Lionel Asbo: State of England (6 page)

6

IN DISTON THERE were many thousands of pylons, and they all sizzled. The worst stretch of Cuttle Canal was as active as a geyser: it spat and splatted, blowing thick-lipped kisses to the hastening passers-by. Beyond Jupes Lanes sprawled Stung Meanchey (so christened by its inhabitants, who were Korean), a twelve-acre dump of house-high electronic waste, old computers, televisions, phones and fridges: lead, mercury, beryllium, aluminium. Diston hummed. Background radiation, background music for a half-life of fifty-five years.

He heard Lionel attacking the locks. The snaps and rattles dispersed his soothing daydream. In this daydream, diligent Daphne was applying herself to a tall stack of mail. She unsheathed Desmond’s letter; her frown melted into a lenient twinkle; and she started to type her reply.
You poor dear, you must have been worried out of your wits. And all for no reason! Happily, following an amendment to the law in 1979, it is no longer …
But now Lionel stomped in. Lionel stomped in, with two unlabelled quart bottles of liquor (one of them half empty), plus a takeaway mutton vindaloo – for the dogs.

‘I tasted success’, he said, ‘with Ross Knowles. At the tenth attempt. But here. Summon up all you courage, Des, and have a look at this.’

Lionel seemed stirred, stimulated, if not downright drunk (and, as always, one size bigger than expected). Yet Des could tell that something was wrong, and he sensed danger … Lionel wasn’t drunk – he never got drunk. He put away suicidal quantities of alcohol; and he never got drunk. It was the same with dope, blow, crack, aitch, e, and methamphetamine. Nothing had any effect on him (there was no intoxication, and no repercussion). In this sphere at least, Lionel was steady-state. But tonight he had a look of lit purpose in him, and something was wrong.

Lionel now upended the quart bottle and took six swallows, seven, eight. He wiped his mouth on his wrist and said, ‘This is what this country’s come to, Des. A national newspaper printing
this
.’ With finger and thumb, and with some show of fastidiousness, Lionel took from his back pocket a rolled copy of the
Morning Lark
. ‘Second page of Classifieds. They calling them
GILFs
.’

‘Jesus … That one’s seventy-eight!’

‘GILFs, Des. Topless at seventy-eight. What’s she doing still
living
at seventy-eight? Leave alone topless! And that’s a uh, a contradiction in terms, that is, Des. GILFs. Grans I’d Like to … Nobody’d
like
to fuck a gran. Now would they. Contradiction in terms.’ Lionel added vaguely, ‘Suppose you could call them NILFs.’

‘NILFs?’

‘NILFs. Nans I’d Like to … And that’s England, Des. A once-proud nation. Look.
Beefy Bedmate Sought by Bonking Biddy
. That’s England.’

It was a clear night in early May with a tang of chill in it. Des wiped the sweat from his upper lip.

‘… What’s up with you, Des? You got a funny look on you face.’

‘No, I’m fine, Uncle Li. So uh, so you got a result today. With Ross Knowles.’

‘What? Oh. Change of subject, is it.’ He yawned and went on blandly, ‘Yeah, I’m outside the Watch Ward with me grapes. And here I’ve had a bit of luck. The copper’s there – but he’s on a stretcher. With blood coming out of his ears. One of them uh, superbugs, I don’t know.’

Des shrugged and said, ‘Diston General.’

‘Yeah. Diston General … So now I’m stood over the bed and he opens his eyes. I never raised me voice above a whisper. I said uh,
Remember me, Mr Knowles? Or may I call you Ross? I sincerely apologise, Ross, for any distress caused. See, that night, I wasn’t meself. I was suffering for
love.
For love, Ross. How would you feel, how would you feel, Ross, if the girl of you dreams got porked by you best mate?
’

‘He say anything, Uncle Li?’

‘No. His jaws’re wired shut. Then I go,
You got to understand, Ross, that I’m a very unbalanced young man. Now if you proceed with this matter, I’ll be inside for – what? Eight months? A year? But when I come out, Ross, I’ll do you again. Only worse. And go straight back inside. Because I’m
stupid
, I am. I’m
stupid … So he had a think and we settled out of court.’

