Copyright

This is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

Fourth Estate

An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd.

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by Flamingo 1996

Copyright © Tristan Hawkins 1996

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

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Source ISBN: 9780006550112

Ebook Edition © JUNE 2017 ISBN: 9780008200862

Version: 2017-06-28

Dedication

To Yuko

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

The Anarchist

Keep Reading

About the Author

Other Books By

About the Publisher

There was an announcement.

It began, ‘This is an announcement’ … then nothing. Then everything crunched to a halt.

The bald man with the lavish ears peered up from his paper and took in the other passengers.

It was bad news.

Insouciant skirts and brave suits. Youth, handsome looks and wealth.

All of them mocking his bad suit and pie-crust shoes. Smirking at his simmering blood-bag of a face. And was it possible? All of them in full knowledge of the unfortunate episode.

Perhaps there could be no question about the bald man with the lavish ears who sat perspiring on the Victoria Line tube train that afternoon.

No question that he was the genuine article. A bona fide sex offender. Your actual nonce. A moral bankrupt cowering in unpressed pinstripe and noose-fast tie. For why else would his face burn cerise at a stranger’s glance?

A pair of recently holidayed legs lay draped in the walkway. Parted arrogantly and wiped across the thighs with little more than the rumour of a skirt, it seemed she was almost daring him to take a peek. Filch a glance at the unpossessable, then at once experience all the wretchedness of his age; his sex; his off-the-peg, all-weather suit; his Tory broadsheet; his bald head and lavish ears; his everything.

He re-reddened at the inadvertent volume of these peculiar thoughts.

Then he swallowed – but the obstreperous, mucoid gas in his throat stayed put. And it seemed to him that he was now wafting outside his body, as if in some other dimension, and that the stubborn gas had transformed itself into a great liquid and the bald man with the lavish ears was now drowning.

In a single spasm he scrunched up his paper and moaned.

A resonant belch of a moan. The clamour of a randy bullfrog. Or a sluggard mastiff. The exhalation of a new corpse.

‘You all right, mate?’ someone from this dimension asked.

‘Yes, thanks,’ he thought he managed to grunt.

But Sheridan Entwhistle was not all right at all. His entire body was squeezing out sweat and he trembled like a rodent lifted from its cage. His field of vision was fast colliding into itself and his chest felt as if it was being compressed into the mass of ball bearing. And though he was breathing hard, gasping even, the air refused to enter his body. As if deflated, his head dropped and his vision was momentarily sucked along the delicious vale of her thighs.

Then … nothing.

When he came to a second or so later he was somewhat giddy yet in full possession of his faculties and his life. Forsaking decorum, he fiddled the pebblish knot of his tie loose and popped open the button below.

The tube wheezed into motion and coughed on to Victoria. Adeptly Sheridan folded up his paper, slotted it into his briefcase and joined the swarm of summer suits and shirts being sucked away by overground trains. And he thought, with mild and deliberate amusement, that apart from a heart attack it been a rather unremarkable day.

Sheridan flopped down and the cool armchair drank him into it.

‘Three, three, five?’ A momentary smile zipped under her big nose as she unscrewed the bottle cap.

‘Perhaps I’ll refrain tonight,’ he said reflectively. Then, not wanting to arouse premature suspicion in his wife, he laughed. ‘Go on, just a wee-un then.’

‘I,’ Jennifer announced as if heralding something of which she were supremely proud, ‘spent most of this afternoon lounging in our new conservatory.’

‘Good God, woman. I’m surprised you’re not sautéed.’

‘Oh no, darling,’ she seemed to echo as if in another room, ‘there was the divinest of breezes with both doors open.’

‘So now I take it, we’re playing host to every airborne bug in Edingley. Charming.’

He slipped a hand inside his jacket and counted the steady, rhythmic beats of his life. Still he couldn’t be sure of this. Not with things in slo-mo as they were.

His wife smiled and he smiled back and thought: yes, I’m doing well here.

Tinkling out the pleasant refrain of the outer life with one hand.

Mutely thumping out the discordant base of the inner riot with the other.

He swallowed and forced himself to speak in what he considered was a sufficiently melodious manner.

‘Seen much of the Unspeakably Behaved today?’ he asked, tunefully he imagined.

‘What do you think?’

‘Well, it is half term. For some. At Imogen’s is she?’

Jennifer handed him the drink, looked hard at him and dragged a vicious hand back though her grey roots. He knew the gesture and raised an eyebrow. Still she said nothing, glaring at him all the while as if she were employing the sight of his face to seethe her anger up to the point of expression. She refocused on the carpet and spoke in rapid stabs.

‘Imogen, you say. You mean Imogen, whose mother I happened to bump into in the butcher’s today. Who, when I made a polite enquiry about our daughter, took great relish in informing me that they’d just, that very morning as it happened, received a divine postcard from Boston. Not Lincolnshire of course, she simpered over a pound of best mince, the other Boston, you know, the one just west of Ireland.’

‘Jennifer, my dear, I hate to say I told you so. But I did say at the time, do try and work on a boy. A lot less heartache. A lot less bloody …’

‘Well, I’m glad you can take it in your stride.’

‘Go on then. Theories?’

‘Chromosomally deficient, three.’

‘Boy? Man? Men? ERE?’

‘Beg pardon?’

‘Edingley Rugby Eleven?’

‘Yes, of course, Sherry. Flippancy, that’s the ticket. I … I …’ Jennifer rose, sniffed shamelessly and marched through the open doors of the conservatory. She paused to count something on her fingers, turned and said acidly, ‘Indian hemp, nine.’

Sheridan thought for a moment, then moaned, ‘C’mon, Jennifer. Now that is ridiculous.’

He felt his chest constrict.

She strode back in the living room and clutched the wings of his chair. Defiant of the odd gasp and sob, she declared that, sure as she stood here, she had smelled marijuana on Folucia’s clothes and in her room and in the bathroom. And there was no mistaking it. It was marijuana. Besides, was she or was she not, as each day passed, taking on the appearance of – she didn’t know, ‘One of those new age whatever-they’re called-s?’

Sheridan waited for his heartbeat to steady then calmly asked whether Jennifer had any further evidence. She told him that she wasn’t sure but perhaps she had noticed a sort of far away look in Folucia’s face of late. He reached back, rested both his hands on hers and smiled. He spoke slowly and possibly condescendingly.

‘I’ll wager my golf clubs against your aspidistra that the Unspeakably Behaved’s countenance comes courtesy of a chromosomally challenged, unspeakable whatsitsname; that the whatsitsname is in the singular, and that, in your olfactory ignorance, you are failing to appreciate the subtlest of all-the-rage perfumes, again courtesy of the whatsitsname. Opium or something. That’s a perfume, I believe. But, further evidence pending, I shall have a word with the suspect.’

‘Sherry, she lied to us.’

‘She’s fifteen, just done twelve rounds with puberty, she’s allowed the odd prevarication.’

‘Well, in my day the age of dissent was eighteen.’

‘And well worth the wait I dare say. But times change.’

‘Humph. Well, I hope you’re right, Sherry. Well, sort of. But you know how I loathe disturbances. Anyway, how was work today?’

‘Oh, expletive dash faecal matter, four.’

*

Coronary thrombosis, more commonly known as a heart attack is the result of a blood clot (thrombus) which impedes blood flow in one of the coronary arteries … Symptoms range from intense discomfort in the centre of the chest … shortness of breath … giddiness … cold sweat … occasionally loss of consciousness …

He raised a hand, lay it softly on his ribcage and swallowed the panic like a hard-boiled egg.

The book remained half open, suspended temporarily at an uncomfortable right angle. He found it mildly disconcerting – a taunting metaphor for his mortal limbo. He shook his leg and the volume shut with a damp thud.

Sheridan closed his eyes and inhaled several times, attempting to bridle the demented fission of his thoughts. Naturally the notion of the GP substantiating his suspicions was a horrifying one. But, he considered, once passed the forty mark the hoodwinking was quite certainly over. Any man believing he’s still in some way young after the watershed is either a coward or a fool. So, the GP it had to be. And by God, Sheridan Entwhistle would enter and leave that surgery with a smile. Even if a dry throated, thank you, sir, for flogging me, smirk was the limit of it.

He stood cautiously and timidly walked over to the bookcase. Again he raised a hand to his chest.

‘Eleven o’clock and all is well,’ he murmured to himself and slid the family health manual back into its gap. Sheridan smiled to himself. There could be no doubt that he was a brave man and it pleased him. But, as he turned to leave and join his wife upstairs, he was struck by a notion that pleased him even more.

Like hell, would he visit the GP! He’d imagine that it had never happened – and innocently notch up his life assurance. Then he’d think about seeing the bloody doctor. Now, that, Sheridan considered, was brave.

The unfortunate episode surfaced once more. He tucked it beneath the covers of his consciousness and went up to bed.

Yantra jerked open the doors of the Bedford and the clean chill of outside gushed in, rinsing away the curdled stench of sleep.

One of the bodies beneath the blankets moaned. It sounded human so he whispered, ‘Sorry,’ and clambered stiffly out of the van.

Loch Laggan was still black as dye and as yet he couldn’t detect any hills to the West. Perhaps he’d overshot. Or perhaps, as was common here, the Loch would wake a cauldron of steam and he’d miss everything.

He could make out what might have been a bush. But being unsure of the ground he considered it wise to piss where he was standing.

Stepping gingerly away from the puddle, Yantra folded onto the cold ground and waited. He was undecided. Should he submerge into a meditation or smoke his first joint of the day? Ideally, he’d have dropped a trip and come on as the sun went up. But they were down to emergency petrol and food money: there was work to be done. Besides he wasn’t a bloody idiot. If there had to be laws at all, then there should certainly be one about driving on acid. The One trip at a time statute, he quipped to himself.

He detected the rumble of a car perhaps five miles south. It vexed him. The only road around here was the one they’d pulled Biddy over on. It meant the bloody thing would pass directly in front of him, annihilating any sense of isolation. Quite obviously a meditation was out of the question under such circumstances, so he unclipped the flap on his bulky breast pocket and slid out a pre-rolled spliff. So much negativity at this hour in the morning could never be good for a person of his exquisite equilibrium.

The first inhalation barely made his lungs before sending a succession of painful firecrackers back up his larynx. He expelled the phlegm, waited a minute or so for his breath to cease grating and attempted to reload himself. Again, it went down like a ball of wire wool and he coughed it into the darkness.

‘The ways to enlightenment are many, mate,’ he gurgled acrimoniously at the car as it passed and instantly felt guilt at taking the words in vain and his lack of positivity in general. And perhaps it was because the vague high was distorting his vexation, or perhaps it was the other way round, but he thought: though mother nature is unquestionably beautiful, sometimes one has to try fucking hard to be in a good mood about it at this time in the morning.

As he’d feared, dawn was an indiscernible penumbra of cold and drizzle.

He heard the whimperings of Endometrium inside the van and rose shakily to liberate him. Then he felt the need to fertilize the land himself and stepped in to grab the bog roll and trowel.

