Curiouser and curiouser . .The party shuffles by a narrow gallery lit by electric bulbs strung from a wire in the bright light of which casualties are being treated. Stanley hangs back to see field dressings torn apart, the bandage tossed aside, the ampoule of iodine broken into the wound — he sees morphia injected into tallowy flesh. We don’t keep ’em, Michael explains. Leastways, not oonless it’s a scratch. We taykem back oop, lissen fer the ebbin’ an’ flowin’ uvvit, an’ when we joodge it right nibble oor way through t’oonderbits inta a shell crater or a trench an’ leave ’em there fer t’oopsiders t’find. Stanley has absolutely no idea what Michael is talking about — although he grasps that the Northerner knows this and speaks only as he does to calm him, as he might have done a restive horse spooked by the cacophony of war. The long shaft terminates in a chalky grotto some twenty feet across, its roof high enough to allow all of them — Stanley and Jean-François included — to stand erect. Oor deepest point in this partuv t’line, Michael says, and Winfried plays his torch beam over the galvanised iron walls seeped-upon brown, writing into legibility the familiar mock street signs. Michael points to one that reads Unter den Linden and says, Over-yonder to the Jerries. . then to the Champs-Élysées, saying, South-west to the Frenchies. . and finally to the Tottenham Court Road: An’ back there to the British lines, see, we moost know oor way round better than t’belligerents — fer them it’s joost back an’ forth a few paces, fer uz it’s scootlin’ all abaht. Stanley revolves and in this murky-go-round sees the faint rings cast by the torchlight travelling along these man-made gullets like a. . sort of pulse, I s’pose you’d say. Michael says, Now, laddie, Ah reckon yoove earned yer tommy, cummere, and, flinging an arm around the taller man’s shoulders, he encourages him under a low lintel, through hangings of sackcloth and canvas, to where there’s a rich, homely glow of firelight and a Catholic blaze of candles. The cool mustiness of the tunnel is replaced by fat frying — the saliva gushes into Stanley’s dry mouth. Men are packed into the well-lit chamber: Britons of all shapes, sizes, classes — Germans and French ditto, some plucky little Belgians, a scattering of coolies, several more Hindoos, also Negroes from the colonies — many are altogether naked, others wear bits and pieces of military-issue kit, others still oddments of civilian clothing, including ladies’ walking cloaks, boudoir bonnets and even — adapted with blade and twine — the occasional corset. The men lounge on blanket-covered divans hewn from the sides of the burrow — they all seem to be simultaneously smoking pipes, mopping greasy plates with hunks of black bread and reading. The studied silence of their concentration is undisturbed by the arrival of Michael’s party, the members of which distribute themselves here, there — wherever we can. . mingling not with laughing comrades. Stanley finds himself wedged between a hook-nosed Levantine and a flat-faced Finn, at his feet lies an etiolated and languid figure, not a stitch on ’im, with the most singularly sticking-out ears, who absent-mindedly rearranges his genitals, pulling the pinched sac of his scrotum from between hairless thighs, then sets down his Everyman edition of Pater’s Appreciations and calls over to the big blackamoor who’s cooking on a pot-bellied iron stove, I say, spear me another banger or two, will you, ol’ man? The blackamoor calls back, Two zeppelins anna cloud cummin’ up! And in due course the plate does come, hand to hand, on it two sausages and a lump of mashed potato. To Stanley the forceful impression of a domesticity long cultivated is unutterably sad: Where is dopey Olive, chirpy Vi? We sit no more at the familiar table of home . .He hunches over, weeping not because of the pain from his strained back or bruised arms and legs, but unashamedly as his sensibility quickens. — The barrage, so muted now it resounds only as memories of summer rainfall on the roof of a bandstand . .Michael squeezes in beside Stan, gloves his hands with his own thickly callused ones and says, Y’know biggest problem we ’av is wi t’smoke. See, we can mekk t’cunningest of chimbleys — he points to where a contrivance of soldered tin snakes up from the stove’s flue to wander across the uneven roof of the burrow — boot we still ass t’vent it soomwhere. Means we can only ’av cooking an’ ’eating by night. . They’ve no part in the labour of the day-time . .Not so bad now, but coom winter it gets right parky down ’ere. The naked officer at their feet drawls up from his resumed Pater, Yaas, deuced fucking cold. The newcomers have all found perches, and now their food comes — the plates are all in use, so they are furnished with platters fashioned from the lids of ammo boxes and other scrap. Nestling in his lap, scorching his thighs, Stanley’s platter supports greenish gravy, a potato splodge. . England’s foam, a single sausage that oozes grubbily from its split charcoal skin and some slices of what looks. . like polony. A tin mug of tea is pressed into his free hand — he takes a sip strong, sweet . .That’s good, he says, and, apart from name, rank, number, these are the first words he has spoken since his rescue. A skinny Irishman, naked except for a purple feather boa, says, Ah, yes, when Mboya makes tay, he makes tay. . Stanley picks up the sausage and reveals the letters marmal on his makeshift plate — marmal, what might that mean? Surely it can only be marmalade missing its ADE? Why, then, do all these other possibilities press in on her claiming her aching attention: MARMALOUS DISPLAY OF RAGTIME FLYING, MARMALARCHING THROUGH PLUCKY BELGIUM A VICTORY REVUE, AT THE STEPNEY PARAGON THE JAILBIRDS AND THEIR BLACK MARMARIA — this last cannot be true, for there would be no room for it on the hoarding, which is only a board covering one of the hotel’s windows. The Alexandra is up for sale, a fact attested to by the estate agents’ names — Knight, Frank & Rutley — on another slab. It is they, she thinks, who will endure — and quite possibly longer than the buildings they sell, which seems preposterous, looking up at the Mameluke bulk of the establishment: its four storeys of windows — each one shuttered and wrought about with iron, its Saracen’s helmet dome covered in scales of lead flashing and surmounted by a coronet of iron railings. Tarrying, she thinks, that’s what I am: tarrying . .and so detaches her eye from the hoarding and its mysterious MARMAL, its timelessness of new poster peeling away from old bill booming Rowntree’s Elect Cocoa, to take in the smaller Saracen’s helmet capping the stairs down into the Underground station — then, and only then, does Audrey remember whence I came. Standing in the ill-lit culvert with the thunderbolt plunging towards her, trying desperately to judge where it might fall, she had become so agitated that she reeled away from the parapet edge to cower under the tiled curve of the parados, wanting to scream over the roar at all the other typewriters, clerks and shop girls that this’ll be a direct hit! Boarding the train automatically, grateful only that it had not exploded, it was not until the second stop that she realised it was going the wrong way — not towards Old Street and the sooty tramp down through weavers’ alleys to the Bishopsgate garret, but south. At Clapham Common, tormented by the weight of the earth above her head — or in it, together with gasbags and pisspipes — she unlatched the carriage door, treadmilled up the escalator so fast and emerged yawning uncontrollably into windy daylight and the mawkish cries of two piker heather sellers, who, flanking the station entrance, bullied all comers and goers with their vicious little sprigs. — Surfaced to this dilemma: should she attempt to fasten the Ince’s Ladies Walking Umbrella that had been a gift from Mister Thomas when she resumed her position at the firm — the ribs and struts of which flexed, unsettlingly alive, as the breeze tugged at their glacé silk webbing? She could not, she felt, rely on the liveliness of her fingers to pull the cloth band around and manoeuvre its button through the wiry eyelet —