Lionel Asbo: State of England (35 page)

In a brief statement (prior to going on the road with her story) ‘Threnody’ said,
I wasn’t able to succour him. Nor he I. It’s tragic. Because I still love the guy to death
.

Death was awake, death was going about its business (in the Northern Lights, in Diston General), but during this time there was only one proximate casualty: Joy Nightingale. Joy – Ernest’s widow, Rory’s mother.

Des saw the notice in the
Diston Gazette
. He was having one of his days with Cilla, so he strapped her to his chest and they took the bus to the cemetery beyond Steep Slope. Yews and apple blossom against a middle distance of breezy sports-fields and pennanted pavilions, the lay churchwarden, the little group of friends and neighbours guardedly blowing their noses and clearing their throats … It was the kind of funeral where a mound of sand abuts the grave and where the mourners themselves begin the work of burial, throwing in their handfuls over the sunken casket. His turn came. As Des bent forward Cilla too reached into the pyramid of orange grit, and looked stern as she released her share through splayed and stiffened fingers.

The summers of 2012 and 2013 came early, but the winter in between was petrifyingly cold.

Part Four

2013: Who? Who?

The Week Before

‘… EH, ARE YOU all right? What’s wrong with you voice?’

‘No, I’m coming down with something. I just told them. I’m going home sick. I’m dropping.’

‘Yeah? Well hear this, Des. Half an hour ago. I’m lying in bed. The phone rings. Gina picks up – and starts having a little chat.
How are you, love?
All this.
Oh, Marlon’s fine. Want a word with him? You coping with the weather?
All this. Then she hands me the phone and says,
It’s you mum
!’

Des raised a hand to his brow. ‘Grace?’

‘Grace. I felt this tingle go up me spine. Like she returned from the dead …
Lionel? Listen, love. The end is near. Come and see you mother, love. We need to talk. Come and see you mother
.’

‘She said it like that?’

‘She said it like that. Haven’t heard her talk proper English for what? Five years?
I’ve got something on me conscience, Lionel. And I ain’t got long now. Come and see you mother, love
.’

‘ … So you’re going up there?’

‘Well I can’t get out of it, can I. What you reckon’s bothering the old …? Rory Nightingale? Here, who’s that nurse? The boiler with the white hair and the big tits.’

‘Mrs Gibbs.’

‘Mrs Gibbs. I had a word with Mrs Gibbs. Says she’s seen it a thousand times. They get like that – you know, just before they pop off. Lucid. And they want – they want forgiveness.’

On the stairs Des paused to catch his breath, and he looked down through the window (as he often did) at the little skulk of foxes on the corrugated tin roof in the alley beneath Avalon Tower. One was curling up into a whorl of off-white and ginger, one was slowly stretching its rigid back legs. They peered this way and that with their usual scrawny apprehensiveness. Did it ever lift, their fear? In all weathers they seemed to shiver.

‘Ooh,
Des
… Okay, that’s it. I’m not going.’

‘No, go. Maybe it’ll pass,’ he said faintly. Dawn was off to Diston General – to be with her mother. ‘Don’t be long. And don’t look so hopeful, Dawnie. What’re you hoping for anyway?’

‘
You
know. I want his blessing. His blessing and his goodbye.’

‘Horace’s blessing? Well good luck, Dawnie. And give my love to Pru.’

… Cilla was asleep in the basket on her free-standing perch. And for once he was hoping that she wouldn’t wake up. His main symptom was a feeling of helpless stupefaction – and the child, the four-limbed figure in its Babygro, looked forbiddingly complicated and mysterious: how to wield her, wash her, feed her? How to do all that, above all, without smearing her with his emanations, his moist whisper, his sickening breath? … He sank down on the couch. Goldie prowled towards him. She was four, but she still looked liquid in movement, and as light as air when she jumped, and it always surprised you – the weight of her when she landed on your lap. He reached out.

The cat sniffed his fingernails, gave a sneezelike snarl, and tore from the room.

Then Des knew he had it.