Admittedly, the man had certain ideological objections to toilet paper. Indeed, a few years back he’d flirted with leaves and brush but, truly, that was an unspeakable martyrdom. Even so, he wished someone had the good sense to make the stuff more biodegradable or even a credible shade of natural green. He’d read somewhere that the steep face of Everest was little more than a morass of human excrement and sheets of toilet paper. All of it suburban pink, he’d bet. Still, pub bogs only ever stocked white rolls or that medicated grease-proof stuff, so he guessed he was stuck with it.

Yantra opened the van up and leaned inside waving what was left of the spliff.

‘Oy, Jayne. You want some?’

‘Save it me, darling,’ she murmured and nuzzled further into the blankets.

‘Can’t do that, Jayne. This is a dawn doobie. A vampire smoke. A mayfly that expires with first light.’

‘Did you see it then, Yan?’

‘Mu.’

‘Call again.’

‘Yeah and no. I experienced the experience, but the experience wasn’t what you might call an experience.’ She laughed half-heartedly.

‘But it goes on the map, yeah?’

‘The corporeal map, certainly, the map of my incarnation, no change.’

‘Right. Well do us a favour then, Yan. Take your incarnation out for a stroll with Endy and let me get a bit more dreaming done.’

As yet, not much of the morning’s colour had been filled in and Yantra could feel the mu-rain (the cold highland steam which though not rain is equally competent at drenching a person) begin to descend. Even Endometrium who was usually a lesson in life appreciation seemed pissed off. He prized Biddy back open and Jayne made a little grizzling sound.

‘Sorry to drag you up from the underworld, babe, but how do we stand in the dog food stakes?’

‘Well it won’t be in here, will it?’ she said with restrained irritation.

‘No, right. You’re right Jayne. Yeah.’

Yantra moved round the vehicle and awkwardly opened one of the front doors. It reeked of dog food which was a good sign. Then again the whole van did – amongst other things. Endometrium jumped in.

‘Lend us a nose, Endy.’

Within moments the dog located it and dug his wiry body under the Babylon bibs. Yantra leaned over and retrieved the half-full tin. He moved out and Endometrium bounced after him. Yantra dug out a couple of clumps of the cat food with his hand and managed to scrape out the remaining collops with a screwdriver. He wiped his palms vigorously up, down and along the dog’s coarse sides and skipped back round to join Jayne.

She made no noise as he entered the van. He smiled at the lump bedecked with patchwork blankets, only a pair of boots and a hint of suedey head poking out. Kneeling, he began to caress her fuzzy scalp, then comb his fingers through the thin blue fringe at the front. He drew the blankets down a little way and saw that her face smiled drowsily. Lazily, he traced a finger along the arête of her nose.

‘Dog food,’ she mumbled.

‘Cat actually,’ he told her, bowing and kissing the small knob of shoulder that escaped from her shapeless black jumper.

Jayne rolled around to meet him and opened her arms slightly. He manoeuvred in and ran his tongue up along her coil of earrings. She took one of his ginger dreadlocks in her mouth and sucked at it like liquorice, then she pulled gently at his sparse beard and gave his nose ring an affectionate flick. Clawing tenderly at the shaven sides of his scalp, she jerked him down and rammed her rheumy tongue into his polluted mouth.

They glutted on each other’s face for several seconds, rapidly working their hands under layers of greasy fabric. Abruptly Yantra broke away.

‘What is it, baby?’ she drawled.

‘Time.’

‘An a priori synthetic concept, an illusion of mortality. Fuck time, Yan. Just fuck me.’

‘Jayne, we’re out of provisions. We gotta do a milk round.’

‘Just a quickie. A wam-bam-thank-you-Yan. Time can take a breather for ten minutes for us immortals.’

‘Near immortals. I mean we’re good.’ He kissed her briskly. ‘But not …’

‘We are good though, aren’t we?’

‘The fucking best.’ He dived down and kissed her more definitively. ‘But, babe,’ he said drawing himself up, ‘hunter-gatherers must do their stuff.’

He kicked open the doors and flew out with a whoop. Jayne followed him with the trowel and paper.

‘Roll one for the road,’ she shouted and disappeared behind a tree.

Still intoxicated by the strange charm of his morning dream, Sheridan Entwhistle propelled himself from the bed.

Then he remembered and padded across the room with the supreme care his condition warranted.

He opened the bathroom door and was greeted by the sweet coconutty scent of his daughter. He smiled. It smelled good. Unlike Jennifer’s Alpic fusion of spices, there was something touchingly honest about Folucia’s coconut.

Sheridan stared at his face in the mirror. The greying occipital strip of his hair was fluffed out on one side and pressed flat on the other. It looked daft. So he ruffled out the flat bits to match and thought with a grin that if he was ever invited to a fancy dress party he’d style his hair in this way and go as Saturn.

He wiped his hair back down into its rightful place and sneered at his officious appearance. If he was being honest, which he rarely was about his hair, he bloody detested it. Of course, he’d taken his father’s baldness for granted. It had never occurred to him that it might mean that each of his hairs also possessed the genetic instructions of a lemming. Initially it began to go at the front. Then a circle, that seemed to expand by the month, developed in the middle. And throughout his late teens his hair continued this patterned exeunt with all the precision of a syncopated swimming troupe. When Jennifer had met him, she’d said that he was twenty-one going on fifty. His suicidal hair doubtlessly contributed to this impression.

1969, Sheridan figured, was not a good year to be bald. Indeed he held this to be largely responsible for his denial of free love and virtually everything else that was on offer at the time. Too young to bop and too hairless to turn on, tune in and drop out, he wondered whether he hadn’t perhaps inadvertently traded his youth for a head start in business. Indeed at twenty-one he was the advertisement manager for a successful pharmaceutical weekly in one of the fastest growing publishing firms in London.

His procurement of a wife was also a rather unglamorous, inadvertent, and he supposed, businesslike affair.

At the time he was living at home with his mother in Edingley. This however was not through choice. It was a matter of obligation. And sharing a flat in Pimlico or Bayswater with other young business lights would have to wait until his mother’s concatenation of motley ailments finally reached some sort of consensus. To this day, the guilt of half wishing his poor mother dead could deal Sheridan an upper-cut.

Each evening the dread of entering the oppressive, rancorous house would virtually push him to tears. Of course, he loved his mother comprehensively and would never have suggested a home – still, walking through the doorway and merely bidding her good evening was doing something terrible to him. Something that he didn’t, and still couldn’t, understand. Something physical. Something that he had no say over. Yet it was something indubitably wrong and selfish. Something, he was in no doubt, that had much to do with his father who, at times, seemed able to defy the grave and take up disdainful residence on Sheridan’s shoulders.

‘I must say, I was expecting someone somewhat older.’ These were the first words Sheridan Entwhistle spoke to his future bride.

Jennifer did not mince her words. She said that she considered twenty-six quite old enough, thank you. Moreover, she told him with evident antipathy, if she was to spend her days in this house nursing Mrs Entwhistle then there would have to be some changes. She had a point. The furniture was millimetre thick in dust, the kitchen floor was adhesive with grime and the washing-up was done on a need-to-use basis. Indeed, even Mrs Entwhistle herself would have profited from a good old-fashioned scrub.

She asked Sheridan how often he bathed his mother and he looked horrified. Bath his own mother! It was beyond contemplation. Removing her coat and getting to work in the kitchen, she informed Sheridan that if his mother was going to remain here, he’d need to face a few home truths. The woman was a virtual cripple and should have had a wheelchair long ago. Sheridan would have to arrange for the door frames to be widened. He would also need to invest in some nappies and plastic undergarments.

In fact, Jennifer did everything short of accuse Sheridan of criminal neglect. Why weren’t there hand rails on the bath and grip mats in the bathroom? Why didn’t she have access to the central heating controls? Did he really think she was capable of using the telephone dial in an emergency? The kettle was far too heavy. Why hadn’t the gas cooker been fitted with an automatic ignition? What if she dropped a match? Indeed, Jennifer had to wonder about Mrs Entwhistle’s GP. Why hadn’t he mentioned any of this? As she lived and breathed, the man needed reporting.

Sheridan Entwhistle was not impressed with Jennifer. And when she left later that afternoon, he suggested to his mother that they look for someone else. Someone with a little more experience, someone less bossy by half. But his mother disagreed. She liked Jennifer and considered her ideal for the job. Besides it would be her not him who would be in Jennifer’s company for the better part of the day. Sheridan wondered what could have possibly passed between them in the bathroom to give his mother such a distorted view of the virago nurse.

The changes Jennifer bought to the Entwhistle household were shocking and immediate. Inside a week, she had not only altered the look and fetor of the place, she seemed to have succeeded in dissipating its burdensome ambience. The rooms appeared bigger, lighter and his mother genuinely happier. But what really swung things was when Jennifer greeted his arrival home with a cup of tea and ginger biscuits.

In the beginning the conversation between them was restricted to short reports about Mrs Entwhistle’s wellbeing and planning the various alterations the house needed to undergo. In the weeks that followed, however, their chat grew to encompass Sheridan’s job and Jennifer’s past. Jennifer, like Sheridan, was Croydon-spawned, and, like him, she intended to leave – eventually. Like most things of any cop, the swinging sixties seemed to have bypassed Croydon altogether. She also told Sheridan that she never planned to have a baby because she’d seen, smelled and, worst of all, listened to childbirth first hand. He shared the sentiment, but for the reason that he’d had enough of people being dependent on him for one lifetime.

It was Mrs Entwhistle who noticed that Jennifer was leaving later and later and that she’d taken to wearing small amounts of make-up. She also noticed a general reduction in the irritability – at a push, desperation – that had characterized her son during recent months. Sheridan assured her that it was to do with his work and made excuses to prune short the evening conversations with the nurse.

Then his mother did something quite extraordinary.

One tea-quaffing evening in late summer, Mrs Entwhistle silenced the conversation with a slap to the arm of her chair. Then she launched into a speech. She began by explaining that perhaps she had a tendency at times to take them both for granted but in the last few months they really had shown her extraordinary kindness. The point being they were young and shouldn’t spend their lives doting over a housebound old woman. She slid out an envelope from the side of her armchair. Sheridan shuddered. He figured the dote must have applied to enter a home. But he was wrong. The envelope contained two tickets for a Bach concert at the Fairfield Hall that Saturday night.

Simultaneously, they reddened. What could have possibly prompted this powerless bag of smiles into becoming a shameless meddler? And how in hell’s name had she managed to get hold of the tickets? They would go, now? she asked. They looked at each other and shrugged. Jennifer was the first to smile and nod. Then Sheridan smiled and it was settled.

As she was leaving he told her how awfully sorry and ashamed he was, he couldn’t think what had possessed his mother to do such a thing. She said, rubbish, it was very thoughtful of her and she’d be happy to go if, of course, he would. He smiled and said, ‘Well, let’s call it a date then.’

As she shimmied into her overcoat he noticed the small rise of her breast in the stiff, white blouse. It was peculiar, he’d never considered Jennifer in this way before.

When Sheridan re-entered the house, he asked his mother exactly how she’d managed to procure the tickets. ‘That’s for me to know and you to find out,’ she told him. Later, when he learned the truth, Sheridan Entwhistle would feel rather idiotic about things. But for the time he merely smiled, content to put it down to the strangeness and unpredictability of female-kind.

