Lionel Asbo: State of England (31 page)

‘Uh, Uncle Li …’

Up ahead, where the lane narrowed to the width of a council-flat corridor, an enormous shape awaited them. Even for Jupes Lanes it was an exceptional sight (and people, now, had to try harder and harder to be exceptional). This alley-filling apparition was about twice Lionel’s mass, grossly bloated but also dynamic, and gasping mechanically for air. As they got nearer they saw that the young man’s face was like a pizza of acne or even eczema, and his loose damp smock was similarly encrusted and ensmeared, with a thick gout of blood or ketchup running from armpit to armpit. He held a bulky mallet with a nubbled head, and his free hand was rummaging around in the crotch of his khaki shorts.

‘… You going courting?’ asked Lionel mildly. ‘Well out the way then. Out the way then. Step back and to the side. By them dustbins … Look, we can’t get round you, mate. You too fucking fat. Jesus.
Out the way then
.’

The young man held his ground – and Lionel folded his arms, lowered his head, and exhaled … Now, in Desmond’s considerable experience, Uncle Li, as combat neared, had three distinct styles of mobilisation. With his peers he gathered about himself a fury of self-righteousness, with his near-peers he opened and widened his mouth and brightened his eyes in quasi-sexual avidity (this was the Marlon Welkway approach), and with everyone else he just rolled up his sleeves and got on with it. But here in Jupes Lanes he just seemed tragically bored, bored to the point of psychic pain – like one eternally diverted from all fascination, all delight … The young man said,

‘Fuck you.’

‘Okay,’ said Lionel. ‘Well relish the moment, mate. You not going to feel half this good – ever again …
So you worked that one out did yuh, you thick cunt?
Jesus. Uh, this DILF toff, Des, she’s taking about forty grand’s worth of togs off and she’s called me a – she called me a
yoik
. What’s a yoik? I mean I can tell it’s not nice. But what’s a yoik?’

Des hesitantly suggested that it was a conflation of
yob
and
oik
. Yoik.

‘You reckon? Thought it was because of me Yoi. You know. Yoi. Yoik … Des, I got a feeling I’m in over me head. On the DILFs. What with me class hatred. And them saying,
Come on, you yoik, come on, slumboy
… That could get well out of hand, that could. That could get
well
out of hand.’

Murdstone Road, Des saw, was now just a block away. ‘It’s all beyond me, Uncle Li. I can’t imagine the type.’

‘Well that’s not surprising, living round here. They no DILFs in Diston, Des.’

‘Wonder what’s in it for them … No offence meant, Uncle Li.’

‘None taken, Des. It’s a good question.’ In a speculative spirit Lionel went on, ‘People say,
Toff birds fancy a bit of rough
. They fancy rough blokes. And I always thought, Yeah, it’s only rough blokes say that. Don’t flatter youself. But there’s something in it. See, what they fancy’s a
change
.’

‘A change from their own kind?’

‘Yeah, they own kind, they own blokes, with they degrees and that. Now. They wouldn’t normally
act
on it. Just a uh, a fantasy. But they can act on it with Lionel Asbo.’

‘Why’s that?’

‘Okay, he’s rough. But he’s famous. He’s worth a couple of bil. He’s in the public eye. He’s safe. Eh, and what you make of this?
They
pay for everything, Des. Consistently. It’s a uh, it’s a DILF trademark.
They
pay for the room and the champagne and that … She’s
controlling
her own little treat, see. Which is?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘The joy of messing around with someone stupid.’

‘You’re
not
stupid, Uncle Li.’

‘Yes I fucking am.’

‘Welcome back,’ said the man at the glass door. ‘How’re you tonight, Mr Smith?’

