Martin Amis - Lionel Asbo

Stripping to his undershorts, he sought out the bare sheet. From the kitchen, her cotside lamp cast a frilly yellow semicircle on Desmond’s wooden floor; and his daughter lay almost within his line of sight. His tiredness, he realised, had a smell: the thick-air smell of ozone and the warmed sea. No, not this wave, that one, yes, that one — that one will carry me ashore.

IN THE DEAD of night he lay dreaming.

He lay dreaming, not of a ladder that rose up to heaven … He lay dreaming of a chamber of varnished pine and white marble and boiling mist where he sat with his mother’s brother and six or seven ginger dogs and piebald foxes, some of which were stuffed (by the taxidermist, Mr Man). He and his uncle were engaged in invisible and mysterious exertions, but there was nothing to breathe and nothing to breathe it with. So he awoke.

… ‘Ah. Here we are,’ he said, and moistened his tongue. His mouth was working (he could hear it click and scrape), and yet his eyes were gummed shut. He raised a reluctant hand and freed his dried lids. The air around him was as black as liquorice.

Someone or something had closed his bedroom door.

Through various thicknesses a muffled but complex sound now chose to present itself for his consideration. A solid thud, followed by two further and fainter impacts, the crackle of basketry and a pneumatic sigh, then the desperate snorting and scrambling of muscular beasts.

Time now slowed. It would in fact take him precisely 2.05 seconds to get from his bed to his destiny. But it seemed longer than that to Desmond Pepperdine.

0.10 seconds. His legs did it. With one arching bicycle kick he was out and upright on the mat. The plywood door had swelled in the heat, as if its glue had wept and oozed, and precious, priceless milliseconds were lost while he tugged on the handle and tugged again.

0.50 seconds. The kitchen door was also shut. He could clearly — and, it seemed, slowly — hear the snuffling, the rootling, the low growling, the slobbering. An entire centisecond passed by as he tried to identify the strange animal in the passage. Was it a porcupine? No. It was the cat. Between one tug and the other on the sticky handle he had time to feel the unearthly size of the quivering deep-sea wave he would now have to pass through. He stepped into it.

1.45 seconds. He threw on the light and in a voice hugely amplified by the chemicals in his brain he shouted out something — an ancient howl. He stared into the rustling, tinkering neon tubes as the deep-sea wave swept by him, and he listened to the click of canine nails on the sanded boards.

2.05 seconds. He looked down. The trestle table lay on its side, the empty basket had tumbled to a halt, four feet away, and now leaned, still swaying, against the leg of a kitchen chair. He fell on his hands and knees and scrabbled about like a beast himself.

The electric fan continued to patrol its space.

There was no blood, and no baby.

Tuesday

Kee you, kee you, kee you. Wicky wicky, wicky wicky. Zhe-zhe diddum eet. View-cha view-cha view-cha. Payee, payee. Tuseetz, tuseetz. Kee you, kee you, kee you. Wicky wicky. Wicky wicky …

The two great drapes, the two giant strips of bulging black velvet, remained tightly drawn, but you could hear, outside, the multitudinous chaos — the rasps and ricochets — of enraptured birdsong. In the expanse of the four-poster a contorted figure gasped and stretched.

‘Mao!’ it seemed to shout. ‘ Mao! … Jesus Christ. MAO! ’

Mal MacManaman opened the door a crack. ‘Yes, boss.’

‘Go and tell them fucking birds to shut they — don’t shine that bleeding light in me eyes! ’

Mal’s shape withdrew for a moment, and then more vaguely reappeared. ‘You called, boss.’

‘Mal. Mal, mate. I’m dying.’

‘… Should I get Sir Anthony, boss? Put you back on the oxygen. And the dialysis.’

‘I’ll give you fucking dialysis … Oh, Mal, heal me, mate. Heal me.’

‘… What can I say, boss? All the cures are old wives’ tales. I was looking online. The Romans tried owls’ eggs. And fried canary.’

‘Fried canary?’

‘In Iceland they eat rotten shark. Keep a rotten shark on the balcony.’

‘Where’m I going to find a fucking rotten shark? See this pillow? Go on — put me out of me misery. I won’t struggle.’

‘Sorry, boss, but what you need’s a drink. You’re in withdrawal. It’s your only hope, boss. Hair of the dog.’

‘… Say that one more time and I’m sacking yer. Hair of the dog . Say that one more time and you sacked.’

‘Some morphine, boss.’

‘Yeah. Go on then. Just a drop. Like a pub treble … You know, Mal, I reckon she poisoned me. That sort up in Scotland — she poisoned me … No. No. Bollocks. This is Lionel Asbo, this is. This is down to Lionel Asbo. I don’t need a doc . I need a priest! A uh, a fucking exorcist is what I need … Mal. Is he coming?’

‘Yeah, boss. He’s coming.’

HIS FELLOW PASSENGERS saw nothing unusual about the young man on the train. He was six foot one, and of mixed race; he wore black chinos and a white shirt; he wasn’t reading, he wasn’t looking out of the window at the streaming, bending, leaning English countryside. His face was without expression. But there was apparently nothing unusual about him.

The shrunken old lady seated at his side was methodically reading the Sun . Gunman Nicked by Grappling Grandad. I Murdered Down’s Baby — Mum. Duane Went Berserk When Wife Cried ‘Harder, Chris!’. Dear Daphne. I had fling with banker but he lost interest. Trapped in a man’s body. Hubby’s six-year cybersex with my best pal. Dear Daphne, I’m having an affair with an older woman. She’s a lady of some sophistication, and makes a refreshing change from the …

Wheezing, slowing, the three-carriage train felt its way into the station called Short Crendon. A recorded voice told our young traveller to collect all his belongings and to mind the gap. He got out and walked through the suspended village.

At the house he crossed the deserted picket line, pressed the buzzer, and announced himself. He was told to wait. After three or four minutes, the tuxedoed butler and a plainclothes security man were making their way down the drive. The electrified gates opened up and let him in.

‘Mr Asbo is slightly indisposed,’ said Carmody as they passed the Bentley ‘Aurora’ and the Venganza and approached the front door. ‘May I offer you some sustenance, sir, while you wait? The other visitors are enjoying a selection of beverages and a cold collation. Mr Asbo does know you’re here.’

Three knights in armour gazed out mournfully at the round table, at the high-winged saddles of the chairs, at the steel chandelier, many-bladed, like a medieval propeller. The dining hall contained eight people, including Desmond Pepperdine.

‘I’m owed,’ ‘Threnody’ was saying. She replenished her glass of white wine. ‘I’m due. It’s only right. I’m owed.’

‘But surely this won’t affect sales,’ enthused Jack Firth-Heatherington. ‘To the contrary, I’d have thought … I suppose it’s too late to relaunch it with a different title?’

‘As it is I’ll be a laughing stock, won’t I.’ She had a slim paperback in front of her, face down. Two other volumes were on display, standing upright, as on a table in a bookstore: My Love for Azwat and Reaching Out to Fernando . By ‘Threnody’. She said, ‘Danube’ll be pissing herself.’

Seeking confirmation, she turned to the youngish man on her left. His colouring was Levantine: this was presumably Raoul. He removed his toothpick and said (pronouncing the i -sound as an ee ),