Martin Amis - Lionel Asbo

Des said, ‘Pneumonia. The old man’s friend.’

‘They’ll treat it. Antibiotics. But when it comes back — nah. Let nature take its course … I’ll be phoning in. And keep a bag packed. We’ll want to be there when she goes. Watch you UVI, Des. Don’t be spreading it. Spare a thought for the baby.’

Grace was giving up the ghost in the home on Cape Wrath, and Horace was noisily and smellily pegging out in the terminal ward at Diston General (with his daughter confined to the far side of the smeared screen), and Des, in Avalon Tower, was also dying — dying of insanity. His mind was the mind of a London fox: Vulpes vulpes in the great world city.

All day, all night (what was the difference?), eyes open, eyes shut (what was the difference?), Des attended the cinema of the insane. In beady pulses and thudding flashes he rehearsed what he supposed were essentially vulpine themes and arguments to do with anxiety, hunger, and shelterlessness, refracted through an urban setting of asphalt and metal, of rubber and cellophane and shattered plexiglas. It was the longest motion picture of all time; and his attention never strayed. The definition was as sharp as a serpent’s tooth. The lighting was indecently and lawlessly lurid. The dialogue (sometimes dubbed) and the voiceover and the occasional subtitles were all in the language of Grace.

‘That was him again. No news.’

‘… Wait. Dawn, wait. Get Cilla. Don’t bring her in. Show her to me. You know, I think it’s going. I think I’m coming back.’

It was Wednesday.

JUST BEFORE TEN Lionel entered the flat, immense and telekinetic, like a human chariot. And his steeds, in their spiked collars, were Jak and Jek.

Des stood up with a judder of his chair.

‘Something happened. In the night. Her signs are going, Desi.’ Lionel’s face was raw and pleading. ‘Her vital signs! Come on , boy. Where’s you bag? God — Christ — come on .’

Fifteen minutes later Des was up in the control tower of the Venganza — bound, at appalling speed, for Stansted Airport.

‘They reckon she had another of her strokes. And in her condition … What you grinning at? Today of all days!’

‘… It’s just so brilliant to be out . You’re grinning too, Uncle Li.’

‘Yeah, well. It’s a relief in a way. No more suspense, eh son?’

That morning Des awoke defervesced, fever-free, and astonished by health — health, that mighty power. He had breakfast with the girls, and saw them off, and made more tea and ate on, all the while refamiliarising himself with reality — in a spirit of ponderous gratitude … Then came Lionel, a gust, a squall, untethering Jak and Jek and booting them out on to the balcony ( Call Dawn. The dogs stay here. No choice ), unpacking the stiff-sided shopping bag (Michael Gabriel — the Family Butcher), and noisily rootling for the litter tray as Des grabbed his old satchel and threw a few clothes and toiletries into it.

And here they were in a great yellow flower of summer heat on the open road, with the strobe of the sun blatting through the high trees, and Lionel coldly masterful at the wheel, using the three lanes at a velocity that was all his own, like a jogger weaving through a street full of decrepit pedestrians … He forwent the use of the potent horn — relying, rather, on the kliegs of the headlights.

‘You ever been on a plane?’

‘Yeah.’ Whether speeding up or slowing down, the machine glided through its gradations with seamless surety, as if wired to the road. ‘Yeah. I did the Cumbria Cannibal. And that torturing nanny in Newcastle. The one with the tongs.’

‘You should stick to them, Des,’ said Lionel, using the breakdown lane to overtake a pantechnicon. ‘Stick to them fucking psychos. And lay off the blokes who’re just uh, just trying to earn a …’ They mounted the ramp to Long Term Parking. ‘Earn a decent crust.’

Des said, ‘I suppose we don’t know how long we’ll be gone.’

‘Back Saturday night. If she’s prompt. They got the undertaker lined up. And the vicar or whatever the fuck he is.’

They dropped down from the car and assumed the standard modern posture — faces steeply inclined over consoles held at waist height.

Lionel straightened up and said, ‘Well she’s still here. Thready pulse. Hanging on.’

Des straightened up and said, ‘Dawn sends her love. And she’ll manage Jak and Jek … Cilla’s always asking for them. She keeps saying, Doh. Doh .’

‘I’ll be wanting a word with her later,’ said Lionel, ‘about Jak and Jek.’

They flew to Inverness, and then on to Wick in an open-prop eighteen-seater. As they made their second descent, the tenuous cloud cover was already reintroducing them to the tones of the home — bedding, face powder, antimacassars, spray-thickened mist.

‘I was praying. Praying they wouldn’t get a point! In they whole campaign! … Last day of the season. Upton Park. I’m enjoying me prawn sandwich in the directors’ box. And what happens? They go and hold Liverpool to a goalless draw! It would be the fucking Reds, wouldn’t it. See, I don’t mind the Pool. It’s from all that time up in Kenny. Doing me Yoi.’

At Wick, in the unserious little airport, there was a liveried chauffeur with a handwritten sign: ASBO. Cape Wrath was still ninety-five miles away. In the limousine Des slept … He awoke to the signs for Thurso, Strathy Point, Tongue. On the outskirts of Souness they queued for nearly ten minutes at a roadworks traffic light, and Des saw, through a lattice of saplings to the left, what seemed to be a druidical graveyard. But the tombstones were not tombstones: they were cropped trees, very old, and all caught in different attitudes of huddled infirmity.

‘Yeah, Mum,’ Lionel was muttering to himself. ‘Yeah, you moving house, woman. Change of address. Yeah, it’s the balsa bungalow for you, my girl.’

Rob Dunn Lodge stood under the lee of a hillside on the east wing of Lochinvar Strand. They took possession of the Henryson Suite, where they dropped their bags and washed their faces. Then they were driven up on to Clo Mor Bluff.

The first-storey bay-windowed room, with the sun staring in at it. And seeing what? Seeing the dark screen perched high above the bed, the flashing digits of pulse rate and blood pressure, the metal tree with its fruit of fluid sacs and gadgets that looked like walkie-talkies and adding machines, the plugs and adaptors, the entanglement of wires and tubes. And the wasted woman lying almost flush with the sheets, her face under a mantle of sweat, eyes closed, mouth open. Her son and grandson sat on either side. The first hour was turning into the second.

Breaking a long silence, Lionel said, ‘You see that uh, architect who topped hisself, Des? Sir John someone. His mum pops off and he tops hisself. And everyone goes, Ah, he was depressed, see, because his mum popped off . They always say that — and it’s bollocks. It’s not that he suddenly wanted to. Top hisself. It’s that he suddenly could .’

‘How’s that, Uncle Li?’

‘See, there’s certain things, Des, there’s certain things a man can’t do till his mum pops off.’

Now the second hour was turning into the third. Every twenty minutes or so Lionel sloped out for a smoke. And every twenty minutes or so Mrs Gibbs, all stern and silent, hurried in and checked the valves and the readings. Finding Des alone (it was now gone five), she said without meeting his eye,

‘Your uncle’s going to keep his temper today, I hope. Should’ve heard him the last time. Yelling blue murder. He scared the —’

‘Ah, Mrs G,’ said Lionel as he strolled back into the room, ‘what’s all this then? Taking her time about it, isn’t she? You been slipping her penicillin on the sly?’