15

IN THE FIRMAMENT of London hotels, the Sleeping Beauty (like the Imperial Palace in Metroland) was a brown dwarf, and not a blue giant (like the Pantheon Grand) or a spasmodic ‘flare star’ (like the South Central). But it was modern, or at least recent; and Des was somehow reassured (everyone was somehow reassured) to see all the men and women in airline uniforms, having a last few rounds of stiff drinks before proceeding by minibus to Stansted for the small-hours package flights (to the Scillies, the Balearics, the Canaries). The pilots and co-pilots in suits of martial serge, the stewardesses in orange jumpsuits, like detainees.

After checking in (and submitting a cash deposit), Lionel procured a half-pint of cider and a whole bottle of Wild Turkey. They settled at a table in the corner of the Beanstalk Bar.

‘Ever wondered, Des, how I amuse meself in Diston?’

‘Yeah. Sometimes.’

‘Well I’ve run out of grudges. None left. So when you toddle off tonight I’ll go and do a couple of NEETs. Go and do a couple of NEDs.’

NEETs were those Not in Employment, Education or Training. NEDs were Non-Educated Delinquents.

‘Nothing serious. Give them a tap or two. And then sling them in the canal. Tonight I’ll go looking for that fat cunt we seen in Jupes. Maybe that’ll put me in the mood.’

Desmond’s frown asked the question.

‘The mood to do a tart. Here. Up in me room.’ Lionel’s features now came as close as they ever did to expressing apology or self-reproach. ‘See, Des, with me sexuality being what it is – there has to be
pain
… This is it. This is it. Don’t know why. But there has to be pain.’ He said, ‘So the Gina relationship’s obviously ideal. For now. You know, I’m doing her in the normal way. And with every thrust,’
every frust
, ‘I’m causing pain … But you can’t say I’m hurting
Gina
, can you. She likes it rough in the first place. But you can’t say I’m hurting Gina.’

‘… How’s Gina feel about it?’

‘Ah, with her it’s all Marlon. Gaw, them two. Talk about love–hate – they like Kilkenny cats. With they tails tied together. Gina’s spiting him, see, because Marlon’s giving her kid sister one. Little Foozaloo. Well he’s got to do something, hasn’t he. Keep his end up. How much can he take? And it won’t end there. It won’t end there. He’ll do her. He’ll mark her. He’ll
have
to.’

Des swallowed and said, ‘What about with Cynthia? D’you hurt Cynthia?’

‘Cynthia? How could you hurt Cynthia? I mean look at the state of her. Hurt what?’ Lionel poured, Lionel drank. Suddenly but glazedly he said, ‘With them DILFs, Des. She goes,
Come on then. Let’s have it you … unbelievable … fucking
yoik.
Let’s have it
. And it’s got a lovely sneer on its face. And you think, Okay. Let’s deal with that lovely sneer. And believe me. When you giving her one, she ain’t sneering no more.’

Des swallowed again and said, ‘It’s important, is it? Dealing with the sneer?’

‘Ooh
yeah
,’ said Lionel. ‘
Ooh
yeah.’

As Lionel gazed at the rolling booze in his glass, Des realised that there’d been no mention whatever, in the erotic sphere, of ‘Threnody’ – Lionel’s fiancée.

‘Des. Be honest. Tell me straight. Have you ever thought that there was anything … not quite kosher in uh, my attitude to skirt?’

‘Well we’re all different. I’m a bit puritanical. Dawn says. And too needy. We’re all different.’

‘She made me go … “Threnody” made me go and see a bloke about it. About me sexuality. Cavendish Square. In a flash old flat in Cavendish Square. And you’ll never guess what this geezer goes and tells me. Grace. Grace. He reckons it’s all down to Grace.’

‘How’s he work that one out?’

‘He says,
Lionel, when you having intercourse, do you find there’s a rage …
waiting
for you? As if ready-made?
I said,
Yeah. Ready-made. You put you finger on it
. We talk it over, and he says,
Well it’s obvious. You got a fucking slag for a mum, mate
. Well, not in them exact words. He says,
And the evidence was there before you eyes! From when you was a baby!
’

‘Before your eyes, Uncle Li?’

