“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 schoolboy … 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 plexiglass. 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.”
It was Wednesday.
Thursday
Just before ten Lionel entered the flat, immense and telekinetic, like a human chariot. And his steeds, in their spiked collars, were Jak and Jek.
Des stood up with a judder of his chair.
“Something happened. In the night. Her signs are going, Desi.” Lionel’s face was raw and pleading. “Her vital signs! Come on, boy. Where’s you bag? God—Christ—come on.”
Fifteen minutes later Des was up in the control tower of the Venganza—bound, at appalling speed, for Stansted Airport.
“They reckon she had another of her strokes. And in her condition … What you grinning at? Today of all days!”
“… It’s just so brilliant to be out. You’re grinning too, Uncle Li.”
“Yeah, well. It’s a relief in a way. No more suspense, eh son?”
That morning Des awoke defervesced, fever-free, and astonished by health—health, that mighty power. He had breakfast with the girls, and saw them off, and made more tea and ate on, all the while refamiliarising himself with reality—in a spirit of ponderous gratitude … Then came Lionel, a gust, a squall, untethering Jak and Jek and booting them out on to the balcony (Call Dawn. The dogs stay here. No choice), unpacking the stiff-sided shopping bag (Michael Gabriel—the Family Butcher), and noisily rootling for the litter tray as Des grabbed his old satchel and threw a few clothes and toiletries into it.
And here they were in a great yellow flower of summer heat on the open road, with the strobe of the sun blatting through the high trees, and Lionel coldly masterful at the wheel, using the three lanes at a velocity that was all his own, like a jogger weaving through a street full of decrepit pedestrians … He forwent the use of the potent horn—relying, rather, on the kliegs of the headlights.
“You ever been on a plane?”
“Yeah.” Whether speeding up or slowing down, the machine glided through its gradations with seamless surety, as if wired to the road. “Yeah. I did the Cumbria Cannibal. And that torturing nanny in Newcastle. The one with the tongs.”
“You should stick to them, Des,” said Lionel, using the breakdown lane to overtake a pantechnicon. “Stick to them fucking psychos. And lay off the blokes who’re just uh, just trying to earn a …” They mounted the ramp to Long Term Parking. “Earn a decent crust.”
Des said, “I suppose we don’t know how long we’ll be gone.”
“Back Saturday night. If she’s prompt. They got the undertaker lined up. And the vicar or whatever the fuck he is.”
They dropped down from the car and assumed the standard modern posture—faces steeply inclined over consoles held at waist height.
Lionel straightened up and said, “Well she’s still here. Thready pulse. Hanging on.”
Des straightened up and said, “Dawn sends her love. And she’ll manage Jak and Jek … Cilla’s always asking for them. She keeps saying, Doh. Doh.”
“I’ll be wanting a word with her later,” said Lionel, “about Jak and Jek.”
They flew to Inverness, and then on to Wick in an open-prop eighteen-seater. As they made their second descent, the tenuous cloud cover was already reintroducing them to the tones of the home—bedding, face powder, antimacassars, spray-thickened mist.
“I was praying. Praying they wouldn’t get a point! In they whole campaign! … Last day of the season. Upton Park. I’m enjoying me prawn sandwich in the directors’ box. And what happens? They go and hold Liverpool to a goalless draw! It would be the fucking Reds, wouldn’t it. See, I don’t mind the Pool. It’s from all that time up in Kenny. Doing me Yoi.”
At Wick, in the unserious little airport, there was a liveried chauffeur with a handwritten sign: ASBO. Cape Wrath was still ninety-five miles away. In the limousine Des slept … He awoke to the signs for Thurso, Strathy Point, Tongue. On the outskirts of Souness they queued for nearly ten minutes at a roadworks traffic light, and Des saw, through a lattice of saplings to the left, what seemed to be a druidical graveyard. But the tombstones were not tombstones: they were cropped trees, very old, and all caught in different attitudes of huddled infirmity.
“Yeah, Mum,” Lionel was muttering to himself. “Yeah, you moving house, woman. Change of address. Yeah, it’s the balsa bungalow for you, my girl.”
Rob Dunn Lodge stood under the lee of a hillside on the east wing of Lochinvar Strand. They took possession of the Henryson Suite, where they dropped their bags and washed their faces. Then they were driven up on to Clo Mor Bluff.
The first-storey bay-windowed room, with the sun staring in at it. And seeing what? Seeing the dark screen perched high above the bed, the flashing digits of pulse rate and blood pressure, the metal tree with its fruit of fluid sacs and gadgets that looked like walkie-talkies and adding machines, the plugs and adaptors, the entanglement of wires and tubes. And the wasted woman lying almost flush with the sheets, her face under a mantle of sweat, eyes closed, mouth open. Her son and grandson sat on either side. The first hour was turning into the second.
Breaking a long silence, Lionel said, “You see that uh, architect who topped hisself, Des? Sir John someone. His mum pops off and he tops hisself. And everyone goes, Ah, he was depressed, see, because his mum popped off. They always say that—and it’s bollocks. It’s not that he suddenly wanted to. Top hisself. It’s that he suddenly could.”