‘What you give him?’

‘I give him a bunch of grapes.’ Lionel stood up and said, ‘I call it the moron theory, Des. You can’t go wrong with it. Okay. Where’s they Tabasco?’

The dogs were tonguing the glass door. Lionel stood at the counter by the fridge, shaking out jets of chilli over the fuming meat. With the two bowls under the span of his palms, he slid and then kicked his way out on to the balcony. Des readied the rogan josh.

‘Ah, rogan josh,’ said Lionel. ‘You know where you are with a rogan josh.’

As they poked at their food (Lionel was in any case an erratic eater, and Des felt full to his craw), a heavy silence began to fuse and climb. A muscular, pumped-up, steroidal silence, a Lionel silence, shrill enough to smother the parched whimpers of Jeff and Joe …

‘It’s too hot for them,’ mouthed Des drily.

Now Lionel flung his irons aside. He turned and stiffly extended his legs, and folded his arms with a grunt. Minutes passed. He stood, and took several turns round the room, staring critically at his shoes. Minutes passed.

‘You know, I’m ever so slightly concerned’, he said, ‘about you gran.’

‘Yeah?’ Des swallowed. ‘Why’s that?’

‘Her morals.’

‘Her morals?’

‘Yeah, you know old Dudley.’

‘Dudley. Yeah.’ Dudley was the cheerful racist in the next granny flat along.

‘Dudley. Old Dud. He reckons he hears
noises
.’

‘… What sort of noises?’

‘Groans.’ Lionel looked ceilingward. ‘As if, God forbid, someone’s giving her one …’

Des managed to say, ‘Uh, that’s prejudicial, that is, Uncle Li. Could be groaning from something else. Pain.’

‘You know, Des, that’s exactly what
I
thought. That’s exactly what
I
thought. In fact, I give old Dud a thump for the uh, for the insinuation. She’d never do that to me, Mum. Not Mum, mate! Not my mum!’

For a moment Des believed that Lionel was about to start crying; but his face cleared and he said conversationally,

‘I know she used to see the odd bloke. Toby and that. But when Dominic passed away she had a change of heart. Turned over a new leaf. She said to me,
Lionel? When you dad died, he give up his life for his little boy. He’d’ve done the same for you. Or for Cilla. And I’m going to respect that, Lionel. Respect Dom’s memory. So no more of me blokes
. And she has a little laugh and says,
And look at me. I’m well past it anyway!
… But now – but now there’s these
groans
.’

Des said, ‘I’m in and out all the time. And I never see anything.’

‘Mm. Well keep you eyes peeled, Des. Look in the bathroom. Razor. Extra toothbrush. Anything uh, untoward.’

‘Course I will.’

‘Mm … The groaning granny. It’s pain. That’s all it is. It’s her time of life. Gaa, Des, you wouldn’t believe what they suffer. During the Change. It’s they insides. You creeping off again tonight?’

Des had a date with Gran. He scratched his chest and said, ‘Nah. I’ll stop home. Watch the football. Might take the dogs out. In a bit.’

‘… It’s they insides. There’s all this stuff down there
raring
to go wrong …
My
mum some GILF? No.
My
mum some bonking biddy? No.’

Minutes later Des reeled down the infinite staircase with Jeff and Joe. Now this really did do his head in – because Gran
never
groaned. Not with pain, not with passion. He brought his fingertips to his temples and searched the windtunnels and the echo chambers of his aural memory. He heard her laughter (the long-ago laughter), he heard her sing scraps of Beatles songs, and again he heard her laughter (the more recent laughter, abandoned, and with an unnerving edge to it). But Gran never groaned. It was Jade and Alektra who kicked up a racket (at least when their mums weren’t indoors) – not Gran. Gran groan? Never …

In the forecourt he ducked into the sketchily vandalised phonebox.

Does she groan because she’s got some wasting disease she never told me about? Or does she groan because she – !

The thought stopped dead.

He made the call and postponed their meeting for twenty-four hours. He didn’t tell Gran anything, yet, about Dudley and the groans.