During the days that followed he took note of the nurse’s heart-shaped behind as she bent over his mother’s chair and her slender black-stockinged legs. Jennifer also had a big nose. Ever since seeing Breakfast at Tiffany’s he’d appreciated big noses on women. Sheridan wondered how Jennifer would dress for the concert. He’d never seen her in anything other than the nurse’s garb.

Jennifer wore a dark green velvet dress with a plump roll collar falling just high of her cleavage. Her black hair was down and her lips were painted cardinal. In fact, out of the nurse’s gear, she didn’t look unlike Audrey Hepburn. Though Sheridan would have never confessed it, he’d bought himself a new suit for the occasion – a brave faun departure with grand collar and flares.

Over tea in a cafe in St George’s Walk, he gave her the news that he’d need to apply for planning permission to widen the living room door as it formed part of a structural wall. She grinned and told him that talk about his mother was prohibited tonight. He agreed and asked what she wanted to talk about. She said she didn’t know. Then she asked him whether he preferred the Beatles or the Rolling Stones. He told her that he didn’t much like either. What type of music did he like then? she asked. He hesitated and then answered that, come to think about it, he didn’t really care much for music at all. This made her laugh. She told him it was impossible. Everyone had to like one type of music. Sheridan didn’t. She asked about his favourite film. He didn’t know. What was he interested in then? He thought for a second or two and told her, magazine publishing. He went on to tell her that one day he’d own a huge company of his own, publishing everything from trade titles to magazines like Oz. Jennifer was, or at least made out that she was, impressed. At the time working in magazines was considered rather avant garde.

The concert was diabolical. Worse than any recording. When it was time for the organ to sound and a disproportionately loud, flatulent note resounded through the hall, Sheridan actually guffawed. Jennifer tutted and softly slapped his knee.

After the performance he drove her home in his Morris Minor and she asked whether he’d enjoyed the evening. He said he had. She wondered whether he’d perhaps like to go out again. He said he’d like that. In that case, she told him, she’d let him into a secret. Then she changed her mind.

It wasn’t until they’d lip-kissed for the first time after their fourth date that she confessed it was she who had bought the Bach tickets after collaborating with his mother – because frankly Sheridan was worse than useless. He told her that for her information he’d had his fair share of girlfriends. Well, perhaps fair share was a slight exaggeration. He’d had one other girlfriend and that was when he was seventeen – but frankly business put paid to that sort of thing. Had she had any other boyfriends? he enquired. That was for her to know and him to find out, she told him, and kissed his mouth for the second time.

*

Sheridan applied a thin veneer of polyunsaturated fat to his toast and forewent the customary marmalade. Jennifer raised an eyebrow but said nothing. She was shattered. Sherry had made no fewer than eleven visits to the bathroom in the night, on each occasion rousing her from a weightless sleep. Something was not right with her husband, she knew this much. What though? Folucia, work, his health? His health; God, she hoped not – how she detested disturbances.

‘Last night …’ said Sheridan earnestly lowering his toast. ‘Well, actually this morning, to be accurate. I had the most remarkable of dreams.’

Jennifer shot him a startled look. They never spoke about dreams. The encoded messages that periodically surfaced from the mind’s sewer were ipso facto private. To Jennifer, breakfast-time dream autopsies were as tasteless as discussion of sexual matters or bowel movements. In two and a bit decades of marriage, dreams had never been on the agenda. There was quite definitely something up with the man.

‘One of those full-colour, three-dimensional, profound-truth dreams. You know the sort?’

‘Sherry, please. It’s too early for Freud. I can’t cope with potties and willies at breakfast.’

‘I assure you that this dream was entirely potty and willy free.’

‘Still, Sherry.’

‘I was in the City. Actually, I suppose it could have been New York, Croydon even, surrounded by the most colossal skyscrapers …’

‘Precisely …’ she spat. ‘Archetype of male virility. Seven, six.’

‘Good grief, Jennifer. Of course, last night I dreamt a dream of a thousand cocks.’

At that moment a dishevelled Folucia tramped in.

‘That must have been nice for you, Daddy,’ she grinned. They bade her a low key good morning, to which she grunted back, and watched on as she opened the fridge, removed what she required and exited – neither, it seemed, ashamed nor guilty that her hob-nails had clumped up the stairs at one-thirty that morning.

Jennifer looked over at her husband disapprovingly. He anticipated her and uttered assurance that, if he got the chance he’d do the father, daughter bit that evening.

‘American valedictory cliché. Four, one, four, three,’ smiled Jennifer in the porch and they clicked their mouths together without touching.

‘I’ll do my utmost. You have a nice day too.’

Sluggishly ambling his way to the bus stop, Sheridan Entwhistle began to mutter. ‘One, two, three … four … five, six.’ No fewer than eleven Bill Isaacs, Cons grinned down from his neighbours’ windows.

An undoubtedly positive aspect to being in the middle of nowhere is that everything is delivered.

On the other hand, folk rise early making it that much more awkward to receive their donations.

Scouring Fort William and the foothills of Nevis that morning, Yantra managed to collect just a pint of milk, a loaf of bread and some eggs. Still, as he often commented at such times, hunger assists humility and provides an empty focus for meditation. And, of course, where there’s famine there’s repletion. They should feel glad that someone would be eating what they would not.

At times, Jayne had the distinct feeling that Yantra’s crude Zen-styled maxims were little more than a façade for life’s frustrations. She was bloody starving and she made this plain.

‘For God’s sake,’ he barked in a very unenlightened manner. ‘I’m really not in the frame for begging and, forgive me if I’m mistaken, but the Jocks aren’t exactly known for their love of the didgeridoo.’ She tutted, but he went on. ‘Tell yer what though, Jayne, find me one of them dying cats in a tartan sack and I’ll have a crack at it. But, you know, babe, it’s been a long day already so just give me a fucking brea … Hey, like sorry. Yeah, I know what you’re saying. You want to use some of the money, right?’ She nodded, so he undid the zip at the back of the driver’s seat and reluctantly pulled out the bank bag. They were down to their last twenty pounds.

Shopping in Fort William was not easy. They concluded that a tribe must have visited the town earlier for many of the shops and pubs had handwritten signs saying no travellers and no gypsies.

Yantra wanted to make enquiries. Was it possible that they’d travelled alone for so long that they’d failed to hear about a festival? Or had the town merely been paranoic hosts to a tiny group of travellers? Jayne had experience of Yantra’s making enquiries. Invariably he’d ask the most inappropriate person he could find – like a pig or a pub owner – and wind up in a vicious debate over civil liberties.

‘Yan, I don’t feel welcome here. You know, I’m experiencing some powerful negativity from the indigenous. Can we, like, just do the dust from our shoes thing.’

‘Well, babe, to my reckoning the path of least resistance has to be the A82. Which leads us directly to the middle of an even more nowhere place than this – and a highly Buddhist place it is to be, if I recall.’

They managed to find some vegetarian burgers in a small shop on the edge of town which they wrapped in tinfoil and cooked on Biddy’s engine as they hurtled southbound on the path of least resistance.

Six weeks before, Sheridan Entwhistle had had a somewhat uncomfortable conversation and quite possibly it had been the beginning of everything.

The cautionary palpitations. The peculiar thoughts flinging up into his consciousness. The dissipation of a hard-earned inner pomposity. And, as it would seem a month and a half later, the folding of his existence into a bizarre anarchy.

‘You realize this meeting is the result of a quite ludicrous misunderstanding,’ Sheridan announced with all the resilience of a seasoned building. ‘And the fact that the unfortunate episode, as you so delicately put it, occurred post a luncheon, where yes, as we’ve established, I did partake of the grape in moderate quantities, is purely circumstantial. The events are entirely unrelated. And in my view, and I imagine the view of anyone with an ounce of commonsense, the events are significant only inasmuch as they are entirely insignificant. I don’t think I can make myself any clearer. Nor do I think that I can spare any further time in discussing these fictions.’

He rose.

Belinda Oliphant, Director of Personnel and Human Resources, cleared her throat.

‘Please sit down, Sheridan.’

He complied with a frown and she nodded to her PA, indicating that what she was about to say needn’t be recorded.

‘Look Sheridan, the last thing I want to do is waste your time and mine re-treading the same ground. And believe me, Sheridan, the very, very last thing I want to do is suggest that you’re, well, being conservative with the truth. But, Sheridan, surely you can see that there are things which simply don’t add up.’

‘Absolutely, Belinda. Someone’s imagination has got the better of them. And I suggest it is to them you should be talking. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have things …’

‘And frankly,’ Belinda went on, raising her voice a touch, ‘if person A reports that person B was slurring their speech and reeking of alcohol, I’m duty bound to treat the sober account …’

‘I take exception to …’

‘Sheridan, what motive could she possibly have for making this up?’

‘I’m not suggesting that she did make it up. I simply believe she misunderstood the intention behind the invitation.’

‘But you repeated the invitation. You wouldn’t take no for an answer. That is not something that a person makes up or misunderstands. That is a statement of fact.’ She gestured to the PA to recommence note taking.

‘Look, if I did, it was purely because, well, I suppose I thought she was being polite, or shy or something … you know how these girls, these women, can be.’

‘Helen declined the invitation, initially on the grounds that she wouldn’t feel comfortable in a wine bar dressed as she was. Is that correct?’

‘Yes, I believe …’

‘To which you replied …’ Belinda donned a devilish pair of spectacles and read from a typed sheet of paper. ‘“Rubbish, my dear, you look absolutely scrumptious as you are.”’

‘I may have used that turn of … an unfortunate choice of words in the light of things but, I assure you, entirely innocent.’

‘And at that time your hand was placed on her shoulder? Her naked shoulder, because that day she was wearing a sleeveless top. Am I right?’

‘A careless error. Still, I have no recollection.’

‘And your hand remained on her shoulder for the entire time you were issuing your invitations?’

‘If it did, it really was an unconscious gesture. And I fail to see that what she was wearing …’

‘Still, your noble intentions aside, you are not denying that the situation may have been similar to the way I’ve described it?’

‘It’s not the description that I take exception to, it’s the ridiculous interpretation that you’re forcing upon an innocent – I stress innocent – professional drinks invitation.’

‘An invitation which took place at five-twenty, perhaps ten minutes after you’d returned from lunch that particular afternoon.’

‘Absolute tosh. I went on to a meeting in the City directly after lunch.’

‘And you maintain that you were sober.’

‘Good God, woman. Of course I was bloody well …’

Belinda looked at Sheridan almost sympathetically.

‘Oh Sheridan, Sheridan. If you’d wanted to discuss Helen’s career, why didn’t you do it in your office? Why didn’t you do it the next morning?’

Sheridan had no answer.

Belinda latched on to his reticence and, looking directly into his eyes, asked, ‘And Sheridan, can you explain to me why Helen was in tears when she came to my office?’

Sheridan shook his head.

‘And why have I had reports of a number of other, all be they less serious, improprieties?’

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘Mostly concerning your choice of words when addressing or referring to women? Three months ago you were requested to refrain from using the word, dear.’

‘Which I found made letter writing somewhat awkward. Of course I denied such a petty-minded request.’

‘And sales executives as, girls.’

‘My dear …’ he said with purpose. ‘You must understand: some habits die hard. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have another engagement.’

‘Sheridan, Sheridan, briefly.’

‘What?’

‘Would you consider writing Helen a letter of apology? Do that and I think things might settle.’

