hollow boy . . in his orthopaedic leg-iron, with a slot in his painted hair, waiting to be filled up by suburban beneficence — I wish me was he. On one especially miserable malicious April morning, Zack had been walking Oscar under rusty, guttering skies when he was accosted by an excitable little nebbish called Mister Green, who, with his koppel slipped sideways to expose a bald patch. . exactly the same size!. . came scuttling out from DOUBLE GEE WIGMAKERS, a bill in his hand. . for a sheitel! — Irene had no money to pay for the ghastly thing, so screamed horribly until Maggie wrapped a scarf around her butchered locks. . hiding them from His all-seeing eyes. How Irene had acquired the rudiments of her newfound orthodoxy was. . mysterious. Certainly not from her usual Holy Writ, Flying Saucer Review, which was posted to her twice-monthly from an address in Leytonstone. But, now he considers it, Zack supposes she might have picked up bits and pieces of doctrine from Maurice — after all, together with the Creep, Irene had been one of the founding residents, present during the three weeks Maurice spent at Chapter Road, sleeping in the back bedroom of 117. Zack’s uncle had come to see for himself whether the community would be suitable for Henry, should they be able to secure his discharge from hospital. And Miriam, seeking in her intuitive, thoughtful — highly prescriptive way to help him join the group, had made it her business to cook a Shabbat supper for them all, bringing sweet-glazed challas from Grodzinski’s on the High Road, and fetching schmaltz from Bloom’s in Golders Green. She’d boiled up brisket on the cooker, and standing nearby. . in one of his occasional patches of lucidity . . Claude sniffed theatrically, then said, Gosh, Miriam, that sure does smell like somebody’s childhood. . before rounding on Zack and snarling: But not yours! — Oscar halts in front of the bland brick façade of Churchill Court, and, carefully arranging his twitching rear over the kerb, he quivers out. . one . . two . . three dollops of. . chopped liver. The old man has been gone these five years, dragged off-stage on his gun-carriage to. . some brandy-soaked Valhalla. Really, though, he’d never leave — he was too solid . . for any other world, so had been. . reincarnated into a road and a block of flats. Zack feels a swirl in his belly — not precisely. . butterflies, and not altogether. . dyspepsia, but something which alerts him to. . the chopped liver of my own experience ceaselessly. . quivering out. It was the Creep of course! The Creep who’d written on that envelope Faithful yet with beast . . Then came the postman with his sad circularities. . for me, the kikel . . his knuckles on Oscar’s head, his bin in Hanwell. . his shocking ’lectric. . Never seen a sight that didn’t look better looking back! Zack shudders: Someone’s rubbed a balloon on my woolly thinking — sparks are beginning to fly out from . . Claude. . in concentric rings of coincidence! When Zack opened the curtains that morning, the sky had been blissfully clear — now, chicken clouds . . are. . fleeing overhead, and from minute to minute the atmosphere thickens with premonition, as, no longer content with announcing his own presence in advance, the shaman has begun to throw out harbingers of a more. . general disaster! — Man and dog move on — or, rather, dog uses lead to sling man on . . Fort — Da! At once they’re at the end of the road, where a much larger block of flats. . forms a prow. Busner looks up at the seven storeys of brick-and-concrete striping and thinks, In there are all sorts of peculiar passengers. . Frantic old maids amassing jam jars full of cat fur. . Punctilious drunks who only spittle at Richard Baker. . KINGSLEY COURT! Its rubber-block nameplate stamps down on him, just as the block itself stamps down on the white sheet of the street, and up above there’s a twig-fractured pain of . . sky. . They wouldn’t dare, would they? He bends down to seek reassurance in Oscar’s broad thick skull, searching the dog’s fur for. . my soul — or his? Looking up at the block again, he sees tiny agitated suicides. . all the schizophrenics we’ve failed to help hurling themselves from the balconies and flapping into. . pigeons! Relieved, he straightens up and chides himself: Kingsley Court has always been here. However handy he may be, Claude wasn’t up the end of the road all night. . a fairytale goblin . . laying bricks and pouring concrete. — On Oscar pulls: up the Avenue, past the enormous Edwardian villas built for. . pre-pill-sized-families, their turrets and garrets now full of. . childlike hippies on the dole. They reach the High Street, and Busner does his best to appear exactly what he is: a middle-class professional man, on the cusp of middle age, walking his dog — but the real mantra is unceasing: Those bastards, they wouldn’t dare, would they?. . Those bastards, they wouldn’t dare, would they? But of course they would. . and they have! In the window of Thomas Cook’s a V-shaped stand bears a Tunisia-bound Boeing over a rumpled blue Rayon Med’. He rattles the change in the pocket of his trousers: It’s one-and-nine into Holborn, where I can prevail upon Mister Wentworth to increase my overdraft by fifty-nine guineas . . Everything, Busner considers, might seem a bit more bearable after fifteen nights away. He sees himself changing trains at King’s Cross: the worn ribbing of advertisements on the tunnel walls, the escalator carrying him down as the familiar warm smelliness rises up to encompass him. . a rollneck worn by a multitude. No! That would be the coward’s way: I will return! Es muß sein! There’s Miriam and the boys — there’s Maurice, who made the whole ghastly wrong-headed failed stupid experiment possible — and who, when he came to stay at Chapter Road, brought his Meissen figurines of Napoleonic marshals. Silly, really, he’d said as he arranged them on the windowsill in the back bedroom and a passing tube tinkled Ney. I s’pose they’re rather like my teddy bears. — Maurice did his best to fit in with all the others’ infantilism: He joined Irene in batiking sessions, his shirtsleeves rolled up and secured with gold-plated protectors. They laid out the cloth on the kitchen table while Claude commented: Ooh, what a swish-dish, ain’t he, this fella — a tutti-fruity-galootie too good to shootie — as ofay as All-Day’s. Y’know, I once calibrated the degrees of the pyramid of the moon and the parhelion of the sun and the fanny of Tallulah, and it all told me WHAT I SHOULD DO, which was take out the earthenware heads, take out the planters and HANG THREE FAGS! He thrust a copy of the Chronicle in Maurice’s gentle and wounded face and. . went relentlessly on: Acts of gross indecency, see! Between men in Roundwood Park, see! A fifteenpound fine — but you can afford that with your skin wallet and your skin money —. Only then — then! did Zack have the guts to intervene, crying out like some minor Shakespearean character: Still! Be still, Claude! — And although Maurice has long since fled back to Redington Road, Zack continues to see his uncle. .