7

DAY CAME. HE heard a snatch, a twist, of weak birdsong; slowly the city heaved into life; and by eight o’clock the whole Tower was a foundry of DIY – hammers, grinders, the gnawing whine of power sanders … Des took a shower and drank a cup of tea. Lionel was sleeping in; he had gone out late and stayed out late (boisterously returning just after five). His door was open, and for a moment Des paused in the passage. This was once his mother’s room. That tall swing mirror: she used to appraise herself in front of it, with a palm flat on her midriff, full face, in profile, once again full face; and then she’d be gone. Now Lionel rolled on to his back – the heaving chest, the dredging snore.

Outside it was bright and dry – and drunkenly stormy. Gates flapped and banged, dustbins tumbled, shutters clattered. And Des, today, felt that he would give his eyesight for a minute’s peace, a minute’s quiet. Just to get his head straight. But his thoughts wandered, and he wandered after them, under a swift and hectic sky. Women, mothers, noticed it, the density of trouble in the childish roundness of his face. Long-legged in shorts and blazer, carrying a satchel, and stopping every ten yards to run tremulous fingers through the close files of his hair.

… On the streets of Cairo the ambient noise, scientifically averaged out, was ninety decibels, or the equivalent of a freight train passing by at a distance of fourteen feet (the ambient noise caused partial deafness, neuroses, heart attacks, miscarriages). Town wasn’t quite as noisy as Cairo, but it was famous for its auto-repair yards, sawmills, and tanneries, and for its lawless traffic; it seemed also to get more than its fair share of demolitions, roadworks, municipal tree-prunings and leaf-hooverings, and more than its fair share of car alarms, burglar alarms, and fire alarms (the caff hates the van! the bike hates the shop! the pub hates the bus!), and, of course, more than its fair share of sirens.

In this sector of the world city, compact technology had not yet fully supplanted the blaring trannies and boom boxes and windowsill hi-fi speakers. People yelled at each other anyway, but now they yelled all the louder. Nor were Jeff and Joe the only neighbourhood dogs who suffered from canine Tourette’s. The foul-mouthed pitbulls, the screeching cats, the grimily milling pigeons; only the fugitive foxes observed their code of silence.

Diston, with its burping, magmatic canal, its fizzy low-rise pylons, its buzzing waste. Diston – a world of italics and exclamation marks.

On his way to school Des slipped into the Public Library on Blimber Road. This was a place where you could actually hear yourself cough, sigh, breathe – where you could hear the points and junctions of your own sinuses. He made straight for the radiant Reading Room with its silvery motes of dust.

First, naturally, he wrenched open the
Sun
, and thrashed his way to ‘Dear Daphne’. Worries about getting an erection, worries about keeping an erection, the many girls whose married boyfriends wouldn’t leave their wives, the many boys who loved the feel of women’s clothing: all this, but nothing about a fifteen-year-old and his nan. Eleven days had passed since he posted his letter. Why hadn’t Daphne printed it? Was it too terrible? No (or so a part of him still wanly hoped): it was too trivial.

Des closed his eyes and saw himself in the granny flat at the age of thirteen. He was, as usual, weeping into his sleeve – while Gran stroked his hair and softly hummed along with that emollient melody, ‘Hey Jude’.
Hey Jude, don’t make it bad, Take a sad song And make it better
. The hugs, the hand-clasps, the vast and trackless silences. Gran said that grief was like the sea; you had to ride the tides (
So let it out and let it in, hey Jude, begin
), and then, after months, after years …

Now in the sidestreet two hammer drills revved up, atomising his thoughts. And just then an old janitor (the one with the ponytail and the dented cheeks) stuck his head round the door.

‘Why you not in school?’

‘Got a project,’ said Des. And reapplied himself to his
Sun
.

International news. Slaughter in Darfur. N. Korea’s breakout N-test? Dozens slain in Mex drug clash … After a look over his shoulder, he reached out an unsteady hand for the
Independent
(which was at least recognisably tabloidal in size). He expected the spidery print to exclude him. But it didn’t; it let him in … Des read all the international news in the
Independent
, and then moved on to the
Times
. When he looked at his watch it was half past four (and he was keenly hungry).