4

‘DOGS,’ SAID LIONEL, ‘they descended from wolves. That’s they heritage. Now wolves,’ he went on, ‘they not man’s natural enemy. Oh no. You wolf won’t attack a human. That’s a myth, that is, Des. A total myth.’

Des listened. Lionel pronounced ‘myth’ miff. Full possessive pronouns – your, their, my – still made guest appearances in his English, and he didn’t invariably defy grammatical number (they was, and so on). But his verbal prose and his accent were in steep decline. Until a couple of years ago Lionel pronounced ‘Lionel’ Lionel. But these days he pronounced ‘Lionel’ Loyonel, or even Loyonoo.

‘Now I know you reckon I’m harsh with Jeff and Joe. But that’s for why. To make them attack humans – at me own bidding … It’s about time I got them pissed again.’

Every couple of weeks Lionel got the dogs pissed on Special Brews. Interesting, that, thought Des. In America, evidently, pissed meant angered, or pissed off; in England, pissed just meant drunk. After six cans each of potent malt lager, Jeff and Joe were pissed in both senses. Course, they useless when they actually pissed, said Lionel. They come on tough but they can’t hardly walk. It’s the next morning – ooh. That’s when they tasty … That ooh sounded more like où. Nor was this the only example of Lionel’s inadvertent French. He also used un – as a modest expletive, denoting frustration, effort, or even mild physical pain. Now Des said,

‘You got them pissed Saturday before last.’

‘Did I? What for?’

‘You had that meet with the shark from Redbridge. Sunday morning.’

Lionel said, ‘So I did, Des. So I did.’

They were enjoying their usual breakfast of sweet milky tea and Pop-Tarts (there were also a few tins of Cobra close to hand). Like Lionel’s room, the kitchen was spacious, but it was dominated by two items of furniture that made it feel cramped. First, the wall-wide TV, impressive in itself but almost impossible to watch. You couldn’t get far enough away from it, and the colours swam and everyone wore a wraithlike nimbus of white. Whatever was actually showing, Des always felt he was watching a documentary about the Ku Klux Klan. Item number two, known as the tank, was a cuboid gunmetal rubbish bin, its dimensions corresponding to those of an average dishwasher. It not only looks smart, said Lionel, as with Des’s help he dragged it out of the lift. It’s a fine piece of machine-tooled workmanship. German. Christ. Weighs enough. But this item, too, had its flaw.

Lionel now lit a cigarette and said, ‘You been sitting on it.’

‘I never.’

‘Then why won’t it open?’

‘It hardly ever opened, Uncle Li,’ said Des. ‘Right from the start.’ They had been through this many times before. ‘And when it does open, you can’t get it shut.’

‘It sometimes opens. It’s no fucking use to man or beast, is it. Shut.’

‘I lost half a nail trying to open it.’

Lionel leaned over and gave the lid a tug. ‘Un … You been sitting on it.’

They ate and drank in silence.

‘Ross Knowles.’

There followed a grave debate, or a grave disquisition, on the difference between ABH and GBH – between Actual Bodily Harm and its sterner older brother, Grievous. Like many career delinquents, Lionel was almost up to PhD level on questions of criminal law. Criminal law, after all, was the third element in his vocational trinity, the other two being villainy and prison. When Lionel talked about the law (reaching for a kind of high style), Des always paid close attention. Criminal law was in any case much on his mind.

‘In a nutshell, Des, in a nutshell, it’s the difference between the first-aid kit and the casualty ward.’

‘And this Ross Knowles, Uncle Li. How long’s he been in Diston General?’ asked Des (referring to the worst hospital in England).

‘Oy. Objection. That’s prejudicial.’

Panting and drooling, Jeff and Joe stared in through the glass door: brickfaced, with thuggish foreheads, and their little ears trying to point towards each other.

‘Why prejudicial?’

