burning behind him . . and warned: There’s an unexploded whizz-bang jammed under a bakery on the ’igh road. Bunch of ARP prats doing the fan-bloody-dango — nothing doing for a gentleman of the road such as yourself, so I’d give the area a miss if I was you. . As the man spoke his collie had come forward to thrust its warm wet muzzle into Kins’s groin, and he’d pictured it wolfing down. . macaroons and Eccles cakes . . How much is that bombie in the window, the one with the wagg-er-lee fuse . . How much is that bombie in the window, I do hope you realise, Annette says to Michael out of the blue, when they’ve tunnelled far into the night and the only light along the platform comes from the glow-worming of a cigarette, your brother is already a dipsomaniacal behaviour, making awful choking noises as he strains at the leash. Oscar has spotted the tabby from two doors down. . stupid as a fly — maddeningly narcissistic with it . . as it comes smarming along the top of the wall, plops! soundlessly to the pavement, and smarms on up the road, its tail dabbing at the air, its swivelling hips retracting all sight lines into its anus. What was it Ronnie had said? He’d been, as usual, drunk as a Gorbals laird: Have you everr considerred putting yourr fingerr inside the anus of the family dog? Oh, Ronnie, Ronnie! Busner sighs aloud, seeing the white hemispheres of his former mentor’s eyelids, below these the placental mess of his eyes, and depending from them heavy bags. . already packed for another world . . Oh, Ronnie — Ronnie, you’ve abandoned your noble gift! La donna è mobile . . Arseholes are cheap to-daay! Cheaper than yes-ter-daay! Buy one for two-and-six, Big ones take lots of —. Although, as they follow the cat, Oscar’s frenzied belly grinding at the paving stones, Busner is dragged to this conclusion: Now would be as good a time as any to do exactly that: now, in the lull of mid-morning, with the net curtains of Chapter Road knotted up in bondage to cleaning, and door mats slung over front gates for flogging. Hearing the lascivious groan and whistling suck of hoovers in front rooms, Busner meditates using a mantra every transcendentalist knows: Dust is skin — skin is dust . . His attachment is to the last thing he saw before he swung shut the door of 117: an envelope stuck by its gummed flap to the wallpaper’s one-dimensional blizzard, written on it in blue crayon FAITHFUL YET WITH BEAST. The telegraphese of the psychotic, he concedes, lends itself to such statements, ones that are simultaneously smirking gnosis — I’m faithful yet with beast, but I’m not going to tell you which one — and chummily phatic: How’s it going, man, faithful yet with beast? The stop-go of such communication is, Busner thinks, not unlike walking the dog — for Oscar has stopped abruptly to cock his leg and scatter a few emeralds in the budding privet. He strains on — and so does his master: It’s also of a piece with the residents’ tedious magical thinking, the I–Ching-bloody-Ching thrown using coins needed for the gas and electricity meters, the doleful allusions to unseen spirits. . yanking their chains. During the last rainy month the tobacco smoke tangles, the gas fire fumes, and the condensation fuzzily felting the windows have all combined into. . a thick miasma. It’s no surprise, Zack thinks, I was taken in by that idiotic pair, because in the clear light of day it’s patently absurd — they wouldn’t dare spike me with LSD. — Ronnie is it, now? says the postman, who’s squatted down to rub Oscar’s head with his knuckles. . faithful yet with beast. He’s capless and tieless, his grey suit and bandolier of empty canvas sack give him a timeless feel — Zack can see him pushing a pram piled high with salvaged household eff ects through the remains of a bomb-shattered city. No, no, he says, I was thinking out loud about a friend who’s in a spot of bother — he’s still Oscar, I s’pose he always will be. The postman, who’s also balding and ageing. . should I rub his liver-spotted scalp with my knuckles?. . looks up with hanghuman eyes, and Zack’s impelled to: I hope he — or anyone else at 117 or 119 for that matter — hasn’t been bothering you? But the postman continues entreating, and Zack thinks, This is bloody futile — because, of course, the residents are nothing but a bother: constantly in receipt of post lacking sufficient postage, or railing against the poor man because they imagine his badge marks him out as an Imperialist lackey or an alien invader. — Straightening, the postman says, I’ve no quarrel with your tenants, Doctor Busner. I’ve a sister got the mentals, bin in Hanwell for five years off an’ on now —’ad electrics ’an all sorts. Shocking business. No, it’s that lot opposite I can’t be doing with — nig-nogs and religious nutters to boot. . Oscar is left leaning disconsolately against the hedge as the postman clicks away on new Blakeys. Probably changes them more than his underwear, Zack thinks, so’s to be ready to put the boot in . . The dog tugs Zack’s mind on along the coastline of Chapter Road, with its inlet porches and bay-window promontories, its foreshore of privet and tiling. Why do people do that? Is the associative faculty merely a matter of neurons randomly zapping together, so that. . electrics sparks shocking? Or is this activated by. . latent psychic content? If it’s the latter, why should it require any further investigation — after all, it’s a perfectly clear example of a circular diallelus: that the postman’s sister has had ECT is indeed shocking to him. . we need dig no further. — Deacon Road, Sandringham Road, Churchill Road — all file by. To parade through English suburbia is, Zack thinks, to have Church and State. . passing in review. He would’ve turned right out of the gate. . Muß es sein?. . were it not that he’d then have had to pass by Westminster Wine and Walter E. Tucker, Newsagent. Both shopkeepers had been known to come barrelling out from their premises in order to haul Zack up over one or another transgression: the Kid trying to buy gin, or Eileen presenting an appalled customer with a big wad of moistened toilet paper she said was her dead baby — or the Creep building a little pagoda with all the tubes of Rollos as he talked the most filthy smut imaginable. It needed no imagining for Zack, who’d to listen to it day in and day out. . a fish-hook caught in whatever’s salient . . Throw de darkie in de coal hole wid de muff-tash on he face . . On the same side of the road there was the So-White Laundry, another DMZ for the Concept House residents. . although nig-nogs’re welcome, and Rodgers’s Garage, where Zack had the Hillman serviced until the small matter arose of an unpaid bill. . smells can burrrn your eyes but on-ly peep-pul make you cry. Why, he thinks, fingering his own none-too-white collar, did I bother putting on a tie today? Why, come to think of it, did I put on any clothes at all? It would’ve been better to have stayed under the sleep-tossed covers — after Chappaquiddick, what do anyone’s nine missing hours matter? Instead, as he follows Oscar’s podgehole up the road, there’s this weary acknowledgement: Es muß sein! For there isn’t a business in the neighbourhood with which some petty debt or minor outrage isn’t associated: Snook, the fishmonger, and MUSICLAND RECORDS — the Segovia Café and LORETTE Ladies’ Hairdresser, outside of which stands the