‘Good God, woman. If there are any apologies flying around I expect to be on the receiving end of them all. Good afternoon, Mzzz Oliphant.’

‘Sheridan,’ she called as he threw open the door. ‘I’m afraid I have no choice but to report the matter to James, and recommend that further action be taken. I strongly advise you to opt for the apology.’

He turned and, for the first time since he’d been in prep school, Sheridan Entwhistle waggled his hand on his nose and blew a raspberry. Belinda Oliphant indicated that her PA should make a note of this.

Perhaps Sheridan hadn’t been quite so eloquent. After all, he couldn’t recall the meeting with Belinda Oliphant word for word. Was it possible that, in reality, he’d been a touch more self-effacing and given some indication that he’d do his utmost to drag his diction into the realms of the politically correct – whatever that meant.

The important thing was that he shouldn’t dwell on it. It all happened nearly six weeks ago after all. Nor should he allow himself to become so goddamn paranoic.

It wasn’t as if he was your actual sex offender.

It wasn’t as if he’d actually intended doing anything.

And if, just suppose, there had been that itsy-bitsy bit more to the invitation than he was allowing himself to admit, well, for bloody’s sake, he was only human.

But, in the name of God, he’d meant nothing by the invitation. And of this he was virtually, nay entirely, sure.

Besides, contrary to expectation James hadn’t summoned Sheridan to an interim meeting. Indeed he was mildly surprised when the MD greeted him in his usual affable manner at their regular monthly engagement. And throughout the meeting they stuck to the usual agenda of taking each of Sheridan’s magazines in turn and discussing ways of maximizing short and long term yield. Quite plainly the Oliphant woman had seen sense and backed down.

To think, he’d actually lost sleep over things.

To think, his self-confidence had faltered. That at times he’d actually taken to seeing himself in the way he imagined his staff must have – a middle-aged drooler. A man with a priapic, clandestine agenda. A dirty old believer in the impossible.

Then he saw it and shuddered. Behind the magazines and figure sheets was something he couldn’t fail to recognize – his fat, green, twelve-year-old personnel file.

‘You OK, old man?’ asked James, noticing that his interlocutor’s attention was somewhere over the Soho skyline.

‘Sorry, James. Lost concentration for a moment.’

‘A short break’s what you need, old man. Do you the power.’

Sheridan was mortified. He knew the euphemism. Invariably, a short break ripened into a longer one and ultimately matured into the old chestnut: Gone to seek pastures new, on the company memo.

They discoursed some more yet James seemed distracted. Then, with an abrupt wave of the hand, he broke off in mid-sentence and laid a palm on the portentous file.

‘Sherry, Sherry, Sherry, old boy. Aaahh, Sheridan.’

‘What?’ he snapped, suddenly indignant.

‘Well …’ James paused and met Sheridan’s scowl full on. He smiled which caused Sheridan to smile involuntarily. Abruptly he modified the expression to a grimace to indicate that he hadn’t intended the smile. How he loathed the way he instinctively emulated the facial expressions of those in authority. It made it doubly bad that James was younger than him. A good ten years younger at that.

‘Been taking a thumb through your file, Sherry. Couldn’t help noticing that you’re approaching the big four-five.’

That’s right, James, you bastard, he thought. Sack me and you effectively retire me. Nice one, James.

‘So I am, James. Not something I’m particularly overjoyed about, but che sarà sarà and all that.’

‘Rubbish man. A fine age, forty-five. Got the experience, but haven’t lost the vitality. Know what I’m saying, Sherry?’

‘I think perhaps I do, James.’

‘Good. Time for a man to spread his wings a little.’

‘Quite so.’

‘So, give it some thought. I mean, Sherry, come back to me in a month and let me know what you want for your birthday. A launch? An acquisition? Product cards? Hell, man, you may even want to drag us screaming into CD - ROM. In a year or so’s time, I want to see you up on this floor. Earning some serious shekels. Know what I’m saying, man? Let’s have Entwhistle on the board of Monroe-Hastings. Ye gads, man, we must owe it you by now.’

‘Well thanks, James. That really is … I’ve been having a few thoughts … I’ll jot down some … excellent. I’ll do that. Leave it with me, James.’

Nor was Sheridan concerned that he now wore one of those froggish grins that almost has to be wiped away with the hand.

‘Fine. And take a long weekend, man. Hate to say it but you’re looking a bit worse for it.’

‘Yes, thank you. Thank you. I’ll do that. And thank you for the …’

‘Ooh-um, Sherry. While you’re in here. Managed to smooth things over with the lesbo-Trotskyite faction for you. But, you know, old boy, tone it down a smidgen. No more said.’

Sheridan sat with head in his hands until his coffee grew cold. Because his secretary was at home with yet another day of menstrual cramps, he roused himself and collected a fresh one from the automatic dispenser then played with his magnetic paperclip pyramid until that cup also gave up its heat.

He fetched a third and picked up the phone.

First he called his financial advisor and arranged to up his life cover.

Next he telephoned his doctor and made an appointment for Monday morning.

Then he called Interflora and instructed that a magnificent bouquet of red roses be couriered to his wife. The message he dictated was, ‘Expression of affection, one, four, three.’

Traditionally, Friday morning was reserved for meetings with the advertisement managers and editors of his magazines. He lifted the phone to summon Ashby Giles, the least favourite of his managers. Ashby who said yar, instead of yes and absolutely, old boy. Who congratulated him on his employing Helen in preference to the other hounds who had applied. Who consistently defied Sheridan’s smoking ban with cavalier proclamations like, Passive smoking is for wisps. Ashby Giles who was without doubt the man behind his staff’s silent mutiny. Their failure to bid him good morning, their solemn exeunt dead on five-thirty and, of course, their utter lack of motivation and consequently sales.

He pressed the first digit of the extension number but found that he was laughing too much to go on.

‘Sea Cargo Month,’ he spoke out loud, sneering like a child saying cabbage. Then there was Warehouse Product and Service Monthly. And to top it all, Logistics and Freight Distribution Monthly. Sheridan could barely contain himself when he recalled how they’d agreed that the title rolled off the tongue. That it had need-to-read written all over it.

And then there was the business plan he was working on for James. A scheme that would in two years’ time put Sheridan Entwhistle in charge of an on-line warehousing and distribution news and recruitment network that fed directly into the established industry interface.

He opened the folder of the proposal, planning to surge on – but couldn’t. The dream was back. Blow-torching into his consciousness. And it struck Sheridan that never before in his life had he had a dream so vivid and powerful. He shut the folder. Without question this dream had need-to-read written all over it.

Sheridan was in the City or perhaps it was New York or Croydon even, surrounded by the most colossal skyscrapers.

At first, squinting up, he felt small. Small that his contribution to the perpetual motion of business in this fantastic metropolis totalled just one floor in one of the buildings and control of three unglamorous trade publications. Small that his sexual influence was limited (and extremely limited at that) to just one reluctant, aging female. And small, although he wasn’t entirely sure that this was the case, because he had forgotten to dress that morning.

The dream’s prescience, unless he was experiencing his own faculty for directing the drama, told him, even before the first tremor, that the earthquake was approaching. It said that he, and only he in this city, was naked and unable to protect himself from the imminent tremor.

Because there was very little else to do, Sheridan slumped down and let the pavement growl beneath him. The movement and noise intensified and he looked up to see cracks veining the outsides of buildings, bricks shaking loose and top stories spitting out their windows. Then whole walls began to collapse and smash into fabulous plumes of dust. Entire buildings started to go and cracks zipped through the tarmac of the road.

Did Sheridan know that this was a dream? Perhaps so, for he wasn’t unnerved in the slightest. If anything he was awed at the insane rococo beauty of it all. He knew he would shortly die and this was fine.

Things settled, or rather snapped, into the ultimate calm of a photograph and he rose and walked away from his wrought, debris-cloaked body. A joy, so sublime that there can be no words for it, permeated him. And Sheridan recognized everything. This was where he always came when released from the atrocious incarcerations of his lives. It was home. A true place where the mad concerns of bodies, money, status, fashion and all that is human were, if anything, laughable.

He turned to take a final glance at his body, perhaps to laugh at it and all it symbolized in the world of the insane. Yet someone was bent over it, carefully brushing away the rubble. He approached and saw that the girl was Folucia. Then again, perhaps it was Helen.

The girl lowered her face as if to kiss the body. The dead kissing the dead, he thought without irony. But this was no valedictory peck. The girl was performing the kiss of life and it was as if the body were vacuuming his weightless spirit back into it.

The body opened its eyes. And behind those eyes was Sheridan – re-imprisoned in the world of the insane. An intense grief overwhelmed him and he woke next to Jennifer on the very point of weeping.

Sheridan allowed the caw of the insane world’s alarm clock to drill through him for a few seconds as he interpreted his waking thoughts into the insane world’s language. The first thought said, Kill yourself Sheridan – and go back home. The second said, What, and annul your life assurance?’

Jayne and Yantra sat in Biddy’s doorway, devouring hard-boiled eggs, today’s bread and apples. They’d arced the van round to watch the sunset and deflect the outrageous north-easterly that was lashing across the Cheviots. Yantra was in two minds: should they clear out of the wasteland and roost ten miles on in the shelter of the Redesdale Forest? Or should they risk the wind shifting direction and Biddy going over in order to make love with the oncoming gale rattling agreeably outside? Of course, it was highly unlikely that the van would take a tumble. But he always felt unnerved in this grey, desolate part of Northumberland. Even when the weather was good this place was as strange and dark as the moon.

Yantra had another problem. He wasn’t sure whether they had enough petrol to make it to Newcastle. Or, more precisely, one of the poorer districts of Newcastle. If it was a toss up between dealing with petrol-cap locks, alarms and the pigs or the irate inhabitants of an inner-city estate and their dogs, there simply wasn’t a choice. A fight was generally avoidable, an arrest hardly ever was.

The wind picked up and the doors began to slam against their legs so they moved back inside.

Jayne saw something move on her coat and squealed. Yantra smiled calmly at her and remained silent.

‘Look, it’s a … flea,’ she said with disgust, attempting to move back from her arm.

Yantra pinched it from her sleeve, gave it a brief scrutiny and satisfied himself that it was of the dog variety. He crushed it with a tight twist of his thumbnail.

‘You killed it!’ she squealed.

‘I karma-ed it. It’ll reincarnate as a beetle and thank me,’ he laughed and laid a hand on her shoulder. She flinched. ‘Come on Jayne. Don’t go all Monophysite on me.’

‘Call again?’

‘The Monophysites. A cool bunch of fifth-century Christians who abhorred cleanliness and referred to fleas as pearls of God.’

‘Mmmm.’

‘Switched on, sure, but not half so wired as the Pythagoreans. Now old Pythagoras, of triangle fame, was also the founder of a religion based on the transmigration of souls.’

‘So?’

‘And the iniquity of bean eating.’ Jayne smiled. ‘Want more?’ She nodded. ‘Other sinfulness included, sharing one’s roof with swallows, walking on highways, picking up things that had fallen, stepping over crossbars, stirring fire with iron and plucking garlands. And woe betide the Pythagorean who, when he got out of bed in the morning, didn’t roll the blankets up and rub away the impression of his body.’

Jayne hooked an arm around her man and kissed his cheek.

