Lionel Asbo: State of England Read Online Free

you get your gentleness from, my love. You don’t get it from me.’
    So Des only saw him once (and Cilla, apparently, only saw him twice). And neither of them could possibly know how excruciating this encounter would become in Desmond’s memory. For he too, in five years’ time, would try very hard to wake someone up – to wake someone up, to bring someone back …
    It was just a slip, it was just a little slip, just a little slip on the supermarket floor.
    So Des (now rising from his bed, in the great citadel) – Des thought it would be rash to attribute any great acuity, any great nous, to his father. Who, then, was the source of these rustlings, these delightful expansions, like solar flares, that were going about their work in his mind? Dominic Oldman – that’s who.
    Grandpa Dom was barely out of primary school when he knocked up Granny Grace with Cilla. But by the time he returned (and stuck around long enough to knock her up with Lionel), he was at the University of Manchester, studying Economics. University : it would be hard to exaggerate the reverence and the frequency with which Des murmured this word. His personal translation of it was the one poem . For him it meant something like the harmony of the cosmos … And he wanted it. He wanted university – he wanted the one poem.
    And here was the funny thing. Cilla and Lionel were known in the family as ‘the twins’, because they were the only children who had the same father. And Des believed that Lionel (despite his dreadful CV) secretly partook of the Oldman acumen. The difference, it seemed, was one of attitude. Des loved it, his intelligence; and Lionel hated it. Hated it? Well, it was plain as day that he had always fought it, and took pride in being stupid on purpose.
    When Des went to his gran’s, was he being stupid on purpose? And was she doing it too – when she let him in? After the fateful night came the fateful morning …
    Got you some milk , he said at the door.
    She turned. He followed. Grace took up position on the armchair by the window, in her granny glasses (the circular metal rims), with her powderless face bent penitently over the Telegraph crossword. After a while she said,
    Frequently arrested, I’m heading east at the last minute. Two, three, four, two, four … In the nick of time.
    In the nick of time. How d’you work that one out?
    Frequently arrested – in the nick oft. I’m – i, m. Heading east – e. At the last minute . In the nick of time . Des. You and I. We’re going to go to Hell .
    Ten minutes later, on the low divan, she said, As long as no one knows. Ever. Where’s the harm?
    Yeah. And round here, I mean, it’s not considered that bad .
    No, it’s not. Uncles and nieces. Fathers and daughters all over the place .
    And at the Tower there’s that pair of twins living in sin … But you and me. Gran, d’you think it’s legal?
    Don’t call me Gran! … Maybe a misdemeanour. Because you’re not sixteen .
    What, like a fine? Yeah, you’re probably right. Grace. Still .
    Still. Try and stay away, Des. Even if I ask … Try and stay away .
    And he did try. But when she asked, he went, as if magnetised. He went back – back to the free-fall pantomime of doom.
    ‘The main role of the semicolon’, he read in his Concise Oxford Dictionary , ‘is to mark a grammatical separation that is stronger in effect than a comma but less strong than a full stop.’
    Des had the weight of the book on his lap. It was his prize possession. Its paper jacket was royal blue (‘deep, vivid’).
    ‘You can also use a semicolon as a stronger division in a sentence that already contains commas:
     
What has crippled me? Was it my grandmother, frowning on my childish affection and turning it to formality and cold courtesy; or was it my pious mother, with her pathological caution; or was it my spineless uncle, who, despite numerous affronts and wrongs, proved incapable of even …’
    Des heard the dogs. They weren’t barking,