Martin Amis - Lionel Asbo

‘Stop laughing like that! How many Dubonnets’ve you had?’

‘Now you stay just where you are, young sir.’

‘No, Grace … Well get a pillow then. In case you groan. And put the Beatles up!’

Later, as she smoked a thickly appreciated Silk Cut, Grace said mysteriously (and she would not enlarge on it), ‘Oh, Des, you’re gorgeous. But the trouble is … The trouble is, love, you’ve been giving me ideas!’

ANOTHER WEEK PASSED. Then it all came to a head — on a day of three-ply horror for Desmond Pepperdine.

Another week passed, and by now Des had more or less given up on Daphne, on Daphne and her counsel. And yet there it was, in the Sun on Saturday (on Saturdays Daphne commanded a two-page spread). All the other letters bore headlines (I Feel Like a Tart As I Can’t Stop Bedding Strangers, Trapped in a Man’s Body, I Want to Wed My Dead Hubbie’s Dad, Heartbreak at Text Cheat, Grief Over Mum Won’t Lift); but Des’s plea was untitled, and appeared in the bottom left-hand corner against a funereal background of dark grey.

Dear Daphne, I’m a young man from Kensington in Liverpool, and I’ve been having sexual relations with my grandmother. Could you explain the legal situation?

DAPHNE SAYS: This must end at once! You are both committing statutory rape, and could face a custodial sentence. Write again urgently with a PO address, and I will send you my leaflet , Intrafamilial Sexual Abuse and the Law.

Des spent the rest of the day on Steep Slope, stumbling from bench to bench. He could hear the brittle fairground music swirling up from Happy Valley; and the air was dotted with spores of moisture that couldn’t quite become rain. Something dark seemed to be growing bigger on the other side of the rise.

* * *

At seven o’clock Lionel shouldered his way into the kitchen with a great load of dog gear in his arms. He halted and his head jerked back.

‘… The tank’s open.’

‘Yeah, I tried it,’ said Des quietly, ‘and the lid just came up. But now it won’t shut.’

‘There you are then.’ With a crash Lionel dropped the tangled mass on to the counter — lunge poles, break sticks, and four thick leather collars with pyramidal steel spikes. ‘You been sitting on it.’

Des’s brow never rippled when he frowned, but tonight his eyes felt (and looked) very close together, like a levelled figure eight. He now saw that Lionel had a newspaper in his sweatpants pocket: not the Morning Lark , not the Diston Gazette (also a red-top tabloid) — but the Sun !

Lionel uncapped a Cobra three inches from Des’s left ear, saying,

‘Dire news about you gran.’

His voice cracked as he whispered, ‘Oh yeah, Uncle Li?’

‘The plot thickens … I had another talk with old Dud. It’s not only groans, Des.’

‘Uh, what else?’

‘Giggles. Giggles. So it’s not pain , is it. It’s not pain . And you know what else?’

Des was scratching his chest with both sets of fingernails.

‘She’s started turning the music up loud! … Tuesday night Dud said he heard giggles. Then the music went up. And that ain’t the clincher.’ He stuck his tongue out and removed a hair from it. ‘You won’t believe this, Des, but the old …’

Lionel fell silent. He went to the glass door, pulled back the curtain, and gazed down at Jeff and Joe; they lay there side by side, humped in sleep.

‘I placed a bet today,’ he said in a surprised voice. ‘See for youself.’ And with a flourish he produced his newspaper and fanned it out on the table.

‘Reading the Sun now are we?’

‘Yeah. Gone uh, gone boffin for the day.’ A new beer can sneezed. ‘No, Des, Page Three Playoffs. And I’ve put money on Julietta. See, she reminds me of someone … I’m not a gambler, Des. Never was. I leave that to fucking Marlon.’

The odds on the gypsyish Julietta were duly noted and briefly discussed. Lionel turned the page, moving on to the Sun ’s TV Guide. Again he turned the page: Dear Daphne!

‘ I Feel Like a Tart As I Can’t Stop Bedding Strangers .’ Lionel read on (with his lips slowly shaping the words). ‘Well you are a tart, darling. Get on with it … Here, Des. Daphne reckons — Daphne reckons that a bloke dressing up as a bird is uh, is an attempt to create a marriage of one … Can a widow get hitched to her father-in-law? … Here. Here Des. There’s this lad from Liverpool … ‘

And Des gave thanks to the half-forgotten dream or dread that had prompted the stuff about Liverpool and Kensington. How was it he knew about Kensington and ‘Kenny’?

‘Gaw. This dirty little Scouse git’s been giving his nan one! His own nan … Funny old world, eh Des?’

Des nodded and coughed.

‘… Yeah, too right, Daph. Custodial sentence. Definitely. Où , they’ll love him inside. You know what they’ll do to him, Des? When he goes away?’

‘No. What’ll they do?’

‘Well. First they’ll fuck his arse off. Then they’ll slash his throat in the showers. They got nans too mate! … Kensington. “Kenny” — that’s where I did me Yoi!’

The room quietened and stilled as a passing cloud lent it the colour of slate.

‘Mum’s visitor, Des. He comes in, he goes out. Just as he pleases. He comes in, he goes out.’

And Des felt obscurely moved to say, ‘Half the time it’s probably just me, Uncle Li. I’m always in and out.’

Lionel detonated another Cobra. ‘You? Oh, sure. Listen. When you go calling on Grace, Des, is it you habit … Is it you habit to come in whistling at half past midnight? And go out whistling at ten? After another quickie and you English breakfast?’

She came hurrying down Crimple Way, quicker, busier, head tipped forward but chin outthrust, she’d had her hair shaped and trimmed and tinted, she wore a red sweater and a tight trouser suit of metallic grey. The gripped thinness of her mouth and the scissors of her legs were asserting something — asserting her determination to thrive. And she looked younger, he thought (he was leaning on her gate); but now, as she crossed the road, every six feet she got six years older.

‘Des,’ said Grace quietly as she moved past him. ‘Well come in, love, but you won’t want to stay.’

She laid out the shopping on the kitchenette counter: bread, eggs, tomatoes, a packet of bacon, a tin of baked beans (and her Silk Cut and a fresh bottle of Dubonnet). She was eyeing his reflection in the window above the sink.

‘What’s going on, Grace?’

‘Don’t say another word, dear. Everything’s as it should be.’

‘No, Grace,’ he said with his pleading frown, ‘everything’s changed. Lionel — he’s got old Dud with his ear jammed up against the wall!’

‘Lionel? Bugger Lionel. Listen. I’ll be forty any minute and all right I’m past it — yeah, past caring! … Ah, Des. I’ve got something to tell you, dear. I’ve got something to tell you.’

Outside, it had rained and grown dark under a lilac sky, and a film of water swam on the flagstones. Orange blotches of mirrored streetlight kept pace with him as he walked down Crimple Way. The awe of his relief was sumptuous, hallucinatory … Des Pepperdine was fifteen years old. And he supposed it was a good thing to get this learned early on. Now he bowed and threw his head back and almost laughed as he consented to the Distonic logic of it.

It’s better this way, Des. You can start calling me Gran again. You and me, we’ll just go back to how we were before. And no one’ll be any the wiser. It’s better this way .

It is. It is. But Gran . Think. He’s on to you and your new friend. Uncle Li knows!