“How’s that, Uncle Li?”
“See, there’s certain things, Des, there’s certain things a man can’t do till his mum pops off.”
Now the second hour was turning into the third. Every twenty minutes or so Lionel sloped out for a smoke. And every twenty minutes or so Mrs. Gibbs, all stern and silent, hurried in and checked the valves and the readings. Finding Des alone (it was now gone five), she said without meeting his eye,
“Your uncle’s going to keep hi
s temper today, I hope. Should’ve heard him the last time. Yelling blue murder. He scared the—”
“Ah, Mrs. G,” said Lionel as he strolled back into the room, “what’s all this then? Taking her time about it, isn’t she? You been slipping her penicillin on the sly?”
Mrs. Gibbs gave him a weary glance as she turned to go.
“How d’you do it, Mrs. G? At your age? That chest! You got the figure of a beauty queen.” Lionel grinned as she bustled past. He called out after her, “Yeah, but I bet it’s all off as soon as you undo you bra … Gaa, Des,” he said as the door jerked shut, “remember the GILFs? Horny Hilda. The Bonking Biddies … Jesus Christ. Look.”
Her eyes were open. Her oystery eyes were open, and straining up into the red rinds of the lids, with terror, as if she was falling over backward. Falling over backward and trying to see if there was anyone there to catch her when she fell.
Des had time to hope—to pray—that when Grace fell she would fall like a feather falls, in drifting rockabye. But Lionel was already on his feet, leaning over her with his hands in his trouser pockets and tightly saying,
“Off with yer. Go on. Go and meet you maker. Go and—”
“Bill!” screamed Grace.
“… Fucking hell.”
“Bill!”
“What she …? Who’s Bill? Another fucking schoolboy?”
“Bill,” wept Grace. “Love, love. But it’s forbidden!”
“What’s this, Des?”
“Chandler reacts badly to predator! Sex, ate!”
And suddenly Des understood: he understood what there was to understand. Not sex, ate. Six, eight: 6, 8.
“Crossword clues, Uncle Li. Remember she always did the Cryptic? They’re crossword clues.”
And Des found he could solve them. Chandler reacts badly to predator (6, 8); anagram: cradle snatcher … Bill, love, love, but it’s forbidden (5); bill = tab; love, love = nil, nil = zero, zero: taboo.
With a desperate wail Grace cried, “Unresisting, even so! Fifteen!”
“What’s that?”
“Crossword clue. The answer’s notwithstanding.”
“What’s this fifteen business?”
“Fifteen letters, Uncle Li. Notwithstanding.”
“Predator. Fifteen. Forbidden … Ah. Here we go.”
This referred to Grace. Who was now engaged in a levitational struggle, with curved back, as if her nerves were being unplucked, a stretching and then a slower unwinding, a sudden retch, a jolt—and the trail of life had frayed.
“How’d he take it?”
“Hard to say. You never know with him.” Des sprawled back in his seat and cast his eyes round the Alexander Selkirk Bayview Bar. Seen side on, the waves filed past the leaded window in orderly droves. The lighthouse throbbed above the boulders strewn round its base. In a white tuxedo the beanpole pianist played “O sole mio” with noodly fingers … Lionel was over in the corner, his third bottle of champagne propped in its bucket; he was talking to Mr. Firth-Heatherington, and to a Mr. John Man—the funeral director. “He seemed plain angry at first. But when she went, he just stared down at her and said, Look at that in the bed there …”
“And you, darling?”
“I can’t tell, Dawnie. Everything seems to be happening to someone else. As if I’m not here. Or only watching. How’s that Horace?”
She said, “I’m being good. I’m not getting my hopes up. But Mum thinks he’s wavering.”
“Well fingers crossed.”
They were about to sign off for the night when Dawn said suddenly,
“Oh Des—the dogs. They’re not the Jak and Jek we knew.”
“Yeah, that’s right. They’re not.”
A synchronised tingle in the ears and the armpits made Des realise that this had been in the back of his mind all day—the dogs. Twelve hours ago, when the tearful charioteer swept into 33F, Des’s immediate worry was that Jek and Jak would make much of him in a way that Lionel could be expected to resent. But the dogs just brushed by him with stiff shoulders, Jak turning his head for a moment with a rictus of scorn—a kind of canine false smile. And once they were out on the balcony they rolled into a muscular heap, growling, snapping, champing. Clearly, Jek was one thing, and Jak was one thing too, but Jak and Jek, or Jek and Jak, were something else again.
“And guess what. They’re queer for each other. And they’re brothers. That’s incest.”
She laughed, so he laughed too, but it came to him like a pang in the brain. Incest. Insect violation? (6). I scent tangled crime (6). No-no disturbs sin, etc. (6).
“Jak’ll climb on Jek. And Jek’ll climb on Jak. With their back legs quivering. Not that I mind that. Much. It’s the way they look at the baby.”
Des said, “Tell.”
“They look right through me. But with Cilla—they stare at her, all panting and drooling. Not friendly. As if she’s a rival. And of course she wants to pet them. I’m not having them in here, I can tell you that.”
