five years ago! the B-bomb of her breasts and belly . . taut enough. . to be punctured! by the toothpick fuse she was forcing into the tharkthkin of an avocado stone. — Charlie, Chief Brody says, take me out to those kids. . The tension of the last few years bites into Zack’s back and shoulders. The five of us were, he thinks, on the surface of it perfectly happy, messing about with our rubber rings and our beach balls, but all the time there was a predatory dread circling us and circling us again — a dread that homed in accompanied by. . a grisly ostinato: thrrrum-thrum, thrrrum-thrum . . a dread that was. . my own destructiveness! You’re beginning to prune, Missus Brody says to the boy who’s been retrieved from the water — and Zack thinks: Yes, I was beginning to prune, so saturated had I become by that unfamiliar element — nuclear domesticity. I felt like Patty Hearst: under the gun held by a kidnapper I couldn’t help but love . . — Mark says, Great Whiteth prefer to attack blind, y’know, they’ve all thorts of thpecial thpooky capabilitieth. . Bar the lithping. . Zack supposes he should take some pride in Mark’s own. . spooky capabilities . . They thenth thingth at a dithtanth by generating their own electrical field — a Great White ith a complicated weaponth thythtem with radar, thonar, buoyanthy control, the only thing they don’t have that Polarith thubmarineth do ith torpedoeth, ’cauth they’re the torpedo. . Pipit! Pipit! the distraught mother cries, and Zack is already sickened by her one-piece bathing suit, by the way it bites off her legs at the groin. Then: She’s started a heat wave, by makin’ her seat wave! The stampede for the beach is through a densening delirium of shouts and splashes that only seconds before. . were antic! Pipit! Pipit! — The dog’s stick floats on the surface, while somewhere down below Pipit’s. . being thaken from thide to thide . . Zack is overwhelmed by all the sweetly cruddy architecture of his own gullet. . Crisp-to-Crunch — More to Munch! as Chief Brody lifts his binoculars and together. . we rush down their tunnels, so that the horizon wraps around. . our fearful faces, and the dorsal fin rears. . into our mouths! Zack Busner watches as the long brassy insets either side of the cinema’s screen, the stylised laurels over the proscenium, and all the other faded Deco detailing is. . eaten up by a baby-blue May sky — there’s no way. . he’ll be able to swallow the mouthful of bread and tongue. Wine? Lesley lifts the Chianti bottle by its plaited straw. . noose, and Zack thinks, What an excellent fellow, anticipating my needs like that. — But the Tiber . . is. . bloody, and he only just manages to choke it down, spluttering. Wiping his gory mouth on his sleeve, Zack remarks, Smashing picnic, Maggie. He’s delighted to’ve managed this pleasantry, given that Maggie’s answering smile, and Eileen’s crazy grin, and Irene’s tentative grimace, and Podge’s self-indulgent moue are all wheeling about me . . and. . moaning as the wind. . sheers through their teeth! — Roger calls from a long way away: I’m a little worried about Chris, Zack. . and Zack sees ranged before him in mid-air! all the letters Jean-Claude, his French pen-pal, ever sent him — assiduous exercises in schoolboy English: I am haved the time for to playing rugby now . . Letters Zack scanned once before hiding them away in the bottom of his tuck box — letters he never replied to. . yet still they kept on coming! — Claude says, I wrote every day when I was at summer camp, kinda witty letters, I thought, with cartoons of the counsellors on them — when Gertie began running a high fever and they realised it was polio, they packed all the other kids off toot-sweet, paid off the counsellors too. When Ma arrived there was just this one guy who’d been conscientious enough to remain behind — his name was Mister Dalcroze, but we called him Turnip-Head, and I’d drawn him with weedy threads of hair growing outta his big bald white head, and she got down from the cab and said, You must be Mister Dalcroze. After that she nursed Gertie night and day, massaging his legs, while I went swimming and canoeing by myself — best summer camp I ever attended. She pulled him through, though — he had to wear a leg brace, but he never had any of those operations they did back then, which were all phoney-baloney anyway. . HE CAN READ MY MIND! Zack thinks, looking fearfully at Claude, enthroned on his kitchen chair. . with weedy threads of hair growing out of his mad white head! He can read my mind — and very soon now he’s going to TELL ME WHAT TO DO! — I tellya, Claude says, what we should do — we should all go back inside, ’cause I don’t b’lieve the Kid oughta be left alone at a time like this — and you, John — he points his bread sceptre at Lesley — you should organise some sounds, man, ’cause I’ll need a strong rhythm to accompany the deal of talking I’ve still to do: how I met my nemesis, I-fifty-eight, and the Godly integral and the Satanic differential. It’s time too you found out why de massa had de muff-tash on he face — most of all, why we threw him in de coal hole. . Zack tears his eyes away from Claude and hurls them straight into Roger’s earnest ones. Never, he thinks, have I seen such loving complicity in another’s gaze. He knows I know this, and he knows I know he knows, and he knows how I know he knows I know, and yet. . still. . this infinite regression is falling in between us. . the rug’s thick hawsers of rusty wool are parting. . obscenely fraying. . As Zack goggles, the magnifying squares of Stuart tartan ripple away into the seething grass of the railway embankment, which, incorporating this motion, body it forth into the all-encompassing geometry of suburbia, its life-squares and death-roundabouts, reverberating triangles and hushed cul-de-sacs. . C’mon, man, Rodge says, easy now — he reaches out a hand. Phantasy, Zack ponders, as he looks deep into Rodge’s kindly eyes, may become a closed enclave — the dissociated unconscious will. . fail to develop. But that’s not what’s happening here — we’re drawing closer and closer to the essence of things. . to the very Logos of experience —. Ow! Owowowowow! His cry is loud — the pain searing. His head snaps back — he clutches at his cheek. Whassup? Rodge asks, and, pointing to the flat roof above the back bedroom, Zack groans, Up there. . it’s Shoemaker! Zack can see the general perfectly clearly — he’s silhouetted against the roof tiles, his olive-drab legs spread, his cap’s leather peak and the silver insignia on his shoulders catching the sunlight as he rears back, yanking the fishing rod. — The fish-hook! Zack yowls as Shoemaker reels him in towards the back door. It’s in my bloody mouth! Claude catches up with them and, putting his arm round Zack’s shoulders, asks, Where is it, kiddo? Show me. Zack points to his grossly. . salient cheek, and Claude puts his nimble fingers into Zack’s mouth and, with a neat twist, removes the savage barb. . none of us can see! You are my friend, Claude, aren’t you? Zack demands, and Claude says, Sure I am, but I ain’t so confident about them. . They look back at the overgrown garden: Clive has usurped Claude’s throne — Maggie taken the deckchair. Podge lies on the rug, kicking her bare white legs in the air. She sings: I can see a rain-bow, Be a rain-bow, You can be a rain-bow too!