‘Hypothesis.’ Hypoffesis. ‘I give Ross Knowles a little tap in a fair fight, he comes out of the Hobgoblin – and walks under a truck.’ Truck: pronounced truc-kuh (with a glottal stop on the terminal plosive). ‘See? Prejudicial.’

Des nodded. It was in fact strongly rumoured that Ross Knowles came out of the Hobgoblin on a stretcher.

‘According to the Offences Against the Person Act,’ Lionel went on, ‘there’s Common Assault, ABH, and G. It’s decided, Des, by you level of intent and the seriousness of the injury. Offensive weapon, offensive weapon of any kind, you know, something like a beer glass – that’s G. If he needs a blood transfusion – that’s G. If you kick him in the bonce – that’s G.’

‘What did you use on him, Uncle Li?’

‘A beer glass.’

‘Did he need a blood transfusion?’

‘So they say.’

‘And did you kick him in the bonce?’

‘No. I jumped on it. In me trainers, mind … Uh, visible disfigurement or permanent disability – that’s the clincher, Des.’

‘And in this case, Uncle Li?’

‘Well I don’t know, do I. I don’t know what sort of nick he was in before.’

‘… Why d’you smash him up?’

‘Didn’t like the smile on his face.’ Lionel gave his laugh – a series of visceral grunts. ‘No. I’m not that thick.’ (Thic-kuh.) ‘I had two reasons, Des. Ross Knowles – I heard Ross Knowles saying something about buying a banger off Jayden Drago. And he’s got the same moustache as Marlon. Ross has. So I smashed him up.’

‘Hang on.’ Des tried to work it out (he went in search of the sequitur). Jayden Drago, the renowned used-car salesman, was Gina Drago’s father. And Marlon, Marlon Welkway, was Lionel’s first cousin (and closest associate). ‘I still don’t get it.’

‘Jesus. Haven’t you heard? Marlon’s pulled Gina! Yeah. Marlon’s pulled Gina … So all that come together in me mind. And it put me in a mood.’ For a while Lionel gnawed on his thumb. He looked up and said neutrally, ‘I’m still hoping for Common Assault. But me brief said the injuries were uh, more consistent with Attempted Manslaughter. So we’ll see. Are you going to school today?’

‘Yeah, I thought I might look in.’

‘Ah, you such a little angel. Come on.’

They refilled the water bowls. Then man and boy filed down the thirty-three floors. Lionel, as usual, went to the corner shop for his smokes and his Morning Lark while Des waited out on the street.

‘… Fruit, Uncle Li? Not like you. You don’t eat fruit.’

‘Yeah I do. What you think a Pop-Tart is? Look. Nice bunch of grapes. See, I got a friend who’s uh, indisposed. Thought I’d go and cheer him up. Put this in you satchel.’

He handed over the bottle of Tabasco. Plus an apple.

‘A nice Granny Smith. For you teacher.’

To evoke the London borough of Diston, we turn to the poetry of Chaos:

Each thing hostile

To every other thing: at every point

Hot fought cold, moist dry, soft hard, and the weightless

Resisted weight.

So Des lived his life in tunnels. The tunnel from flat to school, the tunnel (not the same tunnel) from school to flat. And all the warrens that took him to Grace, and brought him back again. He lived his life in tunnels … And yet for the sensitive soul, in Diston Town, there was really only one place to look. Where did the eyes go? They went up, up.

School – Squeers Free, under a sky of white: the weakling headmaster, the demoralised chalkies in their rayon tracksuits, the ramshackle little gym with its tripwires and booby traps, the Lifestyle Consultants (Every Child Matters), and the Special Needs Coordinators (who dealt with all the ‘non-readers’). In addition, Squeers Free set the standard for the most police call-outs, the least GCSE passes, and the highest truancy rates. It also led the pack in suspensions, expulsions, and PRU ‘offrolls’; such an offroll – a transfer to a Pupil Referral Unit – was usually the doorway to a Youth Custody Centre and then a Young Offender Institution. Lionel, who had followed this route, always spoke of his five and a half years (on and off) in a Young Offender Institution (or Yoi, as he called it) with rueful fondness, like one recalling a rite of passage – inevitable, bittersweet. I was out for a month, he would typically reminisce. Then I was back up north. Doing me Yoi.