‘Before you eyes, Uncle Li? Use you head, Desmond Pepperdine. I’m an infant. And there’s all these fucking brothers! This fucking
zoo
of brothers!’

It wasn’t the first time Des had considered it from Lionel’s perspective – from the perspective of someone in a highchair with a pacifier in his mouth: John like a Norse albino, swarthy and piratical Paul, George with a face as flat and square as a tablemat (and sandblasted with freckles), thick-lidded, mandarinic Ringo – and of course the seedily Silesian Stuart. Des said,

‘Well there was Cilla.’

‘Yeah. Cilla. Me so-called
twin
… And five brothers – and a mum who’s barely eighteen years of age. It wasn’t right, Des. I mean, after that, after all that – how can a man trust minge?’

Five minutes passed in silence. Then Lionel looked at his watch and said, ‘Doing it with
schoolboys
…’

Schoolboys
: it had the force of an ethnic or tribal anathema. Schoolboys, like Hutus or Uighurs.

‘You okay, Desi? I’m off out.’

So Des readied himself – readied himself for the six-minute dash down Murdstone Road, through Jupes Lanes, across Carker Square, and beyond. But no. Lionel made a call, and Des went back to Avalon Tower by courtesy car.

‘All right, son,’ said Lionel on the forecourt. And they embraced.

Through the tinted windscreen you could see the purity of the lunar satellite, D-shaped in the royal-blue distance. The dark side was subtly visible – as if the Man in the Moon was wearing a watch cap of black felt.

Dawn came in at one.

‘Did he see you?’

‘No,’ she said and switched off the light. ‘He didn’t see me …’

For a while he comforted her, and soon she sighed for the last time, and then she slept. But Des did not sleep. He was still awake when Lionel stomped in around seven (he could hear, over and above the hobnailed-boot effect, the subtle flinch of each and every floorboard). And the two men arose within a few minutes of each other at four o’clock on Sunday afternoon.

Dawn was back at the hospital, so uncle and nephew had a sentimental breakfast: Pop-Tarts (Des ran down).

… What was it that kept him awake?

During his night out with Lionel he was helplessly infused with somatic memories. His body kept remembering. The crown of his head and the tight curls of his hair remembered what it was like, as a boy of five, to feel the weight of that palm whenever his eleven-year-old uncle readied him to cross the road. His whole frame remembered what it was like, later, to walk the hissing streets of Diston with Lionel alongside him, the guarantee of his nearness, like a carapace. And as they parted at the Sleeping Beauty, and they embraced, Des’s body remembered itself at twelve, thirteen, fourteen, during the time of numbness and Cillalessness: once a month or so, Lionel would look at him with unusual candour, and there’d be an unimpatient lift of the chin, and he’d say,
She’s gone, Desi, and she ain’t coming back
, or,
Okay, boy. I know. I know. But you can’t just sit there and pine
; and he’d give him a hug (though not enough – never enough), murmuring,
There there, son. There there
… So, in the forecourt, as Lionel said,
All right, son
, and he felt the great arms and the engulfing torso, Des (as he thought about this, lying next to Dawn with his eyes open) found that love flared up in him.

Which was one half of it.

The other half, like the dark side of the half-moon, had to do with fear … Cilla went, Cilla was gone, excised, leaving a monstrous void behind her; and Des looked to Grace, and together they found the wrong kind of love. There it was. And there was nothing he could do about it, then or now.
Unresisting, even so. Fifteen!
… Over time the fear had become manageable – it was his default condition, roiling him when nothing else was roiling him; it no longer aspired to the paroxysms of 2006 (
Dear Daphne
, Gran’s groans,
Ooh, they’ll love him inside
, the youth in the Squeers blazer). Still, he soberly and of course ignobly reasoned that the fear wouldn’t die until Grace died – or until Lionel died.

It bestrode his sleep. And sometimes, when the nights were huge, he felt the rending need for confession – for capitulation, castigation, crucifixion … Then morning came, and the pieces of life once again coalesced.