‘Unadulterated bollocks,’ she told him forthrightly.

‘It’s true. Monophysite’s honour.’

‘Go on then, tell me some more things I don’t know?’

‘Like what?’

‘Well if I don’t know I can hardly say, can I?’

‘’Tis true, my dear.’

‘I know, five minutes life-swap you first.’

‘Mmmm. Where did we leave me?’

‘You were dating Astarot and taking your finals.’

‘Indeed. Well, having read my dissertation on Sir James Murray, the University of Serendipity duly awarded me …’

‘Who?’

‘You jest? Sir James Murray. The man was on a par with Sir Albie himself. Author of Electricity as a Cause of Cholera or other Epidemics, 1849. No? Well, the central thesis of the book was that germs didn’t exist and that all malaise was the direct cause of electrical disturbance. Cholera, malaria and influenza resulted from disturbed electro-galvanic currents. Thus the cure for illness was to lighten the density of the atmosphere around patients. So to ward off the mysterious and all perverting currents of irregular electricity, one should first cover the patient with silk then position buckets filled with quicklime in propitious locations around the house. He also recommended that houses should be constructed on nonconductive platforms and that cities should be surrounded by massive batteries to abate untoward galvanism. The point of …’

‘Yan, you’re doing it again. You. You’re supposed to be talking about you.’

‘For heaven’s sake, Jayne,’ he held his head in mock frustration. ‘You don’t seem to appreciate my difficulty in using the first person singular. The Zaparo have no word for I. It’s either you (uamsca) or everything (ahpikondia), which incidentally also means paradise. I’ve,’ he feigned pain at uttering the word, ‘told you this before.’

Jayne was an utter hog for the man’s seasoned bullshit. Whether any of it was true, which frankly she doubted, she had to credit him with hermetic consistency. The snatches of Zaparo language were always the same, as were his descriptions of life in the yage-swigging, snake- and jaguar-infested forests of the Amazon tributaries. Of course she wasn’t so foolish as to believe that any Ecuadorian Indian tribe could be fair skinned and ginger haired as he maintained (canopial colouring he called it), yet she half wondered whether there actually was or had been a shamanic tribe named Zaparo, whether recherché hallucinogens such as yage and ayahuasca really did somewhere exist and whether there actually had been sects and tribes called Monophysites, Eleusinians, Tschamikuro and Piro and individuals such as Sir James Murray, Tominaga Nakamoto, Al-Ghazzali and John Dewey.

So, he was mad. He was without doubt the kindest, least vindictive or proud man she’d encountered in her twenty-six and a half years on the planet – usually. And when it was over, which inevitably it would be because – as Buddha, Heraclitus, David Hume and Yantra all said – everything changes; nothing remains constant, she would no doubt kill herself. Yet, for now, she was determined to drink as much of this fleeting moment in this fleeting incarnation as was possible.

The dharma of Yantra’s life was indeed that everything is created by a series of causes and conditions and everything disappears by the same rule. At least, as far as women were concerned it was. Before Jayne, Biddy’s passenger seat was reserved for Sylvie, a Scandinavian au pair who had wanted to see the country. Well, he’d shown her the country all right. Left her sleeping in a tent in the Brecon Beacons and if that wasn’t the country then nothing was. Still he hadn’t been all bad to Sylvie (or Hathor), he’d given her a baby. Before her there was Jill who called herself Nephthys and reckoned she could foretell the future. One thing she hadn’t foretold as the acid went wrong in her at Glastonbury was that he’d moved into Sylvie’s tent. Then there was Juliette who gave him gonorrhoea – of the tongue – and forced him into a humiliating encounter with conventional medicine and the establishment. Before her there was Wolfsbane who taught him to juggle and throw diabolo. Cecily Simpson, the journalist, who’d interviewed him and wound up a participant observer preceded her. Indeed, as far back as he could remember, he’d been able to seduce women. Yantra held that as long as one had reservoirs of patience and gentleness, unfaltering respect for the feminine principle, an off-beat sense of humour, five thousand years of potted wisdom and the most beautiful eyes in the world, very few women on this wonderful planet were immune. Not that he abused his God-granted powers. For he maintained that one of the essential secrets of seduction was that a man should display a genuine desire to give pleasure to a woman and that this desire should exceed even his own lust. What woman could possibly resist, he wondered. And, of course, once initiated in Taoist lovemaking techniques, that was that, it was the open road from then on.

Still it had to be said, Jayne was different. They’d been together for over five years now and things had cooled only slightly from the initial white-hot. To ditch her merely for ideological reasons would be a needless martyrdom. Of course, Yantra was in no doubt of the necessity of their mutual infidelities (although he half suspected that Jayne only slept with other blokes to affect a childish revenge on him). Quite simply, people were not the sort of things that could be owned. Getting uptight about that sort of thing would be like throwing a wobbler over someone pampering Endy – negative to the point of annihilation.

‘Yan, you’re not listening,’ he heard her say.

‘Yeah well, I’m sorry but, you know, suburbia bores me.’ He yawned to prove this. ‘The only good thing about suburbia is that it’s next to subversion in the dictionary.’

‘And in my biography. Would you like hear about my subversion?’

One of the problems of being stuck in a van with someone is, no matter how much you may revere them, after about three months or so, you know pretty much everything there is to know about them. And though the repeated and time-tended tales of their rites of passage may offer a vague ritualistic comfort, they can also become bloody boring.

Why she had the need to embark on almost poetic descriptions of the painful mundanities of Hemel Hempstead and her subsequent conversion to a life of the spirit through hallucinogenic chemicals was beyond him. He knew the script and would almost feel his stomach knot with shame when she paused before making the predictable aside that the decision to take that first blotter was the best thing she’d ever done in her life and express her, doubtlessly fraudulent, conviction that everyone should be made to take acid at least once in their lives by law. Still he knew that to stop her now would be cruel in the extreme.

‘Yes, tell me about your conversion on the road to the Essex University library.’ He’d said too much and she looked sadly down at the van floor.

‘I’m sorry,’ she sighed. ‘It’s very old ground, I know.’

He kissed her and ran his hands up inside her coat.

‘There’s little wrong in repeating a journey.’ He kissed her again. ‘In fact, baby, some journeys just get better and better and fucking better each time you do them.’

‘The usual is it, Mr Entwhistle?’ Jennifer asked with uncharacteristic verve and skipped over to the drinks cabinet. ‘Ho, ho. You romantic fool,’ she laughed glancing over at the flowers crowded into a couple of vases. ‘Expression of gratitude, five, three.’

Her husband raised an eyebrow.

‘Well now, a snifter, eh? I think that very much depends on the whereabouts of the Unspeakably Behaved.’

Jennifer went ahead and poured. She was humming and, perhaps, vaguely ecstatic. This was more than flower power. Doubtless something to do with the Telegraph cryptic, he concluded, and submerged into his armchair.

‘Guess.’

‘Joined a hippy convoy in Wiltshire?’

‘Nope.’

‘She hasn’t … Not bloody Boston?’

Jennifer handed her husband the glass and grinned. Still, she was humming. ‘Nope.’ She pointed at the ceiling and slinked into the adjacent chair.

‘Unwell is she?’

‘I think she must be. She’s actually revising, cramming, with real books and notes, Sherry. On a Friday evening.’ Sheridan took a slow, thoughtful draft and nodded.

‘Revision, eh? Right. Best leave her for the time being.’

Once more Jennifer was humming. Over and over the same infuriating refrain. Sheridan attempted to identify it but couldn’t and this incensed him all the more. Then he remembered. The song was popular in the fifties. He’d loathed it at the time and, though he couldn’t explain it, was shot with a fury each time he’d heard the song subsequently. Its daft tune seemed to follow him into lifts, shops and once even, he seemed to recall though he could scarcely credit it, he’d heard an instrumental version on a corporate telephone hold. The song was about a bikini. And the reason he detested it so was because the chorus contained the expression, itsy-bitsy. Itsy-bitsy – he grimaced.

‘Sherry! I do believe you’ve got a tick.’

‘Tick, eh? Done something right for a change have I?’

‘There, it happened again. Your cheek muscle just twitched. Unless, you were winking at me, of course, ho ho.’

Sheridan wiped a palm over his cheek and kneaded the flesh upwards. He sniffed. ‘Tired, that’s all. Work … summer bloody madness. Never really noticed it before. Remember me telling you about a lad called Ashby? Ashby Giles?’

‘The upstart.’

‘That’s the man. Anyway, I got back from a lunch and the lad had only seen fit to don a pair of bloody shorts.’ He began to laugh. ‘Wearing them, bold as you like, around the office he was.’

‘Ooh. Sapid, nine.’

‘Quite. I mean for all the lad knew I may have been expect …’

‘Bread and butter, six.’

‘I say, you are quick this evening.’

‘Thank you,’ she said, grinning monstrously.

‘As it happened I wasn’t expecting a client.’

‘Still, you upbraided the lad?’

‘I did indeed.’

‘And he accused you of sexual discrimination because naturally you passed no comment on your bare-legged female staff …’

‘How in God’s name did you know that?’

Jennifer laughed and slapped a hand down on the arm of her chair. ‘Because, my dear. At times you’re what can only be described as a predictable old … um … light brown oon, seven.’

‘A what?’

She didn’t answer and went back to her humming.

More to move out of earshot than further inebriate himself, Sheri dan rose and wandered across to the gin bottle. He hadn’t the faintest idea why the expression, itsy-bitsy, enraged him so. It just jarred inexplicably. Like executives in shorts. Like sneering women. Like politically correct language. Like much on this increasingly unsatisfactory planet.

The sitting room door opened a fraction and Folucia’s head peered round. She addressed them with exaggerated boredom.

‘Going out now. Where yer going? Ask no questions, hear no lies. What about your revi-jun? Fi-nished. What about su-pper? Not hungry, thanks all the same? Just a minute young lady? Minute’s too long, life’s too short …’

‘Folucia!’ yelped her mother.

‘Folucia, please,’ entreated Sheridan. ‘Before you go, could I please just have a very short word.’

‘Tit!’ she chimed. ‘Short enough for you, Daddy? By-ee.’

Jennifer said nothing. And, although Sheridan was swallowing a chortle, he shook his head solemnly and said nothing in agreement. That was it then, he thought, the evening’s agenda had just been written. Silent supper followed by reading the paper, occasionally glancing up to look at whatever was happening on the television, then up to bed for another bout of insomnia. If he was lucky, she might get stuck on the odd clue and be forced to speak to him. But he doubted it.

Sheridan tried to imagine what Jennifer’s reaction might be if he suddenly announced that he was going out. He couldn’t. Not that after twenty-three years of marriage he didn’t know her, rather, in the last decade or so he’d more or less dried up on the surprises – just as she’d virtually dried up on the lovemaking.

Jennifer sat motionless staring at the blank television screen. And Sheridan, though he had nothing much to say, experienced a colossal urge to break the silence. Like a child who’s taken on an adult’s bribe to remain silent for a time, he felt a stream of iconoclastic statements jostle up into his larynx. It reminded him of these last six weeks, when being in the paradise state between waking and sleep, he’d detect the vaguest of urges to get up and pee. Invariably, he would attempt to sublimate it and succumb to the delicious gravity of sleep. Yet in his heart he’d know that, having acknowledged the urge, all hope of sleep was absurd, and sooner or later he’d be forced to capitulate.