* * *

On the other hand, Squeers Free had in its staff room an exceptional Learning Mentor – a Mr Vincent Tigg.

What’s going on with you, Desmond? You were always an idle little sod. Now you can’t get enough of it. Well, what next?

I fancy modern languages, sir. And history. And sociology. And astronomy. And –

You can’t study everything, you know.

Yes I can. Renaissance boy, innit.

… You want to watch that smile, lad. All right. We’ll see about you. Now off you go.

And in the schoolyard? On the face of it, Des was a prime candidate for persecution. He seldom bunked off, he never slept in class, he didn’t assault the teachers or shoot up in the toilets – and he preferred the company of the gentler sex (the gentler sex, at Squeers Free, being quite rough enough). So in the normal course of things Des would have been savagely bullied, as all the other misfits (swats, wimps, four-eyes, sweating fatties) were savagely bullied – to the brink of suicide and beyond. They called him Skiprope and Hopscotch, but Des wasn’t bullied. How to explain this? To use Uncle Ringo’s favourite expression, it was a no-brainer. Desmond Pepperdine was inviolable. He was the nephew, and ward, of Lionel Asbo.

It was different on the street. Once a term, true, Lionel escorted him to Squeers Free, and escorted him back again the same day (restraining, with exaggerated difficulty, the two frothing pitbulls on their thick steel chains). But it would be foolish to suppose that each and every gangbanger and posse-artist (and every Yardie and jihadi) in the entire manor had heard tell of the great asocial. And it was different at night, because different people, different shapes, levered themselves upward after dark … Des was fleet of foot, but he was otherwise unsuited to life in Diston Town. Second or even first nature to Lionel (who was pronounced ‘uncontrollable’ at the age of eighteen months), violence was alien to Des, who always felt that violence – extreme and ubiquitous though it certainly seemed to be – came from another dimension.

So, this day, he went down the tunnel and attended school. But on his way home he feinted sideways and took a detour. With hesitation, and with deafening self-consciousness, he entered the Public Library on Blimber Road. Squeers Free had a library, of course, a distant Portakabin with a few primers and ripped paperbacks scattered across its floor … But this: rank upon rank of proud-chested bookcases, like lavishly decorated generals. By what right or title could you claim any share of it? He entered the Reading Room, where the newspapers, firmly clamped to long wooden struts, were apparently available for scrutiny. No one stopped him as he approached.

He had of course seen the dailies before, in the corner shop and so on, and there were Gran’s Telegraphs, but his experience of actual newsprint was confined to the Morning Larks that Lionel left around the flat, all scrumpled up, like origami tumbleweeds (there was also the occasional Diston Gazette). Respectfully averting his eyes from the Times, the Independent, and the Guardian, Des reached for the Sun, which at least looked like a Lark, with its crimson logo and the footballer’s fiancée on the cover staggering out of a nightclub with blood running down her neck. And, sure enough, on page three (News in Briefs) there was a hefty redhead wearing knickers and a sombrero.

But then all resemblances ceased. You got scandal and gossip, and more girls, but also international news, parliamentary reports, comment, analysis … Until now he had accepted the Morning Lark as an accurate reflection of reality. Indeed, he sometimes thought it was a local paper (a light-hearted adjunct to the Gazette), such was its fidelity to the customs and mores of his borough. Now, though, as he stood there with the Sun quivering in his hands, the Lark stood revealed for what it was – a daily lads’ mag, perfunctorily posing as a journal of record.

The Sun, additionally to recommend it, had an agony column presided over not by the feckless Jennaveieve, but by a wise-looking old dear called Daphne, who dealt sympathetically, that day, with a number of quite serious problems and dilemmas, and suggested leaflets and helplines, and seemed genuinely …

‘Dear Daphne,’ whispered Desmond.