‘UVI.’

‘UVI. What’s that then?’

‘Urban Vulpine Influenza,’ said Des. ‘You know, the fox flu.’ The fox flu: popularly referred to as
breakbone
– and also as
fascist fever
, because UVI showed a shameless preference for people of colour. ‘Can last a month. You get six weeks off. Automatic. Which is scary in itself. Comes in waves.’

Lionel smiled and said, ‘The fox flu. That’s old Horace, that is. Sending you his lurgy. You possessed by Horace. Seriously though, Des. You want to watch that with the baby. Her being half black and all.’

‘Yeah. They say you’re only infectious before and after. Not during … Jesus.’

‘Don’t worry, Des. You come to the right place.’

They were in the Spa Bar at the Pantheon Grand … Lionel had spent three nights up in Cape Wrath. From his taxiing aircraft, at City Airport, he summoned his nephew to what he called a
family meet
. He sent a car. Des found Lionel at his ease against a background of bamboo and marble, with his feet up on an embroidered pouffe, scanning the
Financial Times
and drinking a tawny liquid from a fluted glass.

‘Uh – uh, Geoffrey? I’ll have the same again. Gin and carrot. And give the boy here a treble Bloody Mary. With masses of spice.’

‘My pleasure, Mr Asbo.’

‘No, Des, it’s the only answer. We’ll get that down you, and then we’ll do some weights. Have a rub and a sauna. Sweat it out. It’s the only cure.’

… Now they lay side by side on black leather benches. Lionel was pressing a hundred kilos. Des was doing what he could with fifty-five.

‘Arch you back a bit. Oy! Lock you elbows on the upthrust! … She was transformed, Des. Grace. She was sitting up and talking to me. To me. Not the wall. Not the lightbulb. Me. Her lastborn son. And guess what. Just so you know me state of mind when I come in the room … Well, I suppose it’s only natural. The old niggles just melted away and I felt all – I felt all
sad
, Des. All melancholy. Okay. She had her faults, Grace. But she did her best. Okay. She could be a bit wild. Like
your
mum. But she did her best … And she said, she said,
I’ve got something on me conscience, dear
. And she looked away. And a tear rolled down her cheek. I said,
Come on, Mum. You can tell
me,
for goodness’ sake! Come on, Mum. What is it?
And she says …’

Desmond went still.

‘She says …’ Lionel, too, went still. ‘Oy. Keep you rhythm there. She says … Daddy
Dom
. Daddy Dom. She reckons she should’ve made a proper go of it with Daddy Dom. Instead of messing around with all them foreign blokes.
A proper family
, she says.
Just me and Dom, and you and you sister. I
humbled
you, Lionel, from the day you was born. With them brothers all shapes and sizes. Can you ever forgive me?
… Okay. Two hundred more and then we’ll do the squats and the deadlifts.’

… Now they were chin-deep in the frothing jacuzzi.

‘I said,
Ah, love. This is no time for hard feelings! For rancour! The past is past. And, Mum – look at me now! … I’m a wealthy businessman. The people of this country have taken me to they hearts. No, you boy’s at peace with the world. Rest, Mum, rest. You had it hard too, don’t forget. Seven kids
. And I told her something I remembered from Sunday school. I said,
God can’t be everywhere at once. So he sends us mums
… A nice touch, don’t you think Des?
Rest, Grace, rest!
Okay. Sauna.’

… Now they sat on slatted wooden stools with plump white towels round their waists. It seemed to the younger man that the air was not unbreathably hot – it was just unbreathably thick.

‘So you were up there three nights, Uncle Li.’

‘Yeah. At the hotel. Got distracted. With a DILF. Jesus, is that you teeth chattering? Des, look at yer. Sweating and shivering at the same time! Stay clear of the baby, Des … Where’s she sleep anyway? In the kitchen?’

‘Yeah. You’ve seen her. In her basket on the trestle table.’

‘You ever have her in with you at all?’