“No, keep them out, Dawnie. Sling them their meat, but keep them out.”
Something made Des turn. Lionel, leaning over him from behind, opened his palm for the phone.
“Uh, Uncle Li wants a word …”
“Dawn? Sorry for the uh, imposition, girl. No alternative.” He nodded as he heard her out. “Well. She lived life to the full. Ripe old age and all that … Listen. Give the dogs they steak tonight—but no Tabasco … That’s it. But give them the lot tomorrow. The whole bottle … Yeah, well, they on a controlled diet. For the hare coursing. All right? And latch that door. Leave it open even a crack and they get they snouts in there and they worry away at it. Keep the dogs out, Dawn. Shut it tight.”
Before very long Lionel led Des to the Dunbar Dining Room.
“Eat something substantial, son. You’ve lost weight from you flu. Here, have the duck.” The duc-kuh. “Or the pork.”
“… Jesus, it’s twenty past nine and it’s still light out!”
“Mm. Reckon I’ll have game. The woodcock … Okay. Now tomorrow I’ll be doing the necessary with uh, with Mr. Man. While you twiddle you thumbs. Take the car, Des. Go to Cape Wrath on the ferry. We’ll plant her first thing Saturday. Be back in London by teatime.”
Their shrimp cocktails came, and the first bottle of claret.
“You know, I’m ever so slightly concerned,” said Lionel, taking out his phone and briefly and dubiously consulting its screen, “about Gina. See, these days, Des … I know it’s naughty, but these days I go and pick her up in the Ferrari. With the roof down. And her poor old lord and master, I make him follow along behind. On a moped … So of course now it’s all over Town. Bit naughty. See, I fancied giving Marl the extra niggle. But now I’m concerned he’ll go and do the obvious.”
“What’s the obvious?”
“Whoop. Don’t look now, son, but there’s me DILF … Me Dunbar DILF. Bruise healing up nicely,” he said, giving a wave and a smile. “Ooh. She doesn’t seem best pleased to see me. Dear oh dear. Quick—there. In the red gown and the fishnet stockings. Feast you eyes … Yeah, the DILFs’ve come flocking back, Des. That’s down to uh, changing perceptions, that is. That’s down to the Chav Chauffeur.”
“Oh yeah. The Chav Chauffeur.” And Des recalled the much-discussed case of the Chav Chauffeur. In late May a young car-tuner and stunt driver (who was once on the Asbo payroll) broke into the cellars at “Wormwood Scrubs.” The next morning he and his two accomplices were found in a heap on the village green, all mauled and maced and tasered. Mr. Asbo will not be pressing charges, said Sebastian Drinker in a terse statement to the press. He believes he has made his position perfectly clear … “That changed things, did it? The Chav Chauffeur?”
“The Chav Chauffeur? Completely turned it around with the DILFs. See, you DILF, Des,” said Lionel, as he addressed himself to his main course, “she wants a bit of piss and vinegar. Not all that Lovechild nonsense. Not bleeding West Ham. Not the mother’s boy. No no. But jamming a cattle prod up a b
urglar’s arse—you DILF can respond to that. Anyway. Fuck me image. No more Goody Two Shoes. It’s going to be Lionel Asbo from here on in.”
The dessert trolley, the cheeseboard, the third bottle of claret. Then nuts and tangerines. Then coffee and, for Lionel, a selection of the choicest liqueurs. It was gone ten-thirty when Des felt the hum of his phone. He went out into the passage with it.
“We’re asphyxiating here,” she said. “It’s not that hot but I can’t get an airflow. I went to open the window in Lionel’s room. And it’s locked!”
“Locked?” He thought for a moment (this had happened once or twice before). “Well do the usual anyway.” Which meant standing with a flapping towel by the open front door for fifteen minutes before bedtime. “That’ll move it a bit. Then train the fan on her. And don’t open the glass door, okay? … I know … I know. But not even a hair’s breadth. Latch down. All right? How’s Cilla?”
“Cilla’s Cilla. She’s great. Have you noticed, Des, when she smiles, it comes to her eyes first. Before her lips. And her eyes just beam.”
“Yeah,” he said. “Straight to the eyes. Light speed. And they just beam at you.”
In the interim Lionel’s ladyfriend had been prevailed upon to pull up a chair. She was an expressionless, blue-veined, porcelain beauty, with a beige smudge on the orbit of her left eye. A presence from the silent screen (an imperilled heroine, perhaps). Or so it kept on seeming to Des, because nobody spoke. The turbid atmosphere was incomprehensible to him, and he soon pleaded tiredness and said his goodnights.
It was getting on for eleven o’clock.
He took a shower, and then settled on the window seat in the smaller of the two bedrooms. You know I’m happy, Dawn had told him, in the dark, not long ago. But it’s as if I can’t … There’s this waiting feeling. Waiting for Dad. A waiting feeling. When’s the train coming? When’s the train going? I’ve had it for four years. Like a clenched fist in my stomach. You don’t know what that’s like. But he did know. He knew the clenched fist of care; and now, within him, these tight fingers were easing free.