the predictable: two packets of Embassy, a large bar of Fruit and Nut, and a half-bottle of vodka. Mumsie says, I dunno why you wrote Gregor’s name on that thing, Jeanie. I mean, he and I may’ve had our differences, and he might not’ve always been the best father to you, but he loves you in his own way. — The coach grinds down to the bottom of Holland Park Avenue and swings on to the Shepherd’s Bush roundabout. — London is this to Genie: a cold and filthy present through which the blurry Viennese past is a pudding-faced old woman in a black sack dress drawn tight at the neck with white lace — a plump. . stubby-beaked old woman who, as Jeanie reaches for the plate of sticky little pastries, slaps my hand — hard . . — At least some people speak the truth — in this case, the mad old biker, because, as the coach accelerates past the Grantly Hotel (TV Lounge, H&C in all rooms, £12. 50), Genie’s heart revs up, and to tranquillise her didgy thoughts she rearranges her bits and bobs, removing half an economising ounce of Golden Virginia and a packet of red Rizla from her jacket and catching them in the netting attached to the seatback in front. — Like I say — Mumsie doesn’t know when to shut-the-fuck up! — we didn’t stick it out together, but we were both young, and with all he’d been through. . he’d his mental problems. . Any man’d ’ave mental problems married to you, what with yer heels tied behind yer ’ead and yer cunt wide open to all comers. — The women on the coach are of all ages, and, energised by this outing — which, despite its solemnity of purpose, remains a jaunt — they begin to sing, their voices raggedly disunited for a few minutes until they settle. . dumb-fucking-cows . . for the lowest lyrical denominator of, She’ll be coming round the mountain when she comes! (When she comes. .) She’ll be coming round the mountain when she comes. . Mumsie is at least silenced — but anyway Genie’s elsewhere: behind the grotty poster-peeling façade of the Palais, where chopped guitar rhythms slice and dice her hurt and anger. . If A-dolph Hitler flew in today . . its strings. . cutting to the bone as it chukka-chukkas on. She casts a cynical eye over the student lefties. . with pimply badges breaking out on their lapels, and the older women, who all seem to have lank grey ’air and granny specs. She wonders if any of them ’ave the chukka-chukka stomach for a ruck . . and remembers the flyer Tina pressed on her when she came over to pick up Genie’s coach money and her whizz: This is NON-VIOLENT protest, DO NOT BRING any weapons, or even objects — steel combs, wire-cutters, hairpins — that can be seen as OFFENSIVE. DO BRING: flowers, drawings by you and your children, mementoes — such as photographs or handmade headstones of war victims. ALSO plenty of WOOL and STRING to tie them to the fence. DO NOT BRING ANY NON-PRESCRIPTION DRUGS. . except, obviously, a bit of hash to chukka-chukka chew on and take the edge off. — Genie wonders how a feminist collective can have the brass neck to be this bloody patronising. . In the inside pocket of her leathers she’s a flick-knife. . like any sensible girl-about-town, and she’d’ve brought the hammer she keeps on the shelf under the leccy meter but it makes too much of a bulge. — Genie glances sideways at Mumsie, who’s too cool to sing along and instead sits meditatively French-inhaling her diplomatic smoke, while tapping a screw head in the armrest with a corner of her rolled-gold Ronson: chink-chink, ch’chink. . Mumsie’s hair isn’t lank or grey — it’s a thick and glossy mahogany — she should smell of furniture polish . . Trimmed short, it understates her precisely plucked dark brows, her neat nose and wide mouth — generous! That’s a fucking joke. There’s more makeup on one of Genie’s eyelids than there is. . on her entire-fucking-face. She must be knocking on sixty by now, but she still knocks it back . . seemingly none the worse for this fluid wear. . She’s prob’ly still gettin’ ’er period — she might get knocked up! Her complexion is clear — the backs of her hands. . always a give-away . . smooth and steady, chink-chink, ch’chink. . She wears a blue-and-gold-embroidered tapestry jacket, neat navy-blue slacks and ankle-high sheepskin-lined boots snug as . . Genie despises every fibre of her being and would like to pick her apart. . right down to her cold black heart, then string her up on the barbed wire of the base’s perimeter fence. Black Irish, that’s me . . How many times has Genie heard her mother bandy about this explanation for her good looks. . Yeah, black-bloody-Irish — black-hearted, pissed-up, foul-mouthed Paddy cunt. — Genie sees her mother standing on the top step of County Hall next to the bearded Provo and Red Ken. — Equally vivid is a vision of Mumsie crouched down, her steady hands in the boot of a Morris Marina, as she French-knits red, blue and green wires. She ain’t ’andy like me . . but she’d love to feel the hard rain of horse’s heads and bandsmen’s body parts on her face, hear the blast blow a mad fanfare through the brass instruments before they clink-clank-tinked down on to the black tarmac that had, in all probability, been laid by. . black-bloody-Irish. — The coach chukka-chukka decelerates past the Fuller’s brewery and Genie smells the dregs in the straights and handles during those long nights at the White Hart in Little Gaddesden. The two of them in the kitchenette’s neon-lit nook, Mumsie rinsing, Jeanie drying — and halfway through my special treat: a fucking Snowball! the sweet eggyholic smear across her child’s lips. . no wonder I’m the way I am. The rant gathers pace inside her as the coach pulls away from the Hogarth Roundabout, and the guitar chukka-chukka-chop-chops faster and faster. At this moment of familiar pain, her numb fingers clutching the threadbare heirloom of blame, Genie has. . a weird outta body experience, like on acid and sees herself clearly: the enraged childish scribbling of her hennaed curls, her mucked-up mush, with its silver mascara, heavy black eyeliner, slutty lippy and a concealer that has dried to a whitish mass, only exaggerating the lumpy eruption I gave a dig to before I left. — A thrumming bass takes up the beat: b’ bum-bum . . bum, b’ bum-bum . . bum — the guitar chops kindling . . and Joe whispers, Shouldn’t go looking for trou-ble, Shouldn’t go . . But he’s not, Genie snaps, back in her own put-upon skin, and loud enough to be heard above When she comes! Eh? — Mumsie plays for time, crumpling her latest Embassy into the awkward ashtray. Come again? Genie near-shouts: Gregor. Gruber. Is. Not. My. Fucking. Father! Mumsie’s knucks shred the smoky-tan rags unwinding from her nostrils. I dunno what you’re talking about, she says sententiously. He’s Debbie’s dad, isn’t he — and Hughie’s the spit of Gregor, so what makes you think ’e ain’t yours? Genie takes a deep breath, feeling certain that at last she’s blown Mumsie’s cover: Moira Fearing, snide as a nine-bob note . . who took Jeanie up to Dacorum College with her, aged about seven. . — Genie remembers the flags crossed on the wall — she preferred the red one with the golden hammer and sickle. I thought we were enemenies, she said, and Mumsie snorted, Enemies, pet, not pond life — anyway, that’s just for show. — Also for show were the beautifully painted wooden eggs, and skittle-shaped wooden dolls that could be eased apart to reveal littler dolls, which in turn could be delivered of littler ones still. . Jeanie’s eyes grew wider and wider, until she clutched the littlest in her hand: a shiny bullet of a baby doll that she wanted more than she’d wanted anything, ever — and that she wouldn’t let go of. Mumsie dragged her out back by the bins and clumped her — then she did. Mumsie snarled, You’re seven years old, Jeanie, not seven bloody months! She shoved her daughter in the back: You can find your own bloody way home. . Which Jeanie did, trailing along the drowsy summer lanes with the egg she’d nicked earlier. .