Des was woken by a gust of cigarette smoke. He squinted up with his unfallen eyes. Lionel, in a black mesh T-shirt, boded over him.
Shove up, he said, and sat. Okay. You a young man now. You fifteen. And an orphan. So you got to listen to you Uncle Li.
Yeah. Course.
Right. From this day forth, son, you can borrow me Mac. When I’m out.
Smiling, Des said thanks, and he meant it. He also had that familiar sense of Lionel as a kind of anti-dad or counterfather.
But listen. Lionel raised a stubby forefinger. It’s not just for messing around with. I want you to concentrate you efforts.
On what?
Porn.
In common with every other Distonite old enough to walk, Des knew about the existence of pornography on the Web. He had never gone looking for it. Porn, Uncle Li?
Porn. You see, Des, this is it. You don’t actually need girls. Girls? They more trouble than they worth if you ask me. With the Mac, you can have three new bunk-ups every day — just by using you imagination! And it doesn’t cost you fuck all. Okay. Lecture over. So endeth the first lesson. Just promise you’ll ponder me words. And here’s an extra fiver for yuh.
Lionel got to his feet. He grinned (a rare occurrence) and said,
Go on, fill you boots … When I come back tonight, you’ll be holding a white stick. In you hairy palm. His grin deepened. I just hope Jeff and Joe hit it off with you guide dog. And here’s a tip: Fucked-up Facials. Start you off on the right foot. Well, son. Happy birthday. I’m glad we’ve had this talk. It’s cleared the air.
Des did, in fact, have a quick look at Fucked-up Facials. And the site, he found, was accurately so called: he had never seen anything half so fucked-up in all his life. After gaping his way through thirty seconds of that, he clicked on History. There was no doubt about it. The pornography Lionel watched was in highly questionable taste. So for an hour Des randomly surfed, or foundered, in the Pacific of filth. This surfing or foundering, he realised with a kind of terror, was a way of finding out who you were, sexually, by finding out what you liked — whether you liked what you liked or not.
And what did he like, Des Pepperdine? Well, his soul instantly and reassuringly recoiled from anything weird. Or anything rough. In churning and interminable close-up, even straight-foward copulation looked horrific (this is what happens, he suddenly thought, when a zoo rapes an aquarium). And all these stripped blokes, with biker or convict faces, and their third-degree tattoos … The lez stuff was okay, but what he liked, it turned out, was this: a pretty girl acting alone, slowly undressing (it was never slowly enough), and indulging, perhaps, in a discreet self-caress — with the lighting all misty and vague. Practically everything else seemed gladiatorial. I’m a romantic! he thought. I knew it … And after a pensive interlude, under the auspices of Strictly Solo Tease and more particularly a wandlike blonde called Cadence Meadowbrook, Des put the Web aside, reached for the Cloud, and started learning about calligraphy.
The Cloud, the Web: it was the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge — the Knowledge of Good and Evil. It was the modern Fall. And there was no going back.
You’re doing that funny face again, he said during his next session with Alektra.
What funny face?
Like you’re looking in a mirror. Or at a camera … Ow. That hurts.
Chanel was the same — and Joslinne, and Jade. What did you expect? They had started learning about the birds and the bees (in high definition) when they were three.
… Why’re you always spitting and saying how nasty you are?
Boys expect it.
He said, Not me. You see, love, I’m a romantic. It’s just the way I’m made.
And it was all so very different with Grace.
That first time, when she was giving him the funny looks, he was paralysed by the unreality of it all, what with the Dubonnets — and then the babydoll! Come over here, handsome, and give us a cuddle. This was the unalterable premise: he couldn’t hurt her, he couldn’t spurn her, it wasn’t in him, it wasn’t the way he was made. So he walked across the room. And what a long walk that was — fifteen feet, across the granny flat, from grace to Grace. He walked across the room because of the clear impossibility of doing otherwise, and entered the heedless world of the deaf. Then he lay back and succumbed to an experiment — an experiment in gentleness. And the texture of her flesh to the touch, with that strange give in it, and the depth of all that lived life, now brought languidly to bear on him and his body.
Oh, you’re so beautiful, Desi my dearest. It hurts my heart you’re so beautiful.
And his heart, in its turn, flared up on him, like an inner climax running through his chest to his throat. He kissed her neck. She touched his brow. On the table was a jar of strawberry jam with a spoon in it. The stereo, with its tiny but furious red eye, was playing ‘If I Fell’.
That was in March, and now it was April. It was April, with its drip drip drip …
‘Des, there’s something I never told you.’
They were getting dressed. It was all behind them for the moment — the soundproofed laboratory of sin.
‘What’s that, Gran? Sorry. What’s that, Grace?’
‘Remember — remember when I used to have gentlemen friends? Remember Toby?’
‘Toby. I remember. And Kevin.’
‘And Kevin. Guess why I stopped.’
‘Why?’
‘Because of Lionel … Remember the summer your grandad died?’
Dominic Oldman was out fishing with his boy Mark (the one child of his twelve-year marriage to a pharmacist named Eileen). And suddenly nature became too big and too loud, and Mark slipped down the bank and into the headstrong River Avon, and Dominic went in after him. Only Mark came back — only Mark came back from under the thick nets of the mists.
‘They let Lionel out of Yoi for the cremation. You were there, Des. After it was over, he sees me home, he comes in here, and he takes the Bible down from the shelf. And he jams my hand on it and makes me swear. No more of your bleeding geezers, Mum, he says. No more of your nonsense, woman. You’re past it anyway. It’s all over.’
Des pictured himself — that day in Golders Green, wearing white shirt, blue tie, black longs. He was ten. Gran would have been thirty-four.
‘And he scared me. He really did.’ She held her wrist and rotated it. ‘Time goes by and Toby pops in for a cup of tea. He’s been here half an hour and the doorbell rings. Lionel. He drags poor Toby out by his hair and gives him a right mauling there on the steps. For a cup of tea! Ooh. Mean Mr Mustard. See, he’s got spies … Don’t look so stricken, Des! It’s all right with you — you’re in and out all the time anyway. And I’m your gran.’
She gave her strange new spiralling laugh, reached for the crossword, and sat down with a bounce on the windowside armchair.
‘Eight letters … It’s an anagram. Got it. Features.’
‘Yeah? What’s the clue?’
‘Mug smashed after use.’
As he walked through the spangles of an April shower (he was going to the sub-post office for an envelope and a first-class stamp), Des was thinking of things his mother told him — about Lionel as a child.