Martin Amis - Lionel Asbo

Two butterflies whipped past, doubled back, hovered for several seconds as if to check, then whipped away again. And an ancient Labrador, with a glossy copper coat and three different limps (and a patient young mistress in white bobby socks), also assessed the young man on the bench, smiling wisely with liquid eyes.

…He awoke from a near-dreamless sleep to find himself already well within the great world city. His train moved with due caution, past white cabins of electric circuitry, past warehouses pitted with glassless windows, past screeds of uniformly corpulent and cryptic graffiti. He stayed on board till the cleaning crew had come and gone. New travellers were taking their seats as he walked down the platform through ladders of evening light.

‘WE’RE HOME!’

She had her new keys in one hand and the shaft of the portable rocker in the other — where Cilla sat, curved in sleep. Dawn listened. From the direction of the master bedroom came a mechanical snivel, nagging, grinding. She opened the door: Des was within, innocently shirtless and down on his knees with a power sander. He looked up.

‘Don’t bring her in here, Dawnie! Put her in the passage!’ He flicked a switch. ‘The dust.’

‘… What’s all this then?’

‘It’s our room now. He isn’t coming back. I went up there yesterday.’

‘You didn’t tell me.’

‘Yeah, I sorted it out with him. He isn’t coming back.’

Lionel’s bed was stripped; in the corner there was a gathered heap of sweatsuits and trainers — a buckled can of Cobra, a steel leash, a few greying copies of the Morning Lark . Still on his knees, Des said,

‘Well you don’t look like someone who’s just been to a funeral.’

She stepped lightly forward to the wide-open window; she looked out, and for a moment a shrill breeze lifted her hair from her shoulders. Smiling open-mouthed, she put her hands on the sill and crooked her right leg behind her left, shin against calf. He said,

‘More like a wedding. Or a christening … I’m sorry he’s gone, Dawnie. Horace, he was all right. He was a great man in his way.’

‘Come on, Des. Don’t take the piss.’

‘I’m not. He relented. That isn’t easy. He did relent. Because if he hadn’t …’

Because if he hadn’t, Dawnie, if he hadn’t, my love, (such was the depth, and pliancy, of the premeditation) then it would’ve been you, and not me, who was here on Friday night, when someone let the dogs in … Who let the dogs in? Was it Marlon Welkway, was it Lionel Asbo, was it Desmond Pepperdine?

‘That’s not easy,’ he said. ‘To relent. That’s hard to do.’

‘Yes it is … You know, I’m sad at the minute, but I’ll be happy now. Just wait and see. And how are you my darling?’

‘Uh, still fluey. Bit better. Not sure.’

‘Mm, you’ve lost a couple, but you look good, Des. You haven’t got a build. You’ve got a tone. You look fit. How was your Uncle Lionel?’

‘Same old Uncle Li. Mean Mr Mustard.’

‘Did you pick up your bathers?’

‘My …? No. No, I didn’t pick up my bathers. He’s going away, Dawnie.’

‘Is he? What’s he gone and done now?’

‘Tell you later. He isn’t coming back.’

‘Huh. So no more Lionel. No more Dad. They’re the ones you and I … Lionel, Horace. And your gran in a way I suppose. Grace. They’re the ones we couldn’t help having feeling for.’ Her chest filled and her eyes freshened. ‘Well they’re gone. And so it’s just the three of us.’

Des gave no answer. And now Cilla announced that she was awake, awake and of the company. She did this, as always, not with tears but with song. They thought she must be singing in imitation of the birds — the birds you could still sometimes hear, up on the thirty-third floor, so high above Diston Town.

Dawn backed into the passage. ‘We’ve got to have a second, Desi.’

‘Got to. No choice.’

‘Pro bono publico.’

‘It might be another Cilla.’

‘It might be another Cilla. Say hello then!’

‘Not yet, Dawnie. I need a shower. I’m … I’m covered in grit.’

Raising her voice as she went down the passage she said, ‘I’ll change her. Wash her in the basin. She loves that.’

‘Go on then. I put the kettle on. Just about to make some tea.’

‘Go on then. Ooh, I’d love a cup. I’ll be needing one!’

She paused, and he paused too, and she heard him call out,

‘… I’ll wait!’