen. Next, he was offered a provisional place (he would have to survive the interview) at Queen Anne’s College! Queen Anne’s College – of the University of London … It took him a long time to break the news to Lionel. Lionel was bitterly opposed to higher education.

Des continued, off and on, to see a fair bit of Alektra, then a fair bit of Jade, then a fair bit of Chanel (who was Irish).
Try being gentle, Chanel
, he said to her late one night.
All soft and romantic. Go on. You’re adventurous. Try being gentle. See what you think
. A week later she said,
I like it with you, Des. All romantic. All soft and dreamy. I don’t know why, but it’s just a better ride
.

And then, in 2008, when he went for his interview at Queen Anne’s College, Des met Dawn Sheringham, and everything changed.

For a while it seemed that a similar transformation had already surprised Uncle Lionel. What happened was this. In the Indian summer of 2008, Gina Drago broke up with Marlon Welkway. The problem was as always Marlon’s gambling (and rumour spoke of a tooth-and-claw catfight between Gina and a croupier named Antoinette – one of Marlon’s exes – in a Jupes Lanes spieler). Anyway, the next thing everyone knew, Gina had homed in on Lionel Asbo.

Now
what? A faithful reader of Dear Daphne and other forums, Des prepared himself for the expected benefits. How would Daphne put it?
Although your uncle is obviously a late developer, there should presently be a steady easing of tension as he adopts a more
… It wasn’t like that.
No, Daphne, it isn’t like that
, he muttered (Des often had these dialogues with Daphne, in the hours between waking and rising).

He’s more nerve-racking than ever! He comes on all cool and masterful, but his hands tremble and his eyes are all over the place. I don’t understand Gina either. Indoors, she treats him like he isn’t there, and they never touch or kiss or smile. But on the street she’s all over him. I saw them once on a bench outside the Hobgoblin. Gina was up on his lap, straddling his thighs in her catsuit and tutu! What’s her game? Personally speaking, mind, it has to be said that I
…

It had to be said, personally speaking, that Des was riveted by Gina. Always in the highest good humour, she was a dark mass of roundnesses with vivid eyes and silky cheeks (her colouring further beautified, somehow, by the pale traces of adolescent acne on the hinges of her jaw). At any moment she’d jump to her feet and do a whole scene from (say) a Sicilian operetta, with all the choruses, the voices, the dances … Lionel watched these displays with an expression Des had never seen before. A false smile, and a remarkably talentless false smile: he simply hooked his upper lip over his front teeth, and that was that (Lionel’s front teeth were white and square, but so broadly spaced that you thought of a cut-out pumpkin on Halloween). She never spent the night. They went off to her maisonette in Doyce Grove. For Gina wasn’t just Miss Diston; she was also Lady Town – the favourite daughter of the controversial coin-op king and used-car czar, Jayden Drago.

Gina passed many an hour helping Des with his Italian, his Spanish, and his French (and she knew Basque too – and even Mallorquin!).
So Daphne, what do you think? Why would a girl who can speak six languages go around with a bloke who can barely speak English? Plus she’s a famous sexpot – and he’s almost a virgin! What’s Jezebel doing with Joseph? What’s the princess see in the frog? What’s Gina’s game?

One half-term morning in the chill fall of 2008 he looked in on Gran and found her frowning over the
Daily Telegraph
with a biro in her hand. He said encouragingly,
Back on the crosswords, are we?

There was a silence, and without looking up she said,
One clue. For a week I’ve been staring at it. One clue
.

… But Gran, some are more difficult than others. You always said. Depends on the setters. They vary
.

She handed it over. And the crossword, it wasn’t the Cryptic – it was the Kwik! The single clue that Grace had solved, or at least filled in, was 22 down. It went,
Garden of – – – – (4)
. And in the bottom right-hand corner of the grid she had written,
ENED
.

And even that’s not quite right, is it
.

No, not quite
.

…
So I’m going daft now am I?

Their eyes met.

Des. What happens when I don’t know what I’m saying?

It’ll pass, Gran
.

… I won’t be able to open my eyes. I won’t be able to close my mouth
.

No, Gran. The other way round
.

