Apple tree, pear tree, plum tree pie, How many children before I die? One, two, three — at least five of them, barefoot, in dirty knickerbockers and, despite the September sunshine, all with thick mufflers around their stalk-necks — he supposes to ward off the influenza that must still be hovering here, among the gold medallions scattered between the chestnut boughs. And so they chant: She open ve winder an’ in-flew-enza! She open ve winder an’ in-flew-enza! which draws him towards a raised casement in the sub-basement. That’s it. He understands now: no matter what enlightenment comes with the New Dawn, even when the fever hospitals, gaols and asylums are turned over to the revolutionists to become beacons of free-association and communal living, still no acts of women or men can ever raise the soil from my back, Our cemetery’s so small there’ll be no room fer ’em all, Our cemetery’s so small there’ll be no room fer ’em all . .The insupportable weight and density of the mud, packed by the pounding of the shells into every nook and cranny of his form — the steel, and the steel that’s made that steel — of all this there will be more: more milled and turned and drilled, the component parts stretching out into the future on a ceaselessly revolving conveyor belt that has no end. He need never have resurfaced at all — his hands shake and twitch, his back bends. . bends . .he is seized by impulsiveness in fingers, hands, feet, toes, and in his inclinations also, an irresistible urge to point, poke, touch, lick, want — this, that, all others . .and yet he cannot, of his own volition, move at all, Tiddly-iddly-ighty, Hurry me home to Blighty, Blighty is the place for me! — the bilyati gun goes off in my face . .The milieu intérieur, a sepulchral Scots voice intones, as described by Claude Bernard — it is, I would say, best understood as a landscape of its own — a habitable terrain, why not? Possessing hills, rivers, lochs — fields and meadows too. . However, if you take a closer look, you’ll see that the significant features are, aye, well, broad fairways, sand traps and beautiful — mark me, bea-u-tiful — greens. A second voice — weedy, querulous — intervenes: You make it sound like a golf course. SEPULCHRAL: Well, indeed — that is its problem in a nutshell. I mean, in so far as the milieu intérieur is a place that can be mapped out within the catatonic’s mind, it’s also most assuredly incapable of sustaining life. It cannot feed its creator — while those others who play round it are ghosts. . shades —. WEEDY: Ghostly fours —. SEPULCHRAL: Fours, pairs — she, the catatonic you see before you, she waves them through — that’s precisely what she’s doing right now, waving them through. She cannot play with them because they don’t, rightly speaking, exist, and so she gives them precedence —. WEEDY: And what about the treatment, how does that alter things? SEPULCHRAL: What we do here? Why, blow it all to smithereens of course — I mean, ideally it would, but perhaps only plough it over for a season or so. The important thing is the dramatics of the procedure — we cannot, at present, know the precise effects on the brain, but the induced coma state, the intensity of the shock itself, and then: hey presto! the reawakening with a jab of glucose. I suppose a fancy way of putting it would be to say that she’ll reach a new psycho-physical accommodation, but I’m a plain-speaking Renfrewshire man, no truck with scientific jargon of any sort — nor am I in thrall to the kirk, still, I’ve seen absolutely astonishing resurrections. . Nurse Greengage, would you be so good as to shut the door and bolt it? GREENGAGE: Certainly, Doctor Cummins. WEEDY: What’re they for? CUMMINS: The restraints? Surely they took you through the whole drill at Claybury, young man, absolutely standard procedure. WEEDY: Oh, I don’t know — can you be certain that —? I mean, I’ve read through her notes quite thoroughly, it doesn’t appear on the face of it that this is schizophrenic catatonia per se —. CUMMINS(laughing, a dreadful grating sound): Per se! Oh, do give it a rest, Marcus — it doesn’t matter a fig what’s caused the catatonia, could be syphilis or bloody socialism for that matter. . (he hums). . The more we are to-gether the merrier we shall be —! Oh, come on, man, I’m only joshing you, you take everything too damn seriously — it’s not as if I’m advocating the good old English fist, do I look like a New Party man? Y’know, what we damn well do need is some sort of an atom-smasher like they have in Cambridge, smash all the madness to pieces, eh? As things stand we throw the switch on this apparatus here and we short-circuit half the hospital — you must’ve noticed? MARCUS: Yes. . I have, and it’s an eerie sight — if the fuses don’t blow, the bulbs all along the lower corridor go dim, one after another, travelling down that enormous length. . like a sort of pulse, I s’pose you’d say. CUMMINS: Spare us the piety — pass me that kidney dish, Nurse. . Thankee. . a-ha. Have you see the plans for the new Underground station, Marcus? MARCUS: No, I haven’t as yet. CUMMINS: Queerest thing — shaped like a sort of hatbox, can’t say I care for it, I’m old enough to remember when, in the waiting rooms of London suburban stations, you’d get a couple of oils of some civic dignitaries or other hung up on the wall and a stuffed bird or two in a glass case! He lies, the torturer, he is Albert’s creature . . — They had been happy and sustained a functioning community. There had been — so far as she was aware — additional production, although this was by no means demanded of them after the suffering they had endured performing the Imperialists’ war work, and the stresses of the revolution. Some brushes, clothes pegs and baskets — simple artefacts they were happy to turn out. Stanley had said: You and your comrades take the old booby-hatch up in Friern Barnet — we’ve no use for it now the greater part of the inmates have been discharged to the care of their families or their local cooperatives. And there’ll be a form of justice, I believe, in free women and men of a rational cast ruling the roost where but lately the poor and deluded were confined against their will. (CUMMINS: Some of this electrolytic cream spread on the temples will ensure closer contact and improve connectivity . .) They had retained their overalls from the munitions factories as a badge of pride — besides, what could be more supremely rational dress than these rough ticken clothes? Tunics, divided skirts and heavy jackets that protected them from the cold and damp of the old buildings, warding off an ague that seemed present in their very bricks and mortar. This was during the early days — later on, when things had been more organised, clothes were donated by the London fieldworkers, nothing too fancy but perfectly serviceable and freely given. A thousand female comrades took up their quarters on the western side of the former asylum, and a thousand male ones to the east. Mingling among both sexes and assigned to their living units were a proportion of malefactors and counter-revolutionists distinguishable by their dark and drab uniforms. These women and men were charged with the mundane and trivial tasks: the locking and unlocking of doors, the changing of soiled sheets and garments, the administration of medicines, and the assistance of those who requested peace and quiet to special reclusion units. The notion was that they were to be re-educated by their close association with these women of high ideals, whose long and arduous labours had dinned into them a mortal legacy of diseases: tuberculosis, typhoid, dysentery and venereal infections transmitted via sexual congress with males of the exploitative class. (CUMMINS: If you’d all please ensure that you’re standing with both feet on the rubber matting . .) Theirs was not the only phalanstery to be established by the Central Cooperative under the chairmanship of Stanley Death. The communalists chose not to discuss such mundane matters, but over the years I learned — by earwigging on the resentful detainees — that there were others at Hanwell, Napsbury, Claybury, Sheffield, Banstead and Tooting Bec — a ring of them surrounding the site of the former metropolis, wherein the same experiments in communal living, and the same practices of the freest thought, were pursued. The wildest and the freest of thoughts — and speech! A’stutterin’ anna mutterin’. . she’s seen a fellow in a picture on the wall, and he’s stepped out of it and had her away, into the family way, she’s given birth! To an automaton! A little Enigmarelle of her own! (CUMMINS: