spitting feathers through their worn ticking. When they’d been hit, Michael was up front and he watched, appalled, as the twisted blades of the port prop whisked to a standstill. . Angel’s bloody delight. He was conscious of dullness . . dampness . . a bitter throb. . in his shoulder — but more pressing were the Kid’s howls in his headset. He handed over the controls to Marwick and went back. — It was his first op’ after ten days’ survivor’s leave, during which there’d been a long evening with Sirbert on the public course at Carshalton. His father — and this was unprecedented — had laid his hand on that selfsame shoulder. . as I dug and dug again at a bad lie, saying, Have a care, old boy, you’ll give yourself the yips if you persist like that. . For a sec’ Michael had been on the brink of. . letting it all out — but he hadn’t: it wasn’t what either of them wanted or needed. Besides, Michael knew Sirbert was well aware of what had happened to Tufty, Claus, Jimmy, Jacko and Jimp — aware also there’d been five casualties, because this was a verified statistical report. Not aware, of course, that Jimp had turned eighteen two days before — nor that he’d spent his last night on earth being viciously teased in the mess: served up with a po filled with bitter in which floated a highly realistic turd crafted from parkin . . and believing this to be part of his initiation he’d gamely choked it all down. . but that was then, YOU BLOODY FOOL! The top gunner was hit over Wilhelmshaven, not . . Willesden! To steady himself Michael does a cockpit drill. Empty beer tins — check. Overflowing ashtray — check. London tube map pinned to the wall behind the television set — check. But it’s no use — no matter how hard he tries to keep things rational! the subsurface arteries — boldly coloured purple, green, maroon, black — infiltrate his eyes, as the intel’ officer smacks the map with his pointer, self-satisfaction oozing through his barathea uniform. . of impeccable cut. Pay attention, gentlemen, he says. Herr Hitler’s flunkeys have dug their rocket factories in deep underground, here at Tottenheimstraße, and our boffins think it’ll take a direct hit to winkle ’em out. Not much in the ack-ack department, but we’ve it on good authority from our friends in the resistance there are night-fighter squadrons here — tap! Here — tap! And here — tap! at Green Park. — Michael suspects this: the terrible strain required to knit together his worlds has begun to show. . I’m fraying as I go round annaround . . Bexhill, Banstead, Royston, Shoreham. . round again. Show as the profound seediness of a man not simply without a woman, but without womankind . . As the leprechaun cabby piloted him up the Edgware Road, and then along the avenues towards Willesden, Michael’s hurting eyes alighted on bright sprays of buddleia and the dried stems of last summer’s willow herb. The bomb sites, he thought, have been left for so long they’re invading the neat suburban gardens. His own seediness . . was vegetative: the bristles of his toothbrush. . engrafting, his underwear. . fungal, and no matter how many circuits he did there were always. . these bumps: I cannot abide these bloody cripples! she’d screamed — but, truth to tell. . I can’t stand them any more either, especially the one inside, the fifth columnist who wears Michael’s own skin for his Sidcot, and who now stretches his arms and legs so Michael’s compelled to bow his head, lean heavily against the wall, then slide down it, the blizzard of snowflakes frozen on the wallpaper scccrrraping against his back. Each and every one of my cells, Michael thinks, is engorged by eating another: No wonder I’m not feeling that chipper . . and still poor Kit keeps on: I’m. Being. Swallowed. Up. By. Ancient. Cell. Wisdom. It’d been, Michael thinks, utterly pointless synchronising watches. . 40 seconds . . 30 seconds . . 20 seconds . . 10 seconds . . 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, 8.15, gentlemen . . because time refuses to be commanded in this fashion: formed up, drilled in short-sleeve order, then sent forward double-quick. Instead time keeps on betraying me, by planting memories in the future that explode in my face. Kins is closer to Michael now than Hobbles, the Scamp, Smalls, Dotty, Tommo, Taffy and the Barrel. — Un-der-neath the arrr-ches. . of the Opera House they lounge, watching the thick broth of young men and women being sluggishly stirred by the clarinets and trumpets of Billy Cotton’s band. Had it been that night or another Kins ended up, or so he claimed, tasting all the delights known to man, while his younger brother lay rigid on the station platform, Annette’s ungovernable elbows digging into his side. . sharp . . unyielding . . N.B.G. It was hard to say, because on every leave he’d had throughout the war, Michael sought Kins out. — Fewer and fewer had rallied to his white standard, and by ’44 the conchie was a bearded and filthy anomaly: a non-combatant corps. . of one. Kins told Michael he only went home to the Paragon every fortnight or so for a feed, a wash and to change his togs. Mostly. . the bloody irony of it! . . he ate in British Empire restaurants and slept in the bombed-out terrace on the north side of Fitzroy Square, together with a motley bunch of would-be Bohemians. . some of who were indeed Czechs. When he met up with Michael in the Wheatsheaf, Kins castigated him: I tell you what you are, man, a bloody Soho non-Blitzer. Some of us stuck it out here on the receiving end, while you were over there dishing it out — and now we’ve these bloody doodlebugs to contend with! Kins had his old varsity scarf wrapped twice round his hairy neck — his jacket pockets were stuff ed with the peculiar little toys one of his Czechs twisted into being out of pipe-cleaners. Kins peddled these for pints once his paltry lecturer’s fees from the WEA had been drunk up. I should’ve popped the lucky bugger on his snoot for his bloody cheek! But by then Michael too was. . a lucky bugger. After Willemshaven his nerves were shot — they tried letting him fly milk runs, and when he protested he was seconded to the chair-borne division at High Wycombe, where he flew at ground level, covered in plenty of scrambled egg — the DFC and bar: a heroic bureaucrat, all of whose green metal office furniture was bolted together out of the young men’s bones. There he’d sat, shuffling papers, his feet resting in a pool of cooling guts. Having completed fifty-three ops, he was — statistically speaking, as Sirbert would say — dead four times over, a zombie with beautiful shoe leather, resurrected again annagain by the higher-ups to do as I was told and look where they pointed. — Face down, the Kid goes on sobbing — and Michael calls to him across the devastated landscapes of. . Hamburg and Dresden, Eniwetok . . and the Montebello Islands: What is it, my child? What’s troubling you — I’m sure if you tell me I’ll be able to help. Kit sniffles, I–I-I don’t mean anything, Uncle Mike, I don’t mean anything! — Michael’s repulsed by the beer tins and the crumpled fish-and-chip wrappings strewn across the floor. Each vilely insignificant object is, he notices, lit up by the spring sunshine