Martin Amis - Lionel Asbo

Sorry, Uncle Li, but what else can I do? It’s her last chance. This whole thing’s been killing her for years .

Lionel turned away. He bared his teeth; and his eyes seemed to recalibrate.

Hang on , he said. Hang on. You go back. Dawn goes to her dad .

Yeah. She’ll spend the night with her mum whatever happens .

So it’ll be you and Cilla. Okay. That’ll work … Here. Call the people. They’ll change you flight. Here .

… Well. Say a last goodbye to Grace for me .

No, fair enough. Old Horace is still with us. And what’s a dead body? It’s nothing. It’s rubbish. And we don’t want Dawn to suffer. Heaven forbid. No, Des. You place is at home. You place is with you daughter in the Tower .

The plane roused him. They were skimming earthward through the cover, and the plane roughly shook him awake. Its wings creaked and see-sawed. Its portholes were dense clots of white. And he had never experienced this — the muscular violence that lies coiled in clouds.

At the clinic the doctor had warned him that his UVI, on its way out, would fleetingly refervesce. And Des’s skeleton was making itself known to him all over again as he came up from the underworld and into the streets of Diston: the chassis of his shoulders, his pelvic saddle. The effect was not unpleasant — his bones glowed like wire filaments. And this time round you knew that it would quickly pass, it would pass, the final flurry, the swansong of the city fox.

Going a block or two out of his way, he walked past Gran’s old flat — Gran’s granny flat on the basement floor. Two empty milk bottles gleamed filmily on the doorstep … Put the kettle on, love. Let’s pit our wits against the Cryptic . And she’d light another Silk Cut, to fuel her concentration … An ice-cream van gadded by. Des walked on. Diston air — a mist of grit, the texture of gauze, with motes, blind spots, puckerings, like vaccination scars …

Up in Avalon Tower the front door was open and he could hear the self-sufficient altos of feminine animation, like a distant radio play. The passage leading to the kitchen seemed novel to him, seemed freshly invented, and a modest success, impressive in its order and lucidity. Now the cat collapsed invitingly at his feet … Prunella appeared. The baby was handed over to him — a clean packet containing something even cleaner. He kissed Cilla glancingly and lowered her to the floor. And it wasn’t long before the two women were hurrying purposefully away.

‘I expressed about a gallon,’ said Dawn when they had a quick moment. ‘Guard her with your life.’

‘I will.’

They exchanged three or four of their usual endearments and vows.

He returned to the kitchen and found Cilla trying to crawl towards the dogs. Des had almost forgotten about the dogs. They were out there sleeping through the heat of late afternoon, in the spoons position; Jek had a forepaw up, lightly steadying Jak.

‘I met a man’, said Des, ‘called Mr Man.’ Cilla thought this was very funny. ‘He’s an undertaker. He undertakes to take people under.’ She thought this was very funny too. ‘What’s your name, mister? This mister’s Mr Man.’ So then they had a read of what was still her favourite book: Mr Man .

After putting the kettle on, Des hoisted the corpulent rubbish bag out of the tank (which, these days, was ajar) — and stared at it. Normally he would wait till Cilla was asleep and then fly down to the dustbin bay. Dawn, when in sole charge, did this too: Cilla never minded being alone. But Des knew at once and for a certainty that he couldn’t leave her up here with the dogs. The latch was down, the sliding door was quite secure; but he could never leave her up here with the dogs.

‘Let’s make a shopping trip out of it. Fancy going to the shops?’

Besides, he wanted to buy something: a surgical mask. He was once again infectious, and he was continually aware of it: when he held the baby he found he was always breathing over his shoulder. So out they went into Town, Cilla strapped into her pushchair, with both hands raised and active, greeting every face with her unqualified smile. Passers-by paused and wondered — wondered what they had done to earn such approval, such delight …

They tried three chemists, the household-goods emporium, and, hopelessly, a hardware store. Typical, that. You saw surgical masks, here and there, all over the great world city, but never in Diston. Diston showed no interest in prophylaxis, in preventive care. Diston, with its gravid primary-schoolers and toothless hoodies, its wheezing twenty-year-olds, arthritic thirty-year-olds, crippled forty-year-olds, demented fifty-year-olds, and non-existent sixty-year-olds.

All they bought in the end was a large packet of ibuprofen and a tin of peach mush for Cilla’s tea.

As he warmed her milk on the ring, Des flapped his way through the Evening Standard and came across a noticeably cordial item in the diary about ‘Threnody’ and her new book of verse. These are the poems about my time with Lionel , she said. So the theme is grief. But loss and heartbreak are the very mainsprings of deep emotion. Look at Bishop King and Lord Tennyson. Poetry thrives on such —

The dogs were stirring. They awoke as one being; random limbs disentangled and strained outward; with a trembling yawn Jak rolled over; his tongue uncoiled as if from a spindle and writhed probingly over his brother’s snout … Des stepped forward and gave the lace curtain a tug. He looked round. Installed in her highchair, Cilla was rubbing her eyes with her knuckles — yes, the little creature, this limited operation, this small concern, after sampling its bottle, was breaking up, was closing down, as babies will, every few hours. He prepared a fortress of cushions on the couch, and within seconds she was asleep.

With reluctance Des twitched the curtain and took another look through the glass door. Jek stood in an expectant crouch as Jak climbed up on him with his back legs hideously taut and twanging.

‘ Fuckoff! ’ said Jak.

‘ Fuckoff! ’ said Jek.

At six-thirty Lionel made the first of his two calls.

‘I’ve got her down. Grace. She’s in bungalow number uh, forty-four aitch, Inver St Mary’s. I gave the vicar a few bob and we did it on the quiet. Packed her down this afternoon.’

‘Well, rest in peace, Uncle Li.’

‘… I’m in the car. Trying to get back. Don’t want to stay up here. I’ll get depressed. Wick’s shut.’

‘Yeah?’

‘Yeah. A mist come in off the sea. Visibility reduced to nil. Reckon we’ll drive to Inverness. Hundred and fifty miles. Good road though. Looking into an air taxi. You all right, boy?’

‘Yeah, Uncle Li. Dawn rang. Says it’s going to be a long night.’

‘Fed the dogs yet?’

‘Just about to, Uncle Li.’

‘Don’t forget they Tabasco. All of it.’

He laid out the dripping steaks on two tin dishes. And he readied the chilli-pepper sauce — matured for several years in oak barrels to develop its unique aroma and flavour. A few drops will give your … He took a driblet on his tongue, and could feel the fire and bite of it; but the aftertaste seemed pharmaceutical — evidence, he suspected, of microbial lingering in his craw. It took nearly five minutes, voiding the whole bottle on the bleeding meat. What were the dogs doing here anyway? Oh yeah. Lionel was taking them to Surrey when he got the call. Hare coursing. Plausible, Des supposed: hare coursing was violent and illegal, and you could gamble on it … Michael Gabriel — the Family Butcher. If Lionel got back tonight, would he come for Jak and Jek?

They were lying side by side with their chins on their paws when Des edged out and placed the bowls by the litter tray.