Lionel Asbo: State of England by Martin Amis Page A

instrument nestling in the cusp of her throat. Des kept his eyes on the floor … Whether Lionel had words with Marlon was not known; but nothing changed, nothing happened, until November, when destiny ponderously intervened in the form of RSP: Lionel received some stolen property, and was arrested for it.
    He got two months in Wormwood Scrubs in west London. Des went to visit him on Boxing Day. The interminable bus ride, the blasted heath. Lionel, in his wrinkly dark-blue overalls, stood at the counter of the commissary snackbar. They ordered, and went to the square table with their hot chocolates and their bags of Maltesers. Over the years Des had visited his uncle in a great variety of prisons (and borstals and Yois), and Lionel, even when settling in for a much longer stay, never seemed more than mildly inconvenienced ( Prison’s not too bad , he often said. You know where you are in prison ). But today he sat in a propulsive crouch on the very brink of the tin chair. RSP , he kept direly saying, and shaking his head. RSP! … Des couldn’t understand why this should seem so staggering in itself, because Lionel was arrested for RSP two or three times a year. But as dusk fell (and as the wardens wordlessly impended with their keys), Lionel said,
    You know what, Des? He put me here. Marlon. He done me! For Gina!
    Des left him there, the tense slope of the back, the chainlit Marlboro Hundred … And even before Lionel regained his freedom the Diston Gazette announced that Mr Jayden Drago’s firstborn child, Gina Maria, was officially engaged – to Marlon Welkway! The day was already named. It was to be a Whitsun wedding …
    As he continued on his journey, his journey from boy to man, Des found that the thoughts that stayed with him about his uncle were getting a little bit harder to file away. For instance. Lionel, sitting in prison, and hating it as thoroughgoingly as any sane and innocent man would hate it (but for completely different reasons). Or again. The unexpected element in his response to the defection of Gina Drago. Together with the hurt, the rage, the humiliation, and the tearing need for vengeance, there was the furtive glimmer of relief.
    Things were at least much simpler now. On the day he came out Lionel challenged Marlon to what was called a garage meet (bare-knuckle, stripped to the waist, with paying spectators, no ref, no rules, and no limit) and Marlon of course accepted – but that’s another story.
    On his seventeenth birthday (in January, 2008) Des threw a little party all for himself. The only guests were the pups, Jon and Joel (who were given a fresh bone each). Well, they were hardly pups any longer. On the move they were like missiles of muscle … He bought two flagons of Strongbow, and sprinkled a pinch of keef into a rolled cigarette. Des only knew a handful of things about his father. Edwin (as he continued to think of him) was a Trinidadian, and a Pentecostalist; he refrained – earlier on, anyway – from harmful liquors; as against that, though, he didn’t deny the clarifying effects of a pensive burn of keef. So Des sipped his cider, and smoked the sparkling grass; and he felt the spirit of Edwin darn its way through him: the smell of thick damp foliage, a vast church on a village hilltop, a fat moon sliced and swallowed by the sharp horizon. He knew another thing about his father – that he referred to babies as youths . Des knew too that Edwin was gentle. Cilla said.
    It was just a little slip. Her legs shot out in front of her, her head twanged back and then twanged up again – but she was laughing when she got to her feet. As they walked home arm in arm the sun hit the thin rain, turning each drop into a gout of solder, and a fabulous rainbow of blue and violet bandily straddled the roofscapes of Diston Town … It was just a little slip. The autopsy report spoke of blunt impact to the head and epidural haematoma . But the phrase that held him was massive insult to the brain