Martin Amis - Lionel Asbo

The dessert trolley, the cheeseboard, the third bottle of claret. Then nuts and tangerines. Then coffee and, for Lionel, a selection of the choicest liqueurs. It was gone ten-thirty when Des felt the hum of his phone. He went out into the passage with it.

‘We’re asphyxiating here,’ she said. ‘It’s not that hot but I can’t get an airflow. I went to open the window in Lionel’s room. And it’s locked!’

‘Locked?’ He thought for a moment (this had happened once or twice before). ‘Well do the usual anyway.’ Which meant standing with a flapping towel by the open front door for fifteen minutes before bedtime. ‘That’ll move it a bit. Then train the fan on her. And don’t open the glass door, okay? … I know … I know. But not even a hair’s breadth. Latch down . All right? How’s Cilla?’

‘Cilla’s Cilla. She’s great. Have you noticed, Des, when she smiles, it comes to her eyes first. Before her lips. And her eyes just beam .’

‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘Straight to the eyes. Light speed. And they just beam at you.’

In the interim Lionel’s ladyfriend had been prevailed upon to pull up a chair. She was an expressionless, blue-veined, porcelain beauty, with a beige smudge on the orbit of her left eye. A presence from the silent screen (an imperilled heroine, perhaps). Or so it kept on seeming to Des, because nobody spoke. The turbid atmosphere was incomprehensible to him, and he soon pleaded tiredness and said his goodnights.

It was getting on for eleven o’clock.

He took a shower, and then settled on the window seat in the smaller of the two bedrooms. You know I’m happy , Dawn had told him, in the dark, not long ago. But it’s as if I can’t … There’s this waiting feeling. Waiting for Dad. A waiting feeling. When’s the train coming? When’s the train going? I’ve had it for four years. Like a clenched fist in my stomach. You don’t know what that’s like . But he did know. He knew the clenched fist of care; and now, within him, these tight fingers were easing free.

That morning on the open road he had felt it — the limitless talent of the world. And here, under a powerful moon (just one size short of full), the restless ocean pitched and yawed, the slow churn of its facets, each of them vying to get a share of creamy light — the motion magma, the rolling mirrorball of the sea.

Des tensed and listened: the slammed door, an anarchical yawn, the words Not best pleased , spoken with dry deliberation. A minute of thickly carpeted silence, and then the crash of the upended minibar …

On the far promontory the lighthouse loyally pulsed. And it reminded Des of something. What? It wasn’t a visual memory. No, it was auditory (and the tempo was quite different). That throbbing glow reminded him of the most courageous sound he had ever heard: the (amplified) beating of his unborn daughter’s heart.

He humbly took delivery of this memory. The thought of Cilla made it clear: it was him, Desmond Pepperdine, that all this was happening to. Him, and not somebody else. Here he was, in health, among the abnormally alive, and looking out over the talented water.

‘HELLO? … HELLO?’

Was it a bad line or a wavering signal or a skewed satellite? All he could hear was a howl. A howl, with a tinny edge to it. This resolved itself, after a splutter, into his wife’s trembling voice.

‘Des. Oh Des. Words can’t … I’m …’

But she talked on, and by now he was out of bed, and drawing the curtains, and plugging in the kettle for his tea. ‘I’m happy for you, Dawnie,’ he muttered, nodding his head with a look of inanity in his eyes. He was fielding all his usual thoughts. So the old supremacist (and emeritus traffic warden), in the wisdom of his last hours, had finally yielded. Four years of ostracism: as Horace himself might put it, this was deemed to suffice. ‘I’m glad for you, Dawn. And I’m glad for me.’

‘It’ll have to be tonight.’

‘… You’re not taking Cilla to Diston General.’

‘Of course I’m not. But Des, you see what I’m saying. It has to be tonight. He’s fading, Desi. And Mum says Saturday’s when they go round with the methadone. On Saturdays they go round killing them with the methadone!’

Lionel came into the dining room just as the kitchens were closing.

‘Uh, Uncle Li. There’s been a development. Dawn’s dad’s —’

‘Too right there’s been a development. Gina. Yeah, mate, she’s been done. Acid. Jupes Lanes.’ Now Lionel turned to the menu and attentively ordered the Full Caledonian Breakfast. ‘But none of you Aberdeen blood pudding,’ he told the grizzled waiter, who took note. ‘And none of you uh, none of you fucking Orkney kippers. Just the English bit … Yeah. Jupes Lanes. Broad daylight. Seen what it does — acid?’

Des tried to feel sceptical (how true was this?). But for twenty years he had been a fully conscious resident of Diston Town, where calamity made its rounds like a postman. Gina, he thought — with that smile, those eyes. He took a mouthful of cold coffee and let it drip back into the cup through his teeth.

‘Makes the face look twisted. Stretched … A Moroccan-type bloke did it. Yeah. Sped past on a bike in his white robes. Here. Have that . Did it J-cloth style, see. See, Gina’s jouncing around in her halftop and tutu. Cover youself up! Whore! Oh yeah,’ said Lionel, nodding. ‘Bollocks. Knickers! It’s Mar lon. Courtesy of Marlon … Can’t say I blame him, mind. But Gina. Ah, lovely.’

Lionel looked down fondly at the shieldlike plate and all it contained: farm-fresh poached eggs, Grampian sausages, cured bacon rashers, heirloom tomatoes, Strathclyde field mushrooms, rough-hewn hash browns, artisanal baked beans, and Highland fried bread.

Strenuously chewing, Lionel continued, ‘But he’s gone and shot hisself in the foot, hasn’t he. Marlon’s gone and killed the goose that laid the golden … Because I won’t be going near her now, will I,’ he said, assembling his next mouthful, ‘with her clock in that state.’

‘Uh, Uncle Li. Dawn’s dad’s —’

‘Oh yeah. You was saying.’

‘Dawn’s dad’s —’

‘That’s right, Des. You were saying. Speak you mind, Des, speak you mind.’

Lionel sauntered out with him to have a smoke while they waited for the car. He had his phone in his palm and was monitoring its screen. He said,

‘Ah. She’s having second thoughts. Me DILF’s having second thoughts. Look at that. She’s taking her two lads to they fencing lesson. Imagine having her for a mum. And not some old fuckbag like … The first time, Des, the first time she comes up and she goes, You not the Devil .’ He took the cigar out of his mouth and examined its tip. ‘ The Devil’s a gentleman. Can you remember you room number, you fucking moron? ’

Beyond, under a mixed sky, the sea still basked and sprawled, with smiling foam. Yet the clouds were regretfully rearranging themselves and now held queries of grey.

‘Last night she goes, Boys like you. They never change because they never learn. They never learn …’ He flexed his left hand. ‘You know, Des, sometimes I scare me own self. My own self,’ he said, stepping back with a bow as the car made its circle in the drive.

Desmond travelled. To Wick, to Inverness, to Stansted, to Liverpool Street, to Diston North. Along the way, in a Christian spirit, he endeavoured to improve his opinion of Horace Sheringham (this was not a success). Later, as he dozed on the second flight, he kept replaying it in his mind: the ancient waiter refilling the water glasses, the two flies playing leapfrog on the window pane, the sunderings of the surf, Lionel’s jaws freezing in mid mouthful and then his categorical scowl …