Martin Amis - Lionel Asbo

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On the other hand, Squeers Free had in its staff room an exceptional Learning Mentor — a Mr Vincent Tigg.

What’s going on with you, Desmond? You were always an idle little sod. Now you can’t get enough of it. Well, what next?

I fancy modern languages, sir. And history. And sociology. And astronomy. And —

You can’t study everything, you know .

Yes I can. Renaissance boy, innit .

… You want to watch that smile, lad. All right. We’ll see about you. Now off you go .

And in the schoolyard? On the face of it, Des was a prime candidate for persecution. He seldom bunked off, he never slept in class, he didn’t assault the teachers or shoot up in the toilets — and he preferred the company of the gentler sex (the gentler sex, at Squeers Free, being quite rough enough). So in the normal course of things Des would have been savagely bullied, as all the other misfits (swats, wimps, four-eyes, sweating fatties) were savagely bullied — to the brink of suicide and beyond. They called him Skiprope and Hopscotch, but Des wasn’t bullied. How to explain this? To use Uncle Ringo’s favourite expression, it was a no-brainer . Desmond Pepperdine was inviolable. He was the nephew, and ward, of Lionel Asbo.

It was different on the street. Once a term, true, Lionel escorted him to Squeers Free, and escorted him back again the same day (restraining, with exaggerated difficulty, the two frothing pitbulls on their thick steel chains). But it would be foolish to suppose that each and every gangbanger and posse-artist (and every Yardie and jihadi) in the entire manor had heard tell of the great asocial. And it was different at night, because different people, different shapes, levered themselves upward after dark … Des was fleet of foot, but he was otherwise unsuited to life in Diston Town. Second or even first nature to Lionel (who was pronounced ‘uncontrollable’ at the age of eighteen months), violence was alien to Des, who always felt that violence — extreme and ubiquitous though it certainly seemed to be — came from another dimension.

So, this day, he went down the tunnel and attended school. But on his way home he feinted sideways and took a detour. With hesitation, and with deafening self-consciousness, he entered the Public Library on Blimber Road. Squeers Free had a library, of course, a distant Portakabin with a few primers and ripped paperbacks scattered across its floor … But this: rank upon rank of proud-chested bookcases, like lavishly decorated generals. By what right or title could you claim any share of it? He entered the Reading Room, where the newspapers, firmly clamped to long wooden struts, were apparently available for scrutiny. No one stopped him as he approached.

He had of course seen the dailies before, in the corner shop and so on, and there were Gran’s Telegraph s, but his experience of actual newsprint was confined to the Morning Lark s that Lionel left around the flat, all scrumpled up, like origami tumbleweeds (there was also the occasional Diston Gazette ). Respectfully averting his eyes from the Times , the Independent , and the Guardian , Des reached for the Sun , which at least looked like a Lark , with its crimson logo and the footballer’s fiancée on the cover staggering out of a nightclub with blood running down her neck. And, sure enough, on page three (News in Briefs) there was a hefty redhead wearing knickers and a sombrero.

But then all resemblances ceased. You got scandal and gossip, and more girls, but also international news, parliamentary reports, comment, analysis … Until now he had accepted the Morning Lark as an accurate reflection of reality. Indeed, he sometimes thought it was a local paper (a light-hearted adjunct to the Gazette ), such was its fidelity to the customs and mores of his borough. Now, though, as he stood there with the Sun quivering in his hands, the Lark stood revealed for what it was — a daily lads’ mag, perfunctorily posing as a journal of record.

The Sun , additionally to recommend it, had an agony column presided over not by the feckless Jennaveieve, but by a wise-looking old dear called Daphne, who dealt sympathetically, that day, with a number of quite serious problems and dilemmas, and suggested leaflets and helplines, and seemed genuinely …

‘Dear Daphne,’ whispered Desmond.

TURN THE CLOCK back to January and the eve of his fifteenth birthday.

Uncle Lionel was out on the balcony, chivvying the dogs. Des, in a white apron (at that time he had done no wrong and knew no guile), was washing up.

Come out here, Des. Forget you housework … Listen. You forbidden to go to school tomorrow .

Why’s this, Uncle Li?

Tell you in the morning … Des. Girls. Have you done it? No, don’t answer. I don’t want to know. Look at you in you white pinny. Fourteen .

Des was woken by a gust of cigarette smoke. He squinted up with his unfallen eyes. Lionel, in a black mesh T-shirt, boded over him.

Shove up , he said, and sat. Okay. You a young man now. You fifteen. And an orphan. So you got to listen to you Uncle Li .

Yeah. Course .

Right. From this day forth, son, you can borrow me Mac. When I’m out .

Smiling, Des said thanks, and he meant it. He also had that familiar sense of Lionel as a kind of anti-dad or counterfather.

But listen . Lionel raised a stubby forefinger. It’s not just for messing around with. I want you to concentrate you efforts .

On what?

Porn .

In common with every other Distonite old enough to walk, Des knew about the existence of pornography on the Web. He had never gone looking for it. Porn, Uncle Li?

Porn. You see, Des, this is it. You don’t actually need girls. Girls? They more trouble than they worth if you ask me. With the Mac, you can have three new bunk-ups every day — just by using you imagination! And it doesn’t cost you fuck all. Okay. Lecture over. So endeth the first lesson. Just promise you’ll ponder me words. And here’s an extra fiver for yuh .

Lionel got to his feet. He grinned (a rare occurrence) and said,

Go on, fill you boots … When I come back tonight, you’ll be holding a white stick. In you hairy palm . His grin deepened. I just hope Jeff and Joe hit it off with you guide dog. And here’s a tip: Fucked-up Facials. Start you off on the right foot. Well, son. Happy birthday. I’m glad we’ve had this talk. It’s cleared the air .

Des did, in fact, have a quick look at Fucked-up Facials . And the site, he found, was accurately so called: he had never seen anything half so fucked-up in all his life. After gaping his way through thirty seconds of that, he clicked on History. There was no doubt about it. The pornography Lionel watched was in highly questionable taste. So for an hour Des randomly surfed, or foundered, in the Pacific of filth. This surfing or foundering, he realised with a kind of terror, was a way of finding out who you were, sexually, by finding out what you liked — whether you liked what you liked or not.

And what did he like, Des Pepperdine? Well, his soul instantly and reassuringly recoiled from anything weird. Or anything rough. In churning and interminable close-up, even straight-foward copulation looked horrific (this is what happens, he suddenly thought, when a zoo rapes an aquarium). And all these stripped blokes, with biker or convict faces, and their third-degree tattoos … The lez stuff was okay, but what he liked, it turned out, was this: a pretty girl acting alone, slowly undressing (it was never slowly enough), and indulging, perhaps, in a discreet self-caress — with the lighting all misty and vague. Practically everything else seemed gladiatorial. I’m a romantic! he thought. I knew it … And after a pensive interlude, under the auspices of Strictly Solo Tease and more particularly a wandlike blonde called Cadence Meadowbrook, Des put the Web aside, reached for the Cloud, and started learning about calligraphy.