And he felt he was preparing for a long voyage on a dark sea where, one by one, all the stars would be going out.

Why was Gina Drago seeing Lionel Asbo? Because she wanted to spite and goad – and thus reactivate – Marlon Welkway. Des tried always to be elsewhere; but anyone could tell how it was shaping. Gina’s pink cellphone, with its lip-prints and snowdrop spangles, took on terrible powers: every chirrup had the rousting force of a siren. She would answer it, saying,
Well you should’ve thought of that
, or
Eff off
, or, simply, Fuera
!
But sometimes she would get to her feet and laughingly leave the room with the instrument nestling in the cusp of her throat. Des kept his eyes on the floor … Whether Lionel had words with Marlon was not known; but nothing changed, nothing happened, until November, when destiny ponderously intervened in the form of RSP: Lionel received some stolen property, and was arrested for it.

He got two months in Wormwood Scrubs in west London. Des went to visit him on Boxing Day. The interminable bus ride, the blasted heath. Lionel, in his wrinkly dark-blue overalls, stood at the counter of the commissary snackbar. They ordered, and went to the square table with their hot chocolates and their bags of Maltesers. Over the years Des had visited his uncle in a great variety of prisons (and borstals and Yois), and Lionel, even when settling in for a much longer stay, never seemed more than mildly inconvenienced (
Prison’s not too bad
, he often said.
You know where you are in prison
). But today he sat in a propulsive crouch on the very brink of the tin chair.
RSP
, he kept direly saying, and shaking his head.
RSP!
… Des couldn’t understand why this should seem so staggering in itself, because Lionel was arrested for RSP two or three times a year. But as dusk fell (and as the wardens wordlessly impended with their keys), Lionel said,

You know what, Des?
He
put me here. Marlon. He done me! For Gina!

Des left him there, the tense slope of the back, the chainlit Marlboro Hundred … And even before Lionel regained his freedom the
Diston Gazette
announced that Mr Jayden Drago’s firstborn child, Gina Maria, was officially engaged – to Marlon Welkway! The day was already named. It was to be a Whitsun wedding …

As he continued on his journey, his journey from boy to man, Des found that the thoughts that stayed with him about his uncle were getting a little bit harder to file away. For instance. Lionel, sitting in prison, and hating it as thoroughgoingly as any sane and innocent man would hate it (but for completely different reasons). Or again. The unexpected element in his response to the defection of Gina Drago. Together with the hurt, the rage, the humiliation, and the tearing need for vengeance, there was the furtive glimmer of relief.

Things were at least much simpler now. On the day he came out Lionel challenged Marlon to what was called
a garage meet
(bare-knuckle, stripped to the waist, with paying spectators, no ref, no rules, and no limit) and Marlon of course accepted – but that’s another story.

On his seventeenth birthday (in January, 2008) Des threw a little party all for himself. The only guests were the pups, Jon and Joel (who were given a fresh bone each). Well, they were hardly pups any longer. On the move they were like missiles of muscle … He bought two flagons of Strongbow, and sprinkled a pinch of keef into a rolled cigarette. Des only knew a handful of things about his father. Edwin (as he continued to think of him) was a Trinidadian, and a Pentecostalist; he refrained – earlier on, anyway – from harmful liquors; as against that, though, he didn’t deny the clarifying effects of a pensive burn of keef. So Des sipped his cider, and smoked the sparkling grass; and he felt the spirit of Edwin darn its way through him: the smell of thick damp foliage, a vast church on a village hilltop, a fat moon sliced and swallowed by the sharp horizon. He knew another thing about his father – that he referred to babies as
youths
. Des knew too that Edwin was gentle. Cilla said.

It was just a little slip. Her legs shot out in front of her, her head twanged back and then twanged up again – but she was laughing when she got to her feet. As they walked home arm in arm the sun hit the thin rain, turning each drop into a gout of solder, and a fabulous rainbow of blue and violet bandily straddled the roofscapes of Diston Town … It was just a little slip. The autopsy report spoke of
blunt impact to the head
and
epidural haematoma
. But the phrase that held him was
massive insult to the brain
. And it was unfair, he felt, to say such a thing about Mum – because, this time, it was just a little slip.