that expression: profound irritation with her own great competence. What did you mean, she says, by winding things up here? Oh. . really, Zack splutters, d’you want to go into it right now? From the garden there comes the antistrophe . . Eileen’s, Irene’s and Maggie’s voices all. . rising and falling: Podge! Po-odge! Podgie, sweetie, where are you, love?! Po-odge! Overcome by this, and by a pre monition of the months to come, anxiously checking the front of her panties and seeing. . spotting, Miriam sinks down on a chair. What — she tries another angle — the bloody hell has been going on here? I mean, drug-taking, pretty obviously — but what else? Zack constructs several fabrications in his mind before. . castles made of sand, Fall into the sea im-mee-diate-ly and he’s resigned to the truth: Roger and Lesley gave some of the others LSD — and took it themselves. What about you? she demands, and he’s ready with this tetchy self-righteousness: Me? Me? Oh, I’ll jolly well tell you what happened to me, the irresponsible idiots spiked me — gave it me without my knowledge. He sits down opposite her. . I tell you, Miri, it’s been an absolute nightmare, but I managed to take some sedatives, so the worst of it’s abated. Into this safe little harbour — she rams: You? You managed to take some sedatives — what about the others? Who exactly did they give this stuff to? Po-odge! Podgie, darling, where are you love? Don’t hide from us — please! Irene’s standing immediately outside the kitchen window, her hands cupped. . a bony megaphone. Miriam says with the bureaucratic manner of an Eichmann: Podge, who appears to’ve gone missing — tell me who else, Zack, or do I have to wring it out of you? Vee haff vays of making you tock! Before he’s broken. . he tries to fasten. . a damp scrap of amour propre around my sagging belly by rising, fetching the kettle from the hob, filling it. . how readily water washes things away — it’s what it’s for, surely . . and clashing it back down on the blackened prongs, at which point he does indeed. . tock: Yes, well — Podge, but she seems to’ve been handling it. . pretty well. She’s stayed in her regressive baby persona — the one she calls Fiona — talking gaily about going through the rainbow door. . That. . sort of thing. And, um, the Kid — they gave it to the Kid, and he’s. . well, he’s not doing so well. He’s in the living room in. . rather a bad way — but luckily this chap Lincoln turned up, his guardian, y’see, and I think he’s doing his best to — the gas ignites with a Whumph! — reach him. Tea or Nescaf’? Ignoring this pantomime, Miriam remains implacable: And? What about Claude — were they stupid enough to give it to him? Were they, Zack? Busner stands with the jar of Mellow Bird’s in one hand, a teaspoon in the other. . all this holding things — if only they’d float. The moodiness lilts on from the speaker in the front room. In there are. . Creeps — lots of him: three Claudes lined up primly along the sofa, two more sitting on the floor, a third flung down on the mattress. . and more: Claudes dangling by their army boots from the ceiling tiles and clustered along the cornices. . Throw de darkie in de coal hole — Claudes are a-censoring in the hall and ranged up the stairs, Claudes are in the back bedroom typing, and in his own one. . horsing about in my bed. Claudes in the bathroom, juggling with bath cubes. . Fort — Da! Claudes tuning their trannies and fiddling with their amulets. . Oh roister-doister little oyster, Down in the slimy sea . . Claudes higher stilclass="underline" up on the roof with General Shoemaker, importuning him: Got any bob-a-jobs for me? Claudes leering and jeering. For, although the memory of whatever it was he heard the two men discussing when the LSD had me in its grip — mangling with my mind has already retreated, it’s left in its wake this very solid apprehension: All this time, when Busner thought he was observing Claude, really it was Claude who was keeping a coldly curious eye on me. He shudders, feeling the rough skin of Claude’s psyche scccraping past him, as the beeg feesh circles below the surface of the apprehensible world. When will he charge from below at these merely superficial events? Well? Miriam insists, Were they? Wearily Busner concedes: Yes, they did give some to Claude, but here’s a funny thing: it barely seemed to aff ect him — on the contrary, for the past few hours he’s been making more sense than I’ve ever heard him make before —. Po-odge! Podgie, pet — come on now, Podge, don’t be a silly-billy, this is no time to play hide and seek. Miriam, who’s holding Oscar’s wounded muzzle between her hands and thighs, tut-tuts over this, over that, over. . bloody everything. She says, Don’t you think you should help them find Podge, Zack? You may believe Claude’s perfectly lucid — but a moment ago he was right over there and made an absolutely filthy gesture at me. Busner turns — and the green Claudes thronging the hallway change to aquamarine, to cobalt-blue, to blue, to silver-blue, to silvery, to silver-white, to transparent — the particulate wave gushes through my head, how readily water washes things away. He staggers, collapsing back into the chair opposite his wife’s. How, he thinks despairingly, can a bird be mellow? while saying: In a moment, dear, I need to collect myself a little. . a dangerous locution, because no sooner is it out than he sees his own severed head set on the enamel-topped bench, and Claude preparing to attack the raggedly exposed windpipe with one of Roger’s scalpels! Anyway, Busner gasps, with a new little one on the way. . Claude. . Roger. . I meant what I said. . before you quite rightly pre-empted me. . This ghastly episode has confirmed it: it’s time to wind up this, um. . experiment in communal living. I–I don’t believe any of the Concept House’s residents are. . significantly less distressed than they would be anywhere else — if they are, it’s only at the cost of those around them being markedly more. . distressed. Y’see — he brandishes the teaspoon authoritatively. . nearly my old self — the overall quantity of, um, distress remains the same, y’know —. A giant bog brush! shoots through the back door, it. . scrubs round, only to reveal that it’s Maggie’s head in curlers. Maggie’s face says: Oh, hullo, Miriam, didn’t know you were here — have you seen Podge, Zack? She’s gone missing and we’re all getting a bit worried. A bit worried is, Busner thinks, what Maggie is all the time — her anxiety given tangible form by a ceaseless but controlled agitation: knitting two, purling three, casting off, crocheting, fiddling at her hair with pins and rollers . . Miriam says: We’ll be with you in a minute, Maggie dearest, Zack and I are just having a rather important chat. Maggie’s head is withdrawn, and they hear her clambering over the broken fence into the garden of 119, calling out: Podge-ie! Podge-ie! I’m glad, Miriam says, you’ve finally begun to see sense — look at this. She pulls a folded Evening News from her handbag and spreads it on the table between them: FOUR DEAD IN KENT STATE SHOOTINGS shouts over a fuzzy photograph of crumpled bodies and kneeling, keening girls. Oh, I say, Busner says — and Miriam snarls, Oh, you say, do you — you say. Well, I say this is where all your libertarianism has been headed — these poor children gunned down by the National Guard, those other idiots blowing themselves up in New York a few weeks ago — this place, with its mentally ill patients — which is what they most certainly are, Zack — running amok. You need to grow up and take some responsibility for things right now. Right now, Busner echoes absently, for all he knows is that