Decisive old Sophie — made ’er choice, no messing. . I’d a big enough stockpile, deffo, but there was no way of knowing how much to —. Mumsie breaks off, because, having passed through a choke point between a pair of cottages, the huddled mass fissions, individual particles shooting off across a wide verge towards the perimeter fence. — There it is. . the net we’re all caught up in . . its chain-link mesh already covered with a mass of handmade cards featuring doves, rainbows, olive branches, CND symbols. . all the dumb, predictable stuff. There are also black-bordered photographs, funeral wreaths and plenty of craftwork banners with sewn-on lettering, a rumpled cladding of sentimentality held together with garden twine, wool, thread and their bleedin’ ’eart strings . . Ooh, look, Mumsie says, there’s wossissface Thompson — Hughie sent me his pamphlet. . Tell you what, though, I dunno about written by candlelight, but I certainly had to read the bloody thing by it. Have you got any idea what us teachers have to get by on nowadays? Mumsie accosts a tall old bloke with a badly drawn dove of white hair and the face of a battered eagle, who shows them his rotten teeth . . as he. . opens his beak. Out comes bad breath and good words: I absolutely assure you that I do, he says, I live entirely on my freelance earnings now, but for years I subsisted on an academic salary, although it has to be admitted —. But whatever it is that has to be admitted is shut out by a woman who touches his arm and coos, Great to see you here. . A second groveller ’omes in on ’im . . then a third and a fourth — his white hair flapping, he’s spun away from them into the throng. Mumsie gushes. . She’ll get wet over anything that’s got one . . I can’t wait to phone Hugh and tell him about this — he’ll be dead chuff ed. Genie says, Well good luck with it, ’cause them old nancies he lives with now never answer the fucking phone. . The speed and vodka had been keeping her sweet — but the encounter with the smelly old writer has soured it: he reminded her of Kins — and one thing was for sure: They’ve both got one, Hughie had one too — so did all the coppers holding hands along the fence, looking ridiculous in their baggy macs and. . bell-end ’elmets. Besides, what were the missiles that would soon be sticking it to the warm silos if not still more pricks. The concrete fence posts are pricks, the wire strung along their tops is covered in ’em — the fog flowing round everyone laps at. . pricks securing the guy ropes of a canvas stockade some Robina-fucking-Crusoes have set up, so they can wait however long’s necessary before. . Man Friday pitches up wiv ’is big black one. — A small girly ball of auburn curls and freckles in a red rain poncho bursts out from one of the tent doors as they pass and presses a flyer into Mumsie’s hand. W-We’re having a dragon festival next m-month, she stutters. P-Please m-make your banners at home and bring them on F-February the f-first. . As they tramp on along the fence, Mumsie reads aloud: The word “dragon” derives from the Chinese meaning to see clearly, she is a very old and powerful life symbol — I didn’t know that, Jeanie, did you know that? Genie snarls, No, I didn’t fucking know that. Mumsie releases Genie’s arm so she can fold the flyer and put it away in her bag. I might, she says, get some of the girls at school to make banners and we could bring them down here — it’d be good for their political education. Genie says, Long as you don’t let any of those boys near this place, they’d go berko, they would. Mumsie tut-tuts, You don’t know anything about my boys — they’re nice boys. . Which is why they’re in a fucking approved school . . Genie thinks back to the dragon festival she celebrated that morning: the dragon’s lurid eye, its needle-sharp teeth and golden scales — all of it puckering up as the silk subsided between her shoulder blades, and she knelt down on the bare floorboards to lick the white powder from the cat’s dish. . a very powerful life symbol . . Bumbumbum b’b’bumbum . . Bumbumbum b’b’bumbum . . Under press-ure! of booze Genie’s heart staggers to a crawl — she senses the ssscabies of withdrawal starting to sneak under her skin, and thinks of David. . heaviest geezer I know. . who must ’ave a prick like all the rest. . — yet came to pick up on Friday wearing fishnets, a pencil skirt and a platinum-blond wig crushed under a wide, floppy-brimmed hat. He sat at the table in the top room concocting his speedball with lock-picking precision, then hunched over for bloody ages . . pushing and pulling the plunger until long after there was anything but blood in the barrel. Finally he pulled out the spike and nibbled up the red liquorice bootlace . . He slinkied over to where Genie had hung one of her tableaux: plastic cowboys and Indians glued on to a photo of Monument Valley torn from an old National Geographic. The caption underneath was IT’S YOUR LOOKOUT! It’s my fucking lookout! David had said. The filth’ll have me any day now — but in the meantime I’ll have this, all right with you, girl? — Mumsie’s mask of concern is. . in me face. — I said, you all right, Jeanie, seems you had a bit of a turn. . Genie finds she is on her knees in the mud. . I’ve shit for brains, with everything — the fence, the cops, the protesters — wheeling about her head. What is it, she puzzles, this force that keeps pushing all of this stuff — the Yank airmen, their trucks and jets, their TVs and their piled-high pancakes stuck together with maple syrup — against the chain-link until it swells. . fishnets fulla flesh. Genie struggles to her feet, the punctured sole of her Doc Marten pisses out a jet of water, and. . it all goes the other way: the second hand on Mumsie’s Timex. . sweeps anti-clockwise. C’mon, Jeanie, she says, it’s nearly two — everyone’s getting ready. — The implacable force is drawing all the women in towards the fence, some silly moos hold up pocket mirrors, the idea being to. . show Patriarchy its own ugly face. Others have lit candles — wax spatters as they draw closer and closer, until they are forced like the pigs to link arms. Some of the women are singing, We shall ov-er co-ome, We shall over-come! Others chat away regardless. We’re in a B&B in a village over that way called Upper Bucklebury, says a chubby middle-aged woman gesturing. . wiv ’er goofy teef. Mine host is a funny old thing with two Pekes — I don’t imagine she’s got the slightest what we’re here for, but then why would anyone come to this part of the world for a weekend in December. I mean to say, it’s hardly picturesque. . Registering the wave of soundlessness sweeping round the base’s perimeter, the goofy woman falls silent. Genie staggers — and Mumsie says, Your blood sugar’s prob’ly low, then faff s in her bag until she comes up with the chocolate. Tearing its wrapper, she snaps off some squares and passes them to her daughter. There you go, meat and two veg’! — The sick-sweet chocolate in Genie’s ravaged mouth conjures up this: the dusty plush-puffs. . tickling me nose, and the teddy bear marine biologist with granny specs played by Richard Dreyfus, who says,