Martin Amis - Lionel Asbo

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.

As he rinsed the glass and cleaned the ashtray (and put the dogs out) and vaguely dreamed about Queen Anne’s College (the one poem, the cosmos of the University), something struck him as suddenly as the sun struck the rain on that last day with his mother: It will take a whole new person to make me whole. A whole new person. It can’t come from anything within. I’ll just have to … I’ll just have to wait. I’ll wait.

Where is she?

I’ll wait.

She was sitting next to him on a hardbacked chair. There were about twenty young people in the room (down from about thirty-five), and she was the only one present who was doing something sensible: she was reading (he stole a glance — The Golden Bough ) … The rest of them, Des included, were merely helplessly and dumbly waiting, like patients waiting for the doctor’s nod. Every fifteen minutes or so a name was called … The setting was a panelled antechamber in Queen Anne’s College, London. A fat bee kept bluntly knocking against the window pane, as if seriously expecting the viny garden to open up and let it in. What was that doing here? It was early February. Des’s mind was clogged and wordless; the vertical ribs of the radiators, he felt, were giving off the acrid tang of a dry-cleaner’s. He wiped the sweat off his upper lip, and reached with both sets of fingers for his brow.

Are you nervous? she said, tilting her head an inch or two, but without looking up. I don’t mean in general. I mean at the minute .

Nervous? he said. I’m giving birth!

Oh don’t be …

Now he saw her face, under its weight of golden hair — the gold of sunlight and lions. And her exorbitant eyes, fairy-tale blue, and ideally round.

Well you know , she said, I was in a terrible condition this morning. Then I had a thought whilst I made my tea. I thought: What’ll they be looking for in myself? And I felt all calm. I’m Dawn .

I’m Desmond . They shook hands. Her voice was high and musical, but her diction, her choice of words, put him in mind of a category he could not yet name: the minutely declassed. And what was that thought? Dawn .

It suddenly came to me. Well, we’ve all got the grades, haven’t we. So what is it they’ll be looking for in ourselves? And it suddenly came to me . Eagerness to learn. Simple. I’ve got that. And I don’t doubt you’ve got it too .

Yeah , he said. I’ve got that .

Well then. Desmond .

She shrugged or shivered; her body sighed and realigned. And he saw her crossing the road, crossing one of the many roads of the future, and quite differently dressed, with her jeans tucked into knee-high boots, and in a tightish top — crossing the road, strongly stepping up to the island and then stepping down from it and walking on … He experienced a gravitational desire, just then (as his blood eased and altered), to reach out and touch her. But all that happened was that his face gave her its clearest possible smile.

Desmond Pepperdine , said a voice.

So it was his turn first, and when he came out, twenty minutes later, they bent their heads and winced at each other …

Dawn Sheringham , said a voice (a different voice).

As she gathered her things he said, ‘I’ll wait. If you like. I’ll wait and we’ll go for some tea.’

‘Ooh, I’d love a cup,’ she called out. ‘I’ll be needing one!’

He watched her walk off. He hesitated, and said, ‘… I’ll wait!’

As a result of a further steepening of Ernest’s depression, the Nightingales moved to Joy’s mother’s place in Hull. Des looked up Hull on the Cloud. Its sister city was called Grimsby. The fog that came in at night smelled of fish.

It seemed to Des that now would be the moment to get shot of Rory’s lip ring. But it stayed where it was. He opened his desk drawer: the sealed white envelope with the circular indentation, and the evil little heaviness at the bottom of it.

In September 2006, there was a much-studied but in the end unfathomable traffic jam which enchained West Diston — all the way from Sillery Circle to the Malencey Tunnel — for five days and five nights (it was relieved only by hundreds of grapple-hoists from RAF helicopters). In April 2007, there was an outbreak among local schoolchildren (all morbidly obese) of deficiency diseases not seen for generations (pellagra, beriberi, rickets). In October 2008, there was a weeklong nine-acre blaze in Stung Meanchey, enveloping the site in a layer of diaphanous smoke like the sloughed skin of a gigantic dragon (it was said to be very beautiful from the air).

The winters were unsmilingly cold.

IT WAS AS he was mucking out — which is to say, it was as he was passing his spoutless kettle of shit to the aproned orderly — that Lionel Asbo first got wind of the fact that he had just won very slightly less than a hundred and forty million pounds.

‘Yeah, you’ve had a bit of luck. Apparently. Don’t know what,’ said Officer Fips (who wasn’t such a bad bloke). ‘The Light wants a word. You’ll be sent for.’

‘The who?’

‘The Light. You know, light of your love. Guv. Love. That’s rhyming slang.’

‘… Jesus, you need you head seen to, you do. And rhyming slang’s all crap.’

Officer Fips continued to go about his tasks. ‘According to him, you’ve had a bit of good fortune. And he was well fucked off about it and all.’

‘Yeah? What’s this then?’

‘You’ll be sent for.’

Lionel turned to his cellmate, Pete New, and said, ‘Dropped charges. Looks like they’ve seen reason and dropped charges.’

‘Yes, Lionel. Could very well be.’

Stallwort was a remand prison — for those awaiting trial or sentence — and its inmates were banged up on a colourful array of charges. Banged up for non-payment of alimony, banged up for serial rape, banged up for possession of marijuana, banged up for knifing a family of six.

‘Well, let’s hope so,’ said Pete New.

Pete New was banged up for having a fat dog.

Banged up for having a fat dog? said Lionel on his first day there.

I know , said New. Sounds stupid. Yes, well. Twelve Reprimands and five Final Warnings. From the Social .

Tinkerbell, New’s basset hound, was fourteen stone. She could only sleep and eat; she lay there on the mattress with her limbs splayed out flat.

She has to be turned, see, Tinkerbell. Or you try. And she creates. She makes a right old racket. And then the neighbours …

Lionel said , What you have a fucking dog for if you let it get into that state? You ought to give it a uh, an appropriate diet .

New shrugged humbly and limped back to his bunk. He had his left leg in a light cast: Pete New had managed to snap a ligament while watching TV. Eleven hours in the same position, and when he readied himself to get to his feet, he said, he heard it pop.