He glanced over at her. And, perhaps, there was something unusual about the light but she appeared suddenly as she might have two and a half decades ago.

She twitched.

Still he glared at her.

She looked away.

He smiled.

*

As was usual, Sheridan had pulled into the Lloyd Park car park. And, as was usual, he’d turned off the ignition, clicked off his lights and pushed his face into Jennifer’s. Yet this night she did not respond with her accustomed ardour.

‘What’s wrong?’ he asked her.

‘Nothing … I s’pose.’

‘No there is, I can tell.’

She cupped his cheek and murmured a small kiss onto his mouth. ‘Can you tell?’

‘Yes, I can.’

‘How’s that then?’

Though Sheridan may have been an expert at the games played over telephones and in the meeting rooms of the major pharmaceuticals, he was clueless when it came to this sort of thing.

‘I dunno.’

‘Maybe it’s because you know me quite well. Sherry.’

‘Right.’

‘You know, Sherry.’ She tightened her hold on his cheek and began to wipe awkward, wet kisses over his face. Her mouth progressed round to his neck, practically panting at his ear. Then she whispered something to Sheridan Entwhistle.

‘Sorry?’

‘I said,’ she spoke with a slightly louder frustration, ‘you can do things to me if you want.’

*

Sheridan laughed out loud.

‘You can do things to me if you want,’ he blurted.

Jennifer looked up at him.

The sternness of her expression made him laugh again. How that face could have once uttered those words was beyond him now.

‘Sherry?’

‘Nothing, sorry.’

*

At work Sheridan was not reticent about the fact he had a girlfriend. And when people asked, Have you had her yet? – which was the way people put things at the time – he’d reply, ‘That’s for me to know and you to find out.’ Then when someone quipped, Is that bald for no? and everyone collapsed, he considered it perhaps time to put it to her. After all, he reckoned, the worst she could do was decline.

Prior to the ecstatic rummagings Jennifer now permitted him, Sheridan had had but one sexual experience.

For half a crown, Hilary Parish had let him snog her and allowed him access to her right breast in Edingley Hills. Before the transaction took place, she’d insisted that Sheridan ask her to go out with him (otherwise she’d be a slag), accepted and then formally chucked him after the drama. This is how Sheridan could legitimately claim that he’d had a girlfriend at seventeen.

When Sheridan arrived home and clandestinely kissed his mother’s nurse in the hall, he knew that even the asking was impossible.

And so he tarried, part curious, part terrified and part famished, stealing away for auto-satiation when impropriety threatened, and returning the gentleman.

At eleven-thirty on the night of the thirty-first of December, 1969, his mother upstairs in bed, Jennifer pulled her mouth from Sheridan’s and said, ‘Let’s open the champagne now, Sherry, and do something really special to see the sixties out.’

Sheridan looked at her nervously. The timing, it had to be said, was less than immaculate. He closed his eyes and listened to the groan of the WC refilling.

*

At perhaps two o’clock, Sheridan was abruptly woken.

‘What is it?’

‘She’s not back,’ Jennifer whispered anxiously.

‘Who’s … Oh right.’

‘And you’re snoring like a geriatric.’

‘Sorry.’

‘If you hadn’t drunk so much, you’d be awake and at your wits’ end too.’

‘Wrong,’ he said, somewhat irritably. ‘If you’d have joined me in a drink you might be asleep and not at your wits’ end. Goodnight.’

He dug his head defiantly back into the pillow and duly Jennifer snapped off the lamp. But it was too late. He was awake and remembering things about hearts and secretaries and bladders.

Jennifer coughed and turned, then coughed again. He tried to force things from his mind and fill it with sleep. Of course it was useless and the frustration made him more awake than ever. Jennifer shifted again. He waited for the cough.

‘Why is my life so consistently infuriating?’ he growled, flinging himself from the bed and swivelling into his dressing gown. ‘I suppose you want a f … f … flaming cup of tea?’

Ten minutes later Jennifer came out to join her husband in the garden. He ignored her.

‘Come on, there’s a good girl. Get it all out. I’ll fetch you some more water.’

‘Good girl!’ exploded Jennifer. She tailed him into the kitchen. ‘What in God’s name are you doing?’

‘She’s not well, Jennifer.’

‘I can see that much. And why do you suppose she’s not well?’

‘Tell me you’ve never had one over the eight and I’ll listen. In the meantime, I am attending to my daughter.’

‘For God’s sake, leave her. You can’t give her the idea we approve of this sort of thing.’

‘Please, Jennifer, let us argue about whether this constitutes a cardinal sin or is merely part of growing up in the morning. For now …’

Jennifer began to shake her head ferociously, then bellowed, ‘Good God, man, what’s happened to you?’ She paused – and for an insane moment Sheridan thought she must be fishing for a crossword clue – then turned and stormed up to bed.

A small police car tobogganed southbound on the unlit A68.

Through the sullen smog of the storm they saw a large white vehicle standing at an angle that seemed to suggest it had slewn off the road.

They drew up and aimed their headlights at Biddy.

‘Fuck me, it’s moving.’

This was so. The van was literally bouncing on its suspension.

They left the car, peered into the driving compartment and satisfied themselves that it was empty. Then they walked round to the back door.

The wind squealed like a banshee as it forced its way through the Cheviots. Yet above this they heard the rhythmic shrieks of the woman inside. And despite the brutal wash of rain they could nevertheless detect the aroma of alcohol and hashish wending from the hole in the van door.

One of the policemen lifted his fist intending to hammer on the door but the older one took a gentle hold of his arm.

‘They’ll be going nowhere tonight, son. ‘Ippies, I’ll not doubt, but ‘armless enough.’

At five that morning a splendid rainstorm cracked and flashed above Edingley. Sheridan, on the precipice of sleep, listened contentedly as lavish raindrops slapped into the fat leaves of the sycamore outside. He envisaged the tree lurching gleefully and clumsily manoeuvring its heavy limbs to catch the cool drops.

This was the first benevolent thought he’d had about the tree since learning that it was thieving moisture from the foundations of the house and would need to come down. And in his halcyon drowsiness he couldn’t decide whether subsidence should be classed as a separate, additional problem or one of the steps on the sardonic staircase that he was currently crashing down. Of course, Folucia (without question, an additional problem in her own right) had argued that the sycamore had more right to existence than the man-made construct of their home. And Jennifer made the clever suggestion that perhaps they could hire a team of men to dig it up and move it further down the garden.

As Sheridan slowly wakened, the lulling comfort of the rain’s thrum diminished. More than likely the bloody stuff was coming in through the window and corroding the paint work. Or rolling over the sill and detaching wallpaper. Rotting the carpet. Perhaps one of the drains had blocked. And he now pictured it, drop by pernicious drop, dislodging shards of plaster, purposefully weeding out clumps of lawn and turning the meticulously eclectic flowerbeds into Somme trenches. He envisaged the water level in the pond rising higher and higher until goldfish, mud, weeds and God knows what else spewed into the lake that his garden had become.

The bastard rain also reminded him that he had a bladder, so he climbed sluggishly from the bed and put on his dressing gown.

Stooped before the lavatory bowl, the nausea of waking billowed through his being. He faltered and reached out to the cistern for support. Feeling too groggy to make it back to bed, he sat on the floor for a short rest. And Sheridan Entwhistle had to confess to himself that he felt drastically unwell. Perhaps he’d mention this to the GP.

Immediately he regretted permitting thoughts of the doctor to enter his mind. Throughout Friday, he’d purposefully avoided the issue, repeatedly chiding himself that no amount of worrying would affect the toss of this particular coin. In fact, bar a squash match, worrying was just about the worst thing he could do at the moment. That is what it had said in the family health manual, so consequently, Sheridan considered, it must be achievable. So why the hell couldn’t he achieve it? Were other people better helmsmen of their own minds?

Sheridan recollected being at school. Whether it was his prep or his gym slippers that he had accidentally left in the dorm he couldn’t now recall, yet on one occasion he faced the housemaster on a charge of forgetfulness. The crime being venial, he was ordered to write two hundred lines. Still, the young Sheridan questioned his master. ‘How can it be my fault that a particular thought didn’t enter my mind?’ The master smiled benignly and told him that it was precisely because it wasn’t Sheridan’s fault that he must be punished. He didn’t understand. The master went on to explain that the nature of the punishment wasn’t retributive, rather corrective and would perhaps afford the boy greater mental discipline – and that mental discipline was one of the most enviable going in life. The heinous rigours of trigonometry, memorizing the strange stories in the Bible, Latin declensions, the staple diet of Polynesia – did such pursuits serve a purpose? Indeed they did – they served to discipline the heinous rovings of a young man’s mind.

So why, thirty years after suffering such asinine tortures, was Sheridan’s brain in a state of complete anarchy? Why couldn’t he shift the eidolon of Dr Dickinson imparting the worst. And why couldn’t he recall whether it was his prep or his fucking gym slippers?

When Jennifer discovered him perhaps fifteen minutes later, Sheridan was cross-legged on the bathroom floor cradling his head in his hands. And she couldn’t be positive but it seemed that he was mumbling, ‘It’s not my fucking fault,’ over and over and over.

All doubts and all hopes vaporized. Disturbance was afoot. There was unquestionably something very wrong with her husband.

Thanks to the storm much of the heat and oppression of Friday had been rinsed from the air. And as Sheridan strolled down the hill towards the newsagent’s a mixture of tiredness, relief and good humour mingled into an agreeable feeling that he might almost have described as postcoital. Several of the people who passed bade him a good morning. Yet as they would later recount Sheridan seemed to be unaware of them – as if something weighty were on his mind.

Indeed, this was so.

Sheridan Entwhistle was plotting a crime.

‘Good morning,’ smiled the newsagent.

‘Indeed it is, Mr Khan. Indeed it is.’

Sheridan slid a Croydon Chronical from the pile on Mr Khan’s counter. His heart was clattering and the sweat of his thumb stained the paper. Moreover, he had no idea why he was about to do this. Quite simply, the notion had presented itself to him, and, like the suggestion of visiting the bathroom in the small hours, he found that he had no choice about things.

‘In fact, Mr Khan, it is such a fine day that I detect an aberration coming on.’ Mr Khan raised an eyebrow. ‘Twenty Benson and Hedges, please.’

As the newsagent turned and reached up for the cigarettes, Sheridan adeptly snatched a Kit-Kat from the adjacent display and interred it in his jacket pocket.

‘On second thoughts, filthy bloody habit. Scrap the cigarettes, Mr Khan.’ He paid for the paper, they exchanged parting smiles and he exited.

As Sheridan’s face met the fresh air a fantastic elation surged through him and the sweat that had more or less sodden his shirt chilled wonderfully. He hadn’t the first clue why he’d committed the daft felony, yet it felt so satisfactory. As he trekked slowly back up the hill he thought with irony of the sign in Mr Khan’s door that read, Only two schoolboys at a time.

… and what exactly is the point of, like, revising something I already know?’ he heard Folucia object as he entered his front door.

‘Look, Folucia. Look …’ his wife spluttered impotently.

‘It’s my bloody life, Mummy. Besides, I’m leaving home on my sixteenth birthday and there’s not a lot anyone can do about it. So put that in your pipe …’

‘Perhaps, young lady, you’d like to put that one to your father.’

