– Don’t hassle. We want to get away from those tenements on Lodge Lane. You can feel everyone weighing on everyone else. Think of having twenty floors on top of you. All that sweat and flesh.
– Bad scene. But this going in the park to get it together seems like a kind of a return to the womb thing.
– Feel all the life growing around us, the grass and the flowers and the trees. Taking their own time.
– Beautiful. But let’s not forget Sylvia. She’s beautiful too, and we hurt her.
– Nobody’s forgetting. Now just feel your foot crossing over from the pavement into the park. Feel the grass accept you.
– Fantastic. It kind of breathes in so I don’t hurt it.
– It’s more than that. It’s welcoming you.
– This is incredible. There’s nobody about except the grass and the trees. Where are we going, down to the lake to see the ducks?
– I shouldn’t think you’d feel too good about ducks right now. Let’s go and see where your dope is planted.
– That’s a great idea. Maybe it’ll talk to us. Like those trees aren’t moving but they’re talking about the sun.
– They’re talking about life. You aren’t there yet, though – the dope has been talking to you since you came on.
– I’m with you. Look how the shadows of the trees are lying down on the path to be in the shade. But they are the shade.
– Identity is a weird thing.
– Right. Those shrubberies, I mean, the sunlight just lies there like honey. I could eat it. But what I meant to say was, the dope is just behind them.
– That’s where I have to go.
– We don’t have to anything, man. We’re free. We can just let the sunlight splash over us.
– We have to go there. Don’t you want to visit it? Aren’t you grateful for what it’s giving you?
– Shit, you’re right, I am ungrateful. Come on, I’m going to thank it. The shrubberies are caressing us. Like -
– There are shoots there if you look. They’re quiet now, but when they grow someone’s going to eat them or smoke them. Then they’ll tell him everything.
– Right. Shoots, thank you, you’re beautiful. But I was going to say, those shrubberies were caressing us like Sylvia. I was just wondering if she’s still at Den and Heather’s. She might have come back to ours. I mean, if someone told me to fuck off while I was stoned I mightn’t be able to get it together either. But I do love her. She knows that.
– I can feel the shoots growing. Birth, that’s what life is for.
– Right. You know, Sylvia wants a baby, I can tell. Maybe we weren’t into getting married before, you know, the whole straight scene. But if she wants it, it’s my scene. “If this is you telling me this, shoots of dope, we’ll both come and thank you.”
– I could be reborn.
– That’s fantastic, man. How?
– Just think how a seed must feel.
– Don’t stop! I mean, too much!
– Thrusting down through the earth, feeling the soil hug you, the trees meditating.
– Digging in the earth?
– That’s right.
– Like this?
– Right, but stay cool. Not so fast. No need to break your nails. Time’s stopped.
– Look at all these stones, been down there nobody knows how long without anything to hassle them. That worm’s going to fuck the earth. Think of all the straights living round this scene and never knowing. Sylvia would love this. We ought to show her.
– We will, but don’t worry about time. She’ll come to see you. You can talk to her then.
– Man, this hole is deep. I’d never have thought I could do it.
– Don’t stop now. Don’t think about it.
– If we’re going any deeper I’ll have to stand in it.
– Stand in it. I mean, straights wouldn’t even think about it, never mind do it.
– I ought to get a job in the country if I can dig like this. Jesus, I can’t even see over the top of the hole. I never realised earth was so warm. Protective, kind of. Feels familiar.
– This is where I was born.
– Come on, man.
– This is only the beginning. Wait till you feel yourself pouring through someone, touching their being and speaking to it. It might be Sylvia.
– That’s amazing. Just imagine. I’d like her to feel – Christ! I can feel something growing up from my stomach like a shoot!
– You know who that is.
– Shit, man, it isn’t you!
– Yes, but now I’m you as well.
– What’s that? Rain? Look, the soil’s raining on us.
– It’s giving itself to us. Stand still. Let me feel it for you. It’ll be easier.
– Clods of earth! Christ, it’s hailing!
– Pull your hands in now. Think of what you’ll have to tell Sylvia.
Chapter I
Perhaps he should stay on the bus, and avoid the tail end of Christmas.
In Lodge Lane, shops had broken out in fairy lights. Tiny coloured bulbs spelt Merry Christmas. The shoppers on the narrow pavements looked as though they all had hangovers. The window of a wine store glided by, glittering with an oval of frost false as a carol singer’s smile.
If he stayed on the bus he would reach the park more quickly – but he wanted his sweets. He’d loved them ever since he was a child: boiled sweets which bulged his cheeks, hard as fruity stones, while he sucked and sucked until it seemed they would never crack and yield up their sticky secret. Why should he deny himself? He hadn’t had much in his life.
Ambushed by wind from the side streets, the bus shuddered. The brakes squealed as a bus stop flagged it down. If there were too many people upstairs, might the bus topple over? Horridge felt unsafe, for the lurches of the bus had set everyone nodding, as though agreeing with a whisper which he’d failed to hear.
The bus had stopped. He limped rapidly to reach the doors before they closed. His hip bumped something. “That’s my hat!” a woman protested like an outraged parrot, patting the furry pink cap back into place. “That’s my hat!”
“ I’m very sorry,” he said sweetly, cursing her for drawing attention to him, to his limp.
He gripped the rusty bus stop for a few moments, like a crutch. People trudged by, greeting one another, laden with bags of anything but turkey. Nobody looked up beyond the shops, to the windows blank with dust, the jagged holes admitting weather to the deserted flats. Above a supermarket, bared nails spelt out the unreadable ghost of its name. Didn’t these people realise that all this could be used as an excuse to herd them into concrete prisons miles outside the city? So long as they had their pubs and betting shops, they didn’t care.
He made for the sweet shop, slowly enough to conceal his limp. The shopkeeper was serving a customer: a packet of razor-blades lay between them on the spread of newspapers. Cupboards and racks made the shop even smaller. Magazines were pegged like printed towels hung up to dry. Framed by romances and toilet rolls, glossy women exposed huge chests.
As he turned to the jars the shopkeeper said “They’d rather not work these days. They’re too well off.”
Was she referring to him? He wasn’t one of the layabouts who drove new cars to collect their dole. Dole! Fortune, more like. It wasn’t for him; he was only partially incapacitated, the Social Security had decided after cross-questioning him like a common criminal. All they needed to live up to their initials were jackboots.
“ I couldn’t agree more,” the other woman said.
Oh, surely she could if she really tried. These days nobody could think for themselves.
“ All these men walking the streets. I’ve never seen anything like it.”
He wasn’t a streetwalker, and he never would be. Just let her watch whom she was calling abnormal! He rapped a lid with his knuckles. “A quarter of these, please,” he said to shut her up.
As he started forward to grab the bag – a sweet was poking over its lip, ready to fall if she helped it a little – his leg gave way. His hand splayed a stack of newspapers across the counter, spreading headlines – New Murder Shock – and razor-blades. A dozen repetitions of the identikit drawing stared up at him, an unnatural family – as though the man had infected a dozen victims until they looked like him. Horridge snatched his hand away. “Bloody leg,” he muttered.