‘No. Never.’ Des effortfully explained. ‘Dawn’s cousin. Marigold. She lost a youth that way. Crushed it by accident.’

‘What you do for ventilation? In these temperatures.’

‘There’s the fan. And we keep the balcony door back. And sometimes we open the window in your room, Uncle Li. Just for the flow.’

‘… You know, Des, I been thinking. When you uh, when you gran passes away, it’ll be the end of an era. How about I get a flat – at the Tower. And the baby’ll have her own nursery!’

‘Well, that’d be massive, Uncle Li.’

‘And I’ll go on uh, defraying you rent.’

‘Uncle Li … You’ll still look in on us, I hope?’

‘Course I will,’ said Lionel, slapping his knees and getting to his feet. ‘Course.’

They then submitted to the expert cruelty of the masseur.

… In one of the ground-floor lounges Des looked on with a glass of water (even water tasted foul) as Lionel quietly consumed, in its entirety, the Restoration Tea for Two – crust-less egg-and-cress sandwiches, buttermilk scones with strawberry jam and clotted cream, apricot tarts, and sherry trifle, washed down with four or five tankards of Black Velvet … Des was not alert that afternoon. Had he been, then certain aspects of the Asbo performance might have struck him. The elevations – of appetite, vocabulary, sentiment. But Des was not alert that afternoon.

‘I still keep me penthouse at the South Central,’ Lionel was saying as he finished up. ‘But it’s getting ridiculous. There’s a prank fire alarm almost every fucking night. And we all milling around the foyer in our bathrobes.’ He glanced over his shoulder. ‘The Pantheon’s got other strengths. Good order, Des. Good order and restraint.’

… Bouncing his lighter in his palm, Lionel led the way out into the squarelike street or streetlike square that served as the hotel forecourt, with its doormen, its question-mark lamp posts, its dedicated taxi rank. Desmond’s courtesy car stood by.

‘You know,’ said Lionel with a rueful compression of his nose, ‘I couldn’t help having a little tease of her before I went. I said,
Remember the schoolboy, Mum? In his purple Squeers’ blazer?
But she couldn’t remember that of course. Went blank. I said,
You want something on you conscience, Mum? How about the schoolboy?
I was smiling, mind – just having her on.
Yeah, Mum. You sealed his fate as sure as you slung the noose youself. Messing about with a
school
boy
… Went blank. Vacant. Started babbling again. In her funny language. So I just tiptoed out the door … Mrs Gibbs says she’s clammed up now – turned her face to the wall. You gran’s got pneumonia, Des. The sacs of her lungs, they filling with pus. Her whole body’s rotting. Here. You car.’

Des said, ‘Pneumonia. The old man’s friend.’

‘They’ll treat it. Antibiotics. But when it comes back – nah. Let nature take its course … I’ll be phoning in. And keep a bag packed. We’ll want to be there when she goes. Watch you UVI, Des. Don’t be spreading it. Spare a thought for the baby.’

Grace was giving up the ghost in the home on Cape Wrath, and Horace was noisily and smellily pegging out in the terminal ward at Diston General (with his daughter confined to the far side of the smeared screen), and Des, in Avalon Tower, was also dying – dying of insanity. His mind was the mind of a London fox:
Vulpes vulpes
in the great world city.

All day, all night (what was the difference?), eyes open, eyes shut (what was the difference?), Des attended the cinema of the insane. In beady pulses and thudding flashes he rehearsed what he supposed were essentially vulpine themes and arguments to do with anxiety, hunger, and shelterlessness, refracted through an urban setting of asphalt and metal, of rubber and cellophane and shattered plexiglas. It was the longest motion picture of all time; and his attention never strayed. The definition was as sharp as a serpent’s tooth. The lighting was indecently and lawlessly lurid. The dialogue (sometimes dubbed) and the voiceover and the occasional subtitles were all in the language of Grace.

‘That was him again. No news.’

‘… Wait. Dawn, wait. Get Cilla. Don’t bring her in. Show her to me. You know, I think it’s going. I think I’m coming back.’