He walked into the kitchen and the women scowled at him. Ignoring them, he bent down to greet Hogarth who was wiping his mottled head over Sheridan’s feet and shins.

‘He’s lying. He’s been fed,’ said Jennifer matter-of-factly.

Sheridan didn’t look up. Instead he pulled the Kit-Kat from his jacket and handed it to Folucia.

‘What’s that for?’ she asked suspiciously.

‘It’s a bribe,’ he answered.

‘Bribe?’

‘Yes, my dear. I’d like you to do me a small favour, if you wouldn’t mind.’

‘Favour. What favour?’

‘Well Folucia, I’d very much like you to tell your mother that I’ve given you a thorough going over. You know, explained that I think you’re a selfish, immature brat, that you take us for granted, that you’re deceitful, ill-mannered and …’

Folucia reddened, then forcibly regained her composure.

‘And I treat this house like a hotel.’

‘That’s the ticket.’

‘Well, Daddy, you’ll be pleased to know that I’m checking out on my sixteenth birthday.’

‘I see,’ said her father calmly.

‘What do you mean … I see?’ she mumbled. He didn’t need to look up to sense her eyes fill. ‘Are you … are you … throwing me out?’

Sheridan said nothing and sat down. He unhinged a dry piece of toast from the rack and began to nibble on it, masticating and forcing the shards into his dry throat. Folucia began to stammer. Still Sheridan maintained his cool.

It was Jennifer who broke.

‘Of course not,’ she announced, laying a hand on her daughter’s shoulder. ‘We’re doing nothing of the sort.’

‘He,’ Folucia growled, pointing at Sheridan, ‘wants me out, doesn’t he?’

Sheridan remained silent.

‘He wants nothing of the sort, darling. Do you, Sherry?’

‘Well, Folucia,’ he said slowly. ‘I mean, if you’re unhappy, here. If our moderate existence in some way offends …’

‘Sheridan Entwhistle, stop it this instant.’

Sheridan grinned to himself and returned to his toast eating.

They pulled over before the slip road to the A1 (M), wrestled out of their heavy coats and slipped into the Babylon bibs.

The Babylon bib had been Jayne’s invention, and as inventions went it was unrivalled by just about anything Yantra had managed to come up with to reduce the inevitable hassles of this way of life. Originally hessian sacks, the bibs had had head-holes cut out and the façade of respectable clothing sewn to the fronts. Thus any Babylon (police) eyeballing them on the motorway would witness a gentleman in a shirt and tie with his long hair hitched neatly back, driving the Bedford, and a woman in a high-necked Laura Ashley number, with albeit unconventional hair, accompanying him.

Prior to the bibs, Yantra would have expected to be pulled over two if not three times on a long motorway journey such as this one – and depending on what type of mood he was in, have his drugs stolen, his van shamelessly criticized and even be forced to listen to crap about the Caravan Sites Act 1968 and the Criminal Law Act 1977.

Since adopting the bibs, they’d only been tugged once and then the policemen found them so funny that it completely slipped their minds to harass them. Painting over the anarchy symbol, fuck the system, and the other brightly painted messages of peace possibly helped matters. These days he didn’t even need to bother with Biddy’s fascist paperwork.

Yantra and Jayne were making their annual journey to London because, compared to virtually anywhere else in the country, its streets and subways really were paved with gold. Not that they intended making their fortunes, but nothing was worse than being at Glastonbury too indigent to get truly wankered out of their skulls. Alas, life required money, but as Yantra often pointed out one can also get greedy on poverty. Money was unquestionably a mu topic – a negative which is beyond negative and positive. And stealing or begging for modest amounts was The Middle Way, and perfectly consonant with the noble path.

And there was another matter. Perhaps it was curiosity. Perhaps it was genuinely familial, though he hoped to God not. He couldn’t know. Still, year on year, the gnawing deepened. Of course, he’d said nothing to Jayne. Nor did he intend to until the groundwork had been done. For Yantra well knew that speaking to a woman about a child and introducing her to one were entirely different matters. Entirely different.

He pulled into the slow lane and unbuttoned his trousers. Jayne smiled nervously and arched down on him. She tried to recall when he’d last had an opportunity to wash and wondered at his reaction to her refusing. To Yantra, fingernail grime, armpit stench, flatulence and just about every other foul thing the body is capable of producing, were human and natural and thus warranted a certain earthy reverence. She half wondered whether he felt sexy at all and wasn’t using her as a method of getting clean.

But Jayne had Yantra quite wrong. He was neither particularly horny nor fussed about hygiene. To him this was Maithuna, a Tantric meditation technique of submitting himself to Shakti (the feminine principle, Mother of the Universe) through impassive intercourse. Silently he intoned a secret Tantric mantra in time with the rhythmic strokes below and adjusted his speed so that the road lines passed in a complimentary rhythm. Once or twice he felt himself succumb to the worldly aspect of what was going on and dragged himself back, Zen-fashion, to the mantra. Only when he climaxed and spoke aloud that he was consecrating his semen as a sacred offering, did he receive a notion that perhaps he was being somewhat hypocritical about things and that he’d squandered a perfectly good head-job concentrating on an enigmatic slab of discourse between Siva and Durga.

By Monday the heat had returned and Sheridan couldn’t be sure whether the waiting room was intolerably stuffy or it was dread that caused him to perspire so copiously.

He rolled things over again and managed to ease his disquiet temporarily. Of course Dr Dickinson wouldn’t give him a verdict there and then. He’d require tests. Arrange appointments for the future. Give Sheridan more time to come to terms with his predicament.

Yes, that’s what would happen.

He wouldn’t be dropping any bombshells on his wife and daughter tonight. And that would be fine. After all, he was sure that if he just had a week or two more, he could prepare himself for things. Think events through a bit more and work out a method of dealing with the circumstances. Besides, it wasn’t as if he was the first person on this planet to learn that he was unwell. People of Folucia’s age and younger had had to come to terms with mortal ailments. There could be no question that with his age and strength of character he’d cope. All he needed was a week or so’s grace. Yet, as he stared unseeing at the open magazine, his heart pealed and he barely had the strength to remain on his stool.

Of course, it was quite pointless denying it. Sheridan Entwhistle was more terrified than he’d ever been in his life.

Memories of Jennifer’s wedding dress, a brand new Folucia, his first magazine launch and the like momentarily rocketed into view – only to be snatched back into a barrel of impotent sentimentality. It struck Sheridan that his brain was out of defence mechanisms and the only thing dividing him and his fate was the sterile glaze of the fear itself.

He felt suddenly alone and badly regretted not sharing his fears with Jennifer. If she were sitting next to him this morning, he knew he wouldn’t be feeling nearly so abysmal. Besides, perhaps she already had an inkling that something was up. On several occasions over the weekend she’d asked him if everything was all right. As if the black coffee and low-fat margarine would have escaped her.

His name was called and he harnessed all the energy his liquid body had to stand.

There would have to be more tests, he told himself.

Time.

A little time.

Dr Dickinson was not a man who would pronounce a verdict like this without sufficient tests. Yet, on entering the surgery, he discovered to his comprehensive horror that he wasn’t to see his old friend Dr Dickinson.

She was perhaps thirty, with shortish blonde hair, gentian eyes and breasts, Sheridan considered, far too fulsome for a doctor. Nevertheless he explained things to her, answered her questions and, when asked to, removed his shirt.

She measured his pulse and blood pressure, weighed him on an old-fashioned balance and shone a miniature torch into his mouth and his eyes – all in virtual silence. It struck Sheridan that, to her, his body was little more than a fleshy machine. A machine that she had been trained to put right. It pleased him that there were no sudden expressions of horror as she jotted coded notes about his machine on her pad.

‘Breath in. Hold. Breath out. Relax now. Please try and relax, Sheridan.’

But Sheridan certainly couldn’t relax. Despite the curt efficiency of her pawings and shuddering frostiness of the stethoscope, she was vastly more than a machine to him.

‘Please Sheridan, relax,’ she breathed against the skin of his naked shoulder.

After some more minutes probing, she asked Sheridan to sit back down and told him that he would be pleased to know that she doubted very much that he had suffered a heart attack.

‘Well, thank you very much,’ he said with disguised relief, squeezing up his tie knot. ‘That really is all I wanted to know. I can only apologize for troubling you.’

She smiled and watched him rise, dig his shirt back into his trousers and swing on his jacket. When he was midway to the door, he beamed at her and said, ‘Once more. Thank you so much for your time, doctor.’

‘No,’ she said calmly, staring down and doodling vacantly on a pad. ‘The symptoms you described were those of a stroke.’

He halted. They stared at one another. She wasn’t smiling. She held out her palm and indicated the chair. Sheridan complied.

‘A stroke, right?’ he said stoically, wrenching up a small grin.

‘Yes, Sheridan. They could have been the symptoms of a mild stroke. But I don’t think they were. Now it’s up to you, of course, but would you care to know what I think did happen to you on Thursday?’

‘Yes, yes. I’m sorry. I just got it into my head that it was … Sorry, please go on.’

‘I think that you have suffered from an anxiety attack, Sheridan.’

‘Right, well. Anxiety, eh?’

‘And have you any idea why you panicked and hyperventilated?’

‘Not the foggiest.’

‘Well, Sheridan, perhaps it’s nothing, but when a seemingly stable, professional forty-four-year-old begins to suffer panic attacks, I think it’s wise to find out why.’

‘Well, it was an unusually hot day. I probably got a little short of breath and panicked. I’m sure it was a one-off.’

‘And how long have you had the facial twitch?’

‘Sorry?’

‘And the tremors in your hand?’

The GP allowed her demeanour to melt into something akin to empathy. She forged a smile and explained to Sheridan that if there was anything he felt the need to discuss about his work, marriage, financial affairs, problems sleeping or anything else that might be worrying him, it was her job to listen. Or, if Sheridan would rather, she could refer him to someone else whose job it was to listen. Sheridan shook his head and assured her that at present his life was remarkably problem free. But if he ever felt the need he’d be sure to get in touch.

She glared at him in silence. He twitched and diverted his eyes. As Sheridan rose and walked out, she shook her head.

They pulled up at a service station and refuelled with some of the cans of petrol pilfered during the weekend stopover in Newcastle. The road was fairly clear and it seemed likely that they would make London by dusk.

The problems started just outside Ripon when Yantra decided that he felt the need for another Tantric experience and Jayne refused.

He pulled Biddy over and told Jayne to get out. Naturally enough, Jayne complained that he was acting the bastard. He agreed and apologized to her, explaining that the stress of London must already be biting.

Still, he was sulking. And when Yantra sulked he had little else to take it out on but the road. Finally, Jayne went for his fly button and said that as long as he recommended using the mirror and indicating then she’d comply. He told her thanks, but the mood had passed. She accused him of being childish. He half smiled and said that anyone who had lost touch with the child in themself, had lost touch with their soul. She attempted to kindle this into some sort of a conversation but he wasn’t having it.

Then Biddy took out the front light of someone’s Escort.

At the best of times, Yantra had problems with names and addresses. But trying to explain that legal appellations were labels without meaning, merely handcuffs of the establishment, and that the corpulent, bald Yorkshireman in the suit was in fact standing outside his address did not help the situation.

