, getting her beer money by yankin’ the ’andles in Delilah’s Massage Parlour. There are, Genie thinks, so many Delilahs in this world — but so few Samsons. Hughie though, Hughie’d been one of the Samsons. . outta the sweetness came forth weakness. . — The signs had been there from the time when he was little and too soppy by ’alf: crying bitterly when they happened on a blackbird’s rumpled corpse, or pointing out to Genie with wild wonderment the quicksilver raindrops poised on a leaf. — In his first term at the University he went and hacked off all his lovely hair — said ’e was a sadhu, but ’e looked like a skinhead saddo . . His new college friends told her where to look for him — Hughie always made friends wherever he went. . so open, so blindly trusting — funny too . . She found him in the chapel, trapped between two pillars, staring up at the figure slumped from the cross like ’e knew what was coming. That first time he was a week in the local mental ward, then he was himself again — except when, after his death, Genie came to consider it properly she knew that the adult self he’d grown up into was the crazy one. The next time they found him wandering around Grantchester Meadows starkers and buzzing, flinging his arms round the glossy-black bullocks’ necks and kissing ’em. Genie had been gone by then, she was. . down in the Smoke — chasing the fucking dragon. And Mumsie, having taken a job in a school in Leytonstone, had bought the house off the Roman Road — going back to my roots, she’d called it. . like she was fucking Alex Haley. Hughie had told his rescuers he was bending down to kiss the green serpent snaking beneath the trees. His mouth had been full of mud, they said. . and there were flowers in ’is mind. It was too much acid, ’course — but too much of. . everything else as well: too much sensitivity, too many thoughts. Now all of it was gone. . steam off a piss. . and only those living ghosts had been left behind at the vicarage, spirits who silently sipped their vodka-laced sherry. Young people’s funerals. . and I done a few . . were always sick and tired and stunned. Old people, they grew weaker and weaker, until by the end they were making only the feeblest of motions and so slipped gently below life’s surface, leaving ’ardly a ripple. But the young — they thrashed about and kicked off, punching their way out of the life they’d so recently ’ead-butted their way into. They left behind this choppy soundsea: Blah-blah-blah . . Terrible business . . Awful for his mother . . How’re you getting back to town? — Because after all. . Genie thinks as she pushes open the wood-effect door and smells the old-man smell and sees the Clozapine in its little cup by the sink, and sees the old motherish man by the window in his shawl with his paperback. . it’s always the others that die: always Hughie and Cutty and Mumsie and David Martin and One-Armed Mickey. After they’ve gone under life flows in again so smoothly and rapidly, its surface unbroken, because really. . there’s nothing down below at all. — Quint peers at her. His chemical trembling is transforming into something else: the normal tremor of old age. His fingers fidget, his desiccated lips are chafed, the long white hairs on his Adam’s apple wiggle, he mutters and twitches — yet all this animation is pleasing to Genie. For the nine months she’s worked at Lincoln House. .’e’s been scuppered: a burnt-out shell of a man, his carbonised face on the point of disintegrating into ashy bits. If she had a cold or anything else that was catching she wasn’t meant to go in to see him — Agrunyou-something-or-other, Missus Perkins had called it, and said: His immune system is compromised — he can’t fight infection. Yet he’s pretty fucking feisty now, and this after only a couple of days of the new. . careless plan. Genie hands him the biro and Quint says, Wrong kinda fuckin’ pen, girlie — too sharp, it’ll tear the pages here. I need a f-f-f —. Felt-tip? she suggests, and his expression is one of furious gratitude. If I’d a f-f-felt-tip, he says, I’d felt-tip in the mornin’, felt-tip in the evening too — I could plot the ballistics of heavenly orbs and figure out the Godly integrals right here. He indicates the Jaws lying open in his lap. Genie sighs, But Mister Evenrude, y’know I’m not meant to get stuff for you any more. I’ve money, he croaks, if that’s what it’ll take, you chiseller — there’s money in my pants pocket, over there. . Genie thinks: He’s a hold on me — and I don’t get what it is. She says, Well, now, it just so ’appens I gotta go to the shop anyway for a. . woman’s thing, so this time I’ll fetch it you. . Then, standing in front of the cupboard door, she hesitates and is back yet again in Jebb House. . fucked on Cyclizine — talking to that other cupboard. Knowing if she could only bring herself to yank open its door, Mumsie would be lying inside, curled up like a pussy cat, with a blissed-out expression on ’er savage old face. — Debbie had written that they had withdrawn care from Mumsie, who’d abandoned her two-up two-down off the Roman Road and gone up to Leicester to be cared for by Little Miss Hoity-Toity. Yes, yes, they’d withdrawn care and given Mumsie a lovely big hit of gear and another an nanother . . until she. . was well and truly under. Genie hadn’t gone to the funeraclass="underline" on the day she’d sat on the edge of the bed, looking at Pippa sleeping in her cot. . ’er crappy little nappy . . ’er scrawny little legs . . and fought hard to prevent herself from picking her up by them and dashing ’er ’ead against the wall. — I’m not going to say anything about your behaviour is what Debbie had written about Genie’s behaviour. — But she still did the business . . two months later a solicitor sent a banker’s draft for three grand. Genie spent Mumsie’s legacy as she’d’ve wanted me too — no! Mumsie couldn’t imagine herself dead — because then there’d be no more pain for her to cause and no more cock, no more drinky-poohs. A grand went to Cutty. . to fuck right off out of it . . another on debts and rent arrears. With some of the third Genie bought a few bibs and bobs for Pippa and the flat. The balance she spent on. . getting fucked up. — A month after that she was still fucked up: it was spring and they were out walking by the canal. Pippa wouldn’t go in her pushchair: she ’ad a plastic figure-thingy of Ronald McDonald . . and kept putting. . its ’ead in ’er mouf — givin’ it ’ead. Genie saw a magpie perched on a plastic bucket stuck through the torn mesh of a chain-link fence. She looked away to the canal, scummy with oil and wood chips. She looked at another planet . . that was Canary Wharf. She looked back: the same magpie was pecking at the stalks of some freshening foliage. She said to Pippa, Stop slobbering on that thing — and looked again: the magpie was sitting right beside them on a concrete post and giving Genie its glittery eye. An omen — that’s what it was. She yanked Pippa along so fast the toddler tripped and fell. .