Lionel Asbo: State of England Read Online Free Page A

he realised, not exactly: they were swearing (and the rooftop Rottweilers, faintly and almost plaintively, at this distance, were swearing back).
    Fuckoff! yelled Joe (or Jeff). It was almost a monosyllable. Fuckoff! … Fuck! … Fuck! … Fuckoff!
    Fuckoff! yelled Jeff (or Joe). Fuckoff! … Fuck! … Fuck! … Fuckoff!

 
    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,