. .However, this is all he thinks — the moment is over, the shell detonates, thrusting up an obscenely wobbling earthen breaker that curls over the sap — over Stanley, where he claws at its wall of sweet-smelling loam. Reddy-dark and then maroon-to-black, it pushes his eyes back into their sockets, it rushes silence beating into his eardrums, it packs around arms, legs, trunk, neck, head — hammering down cottony paralysis into every join and crevice — if, that is, these bits are between anything at all, for there is no feeling any more — none after that final and extreme myoclonic jerk: the arms flung backwards, the spine bowed by the shockwave. There is no information, no current, no resistance, no up or down or back-to-front — only this that worms through the mind, a thought that sucks upon its own tail even as it is reborn, disappearing into one hole, re-emerging from another, expressing only this nightmarishly symmetrical identity: I-am I-am I-am I-am, which is simultaneously expressed numerically, one-equals-one-equals-one-equals-one, over and over again, its maddening equivalence allowing for no purchase, nothing to be gripped upon, so that the I that am might be assisted to sit up — which is what Gracie does, and, although Audrey feels her friend’s arm behind her back, smells the broth, sees its floury steam sift through my hair and sees also her own top half, propped up now on a bolster, two cushions and a pillow, while above her tousled head hangs a dear little watercolour of a windmill backed by clouds that Gracie found in the bric-a-brac shop on Coldharbour Lane — still I am not in Flat G, 309 Clapham Road but remain in that other place, where, naked, she thrusts out her behind and kicks out her legs as she impiously struts the boards before an audience she can only dimly perceive, although — from the shape of its noses, the strength of its chins — she knows it to be composed entirely of Doctor Trevelyans who smile and with folded eyeglasses tap the backs of their copies of Married Love in time, as she sings over and over and over again, Don’t ’av any more, Missus Moore, Don’t ’av any more, Missus Moore, Don’t ’av any more, Missus Moore — a futilely contradictory ditty, because how can you avoid having more when your name is Moore, and therefore the very demand defeats itself, as there are more and more Moores the more this imprisoned part of Audrey descants, Don’t ’av any more, Missus Moore — more Moores and more Trevelyans as well, the rat-a-tat-tapping of their tortoiseshell spectacle frames on the book covers a hideous chaffering — if only she could get past this bulky womanish obstruction! On to: Too many double gins, Give the ladies double chins, Too many double gins, Give the ladies double chins — gins and chins proliferating now, chins doubling up as mouths yawn so more and more gins may be poured down, stray teeth in a magenta juniper haze, torn bodices. . — No! Not there, on further: Our cemetery’s so small, There’ll be no room fer ’em all, Our cemetery’s so small there’ll be no room fer ’em — no! Not there either, so the bed of the lathe that’s me ratchets back to Don’t ’av any more, Missus Moore, while Gracie holds her around the shoulders, shouting it all down with the gentle entreaty, Can’t you at least take some of this broth, Aud’? There’s some brawn left inall if you’d fancy that — I’ll go an’ get it straightways. . It has been two weeks since Audrey has lain in this swoon, two weeks during which Gracie has had to rouse her up for the lavatory and feeding. To Gracie’s untutored eye there is nothing mysterious about her friend’s affliction: illness is all around them in the long, low block of flats, it lingers in the dim stairwells, then either mounts the stairs to the three storeys above, or descends to the one below, where it slouches along the ill-lit passageways, a bad nurse bearing jugs full of microbes and bowls brimming with bacteria, who makes of this place a dying-in hospital. The building is only a couple of years old and there is still the foul sweat of distemper on the walls, and the nosey tickle of sawdust in the tiny angular bay windows. Illness is all around them — twitching the chintz back and opening the casement, Gracie hears Audrey mutter, Poor man they ’ung ’im, while from outside come the chants of urchins playing in the front yard: She open ve winder an’ in-flew-enza! She open ve winder an’ in-flew-enza! In the flat above them a returned Tommy has run a fever of a hundred and four for seven straight days. Audrey managed to whisper an address — Gracie took a precious sixpence and went to the office, where she painfully composed the telegram: miss death ill stop send help please stop, at a loss to know what to do with her five spare words. The doctor who finally comes from Kennington — paid for, Gracie assumes, by Audrey’s lover — speaks of this poor soul and many others. The isolation wards and fever hospitals are all full, he says, and, being a staunch progressive who believes in speaking the truth, whispers: the morgues and cemeteries also, I’ve been at Mortlake and seen bodies laid out in a potting shed. . Our cemetery’s so small, There’ll be no room fer ’em all, Our cemetery’s so small there’ll be no —. He examines Audrey with enough care, exerting himself to lift her with an arm behind her shoulders so he may sound her with the cold collation of his stethoscope aspic shivery lies between my blancmanges, fish slice on my neck. . dill tickles my nostrils . .He is much taken by Gracie, and when she brings him a bowl of warm water to wash his hands in, he takes hers and, examining their backs, says, Oleum? She concedes as much with eyes downcast on the brown burn speckles. The doctor is not much more than thirty, very earnest and sandy, with a narrow skull and hazel eyes. When he tucks his stethoscope up inside his hat brim, it lies against his sparse hair black crêpe on a photograph frame. I’ve seen, he says, Thomasinas who’ve worked with tri-nitro-toluene, cordite and Trotyl, and who’re gravely ill now — how d’you fare? Gracie looks away to where her old overall dress, her jacket and her trousers hang on the hook behind the door, the stiffness of the material giving them. . body. I miss. . she is hesitant. . t’be honest I miss the wages, sir, an’ the other girls. No work t’be ’ad juss now, no matter ’ow far you goes paddin’ the ’oof. An’ since they done turfed us straight out of the settlement ’ouse — rent ’ere’s eatin’ up our savings, an’ what with Ordree not workin’. . She falls silent, wondering if she should add that she begrudges her friend nothing — but it isn’t moral hygiene that interests the doctor. Headaches? he queries. Any, ah, hysterical seizures — fits? The ether, y’know, in the cordite — it’s been known to be productive of epilepsy. No paint or powder but he examines her face critically. It’s, she says, as you see, sir, I’ve only the jaundice to show fer me three years — an’ that’s fadin’. Gracie wants to ask about Audrey, whose head is cast down in the pillows, while her knees are Mother Brown! an unnatural posture she maintains as she murmurs, Dunavanymaw, dunavanymaw — and soon enough, Gracie knows, her friend will start to sob, she will keen and writhe, ravaged by grief. It is not, Lord knows, that there isn’t enough to sadden her — the loss of her younger brother, the estrangement from her family, and the near-total abandonment by fancy-pants Mister Cook, the swine. . that’s as may be, there is still more grief in Audrey’s wasted frame than it can contain: a world of it