The man looked down at his tiny, glistening black shoes and breathed hard. Was it possible, he wondered, that the van might perhaps be uninsured? Nor was he impressed when Yantra opined that insurance was indicative of a rejection of destiny and faith in the principle of ultimate good.

‘Please, man,’ whined Jayne, when he reached into the car for his mobile phone. ‘I mean, you won’t exactly be profiting any by calling the pigs. All you’ll be doing is harming us. You know, for the, well, sheer sadism of it.’

‘Yeah, sadism, man.’

She indicated for Yantra to shut up.

‘And like, I’m sure there’s some way we can pay you for the damage. You know, I feel rotten about your vehicle and that. And, well, I’d be willing to do virtually anything,’ she tugged at his jacket sleeve and grinned coyly, ‘to make things good.’

The man reddened. He looked up at Yantra who was nodding in complicity.

‘Anythink?’ the man mouthed.

‘Do you, you know, wanna follow the van into the country and discuss it with me?’

‘And wha’ about ‘im?’ he said warily.

‘He’s cool. Very cool. Aren’t you, baby?’ Yantra nodded, attempting to push a smile through his revulsion.

‘And you, you travel in t’car?’ She nodded. ‘And ‘ow does I know yer not gonna, well, do us in? Rob us and the likes?’

She looked hurt.

‘Because we’re pacifists,’ she told him earnestly.

‘Pacifists, ay? I see. Well now.’ Yantra moved back into the van. ‘What’s yer name? Yer very attractive for an, you knows, an ‘ippy. ‘Ope yer don’ mind t’word ‘ippy,’ Yantra heard the man stammer as he stepped back into Biddy.

The two vehicles left the A-route and scudded along roads that grew increasingly narrow until finally they were bouncing over unlaid moorland track. Biddy squeaked to a halt and Yantra stepped down from the vehicle. He walked a fair way out onto the turf, tested its firmness with his boot, then went back to Biddy and drove her onto the grass, stopping a few yards from where the land gave way to a small stream. He jumped out and opened the back doors to release Endometrium. Then he indicated that the pair of them should use the van.

Six hours later, as they flew off the motorway and down through Hendon, Jayne and Yantra were still not talking.

As far as she was concerned, luring him into the van then removing his trousers and challenging him to call the police now, was ample punishment for the man’s antisocial behaviour. Why Yantra had seen fit to dump his distributor cap and mobile phone in the water, liberate the air in his tyres, then coin I’m a fat fucking pervert and an anarchy symbol into the Escort’s paintwork, was quite beyond her. The nearest building was perhaps five miles away.

For Yantra’s part, he could hardly accuse her of being the degraded tart he obviously wanted to. Nor could he express anger over her pursuing the charade long enough for the man to emerge from the van with a tent pole in his Y-fronts. That would have sounded like jealousy, which he never felt. Consequently, he interpreted her anger over his actions as colluding with the state, which was indefensible. Well, he’d find a few women in London and Glastonbury to collude with and then they’d see how far her humanitarian principles really stretched.

Sunlight crashed into his face and it was wonderful.

He pulled off his tie, flung his jacket over a shoulder and unbuttoned his shirt down to his navel. He was laughing. Laughing out loud to himself like a maniac.

‘Morning, Bill,’ he called a couple of times, waving at the Con-man.

Of course, people gawped at him – but so what? They could look at him and think what the hell they liked. No one could touch him. Not today.

On the bus, he smiled at the passengers who diverted their eyes. Again, he couldn’t help but chuckle out loud.

It was nearing eleven o’clock so the station was relatively empty. Still, some commuters were making their way to work and Sheridan wondered whether any of them had freshly emerged from doctors’ surgeries in unexpected receipt of their lives. Perhaps not. Without exception, they looked thoroughly pissed off with things.

It was announced that the Victoria train would be six minutes late. Sheridan laughed.

He had an urge to hijack the tannoy for a few seconds. Tell all these gloomy fuckers to cheer up. That there was more to life than Monday mornings and shitty jobs. That there was life itself.

On the train, thoughts of Ashby Giles, James, Belinda Oliphant and, of course, the Helen episode sobered him up somewhat. Still, he told himself, he would always retain something of this morning’s experience. It was as if an existential ballast had been inserted into his being – a bench mark that he could utilize to call any of life’s setbacks into perspective. Never in his life could he recall being so utterly delirious with joy.

Then he recollected the dream. Had he not then experienced a near identical elation – and the very same conviction that the world and its insane concerns were meaningless? And Sheridan quizzed over how a dream about death could prophesy its precise antipode.

And, whilst pondering the nature of predictions and the like, he recalled how Folucia had burst into tears and rushed upstairs to pack while he calmly munched on toast and the ballast momentarily faltered.

Fissures of sunlight shot through the blue gauze of cigarette smoke. Ashby sat, bare calves slopped on the desk, chatting casually into the telephone. The sales figures hadn’t moved. There were no good mornings. He could see from where he was standing that Helen hadn’t bothered to switch on his coffee machine, so he took a cup from the dispenser and headed towards his office.

Then something odd occurred. Helen looked up at him and offered a sheepish smile.

‘Feeling better?’ he enquired, simulating sympathy. She nodded dolefully. What was it about her? Was there something of an apology in the look? And though he knew that this was unquestionably the wrong thing to do, he said, ‘You OK, Helen? Would you like to … you know … chat?’

She followed him into his office and, to his mild surprise, closed the door.

For a time she said nothing and stared at Sheridan’s desk. He unwound a succession of paperclips and scrawled something on his pad. They cleared their throats simultaneously. Then she spoke.

‘Listen, what happened before. Like, I don’t want to talk about that, right. That was that, OK. But, like, what I want to tell you is that, what happened before and that, was my total involvement in things. You know, I haven’t been in much, so I couldn’t have had anything to do with it. And I wouldn’t anyway, you understand. And, like, I s’pose if I knew about everything else, I might not have done it. I mean, I was right to do it and that. But, you know, I didn’t figure on everything else. So, like I said. I’m not sorry about the first bit but I’m sorry about the rest. I wouldn’t have wished that on you. Anyway, that’s what I really wanted to say.’

‘Right,’ smiled Sheridan. He pulled another paperclip from his pyramid and straightened it. ‘Erm, if I’m going to be entirely truthful about things, Helen, I, er, have to confess that I’m not exactly with you on much of this.’

‘No, I s’pose not. But, like, when you are, remember that I had nothing to do with it.’

‘Sure. I’ll remember that.’ He turned back to his paperclip.

‘OK. That’s that,’ she smiled and stood up. ‘Oh yeah, and you know, when you refused to call the managers coordinators or supervisors, you were right.’

‘I know I was.’

‘Manus, hand. Not man, male. I, like, you know, looked it up.’

‘Quite so.’

‘Well, you know, just thought I’d say it, like. OK, see yer.’

Then he saw the yellow Post-It note stuck to his desk asking him to please call Belinda Oliphant – urgently.

Momentarily, he toyed with dialling the woman’s extension and moaning to her in a highly urgent manner but decided that, actually, he had something far more important to do.

Sheridan watched the slow dilution of the city from an empty first-class carriage. Some flowers and an early edition of the Evening Standard rested in the adjacent seat. And it had to be said, for the first time since he could remember, Sheridan Entwhistle would have conceded that he was a happy man.

That afternoon his thoughts and memories were interacting in a way that he considered somewhat peculiar. Then again, perhaps not. For it wasn’t unhappiness that he experienced when he entered his mother’s bedroom that morning twenty-four years ago and discovered that … well, she’d stopped working.

Mrs Entwhistle was smiling and Sheridan smiled back.

He bade her good morning and lowered her tea onto the bedside cabinet. He gave her shoulder a gentle rousing nudge and she rocked slightly, as if she’d tensed her muscles, and continued her smiling.

Sheridan rubbed a sentimental knuckle across the cold, crushed tissue of her cheek and still smiling said, ‘Bye then, Mum.’ Then he made the phone call.

It hadn’t been spoken about but it was more or less agreed that, when the time came, Sheridan and Jennifer would get married. After all, they had regular intercourse, exchanged I love yous, and quite frankly Sheridan would have been lost without a woman in his house.

But when, in the Tudor Rose restaurant, Edingley, Jennifer took a small sip of her wine, smiled and said, ‘Sherry, I don’t think I’m ready yet,’ Sheridan nearly choked on his lamb cutlet. He snapped the ring box shut, submerged it in his pocket and carried on eating.

‘Perhaps you’re right,’ he said through his scorching face.

‘But, Sherry. I wouldn’t be adverse to us living together.’

‘Living together!’ he couldn’t help but exclaim.

‘Sherry, it’s 1970. Lots of couples are doing it. It’s a really trendy thing to do.’

‘Trendy!’ murmured Sheridan Entwhistle, straightening his tie. ‘Trendy. Well now.’

Then he pictured it. Nonchalantly letting it slip at work. The perfect counter to his bald head had to be inviting a select few for exotic cocktails in one of the big new pine and glass pads in Edingley Hills Close.

‘Somewhere really modern?’ he asked, his eyes widening. She nodded frantically. ‘Really 1970s?’ She continued nodding.

‘Orange carpet?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Purple suite?’

‘No, Sherry, polka-dot beanbags. And one of those globby wax light things.’

‘Ahhh, Jennifer, Jennifer. You can get them. You can get them. I saw one on the goggle-box. A cocktail bar that fits into the wall and you pull it down for parties.’

‘Parties. Sophisticated parties. With quiche Lorraine and pasta.’

‘I can’t see why not. Pasta, eh?’

‘And piña coladas.’

‘Right.’ Piña coladas and quiche Lorraine. That would show his Double Diamond and Mackeson-swilling staff.

Sheridan was grinning as he tucked the flowers and paper under his arm and dug for his key. He entered the hall and cheerfully announced his presence. Yet Jennifer did not greet him with the enthusiasm he’d expected.

‘What’s wrong, Sherry,’ she asked warily, automatically reaching for the kettle.

‘Absolutely nothing, my dear. On the contrary, everything is just splendid.’

‘So what are you doing home?’

He handed her the flowers. She eyed them suspiciously.

‘You gave me flowers on Friday, Sherry. What are these for?’

‘To say … you know … I suppose I might quite like you – or something to that effect.’

She cleared her throat.

‘I see,’ she said, looking at the kitchen floor.

‘Jennifer.’

‘What?’

He walked up to her.

‘Come upstairs.’

‘Why, Sherry?’

‘Because I’ve come home to … to, well, make love to you.’

‘Oh no you have not. I’ve got tons, simply tons, to do.’

‘Like what?’

‘Cleaning, cooking. You know. That sort of thing.’

‘My darling, it can wait.’

‘Oh no. Oh no, Sherry. Certainly not. Besides, the Unspeakably Behaved could come back on one of her revision periods. No, no. You sit down and have a cup of tea.’

‘Ah, that tried and tested method of contraception. One of Jennifer Entwhistle’s cups of tea.’ He wrapped an arm around her middle and kissed her cheek. She didn’t resist. Nor did she succumb.

‘Sherry,’ she said calmly. ‘It really is out of the question. In the first instance we’d have to draw the curtains. It would be like raising a flag for the residents. Besides …’

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