Lionel Asbo: State of England by Martin Amis Page B

. And it was unfair, he felt, to say such a thing about Mum – because, this time, it was just a little slip.
    As he rinsed the glass and cleaned the ashtray (and put the dogs out) and vaguely dreamed about Queen Anne’s College (the one poem, the cosmos of the University), something struck him as suddenly as the sun struck the rain on that last day with his mother: It will take a whole new person to make me whole. A whole new person. It can’t come from anything within. I’ll just have to … I’ll just have to wait. I’ll wait.
    Where is she?
    I’ll wait.
    She was sitting next to him on a hardbacked chair. There were about twenty young people in the room (down from about thirty-five), and she was the only one present who was doing something sensible: she was reading (he stole a glance – The Golden Bough ) … The rest of them, Des included, were merely helplessly and dumbly waiting, like patients waiting for the doctor’s nod. Every fifteen minutes or so a name was called … The setting was a panelled antechamber in Queen Anne’s College, London. A fat bee kept bluntly knocking against the window pane, as if seriously expecting the viny garden to open up and let it in. What was that doing here? It was early February. Des’s mind was clogged and wordless; the vertical ribs of the radiators, he felt, were giving off the acrid tang of a dry-cleaner’s. He wiped the sweat off his upper lip, and reached with both sets of fingers for his brow.
    Are you nervous? she said, tilting her head an inch or two, but without looking up. I don’t mean in general. I mean at the minute .
    Nervous? he said. I’m giving birth!
    Oh don’t be …
    Now he saw her face, under its weight of golden hair – the gold of sunlight and lions. And her exorbitant eyes, fairy-tale blue, and ideally round.
    Well you know , she said, I was in a terrible condition this morning. Then I had a thought whilst I made my tea. I thought: What’ll they be looking for in myself? And I felt all calm. I’m Dawn .
    I’m Desmond . They shook hands. Her voice was high and musical, but her diction, her choice of words, put him in mind of a category he could not yet name: the minutely declassed. And what was that thought? Dawn .
    It suddenly came to me. Well, we’ve all got the grades, haven’t we. So what is it they’ll be looking for in ourselves? And it suddenly came to me . Eagerness to learn. Simple. I’ve got that. And I don’t doubt you’ve got it too .
    Yeah , he said. I’ve got that .
    Well then. Desmond .
    She shrugged or shivered; her body sighed and realigned. And he saw her crossing the road, crossing one of the many roads of the future, and quite differently dressed, with her jeans tucked into knee-high boots, and in a tightish top – crossing the road, strongly stepping up to the island and then stepping down from it and walking on … He experienced a gravitational desire, just then (as his blood eased and altered), to reach out and touch her. But all that happened was that his face gave her its clearest possible smile.
    Desmond Pepperdine , said a voice.
    So it was his turn first, and when he came out, twenty minutes later, they bent their heads and winced at each other …
    Dawn Sheringham , said a voice (a different voice).
    As she gathered her things he said, ‘I’ll wait. If you like. I’ll wait and we’ll go for some tea.’
    ‘Ooh, I’d love a cup,’ she called out. ‘I’ll be needing one!’
    He watched her walk off. He hesitated, and said, ‘… I’ll wait!’
    As a result of a further steepening of Ernest’s depression, the Nightingales moved to Joy’s mother’s place in Hull. Des looked up Hull on the Cloud. Its sister city was called Grimsby. The fog that came in at night smelled of fish.
    It seemed to Des that now would be the moment to get shot of Rory’s lip ring. But it stayed where it was. He opened his desk drawer: the sealed white envelope with the circular indentation, and the evil little heaviness